#everyone (people in my age bracket) i think we need to go back

[francisballerhide]

An older viewer's perspective on I Saw The TV Glow

(content warning: discussion of spoilers, depression and suicidal themes.)

x-posted from the subreddit of the same name.

I am a queer, non-gender conforming (back in the day we said "genderqueer") person in their late 40s. I saw this the day before yesterday. I'm about five years or so older than the main characters (Owen and Maddy.) The equivalents to "The Pink Opaque" for my friend group that were on TV when we were the same age as the characters were Liquid TV and/or the 1992-era X Men cartoon (so as you can imagine, I've been ecstatic about the X Men 97 revival.) We were also obsessed with the film The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eighth Dimension.

I liked Buffy, but I was already in my 20s when it was airing.

And woah, this movie is very powerful and made me feel all sorts of things.

Like Maddy, I experienced a "break from reality" in my 20s. And I was deadset on finding someone to go on that "break" with me, to experience a folie à deux with, I guess. To help me validate that the imaginary world I was living in was "the real world," and the outside world where I was expected to "get a job and be a productive member of society" was fake.

I know in the context of the film, it's supposed to be implied that Maddy's story is true. She is really Tara, and Owen is really Isabel. But as someone who has been through something very much like Maddy describes (apart from the "being buried alive" part) it was difficult for me not to see Maddy as someone who did exactly what I did - who rejected reality as it is, and tried to check out from it completely.

But also, it's easy to see what Maddy ended up doing as a metaphor for attempted suicide - and that she might have been trying to talk Owen into going along with her on a second attempt, together, when the first attempt failed. And this may have been how Owen saw it, when he rejected it.

Because for me, adulthood felt the same way. You get a job. You try and fit in, or at least fly under the radar. It's not what you want to do - but society is constantly telling you, pressuring you, hassling you, that it's what you should be doing, what you need to do. Maybe you meet someone and settle down, maybe you don't. Maybe you have kids, and maybe you don't.

But one year passes, and then another. And then five years. And then a decade. And then three decades have gone by. And you don't feel it. It's just like skipping forward to the next scene on a DVD. And then you're old, and wondering where your life has gone. You haven't been living your real life.

And the thoughts running through your mind go: "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. This wasn't supposed to be my life. What happened to my life?"

And as someone with left-of-center politics and a not-always stable mental state, I think: "how much of this is down to reality being screwed up, how much of this is down to us living in a "Black Iron Prison"-style reality construct; and how much of this can be blamed on "late stage" or "end stage" capitalism, which never allows people who exist outside of a certain tax bracket to self-actualize at all?

What if it is "just the suburbs?"

The answer is to try and live your truth and be your authentic self, no matter what is going on in the world outside of that - no matter how difficult the world makes it. But not everyone is strong enough, or has the psychological tools to find their way to that.

I think I need to go back and watch this film again.

I also would like to recommend Matrix Resurrections to anyone who was bummed out by the end of I Saw The TV Glow, for what happens when the person who has been insisting "that beautiful, powerful person can't be me" suddenly decides to be that, anyway.

[galactic-pirates]

Romance Tropes Bracket

@purlturtle is doing this really cool thing and they said I could ramble about it too! And how could I resist talking story? Do you know me? Hahaha.

Anyway they made this spreadsheet and screenshot and you can check them out on their post (clicky here).

So in the BLUE CORNER

Bodyguard vs Love Triangle

Workplace vs High School

Second Chances vs. Made A Bet (90s style)

Sibling's Best Friend vs Nanny/Governess

Rocking that RED we have

Grumpy/Sunshine vs Someone Else's SO

Accidental Pregnancy vs Just To Get It Out Of Our Systems

Family Feud (Romeo&Juliet style) vs Holiday Romance

Billionaire vs Soulmates

The sun shines down on YELLOW

Mistaken Identity vs Age Gap

Love Potion/Aphrodisiac vs Only One Bed

Amnesia vs Kissing Lessons

Forced Proximity (road trip etc.) vs Secretly a celeb/royal

Aaaaaand finally working that GREEN

Marriage of Convenience vs Fake Dating

Snowed In vs Friends To Lovers

Bad Boy/Girl vs Sworn Off Love

Supernatural (vampires etc.) vs Enemies To Lovers

Under the cut for my picks and rambles!

Bodyguard vs Love Triangle I don't do Love Triangle, either pick one and then let everyone move on or all be together as a trio. My very first real 'ship' had a sort of love triangle (the lady dated one guy, then the other, then back to the first etc.) but I only shipped her with the first guy (it was Jack Malone and Sam Spade from Without a Trace). So the whole 'love triangle' aspect was lost on me as I just did not care.

Bodyguard though... that has serious potential. So much so I have some vague concepts for an original novel trilogy based around it. Bodyguard is sort of what Eve Baird does on the Librarians (Guardian) but also not. I mean it can depend a little bit. I like the whole protective part to a point, but not if it takes the protectees agency away. I'm not fond of 'damsel', I would rather they kick butt together.

WINNER: Bodyguard

Workplace vs High School This one is super easy - has to be Workplace because High School = kids. I have no interest in teenagers. Teachers maybe but that would be a workplace. Even when I was a kid I didn't write about kids. I skipped the whole YA thing completely.

WINNER: Workplace

Second Chances vs. Made a Bet (90's Style) I had to ask what 'Made a Bet' was because I didn't know. @purlturtle suggested it was like a '10 things I hate about you' thing, where they date on a bet and then catch real feelings. Now catching feels - that's cool, but the whole bet thing? I don't know...

I did write a fic prompt once where they were in a bar and two characters were challenging each other to see who could pull the guy they picked out. I suppose that's ok as a concept. I didn't develop it so it clearly didn't grab me that much though.

Second Chances though - this I like. I mean I suppose there's the whole "if it didn't work out before, why would it work now?" question, as in their relationship failed for a reason. But maybe that's because they needed to work on themselves. Sometimes people are just idiots and make assumptions and don't communicate properly. I'm actually writing a serial at the moment with a second chance romance in it (divorced ex-wives have to work together). So this does grab me.

WINNER: Second Chances

Sibling's Best Friend vs Nanny/Governess Got to be honest neither of these jump out at me as being something I'm really drawn to. Although I am sniggering a little bit as I think Nanny/Governess is a favourite of Janeway's (wasn't that her preferred holonovel?). So I'm tempted to vote for Janeway but ehhh. It has a bit of a power dynamic vibe I don't like.

Sibling's Best Friend is very... cute I guess. I don't really have much to say about it to be honest. I'm going to make it win on default but meh.

WINNER: Sibling's Best Friend

------------------------------

Mistaken Identity vs Age Gap I have written Age Gap - obviously, as I wrote a hell of a lot of Rumbelle (Rumple and Belle, Once Upon a Time) back in the day. Only... I got to be honest I never really saw it as an age gap thing. It totally was and by a LOT because Rumple was semi-immortal as the dark one. He was a couple of centuries old when they met but... age gap romances usually make me uncomfortable because of the inherent power dynamic. Rumple had so little self-confidence that just wasn't an issue.

Mistaken Identity - "do you let them hate the real you, or love the fake you" - HELL YES! Quote from Sophie Devereaux there and the espionage/heist fan in me is compelled. Also superheroes I guess ala Supercorp. Give me all the stories about masks people wear and just wanting to be loved for who they really are.

WINNER: Mistaken Identity

Love Potion/Aphrodisiac vs Only One Bed *cough* show me a person who wasn't read a few sex pollen fics in their time in fandom, and I'll show you a liar. I jest, I jest but also not really. It's not a bad setup for a PWP so long as consent is clearly established and we know before they are under the influence that they are into one another. I suppose there could be a fair bit of plot in terms of consequences but I have no wish personally to write about consent issues.

Only One Bed though - CLASSIC! I mean it's iconic. It's two people pining like idiots, putting up pillow walls between them, the inevitable cuddling in the night and then awkward aroused awakenings. I wrote this in my Conspiracy Afloat fanfic and I'm sure I'll write it again. It's the classic and you can't go wrong with a classic.

WINNER: Only One Bed

Amnesia vs Kissing Lessons Kissing Lessons? This is a new one on me but not hard to figure out. It feels quite juvenile, like maybe a good match for the teenagers in High School?

Amnesia though - oh yes! I don't know if I first loved this trope when I saw the Harrison Ford movie Regarding Henry, or if I saw the trope elsewhere first, but it's very good. The "I'm sorry who are you?" "I'm your wife" and not remembering, having to fall in love again. The agony of the lost shared memories, of not recalling the life they had together, of making new memories. Hell yeah!

WINNER: Amnesia

Forced Proximity (road trip etc.) vs Secretly a celeb/royal Forced Proximity has it's place as a supplement. Like I talked earlier about the Second Chance divorced exes who had to work together. They are getting that Second Chance because of the forced proximity. As a trope on it's own though? Ehhh.

The Secretly a Celeb/Royal... depends if you can expand that. I have long loved the idea of some super rich person being incognito because 'Rich people wear expensive clothes and drive posh cars and go fancy places' and so seeing Joe or Jane Regular, they think 'oh you look like X' rather than thinking they are actually X. I planned out a Rumbelle fic to this premise that I never wrote, but I swear I will write this someway, someday. It partly goes back to the Mistaken Identity and masks, and do they love the real you. With money, meeting someone and them not knowing you are rich is perhaps one of the few ways to be sure about that. But at what point do you tell the truth? The longer it goes on the more feelings of betrayal there are - very similar trope really. Now obviously royal is a whole thing on it's own but put the 'secretly' in front of it and it becomes something else.

WINNER: Secretly a celeb/royal

------------------------------

Grumpy/Sunshine vs Someone Else's SO Someone Else's SO sounds like cheating/infidelity and I'm not interested in that. Just pick a side and then be honest about it.

I think Grumpy/Sunshine... I'm trying to think of an example. I suppose perhaps I tend to interpret it more as somebody who is reserved vs. someone who is social. Or possibly someone who is cynical/snarky/sarcastic vs. someone who is optimistic/positive/kind. I have definitely written this and will definitely write more of it. It definitely has it's place but equality works too.

WINNER: Grumpy/Sunshine

Accidental Pregnancy vs Just To Get It Out Of Our Systems Honestly not a fan of either, but definitely not a fan of oops pregnancy. It's just not a conflict I am interested in. It doesn't compel me. To be honest neither does the 'Get it out of our systems' because... well it seems odd. Like if you like one another then why is it a one and done? This wins by default but meh.

WINNER: Just To Get It Out Of Our Systems

Family Feud (Romeo & Juliet style) vs Holiday Romance A feud does have potential, the whole 'forbidden love' aspect. I have written this. I have a daughter of politically powerful parents falling in love with a rebel in my Steampunk AU. That's not a family feud, more of a civil class war thing.

Holiday Romance is pretty cool. The whole 'we really click but there is a time limit on it' thing. I did write this once (a Rushbelle fic). As a standard trope it's not something that interests me that much. Now a romance developing during the holidays as like a mutually pining idiots friends to lovers type thing - that's more what I like. I planned and never wrote 2 Bering and Wells christmas fics. First was a fake dating AU where Myka claims Helena is her girlfriend to shut up her sister only to have to invite Helena for the holidays (I know, it's cliche but fun). The other was canon-divergent off season 3 I guess where Helena rejoined the Warehouse and Myka invited her as a 'friend' for Christmas so she wasn't alone at the B&B. Only there was a mix-up and they went to Myka's parents, who weren't home (at the sisters) and they get snowed in, power cuts (huddling together for warmth), only one bed - basically every trope you can think of and hey - Forced Proximity lol - and it gets them to admit feelings. The holidays can add an intensity but neither of these two were technically holiday romance.

WINNER: Holiday Romance

Billionaire vs Soulmates I wrote Soulmates!! It was a Sanctuary fic (Time Will Tell) and it started off as a thought experiment/self-challenge. I don't like the idea of fate and then everything being happy because you have found your 'one' (or in my OT3 case, two). So I really pushed hard on the 'love is a choice' angle, and that lots of soulmate relationships failed because relationships take work. The 'this could be your future but only if you choose it, only if you work for it'. Made me love it. It was fun to explore how having this ticking timer could affect people's personalities, the development of the relationship (having the certainty could be paradoxically paralysing). What that did to society and prejudices etc.

Now of course Billionaire does sort of go back to what I described earlier with the 'Secret Celeb' trope. Having money is kind of a fantasy and it makes for a fun world. You can have them sail around in a yacht, go skiing and sit by the fire in a wood lodge, private jet travel etc. but I don't know. Apart from the 'do you like me or just my money' conflict, having a ton of money is just like so what? It removes worry about paying bills and buying food and that's awesome, takes those stresses off a relationship, but if you don't have to be a billionaire for that, and that as the sole trope... where's the story?

WINNER: Soulmates

------------------------------

Marriage of Convenience vs Fake Dating OH NO YOU DIDN'T?!?! I have to choose? I suppose they are very similar. It's the pretend relationship and then the 'oh no I caught feelings' and that like Only One Bed is a complete classic.

I'm going to go with Fake Dating purely because it's likely to come up more. Although I can think of so many ideas for Marriage of Convenience. They are both so good! They are both winners in my heart.

WINNER: Fake Dating

Snowed In vs Friends To Lovers This is like a situation vs. a dynamic. Snowed In is quite specific. I talked about it earlier with the Bering and Wells christmas fic. It's not something that will happen in a lot of stories because some places don't have snow, or it's not set in winter etc.

Whereas Friends to Lovers is basically everything I write ever. How can people be lovers if they aren't friends? If they don't like one another. Friendship is the foundation. Even when I wrote Enemies to Lovers (Timeless, Flynn and Lucy) there was a loooooong stop off at friends in the middle.

WINNER: Friends to Lovers

Bad Boy/Girl vs Sworn Off Love Ok this feels like an unpopular opinion but if they are actually a 'bad boy/girl' then no, just no. If they are misunderstood, they have a heart of gold etc. then they aren't really 'bad' and so it's just aesthetics or something? Like pretending to be a rebel but not really. I don't get it to be honest.

Sworn Off Love though... so much yes. Think about Helena who didn't want to love, who intended their heart to be frozen, to no longer really beat because it belonged to Christina, their daughter who was gone. But Helena hadn't reckoned on Myka who found a way in anyway, and it was agony, but that love saved the world.

WINNER: Sworn Off Love

Supernatural (vampires etc.) vs Enemies To Lovers Ok my previous mention of Flynn and Lucy aside I really don't go in for Enemies to Lovers. If people are enemies they hate each other - hate is the opposite of love. Yes it's an extreme emotion but I don't get how it works except with a very long stop-off in friends first, and then that feels like not really Enemies to Lovers anymore.

Supernatural though can be fun. I have a long fascination with immortality. One partner living forever and the other one getting older, dying. I hate it, I hate it so much because it hurts, and yet it is compelling. I want to fix it. That's probably it. Carol and Maria from Captain Marvel. Breaks my heart :(

Doesn't just have to be immortality either. I know Harry Potter shouldn't be mentioned today but the Remus and Tonks relationship had potential as a dynamic. Remus as a werewolf saw himself as less than, as not being human - not being WORTHY. It's that kind of self-hate which makes me bond with characters (Rumple had the same thing going on). But the whole I love you, all parts of you, even the monster parts - that acceptance of the flaws. That's good stuff.

WINNER: Supernatural

I will post up the next bracket when @purlturtle does theirs! Though we did pick some different things so their bracket will look different from mine. It's going to be interesting!! :)

[stanheightsimp]

I wrote this quickly to distract myself from my burnout. Sorry, it's badly written and sloppy, a bit. There will surely be corrections in the future, when my mental health is better !

Group Therapy | Adam Stanheight x /Leon Kennedy

Adam must take part in group therapy. He meets a survivor of Raccoon City. Since Amanda and Leon are both in DBD, I'm obsessed with the idea of a Saw and Resident Evil crossover (and also because Leon and Adam are comfort characters). | 2478 words

Adam Stanheight stepped hesitantly into the overheated room, nervously fidgeting with the excessively long sleeves of his flannel shirt. He didn't want to do this. Fuck, he hated this kind of thing. Group therapy. For people suffering from PTSD. Great.

It was his therapist who'd sent him there "an indispensable step in his healing process". Supposedly, Adam was too self-focused on his suffering. Supposedly, it would do him good to find other people who had it as bad as he did. Blah, blah, blah. Fucking idiot therapist. As if he could understand what Adam was going through. As if anyone could understand what it felt like to wake up in a tub of dirty, cold water, seeing a person saw off his foot, , get shot by this person, and be left to die for seven days in the dark, without food or water. Adam decided he'd do the bare minimum, even put all the ill will in the world into it, so they'd leave him alone, or even, oh fuck, that was what he wanted, kick him out of group therapy for being unbearable.

He sat down grudgingly on one of the folding chairs arranged in a circle in the center of the room, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest, reluctant to cooperate. A few people were already there, people in his age bracket. At least, that was something. Adam didn't really like people from his parents' generation.

His gaze met that of a blond boy with hair like the lead singer of the Backstreet Boys (Adam hated the Backstreet Boys). Blue shirt open over a white T-shirt, sky-blue jeans, big clear eyes, and eyes rimmed as if he hadn't slept in days.

Leon Kennedy met Adam's gaze and wasn't sure whether he liked him or hated him. His old self of a few years ago would have liked him, probably. Leon liked people, trusted them without restraint. He believed in many things, was unfailingly optimistic, and managed to find beauty in everyone. Even when people were capable of the worst, he could find the best in them.

Well, that was then. Leon clung desperately to the ghost of the carefree, optimistic kid he'd been before Raccoon City.

"We have a new member," declared the group therapy organizer, and Adam rolled his eyes. "Adam, stand up, would you like to introduce yourself?"

No, fuck no, I don't want to introduce myself, I don't want to be there, I want to disappear.

Adam stood up with a sigh.

"My name's Adam. I'm twenty-five years old. And four months ago, I was a victim of Jigsaw. He locked me in the bathroom, and I almost died in there. And… that's it."

The assembly said a unanimous "hello Adam" which Adam felt was forced and hypocritical. Fuck, he hated group therapy. Everyone came not to support or listen to others, but to be supported and listened to by someone, to have someone sympathize. Basically, this kind of therapy was the most singularly selfish thing Adam had ever seen.

"Was there any particular reason he captured you?" asked a girl, older than Adam but not by much.

Are you fucking kidding me? You really think this asshole needs a reason? You're such an idiot! Adam tried to reply, but just shook his head.

"Actually, maybe there was a reason. I was suicidal, in a way."

"What do you mean, in a way? You either are or you aren't, there's no in-between." commented a teenager laconically.

"Shut the fuck up, I didn't fuckin' ask for your opinion." Adam replied, sitting back down.

The therapy organizer intervened, asking with forced enthusiasm and empathy, someone else to talk about him. At first, Adam couldn't help rolling his eyes as he listened to the other people's testimonials, and especially as he saw the sympathetic nods.

Leon didn't say much either. But he did listen. He listened a lot. He seemed to really listen to what others were saying. He didn't necessarily propose solutions, but offered a listening ear, a real listening ear.

Then Adam decided to speak up:

"Before the trap, I was… I was convinced I was nothing. I was alive, but I was nothing. I didn't even want to live. Today, I want to live, and I've realized it, but I'm just… too broken to live. I have nightmares every night. Horrible nightmares. I can't get into a bathtub without thinking about the trap. Everything brings me back to it."

He took a deep breath, holding back the rising tears. And it was Leon who came to his rescue by speaking up, diverting attention from the dozen or so curious faces scanning Adam, probably waiting for him to burst into tears.

"I was in Raccoon City when it happened. September 30, 1998… It's a day I'll never forget. Somehow, I made it out. But too many others...weren't so lucky. But deep down, I know that the cop inside me died that day. If I could just forget what happened that night, the pain—even for a second."

Leon swallowed his saliva with difficulty, his eyes moist and his fingers clutching the fabric of his jeans.

"Thank you for your testimony, Leon" said the organizer. With a wave of his arms, he invited the participants to repeat what he had just said, and there was a brouhaha of more or less sincere "thank you for your testimony, Leon".

The rest of the session passed laboriously, and when it was over and Adam had put on his jacket, Leon approached him. The room had already all but emptied.

"Hi. My name's Leon." "Adam" he replied in a formal, wary tone. "First session, huh?" "Yeah, and probably the last." Adam replied with a deeply jaded look.

Leon could see through Adam's game. He knew that Adam's cynical, sarcastic attitude was just a mask. Just as Leon had closed in on himself like a shell, Adam was trying to repel others.

They stared at each other for a long, long time. Soon, the room was completely empty.

"Shall I walk you back to the parking lot?" offered Leon to Adam. "Why not" the dark-haired man conceded.

Five minutes later, they were in the men's bathroom, Leon pinning Adam against the wall, pressing his body against his and greedily exploring his mouth, Adam's arms around Leon's neck and Leon's hands on Adam's hips.

"Is this how you welcome newcomers?" sneered Adam against the blond's lips, as he slid his knee between his legs. "Just you. Only you." moaned Leon in his ear, before disengaging himself from the brunet's embrace and wiping his lips. "See you at the next session, Stanheight?" "Wait, all this so I can continue your bullshit therapy?"

Leon gave him a mischievous smile, placed a tender kiss on his cheek, and exited the restroom. Just before, he turned back to Adam and whispered in a soft voice:

"It's a date, yes." "Shit."

And so it was that Adam Stanheight didn't miss a single session of group therapy.

[knownangels]

pathetic

wc: 5.9k

Matilda is nineteen when the inching creep of illness finally takes him. She’s twenty five when it kills.

She collects her bounty from Isaac with a palm-up gesture of victory; he slaps a crisp twenty dollar bill into it and sighs. It’s a remarkably similar noise to the faint shhhhhhf down the hall, where Bunny busies herself dragging his body. 

When she passes the entrance to the dining room, where the two younger Rhoades children are completing their deal, she swears and drops the corpse. As it hits the ground, Matilda is not startled to find the thump against gleaming parquet wood so quiet. In the last few years, he’d lost quite a bit of weight. 

“Oh, fuck you.” She hisses as she marches up to them, jabbing a finger into Matilda’s shoulder. “What’d you say?”

“Three years four months nine days.”

Bunny’s mouth twitches into an intrigued, yet judgmental, scowl. She clicks her tongue. “That’s incredibly specific and so suspicious.” 

Matilda shrugs. “I was going off vibe.”

“I said five.” 

“Six.” Isaac signs.

Their father (the only one Matilda has ever cared to know and label and love) sighs and leans heavily against her shoulder, draped like a golden age starlet with a wrist over eyes bracketed with gentle crows feet. 

“You’ll donate to my renovation fund, right?” She asks demurely, making her voice all funny and high. The transatlantic accent is as accurate as it can get, not at all put-on: she’d spent a few decades in the late 19th century prowling the east coast for fun. 

“I’ve seen the offshore accounts.” Matilda says. She lifts two fingers, the twenty lodged daintily between them. “This isn’t even a drop in the bucket. I think you’ll be fine without my twenty.”

Before she knows what is even happening, Bunny has snatched the bill and zipped back towards the hall with a mean laugh. 

“Thank you oh so much, darling, it really is such a generous contribution to my future den of inequity and debauchery!” She pauses at the cracked door, mouth dramatically pouted and brows cinched as she looks back at them over a shoulder. “Do you think the bloody chains are too…you know?” 

“Camp?” Isaac spells out slowly, adding a sarcastic twist to each letter. 

“Stereotypical.” Matilda offers instead. 

*

Their mother insists upon dining as a family together that evening. Even Happy joins them. He sits between the scientist and Leo, arms crossed and unamused brow as heavy as usual. Isaac tells him a story, some gossip circulating in his mundane little friend group. He’s insisted on going to school, getting a degree; to what end, Matilda isn’t sure. She suspects he must like getting out of the home, meeting more people. She suspects it might also have something to do with the sheer volume of eager young men on a college campus, but will withhold that particular dig until he does something to piss her off. 

A soft clearing of the throat gathers their collective attention. 

“Now. I’m so very pleased we were all able to clear our schedules for this time together.” She touches a hand as far down the table as possible, towards their scientist. “And for those of us who set aside important experiments.” 

He shrugs, hands lifted slightly from the tablecloth in polite acknowledgment. “No need. The spinal cord transfusion did not take, as I suspected, and it went through quite the painful looking rejection.”

Everyone around the table, save Happy, make a sympathetic noise. He’s busy playing a word puzzle on his phone.

“As I was saying,” their mother continues, “I’m glad that we are all together today. Although I suspect that none of us has made a sacrifice of lost love, and certainly none of us are toughing through heartache, it can be a confusing thing. Death, I mean.”

“Rot in peace,” Isaac signs. Without looking up from his game, Happy lifts a hand to press thumb and index finger together, jabbing his wrist forward: period.

Their mother fights a smile. “Even so. There can be a variety of mixed feelings with a passing such as this. Although I think we will likely carry the evening as usual, I just want to make it clear that we are a family — we’re here for each other, whenever that need may arise.”

No one looks down the table at Matilda, except her mother: Happy’s phone dings. Isaac and Leo launched into a rapid-fire conversation about some political intrigue of lord so-and-so from wherever seating of the council, a side-show of drama that Matilda would otherwise also be drawn into. The scientist picks at his plate of food (although she’s never seen him eat, the plate will be mysteriously empty the second her eyes drift away and back), and Bunny busies herself shouting word puzzle answers to their accountant although he hasn’t asked or provided the clue.

You, her mother’s eyes seem to say. I am talking about you. I am expecting you to break down. I am expecting mess. Your father, although you never referred to him as such, has died; there’s no way you handle this like you should. I am expecting the worst. 

*

Matilda gives her the worst. 

The whole third floor is set aflame. She finds an ancient tome on one of the displays in the master bedroom and tears each page until the pieces are as close to molecular as she can manage. Three windows broken, two handmade rugs made ribbon with her nails alone, the moonflower patch she favors near the back patio dug up and salted. 

By the end of her rampage, Matilda forgets that it had started as a testament to her mother’s lack of faith entirely. She has just proved a point — but it is exactly what set her to this in the first place. Because she’s right. Matilda could not handle it: every atom of rage within her bubbled to the surface made her wonder. Made her fear.

Is this him? Is this him? Is this him?

No matter the nature of her creation, the mode the means the method — weren’t the pieces of her him, at some point in time? He’s dead. She reminds herself of that. She tries to, as she sits in the dark blue twilight, in the dirt graveyard she’s made of her mother’s beloved creation, but all she can think: this is him. 

Undoing. Destruction for the sake of it. Destruction for spite. A burning, unhinged desire to inflict the hurt she feels, the hurt she has no name for; a method to, if she’s fortunate, deflect it. To uproot, to ruin, to deny simple pleasures and love where it dug deep and blossomed. To create something vile from something sacred. 

Matilda kneels, shoulders curved and feeling wretched, in the remnants of lily-white blossoms and freshly watered soil for ten more minutes. Then she pushes herself to her feet, knees dirty, to go and tell her mother what she’s done.

*

I understand, she says. I understand, Matilda. 

She isn’t angry. But only because she had been right all along. Her palm cups Matilda’s cheek as softly and lovingly as ever. Matilda loosens the hug, but her mother doesn’t let go. Her free arm stays locked tight around Matilda’s shoulders. It feels more like a clutch than a hug. 

When they finally part, she’s looking up at Matilda with eyes full of unwavering love…and pity. 

Every concern Matilda knows she holds for her youngest child s validated, in that moment. She is unstable, she is incapable of controlling her capability, she is the last of three creations — each more strange and off than the last. She wonders, if she were a bit more wrong, whether she could have been the one in chains.  

Loved, of course. 

But loved and kept.

*

When she turns the corner down the hall from her mother’s room, fists wiping angrily at her eyes, someone catches her at the elbow and yanks her into an empty room.

She doesn’t yelp or turn with gnashing teeth or scream; there are only a few people in this place, and she trusts them all. 

Especially Happy, who it turns out is the one with a firm hand around her elbow.

“You gotta know something, kid.” He says, voice low. She wants to tell him there’s no point in that — that if her mother wants to hear, she will. Privacy is granted as long as one is within the lady of the manor’s good graces. And awarded even after, but with cost. Matilda doesn’t want him to owe anything; she doesn’t want him to pay his debt in pity, either. 

“I don’t want to know anything but nothing for a few hours.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “Which is why I’m going to go smoke until I puke and dissociate on, like, another plane of existence. You’re welcome to join.” 

Happy ignores the deflection. He even shakes her a bit. Matilda blinks. 

“It’s about that decrepit ol’ bastard.” 

*

It’s a relief that he’s gone. It’s a pity that he goes as he does, and a crime that it was fast. She would have liked it if he suffered. She would have liked to do it herself. She would have liked her mother to do the honors. Maybe Bunny. 

But they hadn’t been given the choice or the chance, because it hadn’t been the exhaustion or the wasting illness he’d survived for so long. When Happy hands her the folder of photographs and receipts and maps and transcript radio communications, he gives that choice back. That chance. 

“What is this?” She asks, but the answer to that question becomes starkly clear as the pages flit by. Shipments across sea, substances ordered and smuggled, deals across country lines that break historic alliances. All under the noses of the most powerful vampiric courts in the world. All with a purpose. 

“They haven’t perfected it yet.” Happy says when she gets to a glossy, if not slightly blurry, photograph of a ruined lab. There are glass vials shattered amongst the tile, a still pair of shoes out of frame, a bloodied lab coat tossed haphazard to the ground. And there, on one of the tables, is a glass tube of liquid. The color of its contents is hard to describe; all Matilda knows is that it calls to her, even in print. There is something about it that radiates — something. 

“It’s toxic so far. Mostly. Well, y’know. Sometimes.” He rotates a wrist in the air. “Kinda dogshit about lab safety, you got a buncha thralls banging around doing—” 

She blinks at him. 

“Okay. Anyway. Like I said, they haven’t perfected it yet. But they’re close, I think. Got sources. Not sure if it’s supposed to be a street drug, or some kind of control device, or just vampires being weird and fuckin’ evil.” Happy looks off to the side then back at her. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Matilda flips through several more pages. Chemical compounds, notations on phenotypes and Rh factors and all sorts of other scrabbled together research. “He was on this, or something?” 

“No. Someone gave it to him. Enough to be lethal.” He shrugs when her eyes snap up. “Well shit, Matilda. None of us, obviously. Only reason I know about all this —” his focus falters again, down the hall. Matilda imagines a little trail going down the stairs, out the west wing, into the sterile cool interior of their scientist’s lab on the grounds. “It’s not done yet. They need someone smart to fix it. Make it…whatever they want it to be. Distributable. And…” 

“They want him.” Her fingers tighten on the page. “What was the point?”

“It’s all connected.” Happy says. Then he pauses and snorts, making Matilda’s lips twitch. “That sounded real conspiracy. I know, I know. I mean, serious. I’m being serious as hell right now, all right? Shut up."

All the emotion bubbles up in her again, but this time there’s no destructive itch. She just flattens a hand over her mouth to fight the giggles. 

“He was definitely involved in some shit back in the day. I’m sure you know. Or I’m sure you’ve been told, right?” Happy’s head tilts to catch her gaze again. “Vamps in a lotta circles wanted him dead or controlled or worse, and not just because he was a fuckin’ clown. And I think they find out he hadn’t ate shit, and wanted to make it happen.” 

“How would anyone know?” 

Happy gives her a look. “Which one of us fucks around with ‘em the most?”

*

She finds Leo lounging where he can usually be found. On the rooftop, arms tucked under his mop of golden curls, red-ringed pupils shut to the glow of the moon. 

“You’re in my light.” 

Matilda doesn’t move away from him, doesn’t cast her shadow politely off to the side. She waits until he cracks a lid open. He’s fed recently; the wet mercury of their eyes gets deeper, gets layered, once they’ve had a little blood. They don’t have to drink like others. Leo just likes to. 

Matilda crouches beside him, knees tucked and arms wrapped around her shins. “This is pretty sentimental of you, ‘Lo.” 

Leo’s head turns at the old nickname. She wonders if a vision of her, tiny and knobby-kneed, bounces through his head fondly. She wonders if Leo is capable of fondness. “It’s relaxing.” 

“Yeah? Is that what he used to yank you up here to do? Relax?” 

To her delight, the comment flusters him just enough to pull an annoyed huff. It’s counter intuitive to a good mood, which she needs him in to ask questions, but the sibling need to tease him about an old flame is too tempting. 

“I’m putting Benji down on the list of banned topics.” 

“My first amendment right.” Matilda says, voice a mask of shock. 

He huffs again, and now sits up straight. “Did you come up here to just be fucking annoying, or —”

“Happy thinks somebody killed him.” Matilda blurts. They stare at each other a long moment. She rocks back to fall on her ass, flop backwards to spread her arms and lay against the night cooled material of the roof. There will be twigs and bits of shingle in her hair but…she doesn’t want to move. She can’t. Everything bubbles up again, but there are no giggles now. No destruction. It just feels heavy. 

Leo blinks. “Dad?” 

“Don’t call him that.” 

“He was, Mati. Like, at least by biology a little bit?” He squeezes her knee. “I’m not saying you don’t get to be — you don’t get to feel — Jesus.” Leo swipes a hand down his face. “Just…tell me what Happy said.” 

She glares at him, thinking of the folder and its contents store beneath her bed frame. “Did you tell anyone about him?” 

Leo is such a shit liar, she thinks. The question smacks into him in an immediate display of shock and then guilt. His eyes go big and no, not me for the barest second. And then everything closes off, expression stony and smooth. He turns it off so well, but he’s still her brother. They’re still made from the same stuff. 

(Him?)

“You did.” She hisses. “Who?” 

“Nobody.”

“Leo.” Matilda sits up too. Then she stands, the moon to her back. He’s in her shadow again. “Leo. Tell me who.”

Leo tries not to. He really does. But she makes her eyes big, her expression serious and wounded and something akin to the little girl who would come in and tug his sleeve, ask to play, cry for attention, need a hug when she fell. Matilda doesn’t mean to be so good at it. To manipulate so thoroughly. But she learned it from him. She learned so much from Leo. 

“Alright.” He says finally, with a sigh. He reaches out with an empty palm, and Matilda knows (in the way that siblings do, silent communication and a shared pattern of thought) to put her phone there. He types in an address to her notes. And then a name.

Matilda’s face scrunches at the letters. “Fi-ah…fi-duh?” 

“Her name’s Fiadh.” Leo rolls his eyes. That flustered look is all over him again, shoulders up. She can’t tell if it’s for show. If she’s being a little manipulated, too. “Fee-ah. She — I told her. About him. About the cellar. About — I don’t know, it…it was just one of those moments, you know?” 

Matilda doesn’t know. She nods anyway.

“I trusted her. I’m not sure why.” He goes distant, trying to recall the memory. When it seems to elude him, his face scrunches. “I can’t remember telling her, though. She runs this place out in the country. Like a blood bank, except for the pussy ones.” When Matilda offers him an unamused look, he rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. The no humans losers. The ethical fucks. Stupid. But — she smuggles. I know she does. I don’t know how or what, but it was some shady shit.”

Matilda nods. She stands. 

Leo shoots out to grab her ankle. “Mati.” 

It’s all he says. Her name, the hold on her, the grip, the concern; she’s kept. She’s weak. 

The heaviness returns to her, a weight expanding cylindrical from the center of her out. She’s afraid to burst again. She’s afraid to — him. 

She can see the pleading in Leo’s eyes. Sometimes, when he looks at the two of them (his babies, even though he won’t say it, his siblings, his wards, the parts to his whole, three angles fit to make an equal triangle) she doesn’t doubt how deeply he feels. 

And then other times, like when she’d caught him burying something stiff and pale in the backyard beneath the willow, she thinks: him.

She’s glad she hadn’t dug that portion of the garden up. There are things she wants to know, and things she doesn’t.

*

Fiadh is pretty. Her little rabbit farm is cute. 

Matilda hates her immediately and with a strange stab of red-hot rage so severe that doesn’t shock her so much as catch her by surprise. 

Matilda isn’t jealous of her adorable bedroom, painted earthy green and with plenty of tasteful velvet, weave, and jewel tones. She isn’t jealous of sweet little animals that roam the whole farmhouse, nor the pink-painted hutches in the big barn out back, nor the acres of wildflower planted land for them to roam happy and free. 

Matilda isn’t sure what she’s jealous of — but it rises up in her just like the heavy anger, the desolate feeling of something being taken. 

I don’t know what you did, she thinks, staring at the back of the girl’s head through the sheer-curtain covered window. But you took a right from me. From us. I don’t know how, but I do know how I’m going to get some of it back.

*

Up close, Fiadh’s hair is even prettier. It’s shiny and long, ending in bouncy curled waves by her elbows. Matilda imagines brushing it. She imagines running her fingers through it. She’d call it maybe — amber. Maybe honey. Something darker, layered; just ruddy enough not to be blonde, a color so interesting that people pay hundreds to have it mimicked. 

Golden, but ran through with auburn strands; yes, honey. Honey.

Not any, though. The fancy kind; glass jar, organic sticker stamped, tasteful and classy minimalist font. Overpriced. Because at the end of the day — it tastes just the same as any other honey. It’s nothing special. It doesn’t taste better, smell better, come from a better hive. 

Matilda fists her hand in that hair and yanks. 

*

It’s a short fight. Fiadh’s as strong as any vampire, but she clearly isn’t accustomed to using it. Matilda had waited for all the security vehicles to leave. Had watched as Fiadh stood in the doorway, a robe hanging from one shoulder precariously, to wave them off for the night. It was an awful lot of security for a silly little farm, vampiric clientele aside. 

Fiadh isn’t strong, but she knows things that Matilda wants to know. And that isn’t the jealousy, although it stays stuck wet in the bottom of her throat as they glare at each other, all the same. 

“I’m going to eat them all.” Matilda reveals in a sultry, winded whisper. Her fist is tight to Fiadh’s throat, the other woman’s close to a similar squeeze under her jaw. She pushes Matilda’s snapping, laughing jaws away with a sharp cry. Her disgust at the admission is enough: Matilda throws her off with enough force that her diminutive form gets air. 

Fiadh braces on trembling hands, palms bloody with streaks from Matilda’s sharp nails. She looks pathetic. She looks pretty. Matilda nudges her cheek with a knee, and Fiadh looks at her with wet, terrified eyes through honeyed strands.  

Matilda is stronger. Matilda comes from a better hive. 

She likes to think she tastes better, too.

*

Fiadh is a good Catholic girl. Or she was, at some point, before turning. She screams and wails and then moans weakly from the chair Matilda has restrained her in. A crucifix taped to the center of her heaving chest is enough to keep her weak. 

Matilda wants her weak, not dead. Awake, not out. She wants to make sure she watches. 

You took something from me. I don’t know what you did — I just know I want that back. 

“It’s your last chance.” She singsongs. She stands in the center of the room, a black and white mottled rabbit tucked in the crook of her elbow. Its fire is so, so soft beneath her fingers. She wanted a rabbit when she was younger. She wanted a whole zoo. Bunny and her scientist had done their best to fulfill every one of her desires, but that particular age had been trouble — she would have torn through anything fragile. She would have torn through anything strong; the willpower had not been a trained skill, then.

It is now. But more often than not, Matilda finds it fun to abandon. 

“Please,” Faith sniffles weakly. She looks pathetic. She still looks beautiful. Something nasty and cruel bubbles up Matilda’s chest. “Just tell me what you want, okay? I don’t know what I did. I’m sorry. I’ll make it better. I can help.”

Matilda sneers. She could make it quick. Fiadh had given a merciful death — one that wasn’t hers to give. And that was a luxury. A privilege. A nicety for things that deserved it. Maybe the rabbits deserve a merciful, painless, quick death. But Matilda doesn’t have it in her to offer that, at the moment. 

Instead she lifts the rabbit to her mouth. She holds Fiadh’s gaze for the entire of the slow, steel-jawed bite. She sinks her fangs into its neck slowly. She drinks slowly. It gives a little kick and yelp, something sad that twists a piece of her deep down. Then its little fragile chest begins to heave as it dies. 

Slowly.

Fiadh watches in horror. Her big bloodied-amber eyes are beautiful and wet, tear-framed as they are. They spill over her cheeks and down her neck, over her clavicle. Matilda hopes they burn when they get to the raw skin where the crucifix rests. 

When she’s done with the creature, she tosses it aside in a fluffy heap in the corner of the room. Faith moans again, broken-hearted. 

“That wasn’t even your favorite one, was it?” Matilda kneels down to peer at its limp body, the collar around its neck that reads Snowbell. “I want to know which ones are your favorite. No — I want to know which ones you hate. Do you have them all named? Do you mix them up, sometimes? Gosh, some of them look alike. Do you have to put collars on them so you know which is which, because you don’t love them all equally?” 

Fiadh sniffles. Her brow isn’t knotted with rage, an expression Matilda might respect. Instead, it’s slack and sad. She’s already given up. One little bunny, and the fight has gone out of her. 

Pathetic, Matilda’s thoughts scoff. 

“Cunt.” 

Her eyebrows shoot up, a grin splitting her messy, gory mouth. “Oh.” 

*

Matilda is methodical about it, after that. The brief glimpse of fire in the vampire hadn’t lasted long. She’d returned to her normal sniveling, damsel-in-distress tears just as soon as the insult had passed her lips. 

Around rabbit four, she tries to dip her face away. To squeeze her eyes shut. Matilda goes and finds a little white one, fur dyed lilac purple, with an adorable bell collar in an adorable fluffy bed in Fiadh’s adorable, adorable bedroom. 

She fists a hand in that pretty hair (streaked with sweat, flyaways, imperfect) and forces Fiadh to watch her drain that one, too. And when she’s done, when the other vampire looks sick and pale and like she would prefer to be anywhere else but in that stifling hot, metallic-scented room, Matilda leans down. She rubs their mouths together until Fiadh recoils with a retching noise, tears flowing freely to mingle with the red stain smearing across her mouth and cheeks. 

*

She feeds and feeds and feeds.

Unlike Leo, it isn’t something she does often. She and Isaac prefer the food of the living — more substance, more diversity, more tastes. 

But there’s something about the rabbits that makes it incapable to stop gorging herself. The adorable farmhouse and Fiadh’s adorable bedroom will need gallons of stain remover by the time Matilda tires of the tortuous little feast. And still, as she stumbles blood-drunk down the front steps of the wraparound porch, Matilda eyes the rabbit hutches across the yard and hungers. 

The walk back into town will take her the remainder of the night. She imagines walking towards the city limits as the sun rises; were she a little different, it would bake her alive. Leave a smear of shadow and ash on the roadside. But she’s not a little different; she’s a little him. And so she walks and walks, waits for the feeling of the sun on her face. 

She feels normal until the third mile. It’s then that her steps become strange and off kilter. Her limbs feel tight and heavy. Not with exhaustion, but something else. A dizzying soda carbonation fizz that has her cheeks warm and eyes blown wide. It reminds her of the punch-drunk crossfade of alcohol and a club line offered on a pretty girl’s compact mirror. 

By mile six, the feeling has faded into something nasty like withdrawal.

She favors her left side in a heavy, pained limp as she walks. The night air is crisp and wet, the perfect weight of humidity filling her lungs with every step. Honeysuckle and ozone cling to the rainy pavement, mist rising from between its cracked fissures. For a moment, she imagines she moves through prehistory; a fog-filled jungle, instead of the after-rain concrete. Ferns larger than her head — ferns larger than buildings. Creatures of all size and shape, scaled and feathered and fanged or blunt-molared.

But it’s not millions of years in the past. Matilda is the only creature around; things smart enough to avoid her, do.

The operator of the approaching car is not one of those, so it seems. She can feel the rumble of it beneath her bare feet. And even without that, she had heard the heartbeat of its occupant three miles out. Her senses are better when her stomach is full, her tongue slick and heavy with something iron rich. But they’re not usually this good. And surely not from something as meager as a few rabbits. She feels…she feels— 

The car approaches, but Matilda doesn’t turn from her steady trek. Her face remains forward until she knows the driver is near enough to see her.

She schools her eyes wide, terror-filled. The tears spring up so quick she feels a tingle of pride. And then she pauses in the center of the road, hair whipping around her face as she turns to be blinded by the headlights. It isn’t acting that brings one bloody palm up to shield her eyes. It isn’t acting that makes her muscles quake, her skin shiver; but it isn’t the weather, either.

Matilda has never felt so warm inside. So snap-fast alive. And when the car slows, she realizes it was not a heartbeat she heard, but a steady bassline.

The driver is not human. There are no lights on in the interior, but her eyes — whatever Faith had been smuggling in those cute little beasts was something else, that was for sure. She can see each individual follicle of peach fuzz on his face, each dark hair that completes the shape of his pretty, concern-scrunched brow. 

More than all that, Matilda focuses on the blood-flushed wet meat red of his eyes. 

It takes so much willpower to keep her mouth from jumping into a nasty, intrigued grin. But it takes nothing at all to stumble forward, one shaking hand outstretched in a silent plea. 

“Help,” Matilda whispers, knowing that he can hear it even twenty feet away, even as quiet as she keeps the word. 

The car’s engine does not cut; he’s stupid for that. She could close the distance and pull herself into the front seat of the — well, she’s not sure what sort of car it is. The trashy shine of a classic muscle car likely fifteen years older than she is…they all start to look the same. So do their owners. 

Except this one. She likes this one. No pretentious, condescending gleam to his eye. No, howdy, lil girl, no are you all alone out here, do you need a lift, no oh my fucking god oh christ what are you please don’t it hurts. 

Not yet, anyway. Her mouth fills with saliva as the driver vacates. He’s graceful about it in a charmingly careful way. Like he doesn’t trust this — like he knows better.

Matilda squeezes her arms tighter around her waist. The cardigan she’d stolen from Fiadh’s closet slips, bunches at her elbows. 

He knows better, but his posture relaxes when the pale curve of each shoulder is revealed. She’s almost disappointed in how quickly. How easy, as usual, that they are. Always, always easy — even the ones who know better.

“Help,” Matilda squeaks again, stumbling forward. She falls with a soft noise — nothing too loud, or too sharp. She’s supposed to be weak, after all. She hangs her head to mask the sharp breath she takes when the wind carries his scent over. Dark and rainy, sticky leather like he didn’t care about the state of the seats, something spicy and sharp — boy. 

She puts a hand to her mouth to wipe the saliva. And then, because she’s supposed to need help and she’s supposed to be weak, she fakes a sob.

“Did — holy shit.” He must see now how covered and sticky with blood she is; Matilda looks up just in time, bright grey through strands of rain-wet hair, to watch him cover his own face. His eyes have dilated dark and big, lashes fluttering. The fresh smell of it calling to him, most likely. He’s trying to hide what he is from her. He hasn’t noticed yet.

That she’s more like him than a human. More than him, in the first place.

“Are you alright? Fuck. Were you all the way out in the forest? Where’d you come from?”

Matilda stares up at him. You don’t want to know, handsome. 

Instead of speaking, she wills the tears back up and begins to sob. 

*

The drive back into civilization is long enough that he keeps turning from the drivers seat, assuring her that they’re almost there, she’ll be okay, she’ll be warm soon enough. 

That he sits there in one piece, his pretty neck in one piece and untorn by her teeth, is a miracle. He doesn’t seem to realize it. He only sees the shivering figure of a scantily clad girl, a rescue, tucked under his jacket in the backseat. 

It smells of him. The car smells of him. And it smells like more than just him. It reeks of a whole crowd, a barrage of sensation that makes her stomach turn. 

“Your car is so cool,” Matilda lies. In the rearview mirror, his eyes dart to her when she shifts. He’s quick about turning them away; he doesn’t want her to notice their off-putting color. “If I get sick in it, I’m going to feel awful.” 

“It’s not mine,” he laughs. “So don’t worry about that. Aim for the seats if you want. Leather is expensive to clean, apparently.” 

Matilda offers what she hopes is an adequately charming and weak giggle. “You hate whoever drives it?” She makes her eyes big. “Or — or. Oh my God. Oh God, you didn’t steal it —” 

She can hear how loud his nervous gulp is, even without the recently enhanced senses. “No. I— it’s my friend’s car. I was borrowing. Uh, legally. Legally borrowing.”

Matilda pretends to relax, like she believes him. She tucks the jacket higher around her chin when he looks back again — for a moment too long.

“I’m so glad you were out here. I got lucky — I just. I don’t know where they came from. I don’t know where my friends are.” Her voice hitches. “Do you think — do you think they’re okay? Oh, fuck. You aren’t going to believe me, but…” 

“Try me.” 

Matilda fights a smile. She tries to channel Fiadh; pouting, pretty, pathetic. “It was supposed to be just a group of us. There’s a place up in the mountains—” she pretends to demure here, withhold details. It flusters him visibly to fill in the blanks. “But when we got there — they... There was so much blood.” 

The driver is quiet for a very long moment. His knuckles look extra pale where they grip the wheel, and Matilda loses track of herself staring at the working flex of his jaw. 

When he glances at her in the mirror again, he jumps. The car jerks and he overcorrects, veering them in the other direction.

Matilda has moved closer, impossibly silent in the cramped interior. She leans as close as she can without touching, her chin hovering just over his shoulder. Their eyes snap together in the rearview, and something confused passes over expression alongside the momentary terror. 

In each pass of the streetlights, Matilda’s eyes look even more otherworldly. She’s fed. She wonders if she can see all that blood beneath the grey. She isn’t masked with fear, traumatized or shaking. Matilda stares at him, head cocked, fanged smile sharp and very close to his neck. 

“Help,” Matilda whispers. She inches forward, lips parted, fingers curling around the driver’s seat. Inching closer and closer to a clawlike hold on his shoulder. “Help, help. There are monsters out here.” 

The breaks screech. Matilda laughs wildly as the car loses control and careens in a circle; although the blur of their spin-out snaps his attention, she can only stare at him in the mirror. She thinks of spilling blood and the taste of it and the give of flesh beneath her teeth. Slow motion midspin, she reaches up to tuck hair behind his ear. It leaves a smear of wet blood to dry in the bleached strands. 

*

When the car settles and the smoking tires slide to a halt, when Lark whips around with hand outstretched and a stake retrieved from the drivers side door (amidst wrappers and receipts and condoms, for fuck’s sake), there is no one in the backseat.

There is no one on the road, either. But he swears he sees the shiny glint of a pair of eyes retreat into the tall grass on the side of the road. 

He swears.

[mildlylesbian]

MCYTblr Sexyman Bracket Round 3 Predictions

There has been a lot of debate for who deserves to win these polls. Many say the people like Scar and Cleo are not sexymen, for they are far too traditionally sexy. Do I agree with them? Absolutely. However they do not consider the fact that Scar is a wet cat, and I like Cleo. JoeHills may deserve to win, but they deserve to come second.

Anyway, I'll give brief reasons for why I think the person will win their matchup. Feel free to fight me in the tags, or you can personally come to my home and beat me up. Let me know what works best for you!

Scar VS JSchlatt

This one needs no explanation. Everyone and their cat is going to vote for Scar, the fanartists simply draw him too sexy. He also has the personality of a tumblr sexyman, for he is incompitant yet charming and has people that will cheer for him while he commits crimes against the universe.

Techno VS CaptainSparklez

I don't have strong feelings about either of these people, but based off round 2 they'll probably be pretty close in scores. I do think Techno will win by a small margine, simply because a lot of people enjoy him. Regardless of who wins they will be crushed by Scar in round 4, so rip to them both.

Doc VS False

This is such a good match up imo, and the fact I will be made to choose hurts me on a personal level. Overall Doc gives me more tumblr sexyman vibes than False, as he is insane and i mean that as a compliment. So, Doc will win but False will fight him like hell.

Ren VS Oli

Another great match-up. This one will probably be too close to call until the very end since they both have great sexyman vibes, and as much as I adore ren I do believe Oli will/should win. Do I watch him? No. However he seems weird, and that is the key to be a sexyman.

Cleo VS Eret

Cleo is hot, she should win. Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

On a more serious note, I do think this race will be close. I do not know who Eret is, but based off of posts I've seen they do appear to have sexyman vibes. unfortunately Cleo is hot and we are all simps, so he will lose.

Pearl VS Philza

I see the appeal of Philza, I see why he could win, HOWEVER DL Pearl is a wet cat who tries to act tough but just breaks down into tears every other minute. She is pathetic and must win.

Bdubs VS LDShadowLady

They're both weird af, I don't know what to tell you. the race will probably be close, but Bdubs will pull ahead solely because he has been babygirl-ified to the moon and back. Also, I'd like to talk to whoever made the short kings fight.

Joel VS Ranboo

I know nothing about Ranboo, but I know people like him and he's probably weird. Because of this he'll pull ahead, however Joel will put up a great fight for he is pathetic. truly a showdown for the ages.

Etho VS Aimsey

I know nothing about Aimsey and I feel sorry for her, because Etho may be small in size but he is a legend and will probably win solely based on that fact. Will it be a slaughter? No. But it will still be heartbreaking.

Scott VS Jimmy

I'd like to file a formal complient to everyone who had a hand in making this matchup possible. Regardless of the winner we all lose, so what's the point?

The point is to tell you Jimmy is far more pathetic than 99% of the people in this bracket, and especially more pathetic than Scott, and based off of this alone he should win. However, if he ends up losing that will also be funny.

Mumbo VS Impulse

A good match, and not a soulcrushing one like the last one. Honestly, Mumbo is a pathetic wet cat while Impulse is the squishest person to ever grave our screens. Because of this the race will be close, however mumbo will probably win because we all miss him and think he deserves it.

Pixs VS Charlie

No idea who Charlie is, however his skin seems to appeal to people and he looks like a wet cat. I also know next to nothing about Pix, but he seems far to compitent to be a sexyman. Therefore, Charlie wins.

Joe VS Xisuma

I AM NOT IMMUNED TO JOE HILLS PROPAGANDA. Xisuma is fundimentally not a tumblr sexyman, meanwhile he is put up against the weirdest, most inconsistant, and confusing man to ever exist. Joe will sweep, you will vote joe, we will make this happen.

Wilbur VS Tango

based off pure vibes, Wilbur will probably win. Tango will put up a great fight, and might keep it neck in neck for a while, however Wilbut seems far to cryptid to lose.

Grian VS Keralis

Two people commonly portrayed by the fandom as cosmic horrors. In my opinion, Grian will win because his sad boi (tm) traumatic backstory is more fleshed out and his cosmic horror design lends for more interesting art, plus his channel size is sure to boost his votes. Overall, Keralis is very cool but he stood no chance.

Sausage VS Quackity

I know nothing about these men, but based off vibes alone I feel like it will be a close fight. Quackity will probably pull ahead in the last few hours, but I can see it going either way. They both seem very weird.

[ramblinganthropologist]

Fictober 24 8 - Are we happy

Original fiction: Sunburst Idol Unit, dead name used for one character.

Summary: Tsukamoto Lena and Rin are top idols at Seiza Academy. You think that'd be great, but it comes with a lot of stress. One night, they find themselves asking the question they don't want to answer: is this making them happy?

---

“Thanks for coming everyone!”

In the darkened auditorium, the sea of crimson penlights looked like a galaxy of stars glittering in the night. Of course, most stars aren’t red, but that was besides the point as she stood there, waving at the audience.

Lena was dripping sweat, but her smile was huge as the curtain closed in front of her. Once it was down, she let out a sigh of relief and dropped her final pose, reaching up to wipe her brow. Her entire body felt sticky and hot – she would need a shower when she got home for sure.

Luckily, that was her last event for the day, so she’d be home within the hour.

“Nice work as always, Tsukamoto-san.” The tech this time was a first year – they had to be one of the best if they were handling her show. She smiled at them as she handed back her headset and battery pack to be charged for the next performance.

Maybe they’d be in the Zodiac next year.

“Thanks, good job on keeping everything together. Don’t forget to get home safe when you’re done for the day!”

They shouted they would as she left the stage behind, exiting into the warm up area. Being the headliner and Zodiac for the girls’ dance division, she got to go first. Therefore, it was hard to miss the nervous looking first year fidgeting as they waited to be called up.

“Relax, Yuka-chan. You’ve practiced so hard this week.” Lena patted them on the shoulder as she passed, heading to the dressing room so she could change into her street clothes and head home. “Just remember to keep your time and you’ll do just fine.”

Yuka brightened visibly at her touch. “I will, senpai, I promise!”

Then she was queued onto the stage and disappeared behind the door. Lena normally would’ve stayed to watch from the sidelines, but she’d had a long day of interviews and wanted to get some rest. Besides, she still had to study her script for next week’s taping of Secret Lives, and that took time.

It sucked – she liked watching the first years – but it was part of being a busy idol.

After a few minutes, Lena changed out of her performance clothes and into something more comfortable that wouldn’t get her noticed in public. By now, she was a master of keeping a low profile, brought on by two years of learning how to sidestep and fool fans looking for an autograph when she had somewhere to go. It wasn’t the nicest, but she was only human and didn’t always have it in her to give fan service.

A girl had her limits, you know?

“You make a good senpai, Lena.”

A soft voice drew her attention. Waiting off to the side, sketchbook under her arm, was her twin sister. Rin was the older by a half hour, and that bit of time was all the difference needed to set them apart. Where Lena was energetic and outgoing, her sister was quiet and introverted. People could hardly believe they were sisters sometimes, much less twins.

But they looked alike, so… that was on people.

“Didn’t think I’d see you today, didn’t you have a project due for design class?” Lena cocked her head to the side as they started their walk out of the building. Rin had said something about showing up to campus that morning over breakfast, but the details had been lost on her. They sometimes were when she was hungry.

Her sister nodded at her question. “I handed it in earlier after I got back from the radio show taping and peeked my head in to see you perform once I was done.”

Right – Rin had been invited to be a guest star on Cheery Chii-chan’s weekend broadcast. It was one of the hottest radio shows in their age bracket, and plenty of Seiza students would’ve given anything to get a few minutes. She had gotten the whole hour as the titular idol’s costar for the day, which just showed how far she was progressing.

“How’d that go?”

Rin’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Well, she was true to her name. We played a lot of Harunokaze’s fall selection, but I made sure Seiza got represented fairly.”

Their school would’ve expected nothing less. As one of the top idol schools in the country, Seiza Academy prided itself on its students’ participation in all forms of media. It was also brutally competitive – only the best could rise to the top.

And they were both near or at the top of their game.

“That’ll make the headmistress happy.” Lena started to open the door, but then she stopped at the familiar sound of people chattering, eagerly waiting for something. “Ah, crap.”

Carefully, she peered through the small window. Gathered outside were a group of fans, autograph boards and merch in hand as they waited for their idol. Most Seiza fans stuck to the meet and greets and handshake events, but there were some that couldn’t get enough. These were the die-hards, the ones who’d do anything to meet their favorite performer.

And a lot of them had her picture.

“They must’ve snuck out after your performance.” Rin used her greater height to peer through too. Then she blanched slightly. “Oh, no. I think they’re here for me too.”

Lena was too afraid to look. “Are you sure it’s you? We do look alike.”

“No, it’s definitely me, your hair’s way shorter than mine.” Her sister sighed. “Well, it’s the only door out. Only way to get home is to go through it.”

She straightened up and slipped on her performer’s smile like it was a well worn jacket. Then she tightened her hair ribbons and smoothed out her skirt, making sure she looked presentable. Next to her, Lena pulled out the red ribbon that had become her trademark and tied back her usual ponytail.

Maybe she should’ve kept it tied, but… well, she wasn’t expecting the oshis.

Before they opened the door, the twins shared a glance. Lena then nodded and pushed, stepping out first. Almost immediately, her fans began to shout and offer their boards. Lucky for them, she had her red pen ready, having fished it out of her pocket moments before.

“Thanks for coming to see me, guys.” She beamed at the crowd as she signed their boards and merch. “Hope you enjoyed the show.”

One girl, probably high school aged, hugged her signed merch close. “You were great as always, Lena-chan! I know you’ll be the head of the Zodiac for sure one day!”

She offered a smile back. “I’ll do my best, I promise.”

Across from her, Rin was facing a smaller but similar crowd of fans. She too had a pen, though hers was dark blue to match her image color. Her signature was also much neater and she signed it in kanji – Lena preferred katakana for her name for obvious reasons.

It was one of the many reasons people called them the sun and moon of Seiza.

“Rin-chan, your last show was so good! When are you performing next?”

Her sister’s smile was gentle and sweet. “I think it should be next weekend, but I’ll post about it on social media when I’m sure.”

The girl swore she would be there for it, as did a few others. Then more came to get their merch signed, echoing praise and promises to show up. By the time it was all over, 10 minutes had passed. Yet they all went away happy, clutching their signed merch and memories of meeting their favorite idol.

Lena was glad to see them go as she allowed her shoulders to drop. Next to her, Rin’s posture also loosened. The two sighed in relief and stowed their pens in their pockets before starting their journey home. Somehow, they had survived another boss rush.

---

Later that night, Lena found herself in her bedroom, highlighted script in hand as she hung upside down from her bed. She liked to think the blood rushing to her head helped her memorize better – it certainly felt that way. Then again, she had gotten a lot better since landing the permanent spot on Secret Lives, so maybe it was just experience talking.

Either way, a new perspective helped.

“Alright, I guess I should say the line like that…” She reached for the pen behind her ear and scribbled a note down on the paper. “Or would it work the other way… maybe I can run it by Honey before class on Monday…”

Her acting partner and fellow Seiza student was great to bounce ideas off of, but she was impossible to reach on the weekend due to her current work schedule. They barely saw each other during the week thanks to the fact they were in different specializations – the most time they spent together was on set these days.

It was kind of sad. She liked the girl. It made her wish they were both in Dance class together.

Her attention was broken when the door swung open. In stepped Rin, sketchbook under her arm and glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. She made her way over to her side of their shared room and sighed as she laid facedown on her bed, barely remembering to take her glasses off before she buried her nose in the blanket.

Lena put the pen back behind her ear. “Design critique not go over well?”

“Does it ever?” Rin’s voice was lower now – she wasn’t making it soft like she did for school – and her accent was seeping through the borrowed Tokyo dialect. “I don’t know what sensei wants out of me, I followed her darn instructions to a T this time.”

Who knows – Lena wasn’t in design classes since her focus was in dance. She had certainly heard stories from her sister about it, but it wasn’t like she knew what to expect from the design teacher. There were rumors she was an ogre when it came to details, but apart from that she was in the dark.

But she had to be bad to get Rin to lean into her accent – she worked hard to cover it up for school. If not for the fact Lena didn’t try to hide hers, nobody would have known the difference.

“You’ll get ‘em next time.” She flipped the page of her script, staring down at the highlighted text. “Don’t forget to find out when your performance is so you can put it on social media. Your fans are chomping at the bit to see you.”

Rin let out a groan that was half muffled by the blanket. “I was hoping not to see them today, my face hurts from smiling.”

True – her sister wasn’t actually all that prone to smiling. That was a pretty good act too, one of the best Lena had seen at Seiza. Not even their classmates knew the truth – if that wasn’t the mark of a professional, she didn’t know what was.

It was too bad she wasn’t into acting �� she could’ve been great.

“Yeah, I’m pretty beat too. I thought they were supposed to keep the oshis from the door on Saturdays.” Lena sighed and closed her eyes. She liked her fans and all, but being constantly on was kind of exhausting. “At least we don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow.”

Sunday was typically their only day off if they got one at all between their busy schedules. Seiza wasn’t known for giving a lot of breaks in its quest to produce the best idols in the nation, so the workload was pretty tough even for normal students.

And of course, they weren’t normal students – Lena was the top of her class, and Rin was nearing the top of hers with every day. Their schedules were pretty jam packed between classes, lessons, and their various activities.

But that was what came from being a top idol.

“Yeah…” Rin sighed too. Then she rose from her position on her bed and sat up, shoulders drooping. “Lena… are you ok with all this?”

Lena stopped scribbling on her script. “Ok with all what?”

Her sister’s frown was deep as she returned her glasses to her face. “Being an idol. We barely get a rest with how hard we’re working, and it’s a pain to be on all the time. I barely get any time to draw anymore…”

She trailed off. “I know you miss soccer. It’s why you kept your cleats.”

It was true – they were in her closet, tucked away from where she had last put them after graduating elementary school. They still fit, too, though they were a little tight in the toes. Not that she had much time to use them, what with practice and all her events.

No doubt her former team was getting better and better the further they got into playing in middle school.

Lena sighed as she put her script aside for a second. “Yeah, I do. But it’s not like I could do both. Seiza doesn’t even have a team.”

“A regular school would. You could probably be the ace like you promised Kenta back in elementary school.” Even hearing his name still hurt her – it had been nearly two years since they had last spoken. “Admit it… this wasn’t what you thought it would be like when we sighed up.”

As much as it pained her to admit, Rin was right. When they had auditioned for Seiza two years ago, Lena’s eyes had sparkled at the thought of getting on stage and being with the best in the nation. What she hadn’t realized was how much work it would be to get there and maintain it. Se rose earlier than ever to get morning practice before school, and long hours kept her from home. Some days, she didn’t even see Rin until it was time for bed.

It wasn’t exactly a normal middle school experience…

“No, it wasn’t.” Lena sighed. “Part of me wishes we hadn’t signed up at all some days.”

It was weird, admitting it. It wasn’t as if she hated being an idol… it was just really tiring some days. She barely saw her friends from elementary school anymore, and even in the brief moments she did it felt like they were from two different worlds. They had regular lives of school and clubs and hanging out with their friends after class. To them, idols were just something they saw on TV.

It was a different thing altogether to live it.

“Yeah… me too.” Rin’s frown deepened as she pulled her legs close to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. “Lena… are we happy?”

The question cracked through the room like lightning, stunning both into silence. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. It was hard to breathe in that moment as she tried to think of an answer to the question. At the same time, she didn’t want to answer at all.

She didn’t like her response.

Neither said anything for a long time. In the end, Rin sat down at her desk to begin sketching something new for class and Lena picked up her script to continue memorizing her lines. An uneasy tension settled over the room, thick and heavy, and remained there as they continued their work through the evening.

No doubt it would prompt a sleepless night. Questions like that always did.

---

The spotlight was shining bright that day, and it made her sweat even harder.

Her final scream echoed through the building, amplified by the mic. It harmonized with the long held note, high and clear, of her stage partner. In front of them stretched a sea of red and blue penlights, waved by their adoring fans.

Hopefully, this would be enough to get them into Seiza’s high school.

Lena grinned, flashing her fangs as she waved to her fans. “Thanks for coming, y’all! You better come back next semester to see us!”

Then the curtain went down, and she sighed in relief. The sweat was dripping down her face, and even wiping it away with her hand did nothing. Still, it was hard to keep a grin off her face as she stood there, recovering after a long set.

Seiza’s entrance exam performance was a brutal one, but she was pretty sure they nailed it.

“You’re going to create a lake if you don’t dry off.”

The voice was accompanied by a towel that landed on her head, blocking out her vision. Lena sputtered for a second, not expecting it. It took her a second to see again, but when she could she spotted her attacker.

“Aniki, not cool.”

Ritsu smirked at her as he worked to dry off with his own towel, briefly removing his glasses so he could pat his face dry. Once it was clear, back on they went. That was the only way he showed he had performed at all – his outfit was perfect and there wasn’t a hair out of place.

Unlike her – she went hard and it showed.

“Well, I didn’t want to go swimming.” He shrugged. “Hurry up, there’s another set behind us and I want to go home.”

Lena nodded as she followed behind her older brother, threading through the back stage and making it into the performance area. The next act was already there, ready to go. They, naturally, stared at the passing duo as if they had two heads, but at least they weren’t saying anything.

It was a little hard to say shit to the head of the Zodiac and the top of the singing class.

Once they were changed into their street clothes, the pair met back up near the vending machine. Coins clinked and cans rattled as they got their drinks to cool down. Like always, her brother went for iced coffee. She went for a soda – coffee was only good hot in her opinion.

“So, what do you think our chances are?” She popped the top and took a sip. “You know they’re still mad at me for the thing with Eri-senpai last year.”

Ritsu shrugged his shoulders. “Well, they’re not exactly pleased with me for obvious reasons, so I don’t know.”

He sipped at his coffee. “But since we’re so high up, it’ll look bad if they don’t accept us into the high school division, so I think we’re in.”

That was her brother – always seeing the hidden angle of things. Unshackled from his previous persona, he had settled in nicely to a deadpan snark that raised eyebrows among his fans. Luckily, most of them stuck with him. Those that didn’t could get bent if you asked Lena.

She was kind of in the same boat, what with the metal and everything. Some of her fans jumped ship, but the ones that stayed were more dedicated than ever. Even better, they brought their friends and created a whole new fan base.

Her fan club was busy, and that was without the metalhead addition.

“There’s your evil side coming out. I love that guy.” Lena chuckled as she took another sip. Then her phone beeped in a familiar chime. “Up, that’d be the Sun chat.”

Both their phones had the same tune to let them know their unit’s chat had updated. Since joining Sunburst half a year prior, there had been many moments like that, full of practices and performances that gradually grew in size. Now they were headlining, sometimes having their own solo shows.

For an indy unit, it was pretty damn good.

“Hopefully, Dai’s picked out a theme for the outfits. He was dragging his feet. If he keeps it up, I’m going to have to steal the opportunity and do it myself.” Briefly, Ritsu smirked, and his fangs caught the light. That was happening more too – he was shying away from hiding them as much. It didn’t show as much as it did for her, but it was a marked improvement from his closed smiles from before.

Lena chuckled as she checked the messages – it was a reminder about practice next week. “You already have designs sketched out, don’t you?”

Her brother responded with a long, less than dignified sip of his iced coffee that made her laugh harder. At least he had the sense to blush a little, but he did it with a refined turn of his head that would’ve been affirmed by the highest of gentlemen. He was getting good at that – maybe it was the opera training.

“You’re so easy to read sometimes.” She shook her head, taking another sip of her soda. “But that’s ok. Someone has to do it. Might as well be your favorite little sister.”

Ritsu responded by rolling his eyes playfully. “Last I checked, you were my only sister.”

“Therefore, I’m the favorite.” Lena beamed at him. “Come on, aniki, you know you love me.”

Another dramatic sigh. “Like one loves the flu – it’s good when it gets me out of class.”

He was joking, of course. Their relationship had only improved since starting Sunburst. Something about having a place to work out frustrations with idol life had done wonders to give them common ground. She might have even considered them friends now – it was a world away from where they had been last year.

Amazing what getting some space to scream would do for a person.

“Yeah, yeah, love you too.” Lena finished her drink and tossed the can in the recycling. “Come on, let’s get home. I think we can skip the oshis if we go through the side and out the back gate.”

Ritsu nodded, but he didn’t move. Instead, he stared down at his iced coffee, eyes deep in thought. Then he took a long sip that seemed to linger for ages. When he was done, he adjusted his glasses.

“Lena… are we happy?”

It was a question they had asked themselves a year prior, one they had never been able to answer through long days and sleepless nights. Lena had been afraid to answer the question then, not wanting to know the truth.

Now, though? She smiled as she nodded.

“Hell yeah we are. We’re kicking ass and taking names.”

Ritsu smiled too – it reached his eyes like it used to back in elementary school. “Not the way I would have put it, but the feeling is there.”

“Hey, you asked and I answered.” Lena grinned as she nudged him in the side – not enough to hurt, but enough to get him going. “Come on, it smells like flop sweat and teenage angst back here. I wanna get home before it’s dark out.”

In that sense, it was a normal weekend. Come the next week, there would be anxiety over whether or not they made it into Seiza’s high school division. There’d be assignments, performances, and show tapings to keep them busy, filling their days with work that left them tired at the end of the day.

But there was also Sunburst practice, and the events that came with it. There, no school held them back. They could be as wild – or refined – as they wanted on those stages. Even better, Seiza couldn’t say anything about their performances – their fans ate it up.

It wasn’t perfect… but yes. They were happy. After all the stress and sweat, they had found it at last.

And all it took was a failed coup and coming out of the closet. If only life was always that easy.

[infinitywritesnyc]

Alright you desperate, horny little fucks (including myself) It's time to set the record straight! The person we are going to marry is most likely not on social media apps. Although according to New York Post Magazine long distance relationships have a 60% success rate, I in the other hand I get too anxious not being able to have someone by my side when I need companionship. So consider me part of that 40% failure bracket!

The man of our dreams is more than likely not on Tinder, Hinge, or even Grindr. For some of us ,our future partner is in uptown Washington Heights smoking their hookah sipping on his corona on a hot summer NYC day. For few, they may be in a meeting closing deals or on a trip to Ibiza so he could rave all night. To many they might be at a local store, or just down block, or even better right in front of them. I tend to had my fair share with men, and one thing i have realized about dating apps is that they are overwhelmingly sexually heightened. To the point where in 2024 The First Date, especially in the local community is either, Netflix and Chill, a Cyph, Carplay, or with even higher chances a 'one night stand'.

WHAT HAPPENED TO LOVE GUYS? I am feening for someone to pull up unannounced with flowers, with reservations to Blend On The Water for two, and a playlist ready for the night. Someone who makes me feel like I'm the only person in the world. Does that exist anymore? Or did Love go extinct? Are we just all trying to fuck each other until we run out of people to fuck? What are we gonna do if we all fucked? At least pick three to start a family and keep em on a rotation? Hmm maybe that's why people try to aim for polynomory. But not me! I'm a Monomagous person, so I did some research of my own. 

For a long time I used to believe falling in love online, was the only way my life would change, but in reality social media is an outlet for us to share, create, and support one another. The love part should come after the first link up, after the first get together, creating face to face memories! The list of people I have met online growing up till this day in age 2024? Reaches 20,000 users! I GURANTEE you, that 40% from back in the days are faded into the clouds, the other 40% I have met and created an acquainted relationship with, then there's the 10% that I actually was able to maintain close friendships with and like 2 relationships came out of those online interactions from the age of 13-24.

During the COVID pandemic in 2020 we were locked up and collectively fell under the same illusion that gathered a billion brains blended into one, why do you think anxiety sky rocketed ? Cause we all know exactly what we are thinking and feeling, we all have an ideology of being one. We all tend to downplay it 99% of the times by being relatable to one another in which created what I like to call TikTok Culture, which includes; The effect on how we listen to music, what we find admirable, what is right or wrong, what is in or out. We came together to solve the solutions to our distractions rather than seeing the bigger picture, (which as of today June 2024 that illusion is slowly breaking, and hopefully this blog shatters it) 

the bigger picture: the world we need to fight for is outside of our front door, not in our screens. Then you will see and feel the full effect of the manifestation that's bursting to come outside of you into the world. 

Which is why I am very big on in person interaction, understanding, accepting and loving one another. In-Person experiences are way more genuine, memorable, and in my opinion the most real. When you meet at a job, bump into each other at the market, meet at a festival or concert. At the end of the day everyone has their own version of what's real right? This is mine.

But just to clarify on something really quick, the term "In-Person" did not exist before the pandemic. Think about that. 

Consequently, I took notes at the simple fact that every men i have tried to date or fucked. Left me scooped into the streets with no self-progression, i look back and noticed how much experience I've gained, both negative and positive, yet! Even though how i move about life has helped me focus where i want to be, i genuinely did not benefit from these relationships AT ALL! So i came to a conclusion that me and my future man's end of life goals, will most likely allign, and we will eventually end up with each other, so why don't I just live? take the steps that i need to get to my end goal, and in time the love of my life will meet me in the middle, at the right time. So FUCK dating apps, write your end of life goal, take those steps! And meet the love of your life! YOUR PERSON IS, OUT THERE! 

New York Post Magazine - https://nypost.com/2018/10/31/long-distance-relationships-are-more-successful-than-you-think/# (Oct 31, 2018)

[letkanatasayfuck]

hello i have not stopped thinking about how fucking funny it is that BAE is the one group who uses English the most in their music so here are some of my fave English lines in their songs (with brackets for romanized/translated japanese/korean words!! and romanization used where the sentences change grammatically to keep the lyrics' og flow!!)

"[then] OK JUST PRESS THE PLAY BUTTON LOCATE [connect to the] PARTY": this part was SO good like allen being smooth with it instead of so harsh and rough like he usually is and it's so much fun to sing bc of it!!

“MUSIC MAKE US HOT LIKE PICASSO”: hajun i love you but what the FUCK does this mean. i have no clue!! but it's so catchy!!

"everything you can imagine is real . . . like [paradise and] CHILL": as long as we're on PARADISE lyrics. i LOVE this one. especially how hajun's voice dips really smooth near the end UGH it's like asmr for me

"play button [hitotsu de] hit yo groove": another high quality PARADISE line!! as you can tell i am biased for this song!!

"[everyone] how you doin' WHAT'S UP!": okay this one is SO funny bc it sounds exactly like how'd you expect a guy who speaks only one language trying to combine two and it's just. god. normally they're so on point with their flow but something about this makes me lose my shit

"every scar will build my throne": i just think this metal as fuck and i would totally throw it into a fantasy setting. god bless you hajun i'm just so sorry i know what your scars are :'))

"oh yeah we're feelin' good, [look] it's like an [antlions' trap]": this is just more blatant appreciation for how fucking smooth hajun is. just. <333

"no struggle no progress, we can make it happen": look everything about wavin flag is fucking powerful but i LOVE how anne sings this with so much confidence and self-assurance. like. what the fuck. and this is only like. THREE SECONDS into the song

from "never look back going all the way up (]burning with passion, attack on] PLAYER)" ------> "BAE SOUND HIT THE GROOVE": ALL OF THAT AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN HAS ME FUCKED. THE RAMP-UP. THE ENERGY. HAJUN GOES SO HARD AND DOES IT SO WELL. and allen is a fantastic assist too LMAO

on that note??? the ENTIRETY of anne's chorus makes me lose my shit every single time. i've got "[GET UP] STAND UP NEXT STAGE, [BECOME THE WIND] WE ARE THE NEW AGE" implanted in my brain. like. WAVIN' FLAG is hardcore and i love it for that

EMBLEM is another one where the chorus goes hardcore and i can't just break it all down . . . like how they go from "MY EGO MY EGO" in english and match it with lyrics that phonetically sound the same in japanese but still add meaning to the song??? THAT WAS A FUCKING POWER MOVE. WHAT. THE COINCIDENCE OF THAT BEING WHAT THEY NEEDED. SAW THE OPPORTUNITY AND GRABBED IT IN A CHOKEHOLD.

“BANG! gonna blow your ass”: absolutely adore this one. it’s so distinctly allen in that it’s got explosions and cursing and it’s a threat. like. allen. baby. please. i would prefer my ass NOT blown up but also!!! i support you!!!

"you can't stop me lovin' myself cause i'm so genius (EY)": look i'm sorry but the way allen slides into the "EY" at the end cracks me up EVERY time. he sounds so arrogant and i love that for him!!

also just. hajun's solo part from "some people say i'm wrong" to "i'm gonna be who i wanna be": i fucking love that for him. he DESERVES to be that cocky and unbothered!!! he's had enough shit!!!

special shoutouts go to:

"jumping into my world" bc fuck if it isn't one of the most serotonin-boosting songs i've heard in a while. i love how anne and reo take turns with the build-up to the chorus. it's so catchy and singing along to it cheers me up every single time

"why do you like me": THIS. THIS FUCKING SONG. THE ONE MASHUP LINE IN THE CHORUS MAKES ME FEEL SO MANY THINGS. SATSUKI AND ANNE DESERVE HAPPY THINGS ONLY OKAY I LOVE THEM

"sound of voltage" bc allen's enthusiasm for metaphorical explosions will never not be funny. "can you hear the sound of revolution, we never stop evolution" is such a good line. and the allenkana fuel . . . "enemy enemy [go beyond] you're like my frenemy, suzaku & kanata [mixed together] BOOM chemistry" . . . allen is crushing and he is crushing hard oh my god

[dear-mrs-otome]

Johann Georg Faust - 2nd Birthday (His POV) - Yet Another Terrible Summary

(Faust: "...The children will wake up.")

Here is my irreverent, only nominally-guaranteed accurate rendition of Faust’s 2nd birthday story in his POV.

(We start with a one-liner, ‘narrator voice’ Faust saying how he had learned from a very young age that the world was an absurd place.)

It’s February 28th, and at his church, MC has arrived with a bag she offers him, claiming they’re delicious treats she wanted to share. He asks if she’s there to celebrate his birthday, pointing out to her there’s no February 29th this year. She deflates, grumbling that she hadn’t expected him to see through things so quickly, and he tells her that if she does something like that out of the blue of course he’s going to wonder why.

He can’t believe she’s trying again, after he’d told her last year he didn’t want to celebrate and that the day was meaningless - it’s merely the day he was found after having been abandoned as a baby. No sentimentality to it. But he can also clearly recall the way she’d told him last year she wanted him to be happy on his birthday...and bemused by that sentiment still, he takes the proffered bag.

He says that if it’s a gift, he’ll take it because he can think of someone it’ll make happy. MC finally notices the small child hovering around when he says this, and she has a spittake moment of ILLEGITIMATE KIDDO?? Faust teases her about having a very wild imagination, causing her to sputter, and he pinches her cheeks lightly at her flailings before he hands the bag of candy off to the little boy.

The child seem incredulous at the gift, but MC assures him she’d be happy if he ate it, and she asks him his name. The boy tells her it is Hugo in a small voice. She asks Hugo if he’s from around here, but Faust answers for him - he says he is, but he’s due to circumstances he’s about to take the child to the orphanage now.

MC surprises him by asking if it’s no bother, can she come along too? He tells her it makes no matter to him - wondering to himself if she’s worried about the kiddo. She thanks him, and urges little Hugo to get ready to go, his little hand fast in hers.

They’re greeted by the orphanage matron when they arrive, who kindly welcomes Hugo to his new home. MC hands the boy off with a soft look, and Faust is all in a hurry to leave now that his duty is done...when one of the orphan children notices the priest and the lady and calls out to them.

Spotted, Faust thinks, and no sooner has the first kid called out than the rest of the kids come running over as well, all crowding around him and clamoring for them to stay and play.

Faust immediately shuts the idea down, but MC cajoles that if they have time, they should stay and play. He warns her that she will only regret the idea - when they’re interrupted by the matron asking if they wouldn’t mind actually? She’s short-handed on help and needs to step out to get some things but can’t leave the kids unattended.

She really is not taking no for an answer, and thus Faust and MC find themselves babysitting the orphanage until she returns.

Some time later, Faust is pulling an ‘I told you so’ on an exhausted MC, who’s been run ragged by the eager children. She flops to a seat, and looks up at him soberly, where he’d just picked up a child and put them to sleep. She observes that he’s good with the children, and he says he has practice - he used to take care of some a long time ago.

He spares a moment to wonder to himself how many of them grew up to lead out their lives, given how life in an orphanage long ago was far from easy. Then as he’s looking out over the children he realizes they’re short one, and says as much aloud.

MC and he go searching, and shortly they find Hugo outside near the gates, huddled and shivering in the cold winter air. Faust realizes this is more than simply being sad about his new surroundings, and it’s MC tries to herd him inside so he doesn’t catch a cold.

But little Hugo balks, and he says no, he wants to stay here - if he caught a cold and died, would he meet his mom and dad in heaven?

Faust realizes from the stunned expression on MC’s face that she’s finally understood the truth of Hugo’s situation. His parents both had died in an accident and he was forced to enter the orphanage when no one came to collect him after the funeral. Faust thinks it’s not unreasonable for Hugo to be saddened, but…

“There’s no guarantee you’ll meet someone who has passed on. It’s pointless to choose death for that,” he tells Hugo. “Unless of course someone were to be dissected after death for posterity...then their death wouldn’t be a total waste.”

MC sputters at him for saying such a thing to a child, but Faust is remorseless, still thinking it’s foolish to have any hopes or expectations for after death. As a priest, he often tells people that ‘those who pass on are ushered into the kingdom of heaven’...but he himself has never seen Heaven, or God provide any sort of salvation.

Hugo wonders aloud why his mom and dad had to die? Why did God decide such a thing?

Faust tells him that the world is an absurd place and urges him that if he has any sort of doubts, to think about how he can live in defiance of his destiny...rather than letting winter’s cold choose life or death for him. He takes his jacket off and slips it over those tiny shoulders, and watches as MC wipes away the tears that fall from Hugo’s eyes, comforting him.

He thinks...that he cannot recall what sadness is, what it feels like anymore. But he can tell how incredibly warm the hand MC slips into Hugo’s is.

After they’ve gotten the children all settled for their nap, MC replaces Faust’s jacket with a blanket on the sleeping Hugo and turns to him, holding it as she stares at him. He finally asks her, what?? And she asks what sort of children it was he’d spent time with in the past.

Faust teases her about asking something out of the blue like that, and for being so keenly interested - startling him when she unapologetically agrees that she does want to know about him, and if he tells her she’ll return his jacket.

Faust grumbles that it’s a lame deal, given that it’s not a fun story to hear...but he doesn’t get the impression that she’s asking out of idle curiosity or a whim alone, so he indulges her. He tells her that when he was a baby, he was found by an older nun and grew up in an orphanage located in an old church. He says that they were terribly poor, but he survived, and when he got older he helped take care of the other children. Many of them would die before winter’s end, or disappear after being taken in by foster parents.

Eventually, he was fostered out himself and the nun who raised him died of an illness, and the orphanage was closed. End of story.

He thinks that the abbreviated version he told her was the parts that didn’t hurt...but she still looks up at him with a sadness in her eyes when she asks what sort of woman was the nun?

Faust says that she was incredibly kind, too kind to ignore an abandoned child, and probably too compassionate for her own good.

He thinks how she was kind up until the very end, giving and giving of herself to anyone….and he recalls a time when she’d come to him.

“Thank you for taking care of everyone, Johann” she had said. “But why don’t you put the books down and go play?”

“It’s fine. Even if I make friends with them, they will all leave someday,” he had told her.

“Johann...The reason why you never cry is because you keep your sadness locked away…”

He can still see the sad smile she had worn and hear the conversation they’d had, rising to the surface of a sea of old memories. He coldly waits for those lingering remnants to pass...when his reverie is interrupted by MC telling him she’s thankful the woman found little Faust. That even if the world is an absurd place, she’s happy to be able to celebrate his birthday with him now.

Her words stun him into silence, leaving him only able to stare at her faint smile. He’d never thought of it that way - the consideration to be thankful for such a thing. Her words shed a new light on his cold memories, and sneak their way into his heart.

He teases her though, saying that she speaks of odd things and he wonders if she’s merely angling to dig through people’s pasts and root out their weaknesses. A sputtering MC vehemently denies she’d do such a thing and accuses him of being a smartass, and righteously stomps towards him to shove the jacket back at him...when she steps on a stray toy block, loses her footing, and crashes into him.

They both tumble to the ground, her atop him, and she’s staring down at him wide-eyed as she beings babbling apologies - only to have them fade into muffled sounds when he quickly reaches up and presses her face onto his chest to stifle her voice.

“You’ll wake the children,” he warns her...though he pauses a moment to linger on the soft feel of her cheek on his bare skin, where his shirt has fallen into disorder. He’s thinking, this woman is unbelievable, as he chides her for such - sighing heavily and asking if she gets a kick out of bothering him.

But he’s getting a kick out of her blushing face and her averted eyes, the sight stirring his mean streak enough that he can’t let the opportunity to give her a hard time pass. He teases her about being the one with the red face when she pushed him down...and is amused by her appalled reaction. He says she’s something else to straddle a man with a face like that, right next to a bunch of sleeping children...and he strokes his hands up the thighs that bracket his hips, enjoying the little sigh she lets out.

The moment is broken by a soft sound from one of the children tossing in their sleep, and MC leaps off him like a scalded cat. The whole situation is so incredibly absurd that Faust can’t help laughing, even if it’s met by a glare from MC as she asks him what is so funny.

He’s still chuckling as he points out her reaction, and how amusing it all was...all the while thinking, it has been a very long time since he has laughed so much. He slips back on the jacket she shoves at him, and tells her that he never gets tired of watching her - he wants to keep her close at hand, so he can observe her always.

His words have her turning her face away, but the look in her eyes before she does makes him happy. He wants to know more about her, he thinks. What manner of things would he discover, if he caught her and kept her all to himself, and figured out what made her tick? Her presence in this world, that he looks at through such cold eyes, stirs his heart.

FIN

(many thanks as always to @mikotomizuki for giving this a second set of eyes!)

[writingbeary]

Kingdom -  Sports Day

Minyoung’s Outfit

Note:

Texts placed inside brackets are Kingdom’s show subtitles

Italicized texts are in English

Texts that are block quoted are interview cuts

────────── ♔ ──────────

Today, the groups participating in Kingdom were told that they will be competing in the groups that they will be collaborating with for the No Limit stage. ATEEZ were confident in their athletic abilities but they also know that the other groups also have members who are athletic, especially BTOB who have Minhyuk who won medals in ISAC.

Minyoung brought out her self-made cheer banners for every group, taking it upon herself to be their cheerleader since she cannot participate in most group games. She wrote individual groups names and the Collab Team names on the banners.

"Our princess has betrayed us." Hongjoong feigned a hurt look over his face noticing the cameras zooming on him when Minyoung could be seen cheering for The-i-9 team when they entered the field.

"I'll cheer for everyone! There's no discrimination here!" Minyoung joked sticking her tongue out to her leader before waving the banner containing SF9's name. "Sepgu hwaiting!"

"You're cheering for everyone today? Not just Chani?" Dawon called out grinning

"Of course, I'll prioritize our Chanhee." clearing her throat before raising her banner up high "Kang Chanhee fighting!" with Chani laughing waving her off.

“Okay then 8 makes 1 team.” Hongjoong jokingly said making Minyoung pout and say “If you do that then I’ll ask the other groups to take me in!”

Stray Kids who were lined up beside them looked over the group laughing. Jisung waving her over “Young-ah, come here and perform <God’s Menu> with us.” as he jokingly did the du-du-du-du with Felix and I.N dancing a bit.

“That won’t happen. I’m keeping her.” Yunho placed an arm around Minyoung’s figure grinning “I happen to like having her around.”

The MCs noticing something happening with both groups called out to them. Wooyoung calling them out grinning “ATEEZ, what are you doing? We’re filming something here. Please focus.”

“We would but our Minyoung-ie is about to be taken away!” San shouted back, the other participants amused at what is happening

Wooyung stood up surprised “What? I leave you guys for a bit and this happens. What happened?”

“They’re kicking me out and Stray Kids is adopting me, thankfully.” Minyoung moved over to Stray Kids fitting right in with her clothes having a hint of pink.

“Oh! Welcome. We gained a new member. We’ll gladly take her Dovey.” Changbin laughed teasing Wooyoung as the latter pointed at their female member “Yah! Park Minyoung!”

Eunkwang joining on the teasing raised his hands and said “We’ll also be glad to take her in. That will bring our average age down a bit.” evoking laughter from everyone.

(VAULT)

Minyoung cheered on everyone waving her banners around as the The-i-9 attempted the vaults. Yunho laughed when he saw the girl near BTOB’s table, tapping on Seonghwa’s shoulder to point it out. “Where is she going?”

“Minyoung-ah, stop invading other people’s tables.” San called out to her as she fired back “They’re not other people! They’re our teammates and we’re one team!” making the rest of Mayfly look at her laughing.

“Alice, come and join us here!” Felix waved her over to which she happily skipped over and hang out with them.

“This kid. Wait where’s Jongho?” Hongjoong looked around and saw Jongho already at Stray Kids’ table too

Yeosang chuckled “Our youngest members are all grown-up. They’re already making friends on their own.” As the rest of the members watch as the two youngest play around with the others.

When it was time for Chani to attempt the vault, Minyoung screamed waving her banner excitedly. “Kang Chanhee, fighting!”

"Minyoung-ssi won't you also cheer for the other participants? You shouldn't play favorites." MC Changmin asked, teasing the younger girl

“Oh. But I’m not close with anyone else.” Minyoung mumbled making the older male laugh.

Minyoung returned back to ATEEZ’ table after a long while sitting down beside Seonghwa who gave her a water bottle. “You should take care of your throat. You’ve been cheering since we started.”

“Ah yes. Thanks mom.” Minyoung giggled while Seonghwa shook his head already used to it

“Waah. THE BOYZ is full of good looking people.” Yunho commented as he watched them all attempt the vault

“ATEEZ is also full of good looking people oppa!” Minyoung countered nodding seriously making the members laugh

“What? We also have good looking members! Don’t think otherwise.” Minyoung continued as she returned her focus on the activity

“What is this? You’re praising us now?” Hongjoong laughed, shaking his head a bit

“I’m just saying the truth.” Minyoung shrugged smiling a bit

“But you told us we looked weird. Remember that?” San fired back grinning

“Ahh. That’s different. I’m the only one that can criticize our members. Other people don’t have that privilege.” Minyoung laughed and puffed her chest out as if proud of it “I can say those things because I do it out of love.” at this the members pretended to gag before laughing

When it was ATEEZ's turn to challenge the vault, Minyoung did light stretches before standing next to the vault. "Omo. Hongjoong-oppa what do we do?" Minyoung shouted making everyone laugh.

"She says that but watch her clear it with ease." Yunho chuckled

"Oh it seems like Athlete Minyoung would attempt next." MC Changmin announced as he saw the girl walk over to the starting line

"I'm assuming she's going to do well as she's a main dancer of ATEEZ." Eunkwang commented

"Alice is scared of heights though." Felix noted making Jisung scoff a bit hearing his remark "But she's competitive. I bet she won't even care until after the fact. She's been doing stunts with ATEEZ but I wonder why she still gets so scared."

"Maybe because when she does stunts for their choreography, she knows how she'll land?"

“Minyoung Challenge!” Minyoung shouted as she ran and made it over the vault easily, surprised at herself. “Omo! How come?” she asked aloud making ATEEZ laugh

“How come you made it over?” San laughed patting her back as 6 of 8 members pass.

As they were watching THE BOYZ challenge San commented on Juyeon’s challenge “Having the hood on was so cool. We should have worn hoods too.”

“Oppa, it would only be cool if you made it over.” Minyoung jabbed at the older male sticking her tongue out playfully, the latter reaching over pretending to flick her forehead.

For their second challenge at 1.8m, Wooyoung, Jongho, and Yunho already succeeded. The ones left were Minyoung and Hongjoong. Minyoung mumbled “I’m scared but I also don’t want our team to place last.”

Yeosang who was beside her laughed gaining the attention of the other members. “If you succeed in this attempt then you already did better than me, Young-ah. Besides, we can trust the three to do it well.”

“I know but I also don’t want to lose to our members.” Minyoung pouted as she walked towards the starting point to attempt. She ran as fast as she could and jumped making it over the vault, letting out a squeal as she flew over.

“Young-ah!” Jongho cheered immediately going over to her.

“See? I told you she would do well.” Jisung laughed raising a thumbs up towards the direction of ATEEZ.

When Hongjoong failed to make it over and hit the vault instead, all of ATEEZ ran towards him with Minyoung going over patting his back before teasing him “Our leader did well. It’s just our heights aren’t made for this kind of games.”

“You made it over though.” Yunho noted laughing

“Seriously this kid.” Hongjoong laughed poking her side as they all went back to their tent.

“Are you okay?” LeeKnow asked Hongjoong seeing as how he hit the vault

“The 10cm is a huge difference.” Hongjoong informed them as they’ll go next. Felix letting out a worried sigh.

“Felix you can do it! I even made it.” Minyoung cheered on her friend, San laughing making the girl look at him “If you say it like that then what happens to the people who failed to make it over.”

Minyoung gasped, defending herself quickly in a panic “Ah. I didn’t mean that. I just thought since Felix is more athletic that I am, he has a higher chance to make it over.”

The remaining members of ATEEZ all succeeded the 1.9m and moved on to the next level. Everyone was shocked when Minyoung cleared the 2m height, even she couldn’t believe she made it past it that when she landed she was wide-eyed, looking back towards the vault. ATEEZ let out a cheer in surprise as Wooyoung helped Minyoung out of the mat patting her back.

“You made it! Wah. Our Minyoung found her talent.” Yunho laughed sending a thumbs up towards her direction.

“Oppa what happened? Omo.” Minyoung jumped around excited that she made it over then gasped realizing that she has to try an even higher level.

When she attempted for the 2.2m, she wasn’t able to go over and instead was hanging on almost on top of the vault with half of her body on it. Realizing how high up she is, she continued to cling on the vault tightly “I’m scared! This is so high! Oppa help me.” she exclaimed making everyone laugh at how cute she’s being, while Wooyoung and Yunho made their way to help the girl down. The rest of the surviving Mayfly members also went over to steady the vault for the girl to come down.

“Just let go and jump down.” Wooyoung instructed her but she shook her head “Let go. I’ll catch you if needed.” Hearing this, Minyoung let go and true to his word, Wooyoung helped her up quickly patting her back. “You did great.”

As the three of them went back to their tent, Minyoung was holding unto Yunho as she limped slightly.

“Why? Why? What happened? Did you injure yourself?” Seonghwa immediately went over and helped the girl to sit down, worriedly checking her any injuries.

“I think I hit my knee on the vault during that last attempt.” Minyoung sighed as she shook her head “It doesn’t hurt that much but I think I won’t be able to join the other events.”

“Are you sure? You also hurt it last filming.” Jongho asked handing the girl a towel to wipe herself with

“Mhm! I don’t think I really hurt it. It’s just like stubbing your toe, just temporary.” Minyoung smiled laughing a bit. “I’m serious! If you don’t believe me then I’ll get it checked tomorrow.”

“I think that’s for the best. It’s better to be safe since you did injure it before and it might get serious if not treated properly.” Yeosang noted patting the girl’s head

"Wooyoung-oppa fighting!" Minyoung cheered as Wooyoung became the last representative for ATEEZ however, he also failed to make it over the vault for 2.30m.

(Visual Ranking Voting)

"Omo. I knew it. I told you that there’s a catch when they took our photos this morning. Jongho-yah, I'm ruined." Minyoung said to the male beside her, covering her face in regret. "If I knew this was going to happen then I'd have put in more effort in how I look today."

"Yah. If you're going to say that then what about us?" Hongjoong laughed

"Have you seen everyone else? There's no way we're winning this. That's a miracle if it happens." Wooyoung motioned to the other photos posted on the board.

"Who should I vote for?" Minyoung looked through all the photos before turning to the staff "Can I please have these photos? I'll keep them as a souvenir. Maybe I'll have everyone sign them too." evoking laughter from the staff and a cheer from the girl when they said they’ll ask if she can have it after.

"I'm voting for Minhyuk-sunbaenim. As much as I want to vote for our team...lying is bad and voting should always be objective. Sorry our ATEEZ members. I love you all." Minyoung smiled before slipping in her ballot inside the box.

As the rest of the participants voted, some even voting for themselves citing that one should learn to love yourself first, some of them voting for Minyoung.

Stray Kids Jisung: I’m not saying this because I’m her friend but just judging by the photos, she looks good today.

SF9 Jaeyoon: I’m voting for Minyoung-ssi. Her photo stands out with her posing cutely.

THE BOYZ Kevin: She’s adorable and she cheers on every team sincerely. She even showed off her charms today.

THE BOYZ Hyunjae: Throughout their performances, it’s like having an on-off switch. She’s like a kid off-stage but as soon as they start their performances her charisma explodes that why I vote for her.

ATEEZ Yunho: Do I really need a reason? Our member’s pretty. *laughs*

When the results were announced, Minyoung couldn’t believe her ears when she heard her name called out together with Felix for the 2nd place both of them getting 5 votes each. She looked around pointing to herself confused.

“Me? Why?” Minyoung looked to her group members who were cheering for her.

“Minyoung-ah! You did it! ATEEZ present!” Wooyoung shouted making the others groups laugh

Yunho grinned going over to the girl patting her back and ushering her to go to the center.

“Did our members vote for me? Is this a love your own situation?” Minyoung asked outloud making the MCs laugh.

Yunhyeong looked at the cue sheet to see who voted for her before speaking into the microphone “There’s one ATEEZ member who voted for you.”

Yunho proudly raised his hand “I did! Minyoung-ah, be confident!”

“Yunho-oppa! This is why I like you.” Minyoung laughed before shooting hearts at him exageratting every movement.

Compliments calling her cute were heard in every group while Seonghwa covered his face embarassed for both his members.

“Mom! I’m on TV!” Minyoung posed cutely for the camera before laughing and facing the participants “I don’t know who voted for me but thank you. I’ll do my best to show more of my charms in the future as well.”

“Felix~ We’re twins from now on!” Minyoung declared to her friend making him laugh as they pose for the photo sharing the wreath.

“Aussie!” Chan cheered for the two clapping for them

As soon as she got back to her group, Minyoung looked at Seonghwa and asked jokingly “Does this mean you’re also 2nd place? I mean Atiny says we look alike.”

“Oh. That’s right.” Hongjoong who heard her agreed laughing as Seonghwa just blushed shaking his head.

Minyoung cheered loudly when Minhyuk got the 1st place for the visual ranking, surprising the other groups. “I voted for Minhyuk-sunbaenim.” ATEEZ just laughed shaking their heads used to Minyoung’s fan girl mode.

(Catch the Tail)

As the Mayfly team strategized who was going to play in the second event, Minyoung let out a giggle gaining the attention of their team.

“Why? Is something funny?” Eunkwang asked chuckling when the girl hid behind Yunho’s back suddenly conscious of everyone

“Ah. Nothing..it’s just we’re planning this seriously that it felt like this actually the competition and not the rounds.” Minyoung said her voice going softer as she talks

“What’s happening? You’re not like this Mintokki.” San laughed poking her side as the girl slapped his arm lightly, still hiding behind Yunho as she clutched on to his shirt

“Is Minyoung-ssi normally this shy?” Minhyuk asked looking at the girl

“No. Not at all. She’s far from shy.” Yunho answered quickly making everyone laugh.

“This is such a twist. I never knew Minyoung could also feel shy.” Jisung teased making the girl hide herself more pouting.

(Relay Race)

“ATEEZ fighting! I believe in you!” Minyoung shouted on top of her lungs as the runners take their place. The race went by quickly and turned to the last lap where Wooyoung ran as fast as he could overtaking everyone.

Both San and Minyoung were jumping in their tent holding ATEEZ’ flag up as they cheered for Wooyoung. “Wooyoung run!” “Oppa you can do it! I won’t call your hair, pudding anymore if you win!”

"I never knew Wooyoung was that athletic!" Changbin exclaimed as Wooyoung overtook Sangyeon and won first place in the relay.

"Jongho's still the most athletic out of everyone but Wooyoung-oppa is also up there in terms of athleticism." Minyoung said as if giving insider information.

"Don't let her fool you! If she weren't injured right now, she'll probably be the one running. Minyoungie is pretty competitive." San commented making the MCs laugh.

Minyoung pouted "I wanted to try too. Ahh why did I have to get injured. If I could've joined, I'm determined to at least be better than Hongjoong-oppa." at the mention of his name, Hongjoong's mouth dropped looking betrayed. "Yah!" the girl just laughing throwing a heart sign on her head towards her leader

[Minyoung / 22 / Youngest on Top(?)]

(Outtake)

“Good work today everyone” everyone clapped and bowed towards one another after the day’s activities.

Minyoung suddenly gasped remembering something. “Ah! I was given these by the staff.” She took out the polaroids from the voting before while the rest of the groups were surprised.

“Ah so that’s why the staff asked if it was okay for us if the polaroid were given..” Sangyeon laughed finally piecing together the information

“No! Minyoung-ah, let’s just take another photo. I’m not proud of how I look there.” Inseong shouted jokingly evoking laughter from everyone.

“Really? Then I’ll take you up on that!” Minyoung giggled holding her pinky up as if sealing a promise.

“Just be honest and say you want photos with Jaeyoon-sunbaenim and Minhyuk-sunbaenim.” Wooyoung started while Minyoung quickly slapped his arm, eyes-wide “Oppa!”

“Don’t forget Zuho-sunbaenim and Donghyuk-sunbaenim.” San grinned as the girl crouched down embarrassed. The males who were mentioned all looked surprised with some covering their faces feeling shy. Inseong elbowing Jaeyoon laughing knowing the male voted for her for the visual ranking.

“Ahh. Is that your type Minyoung-ssi?” MC Changming asked jokingly, the girl waving her arms around denying the allegations

“I think I see a pattern. I see a pattern.” Eunkwang laughed joining on the teasing. Minyoung just wanted to dig herself a hole and hide there as Jongho patted her back laughing.

────────── ♔ ──────────

ATEEZ Minyoung Masterlist

Disclaimer: This is just a work of fiction. Any portrayal of real people is a combination based on what we could see on cameras and imagination of the author. This is purely fan fiction written for entertainment. Thank you for understanding.

━━━━━━ʕ ˵• ₒ •˵ ʔ━━━━━━

Writing Beary Corner

Truth be told, Kingdom’s episode for the Sports Day bored me a bit lol It dragged on for a long time during the vault but hey at least the groups interacted a bit more this time. So as long as they had their fun then that’s great!

I also have a question and request for the people reading this. Send me questions anon or off-anon for Minyoung! something like interview questions or fan questions haha I’m planning to use them for a future post. spoiler but meh lol

-Mimi

21

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

"I always just rode the waves,” Rebecca Ferguson says with a shrug. The comment hangs in the air, as if the Anglo-Swedish 37-year-old is only now processing that a combination of currents and tides has led her not just to an acting career but to the brink of big-screen stardom.

“I’ve never been ambitious,” she says. “I’ve always thought that that was a bad thing.” She’s seen others in the industry consumed by constant striving and asked herself why she hasn’t hungered for fame since childhood, slept in cars outside castings, barged into directors’ offices or thrown herself in the path of a producer. “But should I not be burning for this? Out meeting people and networking for the next job?” says Ferguson, who has chosen the sort of quiet, private life outside the big city that so many actors claim to crave. “My life just took another turn. But I’ve always thought: Am I where I should be?”

At the moment, on this late July day, Ferguson is slumped in the backseat of a Mercedes-Benz sedan, crawling through rush-hour traffic on the M4 out of London. She is capping off a hectic week during a particularly busy period. Most immediately, she’s coming from a table read for Wool, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Hugh Howey’s bestselling postapocalyptic trilogy. Ferguson is both the star and, for the first time, an executive producer. “I’m sitting in all the different rooms, listening and learning like the students,” she says. She’s filming Mission: Impossible 7, her third tour of duty in the long-running series that first brought her widespread recognition. She’s also promoting the film Reminiscence, the sci-fi noir written and directed by Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy in which Ferguson stars opposite Hugh Jackman. And now she is starting a press push and festival prep for her role as Lady Jessica ahead of the much-delayed release of Dune (in theaters October 22), director Denis Villeneuve’s reimagining of Frank Herbert’s novel. “After this film, I think everyone will see what I see in her,” the filmmaker says. “She has a beautiful, regal, aristocratic presence, elegance. But that was not the main thing: The most important thing for me was that depth.”

After tracing a long, meandering path, Ferguson has landed in a rare and rarified position: ascendant in her late 30s (still an anomaly for women in the film industry) and sought after by some of the biggest names in the business. “When you meet Rebecca, you just see it. She’s very open, candid, collaborative, hardworking, funny—and not pretentious,” says Tom Cruise, who handpicked Ferguson to star opposite him in the Mission: Impossiblefilms, which are known for their demanding shoots. “She just rose to the occasion every single time.”

In February 2020, when the pandemic began, Ferguson left Venice, where she’d been shooting Mission: Impossible 7, and hunkered down with her husband, their 3-year-old daughter and Ferguson’s 14-year-old son from a previous relationship at their farm in Sweden. After four months, Ferguson returned to the M:I set and basically hasn’t stopped working since.

Dune has sat idle for far longer. By the time the movie premieres, more than two years will have passed since it wrapped. Ferguson recently asked to screen the film again: “I miss it,” she says. She ended up bringing along her Mission: Impossible co-star Simon Pegg. After the credits rolled, Pegg broke into a smile and wrapped her in a congratulatory bear hug. “That’s all I needed,” she says.

Despite being a sci-fi epic based on a novel from 1965, Dune feels “very timely,” Ferguson says, pointing to its handling of environmental issues, religious zealotry, colonialism and Indigenous rights. The plot of the film, which cost an estimated $165 million, centers on occupying powers battling for the right to exploit a people and their planet, named Arrakis, for melange (or spice)—the most valuable commodity in Herbert’s fictional universe, a substance that provides transcendental thought, extends life and enables instantaneous interstellar travel. “Spice,” Ferguson says, “is equally about the poppy and oil fields.”

Ferguson’s Lady Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, a powerful secretive sisterhood with superhuman mental abilities. She defies her order by giving birth to a son, Paul (played by Timothée Chalamet), who may be a messianic figure. “She basically just f—s up the entire universe by having a son out of love,” says Ferguson. In her hands, Jessica is equal parts caring parent, protector and pedagogue. Among the skills she wields and teaches Paul is “the Voice”—a modulated tone that allows the speaker to control others.

The movie was shot in Norway, Hungary, Jordan and Abu Dhabi, whose desert landscape stood in for Arrakis. Filming there was particularly arduous, as temperatures exceeded 120 degrees Fahrenheit, limiting the shoot window to only an hour and a half each day at 5 a.m. and again at dusk. “We were running across the sand in our steel suits being chased by nonexistent but humongous worms,” Ferguson recalls, referring to the sand-beasts later rendered in CGI. “To be honest, it was one of the best moments ever. It was the most beautiful location I’ve ever seen.”

Back in London, Ferguson is approaching home. She leaves the following day for a small town on the coast of England, where she plans to spend her first vacation in two years and to do some surfing. “Let’s hope it’s good weather,” she says. “If not, I’ll surf in the rain.” Not that she’s the sort to paddle out into storm swells. “I think I’ve managed to stand on a board once in my entire life,” she says. “But it was quite a high. Complete surrender to the waves and total control all at once.”

Born Rebecca Louisa Ferguson Sundström to an English mother and Swedish father, Ferguson grew up bilingual in Stockholm. She immersed herself in dance from a young age, enjoying ballet, jazz, street funk and tango. Despite being shy and prone to blushing and breaking out when forced to speak publicly, Ferguson found she was at ease in front of the camera. She dabbled in modeling and then, at 15, attended a TV casting call at her mother’s urging. Ferguson ended up getting the lead role in Nya Tider (New Times), a soap opera that became wildly popular, splashing Ferguson’s face into Swedish homes five times a week.

When her role ended about two years later, Ferguson was adrift. She had no formal acting training to fall back on, no clear sense of how to steer a career and no major connections to the industry. She had a short run on another soap and appeared in a slasher flick and a couple of independent shorts, then…nothing. “I was famous in Sweden, but I didn’t really have an income anymore,” she says. “So I went and I worked in whatever job I could get.” That meant stints at a daycare center and as a nanny, in a jewelry shop and a shoe store, as well as teaching tango, cleaning hotel rooms and waitressing at a Korean restaurant. She eventually landed in a small coastal town named Simrishamn, where she lived with her then-partner and their toddler son, content to be a where-are-they-now celebrity.

When fame again came calling, Ferguson ran away. She was at the flea market when she recognized the acclaimed Swedish director Richard Hobert, and he saw her. As he shouted her name, Ferguson grabbed her son, who lost his shoes and sausage, and fled. “I panicked,” she says. “I don’t know why.” When Hobert eventually caught up to her, Ferguson tried to act nonchalant as he proceeded to tell her he’d admired her work and pitched her on the lead role in his next movie: “I’ve written this role, and I think I have written it for you. Do you want to read the script?”

Her work in Hobert’s A One-Way Trip to Antibes earned her a Rising Star nomination at the Stockholm International Film Festival. She quickly got an agent in Scandinavia, then one in Britain. On her first trip to take meetings in London, she read for the lead in The White Queen, the BBC adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s historical novels about the women behind the Wars of the Roses. Ferguson got the part, and her portrayal of Elizabeth Woodville, queen consort of England, earned her a Golden Globe nomination and the admiration of at least one Hollywood heavyweight.

Ferguson was in the Moroccan desert filming the Lifetime biblical miniseries The Red Tentwhen the assistant director whisked her off her camel. “We’re going to have to pause shooting,” he said as he asked her to dismount. “Tom Cruise wants to meet you for Mission: Impossible. We’re going to fly you off today.”

Cruise had seen Ferguson’s work in The White Queen and her audition tape and couldn’t believe she wasn’t already a major star. “What? Where has this woman been?” Cruise recalls exclaiming to his new Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie. “She’s incredibly skilled,” Cruise says, “very charismatic, very expressive. As you can tell, the camera loves her.” Ferguson landed a multi-picture deal to star opposite Cruise in the multibillion-dollar franchise. He and McQuarrie built out the role of Ilsa Faust for Ferguson, creating the anti-Bond girl, an equal to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. “We could just see the impact she could have,” he says. “She’s a dancer. She has great control of her body, of her movements. She has the same ability to move through emotions effortlessly.”

Ferguson threw herself into the films and quickly found a shorthand with the cast and crew. “There was a dynamic that worked very well with all of us,” she says. “One of the things I absolutely love is doing all the stunts.” That physicality has given her a reputation as an action-minded actor. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve done 20 other films where I don’t kick ass,” Ferguson says. “Mission comes with such an enormous following. That was what made my career.”

Ferguson’s M: I movies bracket a number of films in which she played opposite marquee names: Florence Foster Jenkins, with Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant; The Girl on the Train, with Emily Blunt; The Greatest Showman, with Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams; Life, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds; Men in Black: International, with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson; The Snowman, with Michael Fassbender; Doctor Sleep, with Ewan McGregor. And now Dune, opposite Oscar Isaac, Javier Bardem, Zendaya and Chalamet, whom she calls “one of the best actors, if not the best actor of his generation—of this time.” She was similarly impressed by Zendaya, who plays the native Fremen warrior Chani. “She’s quite raw and naughty and fun,” says Ferguson. “She has an enormous f— off attitude.”

When Ferguson first spoke to Villeneuve about appearing in the movie, “he started telling me about this woman who was a protector, and a mother, and a lover, and a concubine,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry. You want me to play a queen and a bodyguard? And you want me to kick ass and walk regally?’ I was like, ‘Denis, why would I want to do that? That’s the last thing I want to do.’ ”

After the call, Ferguson says, “I went downstairs to my hubby and said, Oh, my God, he’s amazing, but I’m not going to get the job. I just criticized the character.” Ferguson worried she was being cast as a stereotypical “strong female character,” where “it’s constantly, ‘She looks good, and she can kick.’ That is not what I want to portray.”

Ferguson hasn’t always been able to work with collaborators who’ve given her the space to question or opine. “I’ve been bashed down. I’ve been bullied,” she says, though she opts not to say by whom. That was never a concern with Villeneuve, who welcomed her critique. He and his co-writers had already decided from the start to make women the focus of their screenplay adaptation, and he promptly offered her the part.

“I want Lady Jessica to be at the center, the forefront. For me, she’s the architect of the story,” Villeneuve says. “I needed someone who will convey the mystery and the dark side of the film in a very elegant and profound way. Rebecca was everything I was hoping for. She’s so precise. She brought a beautiful, controlled vulnerability—it becomes very visceral on-screen.”

Ferguson vaguely recalls trying to watch the 1984 version of Dune, directed by David Lynch, in her youth, but she fell asleep. And she had never opened Herbert’s novel until being offered the part in the new adaptation. As she dug into the book, she says, she learned that her character was subservient and far more like a concubine, forced to eat alone in her bedroom, not spoken to and not allowed to speak. Ferguson ended up relying primarily on Villeneuve for her research and prep—his notes and comments, his references and the pages in the book he suggested she focus on. “I would feel ignorant not to have read Frank’s book at all,” Ferguson says, though she admits there are parts of the sprawling novel (which Villeneuve is splitting into two films) she’s only skimmed. “I have to finish it.” That will not happen on her upcoming vacation, however. “Absolutely not,” she says “I am surfing.”

By the way, if you saw, I am snaking on the ground, snaking around my room to get good Wi-Fi—it’s not some dance or yoga thing,” Ferguson says. “You have to do that in this old house.” It’s a week and a half after our first meeting, and Ferguson is at her new home, a more than 500-year-old property southwest of London that has, over the years, been home to numerous English Royals. It’s more spartan than stately now. “Empty except for a rock star,” she says, turning her phone’s camera to reveal a framed duotone poster of Mick Jagger that’s leaning against the wall. “We haven’t even started renovating.

Ferguson has returned from her holiday fortified and with renewed confidence, thanks in part to her success on the surfboard. “I went up nearly every time,” she says cheerfully, “but the waves weren’t very high.” She shrugs. “I was proud. I was up. I rode them, not the other way around.”

After years of going with the flow, Ferguson is eager to replicate that sense of control in her career. She values her role as an executive producer on Wool, she says, “because I am, for the first time, a part of it from the beginning.” She relishes weighing in on every aspect, from casting (the show recently added Tim Robbins) to cinematography to her character—which has not always been easy for her. “Why do I feel it’s difficult to speak up? I still battle with these things,” she says. Alluding to those times she was pushed around in the past, Ferguson says, “I was angry, but it was more me getting off at ‘How can I let that happen? Why am I letting myself react this way?’ And I take it with me to the next thing where I go, ‘OK, how do I stop that from happening?’ ”

She is learning that she can ride on top of waves without giving up her agency or maybe just let them break against her. “I want to feel I can go home and think, That was a hard day or that pissed me off—and that’s OK,” Ferguson says, with a nod and tight smile. “Because I still stood there as Rebecca. I didn’t shift.”

[thevirgodoll]

Is it possible to be neuro-typical and still have mental health obstacles/issues? Like honestly…I am AWFUL at self-discipline. I lack focus and sometimes I have to force myself to finish things (even if last minute). But, I genuinely, truly, deeply at the bottom of my heart, DON’T believe I struggle with any mental disorders. Whenever I do research for things like adhd and what not, and I interact with fellow classmates with adhd, I don’t find myself relating to those issues on a deep profound level other than lack of focus/discipline and occasional anxiety.

It is definitely possible, but I think you're comparing yourself too much to Internet articles and your peers. I will give you facts just for your own convenience and you can decide on your own. It doesn't hurt to think about it.

Everyone with ADHD represents differently, considering there's ADHD Inattentive Type, ADHD Hyperactive-Impulsive Type, and ADHD Combined (that's all of it together, which is me!). This creates a stark difference in all of us with the disorder. Primarily Inattentive especially presents drastically different due to the low population of those who have it. It creates imposter syndrome, when it's not any less debilitating. There are even uncommon symptoms that go under the radar, that we didn't even know was ADHD.

Another thing to consider is if you are POC, AFAB, or identify as a woman, it's severely under diagnosed in these populations due to the stigma. And to speak to my demographic, Black women, we do not notice there's something off until we find difficulty in late adulthood due to the ableism and bias in healthcare. Most BW will believe ADHD is something different than what it actually is, and avoid getting knowledge from the right sources (because most are for children, or little boys...). We downplay a lot of our symptoms with mental illness.

The thing is, ADHD is specifically unique because it's a disorder that is neurologically based and developmentally based.

Let me explain executive function!

Executive function helps us manage time efficiently, switch between tasks without conscious effort, problem solve, avoid impulsivity, retrieve information, and regulate emotions. ADHD impacts the development of executive function through neurological structures of our brain, so that becomes executive dysfunction - peep this comic from ADHD-Alien to see it in a situation played out. And another!

I like to use the analogy of neurotypical's dopamine neurotransmitters (thousands of them) completing their job at work while ours don't even show up, even though they really want to. Here's an example of how severe the symptoms are in a comic from ADHD-Alien.

Therefore, it's a deficiency in dopamine and norepinephrine. This is why medication becomes important for a lot of people with ADHD to bring it back up. Beforehand, self medication is usually an issue, through other stimulants like coffee. The low chemicals in our brain will cause those of us afflicted with ADHD to seek stimuli to compensate for that, usually involuntarily.

Tasks with high stimulus are more attractive to our brains. What has some sort of incentive is at the forefront of your brain, and that's why you're not able to do things that you should do. Your brain legit screams, "Do something else, or I'm turning off!!!" This is also why those of us with it have endless amounts of hobbies because we go through various phases of what is the most interesting.

Before diagnosis, most people will be told they're lazy, just need to try focusing/try harder, or that everyone has this same problem. That is all due to professionals not advocating for ADHD properly, having a view that ADHD is just a little boy kicking, being hyper, screaming, and a belief that ADHD is tied to poor academic performance/low intelligence. This all prevents people from seeking treatment and creates internalized ableism. This also leads to feeling like the ADHD diagnosis is invalid due to childhood symptoms being suppressed until adulthood.

I must also mention... it's well known people with ADHD WILL have AT LEAST one co-morbidity... which means it can attribute to the development of these disorders if the symptoms go unnoticed. Depression, OCD, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, Substance Use Disorder, and more. Autism and ADHD counts as well, and often people have an overlap because they are basically brother and sister in casual speech.

A lot of us were already diagnosed with a co-morbidity, anyway. So our brain already had to seek chemicals and that can make it even harder for diagnosis to occur and make it easier for misdiagnosis or increase risks. ADHD also creates the likelihood of suicide, doesn't matter the age bracket.

There is a lifetime prevalence for other disorders for those of us with ADHD either way, because of how difficult it is. So, even if you feel you may be "milder" in presentation, that's not invalid, and don't be put astray by TikToks or Twitter posts. Know your facts and be careful, because social media will say everything is an ADHD symptom, when it's not, especially TikTok. They will also use the wrong words or invalidate less common symptoms. Don't buy into that.

TL;DR: Though you may have mild anxiety to begin with or depression, my concern is that executive function requires the ability to self regulate. Through this you have the ability to essentially force your reward system, so that way you can prime your brain for a greater reward in the future. Anyone with executive dysfunction has a deeper problem than they realize, and I would've been doing my brand of mental health and improvement a disservice if I didn't at least try to define the reasons why you should also consider that you may display lesser known symptoms. Even if you are neurotypical in your world view, mental illness has been defined so concretely by certain people that it becomes confusion. I can tell you're having difficulty. It seems you're having trouble either way with something, so you should seek services if you are able, as well as think more about what's been going on lately.

[munsonboy]

Author’s note: I’ve been thinking about how Loki would act at a meet and greet, especially if he was a giant and what would happen if he met a tiny fan-...so here ya go!! Enjoy!😊

Oh! And before I forget to tell you all, this story is super long! I just couldn’t help myself ☺️

_______________________________________________

~“You’re a Fan of Mine?”~

The 2nd Annual Avengers Meet and Greet had started at last!

The team had decided to start this event when Thor and Loki returned to Earth after Asgard was destroyed. More specifically, it was for the sake of Loki’s reputation. He wasn’t popular whatsoever among the humans, especially not after the New York attack back in 2012, but Loki really was trying to become a better person. Didn’t anyone ever hear of the phrase ‘people change’?

Loki just didn’t see the need of being in a room full of tiny mortals to show that he had turned over a new leaf. That’s right. Tiny mortals.

His body grew in size, letting him stand at 90 feet tall. No one was sure why Loki had grown to be a giant, but Loki did. He believed it was because of Odin’s death. The spell that Odin had put on Loki centuries ago when he found him as a baby must have weakened. Loki had grown to the size he was meant to be as a Frost Giant. Since he was the rightful heir to the throne of Jotunheim, he surpassed the rest of the Jötuns’ height by miles.

A room designed and built was given to him in the Avengers Tower. It was a library fit for a giant-..well, fit for Loki, in this case. Book shelves covered the walls with novels that towered over humans, but fit perfectly in Loki’s grasp. He even had his own personal desk and, of course, a bed that was covered in silk green sheets. The meet and greets were always held in Loki’s room only because it was the biggest spot in the entire tower.

After the first successful year of meeting the team’s lovely fans, more and more people found out about it and showed up this year. It wasn’t successful for Loki, though. The previous year, Stark had all of the fans stay out in the common area. So it was up in the air for anyone to go see Loki. He stayed in his room the entire time, waiting to see if one brave soul would enter his bedroom and attempt to talk to him, but no one did. The whole point of the event was for Loki to talk with at least one person!

At the moment, Loki was sitting at his desk in his room, staring down at Tony Stark, who was decked out in friendship brackets and necklaces that the children had made him. Loki rolled his eyes just looking at how pathetic he looked.

The rest of the team was spread out throughout the whole room. Fans were practically everywhere. Most of the fans were little kids and teenagers. The simple sight of the younglings made Loki’s head spin. He was practically glued to his chair, not wanting to get up and accidentally hurt someone.

If Loki had to guess, he’d say there were about 300 kids there and still, not one of them came over to greet him.

“Stark, I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. I mean, what even is the purpose of this ‘Meet and Greet’ you speak of?”, questioned Loki.

“Quiet, reindeer games. You know why we started the meet and greet. Just smile and wave at everyone. Even if you don’t want to be nice, just fake it. And don’t purposefully scare the kids! I can’t deal with a parent scolding me about how a giant god with raven black rock n’ roll hair made their kid cry just by smirking at them. That was a nightmare last year”, said Tony rubbing his eyes.

Loki scoffed. “Well it wasn’t my fault the child walked into my chambers when I was reading. Who would interrupt someone during a Shakespeare reading session?” Tony laughed at how sarcastic Loki sounded. “That must have been a real good Shakespeare book if you brought the kid to tears. Let’s see-..was it Hamlet?”, asked Tony.

Loki grinned. “No, I read that last week. It was Coriolanus”, said Loki, chuckling, as he looked down at Tony, who started to join in on the laughter.

After the laughing died down, there was a pause between the two of them. “Obviously nobody was interested in meeting me anyways. Not one mortal came in here last year to talk with me”, said Loki sadly. He didn’t want to admit it, but Loki really wished that he had a fan. At this point, he didn’t even mind if his fan was a mortal. Loki wanted someone who admired him for who he was and the good that he has been doing with the rest of the Avengers. He didn’t want to be known as the Asgardian who tried to take over the world anymore. He wanted to be known as someone’s hero.

“Loki, listen to me. I bet you one of these kids are gonna come up to you and say hi”, said Tony with a reassuring smile on his face. Loki began to fiddle with his fingers, uncertain if he should believe the small human in front of him. “And what if one doesn’t? Then what am I left to do? Sulk around and remember that no one in this city likes me?”, he asked sounding even more sad than before.

Tony sighed. “Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. The event just started! Just be yourself, Loki. And I promise you that you’ll meet someone today”, he said. Loki was about to contradict what Stark had just said, but a group of kids that were standing on Loki’s bed started to chant the name, ‘Ironman’.

Loki and Tony looked over towards everyone. “Well, I guess I should get over there, huh?”, asked Tony. He looked up at Loki, who simply nodded at him and waved him off. Tony smiled and said, “I promise. This is the year you meet a fan of yours.” And with that, Tony walked over to the edge of the desk and tapped his arc reactor two times. He was wearing his suit in a matter of seconds thanks to the nano tech he had invented.

Loki watched as Tony flew over to all the kids, getting hugs from each and everyone one of them. ‘I need a miracle to get that kind of attention’, thought Loki to himself. He was back to square one. Loki was all alone again.

‘I knew this was a terrible idea’, thought Loki to himself as he watched the Avengers interacting with all of their fans. They all made it look so easy. ‘Why can’t one of these mortals at least say hi to me? It can’t be that hard’, thought Loki to himself.

Little did Loki know, a human girl named Y/n, who was around the age of fifteen, was watching him from afar on the large bed that was next to the desk that Loki sat at.

Rather than joining the other kids in awing at Ironman flying around, trying to learn fighting combinations from Natasha, or even learning how to properly hold a bow with the help of Clint, she was standing by herself, trying to muster up the courage to go over to Loki and talk to him.

She was a nervous wreck just thinking about what the conversation would be like. Instead of fiddling with her fingers like Loki was doing before, she clenched the hand-made plush of the God of Mischief she held in her shaky grasp. Y/n had decided to make it when she heard that the Avengers were doing a second meet and greet. Y/n finally had the opportunity to speak with Loki! She wanted to show him her gratitude for protecting New York with the Avengers and to tell him that he was her favorite amongst the group. So, what better gift to give Loki than a plush of himself!

She could have written something in a ‘thank you’ card or even decorated a poster, but Y/n wanted to make him something special that took time to put together and this plush toy was perfect.

The plush stood at about 1 foot tall and it was very adorable. Although Y/n didn’t sew on a green cape like she wanted to, she had gotten her hands on a piece of yellow fabric and turned it into a horned helmet. Loki was, without a doubt, going to love it, but Y/n kept on hesitating on whether or not she should give it to him.

‘Oh gosh. What if he laughs at me when I hand it to him? ’, thought Y/n to herself. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her legs were barely holding her up anymore. Y/n just pictured herself standing on the desk in front of Loki and how small she would look compared to him.

“Hello little one! Why aren’t you with the others?”, said a voice from behind Y/n. She jumped, dropping the hand-made plush onto the mattress below her.

She spun around to find out who had snuck up behind her and startled her. Y/n’s eyes widened as she looked up at the tall, blonde haired man. “M-Mr. Thor! I-It’s a pleasure to meet you!”, said Y/n excitedly. Her face instantly turned red. Y/n was very shy around other people, so her burst of energy she got made her backpedal into her shell. She knows for a fact that she’ll be stuttering if she gets to talk to Loki.

Thor chuckled loudly. “It is an honor to meet you as well, little one. Apologies for scaring you.” His eyes trailed down at what Y/n had dropped. His mouth dropped open in awe. He bent down and picked the plush up before Y/n had the chance to hide it.

As Thor held the plush toy in front of him, he admired the precision of the details and traced his fingers along the lines of the stitches. When Thor realized who the plush represented, he gasped.

“Young one, is this-...is this Loki?”, asked Thor, astonished that he was holding a hand-made toy of his brother. Y/n lowered her head down, embarrassed about the whole situation that was happening. “Y-Yes, sir”, she said timidly.

Thor stared at the small girl in front of him and then looked back at the plush. “This is absolutely incredible, young one! Did you make this?”, Thor asked as he stared at the plush toy, looking at it in amazement. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it! Y/n nodded, too nervous to say anything else.

“We must get this to Loki right away! Oh, he’s going to love this! Let me go call him over here for you”, said Thor cheerfully.

Y/n’s heart stopped at the mention of Loki coming towards her. She wasn’t ready to meet him yet. In fact, she wasn’t ever going to be ready! “N-No Mr. Thor p-please! D-Don’t!”, exclaimed Y/n.

Thor stopped jumping up and down, a frown replacing the happy smile he had on. “Whatever do you mean, small one? Don’t you want to give your gift to him?”, asked Thor. He was highly confused as to why the child didn’t want to meet Loki.

“I-I’d love to, b-but-...I’m scared that h-he won’t like it. A-And that he w-won’t like me”, Y/n said sadly. “I-..”, started Y/n. She stopped before she could say anything else. Y/n was afraid that she would start crying. Thor knelt down in front of Y/n, giving her a look that mentally told her to continue on with what she was going to say.

“I don’t have m-many friends. A-Actually, I don’t have any f-friends at all. Loki is the one person that I look up to and-...I just wanted to let him know how much of an impact he’s had in my life”, said Y/n. She bit her lower lip, forcing herself to not shed a single tear in front of Thor. “But I’m too scared to talk to him. I don’t want to look dumb in front of the Loki. I-I’ll be a stuttering mess. I’m not scared of him, his size is just really intimidating.”

Thor didn’t say a word. All he did do, however, was sigh and hand back the plush toy back to Y/n, who immediately hugged it close to her.

He gently put his hand on her shoulder, causing Y/n to look up at him. “My brother needs to know about this, little one. I’m going to have him sit right here-...”, said Thor as he turned towards the edge of the bed and pointed at the vacant space where Loki would be standing soon. Y/n’s eyes became watery just imagining Loki looking down at her.

“I’ll only be a moment”, said Thor. And with that, he summoned Mjölnir and flew off to fetch Loki. As his feet left the bed, he heard Y/n begging him to stop. Thor did feel bad for getting Y/n all shaken up, but he knew in his heart that Y/n needed to meet Loki and Loki needed to meet Y/n. It was time that the two of them finally made a friend.

Loki sat at his desk with his one arm propped up on its elbow resting on the table as his chin laid in the palm of his hand while the other hand flicked through a few pages of a book. Loki was not interested in the meet and greet anymore. He was going to make sure that he informed Tony that he isn’t going to be a part of the 3rd event next year. Loki couldn’t handle not getting talked to for a third time.

Loki had somehow tuned out the noise that was coming from all around the room and focused on the book in front of him. That was until Thor landed on the page that Loki had just started to read. “Hello Loki!”, said Thor as he waved to his gigantic brother.

Loki rolled his eyes. When he said he wanted someone to talk to him, he was hoping that Thor would be the last to come over here. “What do you want, Thor? Have you come to gloat? To mock? Tell me about all the fans you’ve met in the span of one hour?”, chided Loki.

“As much as I would love to tell you about the fans I’ve met, I’ve come to inform you about something”, said Thor, trying to hide the excitement he was feeling so that Loki didn’t suspect anything.

Thor stood there practically bouncing up and down. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Loki’s face when he told him about Y/n. Loki, however, was getting annoyed at the anticipation that was building up inside him. “Oh by Odin, just spit it out Thor”, he said.

“You have a fan that wants to meet you!”, exclaimed Thor. He was more than happy at the moment, jumping up and down like a thrilled, little puppy on a sugar rush. Loki’s eyes widened when Thor revealed the news. “I do?”, he asked with hope in his voice. Thor nodded vigorously and said, “You do, brother! I am so happy for you! She’s standing right over there on your bed near the pillow closest to us.” Thor pointed over to where Y/n stood clutching onto the plush toy.

Thor couldn’t wait any longer to witness the interaction between Loki and Y/n. He was for sure going to ask Stark to take pictures just so he could remember this moment.

Loki slowly turned his head to where Thor had said the small girl was standing. Almost instantaneously, Loki made eye contact with the small, mortal child.

‘I do have a fan..”, thought Loki to himself.

She was staring at him with wide eyes. That’s when Loki realized something. ‘The poor child is visibly shaking’, thought Loki to himself. He looked back at Thor and asked, “Brother, are you sure that she wants to speak with me? She looks frightened.”

Thor laughed off what Loki had just said. “Loki, believe me. She has been meaning to meet you for awhile now. And she even made you a gift!”, exclaimed Thor.

Loki’s eyebrows raised. He wanted to believe Thor, but his conscience just wouldn’t let him trust the fact that someone came to this event to meet him.

Loki looked back at the tiny girl on his bed. Without taking his eyes off of her, he asked Thor, “What’s the little one’s name?” Thor smiled, loving how Loki was practically speechless. “Her name is Y/n.”

“Y/n-...”, said Loki under his breath. He wanted to hear how the little mortal’s name sounded when he said it, finding the name a perfect fit for the little one.

He went to get up from his desk, but looked back at Thor to see if he should go over to her. Thor smiled at him and said, “Go on, brother. Go meet your fan.” Loki partially smiled, afraid that he would scare the poor girl. But he desired to meet her, so he got up from his seat and made his way over towards her.

Y/n felt as if she was going to have a heart attack. Meeting someone you admired wasn’t easy. I mean, just picture meeting Loki. And now picture him being over 90 feet tall. You would be a nervous wreck as well, right?

She watched as Loki lowered himself down to her eye level, kneeling down so that he could see her properly.

Loki rested his hand next to Y/n and began to inch it closer to her. He desired to just hold her in his palm and see how tiny she was, but he froze when he saw her flinch back. “My apologies. I-..”, Loki stopped dead in his track and sighed, closing his eyes so he could concentrate. He wouldn’t be able to make any progress with the small mortal if a mere movement of his hand scared her, so what would be the point in continuing to try and earn her trust?

Loki retracted his hand back and let it hang at his side, offering a gentle smile. “How about if I head back to my desk and leave you be? I could see that you are too scared to talk, little one”, said Loki as he looked down at Y/n. Normally, Loki would have been laughing his head off by scaring such a small being, basking in their fear, but Loki felt horrible knowing that a small child was afraid of him. “I’m very sorry for frightening you, little Y/n”, said Loki softly.

Y/n watched as Loki began to push himself up off the floor to stand up. Her only chance of speaking with Loki was ending quickly. Y/n had dreamed of meeting him and she made him believe that she was scared of him! Y/n had to let him know how much he had changed her life and most importantly, she had to give him her hand-made gift. “W-Wait!!”, Y/n cried out.

Loki became as stiff as a board. He didn’t think that something so little could have such a loud voice. He stared down at her, waiting for a response.

Y/n’s breathing hitched, but she shook her head. She couldn’t let her nerves get in the way of this anymore. “I-I’m star-struck. N-Not scared”, she said shyly. Loki’s mouth hung open just a tad. He was incredibly happy that Y/n had started talking and found it absolutely adorable how she was stuttering when she spoke.

It took Loki a second to process what Y/n had just said to him. ‘Did she just say she’s star-struck?’, asked Loki to himself. “Star-struck, you say?”, asked Loki as he knelt back down in front of Y/n. Surely she couldn’t be referring to him, right?

Loki’s doubtful thoughts were wiped out of his mind when she nodded her head. “Y-Yes. I um-...I-I wanted to come last year and m-meet you, but-..I was too n-nervous”, said Y/n smiling diffidently.

His eyebrows raised at hearing that she was his fan. ‘Thor was telling the truth’, Loki thought to himself. He leaned forward a bit to get a better look at Y/n and asked in astonishment, “You’re a fan of mine?”

Y/n laughed quietly at how Loki wouldn’t believe the fact that someone was his fan. “Y-Yes, sir. I have been f-for a while n-now.”

“What is your name, child?”, asked Loki. He already knew what her name was thanks to Thor, but remember, Loki was a part of a royal family. Manners meant everything to him.

“M-My name is Y-Y/n, sir”, she said, stuttering through her words. Loki beamed at the tiny mortal and awed our loud. Her nervousness was quite entertaining and very cute. “It is lovely to meet you, little Y/n. I am Loki”, he said, still smiling.

Y/n returned the smiled. “I-It’s lovely to meet you as well, s-sir.” Loki’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘Why does she keep calling me that? She does know she could call me by my name, does she not?’, Loki asked himself.

He decided to tell her, “You do not have to be so formal with me, small one. Just call me Loki. I won’t mind.” Loki gently ruffled her hair with his index finger, laughing at the way she giggled when he did so.

Loki was surprised with what was happening in front of his very eyes. Someone actually was a fan of his. Loki was brought out of his shocked state when he noticed that Y/n was holding something firmly against her chest.

“What have you got there, little one?, he asked. He thought that it must be a stuffed toy that Midguardian children carry around, but Y/n spoke up immediately about the item she held in her grasp.

“Oh! I-..I-I have something f-for you”, said Y/n as she held up the plush toy so Loki could see it.

Loki squinted his eyes, trying to even out his vision so he could see the tiny item that his little fan was holding, but he just couldn’t make out what it was. He wanted to rest his head on the mattress in front of Y/n, but he didn’t want to scare her. “I’m afraid I can’t see it that well from up here, little one. Is-..Is that alright if I pick you up?”, asked Loki, nervous to hold a mortal child. She seemed so incredibly fragile from his perspective.

Y/n’s eyes widened. ‘P-Pick me up?’, she thought to herself. She would be extremely high off the ground if she said yes, but this was her shot to finally show Loki the plush she had worked on for weeks now.

Loki saw the immediate change in her facial expressions. “I will be very gentle with my movements, little one. And you won’t fall or anything like that. I promise”, said Loki softly. He wanted to come off as kind as he possibly could so Y/n could relax.

“O-Okay-..”, she said nervously. Loki rested his hand on the mattress next to Y/n, palm facing up, waiting for her to climb on.

Y/n walked over to Loki’s hand and as much as her mind was screaming at her to not go through with it, she boarded the huge hand and made her way to the center of it. She sat down, waiting to be lifted up high off the bed.

Loki smiles at the small girl and raised her up to his face, staring down at her with his large, green eyes.

Y/n was definitely scared at first, but she calmed herself down. She slowly stood up in the center of Loki’s palm, looking around at how tiny she really was compared to him. She had to tilt her head up just a little bit so she could see the tips of his fingers that loomed behind her.

“Now, what were you trying to show me, my dear?”, asked Loki as he held Y/n in front of his eyes. She was so tiny, not even reaching the height of his thumb.

Y/n held up the plush again so that Loki could see it.

“I-...I made th-this plush toy for you. W-Whenever I had the f-free time to work on it, I did. I-I know it’s sm-small, but I worked r-really hard on it and I wanted to show you my ap-appreciation for everything that you’ve done”, said Y/n. She kept her eyes locked on Loki’s green orbs

Loki admired the small gift that Y/n held. The first thing he noticed were the yellow horns and the fabric armor it wore. Suddenly, a lightbulb went off it Loki’s mind. “Is-..Is that me?”, asked Loki, bewildered.

Y/n hesitatingly nodded her head yes, shuffling her feet around nervously as she waited for Loki’s response.

“May I hold it?”, he asked, holding out two fingers on his opposite hand. Loki hoped that he didn’t ruin such a wonderful gift. He didn’t want to hurt Y/n’s feelings by accidentally ripping the fabric apart with his large fingers.

“Of course y-you can!”, said Y/n as her eyes lit up with excitement. She was more than happy that Loki wanted to see his gift.

Y/n watched as Loki’s other hand approached her. The forefinger and thumb reached out for the plush toy and she happily obliged in handing it over. The two fingers grabbed onto either side of the plush toy and ferried it away from Y/n.

Loki laid the plush toy in the center of his other palm and raised it up to his eyes. He slightly touched it with the pad of his thumb, moving it around to get a better look at it. The whole time he did this, Loki was beaming a wide smile. He looked up from the plush toy and at the small girl who was staring at him with wide, blue eyes. ‘Such an innocent child-..’, thought Loki to himself as he smiled down at her.

“That is very kind of you. This is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. Truly. You do not know how much of an honor it is for me to receive such an extraordinary gift. Thank you, little Y/n”, said Loki.

“You-..You like it?”, asked Y/n, astonished that he liked the present she had put so much effort into making sure it looked similar to Loki.

“I don’t like it, I love it! You have an incredible talent, young one. I could never start from scratch with fabric and a few needles to create such a masterpiece”, said Loki as he ruffled Y/n’s hair gently.

Y/n and Loki spent the rest of the event taking to each other. They had moved back over to Loki’s desk for a bit of privacy. The children that were on the bed were all starting to get Loki annoyed. Every time Y/n would go to say something, she was interrupted by noise from the others her age. So, Loki had carried her back to his desk while the plush toy sat safely tucked away in his shirt pocket.

Out of now where, a feminine voice exclaimed Y/n’s name. “Y/n! Sweetie! It’s time to go home!”

Loki’s eyebrows slightly furrowed together, looking for the human that had called out to his tiny friend. He looked down to see a woman looking up towards the hand that held Y/n, who was holding onto Loki’s finger tips as she peered over the edge.

“Hi mom!”, shouted Y/n as she waved at her mother. Loki’s eyes softened at the adorable sight. He looked at Y/n’s mother and, of course, introduced himself.

“Hello ma’am. It is lovely to meet your acquaintance”, said Loki as he bowed his head. Y/n’s mother smiled up at Loki.

“I’m sorry to cut things short here, but Y/n, we have to head home now honey. It’s getting late”, said her mother.

“B-But..”, Y/n’s mother gave her a certain look to know she meant business.

“Okay.” Y/n turn towards Loki with sadness written all over her face. “I-I..I guess I have to go now. I just want to say thank you. I-I’ve dreamed of meeting m-my idol for a long time and this is by far the b-best day of my life.”

“I’m your-...idol?”, asked Loki. His heart had fully melted into a puddle when she nodded her head yes. Loki could see tears glistening in his little friend’s eyes, for she knew that they probably wouldn’t ever see each other once she exits his room. “I’ll m-miss you, L-Loki.” Y/n broke down at this point. She used the backs of her hands to wipe away the tears.

“Oh my little dove, do not cry. It’s okay. I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon”, said Loki.

He held Y/n close to his chest as he tenderly caressed her back. Maybe they would see each other again, but-..what was the probability of that? Loki came to the realization that they most likely would never see each other anymore. He’s constantly here in the tower and is permitted to always stick around his room. “I-…I’ll miss you as well, my little dove.”

“Oh for heavens sake you two!”, exclaimed a voice. Loki’s gaze shot upwards to find that Tony Stark was hovering way above the desk.

“Always with the perfect timing, Stark”, said Loki angrily. He held out the palm that cupped Y/n protectively and allowed Stark to land right next to her.

“Kid listen. The amount of joy that you’ve brought Loki in a span of two hours is unbelievable. He has been the worst debbie downer for the past few weeks, but you put a smile on the big guy’s face in a matter of seconds”, said Tony as he smiled at Y/n.

“Please, get to the point”, said Loki. He poked Tony in the back, causing him to stumble forward. Tony laughed it off.

“She can come visit you whenever she wants. Here, take this, kid-…”, Tony gave Y/n a card with a number on it. “This here is my phone number. Now whenever you want to come up to the tower and see Loki, you just call me up so I can let him know, okay? I’ll even have a limo sent to your house if you’d like”, said Tony.

Y/n couldn’t take her eyes off of the card. She was in complete shock. “Th-Thank you so much!”, she said happily. “No problem, kid. And no more tears, alright? Loki here looked like he was about to start crying himself”, said Tony sarcastically. He glanced up at Loki, smirking away.

Loki was about to retaliate, but kept quiet because he knew Tony was right. He probably would have started crying if Stark hadn’t come over to them. “Alright, I’ll let you say your farewells to each other”, said Tony as he flew over to the bed.

“L-Loki, could I come see you tomorrow? If that’s okay with you o-of course”, asked Y/n nervously. She really hoped that Loki would say yes because she had so much more to tell him about how she became a fan of his.

“Absolutely, sweetheart”, said Loki. He lightly tickled her stomach, causing Y/n to laugh.

After Y/n had left with her mother, Loki looked down at the plush toy in his palm. “This will never leave my side. Ever. I cannot wait to see my little friend again tomorrow”, said Loki.

Loki stayed true to his word as he as he slept later that night. Next to Loki’s sleeping form was the plush toy Y/n had gifted to him. It sat upright against Loki’s green pillow and sometime during the night in his sleep, Loki reached over and grabbed a hold of the plush toy, drawing it near him. He held it close to his chest, subconsciously smiling to himself.

_______________________________________________

Author’s note:

This is probably my longest story I’ve ever written! I hope you all liked it!! Do you guys mind if I post long stories like this? Or do you prefer short ones?? Let me know what you think!❤️

Also, here’s what the Loki plush looks like😊:

I bought this lil’ cutie off of Etsy! I’m so happy I finally got to include him into one of the stories somehow. The seller’s name is “MythfitCreatures” and they have different characters as well!

[foster-the-world]

Flying out

Flying out tmrw. We considered driving due to Omicron hitting NYC. Seems like our risks are pretty limited except for the airport. Last year we drove and numbers were better. Ultimately decided to go ahead with the flight. A benefit of my Mom already having it is we are less worried about passing it on. My Dad never got it - and that was after sleeping next to her without a mask for the entire time. 

We’ve now become those people who say things like “well if we get it, we get it.” I mean we will still mask up indoors and follow all of the protocols but considering we are all boosted, vaccinated or in an age bracket where odds are in our favor I don’t think it makes sense to cancel our plans. Long Covid still scares me. Baby boy still being in foster care scares me. Coparenting with the govt is no fun on a good day. I can only imagine it’s a horror story if we have to deal with Covid with our caseworker asking questions. We aren’t going to see any of my family members that are unvaccinated. Luckily, all of our childcare workers are vaccinated. I imagine by next school year NYC will require it for all students (fingers crossed). I’ll be doing clinical’s in the hospital starting Jan 16th. 

Bee’s teacher sent out a Donor’s choose project for some supplies she wanted. She mentioned she has kids from nine countries in her class. There are only 15 kids in the class. Laos, Israel, France, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Slovakia, Scotland, Germany, Austria, and the US. How amazing is that? 

Baby boy is such a riot. Something about little babies imitating grown up things cracks me up. Every morning when I go in his room he hands me his blanket before he lets me get him out of the crib. Then he looks for the bottle he threw on the floor after the last nights feeding. Walks the bottle to the kitchen sink and throws it in. This morning I put him in the living room with the girls while I was getting something ready. Came back he was gone. Searched every room. Finally found him in the bathroom - where he had shut the door behind him, climbed on the toilet, got his toothbrush and started brushing. He’s 17 months. Luckily, he didn’t crack his head on the toilet. We have a gate on the living room door but I guess I didn’t latch it. 

He gets very angry if you tell him no but luckily the anger doesn’t last long. I’ve been saying he’s turned into a maniac toddler after being a really chill baby. However, Friday night we had him all alone because the girls spent the night at my in-laws (after we did a rapid covid tests for the girls. We are still very cautious about my husbands parents). Baby boy was so calm and loved the full-time attention of both of us. Normally he tried to bust into whatever the girls are doing, they understandably get annoyed, I try to stop him and chaos ensues. We are going to start making sure one parent is giving him undivided attention at all times. I think it will make everything run smoother and he’s at an age where he needs it. It’s not as if we leave him alone now but between trying to get everyone home, fed, bathed, etc we sometimes get distracted.

My Uncle is doing much better. The treatment seemed to have helped after 48 hours. Thank goodness. He’s an idiot for not getting vaccinated but a lovable idiot. 

[draven-imani]

Journal 5 (part 1)

We’ve had an…extremely productive day. We found a note on Hosilla’s person that detailed three safehouses of the cult of Baphomet: Nyserian Manor, Topaz Solutions, and the Tower of Estrod. The note was signed SV—which I’m assuming is Stauton Vhagn. Looks like he came back and finished the job of destroying the Wardstone after Commander Tirabade stopped him the first time.

After talking to Aravashnial, Anevia, and Horgus, we pooled our information together. Nyserian Manor was owned by a noble who sometimes worked with Horgus, and had taken out a loan from him once to buy Commander Tirabade’s sword from her. Anevia hadn’t been aware Irabeth had sold her sword—apparently she’d told her wife she’d lost it. Anevia was going to be having words with the commander of the Eagle Watch upon seeing her again.

The Tower of Estrod was of interest to Aravashnial, as it was a place of arcane studies. He also requested that we look into the Blackwing Library, where the Riftwardens would be located.

Anevia wanted to look for Irabeth, and therefore would like to look into going home as that was the only lead she had on where her wife may be.

As we discussed, we exited the subterranean tunnels and entered the sewers. And came upon three orphan kids and a middle aged pinkish tiefling woman with many piercings and a bow. The orphans immediately ran to Luna, clearly familiar with her. Another point in her favor for ‘good person, not a murderer/serial killer/whatever else the rumor mill decides to say’.

“So you must be ‘Una’,” the tiefling said, imitating the orphans mispronunciation of her name. Or maybe legitimately mistaking her name for that. “Nice to meet you, incase you haven’t noticed, everything’s gone to hell.”

The tiefling introduced herself as Hiskaria. She had arrived in town from Numeria recently to join the Raven Corps, actually, although she was apparently a Kenabres native initially. She was on lone by one ‘Kevoth-Kul’, because she was a criminal on parole, and joining the Raven Corps was her penance.

Ouch.

Aaaaaand as the only member of the Raven Corps around that means it fell on me to keep her around until we could either find her handler or someone with more authority. That and strength in numbers. We couldn’t exactly leave her behind, even if she is a confessed murderer.

Oh, yeah, I didn’t mention that her crime was murder did I? Yeah, our new buddy’s a convicted murderer. One fake murderer and one real one, and if I had to put money on it, everyone’s going to get who’s who wrong.

After some discussion, we decided to head for Horgus’ manor first. It would provide a safe place to leave the orphans, so that we wouldn’t be dragging them around in the open where every demon still lurking around might decide to swoop down on them.

We made it there with only minor incident, some rat demon ripping up a clothing store who dubbed himself ‘the rat king’. He was of personal offense to Melody given that he was in the process of destroying things of beauty. That and the owners of the shop were still there and might be able to salvage some things.

Given my studies I was able to identify the demon as an Abrikandilu, a wrecker demon. A destroyer of beauty, not just of artwork like the dresses, but of physical beauty, using their fangs to cause horrible scarring on those they attack. I also knew that Radiance was the only weapon we had that would pierce its defenses, although it also had a unique weakness to mirrors, due to all demons of this kind having an abhorrence of their own visage. That being the case, I suggested that Luna and Melody slip into the store to get one of the mirrors from the changing rooms within while I distracted and fought it with Radiance and Hiskaria took pot shots at it from a safe distance.

Radiance and I were both more than happy to finally be putting a demon to the blade.

Spilling demons’ blood, at least, we both agree on.

Things went off about how we’d hoped. The Abrikandilu was a bit faster than I’d anticipated and it rushed me rather than me pinning it by the building as I’d planned, but I stopped its fangs with my shield and avoided any new scars. Melody and Luna came out with a mirror, which drew the demon’s attention. Luna’s axe stuck into it. Then Radiance slew it.

Radiance roared in my head each time it drew blood against a demonic foe, in what I can only describe as ecstasy. They, at least, get joy from battle. I wish I could say the same, but the demons die all the same. I feel good about it, that we slayed the demon and helped those people. It’s something good. Not joy, that’s too strong of a word. I feel—satisfied, maybe?

Regardless, the shop owners thanked us. They had little to offer and we tried to assure them that we didn’t need anything, but they insisted on at least providing us with a nice outfit each in thanks. I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything so fine. An orphan and a soldier don’t exactly make for elegant living.

Afterwards we made it to Horgus’ manor with no further incidents. His holdings were untouched. Melody mused at first that perhaps someone was trying to frame him. However after some thought, Hiskaria and I disagreed with that assessment. Demons by nature would seek out where the most people are, the places where they could wreak the most havoc. And as we approached it was clear that his manor was devoid of life. It would seem that his men and his servants had fled their posts when the attack happened, and as a lucky result the manor had been untouched. I’ll give Horgus some credit here. While he was clearly visibly upset that the men he’d hired to protect his holdings had left their posts, he tried very hard to be reasonable that it was for the best that they’d left and protected the servants, and that it had indirectly kept the demons from destroying his things. He was however very upset that they’d taken all of the mints from the little bowl at the front entrance—as was Miss Melody, who bemoaned that it was quite rude of them. Ah what I would give to have her priorities.

Luna was shepherding the orphans—one of whom, Hamm, had taken a shine to Hiskaria’s magic and gotten it into his head that he was going to…what was it? Summon demons in his snot bubbles? Charming kid. Glad his entire world falling apart around him didn’t completely destroy his sense of innocence and wonder. Suppose he was lucky he ran into Hiskaria so the three of them didn’t get killed or worse. That’s a point in her favor.

After gathering up food from the kitchen and some entertainment for the kids from a room formerly used for the staff’s children while they were on the job, Horgus went down to the safest part of the manor: the vault. He opened the safe, which proved to have been completed untouched. Inside was more wealth than I’d probably ever seen in one place before, or ever will again. He paid Luna that looked like a rather hefty sum. Then he also paid myself, Melody, and Hiskaria 1000 gold for returning him here safely, although payment had never been promised. Hiskaria tried to argue that she’d only just joined with us, but he said that it was payment due to someone who couldn’t be here to take their cut.

Horgus…is a complicated man, I am beginning to realize. I cannot pin him down yet. Even more than most people, his words and actions do not align. And even some of his actions I think are more masks on top of that. Luna insists he’s a good man but won’t give details beyond that. She’s had a few private conversations with him, so I’m inclined to believe she knows something that’s given her that impression. And I trust Luna’s judgement in people.

As Horgus locked himself away, we heard the beginnings of him teaching the kids something or another about some…math thing. I don’t know, look, I’m not the one to look to about Abadar tax bracket stuff. Luna was just glad he was hopefully keeping Hamm from thinking about snot demons.

From there we went next door, to Nyserian Manor. Or what was left of it. Which was not much. At all. Or anything, really. See, the demons hadn’t been very discerning in their building demolition. They’d destroyed their own safehouse. Idiots. Served anyone who was inside right for betraying humanity to the demons.

Next up was Blackwing Library.

Oh Blackwing Library. This one made me angry.

If you know me you know that’s bad. Of course, you don’t know me, because you’re just a bundle of inanimate papers sandwiched in leather that I’m writing in to keep my tenuous grip on sanity together. Suffice to say: that’s bad. I don’t get angry easily. Unless you’re a Deskari worshipper or waving his symbol in my face like I’m a bull, but I mean, that’s just asking for trouble from any Iomedaen, really.

As we approached the library, it was immediately apparent that the entire thing had been decimated. Aravashnial was despondent. All of his friends and colleagues with the Riftwardens would have been there, and he feared the worst. While Melody and surprisingly Hiskaria tried to comfort him, Luna tried to sneak closer to look into the library. I stuck close to her, although not so close as to blow her cover.

What she saw was a turncoat Iomedaen with five librarians bound and gagged, and a sixth librarian being forced to pile books around them, to serve as both a book burning and a funeral pyre.

We didn’t have long to think as he pulled out the flint and tinder. Luna downed a potion of invisibility and vanished. We had to put our faith in her. And as usual, she didn’t let us down, as a moment later blood splattered across the floor and she reappeared behind the armored man with her hood up and a declaration that she was “the Butcher of Balestreet, Bitch”.

The cavalier’s two tiefling thugs tried to flank Luna, but I helped fight off one and Hiskaria finished them with a potshot from outside the door that got him right between the eyes, while Melody swooped in to take a stab at the other.

Luna clearly outmatched the man she was facing, and he was smart enough to realize it. He dropped his weapons, and offered to surrender. He swore if we let him go, he’d never do such a thing again.

The others seemed ready to let their guards down.

I didn’t buy it.

I could feel it. This was an evil man. The kind who would just turn around and do something like this again the second he had an opportunity, if we let him live.

Luna lowered her weapon to go deal with the tiefling thug. I told her what I just wrote, that if we let him go he would just harm others. She said it wasn’t going to be her choice to make.

If anyone was making this choice, it was going to be me, and me alone.

Melody tried to reason that maybe we could get some information out of him. That we could take him alive, and question him. After all, that’s what she was best at.

And then what, I asked her. What do we do with him after that? There weren’t any jails. The city was in chaos. Where do we put him when we’re done questioning him so that he doesn’t hurt anyone else?

He swore again that he’d just go away and be good. I called bullshit.

Melody said maybe he’d know more about the safehouses, or the other plans. What we’d potentially be walking into.

Fine. For the safety of the rest of the group, I’d take him alive.

So I punched the cocky bastard in the face and left him to Melody.

Hiskaria and Luna went about helping the librarians while Melody did her thing. She manacled the man and tied him up for a nice friendly chat. I stuck around. I didn’t trust this man. Kaleb, I learned his name was. Much good it did.

Melody woke him up. First thing he did was tried to play ignorant. Tried to pretend like he’d been possessed, like he hadn’t been in control of his own faculties before.

Bullshit. More lies.

Melody saw through his lies this time just as much as I had. She told him to start over and try again.

Next he tried to weave a sob story about how he’d been coerced into doing what he’d done. How he was a crusader who’s unit had been taken captive, and he’d been forced into committing evil acts out of desperation.

Again, nothing but lies. All he knew how to do was lie, habitually, spew whatever falsehood he thought would get him in our good graces.

When Melody and I called him out on it again, he snapped. In a final act of rebellious desperation, he finally told the truth. He’s nothing but scum of the earth. He was a crusader, and his unit had been wiped out, that was the one honest thing that had left this mouth. Afterwards he’d decided to hedge his bets and side with the demons, so he started committing every atrocity he could to try to win their favor. And he swore that when he died and went to the pits of the Abyss to be reborn he’d come back.

And flay us alive.

Bad choice of words.

I think the bull metaphor before was apt, because I certainly saw red for a moment. I don’t think anyone was in disagreement when I stabbed Radiance through his blackened heart at this point though.

We didn’t learn anything though. Except that he wasn’t a cultist. Just a psychopath who found an excuse to start killing people.

As we discussed our next course of action, the librarian we’d rescued approached us. He knew that Aravashnial was with the Riftwardens, and he knew what had happened to them. The Riftwardens after locking what they could in their vault had teleported to a different location, meaning Aravashnial’s friends were safely somewhere else. Unfortunately, a day later someone else arrived. Xanthir Vang. Another of Deskari’s generals. A worm that walks, a terrible creature that is both a swarm and one being bound to Deskari’s will. Xanthir cut through the floor, right above where the vault would be in the secret Riftwarden floors below, and lifted the entire vault from the floor. Then he ripped it apart like it was nothing. He seemed disappointed that the Riftwardens weren’t there—predictably, I suppose, since he had a personal grudge against them.

We found a single dead and dried up worm husk in a corner of the room. I don’t like this. It’s probably my imagination that my arm itches. Probably. Another of Deskari’s generals so close. That’s…terrifying.

With this information tucked away, we decided to head for Anevia’s home to look for clues of where Commander Tirabade may be. Mostly to make sure her wife was safe, and to inform her of everything we’d found out thus far, and a little tiny bit to ask her about that sword she’d apparently sold behind her back.

On the way, we were accosted by a skeletal demon from atop a building, who also called himself the rat king. He claimed the one we’d defeated before was a usurper, and then summoned a swarm of dire rats to attack us. We dealt with the dire rats handily enough. They took a few chomps at me, annoying little things. Between rats and lizards, do I just taste good or something?

Nope, just licked my hand to test it, I’m quite certain I do not taste good.

We arrived to a small unassuming house. Irabeth’s funds clearly went to things other than worldly possessions. Not that it was a bad house. I’m not trying to be judgmental of Irabeth Tirabade I’m just saying with her position most people would have much larger quarters, so she clearly puts hers to good use elsewhere. I’m not one to judge small living quarters, I live in the barracks. Which probably are in ruins now. Ah, well. Not like I had anything of sentimental value in there anyways. My fiddle, my sword, and my shield were on my person, those were the only things I might have cried over losing. And then my sword got forcefully replaced by a talkative holy blade anyways.

I wish I could say Radiance is growing on me like Horgus. Unfortunately, we got off an extremely wrong foot and they haven’t exactly tried to mend any bridges. Luna says I should be more assertive with them, since I’m the only one who can wield them, they need me to do their holy mission they want. And Radiance even agreed with her, because of course they did.

Figures. A guy tries to be nice to the holy sword who he’ll have to be working with for the foreseeable future and apparently even trying to just not make waves with the being you’ll have to work with talking in your head is the wrong move.

Fine…assertive. What do they want me to do, put Radiance in time out in their little box when they get uppity? That is a funny image though.

I’ve completely lost my train of thought.

Right, reread a few paragraphs, Anevia’s house. So, Luna and Melody took a peek inside to make sure nothing was lurking around inside.

Predictably, something was lurking around inside.

He was invisible, but when Melody began using detect evil he ‘pinged’, so she had an idea of where the invisible presence was. The invisible presence summoned a fire beetle outside to attack Anevia, but Hiskaria turned and shot it dead before it got a chance.

Melody and Luna had a good idea where the invisible foe was, and began to force him back into a corner, although their swings of axe and glaive kept hitting nothing but air.

I came in, and I swear to you Iomedae guided Radiance’s blade. Not only did I strike true, from the amount of red that splattered across the ground, I’m certain I hit something vital. That, and I made him very angry. The next thing I saw was an enraged orc, whose invisibility faded away as a blast of fire was released from his hand point blank in my face. Too familiar. Far too familiar. And then darkness.

And then I was awake again, Melody tipping one of my potions into my mouth. Luna had bloodied the orc, but he’d refused to go down in his blind frenzy. Then Hiskaria had stepped in and finished the job.

I proceeded to heal myself a little more thoroughly while the ladies talked to Anevia about what just happened.

Huh, now that Aravashnial and Horgus are gone I am the only guy in the little group of ours, aren’t I?

The prettiest guy in our group by default as well, not that that’s saying much.

Anevia recognized the orc, he was someone who Irabeth had stopped from some previous scheme years back, who she’d left out in the world alive. Apparently, he came back for revenge. He won’t be getting a third chance.

With that settled and no more assassins lurking about, Anevia went to her and Irabeth’s bedroom and opened a secret compartment. Inside she read a note and took out some supplies. She told us that Commander Tirabade and the other remaining Crusaders were hiding out at the Defender’s Heart tavern, and the passcode to get in was “Silverstrong”.

We decided to go straight there, as it was closer than any of the safehouses, and allies were still more useful than victories at the moment.

I was especially feeling that way when that damn skeleton ‘rat king’ showed up again, and threw a flock of vultures at us. Most of which decided to descend upon me. I know vultures are a bad omen but come on, that’s too on the nose even for me. What’s worse? Do you know what’s worse? What’s even worse than vultures? Fiend vultures. These things could smite. I had, no joke, five buzzards smiting me like a bunch of feathery antipaladins.

Just my cursed luck again. Why does Desna hate me?

So, yeah. I was hurting. And really wanting some rest. While everyone else was ready and raring to go for two more safehouses after we finished meeting with the Commander. I finished healing myself again and I was almost tapped out of spells, and completely out of potions. My fervor was wearing thin as well. Luna was all well and good, she didn’t use spells. Hiskaria was fine, she mostly only used her cantrips to empower her bow to fire twice—a neat trick that didn’t really cost her anything. Melody had used one judgement and some spells but she was just fine and equally ready to go.

Ever the weak link.

Eh, no point thinking like that, right? Plenty more happened after that. We arrived to Defender’s Heart and gave them the passcode. They came out to meet us, initially excited to see Anevia.

Then they saw Luna, still with her hood up in her Butcher guise from our fight earlier.

Oops.

We tried to explain that this wasn’t what it looked like. That she wasn’t actually a murderer. That the rumors and stories and reports were wrong. Anevia tried to back us up. Luna took off her hood, and pointed out that she drank one of the two of them under the table at this very tavern just a few days prior, and no one got hurt. Despite our best efforts, tensions were raising. The guards were going for their weapons, and we were surrounded. The paladins were throwing accusations, and no one was listening to our words, they were only hearing what they believed to be true.

Then a strong hand came down on both of the guards’ shoulders. A voice spoke, and told them that maybe sometime they should try actually using the gift Iomedae grants them to detect evil.

Irabeth Tirabade stood behind the two guards, in the flesh, as…everything as I ever would have imagined. Tall, proud, honorable, noble.

The guards scrambled to cast the detect spells, and predictably found that Luna was not evil. They were puzzled but relaxed somewhat. Then jumped and went for their weapons again when they looked in Hiskaria’s direction.

The Commander told them that it was alright, and held up some papers, saying all the paperwork was in order for Hiskaria.

It looked like she was officially Raven Corps now.

Commander Tirabade picked up Anevia and carried her inside, and asked the four of us to follow. She got to quarters where she could lay Anevia down, then turned to me.

And the conversation went something like this.

“Acting Captain of the Raven Corps,” she said.

I was flabbergasted for a moment then realized she had to be talking to me because there was literally no one else she could be talking to. “Me?”