#can’t relate. every day i thank every entity in the universe that i’m not a teenager in any way shape or form

[segretecose]

‘when you lose your teenage features’ ‘when you lose your teenage style’ you guys i think the word you’re looking for is ‘grow’? perhaps ‘change’ even

[wangxianficrecs]

Sweeties, it’s time for

I’m In The Mood For A Fic Where…

_______

1.  Ahhh mojo your blog makes my world go round and back and around again.  [You’re so sweet!] I was wondering if you could help me out with your next "I'm in the mood for a fic where".. I'm looking for two types of fics

A) fics in which WWX regains his core somehow (either by working on it, divine intervention, core sharing, anything!!) I so desperately want my boy to have his precious and favourite sword back (◡ ω ◡)

B) fics where WWX (or LWJ) *almost* marries someone else.

Thank you for your help!!! (~￣³￣)~❤️ ~ @akyra-talanoa​

1a.

nothing gold can stay by rikke (M, 10k, wangxian, my post)

❤️Ghosts Shouldn't by ShanaStoryteller (not rated [G], 15k, wangxian, my post)

the path to heaven / immortal wangxian by lightningalwaysreturns (E, 51k, wangxian)

Chimera by nirejseki (T, 18k, wangxian)

Righteous at a Cost by thunderwear (G, 21k, wangxian, my bookmark)

Different Paths to the Same Route by JustAWanderingBabbit (T, 184k, 3zun)

24 Hours by tailor31415 (E, 6k, wangxian)

Core-Thieving Hand by x_los (T, 5k, wangxian)

Field Trips with Wei Wuxian by antebunny (G, 43k, wangxian)

1b.

to swim through the fires by littledust (M, 37k, wangxian)

❤️Neatly Arranged by thunderwear (T, 46k, wangxian, my post)

Rebound Betrothal by mondengel (not rated (G), 2k, wangxian, my post)

History Will Call Us Wives by silvermarie (E, 17k, wangxian)

today was a smoking sky by typefortydeductions (E, 38k, wangxian)

~*~

2.  hello! any recs wangxian modern au/mpreg? please and thank you!

Here’s my mpreg post (mostly current) and also

Brilliant Mistake by brooklinegirl (E, 54k, wangxian, my bookmark)

Winter Moon, White Rabbit by nachttour (E, 62k, wangxian, WIP)

Stale Spice, Sandalwood, and Nests by Tyongslips (M, 18k, wangxian, WIP)

~*~

3.  Hello!! This might not be specific enough to find anything, but I was looking for modern wangxian fics that have a very distinct italicized 'oh' moments together? Like both of them or either of the pair doing something that makes them suddenly realize

every time we kiss i swear i could fly by sarahyyy (T, 3k, wangxian, my post)

【那夏天的我們】a stroke of fate by puddingcatbeans (G, 60k, wangxian)

not in so many words by jaws_3 (T, 18k, wangxian, my post)

~*~

4.  In the mood for fics where WWX is genuinely afraid of LWJ, believing that he will kill him/hurt him/cast him out/haul him back to Gusu for punishment; with emphasis on LWJ's reaction when he realizes and it hits him like a sack of bricks, and ideally on his efforts to regain WWX's trust. Not looking for something where LWJ really does wish WWX significant harm, but it's ok if he has well-intended ideas that he doesn't realize would hurt him. Any time period, canon version, or AU is good. Example: decay by antebunny.

~*~

5.  Hi there! First of all thank you for making such a helpful blog. I have been reading tons of great stories due to you.  [I’m so glad!] Secondly I would love to read a fic (a) where lwj is a single dad and then meets wwx (b) Best modern au fics with lots of angst. Thanks!!! ~ @pastashouldbeeatenwithafork​

5a. 

❤️A Flower That Blooms In Adversity by thunderwear (M, 62k, wangxian, WIP, my post)

like wildflowers (we grow) by moonsteps (T, 80k, wangxian)

say it's here where our pieces fall in place by Lirelyn (E, 69k, wangxian)

plant a little happiness (let the roots run deep) by fleurdeliser (E, 48k, wangxian)

tear out the thread one by one from your skin (’til your bones feel embarrassed by all the attention) by lightningalwaysreturns (E, 41k, wangxian)

paint smears on sunny days by SnowshadowAO3 (E, 54k, wangxian)

love thy neighbor by wincechesters (M, 7k, wangxian)

No Need to Change a Tune by yeolinski (T, 10k, wangxian)

5b.

Tempo Rubato by Spodumene (E, 108, wangxian, my post)

A Sequence of Coming Outs by kippalittlefox (M, 24k, wangxian)

new york, i love you by Anonymous (T, 7k, wangxian)

leading tone by silencemostofall (G, 32, wangxian)

An Ocean Between Us by feenwitch (E, 11k, wangxian)

总有一天; a place to hide (can’t find one near) by yiqie (E, 76k, wangxian, *mind the tags!*)

me and you, always and forever by fyredancer (E, 150k, wangxian)

Momentum Deferred by DisasterBiAlert (T, 13k, wangxian, my post)

After the Final Rose by azurewaxwing (E, 55k, wangxian)

there's no promised goodbye here by Anonymous (T, 54k, wangxian)

defective requiems by Misila (M, 9k, wangxian)

❤️Common love isn't for us by feyburner (M, 8k, wangxian, my post)

twice by Misila (T, 8k, wangxian)

one good thing by Yuu_chi (T, 27k, wangxian, my post)

~*~

6.  Hey! Can you rec some fics with wangxian being in cloud recesses or modern au of college?? Thanks!

I have tags for #students at cloud recesses and #college/university au

~*~

7.  Would you happen to know any fics where lqr and wwx actually get along and have a good relationship? Lqr the scholar he is and wwx the inventor/genious ???? There are a lot of possibilities there.  Thank you so much have a great day and stay hydrated!!!

❤️To have and to hold by Moominmammashandbag (M, 79k, wangxian, my post)

❤️to arrive late is better than not to arrive at all by Moominmammashandbag (M, 35k, wangxian, my post)

Just Say Yes by edenwolfie (M, 312k, wangxian)

Post-war baby! by like_a_bird_that_flew (E, 23k, wangxian, WIP)

Righteous at a Cost by thunderwear (G, 21k, wangxian, my bookmark)

~*~

8.  Hello! I love your fic recs and the hard work you do! I've discovered so many new favourites thanks to you! [Yay!] I was wondering if you know of any fics where they're shapeshifters or some such? Animals or wing-fics or something similar? ❤

I have an official tag for #animal transformation, and on my AO3 wangxian collection (which returns more search results than tumblr) here is the search for shapeshifter, and wingfic

over forests and mountains by beechtree (T, 9k, wangxian, WIP)

~*~

9.  hii do you know any fics that focus on lwj and lxc and their relation?? thanks <33

❤️Begotten by ecorie (G, 37k, wangxian, my post)

Brotherly Concern by Ibijau (G, 11k, wangxian, my post)

~*~

10.  hellooo! do you know any fics where jiang cheng finds a-yuan instead of lwj? thank you for all your recs btw, they're super helpful!!! [Thank you!]

grieve the living by Misila (M, 161k, wangxian)

Overflow the autumn pools by Mhalachai (T, 74k, jiang cheng & lan wangji)

~*~

11.  I love your blog! Thank you so much for all the wonderful recs! [Thank you!]  I don't suppose you know of any fics where WWX is a non-human entity of some sort, but presents or is disguised as a human? (Or maybe he even thinks he is human?)

Cruise the tags mentioned above in #8, too.

❤️Spellbound by Latios (T, 37k, wangxian, my post)

When fish soar by mondengel (G, 2k, wangxian, my post)

Breathing Firestorm by ladyshadowdrake (M, 111k, wangxian)

flame and rust by cl410 (M, 29k, wangxian, WIP)

❤️The Tiger has Destroyed his Cage by updatebug (G, 55k, wangxian, my bookmark)

Magical Marriage Ribbons by starandrea (M, 376k, wangxian)

Ever Distant Shores by fuddy_duddy (rainier_day) (T, 69k wangxian, WIP)

~*~

12.  Hiii do you know any fics where wwx or lwj OR wangxian leave the cultivation world/retire/grow old together away from cultivation drama? Something like And They Have Escaped The Weight of Darkness by cosmicmilktea , All that is solid melts into air by huxiyi , and that fic where post resurrection wwx just decides to not bother with dafan mountain and opens a flower shop:  focal, filler, and line by bosbie.

Dan Tian / Heaven by ArchiveWriter (T, 20k, wangxian, WIP)

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Moonpuddles (T, 3k, wangxian)

Pair of Swallows, you and I~ by Moonpuddles (T, 13k, wangxian, series in progress)

~*~

13.  Hello! Do you know any fics where wangxian has some incompatibility issues/dysfunctional relationship that isnt because of canon typical one braincell wwx, but because of more structural things like their mental age gaps, how wwx will prolly hate cloud recesses after the honeymoon bliss is over etc. Generally fics that show wangxian having to work to build the relationship

~*~

14.  Hi! Any wangxian onlyfans au fics? I read For a Good Time, Call by ScarlettStorm and the ongoing sequel KILF (Knits I'd Like To Fuck in) and those were so good!!! I'd like to find more similar fics!

Temptation's Mask by threerings (E, 58k, wangxian, camboy wwx)

A ghost by the light of the phone by shibrogane (E, 10k, wangxian)

~*~

15.  Hey, do you have any fics where lxc doesn't like (or outright despises) wwx?

❤️to arrive late is better than not to arrive at all by Moominmammashandbag (M, 35k, wangxian, my post)

I don't like your boyfriend by lazulisong (G, 3k, wangxian, my post)

~*~

16.  Do you know of any fics where the Lan Elders (unsuccessfully) try to make Lan Zhan marry someone other than Wei Ying?

Lie Open To One Another by levament (M, 41k, wangxian, WIP)

~*~

17.  Hii! Do you know any fics that similar to Ardent Desires by crestre / Baby Of Mine by pupeez4eva ? I've been searching for it and want to read fics that similar to those so bad. I hope you and your followers can help me! Thankyouuu

The Trouble with Talismans: a Treatise on Time-Travel by Young Master Lan Xiaohui (Age 6) by stiltonbasket (G, 17k, wangxian, WIP)

~*~

18.  Do you know any wangxian fics where either one or both of them are models/actors/musicians/famous in some way?

The Fault in Our Stars by Vamillepudding (T, 18k, wangxian, my post)

Patient came so hard from prostate exam he kicked me in the dick by Hades_the_Blingking (e, 17k, wangxian, my post)

An ocean in a drop (not a drop in the ocean) by dea_liberty (E, 10k, RPF, yizhan, my post)

how to fall in love with a catfish: a guide by wei wuxian (disaster rat) by Anonymous (T, 55k, wangxian, my post)

Make It Count by wearing_tearing (E, 47k, wangxian, my bookmark)

❤️Love wakes me by dea_liberty (e, 46k, wangxian, my post)

life, drama and action by Akai__hana (G, 13k, wangxian)

call me, beep me by myung (T, 39k, wangxian)

Rest by sassybluee (T, 115k, wangxian)

~*~

19.  hello, i'm searching for a fic where wwx like... transmigrates into mdzs/cql? like i think there were a couple of them and but i can't find them for some reason?

Untitled. by c11to (M, 61k, wangxian, WIP)

[squashfolded]

all your oc's look so cool!! can you give like a summary/rundown of the static city universe? or just talk about any oc you want :>

Ah thank you sm!! 🥺💕 and sure thing!! I’m super bad at putting lore into words but I’ll give a brief (probably won’t be brief) description 👀 basically here’s the three protagonists and their planets of “origin” (Sym was originally from a space cult not a planet)

Ember is accidentally kidnapped from her home planet when said space cult attacks it and is dropped off on the planet Flicker and meets Jia, who lives in the forest and they really hit it off but Ember needs to find civilization to survive so and Jia won’t go with her so they part ways and after finding out there’s basically no way home to her planet and even if there was it’s classified as “destroyed” she starts a new life on this planet and works as an engineer and one day ends up in the forest again and sees Jia, who remembers her and they talk again and it turns out Jia is part of a species that are basically gods called Nexulae who can control this universe’s magic/life force called “static” with her tentacle hair and this planet is abnormally overflowing with it and her species also makes these sort of living space ships shaped like animals and made out of plants and other living organisms and it’s basically a whole ecosystem and they can space travel with them and they sort of evolved to be the caretaker of the planet they’re assigned and restore any damaged habitat with their living spaceship which acts as a sort of appendix for the planets ecosystem and depends against interplanetary threats

Anyways so they keep meeting up and grow closer and but Jia doesn’t even begin to understand her powers and it kind of scares both of them since there’s no record of her species anywhere so Ember keeps asking around and a space pirate tells her about an encounter with a entity that sounds and looks very similar to Jia and gives them coordinates and after a couple of test drives to the moons they set off for this planet and arrive and meet Sym! Who tells them their tragic backstory and basically they left the space cult of evil nexulae and cut their tentacle hair off (very very hard to do their species is nigh indestructible) to get rid of their powers but the power manifested in other ways and they ended up hiding on one of the many planets almost destroyed by the space cult and saving it’d inhabitants from extinction by basically fusing them together and having hybrids and now they’re all super animals that can withstand lots of disasters but also there’s no intelligent life so Sym is very lonely and becomes good friends with Jia and both Jia and Sym catch feelings for Ember and it becomes a kind of poly cule situation

And also all three of them have autism and relate to each other heavily but are still very different Jia is very self isolating and tends to try and take responsibilities on herself even when she can’t mentally handle it Ember is more outgoing and short tempered and the others tease her for it but she’s very smart and loves inventing things and building things and is probably the most socially competent of the three, Sym has a lot of trauma from being in the cult and is very scared of failure and hurting others but also craves affection and cares very deeply for Jia and Ember and can even be a bit possessive, they also had encounters with other people finding the planet but they always tried to hurt the creatures on the planet to eat them or take them and Sym scared them off

More of the species on Ember’s planet

Almost every animal on this planet is a mammal and it’s very dry and desert-y!

This is the leader of the space cult she killed her own brother when they both watched over the same planet

This is one of the cult leader’s most dedicated followers she’s the one that destroyed Ember’s planet (spoilers it’s not entirely destroyed)

This is very long and rambly I’m sorry 😭 I have a lot more lore in my brain but idk how to word it all I should make a lore document or something in google docs 😳ty for asking again!!

[nochiquinn]

campaign 2 wrapup: it was all a mistake

sam don't tell them to hit you they'll take you literally

not ONE rebecca black reference

do we get another animated intro?? we deserve one

matt invented Welcome Back

"the universe is paused"

what is the tattoo incident. it's not just that you got tattoos, it wouldn't be an Incident

"I'm not dissing alignment but fuck alignment"

"fuck! .....unless?"

travis using his enormous hands to block the logos on his drinks is still my favorite thing

travis knows nothing about nothing, look at his playlists

The Old Notes

such a well-oiled machine

yasha is me cutting off all contact with the outside world every six months

"I'd ignore my texts too"

would they have gotten a house in shady creek instead of the xhorhouse

(what happened to the xhorhouse)

"I don't know anything about dungeons and dragons"

sam's just a low-level telepathist

Thanks Pandemic

oh, that's why no brian, brian do other thing

oh he names things the way I do

[types the first three letters and rearranges the rest until it looks right]

pop-up video~

it takes two to derail a d&d campaign, TRAVIS

kiri as a musical-themed serial killer

mala: the real biggest cr miracle is the fact sam still lives

til laura was in labor for two days

uko'toaaaaaaaa

entity

pirate one shot piratE ONE SHOT

DIRT WIZARD

"like a nickname in high school, it just sticks" or you have an lj name that your friends call you and that's how your girlfriend knows you and then she introduces you to EVERYONE like that so when you break up everyone still knows you by that name and your legal name is a distant afterthought

not that anything like that has ever happened to me

nila rose

aw, that's cute

ashly burch my beloved

mala: oh they're holding her hostage in the basement

the cracked glasses were very cute

keg's legacy. kegacy.

cosplayers' vision is based on movement

matt's going to murder them all

essek is me playing among us

"you made him float, man, what were we supposed to do"

[shoves my inner widojest shipper back in the closet with a broom]

"don't you make eyes at her! she's mine now!"

"inspired but confused" is caduceus' whole aesthetic

HERE'S HOW WIDOFJORD CAN STI

caleb is that ancient quiznos ad

"I'm not doing that again, that burned"

(I am very enamored with the narrative track of keeping essek at arm's length or considering him "off-limits" bc he was so like astrid and eadwulf and caleb was hurt so badly and so deeply)

liam vs matt's unexpected npcs

essek: shadowhand

verin: shadowhimbo

laura just gave the whole table psychic damage

brian stop saying undisputed I'm having LABN flashbacks

"EDIBLES!"

trent that's gross don't do that

(trent can't do ANYTHING anymore muwahahaha)

laura ur vex is showing

"that's the traveler" "you need more sleep"

taliesin practicing for percy

(or leftover percy if they already filmed it)

where's the art, I know y'all are already on it

"it's awful, but let's encourage it"

SPILL

remember my early theory that yasha and zuala had kids and yasha was the Orphan Maker bc she killed zuala and then ran

ORPHAN TAKER

"role play zoning"

this feels like what happened between ATLA and Korra with the post-war restructuring and building republic city

"into a literal volcano"

mica!!

every so often she does a certain expression or turns her head a certain way and I'm like "oh right her dad's levar burton"

reani: a gay sunflower

matt: the hag is no longer under the spell laura: but she still loves jester, right? matt: laura: she still loves jester, right???

frienisis

laura: WHO LOVES WHO AND WHY >:[

sitting down and aggressively interrogating an emotion bc Why Is It Doing That is relateable

"I am always entertaining the idea of leaving the group"

I just remember laura at one point going "MATT he's gonna KILL HER" about sam being reckless with nott bc none of them trust sam even a little bit anymore

"let's talk about time travel" let's not

"caleb would have to fight astrid and eadwulf and their bodies would replaces his parents'" HEY LIAM???

"because somebody abused him" say it louder for the people who haven't heard it for a hundred fucking episodes

laura put that eyebrow back

samuel

hearing casual confirmation of polyam does my heart so much good

(he's trying very hard to impress the difference between physical familiarity and intimacy and sexual relationships and laura and sam are just. here. being like that.)

(blumentrio had BOTH but they weren't always the same thing) (physical and emotional closeness and intimacy from a survival situation translating into sexual intimacy is my SHIT) (or also just platonic physical intimacy)

(liam o'brien was put on this earth to hurt me and he's doing GREAT so far)

that was crazy town and I hate that I know that

"in kraghammer it's like 4"

.....the crabgrass dynasty being the only living thing in the spot where molly died

they had a batman list!!

on a scale of one to skynet

that's very on-brand

adventures of jester and artagan comic (and inevitable animated adaptation)

"on buildings you don't own and have not gotten permission to paint"

DICK SHIV

"that would have been really bad"

astrid beck my beloved

Thanks Moonweaver

also someone go kick trent in the head one more time for good measure

"also his anus"

"in my brain we killed him because I hate him so much"

travis and laura sitting up and looking at each other

"dani's losing it"

"hackneyed maybe, but I don't give a shit" me writing

allura's a cheat answer, we knew that one

awwwWWWW

I knew at least one VM member was on it or matt wouldn't have been so cagey about it

something something vex as kenny omega as the collector something

PIRATE ONESHOT

beaurebar franchise on darktow

matt: all of this was a mistake

[loniereads]

cr: Sufficiently Advanced Magic

*spoiler warning*

Chapter 1 - 5

Chapter one

“I was prepared in a thousand different ways that didn’t matter” - Me for every test I’ve ever taken ☺️✨✨

Omg is he gonna go look for his brother 🥺 This book said found family but make it literal - side note, love the name Tristan.

I hope it’s explained as to WHY hundreds of 17 year olds are enduring a judgment to their possible death????

Imagine you’re brother going basically missing, your mom leaving, and then your dad pulling you out of school so you can prepare to possibly ✨die✨

“It could take years to grow strong enough-” 🥺 He’s going to sacrifice years of his life and risk certain death just for a chance to reunite his family is this book gonna make me cry?

I don’t like his name as much as I like his brothers but yanno whatever- how do you even say Corin

I already hate the dad??? Hello? Your first son is gone and your second could follow in his fate and you don’t even see him off?? Fuck you buddy why are book dads such assholes

“I loathed hurting people. I always had.” so i have decided that if anything happens to Corin I will kill everyone in the room and then myself. WHAT A CUTIE SWEET SOUL

If this book forces him to hurt someone I’ll riot-

Oh my gosh he hates fighting but he’s willing to fight for his brother I LOVE HEALTHY BROTHER RELATIONSHIPS they’re so pure

Corin is so nice to try to explain all of this weapon stuff and rune stuff to me like I have any idea wtf he’s talking about- he’s talking and I’m like I’m just happy to be here ☺️

I feel like the fact that he’s paying for everything he takes is important- like maybe other people just take and don’t leave anything? But he’s like here’s a coin for you scary tower~

“It was too cute to die” why do I love Corin so

What a cute ass sweet ass cinnamon roll, my god🥺

HE FELT GUILTY FOR KILLING A SHADOW SNDKDNSK I love him sm what a king

Chapter two

Why does everything he say sound so intelligent

ldmoaha not Corin having a convo with a book

It’s been too long since I read a normal romance book why did my brain just decide to ship Corin and a BOOK

Ok but him taking time to ask about his brother has me so soft

What the flip chapter 2 was so short??? ):

Chapter three

“You shouldn’t have done that” how ominous and amazing and I love it

He so casually was like OH LOOK A DEAD BODY OH LOOKIE PEOPLE

Omg is he gonna find his brother in here- OH MY

OMG HE DID AHHHHH

just... kidding. He did infact not find him.

Oh wait someone younger than him though- so is going into the tower a choice? That would make it a little better. Like you decide when you go in or? I NEED MORE INFO PLS

The word resh is growing on me

He risked his gold key on her 🥺

I love this little merry band of criminals- also just hoping the kid doesn’t yanno....die

omg Keras is out here crushing stones with his bare hands 😏 hellooooo

Wait I’m so conflicted??? I want to trust Keras and Vera but I also want to trust the book alsnsish

Vera is a whole mood I really hope she’s not like evil or just a weird thing in the tower or idk whatever I want her to stay

AWWAIT ☹️☹️☹️ They left Keras behind- that can’t be it. He’s gotta come back right? Like book person is gonna save him? Right!!??

Chapter four

VERA SUCH A BADDDDIE

This ‘kid’ they’re carrying is just making out like a bandit, he’s just getting carried through the tower 😂

WOW FUCK YOU VERA??? UH I HOPE SOMETHING KILLS HER-but not rhe kid 😔

Okay this might be a weird jump- but WHAT IF THE BOOK ENTITY ISSSSS HIS BROTHER??????????? Like the book person seems to really care if Corin lives? so it’s either just like a really caring person, OR HIS BROTHER

Pls let me be right

That would be so cool

The book entity helped him to finish the rest completely? Is this allowed? This feels not allowed

Corin: fighting monsters with criminals in a magical tower, very time sensitive needs to escape quickly

Also Corin: lemme just wrote a little diary entry ✨☺️

So obviously he’s going to get to keep his memories

Also like he got out of the tower so easily? What?

“And don’t let anyone hassle you about your attunement.” HOW VERY OMONIOUS OF YOU TO SAY

Honestly- Fuck Magnus Cadence

REPLACEMENT? What?

His childhood bestfriend is his half sister? I love that???? Instead of making them love interests they’re half siblings that’s cool as hell. We love childhood friends to siblings trope

I will reiterate, FUCK MAGNUS CADENCE

I hope we get to see their friendship bc I’m here for this trope

Chapter five

🥺 he sent the boys glove to his parents I’m so soft

Their relationship makes me so happy?? Like I love this. So they better reunite or I’ll riot

BROTHERLY RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE BESTTT

I miss Keras 🥺

I am so unsure of Sera. I do love the sudden sibling, and I really really hope they end up having a cool relationship and like she helps him find his(their) brother and hdjsjdjs

If anyone gives Corin a hard time for his attunement I’ll throw hands-

Not them earning points at their schools- All I can think about how is “10 points to gryffindor”

I love the word behooves

Can they go back into the tower already 💀 This down time is killing me. I want book entity, Keras and that boy who was unconscious the entire time back.

-side note, I absolutely love how all three of them(Keras, Corin, and Vera) were all so concerned with this unconscious boy and they literally carried him to complete safety. Who is this boy?? Will he come back? I miss him he better not be be dead. Vera can die but not unconscious boy.

I don’t know if I’m supposed to like Sera... but she’s giving me “I’m better than you because I have a better attunement” vibes and I do not like that at all so if Icneed to I will pretend to doesn’t exist.

Aw the schools has like animal representatives decisions?? CUTE UM. - there’s way too many for my brain to keep up with but I love them anyway

Not them assigning kids to basically play pranks on everyone else and tell them if they don’t find the prankster kids they lose points- what a weird ass school

“You and Patrick were practically brothers” GIRL YOU CANT SAY THINGS LIKE THAT TO SOMEONE WHO HAS AN ACTUAL BROTHER WHO IS MISSING AND/OR DEAD

-Also I know Tristen isn’t dead because like then what would be the point huh? HUH? So he’s got to be alive

Or I’ll riot.

“A walking rainstorm” idk why but that is so fucking adorable. I love my new comfort raintorm, Corin.

I can’t wait for them(Corin and Sera) to meet up with their friends and they have to explain that they’re now half siblings.

Them reminding him to not lose his little sigil pin makes me feel like he’s going to lose or forget it ummmm

Imagine getting fucking EXPELLED because you forgot your pin on your other uniform.

I feel like that would be me honestly. Are people not just...forgetful in this universe??

Ngl i would hate to be in the tortoise division

Corins attunement is lamer but his division is called the Phoenix? Like that’s so much cooler than tortoise

The fact that sera is trying to convince me the Spider division isn’t real makes me feel like she’s in it???

I know my babey Corin didn’t mean this as snarky as I would have liked him to but I love this line so much.

SARCASTIC BOYS WITH DADDY ISSUES OWN ME AND IM NOT ASHAMED TO ADMIT IT

Ngl I was hoping they would have roommates- I love a good school roommate dynamic

For the third time I would like to make my opinion to be known; FUCK MAGNUS CADENCE

Why has no one made a playlist for this book on Spotify? I am throughly disappointed

Not Corin being ghosted by his book-

I wish I had half the motivation Corin has? Like it’s my boys first day of school and as soon as he gets into his room he starts studying. I would have taken a nap

Oop jk as soon as he couldn’t find the rune he was looking for he went to lay in bed.

I’m sorry what in the hell is Wyddsday??? Did I miss them explaining to hat this universe has different names for it’s days of the week?? How am I supposed to know when this is Corin? Or what day it even is currently

World building is so intricate and interesting and I absolutely live for it- but it’s literally so frustrating sometimes learning and remembering everything

Okay Sera being less irritated about her studies being interrupted because it’s Corin is cute

Fuck

I still don’t know if I’m supposed to like Sera

Tashday, Fersday, Kyrsday, Tensday, Vasday, and Wyddsday- either I can’t count or they’re missing a day. And what order do they go in? I need a calendar insert pls and thanks

Wait wait did he just run into an ex? What is this sndlsnsin “long-buried emotions”??

Oooo we get a name. Cecily Lambert

I didn’t possibly think I could relate to Corin anymore than I already do but here I am

The dorm chiefs introduce themselves to everyone? How cute and Curtis didn’t seem at all annoyed by Corin asking so many questions I love when upperclassman in books aren’t rude for no reason. It’s such a tiring trait they often have smh

I need his exams to hurry up because I would very much like to get back to the fast paced tower scenes-

I know absolutely nothing about Jin but I love him immensely

[crackcrocs]

DEATH WILL ONLY BE THE BEGINNING #3

3. Transformation Central

the entities of my personalities would like to come together in one voice that speaks through me, we or I call this collection of words from the mustiest corners of my brain to this note page to voice something that might come close to what I feel underneath the skin I wear. In all my unorganised words- I might even go as far as to call this a poem, titled:

‘TRANSFORMATION CENTRAL’

sub characters in my head would appreciate if this could be visualised & understood through as deep a lens as humanly possible. even I confuse myself so if you can decode or relate to any of this, wonderful. If not, I’m locked in my own mind, swallowed the keys to my soul.

SIMILARITIES & INTERCONNECTEDNESS BETWEEN HUMAN & PLANT CONSCIOUSNESS EXIST! if you look closely at my nose freckles you’ll see the resemblance of the constellations above. if you look at the human veins & the layout of a tree, this is further proof.

{VISUALS THROUGH A SEPIA WINDOW STARING @ THE AUTUMN LEAFS; IMAGINING THE SEEDS UNDERNEATH, THROUGH NUMB ROOT VESSELS THAT PERMEATE THROUGH EVERY MEMBRANE OF MY EXTERNAL TO INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT}

~FEATURING THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF DEPRESSION & PERFECTIONISM.

here goes:

What is this part of my mind ?

If you want; delve inside-

I may look sweet like Alice,

but underneath it all

I deteste looking in the mirror

-cos I see the mad hatter.

my inner child needs a platter-

full of care not distortion & abuse pls.

less fibbin would’ve been a breeze.

now following the dead fish in the stream!

HOW on EARTH do I fit with the cod & the Haddock?

I’m the rainbow fish- beat & battered.

dim my own light cos I’m too afraid to shine.

alone.

thieves tried to steal my shiny scales.

I sat and watched them grow.

In the sea realm they were mean gargantuan selfish whales, with poisonous shark fangs & alligator tails. scorpion hands. (gremlins)

and still they make me feel like the alien-

I cant take it.

Make it make sense ?

I can’t.

controller in my hand-

Off balance stance.  

anxiously I move round like a wobbly jelly.

where’s the button to balance my chi & shut out the ego ?

the teLLIE telling lies to our vision!

change the channel aura terracotta orange- daily dosage of vitamin D & C.

catch me sun gazing by the sea

head buzzin like a bee.

speaking from a dusty box

stuck on top of a forbidden shelf

cos I dunno how else.

I’m tryna delve deep but forgot how to dive

How can i visualise? scenery foggy-

the establishment man with the glue gun got me xD

inner monk burning but at peace

Cos I refuse to believe

If the only way is the American dream

Interconnected; like the frog in science -let’s dissect it!

down to every floating atom spirit neighbouring your door

subcategories & divisions, it’s more!

than the rich and the poor -prism that’s been built

do we all feel like a performance monkey on stilts?

will my data be extracted & used to mould a robots personality some day?

well obviously not.

does the price of our lives all amount down to slave ways?

LABOUR YAY!

but morals & values it seems we’ve forgot.

sO If i don’t speak its cos I’m lost.

or maybe i’m enlightened-

Standing at the edge of the porch;

watching TRYING to understand how the flowers grow.

questioning eVERYTHING man made!

I’ve stepped out of the perfect picture frame

I can see the coal pollute the sky

I need to hop on the train-

but I’m comfortable

Sunset to sunrise statue standing still.

what’s the ingredients to life’s yucky pie?

I’ve exceeded mental lotteries.

Sanity n universal peace would be a trophy.

TIL then I’ll be crafting & shaping a solid pottery reality,

with a few pence, gum, and a bandana of belongings tied to stick.

thinking one day I’ll be laying the bricks

& building a kingdom of bliss.

guess for now I’ll use the intricate delicate materials in my tool box- that’s all I’ve got.

might have a long way- maybe worth a shot.

I observe, cruisin in the sky.

dunno why..

I jus look @ the hills.

Only time & history reveals.

no thanks mr men-

I don’t want your prescription pills.

there’s enough propaganda as it is.

I won’t jump on the merry go round-

til my core trusts & envisions we’ll actually feel safe!

I don’t want to take part in this faux fur, sweet nothings & a jack in a box punching blur, so called future.

oh and genuinely thanks quarantine-for once again, I can hear bird sounds!

guess this is me tryna speak out loud!!!...

it’s not thrilling

system  time killing everything-

mother nature’s oxygen

everything is nauseating

clock ticking, I better start creating.

they should write a book on how to be free when the system set us up to believe that we’re tied to the cut down trees that gives them a currency of greed that they breed.

If blindfolded, I don’t wanna eat what they feed.

Whilst they profit of us -tell us smile and the bandits don’t wanna see us happy.

they’re too busy robbing all our hoods.

In exchange for the silence, they’ve granted us with a 21’st century fashion garment of a slave muzzle! labelled conform.

More delusion to add to the already desensitised norm.

zootonic diseases, welcome covid 19 to your plastic kiddy tea party!- apologies for questioning your motive!

Been handed too many hot plates with a post it note saying HOLD THIS.

we’ll be okay just hush.

Same Shan message told to every generational seed.

If we don’t TRY overpower-

we’ll never succeed!

it’s getting even more scary.

Artificial intelligence.

Societal negligence..

my canvas isn’t clear-dunno am I schizo ?

finger painting, cos it makes more sense.

struggling to blend.

borderline conspiracist pretending to be fine;

moving the goal post, hovering above the race line.

who made the chalk? who set the lanes?

I wanna know it all, maybe¿ far past insane.

I can fit all I need in the palm of my hand,

Maybe even less! cut a finger off not sure it’ll even add stress.

hi from personality Peter, even sober- always away with the fairies.

Pass the pixie dust, I’m in a rush

Found shelter in the comfort of pan physicists timer, no not the one on your phone!

Ring ring, skeptical! is it my demon or my mommy on the phone?

I’m stuck in the airspace of an infinite glass filled with beach particles trying to form myself standing up still attempting not to slip through the hands of my very own discovery.

time is running out & ill go when I go.

I’m sitting inside the fly trap -

stardust, chakras can you feel the sensation colors like a starburst.

deep emotion is a curse.

still entrapped in the sand dune of nothingness-

flipping a domino monopoly of solidified thoughts as I sway with the wind.

I’m the trapped sandbox in the playground & the slipping sand in my own hands.

Inhale chronic but I wanna enter the quiet realm of white noise

-color of a wife beater vest, calmer than the ease in ignorance of a red neck.

sadomasochistic, messes.

but oblivion, seems like less stress.

Unfortunately I can see, with all eyes

empathetic paralysis, gets me vexed.

Punching truth into the core of your chest!

It’s not funny, neither is the one on the receiving end..

My limbs are numb

& im done playing octopus alchemy.

I want minimalism & life can be simple,

Evil entities have made it hard.

Maybe I’ve got stars above my head like an old cartoon character.

But I can’t make it make sense, are they out to get me. worse all of us? Or have I bottled myself tryna re mesh the broken shards,

I feel glued to the floor cos there’s a pretty price to pay if you want more.

I see life through a different lense, maybe born downside up, Benjamin button I came out the back door-

Outside looking in, digesting confusion.

Is to be a product of environment a sin?

rummage through my messy brain.

personalities sardine packed in this tin

I’m the wizard of my mania

Scaring & attracting the black crows-

they’re my friends.

Sometimes still a cowardly lion

Roaring pain & true riddles at the wrenching wicked witch posse of the west.

will my voice ever be loud enough to shed light wit my words and grate the sweet zest

In to the cake i’m baking?

Probably not.

Got more thoughts than the autumn leaves collected by the garden rake. alone.

gathering & storing the pains of yesterday.

sometimes I stay in line

Other times in my head Im on my hands juggling out of time.

but I really don’t mind if I lose or win.

we all have a pace

I jus don’t want the 1% to win the race.

It’s unfair!

Humanity does anyone care ??

Half lady

half fairy

Good  MOOrning-

from my anagrams.

no I’m not a cow.

twister fidget spinner brain in the flesh-

form of expression this time around lyrics.

feel I’m jus a silly rubix

& still mourning

I don’t like dairy

pass the oat milk.

Are you aware the industry are sabotaging our diets?

we want peace!

the powerful elite-

perceive & deceive

the scene they want us to be.

chuck the narcissistic psychopathic pie back in our face-

every time we almost found & addressed the Programme & Control man in the maze.

evil & extroverted- he said that the anarchists have to be the cause of riots.

working isn’t class. I said let’s switch roles- he said pass.

It’s piss! Who’s got the bomb & the guns?

Who got the land? off wit OUR heads 4 fun!

it’s pure scary.

Pharmaceutics handshake.

with the cooked up suppliers, also crooked wack liars.

I’d rather shot a gallon of bloody blubbery infused slaughter house milk

If it meant we didn’t use cocoons for silk.

why not add a drizzle of bleach to the concoction & maybe that’s a reach.

every time I guzzle fakeness, it taste peak.

I want real fruit, what next-

a seedless peach ???

what’s the difference between a weirdo & a freak?

layers & levels to the shit.

Magnifying tapping the window of society, I’ll be puffing green til I get to the land of Oz.

sponge soaked soaking up emotions

Suffocated by deduction of care in life

feel entrapped in this paradigm

what am I thinking ?

got the verbs & a cuppa tea

It’s mixed with torment & desire to be free.

I’d rather be awake than asleep

When I get too comfy I feel weak

Demons they reap

underneath

rip the seems as I bleed

Concrete

Solid

Emotions

Is all you’re getting

It’s all sad scenes in the imagery I’m setting

people need care we seem to be forgetting

why are we in debt wit

a posse of clowns

pay the price so we can get a frown

here’s some seratonin

quit ya moaning

life is all sound

aw yeh¿  if you’re not an over thinker!

product of environment- Sirius flickers

theyve done a ritual like it’s Wicca

now here’s your gold sticker..

for managing to co operate.

In this world fuelled off of evil n hate

waking ups a bloody disgrace

I am not amazed.

Man I love my fam n my friends

Just hate this part of my brain that feels the need to play pretend

sometimes I feel insane

but I’m calm

need to escape so I don’t do harm

Gold lioness in the sky by the sea

with puff the magic dragon

fire out my mouth, fuel helps me breathe

I will shine bright

Promise imma be alright

even tho I’m not sure why

I function like this

I wanna be myself

It’s just hard to find the comfortability

To feel happy and pretty

Lay me down on a bed of roses

Ring around sing about overdose emotions

Sorry dunno how to communicate

Heads in a constant debate

Should I go or should I stay

My head clashes

Burnin the next ciggy as my thoughts become ashes.

[arcticdementor]

Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college.

“I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.”

She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says.

This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off.

“My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I'm a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I'm just taking out this money to put my ass through school.”

Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices.

Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in intersectional basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn't even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I'll do your housekeeping. I don't give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.”

The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures.

She personally delivered those to the Washington offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

“I definitely poked the bear,” she says.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000, in fact — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.”

Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight.

When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

Corporate creditors often play probabilities and mass-sue even if they don’t always have great cases, knowing a huge percentage of borrowers either won’t show up in court (as with credit card holders) or will agree to anything to avoid judgments, the usual scenario with student borrowers.

“What usually happens in pretty much 99% of these cases is you beg and plead and say, ‘Please don't put a judgment against me, I'll do anything… because a judgment against you means you're not going to be able to buy a home, you’re not going to be able to do basically anything involving credit for the next 20 years.”

…

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. Hillary Clinton, who took $140,000 from bank interests in her Senate run, had voted for an earlier version.

Party intrigue is only part of the magic of American politics. Public relations matter, too, and the Bankruptcy Bill turned out to be the poster child for another cherished national phenomenon: the double-lie.

…

Years later, pundits still debate whether there really ever was an epidemic of debt-fleeing deadbeats, or whether legislators in 2005 who just a few years later gave “fresh starts” to bankrupt Wall Street banks ever cared about “moral hazard,” or if it’s fair to cut off a single Mom in a trailer when Donald Trump got to brag about “brilliantly” filing four commercial bankruptcies, and so on.

In other words, we argue the why of the bill, but not the what. What did that law say, exactly? For years, it was believed that it absolutely closed the door on bankruptcy for whole classes of borrowers, and one in particular: students. Nearly fifteen years after the bill’s passage, journalists were still using language like, “The bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt.”

…

The phrase “Just asking questions” today often carries a negative connotation. It’s the language of the conspiracy theorist, we’re told. But sometimes in America we’re just not told the whole story, and when the press can’t or won’t do it, it’s left to individual people to fill in the blanks. In a few rare cases, they find out something they weren’t supposed to, and in rarer cases still, they learn enough to beat the system. This is one of those stories.

…

Smith’s explanation of the history of the student loan exemption and where it all went wrong is biting and psychologically astute. In his telling, the courts’ historically sneering attitude toward student borrowers has its roots in an ages-old generational debate.

“This started out as an an argument between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers,” Smith notes. “A lot of the law was created by people railing against draft-dodging deadbeat hippies.”

He points to a 1980 ruling by a judge named Richard Merrick, who in denying relief to a former student, wrote the following:

The arrogance of former students who had received so much from society, frequently including draft deferment, and who had given back so little in return, accompanied by their vehemence in asserting their constitutional and statutory rights, frequently were not well received by legislators and jurists, senior to them, who had lived through the Depression, had worked their ways through college and graduate school, had served in World War II, and had been paying the taxes which made possible the student loans.

Smith laughs about this I didn’t climb the hills at Normandy with a knife in my teeth just to eat the debt on your useless-ass liberal arts degree perspective, noting that “when those guys who did all that complaining went to school, only rich prep school kids went to college, and by the way, tuition was like ten bucks.” Still, he wasn’t completely unsympathetic to the conservative position.

…

This concern about “deadbeats” gaming the system — kids taking out fat loans to go to school and bailing on them before the end of the graduation party — led that 1985 court to take a hardcore position against students who made “virtually no attempt to repay.” They established a three-pronged standard that came to be known as the “Brunner test” for determining if a student faced enough “undue hardship” to be granted relief from student debt.

Among other things, the court ruled that a newly graduated student had to do more than demonstrate a temporary inability to handle bills. Instead, a “total incapacity now and in the future to pay” had to be present for a court to grant relief. Over the course of the next decades, it became axiomatic that basically no sentient being could pass the Brunner test.

…

In 2015, he was practicing law at the Texas litigation firm Bickel and Brewer when he came across a case involving a former Pace University student named Lesley Campbell, who was seeking to discharge a $15,000 loan she took out while studying for a bar exam. Smith believed a loan given out to a woman who’d already completed her studies, and who used the money to pay for rent and groceries, was not covering an “educational benefit” as required by law. A judge named Carla Craig agreed and canceled Campbell’s loan, and Campbell v. Citibank became one of the earlier dents in the public perception that there were no exceptions to the prohibition on discharging student debts.

“I thought, ‘Wait, what? This might be important,’” says Smith.

By law, Smith believed, lenders needed to be wary of three major exceptions to the non-dischargeability rule:

— If a loan was not made to a student attending a Title IV accredited school, he thought it was probably not a “qualified educational loan.”

— If the student was not a full-time student — in practice, this meant taking less than six credits — the loan was probably dischargeable.

— And if the loan was made in an amount over and above the actual cost of attending an accredited school, the excess might not be “eligible” money, and potentially dischargeable.

Practically speaking, this means if you got a loan for an unaccredited school, were not a full-time student, or borrowed for something other than school expenses, you might be eligible for relief in court.

Smith found companies had been working around these restrictions in the blunt predatory spirit of a giant-sized Columbia Record Club. Companies lent hundreds of thousands to teenagers over and above the cost of tuition, or to people who’d already graduated, or to attendees of dubious unaccredited institutions, or to a dozen other inappropriate destinations. Then they called these glorified credit card balances non-dischargeable educational debts — Gray got one of these “direct-to-consumer” specials — and either sold them into the financial system as investments, borrowed against them as positive assets, or both.

…

Smith thought these practices were nuts, and tried to convince his bosses to start suing financial companies.

“They were like, ‘You do know what we do around here, right?’ We defend banks,” he recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Not these particular banks.’ They said it didn’t matter, it was a question of optics, and besides, who was going to pay off in the end? A bunch of penniless students?”

Furious, Smith stormed off, deciding to hang his own shingle and fight the system on his own. “My sister kept saying to me, ‘You have to stop trying to live in a John Grisham novel,’” he recalls, laughing. “There were parts of it where I was probably super melodramatic, saying things like, ‘I'm going to go find justice.’”

Slowly however, Smith did find clients, and began filing and winning cases. With each suit, he learned more and more about student lenders. In one critical moment, he discovered that the same companies who were representing in court that their loans were absolutely non-dischargeable were telling investors something entirely different. In one prospectus for a trust packed full of loans managed by Sallie Mae, investors were told that the process for creating the aforementioned “direct-to-consumer” loans:

Does not involve school certification as an additional control and, therefore, may be subject to some additional risk that the loans are not used for qualified education expenses… You will bear any risk of loss resulting from the discharge.

Sallie Mae was warning investors that the loans might be discharged in bankruptcy. Why the honesty? Because the parties who’d be packaging and selling these student loan-backed instruments included Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s one thing to lie to a bunch of broke students. They don’t matter,” Smith says. “It’s another to lie to JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. You screw those people, they’ll fight back.”

…

In June of 2018, a case involving a Navy veteran named Kevin Rosenberg went through the courts. Rosenberg owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to keep current on his loans, but after his hiking and camping store folded in 2017, he found himself busted and unable to pay. His case was essentially the opposite of Brunner: he clearly hadn’t tried to game the system, he made a good faith effort to pay, and he demonstrated a long-term inability to make good. All of this was taken into consideration by a judge named Cecilia Morris, who ruled that Rosenberg qualified for “undue hardship.”

“Most people… believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” Morris wrote. “This Court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.” The ruling essentially blew up the legend of the unbeatable Brunner standard.

Given a fresh start, Rosenberg moved to Norway to become an Arctic tour guide. “I want people to know that this is a viable option,” he said at the time. The ruling attracted a small flurry of news attention, including a feature in the Wall Street Journal, as the case sent a tremor through the student lending world. More and more people were now testing their luck in bankruptcy, suing their lenders, and asking more and more uncomfortable questions about the nature of the education business.

In the summer of 2012, a former bond trader named Michael Grabis sat in the waiting room of a Manhattan financial company, biding time before a job interview. In the eighties, Grabis’s father was a successful bond trader who worked in a swank office atop the World Trade Center, but after the 1987 crash, the family fell out of the smart set overnight. His father lost his job and spiraled, his mother had to look for a job, and “we just became working class people.”

Michael tried to rewrite the family story, going to school and going into the bond business himself, first with the Bank of New York, and eventually for Schwab. But he, too, lost his job in a crash, in 2008, and now was trying to break the pattern of bubble economy misery. However, he’d exited Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College in the nineties carrying tens of thousands in student loans. That number had since been compounded by fees and penalties, and the usual letters, notices, and phone calls from debt collectors came nonstop.

Now, awaiting a job interview, his phone rang again. It was a collection call for Sallie Mae, and it wasn’t just one voice on the line.

“They had two women call at once,” Grabis recalls. “They told me I’d made bad life choices, that I lived in too expensive a city, that I had to move to a cheaper place, so I could afford to pay them,” Grabis explains. “I tried to tell them I was literally at that moment trying to get a job to help pay my bills, but these people are trained to just hound you without listening. I was shaking when I got off the phone, and ended up having a bad interview.”

Two years later, more out of desperation and anger than any real expectation of relief, Grabis went to federal court in the Southern District of New York and filed for bankruptcy. At the time, he, too, believed student loans could not be eliminated. But the more he read about the way student loans were constructed and sold — he’d had experience in doing shovel-work constructing mortgage-backed securities, so he understood the Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) market — he started to develop a theory. Everyone dealing with the finances of higher education in America knew the system was rotten, he thought. But what if someone could prove it?

The 2005 Bankruptcy Act says former students can’t discharge loans for “qualified educational expenses,” i.e. loans given to students so that they might attend tax-exempt non-profit educational institutions. Historically, that exemption covered almost all higher education loans.

What if America’s universities no longer deserve their non-profit status? What if they’re no longer schools, and are instead first and foremost crude profit-making ventures, leveraging federal bankruptcy law and the I.R.S. code into a single, ongoing predatory lending scheme?

This is essentially what Grabis argued, in a motion filed last January. He named Navient, Lafayette College, the U.S. Department of Education, Joe Biden, his own exasperated judge, and a host of other “unknown co-perpetrators” as part of a scheme against him, claiming the entirety of America’s higher education business had become an illegal moneymaking scam.

“They created a fraud,” he says flatly.

…

Grabis doesn’t have a lawyer, his case has been going on for the better part of six years, and at first blush, his argument sounds like a Hail Mary from a desperate debtor. The only catch is, he might be right.

By any metric, something unnatural is going on in the education business. While other industries in America suffered declines thanks to financial crises, increased exposure to foreign competition, and other factors, higher education has grown suspiciously fat in the last half-century. Tuition costs are up 100% at universities over and above inflation since 2000, despite the 2008 crash, with some schools jacking up prices at three, four times the rate of inflation dating back to the seventies.

Bloat at the administrative level makes the average university look like a parody of an NFL team, where every brain-dead cousin to the owner gets on the payroll. According to Education Week, “fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009,” which is ten times the rate of growth for tenured faculty positions.

…

Hovering over all this is a fact not generally known to the public: many American universities, even ones claiming to be broke, are sitting atop mountains of reserve cash. In 2013, after the University of Wisconsin blamed post-crash troubles for raising tuition 5.5%, UW system president Kevin Reilly in 2013 admitted that the school actually held $638 million in reserve, separate and distinct from the school endowment. Moreover, Reilly said, other big schools were doing the same thing. UW’s reserve was 25% of its operating budget, for instance, but the University of Minnesota’s was 29%, while Illinois maintained a whopping 34% buffer.

When Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice looked into it, he found many other schools were sitting atop mass reserves even as they pleaded poverty to raise tuition rates. “They’re all doing it,” he said.

In the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crash, financiers siphoned fortunes off home loans that were unlikely to be repaid. Student loans are the same game, but worse. All the key players get richer as that $1.7 trillion pile of debt expands, and the fact that everyone knows huge percentages of student borrowers will never pay is immaterial. More campus palaces get built, more administrators get added to payrolls, and perhaps most importantly, the list of assets grows for financial companies, whether or not the loans perform.

…

“As long as it’s collateralized at Navient, they can borrow against that,” Smith says. “They say, ‘Look, we've got $3 billion in assets, which are just consumer loans in negative amortization that are not being repaid, but are being artificially kept out of default so Navient can borrow against that from other banks.

“When I realized that, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They’re happy that the loans are growing instead of being repaid, because it gives them more collateral to borrow against.’” Smith’s comments echo complaints made by virtually every student borrower in trouble I’ve ever interviewed: lenders are not motivated to reduce the size of balances by actually getting paid. Instead, the game is about keeping loans alive and endlessly growing the balance, through new fees, penalties, etc.

There are two ways of approaching reform of the system. One is the Bernie Sanders route, which would involve debt forgiveness and free higher education. A market-based approach meanwhile dreams of reintroducing discipline into student lending; if students could default, schools couldn’t endlessly raise costs on the back of unlimited government-backed credit.

Which idea is more correct can be debated, but the one thing we know for sure is that the current system is the worst of both worlds, enriching all the most undeserving actors, and hitting that increasingly prevalent policy sweet spot of privatized profit and socialized risk. Whether it gets blown up in bankruptcy courts or simply collapses eventually under its own financial weight — there’s an argument that the market will be massively disrupted if and when the administration ends the Covid-19 deferment of student loan payments — the lie can’t go on much longer.

“It’s just obvious that this has become a printing money operation,” says Grabis. “The colleges charge whatever they want, then they go to the government and continuously increase the size of the loans.” If you’re on the inside, that’s a beautiful thing. What about for everyone else?

[omoi-no-hoka]

Hey! I saw your blog today and I love it very much!! I see you're an open person so, I also have a question: HOW does one survive studying japanese at uni?? I'm in my first year and only my second (online haha) semester and we started out with Minna no nihongo 1 but we're supposed to finish Minna 2 by the end of this semester, same with Basic Kanji book 1 in the first sem and now Basic Kanji Book 2, all while also learning mostly of Japan's history and others in this semester. Exams will kill me

Hello! I’m glad you’re enjoying my blog! I am open to a fault lol. Let me recount my meandering journey through uni, illustrating my feelings through gifs of Noel Fielding because he is my celebrity crush.

Uni is such a difficult time for so many people, trying to figure out who you are now and who you want to be later. It wasn’t until my senior year that I realized what I wanted to do. I started writing out my university experience and it got super long, so allow me to just summarize my “Lessons Learned” here and you can read the rest if you want to know all the dirty deets lol. I double-majored in Japanese and English, so I think that my experience can perhaps be useful to people who are majoring in things other than Japanese as well. 

Hard-Learned Lessons from Uni

Do not choose a course of study because it is “practical.” Choose it because it is something you love. Seriously. Nothing is more important than this point. Do not choose a major because “I’ll make a lot of money” or “My parents are telling me this is good for me.” 

If you are learning multiple languages at once, you must give your brain time to organize what you learned from one language lesson before moving on to the next. You can do this by waiting a couple hours between lessons, getting up and walking around, studying one language in different space from the other, etc. Otherwise, it all becomes a terrible mess in your head.

It’s okay not to know what you want your career to be. It’s okay not to have a specific plan. Life works out one way or the other.

I know how expensive uni can be. (It’s been six years since I graduated and I’m still making hefty loan payments.) But don’t feel like you have to take a full courseload every single semester and graduated asap, particularly if the classes are hard and/or you are working. I took the maximum credit hours allowed every semester on top of working RIDICULOUS hours and it nearly killed me at one point. I’m not kidding. 

It is not unusual to have an identity crisis and/or mental breakdown. Take care of yourself. Know when you are nearing breaking point. Seek out the help of professionals. Most universities have psychiatrists and therapists that will see you very cheaply. 

Surround yourself with good people and look out for each other. 

Do not rely on substances to ease your suffering because sometimes the remedy becomes the malady. Not saying you should avoid all parties or anything square like that, but just don’t be one of those people that parties every night and gets in over their head. 

Let me preface this by stating that I’m an American, and our universities are stupid because they force us to take a ton of “general education” courses that are irrelevant to our majors, and many students spend their first couple years taking only a couple courses related to their majors and minors, and try to focus on getting those stupid gen eds out of the way. 

Year 1: Oh Shit, This Is Harder Than I Thought It Would Be

I come from a town of less than 2600 people. Our high school prepared its students for the following career paths:

joining the military (boys only)

becoming a farmer (boys only)

welding, carpentry, or other practical jobs (boys only)

becoming a housewife (girls only)

So basically I coasted through high school never having to study anything because it was one great big joke, only I thought I was like super duper smart because I was in the top five of my graduating class of 48. LOLLLLLLLLL

I entered university as a German major, Japanese minor. (Japanese was not offered as a major at my uni). I had never studied German previously, but I studied Spanish and French in high school and I just had this feeling that German and Japanese were the languages for me. 

The first semester, I had Japanese 101 and German 101 back to back, in the EXACT SAME CLASSROOM. I can’t stress enough how much of a mindfuck it was to go from thinking about Japanese for 50 minutes, having a 10 minute break, and then trying to switch your brain to German. IN THE SAME ROOM. It actually gave me headaches to try and make that mental jump. Managed to pull through the year with A’s in both, but German was much more of a challenge to me than Japanese. Which was really unexpected. 

I also flunked several gen eds because I didn’t give a shit about them and skipped them and got placed on academic probation and was nearly kicked out of uni because of my poor grades

Basically, I was such a weeb that I had watched enough anime with subtitles and sung along to enough anime songs that I had absorbed about 90% of the first year’s worth of Japanese vocab and grammar through osmosis. I really did have the power of God and anime on my side.

Year 2: The Year of the Mid-Midlife Crisis and Mental Breakdown

There really is no gif that will encapsulate the level of turmoil I went through that year. I looked really hard for one, trust me.

It became apparent very quickly that I could not keep up with German. I ended up dropping it early in the first semester, which meant I had to choose a new major. Thinking of what would be practical to pair with a Japanese minor, I went for International Business for a semester, took Accounting, and realized that I HATE The Man, corporate bullshit, and also numbers as a concept.

All I knew at this point was that I liked Japanese but couldn’t make it a major. I also knew I didn’t want to transfer universities. So I kept taking gen eds, just barely passing them because to this day I cannot bring myself to put effort into something I do not care about, and also taking more classes related to my Japanese minor. It was the Japanese classes that saved my GPA and kept me from getting kicked out of uni.

At the same time, I took a creative writing course because that’s been a hobby of mine since elementary school, and I kinda thought about an English major, but then was like, “Eww I don’t wanna be forced to read books I don’t give a shit about. And also, what will I do with that degree?”

Also, at the same time, I was working full time, and often getting stuck working from 2 pm to 7 am (Yes, 15-hour shifts, because the overnight dude would call in sick last minute and I’d be begged to cover his shift), and then dragging myself to classes and drooling on the desks because I’d fall asleep.

Also also, I started to have possible hallucinations? To this day I don’t know what was going on, but either I was legitimately going crazy, or there was a demon following me around and being quite rude to me, making light fixtures fall and shatter inches from my head, throwing papers around my room, opening and closing doors, turning lights off and on, coming to me in dreams and doing some really, really traumatic things to me in them, and just standing in corners staring at me at all hours of the night. Had me so scared that towards the end of the school year I was waiting to sleep until sunrise, when it would go away. And no, I was not using any mind-altering substances of any sort. Not even going out and getting drunk. 

So, yeah. Year Two was a hard one that I can’t believe I pushed through. Probably the darkest year of my life, I’d say. What got me through it? An unhealthy amount of energy drinks, friends, and my love of Japanese. Also Aerosmith.

Do I still see that demon? No. He vanished when the school year ended and I moved out of the dorms. Do I believe in the supernatural? Yes, to an extent. Do I think that what I was seeing was actually a demon? I honestly don’t know. I have had actual supernatural experiences verified by multiple witnesses, and a few years before Year 2, several friends and myself had seen an entity similar to what was following me around. But this one in Year 2 only did things when I was alone. So it could have all been in my head, and I will never know. 

Since then, I have been diagnosed with general anxiety and also a form of insomnia that keeps me from sleeping through the night, and I know that my anxiety manifests itself in psychosomatic ways. In other words, my mind will take my anxiety and turn it into a physical symptom that feels real in every way, but is actually not occurring. So far it’s manifested as: sensitivity to sunlight, the symptoms of a stroke or heart attack, half of my face going numb, and headaches in my left eye. Once I realize that the symptom is just my anxiety, I can force myself to ignore and overcome it. But then my anxiety finds a new form to manifest, and the cycle repeats a few months later. It could be that my stress caused me to see this demon for a while.

Should I have consulted a psychiatrist and gotten help? YEP. If you find yourself struggling like that, seek help please. 💕

Year 3: Adrift But Afloat

I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with my best friend, a Japanese girl I met in the dorms freshman year. I will call her Setsuko. Setsuko is basically the reason I graduated uni. She memorized my class schedules and took copies of exam dates, woke me up, forced me to go classes instead of skipping, forced me to go to the library and study with her, and cooked me dinner most days since she didn’t have to work like I did. I can’t express enough how much she did to improve my life outside of school and work, and how much that improved my mental health. She also acclimated me to lots of subtle things about Japanese culture just by living with her, and this helped me later when I moved to Japan. Thank you, Setsuko. 一生の恩人。

I was still doing those bullshit 15-hour overnight shifts way more than I should have, and also had the maximum courseload.

The Japanese classes got a lot more difficult in Year 3. But I loved them. They were the only classes I never skipped. I took more classes towards the minor like Buddhist Philosophy and Japanese History, which I really enjoyed. While polishing off more gen eds, I thought over what to do with my major. 

My family and friends all told me that I should become an English teacher. I had always been good at words and at explaining things. But I didn’t really like the idea of being a high school teacher. I became an English major, though, because I knew that I didn’t hate English. Took grammar classes and HOLY SHIT did I hit my stride.

I realized that I didn’t like English lit. I liked linguistics. So I focused heavily on all grammar and linguistics courses, taking the bare minimum of literature courses required for the major. My GPA improved substantially. 

Yet I still was consumed with this nagging fear. It was Year 3 and I still had no fucking idea what I wanted to do when I graduated.

Year 4: Clarity At The 11th Hour

Urged on by my “Don’t you dare get one of those stupid arts degrees that won’t get you a paycheck” parents, I decided that the most “practical” degree would not be “English,” but “English Education.” I began taking the English Ed classes with linguistics, grammar, and second language acquisition classes. The goal was to become a qualified English high school teacher who could also do ESL (since I had Spanish and Japanese under my belt more or less). 

At the same time, I entered into Independent Study for Japanese with two other students. We were tasked with reading Izu no Odoriko, a classic short story. Independent study was its own beast. It required a lot more concentration and work on my part, obviously. But because Japanese was my first and foremost passion, I centered my efforts on those courses, and then on the others.

The process of getting certified to be an English teacher was lengthy and expensive in my state. This meant my graduation would be further prolonged, and I was worried about money, because I was already about $50,000 in debt at the time, despite working those fucking overnight shifts all the time that were eating me alive.

Then, during the summer vacation when my 4th year ended, I got a scholarship and went to Japan to study abroad. Education majors had the option to study abroad in several countries, and as luck would have it, one of them was Japan, and it was Setsuko’s HOMETOWN! The study abroad program itself was the first month of summer vacation, and Setsuko said, “Okay, just come stay at my house for the rest of summer vacation!”

Never have I said “yes” quicker in my entire life.

On the train headed from Sapporo to the town where I would be actually staying during my studies, I looked at the lush rice paddies and mountains in the distance and my entire heart just hummed with this “This is where you’re meant to be.” I knew then and there that I would move to Japan upon graduation.

What would I do there? Well, teach English, obviously.

My three months in Japan effectively aligned my entire life. My path had materialized before me. It was a roughly hacked, hard-to-see path through thick underbrush, but I could see it nonetheless. 

Year 5: Let’s Hurry It Up, I’m Ready To Live

Come Year 5, all of my Japanese classmates that had been with me since freshman year were gone and I was alone. My professor taught me Classical Japanese through independent study, and it was the must grueling course I took my entire five years there. But I found it invaluable and am eternally grateful to him for teaching me, because you see Classical Japanese a lot more than you’d think you would in everyday life. Particularly in formal settings. 

I still wanted to get certified to teach English in American high schools, because while I knew I wanted to go to Japan for now, I didn’t know if I wanted to spend my entire life there and I wanted a solid job opportunity when I came back to the states at some point.

However, the more education courses I took, the more I saw that the American education system was just as full of red-tape and The Man’s bullshit as corporate America, something else I rebuke with every fiber of my being. I also realized I’d need to take a 6th year of university, and that just wasn’t financially feasible for me. So I switched to a plain old English major with a heavy focus on linguistics and second language acquisition, and continued classical Japanese. 

I took the remaining 3 gen eds online in the summer, graduated, popped up to Chicago to do a month-long intensive course to get the CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages issued by Cambridge.) It’s the most widely accepted and revered certification for teaching English as a foreign language.

So in the span of five years, I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in English with a focus in linguistics and SLA, and what is technically a major in Japanese Studies. 40 credit hours were required for a major, and I completed 42 credit hours tied to my minor, so while it isn’t listed on my diploma as a major, I did the coursework. I also got a CELTA Pass B, which only 20% of applicants achieve and never expires. The grand total for all of this was roughly $100,000 USD in loans.

Post-Graduation

The week I came back to my hometown from Chicago with my CELTA in hand, I packed my suitcases, threw a going-away party, and then flew to Sapporo, where I began my first job after uni, teaching English to children aged 0-18 at a private English conversation school. I did that for three years before changing careers and becoming a Japanese-English translator/interpreter for a global company. 

So how useful have my choices during university proven to be?

I’m sure I don’t have to explain that studying Japanese helps me tons with translating Japanese to English or living in Japan lol

Studying English grammar, linguistics, sociolinguistics, and second language acquisition has allowed me to recognize minute nuances that can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful business negotiation when interpretation is necessary.

My background in education also means that I know how to present information clearly, concisely, and in a way that engages the audience. I am known as “The PowerPoint Pro” at work lol. 

I also have a keen eye for performance evaluation, behavior analysis, and improvement action plans. 

I offered English conversation lessons to coworkers for over a year, and now that is being done in other branches across the company! (Well, they were before COVID haha.) 

I DO NOT RECOMMEND WORKING THE HOURS I WORKED WHILE IN SCHOOL. My grades suffered and I wish I had worked less and focused more on classes. However, by working 15-hour shifts and doing full days of classes, I developed a very good tolerance for overtime, which comes in handy in the Japanese workplace. Just last month I had three 15 hour days in the same week. Sweet, sweet overtime pay. 

All of these facets have culminated in me earning a pretty nice promotion to 正社員 seishain back in February, which means I get nice benefits and basically my job is guaranteed until I die or the company goes under.

Should I decide to return to America someday, I will probably not go into the education field. Too much red tape. I will likely continue translation/interpretation for companies, because it isn’t too difficult and pays well. Though ideally I’d love to just make a living sharing cool information about Japanese and stuff, and maybe writing those stories that are bouncing around in my head when I should be working haha.

Do I think the debt is worth it?

Well, I don’t think I had any other option than to take out those loans. I didn’t have the means to learn the things I wanted to learn unless I went to university. 

Unless Japanese work visa requirements have changed, you are required to have a bachelor’s degree in order to obtain my sub-type of work-visa, so I needed a degree of some kind no matter what. 

Frankly, if I hadn’t gone to that university and met my best friend Setsuko, I don’t think I’d be where I am right now, living the life I am now. So just having met her is worth any price to me. 

Paying off all the loans is daunting, especially when yen is weak to the dollar. There were months I had to ask my parents for help, especially early on. But now I’ve got multiple loans paid off, my salary has increased, and the “omg i have money and no supervision so I can buy whatever I want” idiocy has mostly gone away. But I did get a super sweet pair of blindingly silver Converses a couple days ago that I definitely didn’t need

Do I have any regrets regarding my time at university?

I still regret dropping Old English for a stupid English Ed class. Seriously, how cool would that have been? But I still have the textbook, workbook, and I contacted the professor last week and she was kind enough to send me a syllabus. God bless her. So now I’m working on that bit by bit, which is fun.

I wish I hadn’t been such a cocky, naive idiot my first year. Thinking I could just “show up for tests” was the stupidest thing. It messed up my GPA, and my parents forbade me from retaking classes so I couldn’t go back and fix my mistakes. I think I graduated with a 3.4 overall GPA out of 4, but my English major GPA was 3.9 and my Japanese GPA was 4.0. So it’s pretty frustrating to have those gen eds and my dumbfuckery mar my transcript like that.

I really didn’t party at all. Most all of my friends were straight-laced Japanese exchange students, and I was also working ridiculous hours so I just didn’t really have the time. A part of me feels like I missed out on that part of the college experience.

Recently I’ve been putting more effort into improving my creative writing by reading a lot of books on the subject. Not a small part of me wishes that I had gone with a Creative Writing major instead of English major, because I still would have studied all the grammar and linguistics. Then again, I do believe that creative writing can be self-taught.

I wish I hadn’t worked as much as I did. There were a lot of times I couldn’t complete assignments or I missed lectures because I was just so drained. It wasn’t even good money.

Well...I did not intend for this post to become as long as it has. I’ve been cooped up in my apartment with nothing but two goldfish for company for over a month now and I think I’m a bit stir-crazy. Thank you to anyone and everyone who bothered to read all of this and become my therapist for a bit haha. Love you all. Stay safe and well. 💖

[celestialholz]

Inspired by your recently posted Continuum story and if you still do the event: It ended with Q thinking, he will find out about the others secrets. So what if, in a positive turn of events, he does find them out and can blackmail himself to the top of the proverbial food chain of the Qs. Now he can do whatever he wants without any stupid council telling him no. Picard is torn between feeling glad for Q or unsure about one of the most morally gray beings he knows gaining absolute power.

Oh, excellent. Love a good follow-up! ^_^ Allow me to reward this wonderful ask with something rather different and a little longer than usual, though it may have to avoid our positivity tag just this once…

(Related to this, for context: https://celestialwarzone.tumblr.com/post/615422269797384192/the-continuum-is-not-entirely-sure-what-to-think)

Got any fun, fluffy or just Soft™ headcanons you’d like as fics for our positivity event, friends, despite this delightfully dark diversion? My inbox is open!

Seven o’clock creeps up on Jean-Luc Picard as though through treacle, slow, heavy and plodding; the problem with deep space, he’s been musing since morning, is that everything is so desperately far away, and inevitably, there are days where little of merit can be accomplished until they’re where they ought to be. With a sigh of something suspiciously like relief, he heads from the ready room and his sixth tea of the day to meet his First, deeply glad to leave the trail of electronic paperwork behind.

“Long day, sir?” Riker asks conversationally, though the question is rather rhetorical; he imagines the weariness will be etched into his features, plain for all to witness. Inactivity has never really suited him for any length of time, and this is their second day in a row of simply ‘boldly going’.

“At least we’re only several hours away from Deep Space Eleven,” he replies simply, expression quirking into reassurance. “Can’t imagine you’re faring any better.”

Riker’s lips twist into a warm grin. “Well, at least holodeck two’s been mostly free. You’re relieved, Captain.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” comes the dry riposte, the grateful smile. “Safe travels, Number One.”

“Is that an order, sir? I could really go for a battle fleet right about now.”

Amusement creeps into a smirk, head shaking.

“Yes,” he answers wryly as the turbolift doors slide shut. “Deck nine, officer’s quarters.”

Safe from prying eyes, Picard lets out a lengthy sigh; he’d always been more tolerant of steadiness before Q’s continued presence in his personal life, acknowledging it as something to merely accept as a drawback to the job he adored, but forty-nine entire hours of tedium had left him almost wishing he could snap them to their destination himself.

Well, at least he could finally sink his teeth into some delightful diplomacy tomorrow - and in the meantime, perhaps the god could whisk them off somewhere wondrous, full of exploration and academic curiosities to sate… though he’d seemed uncharacteristically distracted recently, and unusually unwilling to discuss the reasons.

An ancient city, perchance, he ponders quietly as he makes his way down hallways. Interesting enough to avoid eye contact, quiet enough to speak your mind.

He smiles, keying in his code on autopilot, and as the door opens to simple, vividly white nothingness, all hope of solving the enigma easily fades into the ether of his quarters. It’s uncomfortably familiar, and he’d rather thought they’d moved past such things…

“Q?” He questions softly, stepping in with a series of rapid blinks, beginning to simply wander for lack of a clear path. “Q, why on earth are we back here?”

“Earth, dear? Oh, hardly.”

His brow creases as he finds him, and the prickles race higher up his spine; it’s almost identical, down to his lover’s white robes, the metaphorical distance between them painfully obvious.

To hell with this, he thinks furiously, wasting no time in closing the symbolic gap; there aren’t realms between them now, simply things not yet disclosed, and his hand claims his lover’s in silent acknowledgement.

“What is this, Q?” He urges, grey gaze earnest. “Are you alright?”

Grasped fingers tremble then tighten, free hand flung out to the void.

“You see this, Jean-Luc? It’s mine.”

Something distinctly unpleasant splinters through the captain’s very being. “Yours?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t -” Picard swallows, almost dreading the response. “What does that mean, mon dieu?”

“Oh, whatever I feel like, really,” Q answers cryptically, unnervingly blank for a being usually so theatrical. “What do you think it should mean, mon capitaine - this, perhaps?”

He clicks sharply, and the void shifts instantly to space, pure black and twinkling.

“Or even this.”

Another snap sends them into chaos, swirls of brightly coloured gas spiralling madly around them, and every inch the commanding officer, Picard abandons his astonishment, frantically clasping his other hand in a pointless effort to cease his whims.

“Q!” He states firmly. “That’s enough!”

Disturbingly neutral eyes blaze with the scope of the universe; fire and stoicism, the ultimate parallel. “I don’t need to click, Jean-Luc.”

I know you don’t, but what else am I supposed to - he silences his inner desperation, focuses down. 

“Tell me what’s wrong, dear,” he demands gently. “Please.”

Kindness is all it takes to strip down shields, both clasped hands squeezed almost to the point of pain as a shadow steals over omniscient vision.

“They threatened you.” His voice trembles. “Just before Utirion, they were keeping something secret…”

They’re back to the starkness of white in a blink, though the captain barely notices, too locked to those wondrous eyes, the unfolding, pained narrative.

“I found out, Jean-Luc. Oh, they can misdirect all they like, of course, but the right application of blackmail works wonders.” The faintest of smiles half-raises a lip. “And my son can’t lie to save his own omnipotence. It was written all over his vaguely ionised being.”

“Threatened me?” Picard repeats, desperate for full clarity, and the darkness only seeps further into an anguished deity.

“Oh, only for a moment.” He sets, rigid, livid. “More than long enough.”

An understanding shivers between them for a protracted moment.

“So, you -”

“Made sure it wouldn’t happen again.”

Picard curses himself for the shudder that braces across his shoulders; there was nothing to fear from this entity, he’d long since known that intimately, but that phrasing -

“How?”

A frown etches into an ancient expression for a second, distressed at the clear horror in his beloved human. “I didn’t kill them, I assure you. Oh, I was almost angry enough, but - well, I’ve learned from the best. Billions of years of acquaintance rather familiarises one with weak spots.”

Picard’s mind whirs as he slots together pieces of a bankrupt jigsaw, eyes widening.

“So this, the void, space, is truly - mon dieu -”

“Capital D,” Q expresses, brow quirking. “King of the proverbial hill, Jean-Luc. Captain of the starship Continuum.”

He glances pointedly down at his robes, and Picard balks, spontaneously letting go of hands.

“You are not God!”

His lover’s features flicker in recognition, almost entertained. “I wasn’t, then.”

Picard reels, stepping away, struggling to process the magnitude of what such a concept could mean; he’d always accepted the wealth of power that stood insurmountably between them, but one thing needles at him above all others, a nasty, clawing anguish he can barely describe before the words burst forth.

“… And you did all this for me? To keep me safe?”

Confusion claims the all-powerful entity, stare shining. “And I’ll do it over and over again, if I have to. Didn’t you know that, darling?”

A soft, strangled cry tears itself from Picard, dashing back solely to tightly embrace him.

“You can’t do that!” He protests furiously against a robed chest, even as arms encircle him fiercely. “This isn’t healthy -”

“Less of your human morality, thank you,” Q scolds quietly, eyes falling closed as he drops a kiss to his captain’s skull with a gentle shiver. “I’m reliably informed that homelessness is desperately bad for the soul, Jean-Luc.” 

Tearful eyes meet his, divided almost perfectly by outrage and despair. “I’m not worth this, you fool.”

A head shakes in pure exasperation, expression almost unfathomably tender.

“Au contraire, mon capitaine,” he whispers, and they hover in an extended breath, fractured and ironically whole in perfect harmony.

“Now what?” Rises a deceptively simple question from his beloved, and the ashes of bitterness sweep across Q’s lips, crease into his face as he stares into eyes that believe he’s ultimately capable of using his absolute power for kindness.

It’s enough, he acknowledges silently. It’s always been enough, that belief; it doesn’t require further proof over time.

“Oh, now?” A finger runs up a cheek, smile warm. No regrets, Q. “An ancient city, perhaps… well, at least after you wake up.”

Picard’s gone in an instant after a tender touch to his temple, and God swallows fire.

Jean-Luc Picard has more than enough to deal with. He doesn’t need the burden of knowing the lengths a homeless, frightened entity will go for him, however many times he must.

————–

“Can’t say I’m not mildly offended. Infinite scope of time presented permanently to me, mon capitaine; I run ten minutes late in an exceedingly rare instance of miscalculation, and you fall asleep on me.”

A familiar voice permeates his consciousness, rouses him from a deliciously restful slumber; he blinks, briefly confused, and meets an amused gaze.

“I…” Since when had he ever come back to his quarters and instantly drifted off? “I was asleep?”

“The light was well and truly out, my dear,” Q assures him, eyebrow hitching. “Dull day at the office, I take it?”

He thinks of their seemingly endless trek to Deep Space Eleven and wrinkles his nose just slightly. “Rather, yes. Ought to have asked you for a lift.”

“Indeed,” Q murmurs, gaze piercing. “I’d have done it, too. I’d do anything for you, dear - do hope you know that. Capital of Tenhaglion, then? Rather delightful four millennia ago.”

He offers him a hand, and something in Picard pauses for a long moment as he meets the rich bronze of eternity, the absolute tenderness that resides there, that flashes with the most heated warmth and desperate trust.

… There’s something decidedly different about him today, he acknowledges to himself as he accepts the help, gifts him a bright smile. He’ll have to ask him about it later.

[backofthebookshelf]

Book Recs for Magnus Archives Fans

I was just rambling in tags the other day about how my avatarsona was "the Archivist, but a public librarian: Oh, you like dirt?? Let me tell you all the dirt stories I have!!!!" so, uh, here I am I guess.

I'm gonna spare you all the M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood and House of Leaves and Blindsight; you know all that already. These are my horror backlist recs.

The Bone Key by Sarah Monette Y'all. Y'ALL. Kyle Murchison Booth was absolutely the Archivist before Gertrude. He was poached from the Parrington by the Usher Foundation and the Eye glommed onto him at once, because the Eye loves disaster queers who can't people right (and also Gertrude). This I believe to be true, and so will you.

Kyle Murchison Booth is an archivist at the Parrington Museum, which is somewhere in New England, sometime in the early twentieth century. He also has a lifelong entanglement with the supernatural which is almost entirely not his fault, and he would very much like it to stop, but he also feels responsible and he can't just let evil mirrors and cursed necklaces and possessed dressing gowns randomly eat people who have no idea what's happening. Even if it means he's going to suffer for it.

(This collection doesn't contain all of the Booth stories, so here I am going to link to "White Charles", which happens to be my very favorite Booth story.)

For you if your favorite part is: honestly everything about MAG, from the modern sensibilities about early twentieth-century-horror, truly eerie ghost stories, to suffering eldritch librarians (thanks to whoever tagged my most recent fic with that you're so valid), monsterfucking and soft gay pining. No happy endings here, sorry.

Bedfellow by Jeremy C. Shipp You may or may not have heard that Macmillan-Tor is launching a horror imprint, and I don't know how long it's been since a major publishing house has had a horror imprint, but I am EXCITE. This book is part of the trend that's the reason why: Tor.com has been publishing these kickass novellas for a couple years now, and their horror books are top notch.

One night a stranger knocks on a family's living room window and asks to be invited in. They ask him to stay the night. He's an old friend, after all, he needs a place to stay. You can't kick out your twin brother when he's just gotten divorced, no matter how much Gatorade he spills on your two-year-old hardwood floors.

For you if your favorite part is: the Stranger, this is all Stranger, it's terrifying and good.

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll A graphic novel, some of these were originally posted as webcomics (have you seen His Face All Red, and if not, why not???) and the only disadvantage to having them in book form is they can't blink at you. Probably. Very folktale-ish, with all the death and violence that implies, and also the slightly eerie feeling that you know this story already, and then it turns around and slaps you.

For you if your favorite part is: looking over your shoulder when the foley gets good; Once Upon a Time in Space (I know that's not technically part of the Magnus Archives but shush)

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle I am not usually a fan of artists who jump media. Just because you can write songs doesn't mean you can write novels. Apparently writing good songs doesn't mean you can't write good novels, though, because John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats (pretty sure that's his full name at this point) wrote Universal Harvester and I love him for it.

Jeremy works at a video rental place in Nevada, Iowa (it's pronounced Nah-vey-da, and yes it’s real, I've been there, and yes, it's probably haunted). It's the 1990s, and someone's been returning their VHS tapes with something on them that isn't just the movie. Footage that includes a barn that he recognizes, just outside of town.

Fair warning: this is not the kind of mystery that gets tied up in a nice bow at the end.

For you if your favorite part is: Jon losing it with paranoia in S2, The People's Church of the Divine Host, the Lonely

The Good House by Tananarive Due If this author's name is unfamiliar to you, RUN, do not walk, to your nearest internet bookseller and purchase every single one of her books immediately, you will not regret it. She also just came out with a documentary on black horror, Horror Noire, on the Shudder streaming service. They've got a free month if you aren't a horror movie person, it'd be worth your while. This book summary sounds like it's full of tropes. It is, but Due has the cred to write them well.

Angela Toussaint hopes to salvage her suffering marriage and her troubled relationship with her teenage son with a trip to her grandmother's house, a home so beloved the locals in small-town Washington state call it "The Good House," but tragedy strikes instead. Two years later she returns and finds that the tragedy isn't over, and it's not going to stop on its own.

For you if your favorite part is: the very practical statement-givers who know what's happening to them and Will Not Put Up With This Shit, the Desolation, the Hill Top Road statements

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins Is this horror disguised as fantasy? Found family disguised as horror? Grown-up Neil Gaiman? Less grimdark George R.R. Martin? Honestly I have no fucking idea, but it's amazing. Fair warning, unlike Magnus Archives, this deserves all kinds of trigger warnings, including but not necessarily limited to: sexual assault, torture, mental manipulation, dysfunctional families, incest(?)

Father is missing, and his twelve children (though extremely talented in their own ways, and not strictly speaking children any more) are at a loss without him. But also, without him, things are starting to seem different. He might be God? They might not be human? (They were probably human once.) He might not be God but maybe one of them might be next? If any of them survive.

For you if your favorite part is: slowly turning into a monster, the relationships between entities and avatars, monsters hot (not kidding about the trigger warnings)

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley I have to keep reminding myself that Magnus Archives isn't really folk horror, there are two separate (if related) strains of British horror here and folk horror is not the one we're on, but at the same time I really want a good creepy rural pagan cult to show up in the series, you know? Anyway.

When he was a child, our narrator used to go with his family on an Easter pilgrimage to shrine on a bleak stretch of Lancaster coastline locals called The Loney. His Catholic mother was searching for a cure for his older brother, and she was convinced if they kept going long enough she would be granted her wish. The locals, however, are not huge fans of her annual visits, and even less so when the boys become involved with the goings-on of a pair of glamorous tourists.

For you if your favorite part is: the Lukases, I didn't realize until I was writing this up that I'm picturing Moreland House in the exact place described by this book

Eutopia by David Nickle One thing I love about the historical statements in Magnus Archives is just how truly historical they are. There's almost nothing in "The Piper" that isn't historically accurate - yes, Wilfrid Owen spent several days in a trench underneath the shredded bodies of his fellow soldiers. Like. You can't make up horror worse than that. But then you add monsters and it gets good. And I'm a sucker for early-twentieth-century history, it's such a bonkers time.

It's 1911 and the new Eugenics Record Office is sending agents out to catalog the disabled, infirm, and otherwise undesirable members of society so they can figure out what to do about them. In the utopian town of Eliada, Idaho, Dr. Andrew Waggoner runs from the racism of American society and straight into the influence of Mister Juke, the most troubling patient in his new practice. (Trigger warnings for, obviously, a whole lot of ableism. Treated like the monstrousness it is, but there's a lot of it.)

For you if your favorite part is: learning history through horror, the Flesh

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay I hate male writers writing about teenage girls, so you are going to have to trust me when I say that I had to check, several times while reading this book, to make sure that Paul Tremblay is actually a dude. He's very good. This book was kind of his breakout, so if you follow horror you've read it already, but if you don't necessarily then please do not miss it. His newer ones, Disappearance at Devil's Rock (Stranger, Spiral) and The Cabin at the End of the World (Slaughter, Extinction), are also good but not as good as this, I think.

Fourteen-year-old Marjorie is having a rough time - outbursts, hallucinations, paranoia. Treatment is difficult (and expensive) and her family ambivalent; they turn to a local Catholic priest, who recommends an exorcism and, to help manage those medical bills, a production company who's interested in filming a reality TV show about the process. Fifteen years later, Marjorie's sister deconstructs the now-famous show and wrestles with her own memories of childhood. Trigger warnings for ableism on the part of many of the characters, but not the narrative.

For you if your favorite part is: the Spiral, metafictional analysis of horror tropes

[chainofbeing]

Something has gone wrong with the Avian Ark. Adam goes to investigate, hoping to find some evidence of whatever it was that destroyed the Gorlan

Narration: David M. Sledge

Old Man: David Charles

PAGAA: Nathan James

Adam Delta 5 and, Sound Design: Cai Gwylim Pritchard

Follow the podcast on twitter @/chainofbeing

Email us at chainofbeingofficial@gmail.com for enquiries and stuff

Subscribe to the patreon for exclusive content and rewards!

[a deep voiced narrator speaks over clicking pipes and a deep low rumble]

A soft gurgling can be heard in the pipes buried within the bowels of the AEN avian ark. Surrounded by a thousand other pipes with a thousand other jobs; this gurgling would go unnoticed by a crew of humans. Which is why the Alliance of Earth Nations felt it necessary to design and construct one of the largest self sustaining systems of AI controlled maintenance drones ever conceived of. It's not long before a circular drone scatters along and begins to scan the pipe for blockages. All of a sudden the whole station falls silent as a large and indescribable presence drifts by. The complexity of this presence supersedes all code written into this drone and it stops. Proximity alone to this thing that occupied every aspect of existence, even beyond those of the physical and logical realms, this oppressive force beyond forces, causes the entities within the avian ark to shift internally, even down to the code that drives them. This indescribable, incomprehensible pressure emanates something which moves the station to behave in a way so vastly different to how the multitude of coders and engineers intended for it to behave, one might be driven to call it possession.

[Adam is now narrating]

I’m sat in a carrier, it’s hurtling through space at speeds which cause the ship to shake and rumble lightly but with total surety. Back in the old days speeds like this were impossible to achieve, but since the discovery of the widening field; travelling across the universe became easy as- well it's still extremely expensive and difficult to achieve but still possible. Sat across from me is an old Veatorian man. Strapped into the economy class seats and surrounded by luggage, his skin has faded into a light blue with age and he stares at me with the look of a man who was not expecting to see or experience anything new until death, but has been rudely ripped from his resignation into the haze of old age.

“Hello! Nice to meet you, my name is Adam. As in capital ‘A’ Adam” I say to him, masking my discomfort with friendliness in the hopes that he’ll at least give me attention in a nicer way

“Isn’t every Adam ‘capital A’ Adam?” He replies, maintaining his demeanour

“Well- uh-“ I start,

“And I can tell who you are. The glass horns give it away”

I reach up and touch the glass protrusions coming from my forehead. At least he didn’t zero in on any of my other features that differentiate me from regular humans. The two of us are the last passengers on this 400 seat, 50 year old well worn and slightly dingy carrier. I stand up and move to the cockpit of the carrier in order to avoid the old man's gaze. The two pilots are making their final preparations to land and drop me off. The ships jolts and docks with the orbital station, the ships AI doing most of the work.

[the sounds of a creaking and broken station can be heard]

The Hangar for the Avian Arc looks like shit, space stations are usually built to deal with a minor problem, if they’re designed well enough and nothing interferes with them. I had heard stories of Demons materialising inside space stations fusing with them in the orbit of planets, at which point the punished such as myself have to get involved. It sounds strange but I’m hoping it is that. Seeing that symbol shook me, something about being reminded of Eden has given me this pit in my stomach I can’t seem to shake, for a few reasons, unfortunately. In terms of cold hard facts All that I know is that the Avian Arc sat along the predicted course of whatever it was that destroyed the Gorlan and that every warning was set off at once. The data received was completely unreadable and seemed...panicked. At least to me. When I said that to the investigators they looked at me like I’d insulted them personally, but being alive for as long as I have teaches you a lot of things, chief among them being that science and logic don't explain everything. Regardless, it seemed like the two were related. The avian arc was designed to house all manner of species of birds. One of many other preservation centres, it was meant to preserve and propagate in the face of the loss of Earth. There's no engineering department on stations like this, The whole station is fully automated making it somewhat vulnerable to attack and looting. The station does have some defence capabilities but it's mostly reliant on outside, human security that is stationed on the nearby planet.

Currently the blast doors of the hangar are shut, they very rarely get opened unless it's to accommodate large craft delivering supplies or ships that don’t have normal docking capabilities. The hangar is barren, save for a few empty boxes. The unusual thing is that it seems like it’s being dismantled. The lights in the ceiling are mostly off and there are great swathes of exposed wiring hanging loose from the walls and ceilings. The surfaces are built up with grease and dust and the whole room just seethes with dilapidation. I see three decontamination chambers at the end of the room, two of them are still lit up but the last one is dark, and as I walk closer, carefully avoiding missing floor panels and debris, I see that the interior has been completely and meticulously stripped clean. Panelling, wires and the tubing that spray the visitor with an anti bacterial solution. Essentially all that was left was just a hole in the wall. Not being one to let anything get in the way of proper procedure I decide to use a working chamber

As I enter I hear a depressing spurt as a few drops of cleaning fluid trickle out of the sprinkler overhead and onto my horns. I step over the gap where the seal used to be and I'm in a long corridor. it's curved slightly around the main column of the "avian arc". this particular station is a large core surrounded by 3 rings. At the centre column are the habitats, dozens of artificial biomes designed to replicate earth's atmosphere as close as possible to the real thing. It's not though. No amount of machinery could replicate that.

At either end of the corridor there's 2 staircases, one going up and one going down. There's a terminal in front of me with a touch screen, I press the activation button, nothing comes on. I press the button above labelled “help”. A red light flickers on and a voice comes seemingly out of nowhere.

[the voice is natural sounding, with a slight robotic quality]

"hi! I'm PAGAA the protector and guide to the avian arc! How can I help you today?"

An AI, thank gods, that makes things far easier

"PAGAA, can I port you to my visu-link?

"Absolutely, I am a state of the art AI"

"Not anymore"

"I didn't catch that, sorry"

"Nothing, What has happened to the avian arc?"

"I'm afraid that information can not be accessed at a public terminal"

"Ok, how do i get access to this information?"

"You would have to converse directly with the overseer, would you like me to schedule a meeting? It usually takes 3-5 days for them to get here"

"I’m in a bit of a hurry, on which floor is the overseers office located?"

“allow me to escort you, please follow the markers on your HUD”

I begin making my way up the stairs, the curve around the central column is very slight, almost i unnoticeable, the notice boards on the walls flicker on and off, some missing the internal circuitry entirely

"Can you tell me why the Avian Arc is missing so many components?"

"Station protocol states that under certain circumstances resources can be re-appropriated for use in repair and upgrade of the maintenance drones"

"Which circumstances were met?"

"I'm afraid that's restricted information"

As I'm following the path highlighted on my visu-link, I see to my right Where there is usually a set of double doors only one remains. Out of curiosity I shuffle past and step through.

[transition from station ambience to the sounds of a savanna, wind, water and insects]

The room is large, it's more of a hall then anything, the pressure feels almost immediately different that, along with the humidity and heat, knocks the breath out of my lungs, the whole space is done out like a savanna, large acacias, tall grass waving gently in the artificial wind. At the sides of the room where there should be a wide sweeping unbroken facsimile of the sky there are large chunks absent, ruining the illusion.

"This is a restricted area, please leave immediately or I will be forced to call security"

"What? Am I gonna be waiting a week to get arrested?”

"no, security is on board currently"

"That can't be right, automated security was banned long before this station was constructed"

"Due to certain circum-"

"Certain circumstances bla bla. But if there’s no onboard defence, and the security team aren’t here, then you must mean self-constructed security right?"

“Please leave the area,”

I don’t want to wait and find out what sort of machine a station creates to protect itself after being shocked into emergency shutdown and so I make my way out, but before I reach the door a thought strikes me

"Wait a minute, where are all the birds?"

The whole room is silent, there are a few insects buzzing lazily through the air as well as the rustle of leaves and flowing of water.

"Station protocol states that under certain circumstances resources can be re-appropriated for use in repair and upgrade of the maintenance drones"

"You've already said that but, what does that mean? What does that have to do with the birds?

"please leave the area,"

I pace out of the room, as I leave the artificial savanna and step back into the staircase I spot a maintenance drone, it's a wide flat thing designed to be as unnoticeable as possible without being a tripping hazard. A series of arms suddenly pop out from underneath the metal carapace and begin to dismantle something within the walls, it removes the panelling and I see it pull components and wires out. It doesn't move or act like any sort of typical automated drone would, it's sloppy and almost seems organic, the fervour with which it pulls the walls apart almost seems hungry.

"Let's take a look at you,"

As I reach out to pick it up it turns and hisses at me and an appendage pops out from underneath. What I thought was mechanical seems more like bone, muscle and sinew. I pull my hand back and it scurries away.

“Weird,”

I follow the drone along the course set for me by PAGAA, picking up my pace slightly to keep up. Suddenly it veers off to the left down a long corridor that leads to the first of the three rings. I see that the path on my visu-link is bringing me up further along the edge of the main column.

“Thanks for the help PAGAA but I’m going to take a little look around on my own,”

“Please stick to the set path”

Ignoring PAGAAs request. I follow the trail of the drone, I can see it in the distance as it races to the entrance of the ring. On either side of me are long uninterrupted windows which give a glimpse into the vastness of space, I can just about make out the other corridors that connect the detached 1st ring to the rest of the station.

“Please turn back, you are about to enter a restricted area”

“Don't worry about me, I'm just going to have a look,”

“Please state your business on the Avian Ark”

“Restricted information unfortunately, I'm sure you understand”

the security doors on either end of the corridor suddenly close and I am left trapped.

“PAGAA what’s going on?”

[PAGAA says something but it is completely corrupted and sounds like static]

I hear the clunking of machinery and the panel above me detach. With a deadly immediacy I feel my body pulled out into the cold and unforgiving vastness of space.

[grandmasterofwangxiancultivation]

I've always seen stories portraying Zhuilingyi with LJY as the one to join SZ/JL, which is good and all, gimme all that LJY angst - but consider: LSZ and LJY are childhood friends and get together probably before canon starts, and JL is the awkward third wheel who starts falling for them and reacts very badly when he figures it out.LJY screams at him for being a prissy princess and not telling them how he feels and then kisses him and LSZ's just. Smiling at both of them and blushing like crazy.

sorry it took me so long to reply, but your ask changed my life and i had to write something about this moment, because you’re absolutely right -we need more flustered!jl in this universe.

just, i thought it’d be shorter, but honestly i couldn’t limit myself into commenting your idea and nothing more. FORGIVE THIS FOOLISH MASTER!

“Formation!”

Lan JingYi nods swiftly, all previous chattiness gone from his demeanour. He follows Lan SiZhui with practiced steps, dancing lethally but gracefully around their prey. He seems as elegant as the other, a quality one would not think JingYi capable of -which is just stupid, he is a Lan, after all, they are born like that.

Jin Ling’s heart thunders in his chest. He grips the handle of his sword, grits his teeth, but he doesn’t close his eyes.

They stay wide open, and take everything in -the resentful energy leaving the corpses under the array created by SiZhui and JingYi’s combined strength, they perfect coordination, pure white robe swaying in the night wind and blades flashing sleek and crystal clear as entities of their own.

The corpses stop moving, falling on the ground, and the two Lan disciples halt, breathes not even heavy, energy quivering excitedly around them and on their faces.

SiZhui’s ponytail winds up on his left shoulder, forehead ribbon fluttering for a moment. The boy’s relief gentles his facial features, but the residual rush from the battle still lingers on his contracted arms, straight back, drawn sword, vigilant and focused eyes.

He throws a side glance at the other side of the formation, nodding in silent acknowledgement at his childhood friend.

JingYi’s mouth opens in a wide grin, the smooth skin at the corners and on his cheekbones wrinkling in a joyful expression, forelock swinging and trying futilely to cover the twinkling in his irises. He seems on the verge of saying something -stops when SiZhui tosses something. JingYi catches it swiftly, laughing at the sight of a juicy looking loquat -Wei WuXian must have rubbed it off on him in the long run. Things like how did you know I was hungry? and As if I still need to ask you hover between them, needless to voice out loud.

Then, SiZhui turns and walks toward him, smiling tenderly at Jin Ling. So they know I’m still here he huffs, eyeing warily the loquat he is being offered.

Lan SiZhui, “You should eat, Young Master Jin. It is important to retain one’s strength until the very end.”

Jin Ling knows, he is not stupid, nor does he need all this curtesy and big words and long sentences every time he is being addressed by either of them.

He hesitates, sheathes away his sword, falters toward SiZhui. Hears JingYi giggles at his clumsiness and blushes angrily at the patient gleam in the boy’s gaze when he reaches out at snatches the loquat, being careful not to touch his hand.

A second passes, then two. SiZhui lowers his arm and presses his lips tight.

“Let’s keep going and be careful, we are almost home” he advices, and goes back to JingYi’s side. The boy, though, keeps his gaze on Jin Ling’s grumpy expression, a tactful glance from SiZhui warning him from saying anything rude or too nosey. He rolls his eyes and looks over at the Lanling Young Master -Jin Ling notices.

“What?” he bursts out, all his muscles tensing and quaking in shame under their bewildered expressions.

“I didn’t even say anything!” JingYi protests before SiZhui can hold him back.

Jin Ling, “Then why were you looking at me like that?”

Lan JingYi, “Like that? Like what?!”

“JingYi…” SiZhui admonishes, putting a hand on his shoulder. JingYi relaxes slightly, but a frown still mars his features.

Jin Ling clenches his fists and diverts his gaze elsewhere, walking forward and moving past the two of them, slowly abandoning their hunting field.

He hears JingYi complain about something, but his whining is cut short -probably thanks to SiZhui. Jin Ling bites his lips until the physical pain he feels is stronger than the black hole in his stomach and the confusion in his mind -until it is louder than the worried whispers behind his back and the shuddering questions burning into his veins.

—

JingYi is staring at him.

He tries to not react, to make it seem as if he has not noticed yet -though how can he, when he is sitting exactly in front of him, back at him, JingYi’s gaze piercing it as if he was attempting to set Jin Ling’s robe aflame.

Lan WangJi has probably noticed as well and decided to not say anything, to just keep going with his lesson. As long as no one interrupts him or distracts the other disciples, there was no true need to assign punishment.

Jin Ling knows he has to endure it.

He also knows he has no explanation to give him.

It’s not like he is not aware that he is behaving strangely -it feels stupid in his eyes, too. The truth is, every little thing the Lan boys do irritates him.

How they don’t need to talk to understand each other, and appear to use common speech only when they want to relate something to him. How perfectly they fit one other while night-hunting -how beautiful they are while doing so, Jin Ling bitterly adds.

He has always noticed these little things but then, then they had to invite him to Cloud Recesses to study with him for a bit and his uncle had to accept their offer, because do you have a good enough reason to refuse the Lan’s kind offer, Jin Ling?

As a matter of fact, he does not -and that’s what makes thing worse. How can he explain to his uncle something he can’t fully grasp himself?

And then he had to see them silently sneak away after dinner the first day, JingYi holding SiZhui’s hand tightly and the other smirking at him while they made their way between the trees, in a more secluded area.

He didn’t know what possessed him to follow them -what made him keep quiet when he saw them whispering with such comfort, smile with such confidence, kiss with such ease it was clearly not the first time for them.

Jin Ling felt quite flustered and confused -but more than that, he had no explanation for how strongly he had reacted to that. The way his chest had tightened slightly, something similar to envy weighing down on him, similar but not identical -he knows it wasn’t simple like that, he was accustomed to envy and could easily recognise it, though not accept it. The way he had been unable to tear his gaze away, shamefully following the path drawn by SiZhui’s fingers on JingYi’s side when he gently coddled him against a tree, the boy softly moaning his name and smiling lovely while his neck got peppered his little kisses.

The way his body had responded to that -and how he fled the scene so quickly, he got reprimanded with a no running in Cloud Recesses by a laughing Wei WuXian, among all.

Accepting to go night-hunting with them weeks later had been more a flustered mistake than a heartfelt agreement. He had bitterly watched them triumph as the perfect team over and over again, too focused on chasing that strange envy away to register how little he had participated -and how that had baffled the Lan boys.

Jin Ling keeps his eyes on Lan WangJi and tries to ignore everything else, but he cannot run from his own thoughts and feelings much longer.

—

“Release me!”

“Not gonna happen”

“JingYi, maybe you should consider-”

“I won’t consider a damn thing! I’ve had enough!”

“What the hell are you talking about?! Release me this instant-”

“There” JingYi says, with a note of finality in his voice, and Jin Ling stumbles backward, back hitting a rock wall. He is breathing hard, not from actual exertion but rage and dread, sweaty hands clamping behind him.

“Are you insane-” he starts, but the other stops him almost immediately.

“Shut up, whiny mistress! You either are like this or ignore us, I’m going insane!”

“JingYi, we won’t resolve a thing like this!” SiZhi tries to interfere, planting himself between the two. Jin Ling can’t see his face, but JingYi puffs his cheeks and lowers his eyelids, diverting his gaze. Turns it back on them a moment later, arms tensing on his sides.

“We have handled this as you wanted and it didn’t work, now we are gonna do it my way” he retorts, eyes burning in determination.

SiZhui sighs, bites his lip, shakes his head and looks down.

“Alright” he complies. His eyes focus on Jin Ling and the boy feels like he should take a step back -he can’t, the rock wall threateningly solid against his back.

He swallows, unable to old their gaze.

Jin Ling, “What’s wrong with you two? Why did you bring me here?!”

“Young Master-”

(Jin Ling starts clenching his fists at the formality in his tone)

Lan JingYi, “You’ve been avoiding us, don’t deny it!”

The Lanling boy lifts his chin, irises jumping between the two Lan disciples.

Jin Ling, “What are you talking about?! Did you eat too much bland congee and it finally went to your head?!” he says, the frenetic rhythm of his heartbeat making him all the more flustered. Why are they looking at me like that?

Lan SiZhui elbows JingYi on his side, receiving a dirty look. The boy ignores him, taking a deep breath.

“Jin Ling” he calls, clear and light and warm, before moving a bit and taking his hand.

Jin Ling’s eyes widen, his heart trembling in his chest and the rest of him going dead still. His lips part, but nothing comes out, and he grips his robe with his free fingers.

“I’m sorry if we scared you. We just… we wanted to know if we did something wrong, because it really feels like you’ve been avoiding us” he murmurs, trying to keep his tone reassuring and diplomatic -not suspecting how that gentleness and his closeness is killing every ability of functioning like a normal human being Jin Ling owns.

He opens his mouth again, wanting nothing more than to deny it again and run away, but JingYi’s eyes are pleadingly and anxiously staring at him, and Sizhui’s fingers are still holding his.

He quivers.

Jin Ling, “Why do you care?”

Not another word.

Lan JingYi, “What does that mean? We are your friends-”

“Maybe I shouldn’t be your friend! I wouldn’t want to intrude between you two or anything!”

Don’t say it, it’ll make you look weird, you’ll be the strange one all over again and they won’t want to have you with them.

Lan SiZhui frowns, pulling him toward him by the hand, but Jin Ling notices the understanding flashing quickly in JingYi’s irises.

You’ll be cast aside again.

Lan SiZhui, “Why would you? We invited you here!”

Jin Ling, “So that I could work as a disguise, cover for you? Do you think I am an idiot?!”

Why can’t you be less strange?

Lan JingYi, “It makes no sense! You made your head think too much, we actually-”

Jin Ling flashes a ireful look at him.

“I don’t care! If you wanna kiss or whatever, do it when I’m not here!”

He clumps his mouth shut. Dread slowly fills his veins, closing his throat with a knot, and he suddenly feels dizzy from talking too much. And he did -he said too much.

He frees his hand from SiZhui’s grasp and moves, feeling ashamed, so ashamed, what he had told himself was envy melting away and revealing itself for what it actually is -longing, fierce and overwhelming, enough to justify the wetness in his eyes.

Jin Ling freezes and JingYi snaps, seizing his arm.

“Are you-”

“Jealous?” the Lanling boy interrupts, abruptly prying his arm away once more and turning to face them. “Of you two spending so much time together alone, thinking I’m not aware of your- your- whatever it is?! Yes, I am! It angers me so much and I don’t know why! I shouldn’t even care, it’s your business! Yet here I am, yelling at you because you keep being all polite to me and treating me like an outsider but- but-”

Jin Ling can’t bring himself to say the rest, a reason swiftly climbs back into his head -making him realise that he did, indeed, said all those things.

They are going to hate him, of course. How could anyone-

JingYi, “You are the most idiotic mistress I’ve ever met”

Jin Ling tries to counteract that -he is ready, the next insult hesitating on the tip of his tongue-

but JingYi cages his cheeks with his palms and brings him closer, not giving him time to think or even oppose him.

Kisses him with vicious intensity and burning determination, lips pulsing on Jin Ling’s, whose hands fly on his shoulder to fight back a fainting spell.

JingYi’s mouth is rough but slow, caring but raging, and he almost -almost lets himself go, shock dominating every fiber of his being-

-he pushes him away, and JingYi lets him be. Jin Ling’s eyes stops on Lan SiZhui, terrified of his reaction, but the older boy -cheeks aflame, lips parted, breathe eluding a natural rhythm- doesn’t show him what he feared. His irises are sparkling, wild with something that scares Jin Ling more than anger itself.

“Y-you- he-”

Jin Ling is confused, but JingYi’s arm wrapping around his waist, his signature grin on his face, and SiZhui moving toward them with shy but relieved steps, gives him the reassurance he didn’t know he needed.

“We both want you” JingYi whispers in his ears, and Jin Ling shivers and blushes desperately, outraged and on fire.

“So, if you want us both…” SiZhui tentatively tries, going for Jin Ling’s hand again.

He doesn’t let go -squeezes it with all the strength he could muster in that moment, which isn’t much, and gathers all the courage he owns to reach out for SiZhui nape and bring him closer, clumsily kissing him before he can think that’s a bad idea.

JingYi tightens his hold and SiZhui hugs him with his unoccupied arm, tilting his head up with his lips and nuzzling Jin Ling’s tenderly, then drawing back.

They all smile and Jin Ling can’t bear it anymore -he looks down, away, face burning and lungs constricting in a kind of pain he already loves, and they are still here, still keeping him close, no more walls made of formality or misunderstandings to divide them and no one to intrude or witness, for this moment is theirs and theirs only.

[kungfupandawiki]

Hey everyone, Spottedstar here. For those who don’t know me, I’m the wiki admin and the moderator of its social media accounts. I occasionally make posts like these on the wiki’s social media because it pertains to wiki- or franchise-related stuff that I find to be more effective to communicate on a personal level than in an “online entity” one, like the one I use for the wiki’s accounts.

I have something to say, but it’s a tad long. Please bear with me though - it’s important...

So, cutting straight to the chase: the wiki needs more people contributing to it. Like, desperately.

Over the past few days, I’ve noticed from my admin statistics that viewership on the wiki has gone up (as does happen when new franchise material is released, in this case the new season of Paws of Destiny), but actual wiki activity not as much. This means people are mainly looking, not contributing.

Like every wiki on FANDOM (re-branded from “Wikia” a while back), the KFP wiki is a community website, which means it’s completely dependent on the community to keep it alive. Everything you find on the wiki was and has to be added by someone. And lately, it’s only been myself and a couple of other people (usually the same ones day after day, bless them).

As a KFP fan, I do my fair share of “snoopin’ ‘round the webs” to see what the pandom is up to. It’s genuinely awesome to see that so many of you fellow fans use the wiki for information on the KFP universe, but that information does not exist without people (willingly) adding it.

So please, please consider joining the efforts of adding to the wiki database.

Don’t have an account? Make one! It’s completely free to anyone 13 or older. Because of law changes with intent to protect children online, our particular wiki requires its contributors to have an account to make edits.

Don’t know how to edit? It’s super easy - FANDOM has tons of editing resources you can have a look at.

Don’t know where to start or what to do? Have a look around the wiki and I’m positive you’ll find something. I’ve marked nearly every page or page section that needs attention with a brightly-colored banner that’s hard to miss. But if you can’t find/don’t want to look for those, I can tell you that we have a LOT of missing material from the new Paws of Destiny stuff. We need pictures and videos (obtained from legal sources, that is), we need articles to be created (and I have style guides on all of those), we need blank sections and infoboxes to be filled out, we need revisions made to the existing material, etc etc. There is no shortage of things to do on the wiki, especially now.

Worried about not making the “right” kind of edit? Don’t be! It would honestly make me really happy at this point just to see people try more than it would bother me to see contributions that aren’t factually correct, or aren’t cited, or are too presumptuous, or aren’t formatted correctly, or whatever else. And please don’t be offended if I undo an edit of yours. I’m trying to keep the wiki’s factual accuracy at heart, sometimes more than the feelings of my fellow fans/editors. However, as a result, I’ve gotten a bit “undo-crazy” over the past year or so, but I’m going to be more lenient on that from now on.

Still need help? Don’t be afraid to ask me. I’ve been on the wiki for nearly 10 years now - I know all the ropes 'n tricks ‘n stuff. ;)

If you got this far, then thank you very much for reading and for your interest, even if it was temporary. Feel free to ask me any questions and I’ll try and get those answered as soon as I can. Hope to see you on the wiki!

~ Spottedstar

[sleepyfan-blog]

Sleepy Dream [part three]

fandom: understale au

part three of this and this. Continued here

Characters: Dream, WD Gaster, Science!Sans

warnings: cursing

word count: 2,337

Summary: Sci and Dream figure out what’s wrong. Dream is less than thrilled.

Dream has gone through every physical test that both of the scientists can come up with - and he’s used his magic in every way he knows how - from telekinesis and using his bow - to affecting one of theirs’ emotions while other notes down what’s going on and how much magic he’s using. The positive spirit is trying to stave off of the feelings of being used as a lab rat, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to do so. “So… Now what?”

Sci and Gaster glanced at one another, before the former says “We’ve ran you through a bunch of physical tests. And you’re right when you say that you’re not falling down or anywhere close to it. But something is causing your magical exhaustion and from the data we’ve gathered… It has something to do with your Soul.”

“If you like, I can leave the room. I know that you are uncomfortable in my presence.” Doctor Gaster offered, standing up and heading slowly for the door.

“I… Please do. I’m sorry it’s just-” Dream answered apologetically, shuffling his feet a little. He felt guilty but… Also relieved that only Sci would be directly observing his soul. This was going to be a weird conversation as it was.

“I’ve had nightmares  about alternative versions of myself. I am well aware of how awful I can be in other timelines.” Doc G responded, a small, sorrowful smile on his face, and a mixture of distress, disgust and unhappiness in his emotive aura.

“Thank you, Doctor Gaster.” The positive spirit murmured gratefully. The other nodded as he left, closing the door quietly behind him. As soon as Gaster was gone, Dream shut off his eye lights and took a couple of steadying breaths in and out before summoning his soul, not quite looking at Sci as it took shape. “So… For as long as I’ve been able to summon my soul, it’s been this shape and color. I’d also like to… Admit that… I’m not exactly a monster… I am… I was created from all of the positive feelings in the multiverse, and condensed into the form similar to an elemental. A skeletal shell was created for me to inhabit. After… Something happened, I fused with the skeleton body I inhabited and this is the shape and color my soul has taken. But that happened centuries ago, and I became much stronger, so that incident is not related to the reason why I’m suddenly losing strength. I’m not and have never been a Sans.”

“I… Uh… Okay. That’s… Kind of surprising, but okay. I’m going to grab the Soul analyzer. It’s going to either tickle, tingle or both. It shouldn’t feel painful - but if you feel even the slightest twinge, tell me and I’ll stop and recalibrate it.” Sci informed Dream, going over to one of the built in wall panels and touching a couple of buttons as he spoke.

A thin, spindly metal arm descended from a hole in the ceiling. Thin and flexible fibers of magically enforced something attached themselves to Dream’s soul, the fibers wrapping all the way around before glowing a faint green color. Dream held very still, trying not to laugh a little or squirm as the fibers tickled his soul. It was one of the strangest sensations that he’d ever felt. He watched Sci occasionally poke buttons and write stuff down for what felt like an eternity before the other switched off the machine, and it let go of his soul, the fibers vanishing before the arm did into the hole in the ceiling, a little metal plate snapping shut.

Sci stared at the data for a long time before murmuring quietly, his aura filled with curiosity and fascinated confusion “Huh. You’re half of a binary entity. That’s… Really strange.”

“I-I don’t… What do you mean by that?” Dream asked, confused by what the other meant, startling a little.

“You have an other half. Literally. So who is it? You have to know them. You and they were created by the same magic. Their powers either complement or oppose yours.” Sci prodded “You have a soul bond with another being. The likes of which I’ve never seen before. I’ve studied the bonds between family members, between long term mates. Hell, even between platonic and romantic soulmates, from AUs where monsters have such things. But I have never seen a bond like that.”

“...” Dream stayed quiet, averting his eyes. The metal floor had a very fascinating pattern, and he was entirely focused on it all of a sudden.

��Dream? Dream you know who I’m talking about. Please just tell me?” Sci pleaded, moving so that he was directly in the other’s line of sight. “I won’t tell anyone else. But if I know who it is, then I might be able to figure out why your magic is draining.”

Dream realized that he was shaking again, tears blurring his vision as he curled up on the cold examination table “I don’t… Please don’t… I don’t want to talk about this…” He never, ever wanted to talk about Nightmare. He had no idea if the other was confined to their home timeline, or like him, could create portals to different worlds, so long as that world held a certain amount of the kind of feeling that they were created from and were created to protect.

“... Okay, you don’t have to talk about who they are. But how long has it been since you’ve last seen them? I mean face to face - not talking to them on the phone, or using a screen to talk to them long distance. But actual, face to face communication. Or the two of you being within the same timeline at the very least, if not within the distance that a single zone of the underground of one another.” Sci pressed, placing a hand on one of the other’s shoulders, watching him intensely.

“... I would say at least… Four… No five decades. A century at the most? I’m not quite sure. How long’s it been since I started travelling with Ink?” Dream responded, frowning a little bit, trying to figure out how long it had been. "I really don't know. Hopping between timelines and universes really messes with a person's sense of time. And I have noticed that some worlds have a bit of a dilation. A day in one timeline can be a week, or even a month in another.

"I... Don't you feel a pull to be with your soul bonded? I... I've never been bonded myself, but from those whom I've spoken with, such a distance between those who have less intense soul bonds of more than a few weeks can cause a lot of stress, misery and worry about the absent partner. I... I'm not surprised that you're starting to lose your magic. You need to seek this person out, Dream. The bond between the two of you is trying to pull you back to them, which is why you're losing energy." Sci explained, his voice gentle but firm "And please don't try to lie to me and say that they're dead or something like that. I've seen beings with less intense soul bonds die within weeks of their bonded dying. I'm not sure you'd survive an hour if your other half died."

"I know that if he died, I would die too. We're not meant to live without each other." Dream snapped, wrapping his arms around his waist and shifting away from the other, a defensive scowl appearing on his face. "I mean... He's... He's the guardian of negativity. We were created together to help provide balance. If only one of us died, the other's presence would cause an emotional imbalance that would eventually cause havoc across the entire multiverse... Or so the information that we were given said. So our fates were bound together. When one of us dies, the other will too, shortly after. I don't know if that means the other would just crumble to dust or they would be... Driven to ensure their own death. And you ask if I miss him? Of course I do. Every day. Every hour. I can't get him out of my head, and he still has control of my heart." Dream buried his face in his hands, and failed spectacularly not to cry.

"I... Okay..." Sci has never in his life ever heard of a guardian of negativity, but now that Dream mentioned it, he supposed that it did make sense for such a being to exist. The question remains is... Why have none of them heard of them before? Though the more important question is... Why does the very mention of him drive Dream to inconsolable sobbing, if the other is clearly alive, given that his friend is still alive, if miserable. "So... Where is he? Does he need to be rescued - like did Error steal his soul or something?"

Dream laughs, and it is a bitter, hollow sound. His eye lights are fractured circles that reflect the misery that he feels. His magical aura - due to his intense negative feelings - is much weaker than it normally is, startling the hell out of Sci, who tightens his grip on Dream, half-convinced that the other was about to vanish at any moment for a couple of seconds. The positive spirit sighs and shakes his head "If only it was so simple a thing for Error to have captured him." Dream curls into a tighter ball, very much unwilling to elaborate any further.

"Uhhh… You don't have to tell me about whatever happened between the two of you, however this energy draining thing? It's going to get worse, and I'm pretty sure that it's affecting him too. I'm not saying that you don't deserve to be mad at him for whatever the hell you're so pissed off at him about, or that avoiding him for whatever reasons that you have isn't a good thing... Except for the fact that it is affecting your physical and magical health. You have to see him regularly. Even if it's just to yell at him for being an asshole." Sci offered quietly.

"How long?" Dream asks, glaring holes at the floor, no longer crying. "How much time to I have to spend with him, for this to stop?"

"I don't know. I'd have to measure his soul and the rate at which the MP drain decreases when you're together, versus while the two of you apart." The younger skeleton answered  honestly.

Dream stared at Sci, gently patting one of the other's cheeks and murmuring absently "I would never inflict his presence on you. Or anyone else. Not as he currently is, filled with a twisted corruption that has tainted his mind and caused... A great deal of strife and pain in our home timeline." Also death, but Dream's not going to say that. No need to scare Sci. The other had been doing all he could. "I was wondering if my lack of energy was related to him somehow. So it is… Just not in the way I was thinking. Thank you for answering this question for me… I need to tell Ink that I’ll be gone for a while… I don’t think he’s ever been to my timeline before. I definitely would have remembered meeting him. Then again, perhaps he might have visited before we existed? If none of you ever see me again, please know that it’s not by choice, but because I couldn’t escape Nightmare.”

Sci tilts his head a little, and asks quietly “Nightmare?”

“My other half. That’s his name. Fallen guardian of negativity. He is… Magnitudes stronger than I am. He’s quite possibly stronger than Ink and Error together. We were at equal power level once… Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see the one being I’ve been running from since I figured out how. Thanks for the help, Sci.” Dream murmured, eye lights very dull and shattered as he uncurled from the ball he was and stood up almost robotically. “... Actually, would you mind telling Ink? I have a feeling that if I try to explain only a little bit he’s not going to be satisfied until I explain the whole thing and I really, really don’t want to.”

“I… Wh- hold on! Dream… Dream please try to calm down? I can tell that you’re miserable and distraught - don’t try to use your aura on me to think otherwise. I know the look of a person in abject misery. Promise me you won’t do anything that you’d regret in a better frame of mind?” Sci pressed, grabbing his friend and hugging him tightly, in an attempt to get the other to stop moving.

Dream stopped moving long enough to smile down at him, and it was filled with great sadness “I… I will try. But for now I have to go home. Please give Ink and Blue my fondest regards.” With that, he gently pried Sci off of him, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of the other’s forehead, murmuring quietly “Sleep now, you don’t want to see this.”

The younger skeleton cursed quietly, feeling his body go limp and relaxed as Dream carefully set him on the bed. He was awake, but only just. The positive guardian opened a bright yellow portal, revealing a rust-red sky and an ashy, desolate looking landscape. Sci honestly couldn’t tell if the AU that Dream was going to, he’d opened it to an above or below ground place. There was a giant, dead stump filling one portion of the portal as the other went through it.

Sci couldn’t get up - he barely managed to drag his interdimensional phone out of his pocket and shakily typed out one word [help] before hitting send, unaware that he hadn’t sent it just to Ink, but all of the AU travelling Sanses he had contact with - as he’d sent it in the main text chain before passing out completely.

[kaiayame]

post s8 thoughts

the good, the bad, the mixed. 

the good

the marketplace at the garrison in ep 1! i’m a sucker for a marketplace. and allura got to go shopping!!

romelle was back! her hair was cute. 

i think the tone of the first episode was actually a really smart one to start the season on. i’m glad they jumped a few months (or was it a year?) since the end of last season. 

pidge and allura got some good bonding time in general this season. pidge giving up her game for allura was cute. and then when they were together on that planet where the olkari had lived, that was strong. 

pidge being upset about the loss of the olkari, lamenting over “how much more they had to offer us” was solid. i think they spent too much time on it, but the sentiment of mourning all the good that a people could’ve given the universe if they hadn’t been lost was solid. 

omg listen. keith and lance. literally sat together. just the two of them. watching a FREAKING sunset. and keith, in my opinion, basically said the nicest things anyone has ever said about lance to his face, and it felt like a confession of feelings from keith’s end tbh. the writers did that. they know that they did that. and it happened. it was real and so, so soft. i had to stand up in front of the tv while i was watching, clutching a pillow and screaming a bit. 

i think the amount shiro and coran were utilized throughout the story felt balanced. shiro especially has dominated so much of the story over the seasons, and even tho i love him, it felt nice to kind of have him become somewhat less of a focus. 

i think the episode where they got trapped in the ship with the monster was fun! did you see how crazy lance went when keith got stuck in that room with it?? 

the carnival episode!!! I love a good carnival setting :) i like that they all wanted to get something for allura.

the day 47 episode was also cute, imo. I thought it was clever. I loved kinkade! the overall concept could’ve gone really badly but it felt creative enough to me. I wish it had focused more on just the paladins, but still.

all of the MFE pilots actually didn’t annoy me this season, yay. 

veronica and axca had super gay vibes.

keith and axca didn’t happen! *throws confetti*

lance got called a genius by his fellow paladins! and they meant it! 

we got to see them all in their under suits and out of their paladin armor!

that short bit where Hunk made the recovered alteans food from their home world? I think that was actually more powerful and potent than the writers even intended. I thought that was really well handled and not heavy handed and had a lot of weight to it. 

the bit before the final battle with keith and lance alone at the war room table...................... prime, prime content. THEY HELD. HANDS. there was a CLOSE UP. i’m still living off of it. another “lost my shit” moment. favorite scene of the entire season. 

there was some genuinely good moments of humor. keith had some especially funny moments, i laughed out loud a few times, tho i can’t name anything super specific atm.....

it was nice that they tried to really work in the idea that unity is what’s important, and the best unity is built through love, and differences shouldn’t tear us apart and we are always stronger together, etc etc.... i think that was obviously the writers referencing our society’s current climate to some extent, so i appreciated them at least trying to touch on that, however generic and vague it was. 

they had some good new outfits this season?? it was nice to see the paladins in so many different clothes. and a lot of the garments were really cute!!

i like how often keith urged them to not give up. I think that’s another strong theme that’s existed throughout the series. it just strikes a personal note with me. i like how far keith has come as a character in general.

pidge’s mom making that flower for allura?? very sweet. 

i liked all of lance’s reactions to anyone mentioning someone having an interest in keith, haha. Obviously, i’m projecting, but still. 

i think the concept of ALL realities being threatened was actually great, because otherwise idk why they would’ve brought up there being other realities in the first place. the significant level of what was at stake with that being what the paladins were dealing with was a good choice. 

keith turning down becoming the new head of the galra. phew, thank you @god.

as always, studio mir is the lord’s animation studio and so much of the visuals were so excellent. can’t wait to see their future projects.

and honestly, it’s been fun. it’s been a fun show. it’s had a ton of problems but i cannot deny that i have seriously enjoyed watching a lot of it as a whole. 

i guess technically they did end the show on a gay kiss. 

the bad 

i’m not even that personally upset but it just goes to show how important an ending is. how a story leaves you makes such a significant impression. it’s probably the most important part of a narrative and OMG THESE WRITERS DO NOT KNOW HOW TO WRAP THINGS UP AT ALL, IT’S SO FUNNYYYYY.

so anyway, yeah........ episode 13.......................... what. 

like wtf was ep 13. 

what.

what even WAS THAT. PEOPLE got PAID to write THAT. 

lance became... altean? can that.... happen? also........... why???

and a farmer?? a simple life?? where did that even come from??? like sure, lance was homesick and missed rain one time. that doesn’t.... it just..... that doesn’t mean he should just be a random farmer?????? whose gf died, i guess??

speaking of that, OMG they fucking KILLED ALLURA. I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. WHAT A DUMB CHOICE. I’M STILL LAUGHING. I HAD NO EXPECTATION THAT THAT WOULD HAPPEN. WOULD NEVER HAVE EXPECTED THAT. AND YET IT DID. WTF. HOW CAN YOU MAKE SUCH A DUMB WRITING CHOICE. HOW???

and the fact that they didn’t even EXPLAIN why honerva & allura had to do whatever it is they did????? criminal. ridiculous. 

and all that aside, allura and coran’s relationship was so important and so special and the fact the she and him didn’t get a goodbye? garbage. unbelievable. 

and to add to that, all of her goodbyes were underwhelming. shiro being like “you don’t have to thank me for anything” umm, what. yes she does. you did a lot. wtf, what was with that?

like i love allura, but also, why was the ending SO FOCUSED on just her?? And by that, i mean including the choice to kill her off. VLD has always been about the group. It just was a weird vibe to end on for many, many reasons. The ending should’ve been about her and the rest of them recognizing how they were more than just friends or paladins. They were family... like ALL THE WRITERS HAD TO DO was have them all together at the end?? I’m not even joking. That needed to be the ending, point blank...... AND THEY COULDN’T EVEN DO THAT. WHYYYY

ok moving on but still related, I HATE slideshow endings like that, in pretty much anything that isn’t a documentary or historical drama. I feel like it’s such a cop out. Writers should find confidence and end their story on a specific note. Not a series of slides.

as i was watching ep 13, tbh, the title got me excited. “the end is the beginning” made me feel like they were somehow going to get thrust back in time for a brief second to the moment they all met at the garrison, or met allura and coran, and somehow that was going to get pulled into the finale as a way they could re-establish all the destroyed realities.... so i guess this is my own fault for just hoping for something that wasn’t there, but whatever.

i think lotor and zarkon also got some really undeserved positive recognition. like, they both killed a LOT of people... some things are just too little too late. 

lotor coming “back” was also like, half assed. it was weird. it would’ve made more sense for honerva to start jumping through different realities earlier in the season “looking” for a version of her son and husband that she could be with. 

too many big robots. like..... so many different kinds of big robots. i couldn’t care less. 

as always, a lot of the fight scenes were repetitive as hell. I wish they’d been more creative and written them taking on different approaches rather than just charging at the bad guys.  

WHERE IS MY FORMAL WEAR EPISODE

sorry to hate on allurance, but like, neither lance or allura felt like their actual selves whenever they were together or trying to be a couple... it was weird and sad. Lance barely ever acted like himself this season. 

I thought they threw krolia around a bit too casually. Like she barely pops up and when she did it almost felt like the writers were like “oh yeah, i guess we should include her every now and then”

i thought allura being like “i don’t have a family” to lance was bullshit. like, hello, coran and romelle are right freaking there. more alteans are showing up every day. girl, what tf do you mean???

allura was also kind of excessively mean on multiple occasions?? she was cutting people off, being unreasonable, reckless, and kind of dark..... i didn’t really understand the sudden downfall of her character when she’d started out as this sort of insecure victim, but season after season became stronger and stronger and an awesome member of voltron. idk, it just felt out of place to make her a part of the problem for the final act. 

i wish i had......... cried. i wish they’d written at least one moment well enough that i actually got to experience at least a little bit of a tear.

adam didn’t magically come back from the dead. 

OMG and the kiss between shiro and random dude???? IT WAS SO SLOPPY, I WAS SO EMBARRASSED. it was obviously thrown in at the very last possible moment because they were trying to cover their own asses about the adam thing. like, what was with that bad animation....

epilogues in general are just........ so bad. no one should do them. stop.

omg they never explained the altean colonies... 

honestly, as we kept getting closer and closer to the last episode, i was like....... they do know this is the LAST season, right??? they’re kind of running out of time??

that black entity thing should’ve been fleshed out more and had more of an actual purpose, especially because they touched on it before with the paladins of old. 

i feel like the writers just threw so many things out there over 8 seasons and didn’t actually.... resolve most of them. like, they needed to edit down sooooo much of what they were trying to do. it would’ve been such a stronger series overall if they’d just FOCUSED on the actual compelling parts of this story and its characters.

i feel zero closure tbh, lol. whatever.

the mixed

overall, i was pretty engaged for the most part from episode to episode, but i did get pretty damn bored a few times.

oh god, the leaks were real. it’s good and bad. 

lance and allura still felt SOOOO forced and awkward but at least they tried to give them some actual substance.

like I said before, yay romelle was back! but boo, she wasn’t as quirky or funny anymore :(

Slav bothering everyone was still quite enjoyable to me. i wish shiro had gotten roped into that more, tho. Missed opportunity.

Atlas didn’t feel quite as dumb... but it was still kind of dumb.

i thought honerva honestly held up as a villain. Maybe not a FINAL season villain, but meh. her motivation seemed legit enough and the lengths she was willing to go after 10k years of pain seemed real. I just..... ugh, i wish they’d stuck to her just being evil. Or revengeful. Lok tried to do the same thing with kuvira right at the end. there just... wasn’t enough time to actually do that right, in either case. Or if they were going to do it, Honerva should’ve sacrificed just herself and allura should’ve left with all the other paladins, and that could’ve redeemed her character if that’s what they were going for.

the 2nd episode that focused just on honerva was... fine i guess, but i thought they didn’t define the mixing of timelines very well. it would jump from one clip to another and i didn’t realize fully that we’d gone back in time, or returned to the present, or were seeing this important thing before moving on to another. idk, the order just didn’t work for me. 

i’m glad allura got so much more focus but i feel like keith had so many important story points throughout every season and it felt weird that he was kind of just in the background for the most part of every episode.... like if vld had a “main” character, i always kind of felt that it was slightly keith.... so i’m sad that he didn’t really get much of an ending.

and that being said, i guess this is just a negative, but i feel like keith and shiro’s relationship just didn’t matter anymore??? that was so weird to me?? it was such a focus for SO LONG, it didn’t feel good to just never address them ever. 

there was this really awesome momentum going in the first half of season 8 for this theme of “not holding on to the past / letting the old give way to the new” and they just….. totally lost it. Like, it just never came up again by the end, lol. But i liked it a lot while it was initially there. Just.... wish these writers knew how to stick a landing, jesus. 

like, that older olkari woman that pidge was trying to call out to? she probably had one of the best speeches of the season when she was telling that little olkari girl to go on and be a part of the future. that’s what i’m saying. it had good momentum. they just didn’t fully realize it :/

i think where they started to lose the narrative was in the two part episode, the knights of light ones. going into honerva’s mind seemed cool and i appreciated them trying to do a few interesting things with it, but bringing back the old paladins didn’t feel right. For some reason, I didn’t enjoy allura reconnecting with like, the spirit of her father. I felt like it was a loss that should’ve remained a loss. and yeah, just in general, having them bring up the idea of the benefits and power behind “the old making way for the new” just wasn’t supported by bringing the old paladins BACK... it felt counterproductive. i didn’t like it.

Anyway. I feel like i’m still forgetting stuff and I’ll probably go back and edit this post but yeah. Enjoyed a decent chunk of the final season. Cannot..... even believe how dumb some of the writing choices were. Will forever be slightly confused. Canon is whatever. I’ve still enjoyed this show and its characters and a lot of the amazing content fans have created for it, and it is what it is and at least it’s over and done with :]

[seasonsofsol]

Not Sure if i’ve posted this on my main before or not, but i’m gonna put this here regardless.

This is a cropped/edited version of my current header. Drew it some time ago as a remake of the original version. Relates to both my blog name and my Sonic OC’s Winter and Summer, which you can find more about on my OC page 

Copy and pasting description from DA under the cut:

Ahem, so, if you know of, or are familiar with my two Sonic OC's Summer and Winter you've probably seen me mention them being spirits, or referring to "the spirit of the seasons". These spirits are related to the Sol dimension, aka, Blaze The Cat’s universe. In [my version of] the Sol dimension, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, are not just names for each season, but the spiritual entities that represent/embodies [Pictured above] the emotions and changes brought by each season. These four entities came about through a small population of Solians [what I call the citizens of Sol, like how the citizens in Sonics universe are refereed to as Mobians.] living on an island. These Solains held many festivals, and every year there were two held for each season’s spirit (which they believed to be gods). One festival was held when the season began, and one as it was coming to an end. The first festival was to pray and ask the season to be kind to them, and offer the best weather they could provide through their time of the year. The second festival was to offer gifts to the season, either as thanks for the merciful weather, or bribes to make their visit next year better, if it wasn't satisfactory. The islanders also had all seven Sol Emeralds in their possession, and would use them during these festivals. The Solians didn't understand their power, and only used them to decorate the shrine used to pray to the seasons. The emeralds would absorb the emotions of the Solians at the shrine, and eventually birthed the Spirits of the Seasons. The first born was Winter. Winter is a stern, and unforgiving spirit. People are depressed and unhappy during her time of the year, and thus don't appreciate her as much as other seasons. She is incredibly jealous of her fellow spirits (particularly summer), and takes her feelings out on Solians with harsh blizzards throughout her stay, causing mass destruction. The second born was Spring, a kind and cheerful young thing.  People welcome spring with open arms, it brings in the new and shoves out the old. People enjoy the feeling of freshness Spring brings. She helps farmers with struggling crops and leaves beautiful flowers behind everywhere she visits. Third was Summer. Summer is a social and creative spirit. People love summer! t=Though hot, people appreciate the vacation days and nearly perfect weather. Summer, unlike the other spirits, interacts with Solians openly and frequently. Last is Autumn. Autumn is the mysterious and bleak type. Most people are neutral with this time of the year. The weather is calm, but people can't help but feeling an unexplained somber sadness that comes with it. Autumn keeps to himself, and not even the other spirits know much about him. Rumors say he is the one that causes all leaves on the trees to fall simultaneously every year. These four seasons reside on the island which they were born at, and only appear during their respective seasons. The spirits are not required for the season to take place, and if one should die or disappear, nothing would change. Other Info: - The spirits are immortal (ageless). - The spirits are not siblings, and do not view each other as such. - The spirits are all connected via the sol emeralds. - The Spirits are not actual deities, and it has become less common to view them as such. - The spirits reside within their own type of pocket dimension when they're out of season. They can control when they come and go, but they respect each other and like to give one another their time in the spotlight, and don't interfere. - The spirits only exist on and effect the island they were born on. They are largely unknown by anyone other than the Solians on the Island and the royal family. - The way people on the island feel towards the season greatly impacts how the spirit acts. They literally represent the atmosphere of the season, and that atmosphere is interpreted by Solians. This is why Winter is so angry and tyrannical. The Solians feel depressed and unhappy during her season, and their feelings feed directly into her.