#but the point is the rant and the feeling behind it

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Editing Part 5: The Structural Pass

Okay, by now you've nailed down how you want your plot, characters, and worldbuilding to be. If you haven't by now, it's a good time to format your document into manuscript format if you plan to move forward to publish in any form.

When it comes to structure, what you're really focusing on is readability. If the format of your book is a slog to get through, if your paragraphs are too long or your sentences are all the same. This will lose readers otherwise in love with your plot.

Dialogue

Dialogue heavy scenes are very fun to write, but pages of dialogue with no action can also be exhausting. Break up your dialogue heavy scenes with actions and descriptions. How does the character's body language reflect their feelings on the discussion? Can you give them a task (picking a lock, chopping onions) that allow you to add to the scene (fumbling when frustrated, dicing harder when angry)?

One mistake (that I've made plenty of times) is to have characters doing things for the sake of doing them. But this is an opportunity to add details that add to your plot (the normally awful cafeteria green beans are delicious, a clue to solving the murder!), character (an alien crewmember is trying to copy human expressions to seem more personable, but his many teeth just freak people out), and world-building and setting (Laura is ranting about her ex, but Tara is distracted by how soulless her rich mother's house seems).

Scene Lengths

Are your scenes running too long? Do they start in the wrong place? (Two paragraphs on making coffee instead of "She was making coffee when George burst in.") Tightening up your scenes will do a great deal to make your book better.

This is easy advice to give and harder to picture doing, I've found. Everything often feels essential to a scene. Try to tackle scenes with the following questions:

What is the point of the scene? (George tells Susan his wife left him for Keanu Reeves.)

Where does the action start? (When George burst through the door without knocking.)

What is the goal of the scene? (Susan starts to suspect George of murdering his wife.)

Where does the action end? (George leaves.)

Where should the scene end? - This answer depends entirely on what you need to happen next. Maybe you have another page and a half of Susan musing about her suspicions right there in the kitchen. But maybe this will be more impactful in the next scene, where Susan is snooping in the garden and happens to find something George's wife would never leave behind.

Varying Paragraphs and Sentences

Pull back and look at your pages. Are all the paragraphs the same length? Do you fall into using the same pattern of sentences over and over? (Guilty) Have you used the same word four times in a single paragraph to describe something? (Double guilty) Break those chunks up, what for those repeat words, and vary your sentences. This is going to help so much with issues you weren't aware of.

Chapters and Word Count

There are many ways to do chapters, but you want to keep an eye out for chapters that are going too long (giving your reader a visual break of a chapter ending can help shift the setting and tone) or too short (have you accomplished everything you need?) This is not a knock on either structure done on purpose - this is to catch something you may have overlooked.

When it comes to word count, industry standards are always a good baseline to go with. Your audience often approaches a genre with certain expectations, and while you can make a doorstopper of a romance, you will find more readers by sticking to the 80-100k range.

[luwritesstuff]

Breaking Point

Spencer Reid x reader

notes: angst/arguing followed by fluff/comfort, gn!reader, no use of y/n

wc: 884

Every relationship had their weakness, the one thing that tested how strong two people really were together. You and Spencer found out months into dating that your relationship's pressure point was exhaustion. It hit you both after two back to back cases across the country in one week, a friend’s wedding on Saturday, and a dinner with your parents on Sunday. By the next week, the two of you were stretched thin.

For you, the exhaustion made you irritable. Things you usually had patience for were getting under your skin and turning you into, quite frankly, an asshole. Spencer somehow had the most patience in the world and this only pissed you off more. Why wasn't he annoyed that your neighbors kept taking up two parking spots? Why was he so calm when you lost power for 12 hours?

As much as you ranted, Spencer listened. He made it a point to be a good boyfriend even on your worst days. This didn't mean that the exhaustion didn't get to him too. Spencer’s lack of sleep brought out his insecurities. The more irritable you got, the more worried Spencer became that he was the one annoying you.

On a normal week, you had more control over your emotions. You were thoughtful about how you spoke to Spencer and you were able to let the small stuff roll off your back. But this week wasn't a normal week and you couldn't stop the anger that kept slipping out of you around every corner. Spencer’s solution was to give you space, but deep down, you didn't want to be alone. Not even on your worst day did you want Spencer not to be curled up on your couch with you.

And how could Spencer say no to you? He wasn't evil, if you asked him to stay, he'd stay. Even if you had a permanent scowl on your face and didn't offer any conversation.

“Spencer!” You groaned, fighting the urge to stomp your foot like a child. “Why do you keep putting your wet towel on top of mine? There's another hook behind the door and every time I go to use my towel, it's wet!” You brought the towel out to Spencer and threw it onto the couch. Before he could finish his apology, you were continuing, “It just drives me crazy, honey. It makes me cold getting out of the shower and-”

“If you hate having me around so much, then why am I even here?” Spencer cut you off, raising his voice in a way you'd never heard directed at you before. Anyone who didn't know Spencer well would see his words as anger, but you knew Spencer well and you could feel the hurt and insecurity seeping out through his voice.

You both froze, staring at each other in silence while you replayed his words in your head. After a beat, your shoulders sagged and you moved to sit on the opposite end of the couch from him. “Shit,” you sighed and grabbed the towel to start folding it, “I'm being mean, I'm sorry. I do want you here,” you promised and looked over to find Spencer staring at his lap.

“It's fine if you don't, just… tell me that. I don't want to keep pissing you off and making things worse,” his voice was calmer now and your heart ached. Spencer, the light of your life, felt unappreciated and unloved, because of you.

You reached out to take both of Spencer’s hands into your own and gave them a squeeze. “Hey, I want you here. I love you,” you emphasized, “having you here helps and I'm sorry I haven't been showing it. This week was just… you know how it was. And my parents just get under my skin, but I shouldn't have taken that out on you. I'm sorry, sweetheart.” Spencer couldn't hold any anger towards you if he tried and the thought made you want to cry. Your Spencer, that you were cold and bitter to, still held your hands tightly and pulled you to his chest after your apology.

“I'm sorry I put my wet towel on top of yours. I know you like having a warm towel after your shower,” he said softly and kissed the top of your head, “and I'm sorry I raised my voice at you.”

You sniffled and shook your head against Spencer’s chest. “No, don't apologize for that. You should've raised your voice at me sooner, I was being a brat,” your voice was muffled by Spencer’s shirt but he took every word in, rubbing your back as you spoke.

After you'd both calmed down, Spencer took you to bed where you both slept a solid three hours. You woke up feeling lighter than you had all week and Spencer felt relieved to have you back to your usual self. “There you are, my beautiful love,” he whispered and brushed your hair from your face.

“You're one of a kind, Spence. Let's not overdo ourselves like that anymore. Next weekend, we’re taking both days off and we’re not seeing anyone but each other,” you promised and rolled over until you were straddling Spencer’s hips. His thumbs traced shapes into your hips and he agreed eagerly by pulling you down into a kiss.

[pitrsattabhaadmeinjaa]

wont you kiss me on the mouth (and love me like a sailor)

buddie, 2.1k

beta reader: @krissy-kat

“I’m in love with Eddie!” Buck nearly yells as soon as his sister opens the door after his frantic knocking and calls of her name, panting like he’d run a marathon, half-leaning on the doorframe, half falling inside. “Maddie, I’m in love with my best friend!”

“Buck–” Maddie’s eyes are wide and she’s carrying a half filled wine glass.

He started turning around to find a place to lay down and never get up again, just to stop in his tracks when he saw what had Maddie so worked up.

Eddie.

Or, Buck discovers he’s in love with Eddie, rants about it to Maddie, and doesn’t realise Eddie is right behind him.

“I’m in love with Eddie!” Buck nearly yells as soon as his sister opens the door after his frantic knocking and calls of her name, panting like he’d run a marathon, half-leaning on the doorframe, half falling inside. “Maddie, I’m in love with my best friend!”

“Buck–” Maddie’s eyes are wide and she’s carrying a half-filled wine glass.

He sidesteps her to enter the house, rubbing his face like if he did it hard enough, he could stop feeling these emotions. He walks in a few steps and turns to her with his back to the rest of the house and says, “Maddie, oh god, I’m so fucked, Maddie– I was just dropping off Chris at his friend’s house for a sleepover and the kid’s mom met me outside to greet us,” Buck starts gesturing with his arms, “And after Chris went inside she started asking about me, right, like, asking how I am and if I knew how this sweater brings out the color of my eyes, and like of course I know, that why I chose it, but that's besides the point. The point is that it made me uncomfortable! Like, since when has someone hitting on me made me uncomfortable?

“And then when I thought about it a little, Maddie, you know what I realized? I didn’t like it because she’s not the one I wanted to notice my sweater, I didn’t like it because I wore it to meet Eddie later today,” he burst out, “to go get pizza at this new place that opened up that we wanted to try and see if Chris would like it, and I wanted him to like my sweater and my eyes!”

“Buck, wait–”

“No, no, this cannot wait. I’ve been thinking about that the whole drive here, that I want Eddie to think I look good and that I think he looks extremely good in the jeans that came half-off with this sweater that I let him borrow because I knew they would look so good on him– No, stop distracting me, I need to tell you what happened next.”, he said, holding up both hands. Buck had been stewing in that fact deeply the whole hour and a half that he had been driving and sitting in traffic, thinking back to every interaction he’d had with his best friend. Had he always liked the way Eddie’s brown eyes shone whenever he smiled at Buck, or how his fingers looked perfect for sucking on, or how his voice was all rough and raspy and hot in the mornings? No wonder Tommy left him after a few months.

“Apparently, that lady wasn’t his mom, but just her twin sister who’s visiting, which, does make more sense because I know his actual mother loves her husband too much to do that, and when Sandra came out, she apologized to me, to which I replied ‘no, it's all good’, but then, she scolded her sister, which at first I was confused a little by,” Buck splayed his hands open, showing his apparent confusion, “but then she told her sister that I’m Christopher’s other dad, Eddie’s husband. And I wanted to correct her, but I didn’t, because you know why?”

He fisted his hands and joined them, and leaned down toward her, speaking through his teeth, “Because I liked it! I liked her referring to me as Eddie’s husband, as Christopher’s dad, because,” he tilted his head pointedly, “as I’ve deduced on the ride here, I want to be Eddie’s husband and Christopher’s dad!”

Maddie’s face had a look of urgency, and she was looking behind Buck, but he disregarded it as soon as she said, “Buck, Eddie is–”

“Yes, I know Eddie’s straight, and he could never love me like that,” he pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes, and a broken, wet laugh emerged from him, “but I just needed to tell you as soon as possible because you gave me some pretty solid advice on how to deal with Eddie-related stuff last time, and oh my god, that wasn’t me trying to get Tommy’s attention was it? I was trying to get Eddie’s back.” His hands were no longer against his eyes, and his face was lit with a mix of realization and dismay. His head was also brimming with the same, realizing that he’s been in love with Eddie for far longer than he thought, and devastated with the fact that he can’t do anything about it. Eddie was straight, and their relationship will never be the same after this, because there is no way that Buck can keep lying to his Ed–his friend for long, no way that he can bear Eddie not knowing everything about him.

He started turning around to find a place to lay down and never get up again, just to stop in his tracks when he saw what had Maddie so worked up.

Eddie.

Eddie, sitting there on Maddie and Chimney’s couch. Eddie, with his mouth open and a beer halfway to his mouth. Eddie, with his eyes wide and that borderline pornographic mustache he’d grown.

Eddie, who heard all of that. Eddie, who is surely about to break Buck’s heart by letting him down gently and he cannot bear the rejection right now.

So he did the only rational thing one can do in a situation such as this. Taking a page out of all his ex’s books, he ran.

…

Eddie didn’t think his ears were working right, because there is no way that just happened, right? His best friend didn’t just basically confess his love to him and run away, right? Right?

Except that’s exactly what happened, because even if he was delusional and hallucinating that, the expression on Maddie and Chim’s face is shocked enough that he can be sure they all saw that.

So now that he’s sure that was real, he can safely go through his emotions, starting with: What. WHAT. Buck loves me? Buck loves me back? What?! Fuck. Buck loves me. Fucking fuck yes. Buck loves me. Wait. Fuck. Buck loves me. Buck ran away. Shit. Buck doesn’t know I love him. Shit. SHIT.

Maddie’s looking at him, apparently over her shock now, sporting an expectant look on her face. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

The sound of an engine starting outside stirred him from his own dazed surprise, and he did the only rational thing one can do in a situation such as this. Taking a page out of Buck’s book, he ran.

After Buck, that is.

Eddie kept his beer on the table and leaped to his feet, and ran out, foregoing shoes, and saw Buck’s Jeep pulling out the driveway, on the street. Shit. “Stop, Buck, wait! Buck, stop, would you just–for god’s sake Buck, stop!” He didn’t.

Due to the lack of fully-there-ness because the love of his life had just said he loved Eddie back, no one can blame him for what he did next. He ran in front of the car. Because more than he was reckless at the moment, he had full trust in Buck not to run him over.

Which turned out to be true because as soon as Buck saw him, he braked hard and then just–froze. His baby blue eyes wide open and hands gripping the wheel, he just sat there staring at Eddie who was in front of the car with his hands out.

Eddie pointed at Buck. “Out. Now. No running.”

Buck's face turned stony and he reinforced his grip on the wheel. “No.”

“No? What do you mean no? Get out of the car, Buck!”

“Or what?” Buck’s face was now doing that thing where he thought he could stay strong enough to resist the Diaz Eyes, patented by one Christopher Diaz. He was so annoyed, because he never could. And he’d done enough therapy to know that Eddie wouldn’t let this ruin their friendship but Buck was too high on his emotions that he couldn’t take even a gentle let down by his best friend, so he resorted to acting petulant.

Eddie, who was also a Diaz and aware of the Eyes, said nothing and just stared at Buck pointedly, with one finger still pointing to the ground outside the Jeep.

Buck, as expected, didn’t hold out long. His face turned resigned, and he heaved a big sigh, folding in on himself in the driver’s seat. He slowly started opening the door, and Eddie, now satisfied Buck would actually come out, went over to him.

He got out of the car, eyes downcast and opened his mouth to defend himself. “Eddie, please. Just reject me later, I can’t bear it now–”, only to be interrupted by Eddie’s lips.

Wait. By Eddie’s lips? What?

Eddie was kissing him. Eddie was kissing him. Eddie was kissing him. And Buck was just standing there like an idiot.

Well, no one said he couldn't learn and go with the flow. He brought his hands up, one to Eddie’s, who was cupping Buck’s face, and one to Eds’ hip, holding him close. The kiss was…amazing. It was everything they said it would be. Fireworks, a burst of emotion, senses dulled to everything except the points their bodies were touching.

It was magnificent. And short-lived. Eddie pulled away first, Buck subconsciously leaning forward to chase his lips, away from where he was pinned against the Jeep. He opened his eyes, and the world, and all of its tortuous realities, came flooding back.

“What.”, his voice cracked. Tears were starting to build up in his eyes, and Evan Buckley had never been more confused in his life.

Eddie was still staring at his lips, and said dazedly, “God, I should’ve been kissing you a long time ago if that’s what it feels like.”

“What.” Buck’s world was rocked. What did Eddie just say?

Eddie took pity on him, and looked up at his eyes. And then he said the most ridiculous thing ever. “I love you too, Buck.”

“What. I– I don’t understand.”

Eddie softened then, his smile turning small and quiet, and his eyes took a devastatingly watery quality, “I want you to be my husband too, and Christopher’s other dad. Legally, that is, because you’ve been raising him alongside me for years now a.”

Oh. Buck’s world rocked further. This all wasn't a dream, or a confusing second reality. Eddie loved him. Eddie wanted to be his husband too.

Buck’s expression started clearing up, a hopeful one dawning on his face. He was the happiest man in the whole world, and he knew Eddie wouldn’t lie to him, but, “Really?”

His future-husband’s face turned mock reserved at that, a glint of mirth in his eyes giving him away. “Well, no, I was just kidding–”

Buck interrupted him with his lips, “Nope, no take-backs, you said it now, sorry.”, with a cheeky smile, and Eddie gave up all pretense, laughing fondly at the man he loved. They leaned in again, and Eddie gently poured all the love he had into this kiss, moving a hand up to Buck’s hair and pulling him in even closer by his waist with another. They moved slow, because it felt like they had all the time in the world now, and nothing could get in between them, nothing– click.

They broke apart, both grinning at each other dopily first, to see Maddie and Chimney out on the front porch, twin grins pulling at their faces and taking a photo of them.

Chim gave them two thumbs and Maddie held the phone up to them and yelled, “I’M SENDING THIS TO THE GROUPCHAT.”

Chim pointed aggressively at them and said, “BUCK I’M GONNA BE YOUR BEST MAN, I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU BUT DON’T YOU DARE ASK ANYONE ELSE!”

Maddie looked up from her texting at that, “Sorry, babe, but I’m gonna be his best woman.” Buck chimed in from his place in Eddie’s arms, “Yeah, Chim, sorry, but she’s right.”

“Aw, well,” he sighed, “You’re the only person I’d give up that spot to.”, and lovingly pecked his wife’s cheek.

Eddie looked back then, “DON’T WORRY, BUD. YOU CAN BE MINE!” Chim whooped at that, and Maddie went back to the barrage of texts that must surely be coming in from their family, shaking her head fondly.

Buck kissed him again, chastely this time, for his sister’s sake. “You don’t think we’re moving a little fast?”

“This has been seven years in the making, baby. You’re my family, and I’m not waiting on societal norms to make it legal.” Eddie punctuated that with a kiss to Buck’s birthmark, and what could Buck do other than melt?

His eyes shone, and he let his grin lose once again. “Well, thank god for Sandra.”

Eddie laughed into his love’s neck, and hugged him close.

“I can’t wait to spend forever with you.”

[marscantread7]

Sylus x Plus Size Reader/mc

Slight nsfw mention so mdni please!!!

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I'm a bit on the heavier side, like. Very plus size, and it's been on my mind for the past few days, like. Sylus w/ a plus size mc, and I'm not talking like average, what the media's idea of plus size is, I'm talkin like actual plus size.

Kinda a self insert, but thinking of mc just like poking and prodding at her skin bc it's just ugh! Like, this shirt just isn't looking right on her... maybe she should just go w/ the hoodie or wear a jacket over it like she originally planned, but here comes Sylus and he's all like, "🤨what r u doing?" And mc turns around and she's like, "this shirt just doesn't look right! Or feel right! None of this would be happening if I was smaller!" And Sylus just shuts it down real quick bc, "Sweetie. Ur perfect the way u r. U look absolutely stunning right now." And mc is very skeptical at first, bc she's literally just in typical lounge wear, but Sylus catches her gaze and decides to show her just how beautiful she is.

Omfg and like, thinking of how strong Sylus is. Like, okay another self insert😛 I'm 5'7 which isn't short, but it isn't necessarily tall either. So like, mc trying to like reach something on the highest shelf, and instead of just grabbing it for her, Sylus will lift her up so she can reach it. Just imagine her gripping onto his shoulders and looking down at him like, "Omg! Put me down, I'm too big!" And Sylus just giving her that look to try that again. "Sweetie, that means nothing to me. I'd be an inadequate partner if I couldn't support u in every way hm?" And just to spite her, he carries her away. Mmmmffffffggghhhh Sylus just randomly picking mc up at random bc he just loves holding her and🤤 Sylus holding her up and just fucking her. Like he doesn't even need to hold her against the wall! He can just pick her up and just go to town, no support.

And honestly another self insert, but I personally hate when I get insecure abt my weight and I'm ranting abt it and people get offended like "Ur not fat Marshall." Like that's such an insulting thing. Like, half the time I don't even mean it in a negative way when I point out my weight, I'm just stating an obvious fact. Like I'm big, that's a fact, u getting offended and acting like it's a bad thing that I'm big just makes me feel worse abt myself, hope this helps🙏🏾

Anyways, thinking abt mc like, criticizing her weight one day. Like, "I just don't see what u see in me. Like I'm not saying I'm ugly, but doesn't my weight make me a bit... unappealing?" And Sylus, oh the loverboy he is... "How dare u! Kitten, ur the sexiest person I've ever laid my eyes on." And he goes on this whole spiel abt how weight means nothing to him bc like??? Why should it? Like, genuinely what's so unappealing abt a little extra weight? If anything, he likes her size personally, and boy does he make it obvious. Always pinching those chubby lil cheeks, squeezing her thighs, resting his head on her stomach after a long day. And don't get him started on that ass😛😛😛 the way it bounces as he's fucking mc from behind. The recoil when he gives it a light smack, signaling her to "stay still baby, I'm gonna cum too soon if u move like that." BOY... like wow! Yeah #needthatNEOW

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Anyways that's all. Sorry for like the poor grammar and not spelling words out all the way😭😭😭 I didn't intend for this to be as long as it is. I would have written it properly if I knew I was gonna be doin allat. But anyways yeah. This was just one giant thought I had bc it's like ugh! I just know Sylus would treat a big girl so well and squish down and anxieties and doubts she has abt herself and his thoughts on her. Like yeah... this was literally just written for myself😭😭😭

Also ik I use mc, but u can read it as like a y/n or reader type of thing. I just didn't feel like using "you" atm😪😪😪

[elbiotipo]

The most annoying thing about generic medieval fantasy slop is that most of it has basically nothing to do with real European history. Tolkien's stuff was based on folklore and myth from anglo-saxon England, so the omission of things like religion and social classes makes sense. But most modern DnD-like fantasy stuff is based on worlds that are much less mythical, and yet they're all exactly the same while having not much to do with real europe. There's no notable distinction between the names and languages of people from one country and another, they're all random european names that come from everywhere from Ireland to portugal to greece to Novgorod, with a few made up european-sounding names with no thought behind them. The exact way social stratification varied, like how some serfs from the HRE would be trained as knights and given valued positions as the emperor's Ministeriales; or the difference between serfs, free peasants who rent, free peasants who have common land, and gentry; or the antipathy between HRE Princes and the Free Cities' elites; or that the centralisation of the governments of the iberian crowns that was made possible by an increase in burghers who studied Roman Law and became Civil Servants; or how feudal lords didn't do much administration and were rarely even literate; is all completely ignored in favour of a worldbuilding-wise nonsensical stylistic mish-mash of anglo-saxon England, Arthurian Britain as imagined by the French, ancient-regime france and the late-medieval Hanse. I wanted to ask you something but I got lost in the rant, sorry

Don't matter, you can keep talking to me like that all night if you wish, in fact, feel free to get more comfortable over there

ahem

I'm very tired of the Middle Ages, even with well researched settings, I believe we reached a point of saturation. I do wonder when this omnipresence of the Middle Ages in fantasy came from, because while there are undertones of it in Tolkien for example, it doesn't scream Middle Ages (more of Arthurian and Anglo-Saxon legend though) I have a feeling there is more to this relatively Middle Ages obsession, because it's even widespread in pop-culture in a way that I feel other time periods aren't.

But what bothers me is the same as you Anon, the fact there is a lot of interesting things to explore about the Middle Ages, and instead it's treated as a shallow aesthetic, as a monolith that can be just used as decoration for your story. Because that's in fact my main complaint with worldbuilding, when cultures are treated as interchangeable monoliths, and then every setting is the same; and if your setting is generic and flat, it means that you could switch your characters to any other setting and that makes them generic and flat. And what is interesting about Middle Ages Europe is that people back then, like any past societies, had very different worldviews and very different ways of organizing their lives. You wouldn't just exchange a knight into a modern soldier or cop and it would be the same. The life of people back then was different, and I would expect a fantasy work inspired by that to reflect it.

Many don't seem to want to engage with that though. They want the aesthetics without any thought about the societies, culture, economics, dynamics that were there. And to be honest, at this point, those aesthetics are not even that compelling anymore.

[percivaljacksons]

those little town blues (pt 1)

the modern percabeth ghost whisperer au. girl, at this point you have to trust me. first 5k or so as i edit the big mama doc for ao3. sorry not sorry to tease! i'd give this section a t rating

“For someone who just moved here, you really know your way around,” Piper says. “I absolutely thought you were taking us to the wrong platform.” 

Two descending notes play through the speaker above their heads. The Q train’s doors slide closed. The breaks release in a puffy exhale and the car lurches as they begin to move out of the Canal St station. 

Annabeth shrugs. “I like research,” she says. “Figured if I was going to do the whole ‘move to New York as a broke twenty-something,’ I might as well be prepared for it.”

“What a load of baloney,” Percy says from somewhere behind her. “You were walking right for the Downtown platform, too. You could say ‘thank you,’ by the way.”

Piper doesn’t react—of course she doesn’t. She just tells Annabeth with a sheepish smile, “more than I did. God, this is so embarrassing, but I really did Uber everywhere for my first few weeks.”

“Asshole,” Percy cuts in again. “I can’t stand people who do that.”

Annabeth kicks one foot back as subtly as possible. She doesn’t feel it connect with his shin, but he does quiet down.

“You’re getting the hang of it,” Annabeth reassures her. “Silena said you moved here—what, two months before me?”

“Something like that.”

“Plus, I did a lot of exploring in the past few weeks and got turned around a lot of times. You’re seeing a well made facade.”

“Is that how you found that Wo Hop?” Piper asks. “God, I can’t get over that tofu. And it was in some random basement!”

While Piper waxes poetic about their lunch, Annabeth’s eyes slide to the left. It’s not an overly crowded subway car. There’s a couple pouring over the map on the wall, a short man reading a book in the seat parallel to the window, and around a dozen solo commuters buried in phones or listening to music. 

But to Annabeth’s left, leaning against the door, is a man with short cropped hair and an angular jaw. His button up shirt is untucked, wrinkled, and saturated with blood. She has to breathe through her mouth because she can smell it wafting off of him. From the corner of her eye, she can spot the elderly woman trying to read over the shoulder of the man by the window, ranting a rant he can’t hear. And, of course, right behind her is Percy, dripping wet. 

“I really hope you’re not about to take credit for finding Wo Hop on your own,” he says. 

“...in an article, right?” Piper asks, forcing Annabeth to tune back in again.

“Yeah, about the James Beard Foundation Awards,” Annabeth says. “It’s officially an American Classic.”

“Fucking typical,” Percy says. “I’m not telling you where that halal cart is now.”

“So cool,” Piper enthuses. “I didn’t even realize how much food there was out there that I’ve never even tried, you know? This city is crazy.”

“Best city in the world,” Percy and Annabeth say in perfect unison. 

Of course, only Annabeth and Percy know that. 

//

It started on her third day in New York, because Annabeth has, in general, always had completely shit luck. With a week until her new job began and her boxes (almost) unpacked, she woke up to a sliver of perfect blue sky visible between the brick walls outside her window and decided to spend the day exploring. 

While she waited for the shower to heat up, she drank a glass of water—straight from the tap—and looked around her joke of a studio apartment. Despite the near negative space she now called her own for the next twelve months, her singular closet was pitifully half empty. 

Annabeth frowned into her water. Half full? She’d never had many clothes, was the point. The t-shirts and jeans she’d favored in high school had stopped fitting once she started doing track and field more seriously, and her college dorm room hadn’t offered an abundance of space, either. 

She wandered back to the bathroom and stuck a hand under the tap. Only lukewarm. The previous two days' experience told her she had another minute before it would get hot, so she took out her phone and googled thrift stores nyc. 

The results were almost too many to believe. She shook her head. 

“Best city in the world,” she said to herself, and finally stripped down to step into the shower. 

In the end, she chose a thrift store in lower Manhattan, a little to the east so it was on the yellow line and she wouldn’t have to transfer trains. It was close to Washington Square Park, too, so she could check that off her architecture bucket list. Just like that, she had a plan for the day—and Annabeth loved having a plan.

She flew down the four flights of stairs, keeping her eyes on her feet so she wouldn’t get drawn into whatever was going on with the man who always lingered on the second floor landing. He left something in his jacket pocket, but Annabeth had never stuck around long enough to hear what it was or who he needed to tell. She’d get around to it eventually. Probably.

After riding the N train two stops in the wrong direction, she managed to get on a Manhattan and Brooklyn bound W. It was all part of the learning curve. The car was near empty, so close to the origin in Astoria, so she found a seat by the window and watched as the lower buildings of northwest Queens morphed into the skyscrapers of Long Island City before the train finally went underground. She pulled a book out of her tote bag before long and focused her gaze on the paper, even though the letters were swirling around the page so aggressively that she couldn’t read a word. 

Her dyslexia always got worse when she was stressed. She turned a page in her book, a perfect pantomime of reading, so that the three ghosts standing within fifteen feet of her don’t realize that she can both see and hear them. 

Spirits, earthbound souls, whatever. They were all ghosts, really, haunting people or places or things. She thought maybe they were haunting this specific subway car, except a man in a navy suit got off at 59th street and one of them—the woman in bright red lipstick and a mink coat—followed him off. 

Annabeth kept looking at her book, flipping forward a page every minute or so. She had long ago perfected the half-glazed over expression that tricked most ghosts into thinking she was just like everyone else—unable to see them. It was a small part of the reason she’d decided to move to New York: everyone here had that expression on. Everyone here avoided eye contact on the sidewalk and went about their business, so maybe—just maybe—Annabeth wouldn’t acquire her usual ‘rude and standoffish’ reputation. 

One of the ghosts sat down next to her. He was mumbling in a language she didn't recognize. Hungarian, maybe—a relief. She wouldn’t have to try so hard to not react if he said something appalling. 

Annabeth turned to the next page in her book. She didn’t even remember what it was about. The stops got more frequent in Manhattan, crawling at times only five blocks between stations after Times Square, before the W finally pulled into 8th Street-NYU. 

Annabeth put her book back into her tote and stood, edging around the ghost’s legs with a mumbled, “excuse me.”

She realized her mistake two steps later, when the voice got panicked and excited, rapid-fire consonant heavy speech trying to get her attention again. Annabeth kept her head down and walked towards the closest exit like she knew it would take her where she wanted. It worked, either because he thought it was a fluke or he was tied enough to that train car to stay put, and when she walked up into the autumn sunlight she was once again alone. 

Not unhaunted. She was never really unhaunted, but she could be—however briefly—alone. 

Maps told her that the Buffalo Exchange was close, only a few blocks south. She made her way there, realized she was on the wrong side of the street, and blatantly jaywalked to get to her destination. One thing she certainly would not miss about California was driving and cars and mechanics. She hoped Clarisse would love the hunk of bolts Annabeth couldn’t have more joyously parted with.

The thrift store wasn’t too crowded inside, because it was around 11 on a Tuesday, so Annabeth took her time. She started in the back, sifting through women’s cut jeans and giving up quickly, moving to the men’s section in the front where the inseams were longer. She found a few potential successes, all dark wash enough that she could probably dress them up for work, and made her way towards one of the circular clothing racks in the middle of the shop. 

Annabeth hadn’t lived on the east coast since she was twelve, but she remembered the cold bite of the winters. She didn’t have nearly enough sweaters to get her through January and February, only a few short months away. A few hoodies with stains and holes got flipped past, but eventually she came across a maroon crewneck with a faded lettering that said MONTAUK. She threw it on over her shirt and managed to catch her reflection in a nearby mirror—exactly the kind of baggy she’s always preferred. Perfect. 

“That’s mine,” someone said.

Annabeth looked over and gasped. Standing next to her, soaked from head to foot, was a guy about her age. He was a bit taller, with dark hair plastered to his head and green eyes so bright they forced the air out of Annabeth’s lungs. Every inch of him was dripping water in the middle of the perfectly dry Buffalo Exchange.

“You can see me,” he realized, eyes getting wider. “You can actually—holy fuck.” 

She bought the sweater, in the end, because she stopped letting ghosts decide what she was and wasn’t going to do a long time ago. Percy—I’m Percy, by the way, can you still see me?— didn’t seem to mind, even as she ignored him and checked out with her new pants and sweater. 

“I know you can hear me,” Percy said, following her out the door. “You’re not a very good actor, you know.”

Annabeth pulled out her headphones and slipped them on. She fiddled with her phone, miming a call, and finally turned to face the very wet ghost beside her. 

“Percy, you said?” She asked. 

He grinned. “Yes! Yeah, I’m Percy. I can’t believe you can hear me. It’s, like, so great to talk to someone.”

“I’m Annabeth.” She didn’t reach out to shake his hand, because they wouldn’t be able to anyway. “I’m going to the park. Want to come?”

They walked the two blocks to the north side of the park, until Annabeth stood directly under Stanford White’s famous arch. She knew it already, of course—the Tuckahoe marble used to construct it, the fact that it commemorated the centennial of George Washington’s presidential address in 1789—but Annabeth’s favorite thing about architecture isn’t facts or materials. It’s the way she feels looking at it; it’s something about the innate nature of human beings and the way they just can’t help their desire to create.

She could see Percy out of the corner of her eye, watching her. As she stood there, her gaze still fixed upward, someone in a purple t-shirt walked right through him.

“Okay,” she finally said. “What’s your deal? Normally I’ve gotten a whole life story by now.”

“Normally,” he repeated. “This happen to you a lot?”

“Look, do you see a white light?” Annabeth asked, already losing her patience. 

“A what?”

“God, I can really pick ‘em,” Annabeth muttered to herself. “A white light. Bright, blinding even. Maybe a loved one standing there waiting for you? Walk into it.”

“I—what?” 

“Unless there’s something you’ve left unfinished?” Annabeth prompted. It usually went smoother if the ghost came to terms on their own, but this whole conversation was messing with Annabeth’s plan for the day. She wanted it over and done with.

“What are you talking about?” Percy asked, his accent hitting harder than it had before. His ah vowel was like an A and U and W smushed together. “Why are you the only one who can see me?”

Annabeth closed her eyes. “Fuck,” she said. “Seriously? This is just my luck.” She turned back to Percy, kind of vaguely relishing how no one around them seemed to care that she was talking to thin air. “You’re dead.”

Percy blinked at her. A drop of water made its way down the arch of his nose. “What?”

“I can see ghosts. Spirits. People who haven’t yet moved on.” She let that sink in for a moment, then added, “like you.”

“Moved on to what?” He asked, his voice getting louder with pure panic. 

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “I’m not dead. I just have the pleasure of seeing all of you on your journey in between.”

“Fuck. What the fuck?” Percy started to pace, his hands on his head. “I can’t be dead! That’s such bullshit. I’ve never even left the tri-state area! And I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lady—”

“Annabeth.”

“—Annabeth, because there ain’t no fuckin’ light, alright? There’s just this stupid park and a bunch of asshole NYU students walking right through me, and apparently, the only person who can see me is a goddamn Yankees fan, which is fucking rich. And!” He turned back to her, an almost triumphant expression on his face. “And I bet you you’re not from here, am I right? No shot.”

“I’m from…” Annabeth trailed off. She could’ve said Virginia, or the Bay Area, or something else. In the end, she just confirmed his suspicion. “I’m not from here, you’re right. This is my third day in New York.”

That made him laugh uproariously, too dramatic to be earnest, his hands flung out to the sides. “Of course! A fucking transplant in a Yankees hat. I can hardly believe my luck.”

With him standing facing her once more, Annabeth finally saw the logo made dark by his wet t-shirt. A baseball with dark blue skyline and orange piping, Mets written out across the front. 

“Are you done?” Annabeth asked. “I want to go see the narrowest house in the city next.”

“I’m not a tour guide,” he seethed.

“Which way is Bedford Street?”

He pointed behind him. “Like, six blocks that way.”

And so Annabeth’s first friend in the big city was a chronically damp, kind of asshole ghost named Percy.

//

“Silena said Piper liked you,” Clarisse says. They’re playing Battleship online as they FaceTime, both unwilling to admit that they want to talk for the sake of talking, and certainly unwilling to admit they might miss each other. 

It’s one thing to move across the country to an apartment you’ve never actually seen for the sake of a life you think you might like, and another to do it knowing you’ll leave behind the two best friends you’ve made in your entire twenty-two years on Earth. 

That are still alive, at least.

“She was cool,” Annabeth says. “So different from Silena, though. We got greasy Chinese food.”

Clarisse snorts. “Uh, yeah. Duh. Get sunk, by the way.” Her missile lands in open water. “Seriously? What the hell.”

“Be better,” Annabeth replies, confidently clicking on G3. Sure enough, a tiny explosion graphic goes off on G3. 

“What the—is there someone behind me giving you clues? I know that’s how you kept winning poker night in junior year—”

“I can’t see ghosts through FaceTime, that would be ridiculous,” Annabeth scoffs. 

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Clarisse scowls. “Sure.” One of her shots finally connects, but Annabeth’s still smiling, two ships in the lead. 

“Did I tell you I’ve got a new one?” Annabeth asks, pulling her fidget cube out from its drawer and flicking one side of it. 

“A Casper? No.”

“His name’s Percy. He’s wet.”

“Is that some kind of horrible New York slang?”

“What?” Annabeth laughs. “No, he’s actually wet. Like, dripping water.”

“That’s new.”

“Plus, he had no idea he was dead. Bizarre.”

Clarisse frowns. Clarisse always looks like she’s frowning, so it’s really hard to tell when she actually is, but at this point Annabeth’s had years of practice. “That’s happened before,” she says.

Annabeth gets a flash of sun-bleached blond hair and that awful scar in her mind’s eye before she manages to shove it back into the box in the corner of her mind. “S’not common, though,” she says. “Usually means the death was traumatic.” 

“Not to play Silena,” Clarisse says slowly, finally managing to figure out which way Annabeth’s submarine is pointing, “but should you be doing this?”

“Talking to you?” Annabeth snarks. Her next shot misses. 

“Getting wrapped up in helping a ghost your first few weeks in New York. Isn’t that why you left California? Oh, get fucked, I knew that was your battleship.” 

Annabeth shuts that right down. “I left because I got a job. I knew New York would have a lot of earthbound spirits; that was kind of a given, it’s huge. And yeah, I did say I was going to try and focus on me a little more, but…I don’t know, there’s something about him.”

Clarisse looks like she doesn’t know what to do with that. “He’s…nice?” She asks.

Annabeth laughs. “Uh, no. I’m not sure I would be if I just found out I was dead, so.” She shrugs. “I won’t be able to help him cross over until he starts to remember more, anyway. Googling ‘Percy NYC’ got me a dollar pizza place in the West Village and some place called Percy’s Tavern that isn’t even open anymore.”

“Silena’s going to be so pissed that all we talked about on our call is your new familiar.”

Annabeth sinks Clarisse’s final ship. “No, she’s not.”

Clarisse raises her eyebrows. “Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm.” Annabeth smirks. “Because you get to tell her that the new ghost is, like, seriously hot.”

Clarisse just shakes her head, grinning. “She is going to love that. Damn. Well, good luck. I’ll call whenever my ego can handle a rematch.”

“Okay,” Annabeth says softly. “Bye.”

“Love you. No homo.” 

Before Annabeth can reply, she gets hung up on.

“Typical,” she says to her empty studio apartment. No one, alive or dead, replies.

//

“Alright,” Annabeth says as she steps out of her office building, her headphones on. “Where am I getting lunch?”

“I’m not telling you,” Percy sulks. “You just abuse my knowledge. I spent a lifetime accumulating this stuff, only to give it away to some yuppie. Barf.”

Annabeth picks a direction and starts walking. “I read that Ess-a-Bagel is good,” she says, already knowing what will happen next with only a week and a half of experience.

“Overrated,” Percy says. He can’t seem to help himself. “Like, it’s good, but they only put the seeds n’ shit on one side. Shmear options are okay,” he adds a little begrudgingly.

“Like, cream cheese?”

“Like, cream cheese?” Percy mocks, his voice high-pitched and whiny. “If you ask for them to scoop out your bagel, I’m actually going to start haunting you.”

“As opposed to what this is,” Annabeth murmurs to herself, well aware that he can hear her. 

“Hey! I’m, like, super chill. I haven’t even tried to get your lights to flicker.”

“You’ve never even appeared in my apartment,” Annabeth acquiesces. “Or at work.”

He shrugs, falling into step beside her. “Seems rude.” 

Annabeth almost stops in the middle of the sidewalk, she’s so surprised. “Okay, that’s a first.”

“Are the people you see always rude?”

She wrinkles her nose. “It’s more like…it’s all on their terms. No one’s ever been that concerned about appearing in the middle of my calc final, for example.”

“Yikes.”

“Exactly.” Despite having the light, she looks both ways before joining the crowd in crossing 6th. One of the idling cars honks at her.

Percy flips the car off. It doesn’t make a difference to anyone but her, but she appreciates it. “If you want to spend too much money on a bagel, I’m not going to stop you,” he tells her. 

Annabeth walks into Herald Square; she’d rather go through a tiny park than down the crowded sidewalk. “Where would you go for a bagel?”

“Absolute Bagels. 108 and Broadway.”

She snorts out a laugh. “You knew that answer way too quickly.”

“I’m tired of these bougie, overpriced bagels! Absolute is good enough I drag my ass to the west side—that’s how you know it’s legit.”

“So you’re from the east side,” Annabeth follows, nodding. “Okay, that’s something. Remember anything more specific?”

“Yeah.” Percy grins proudly, pushing his wet bangs out of his face. “El Barrio, baby! Proud of it. Just off 2nd and…” His grin fades. “Shit. Goddamn it.”

“It’s okay,” Annabeth soothes. “That’s something. I’m assuming that’s…a Hispanic neighborhood?”

“Spanish Harlem,” he says. “East side, north of, like, 96.” He wrinkles his nose in distaste. “These days, north of 110.”

They’re already on the other side of Herald Square; Percy picks up into a jog. Annabeth follows suit, only realizing that he’s trying to catch the light before it changes a few seconds later. They make it to the other side and slow back to a walk. 

“If you want,” Annabeth offers, “I could go there. With you, I mean. We could walk around, maybe spark a memory.”

“You’d do that?” Percy asks, his voice almost severe in its sudden quiet volume. 

Annabeth shrugs. She pauses on the corner, barely a moment of hesitation, but Percy points diagonally to the side of the street she wants to be on. With a wince of thanks, she says, “I want to see more of the city. Might as well check off a good deed while I’m at it.” 

“Well, I can make it worth your while,” he says with a confident nod. “D’you like Italian food?” 

“Am I human?”

“Okay, so we’ll swing by Patsy’s, then. Oh, or Sam’s! And that bakery with the killer conchas—”

“I have no idea what that is, but I’m sold,” Annabeth says. “Why does Spanish Harlem have Italian food?”

He shrugs, sending tiny flicks of water flying. “Dunno. Better Italian food than Little Italy, though.”

“Haven’t seen it yet,” Annabeth says, pushing her way into the surprisingly large bagel shop and immediately struggling to focus. 

“It’s mostly gone, honestly. Hey, you good?”

“Hm?” Annabeth blinks away from the menu behind the counter. “Oh, yeah, it’s just loud in here. You weren’t kidding about the cream cheese.”

Percy doesn’t say much as they wait in line, or as she orders—toasted sesame bagel with olive cream cheese—but he sort of squints his eyes, like he’s sizing her up. 

“What?” She hisses out of the corner of her mouth as the cashier rings up her order. 

Percy shrugs, the movement of his shoulders just barely visible out of the corner of her eye. “Nothing.”

She raises as much of an eyebrow as she dares, smiling quickly at the cashier, tapping her credit card, and hoping to get back outside as quickly as possible.

“It’s clearly not nothing,” Annabeth says once they’re on their way again. The bagel is hot even through the paper bag it’d been stuffed in. 

Percy moves like he wants to grab the door for her, then awkwardly follows her as she jerks it open herself. “I just think you’re a sociopath for getting olive cream cheese.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “You’re so dramatic. Ever heard of not yucking someone else’s yum?”

“Nope. Where we headed?”

“I thought we’d sit in the park?” 

“The squirrels are going to maul you.”

“Well, you’ve never seen me fight before.” 

Privately, even as Percy laughs, she casts a few suspicious glances at lingering squirrels as they make their way into the park. Most are high in the trees or lingering around the trash cans. She picks a free table that’s far away from both, sits down, and kicks out the empty chair so that Percy can sit down, too.

“I feel like a food critic,” she says, unwrapping her lunch. She opens the bagel using two hands to get the visual, her stomach rumbling at the sight of cream cheese going a little runny from being sandwiched between two warm halves of bagel. “Except kind of like I’m cheating, you know? I haven’t had to look up any new things to try in two weeks.”

“You’re welcome,” Percy says. He rubs at one eye and flicks the water off his hand after. “But I feel like you should know that I’m not telling you everything.”

Annabeth gasps in mock offence. “But you’re so endeared by me.”

“Lie. I’m living vicariously through you.”

“By not telling me everything?” Annabeth asks cheekily, taking her first, relatively heavenly bite.

“You know what?” Percy says, clearly trying to sound pissed off but failing by laughing halfway through his sentence. He flicks some water at her, and Annabeth swears she can feel it land on her arm. 

“What’re these big secrets you’ve been keeping?” She asks. “It’s not like I’ve gotten food poisoning or anything.”

Percy sighs, still kind of smiling. “Well, then they wouldn’t be secrets, would they? Gotta keep some stuff for the locals.”

Annabeth pouts. Percy rolls his eyes.

“Fine, whatever.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing back across the street. “You didn’t have to wait on line in there.”

Annabeth chews slowly, trying to figure out what’s been lost in translation. “I…ordered in person?” She says. “I didn’t use, like, an app or something.” 

Percy looks just as confused. “Yeah, I was there. I’m saying you could’ve skipped the line.”

“No, you said I didn’t need to be online.”

“Yeah,” he repeats a little slower. “You didn’t have to wait on the line. Have you, like, stopped being able to hear me?”

“Who says wait on the line?” Annabeth asks incredulously. “You wait in a line, Percy.”

“Everybody says that! There’s an invisible line on the ground, and we all stand on it.”

Annabeth takes a bite without looking away from him, wondering how she ended up here. “I’ve literally never heard that before in my life,” she says through her mouthful. “Online is the internet. You wait in a line. I live in a city. I ride in a car.”

“You get on a bus. I ride on the subway. And I wait,” Percy says, leaning in, “on line.” 

“Maybe you’re not dead,” Annabeth theorizes. “Maybe you’re a demon raised from hell, come to torment me. Maybe you’re from an alternate universe!”

“This is what I get for revealing the schmear only express line at Ess-a-Bagel.” Percy shakes his head. “I should’a known.”

“What?” Annabeth asks. “I didn’t have to wait in that stupid fucking line?”

Percy throws his hands up. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”

“Tell me that before next time. You had to wait in the line, too.”

He shrugs. “Not so bad. I’ve got nowhere to be.”

It sends her into a little bit of a tailspin. Sure, he’s actively dripping water on an otherwise dry and sunny day, but he’s around her age and died relatively recently, if the in-style cut of his jeans is anything to go by. He’s easy to talk to. It’s easy to forget he’s dead.

Annabeth takes another bite of her bagel. It’s a little strange that the sesame seeds are only on one side, but it’s just the right amount of chewy and pretty big for what she paid. The olive cream cheese is more of a disappointment, but she’s not going to tell Percy that.

“This is really good,” she says. “Your place is better? Or are you going to gatekeep that now?”

“Oh, shut up. It’s not like Absolute is a big secret, they’ve got a crazy line all weekend.”

“Good to know.”

“I don’t fuck around when it comes to bagels, Annabeth. Honestly, have any of my food recommendations let you down?”

“No,” she agrees. “Why do you think you remember all of that so well?”

He shrugs, his eyes sliding to the side. Annabeth doesn’t think he’s particularly interested in the squirrel eating a cigarette butt, so he probably just wants to avoid looking at her. It strikes her somewhere beneath her ribs, how sad it is, to wander around your home with only the innocuous pieces left.

Not for the first time, she wonders what will happen when she dies. Will someone see her? Will she even know that she’s dead? Will she be here, or in San Francisco, or on Berkeley’s campus, or back in Richmond? Has she ever known a place her soul would cling to?

“What’s your favorite thing about New York?” Annabeth asks, deciding suddenly to change tactics. “Since you keep insisting us transplants don’t know—”

“—know shit about shit,” Percy finishes. He looks back at her. “Uh, it’s the best city in the world.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “I know that. That’s why I moved here. You could argue that means I love it more than you.”

“Shut up,” Percy says, his face screwed up with indignation. “No, it doesn’t!”

“Great comeback,” she drawls. 

“Okay, I love the people,” Percy answers. “I love New Yorkers, and the way we treat each other.”

“Like?” Annabeth prompts him.

“We leave each other alone, but if I’m short a dollar on groceries there’s almost always someone who’ll cover me. And I just…I love walking places, and the subway, and I love it when I hop the turnstyle so smooth you can’t even tell I jumped it. I love the old guys who play chess in the park. The graffiti. I love riding the bus at night and Biggie, and shitting on Jersey and the goddamn Mets. I love not giving a fuck, I guess.” 

“Well, that’s things you love, but what’s your favorite?” Annabeth pushes. “Mine is easy, it’s the—”

“—the architecture, I know,” Percy finishes again. “I like that, too. I…well, maybe it’s the food. The food here is the best.”

Percy has admitted to never going anywhere else, so Annabeth doesn’t really know how he knows it’s the best, but she doesn’t call him on it. 

“But my favorite…” Percy goes a little still, like he’s remembered something. “My favorite thing when I was a kid is gone now,” he says. 

“Yeah?” Annabeth prompts

“Yeah. It was on the west side, if you can believe it. When you got off an uptown 1 at 79th, if you went up the staircase that took you to the northwest corner—there used to be a Circuit City there, next to the DSW.”

“There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” Annabeth mutters.

“Yeah, it closed ages ago, but it was in this little, two story building. And it meant, when you were going up the stairs, if you looked up all you could see was the sky. Like the sky was the ocean and you got to go down the ladder and jump into it.” He goes quiet for a moment. Then, “now there’s an ugly fucking apartment building.”

Annabeth resists the urge to scoff. “You think any new building is ugly.”

“That’s not true! I like the Jenga building downtown.”

“The Jenga…” Annabeth thinks. “You mean 56 Leonard?”

“Is 56 Leonard the building that looks like a wonky Jenga tower?”

“I—” She sighs. “Yes. But it’s a Herzog & de Meuron.”

“You’re a hotdog and demure one.”

“You’re not that funny.”

He shrugs. “I dunno, you’re smiling.”

You’re flirting, Annabeth realizes. You’re flirting with a ghost, and he’s flirting back. 

“I can show you the ugly building some time,” he offers, blinking some water out of his eyelashes. “It’s right by the Natural History Museum. You like museums, right?”

“My second favorite thing about New York,” Annabeth confirms, and just manages to stop herself from saying it’s a date. 

//

Her dad texts her on a Saturday morning, the first time he’s reached out since she moved to the east coast, and his message reads [ Hi, Annabeth. I hope you’re settling in well at your new job. How is New York? Let me know when you might be free to talk.]

She doesn’t respond for three days. What’s there to say? She wishes she could explain to him that you can walk south on the east side of Broadway, from Grand to Howard, and you can look up and see the top of One World Trade peak through the buildings. You can look down so you won’t trip over the subway grate, and when you look back up again 56 Leonard has taken its place. 

She could tell him that if you walk past the entrance to the NQWR to the corner of Canal, you can see all of Herzog & de Meuron’s creativity, bottom to top, and you can decide that from then on out you’ll be calling it the Jenga Tower. She could type it out, or even try and call and inevitably tell him in a voicemail, but he wouldn’t get it. He’d probably say something ridiculous, like ask what Jenga was, or tell her about an exhibit that has something to do with planes that’s soon to arrive in the tri-state area, and Annabeth would remember why she hadn’t reached out either.

Instead, she tells him about work, and doesn’t talk about buildings or bagel shops or the bitter and charming conundrum of a ghost that’s taken to appearing at her shoulder as she makes a city her father hates her home. 

[downtroddendeity]

@sapphirestar98

Hoo boy. Okay.

This is going behind a cut both because this post is already so long and because I generally try not to talk too much about gacha game fandoms on Tumblr because I feel weird about providing free marketing for things with gambling mechanics that can easily destroy people's lives.

Let me see if I can explain this.

So! Despite the aforementioned attempts to mostly keep the amount I talk about it on Tumblr low, I have been into Arknights for several years now. Like, into it enough that I keep breaking down and ranting about it anyway.

The easiest way to describe Arknights is, "Grimdark science fantasy tower defense about catgirls with guns." But this is a little like describing Metal Gear Solid as "a series of stealth games where you play as a genetically-engineered supersoldier": it's a largely accurate description and necessary starting point, but it doesn't remotely prepare you for what you're about to get into, and especially how much of that experience will consist of hour-long cutscenes discussing the human cost of the socioeconomic turmoil following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Arknights is an otherworld fantasy story and the vast majority of its characters are animal-people, but most of the countries are extremely clear and up-front parallels to real ones- the Ursus Empire is Furry Russia, Siracusa is Furry Italy, Victoria is Furry England, etc. That makes it a setting that's knit together by huge amounts of real-life references, even though the original setting lore is pretty expansive all by itself, which is something they're only able to pull off because there are clearly people on the creative team in a variety of positions who do incredible amounts of research about a wide variety of topics purely out of love of the subject. We're talking deep cuts. We're talking "there is a Halloween costume skin that paraphrases the closing passage of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which turned out to be a stealth spoiler for main story plot points several years later." We're talking "a whole storyline centered around 12th-century poetry." We're talking "NPC named for the author of a novel about medical ethics." We're talking heartrending multilayered Russian puns. We're talking the translators once had to swap out the names of several boss levels a few weeks after they released them because they hadn't caught that they were all titles of songs from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

So, this is already a shockingly dense text, and it's intensely and openly political. And on top of all that, their favorite way to foreshadow things is through Dark-Souls-style single-line ambiguous but portentous hints. For someone like me who loves deep reading and overanalyzing for fun, this is catnip. However, for us losers who only speak English, there's a major extra complication: Arknights is made by people in China, in Chinese, and localizing it has got to be one of the most nightmarish translation tasks ever. The English server is 6 months behind the Chinese server, so there's always quite a bit of in-game material that's been released but Anglophones only have sketchy fragmentary translations of, and there are various tie-in materials that we don't know if they'll ever translate at all, notably an in-universe setting guidebook.

So, if I want to get my red string and thumbtacks conspiracy corkboard on properly, I need something like a wiki. I want to be able to check out references I might have missed and hunt for lore breadcrumbs more easily. Pretty basic wiki stuff, right? There's just one tiny little problem.

It's a mobile gacha game about anime catgirls.

And it turns out people who become admins at websites for posting data-mined combat statistics for mobile gacha games about anime catgirls are not always very smart or good at reading.

So the trivia and lore articles are frequently just... wrong. Sometimes it's tiny quibbles or missing nuance that disproportionately annoy me, but other times it's flagrant. Like, there's a character song that prominently references an extremely famous piece of classical music, the serenade from Franz Schubert's "Swan Song." Both the wiki and the not-actually-a-wiki-but-says-it-is-anyway correctly say that the character song is referencing a piece by Schubert... and then link to a completely different Schubert piece that is not referenced in the character song, because both of them are titled "Ständchen" because it. Means "serenade." And somebody made a Twitter thread about classical music references that linked the wrong video, and Gamepress plagiarized it without checking, and the wiki added it to various pages also without checking. And you can tell this immediately if you listen to the songs, but apparently no one has done that in almost 3 years even though @onwardmotley tried to fix it.

Now imagine that across a whole wiki trying to document a game with millions of words of text, which is the only public-facing source about some Chinese-language official material in English.

*sighs and resets "days since last tirade about an extremely obscure subject in a group chat because someone was wrong on the internet about a video game" counter to zero*

[fairyfleshprison]

You know what confuses the hell outta me as a Canadian being force fed American politics by proxy of having the internet ?

Is there only ever two candidates?

I could've sworn there was like 4 parties that you could vote for but like for the last eight or something years it's been like Trump or Biden then kamala or Trump or Trump and Obama. Like are there no other people running for office over there? I feel like I'm in the twilight zone, and it's just the same three people on a loop. But you guys do reelection every four years so like...what's even going on over there ????

[mitsuki91]

Okay but you know what could really destroy Snow?

Seeing Lucy Gray slowly starting to fall out of love with him. Lucy Gray knowing him so well she starts to be repulsed by him. The pain and disdain and the masks she has to wear (expecially if they are in the Capitol and she depends on him) in order to survive... With him because she has no other option. Lucy Gray, who put trust above everything, slowly starting to lie to his face, to hyde the fear and the pain behind fake smiles to make him happy with her.

And he will see this. He will see because, as always, as they are connected by the stars, as they are both performers, he can read her as she can read him. He can see her pulling back from their love story.

So. He may think that he want her to be caged, because so he can feel safe. But in reality he can not. In reality, he needs her to choose him. Everyday. They have to be a team. They have to be alone against the world (even if that means they have to perform to find a place in that world). He has to know, to feel sure, to feel warm about the fact that his Lucy Gray wanted him and wanted to be with him in the same way he wanted to be with her.

He has to be sure they truly love each others.

Or he is going to be insane. After all, he already did. One trace of doubt - he lost it. He lost it so bad.

But betrayal in a so giant way is a thing; a thing that set him in a rage, that make him spiraling without control and do despicable things in a matter or seconds.

Slowly see your only love slowly fade away? This is another type of pain who can drive one mad in a more subtle way, because he still had hope he can just fix things and surerly he will do it. Just a little time. Just a little patiente. He will do it. But in reality she fade. More and more far away. And panic arise, day by day.

So yeah, Coriolanus Snow was a boy in love, and as a boy in love (the first time I must add) wanted to cage her loved one, to control her. It's normal to feel this way when you love someone, because you want the other one to love you the same. But it's a passing thought, not a real one, because physical possesion doesn't mean owning someone's feelings, and he knew this. Deep down he knew. And he wants Lucy Gray's love above everything else.

Seeing her simply perform their love story to him will be too much.

[bromcommie]

so I was digging through the Vast Legally Grey Junkyards of the Internet in search of better quality footage from AoU for my edits, specifically the scene with the CA FASCIST grafitti in Sokovia—which I unfortunately didn't find, but what I DID find was a bunch of deleted/expanded scenes that I didn't know/didn't care enough to pay attention to before. Which is fine. Most of it is techno babble and rushed plot setup. However. This stupid-ass ten second clip makes me literally insane. It makes me. Want to kill and maim and chew on the bars of my enclosure. And not in the sense that the contents make me oh-so-emotional, but because the potential of them could. Because what do you mean.

What do you mean those four and a half lines were cut for pacing/time when it's a ten second difference and the rest of the scene is in the film anyway. What do you mean you cut it because it didn't fit the narrative. It's literally couched in two minutes of plot it could've been so easy to slip it in there. A passing reference that would add at least a smidgen of depth to both the (already fucking incomprehensible) plot + politics of the antagonists, and to one of the main fucking characters. Like you were SO close what do you mean you cut every feeble attempt that was made to scratch the surface of Steve's character outside the whole nightmare scene we're supposed to feel so bad about what do you MEAN.

The fact that this minimal exchange—paired with that graffiti scene where Steve is confronted with the actual legacy of Captain America and what he's come to mean to people around the world and then quite physically discards the identity + him still circling back to the mantle at the end of the film anyway because he doesn't know how to do or be anything else, feels like he's too changed for this idea of a normal life that stems from before the war and the ice and doesn't know how to live without carrying that, without being useful in this one specific way—has more meat on its bones in the whole lead up to Civil War and ultimately Endgame than half of this movie's sledgehammer-over-the-head lines about home and family with Barton's kids laughing in the background or whatever like some fucked up C list hallmark movie is downright infuriating to me because like. You clearly thought about it. It passed through your head. You wrote some version of it into the scene. You shot it and edited it and watched it a few times and then you went "nah off it goes to the cutting room floor, we have enough of that. Add those seven and a half seconds to the 20-minute long, entirely CGI Hulk sequence, that we need more of. Surely that will fix the pacing issue".

Side note: this is me not even getting into the fact that, at this point in the franchise, this would have been one of the few lines we'd get of Maria actually saying something or interacting with anyone in a way that is even marginally removed (which this barely is) from simply delivering plot information. This is the only time we kinda get her view on something or even an inkling that she used to be a goddamn intelligence agent. And how that history informs her view of the situation and how it could possibly clash with Steve's own. And that woman is in every fucking movie. (Not to mention the fact that the two of them were just in a movie together, for Christ's sake, and going through something together you could pretty fairly characterize as traumatic and bond-inspiring to boot—and in AoU we can barely tell they even know each other. I mean the bar is so low and they still managed to limbo right under it.)

[sweetpea-sprite]

just got past the fairygrounds again and. do you think they forgot oliver almost mcfucking drowned because like. if i was an autistic 13 year old that got launched into a river out of a mountain-high cannon with confetti and a shitload of fairies yelling about it right after fighting a massive jellyfish i'd be freaking the hell out. like logically i know they probably couldn't have made that go done how it probably would have but Man

TRUEEEE i think level 5 forgot everything about oliver when they were making wotww. and i think everyone should go play dotdd

[laiosynth]

it really irks me when discord servers, specially fandom ones too, have strictly enforced "no discourse" rules. not because i am in any way fond of discourse, but because it leads to, like, EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION that could be even POTENTIALLY a bit hard, but that could lead to beneficial discussion and debate from which people grow, being shut down completely. want to critique the actions of a source material's creator? NOPE. want to have a discussion on some part of the story or lore that you didn't like as much, or critique it for any reason? NOPE. want to have a dialogue about the source material's rough edges? NOPE. literally ANY possible learning experience or dialogue gets shut down completely because it might be a little bit uncomfortable.

it feels slightly unfair to people affected by the situations and topics that become stuck in the taboo created by these strict anti-discourse rules. like, imagine you're a POC and you're completely shut down when trying to critique hoyo for their racism with natlan. it tells you that YOU are taboo, your experiences and feelings and struggles are inherently Too Much for polite conversation.

same thing with, like, a disabled person critiquing the representation of disability in a comic, or a queer person upset with the way a queer relationship was portrayed. you name it. it just pisses me off. it's cowardice, to me; it's a fear of any kind of change or slight disagreement. it's a fear of being uncomfortable, despite the fact that uncomfortable conversations and feelings are the only way you can grow and learn from past mistakes or ways of thinking, and the only way to get past and through cognitive dissonance, to the other side.

[m1dnight-blu3]

someone please free me from the shackles of my ableist job so I can read my books, draw and write my silly little fics in PEACE

[exltwounds]

Sometimes i hate to be the one who's always right

[missmouse43]

6 weeks of breathing clean air, I still miss the smoke…..

🏝️🤙🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏼‍♂️💔

[dayurno]

darling, have you any kevjeanthea thoughts to spare? i've been going insane since i found out jean was thea's puppy and also their Mailman. i'm in need of your wisdom rn.

<3 (@stabbyfoxandrew)

OF COURSE hello darling aerie i hope you're doing well also you know exactly what you're doing referring to jean as thea's puppy don't you. i think i hauve covid....

as of right now i have two ideas which are not really that distinct but cause me great amusement... first i thought about established pro era kevthea and jean ending up in the same team as them (possibly the olympics?) while being a trainwreck himself and kevthea immediately taking him under their wing :) this is like the standard aftg poly fic scenario and i fall for it all the time because it's so GOOD. i think at first kevin's the one who's kind of laying it heavy on jean because he's worried he might do something stupid but thea is ultimately the one drawing jean by the back of his neck and being like you're acting ridiculous. live with us. and he does... AND THEN OF COURSE the evergreen offer of a threesome, the unbearable tension, the constant mistaking of jean as either kevin's or thea's boyfriend, being so close it gets inappropriate. the perfect culmination i think would be a night where they actually do sleep together and jean wakes up under kevin and thea like what the fuck just happened

AND I DONT THINK THEY EVER TALK ABOUT IT. or like define terms. or even boundaries. but it happens and its there and jean is just casually added to their every activity like hes always been there in the first place :) i think theres something just so fun about a dynamic like that for poly ships sorry sorry sorry. jean thinks he's a single man until it's christmas 2011 and he's having dinner with thea's family

my Other idea was well of course the nest-era moment. i was thinking thea has a the boy is mine moment with jean until she realizes that jean has a crush on her too and she's Very flustered about it because it's definitely not what she expected would happen out of this situation. i don't know if it'd change much about canon but i think itd make the scene where kevin takes thea to see jean in tkm very tense >:3 and you know how she was like should i come back? to kevin i think they could do something similar for jean like. finish usc. get a little better. and then we'll come back for you. and they do :3