#for all i know i'm actually just projecting really hard onto wonder

[auroracalisto]

with all the power in oz

movie!fiyero x gn!reader, 2.2k words summary: the reader, rather anxious and studious, finds their self head-over-heels with none other than fiyero, supposed boyfriend to galinda upland. to placate this, they somewhat agree to meet him at the ozdust ballroom. a/n: YOU pronouns are used to address the reader, but there is no usage of y/n. just watched the movie today. tried to find a fic, couldn't. here I am writing one instead. reader worries a lot. so me. you're welcome. also, I'm going into this blind. I have unfortunately never seen the actual musical (downsides to living in the middle of nowhere) so I'm only going off based on wikis and the movie. it should be gn as I read through it like... five different times, but please let me know if I missed something!

Breathtaking. That's what he was. But could you truly refer to a man like him as breathtaking?

The very features that graced his face were absolutely mesmerizing, and you felt like a fool watching him at times. How could you not? He seemed so full of life, so full of... well, not a care in the world, really. It was as if he brushed everything off of his shoulders without hesitation.

You could only wished you were the same way.

No cares, no worries. How lovely that would have been.

No, you hold onto the things that happen to you as if you have no other way to live. You hold grudges, you think over things that happened years ago that no one could possibly remember.

For someone who wished to be a sorcerer, you had a hard time simply letting things go. Your emotions often got the better of you, even when you knew better. Even when you wished it could be the opposite. But perhaps that was the way of the world.

Not a man in Oz could tell you otherwise.

Books in hands, you crossed the path to your dormitory, brows cinched together in mild concentration.

You had a project in your history class, and an extensive paper to complete on the study of mathematics—of all the things you could have had, a paper in mathematics. You'd rather perform magic in front of the entire student body, but you couldn't.

As you walked, you heard your name come from behind you. Eyes flicker back, a soft frown on your lips. You see him—Fiyero. The one fool you meant to avoid with all the gumption within you.

You'd melt just being near him.

"Fiyero," you softly greet.

He gave you a charming smile, coming up to walk with you. "Heading back already?" he asked.

"I am."

"Working on the project, hm? We could work on it together if you'd like. I'm sure our minds could do wonders," he said, a playful wink coming from him.

"I'm fine," you simply said.

He blinked slowly, but his smile never wavered. "Come now," he said, your name leaving his lips rather sweetly. "Surely you're not going to spend the rest of your evening alone. Why don't you come to Ozdust tonight?"

You looked back at him, frowning. "Ozdust. Me. I don't think so, Fiyero."

"And why not? I'm sure you'd be as dashing as ever."

You stopped in your steps, eyes searching his for but a moment. "Dashing. Are you in earnest, Fiyero?"

"Yes," he said, smiling.

"And what of Galinda? You'll be with her. Why invite me?"

"She doesn't need to know. It's not her business," he said. "Besides, she will be busy with Elphaba. I'd much rather spend time with you."

"And I think you're just pulling my leg," you said defensively. You crossed your arms over your chest, careful to keep your books close.

"Pulling your leg? I haven't even touched you," he said, a cheeky grin on his lips. "Come now, don't play coy. You should come."

"And if I do?"

"Then I'll be quite happy."

You rolled your eyes and went to walk away.

A hand wrapped around your bicep, and you paused, glancing over your shoulder at him.

His eyes widened a bit and he dropped his hand, albeit hesitantly. Perhaps he didn't think he would actually reach out to you. He cleared his throat.

"I really would like you to be there. You'll have the time of your life."

"The time of my life," you repeated. "I don't think you realize how much I dread parties."

"Have you ever been to one?"

"No."

"Then how do you know you dread them?"

"I just know," you said. "I feel it in my bones. I know going will just get on my nerves."

He scoffed, placing his hands on his hips. "I think you're foolish for that," he said. "Come on. What are you losing? A couple hours to work on a project that you know you could finish in a morning session? You'll be fine. Come to the Ozdust tonight. I'll show you a good time."

You clenched your jaw. "I don't want—"

"—I would like you to be there. That is all. I won't ask again." He gave you another small smile before he looked away. "I'll see you around. Perhaps tonight?"

You stared him down. He would like to see you there? Was he being honest? And what of Galinda? Would he be going behind her back? Wasn't he madly in love with her, or something? Or was it the other way around?

He said your name once more, and you looked up at him, letting out a soft sigh.

"Right. Perhaps tonight," you softly said.

The smile on his lips was rather... hopeful than anything else. There wasn't anything smarmy by it. He seemed as genuine as the glint in his eye—the one he used when he spoke with anyone he trusted. At least, you hoped so.

The night came quickly as you finished up your outfit—one you would hope you didn't look completely foolish in. The color you chose seemed to fit well with almost anything, but you still worried. You always worried about something.

Time was of the essence. You weren't even supposed to leave Shiz University's campus, but here you were, sneaking like some scoundrel.

Well, perhaps you were, listening to the requests of a man who already had a girlfriend—a fantastically beautiful one at that.

But you paid no mind. You did what you could, and soon, you found yourself walking down the steps of the Ozdust Ballroom.

Never had you been in a place like this. It was almost... breathtaking, had it not been for the overpowering smells of perfume and some kind of drink wafting from the bar. Your eyes flitted from patron to patron until you finally spotted him—Fiyero.

He looked just as handsome as ever.

Good Oz, what in the world were you doing? This was foolish.

You took a step back, staring at Fiyero for a moment as he spoke with another man, drink in hand. You needed to leave. This was ridiculous. You were ridiculous! Never in a thousand years would you ever imagine yourself to do such a thing—

"You made it!"

Fiyero's voice rang out above the music.

You look to him, eyebrows furrowed in frustration. Because of course he saw you as soon as you had decided to leave.

Fiyero smiled and made his way to you, taking your hands in his, drink left with the confused man behind him. Surely he didn't just up and leave in the middle of his conversation.

You part your lips and go to speak, but to your dismay, Fiyero is instant.

"I was afraid you had changed your mind," he said. "You look ravishing, darling."

Your eyes widened. Ravishing? You'd been called many things in your life, but never ravishing.

"Galinda couldn't make it?" you asked.

"Wha—no, she couldn't. But what of it? I didn't ask her to the Ozdust, I asked you. I'm glad to see your face."

Warmth blossomed in your cheeks as you watched him. "Fiyero, please... I shouldn't be here."

"Oh, nonsense," he said, grinning all the while. "Come. Dance with me."

"But I don't—"

"—do not say you don't dance. I can teach you."

"Teach me?"

"It's as easy as breathing," he said.

"For you, maybe, but not for—"

"—humor me," he said, smiling.

You pursed your lips. Of course he had to give you that charming smile and the sweet bat of his eyelashes.

"I do not dance," you repeated.

"I think I will be the judge of that."

He grabbed your hands once more and pulled you out into the ballroom floor, smiling all the while.

"You'll be a natural. I can just see it."

"I feel like if I were a natural, you wouldn't have to teach me," you said, gasping as he pulled you close to his chest. His face was dangerously close to yours, his eyes flickering from your eyes to your lips.

"You know," he began, eyes flickering back to your eyes. "We all start somewhere, do we not? You should know that better than anyone."

"What? What does that—"

He interrupted you by spinning you by your arm, back into his embrace. The music was rather ambient, not quite one for dancing so enthusiastically, but Fiyero embraced it. Hand to your hand, face close to your face.

"See? A natural."

"You merely spun me around, Fiyero. Do not be foolish."

"You could have fell flat on your face," he said, a boyish grin evident on his lips.

"Stop looking at me like that," you defiantly said. "You are far too close to me for my liking."

"Oh, feisty, are we?" he asked, moving his body along to the music and forcing you to go along, too. You nearly stepped on his toes several times. "I do not think there is anything wrong with the way I'm looking at you. You're rather breathtaking, if I may."

Breathtaking. The same way you had described him only hours before. He wasn't a mind reader, was he?

No.

Of course not. That was foolish. He was merely a man. Nothing of great importance—no power within him other than the power he held in every single eyelash as they batted down at you, making you melt over and over again.

"What of Galinda?" you repeated.

"What of her?"

"You shouldn't be calling someone who isn't yours breathtaking. It's quite..."

"There is nothing wrong with admiring the beauty in front of me," he said, your name playfully leaving his tongue. "Look at me. Galinda and I are only friends."

You rolled your eyes. "Do not lie to me."

His eyes widened a bit. "Lie? I do not lie. We are friends and nothing more. Though I do believe she thinks differently..."

"She must," you said, huffing softly.

"But that does not make it true. I have eyes for someone else."

"Eyes for someone else?"

He tilted his head once more. He was rather endearing when he did that.

"Who did I ask to their very first party?" he asked, smiling. "It's quite a feat, isn't it? Afraid you wouldn't show, and then you do, questioning me and everything I stand for, hm?"

Warmth found its way to your cheeks once more. You looked away from him. With the crescendo of the music, Fiyero pulled you closer, fingers lacing with yours. His lips hover dangerously close to yours.

"You know, if you would just give it a chance, perhaps you and I could make some magic of our own."

You let out a curt laugh. "You—oh, good Oz, I hope you never use that line on anyone! Has that worked for you before?"

He gave a cheeky smile. "It seems like it's working on you."

"Absolutely not!"

"Not even a little!"

"No!"

His smile only seemed to grow. "Truly?"

You looked away, swallowing thickly. "I mean... no. Not even a little. Not at all."

"You're lying," he said.

"I am not."

"I do think I know what I'm talking about," he said, leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to the soft skin of your cheek. "Come now," he said. "Stop with the lies."

You looked up at him, a soft huff escaping you.

"Fine. I lied. It may or may not be working. But it's not just because of what you said."

"Oh? Are you saying you like me for more than my suave words?"

"Suave words? Who in Oz said they were suave?"

He just smiled, his eyes flickering to your lips once more. "Do you think instead of just a dance, I could try something more?"

"Try what?"

"I think you know."

You blinked slowly at him, your fingers gently gripping onto his tunic. Your lips part in mild surprise, but you realize that you shouldn't have been. He'd been eyeing you the entire evening.

"Very well," you softly said.

"Wonderful," he replied, and in a swift motion, he pressed his lips to yours. It was short as he pulled back almost as soon as he had kissed you, but it was enough to keep you wanting more.

"Fiyero, that wasn't—"

"—come with me," he softly said, lacing his fingers with yours once more. "Somewhere without so many prying eyes, yes?"

Your answer was almost instant: "Yes."

Fiyero led you back up the staircase, and he didn't look back once at the ballroom.

"Where are we going?" you asked.

"Somewhere where I can see you and only you," he said. "If that's alright."

"Oh," you softly said. "Yes. That's alright."

"Then follow me," he said. "Do you trust me?"

You smiled sincerely for one of the first times in the evening. Did you trust him? What kind of foolish question was that? If you had the chance, you'd do whatever he'd ask of you. You found your answer rather quickly, knowing within yourself that it was far truer than any other statement you had ever uttered.

"With all the power in Oz."

[indecisive-v]

forgive me, i've really gone down the p5x rabbit hole now

[reidmania]

sharpest tool | s.reid

(chapter three, full machine)

‘I'm a forest fire, you're the kerosene. I had a life here before you, but now it's burnin'. I know I know better and you're ignorin' me, still, if you asked me to run away, i'd go easily’

summary; you know you have a bad history with relationships, so to try not to get in your own head when you stop hearing from spencer.

warnings; fem reader, mentions of bad relationships, ghosting, commitment issues, self doubt & overthinking, preettyy angsty idk guys, no comfort yet but there is some fluff, and theres penelope & reader friendship!! reader lowkey shit talks spencer but he deserves it. reader is embarrassed & upset.

taglist; @gghostwriter @lavonee @guiltyyassin @spencersinonlygf @criminalmindssworld @iknwreid @fortheloveofgubler @yokaimoon @sapphirecobalt-1 @eddiesdrummergf @livvyliv15 @lover-of-books-and-tea @sebastiansstanswhore @bloodredrubyrose @sp3ncelle @nemobee777 @jencole214 @hazzarules

2.1k words.

SERIES MASTERLIST

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since you had last seen Spencer. You understood the demands of his job, that it kept him busy and a lot of the time you were fine with that — you enjoyed your space and your own personal time. You had never had an issue with him being gone on cases before but he would always text you or call you when he got the chance.

And never had he been on a case for two weeks. Not that you knew of anyways.

It was difficult not to jump to conclusions and ruin the idea of him you had. It was difficult not to shut down. It was difficult to not think ‘how could you be so stupid’ and you were trying really really hard to not repeat past mistakes and project past relationships onto this one.

But it wasn’t even a relationship.

It wasn’t like he had talked to you at all. The first two days after he left for his case he had sent you numerous texts, telling you how sorry he was for having to leave early, he called you on the first night and stayed on the phone until you had fallen asleep. Everything was normal. There was nothing that set off any warning bells in your head.

That made you feel even worse.

You hadn’t spammed him with texts, nor calls. You hadn’t messaged him since the last text you sent was left on delivered. You wouldn’t beg for him to reply to you, you wouldn’t beg for an explanation on what you might’ve done wrong. You’d rather live with the lack of closure than further damage to your pride.

But then there was a part of you that wondered if maybe something happened to him, a big part of you worried that something happened to him — actually. You tried to ignore the lingering dwindle of anxiety in your stomach as you carried on with your day to day life. You tried so hard to ignore it.

But two weeks was a long time to ignore an aching gut feeling, one that kept you up at night and never seemed to go away.

Could you have called Spencer? Yes. You could’ve. But did you want to risk the call being ignored and every lingering doubt in your mind being proven correct and then be embarrassed about it? God no.

You were a shame spiral when you instead texted Penelope, who had given you her number when she saw you and Spencer at the grocery store, the last time you had seen him. She begged you to reach out when she got back so you two could arrange to hang out.

You weren’t even sure if they were back. Normally you would know that by Spencer coming over to your house at some ridiculous time and delving into your arms like it was the only place he had ever been able to call home, but he didn’t come over this time.

It was a simple text, ‘Hey Penelope, how are you? I haven’t heard from Spencer in a while so i just wanted to make sure he was okay’

It was good enough. You didn’t want to explain how you just wanted to make sure he was alive so you didn’t feel guilty for hating him. You didn’t exactly want to hate somebody who was dead. Yet a twisted part of you hoped that something had happened to him, because at least then he wasn’t just ignoring you.

What you weren’t expecting was your phone to light up with an incoming call from the one and only Penelope Garcia. You answered it, partly scared that she was calling because texting you to tell you that Spencer was dead seemed insensitive.

“Hello?” You answered. The place in your bed warm from the weight of your body as you shuffled slightly. It wasn’t exactly late, but it was past evening times. You heard mumbling and shuffling on the other side of the phone, before a happy voice.

“Hello my sweet angel!” Penelope greeted you, even in your doubtful mood the warm greeting from the sweet women made a smile line your lips. “I got your message — I’m a little confused. He is fine, he just left work” She answered.

Okay. Not dead.

“Oh” It passed through your lips because now you were just overwhelming confused. “Uh- How long have you guys been back?” You asked, almost afraid of the answer you would receive. You were hoping she would tell you they had only just gotten back, and that the case had been so busy that nobody had time to text anybody.

“A little over a week.” She answered. That made your chest tighten, a lot. Almost painfully. You didn’t want to cry, you didn’t want to give the situation the satisfaction of your tears. You didn’t want to give Spencer any more power over you.

“Right. Okay. Thanks.” It came out shakier than you intended it to be and a wave of embarrassment washed over you. You took pride in your ability to not care about things like this, you didn’t get emotionally involved because of this reason. Your mind was overwhelmed with an abundance of doubts and self depreciation. Embarrassment. You were so embarrassedz

“Did Spencer not tell you? He has been stroppy all week. We thought maybe he had messed up and you were mad at him.” The words came out as a playful joke, but you found it humourless. Because although you weren’t mad at him, you were now.

You wondered if you even had a right to be mad. Clearly he wasn’t dead, so he was just ignoring you. You hated how much that thought made your heart hurt an overwhelming amount. You hated how you had now let someone in enough for their absence to have an effect on you.

“He.. No. He hasn’t told me” You mumbled out, your voice representing how distant your mind was from this conversation. A million different thoughts and each one as bad as the last. You didn’t want to tell his co-worker and one of his friends that he had just up and ghosted you, you didn’t think it was fair, but you could basically hear the confusion and concern lacing her voice. “He hasn’t talked to me at all in over a week..”

“What?” Her response came out hard and fast, tone laced with clear shock and confusion. “Thats- I mean it was a rough case but.. not.. that rough — Maybe he is just overwhelmed? Have you tried calling him? He can get distracted easily.” She rambled, trying just as hard as you were to find a valid explanation for his sudden disappearance.

But you both knew Spencer. Or you thought you did. You knew enough to know about his memory. He didn’t just forget. Or maybe he did. Were you forgettable for him? Were you something so minority important that it slipped through the tight grasp of his memory. Oh that wasn’t a fun thought.

“No- uhm.. I’m not going to call him.. If he wants to talk to me he would.” You muttered. You wanted to believe that, you wanted to not care as much as you were making it out to seem you didn’t. You wanted to feel casually about it. About him.

You really regretted kissing him two months ago.

You wished you could be the type of person who believed that was no point dwelling, the type of person who would be grateful it happened rather than sad it was over — but you just weren’t. You didn’t think you were capable of getting over someone unless you hated them with every fibre of your being. Unless they hurt you to the point of no forgiveness. You couldn’t be glad it happened — not when it ended like this.

It always ended like this, you knew that from the start.

“Im so sorry. I have no idea whats going on with him!” She apologised in his behalf and it was almost funny to you. How come a girl you met once seemed to have more remorse than the guy you had (stupidly) falling in love with.

You shook your head, but she couldn’t see you. “Don’t apologise. Its fine. Its not a big deal really. We weren’t much of anything anyways.” Maybe the words came out fast enough for you to believe them, maybe they were to try and convince yourself that it was true — that it was how you felt.

It seemed it was how he felt.

“Oh sweetheart” Penelope synthesised. “How about this — We can have a massive movie night at mine sometime over the weekend and if you haven’t heard from him by then, then we can talk about how bad his eyesight is and the amount of sugar he puts in his coffee” She mumbled.

You let out a laugh, you wished that his bad eyesight and way too much sugar was the worst you could say about him right now. Your opinions on the boy seemed a lot stronger. Although it made your heart ache that it was his friend apologising and making you feel better.

“I’d like that.” You said, pulling your knees closer to your chest as your curled in on yourself in your bed. You hated how cold and empty it felt without his presence by your side. Even with the same glow of your fairy lights, the room was lit with the same warmth when it was just you.

You were mad. If you could only use one emotion to describe how you felt it would be mad. Embarrassment, disappointment, hurt — they’d all be thrown out the window. You were just so mad.

At him, for making you believe that maybe things would be different, for letting you get close to him, allowing you to trust him, open up to him. You were mad at him for giving and taking like it was some sort of game. You were mad at his lack of communication. You were mad at how he once looked at you like you held so much value only to leave as if you were worthless.

But you were more mad at yourself. You had made it a rule not to date. You had a life, a good happy life before. You busied yourself with work and going to the library to read and get a moment of peace beneath the shelves of books, you enjoyed getting your coffee’s from the small cafe on the corner in the morning, and dancing with your small group of friends at the club on the weekends, and then Spencer came along and now all those things you enjoyed so much seemed dimmer without knowing you’d see him at the end of the day.

You were frustrated because you knew better than to let someone get close to you. You knew how codependent you became on the existence of another by your side. You knew this. You knew all of this. You knew you were cursed, unloveable if you really wanted to hurt your own feelings. You knew this.

Yet you let yourself get sucked into his sweet words and empty promises, his soft touch and warm embrace. You let yourself believe that things might be different this time.

And god were you mad about that.

But most of all, you were mad about the fact that despite all of this. All of the doubt and anger swirling through your veins and leaving every harsh breath that existed your lips, you didn’t hate him. You were mad at him — so mad, but there wasn’t a single part of you that would ever say you hated Spencer Reid.

Not optionally. If it was up to you, you would go back in time and you wouldn’t have let him get close enough for the line to be between love and hate.

You worried, still. About if he was okay, what he was doing. You hated that. You hated that he had made you soft.

You hated that you let him make you soft.

You hated that you still wanted him to reach out to you, apologise and say he had just been so busy, or say he just needed time after the case. You hated that if he showed up on your door step right now you’d probably let him in without a word — whereas if this was prior to six months ago you would’ve slammed the door in his face and told him to get fucked.

Love didn’t come easy for you. But loving Spencer was the easiest thing you have ever done. Hating him was near impossible.

[genericpuff]

So there's this account I follow on Tiktok that critiques some webtoons and LO was one of them. They're discussing the finale and my god the comments are glorious. Lots of the people commenting either fell off the comic or were once die hard fans who hated what happened. Some of them even were fans of the series who recently started hating it after the hiatus. From what I saw this was what their concerns were.

Apollo not being punished harshly enough

Last minute queer rep with Hera

Certain plots being thrown in and old ones being tossed out

The ending feeling rushed.

Some of them are blaming Webtoons for 'axing the series' so Rachel had no choice but to rush it. Others are questioning why was there a hiatus at all if this was the pay off?

So now even some of the fans are starting to feel like we former fans do.

Yeeah you know it's not good when even the fans were left going "... huh?" And frankly I do feel bad, as much as I've talked shit about the stans in the past, so many of them hung on with the genuine good faith that it was all "building up to something". There are also people who are still praising it as the best thing ever which, okay, that's them, and people who didn't love the finale but are leaving it be like reasonable non-obsessed people.

I'm not entirely convinced that Rachel ended it willingly, I've seen Webtoons cut series short during their midseason hiatuses by telling the creators "okay once you come back you have this many episodes to wrap it up", so while it is shocking to see it happen with WT's golden goose, maybe they saw the decline over the past several months and realized it was time to cut it loose. But ultimately I can't ever know if it was Rachel calling it quits or Webtoons, not unless one (or both) of them come forward and say anything regarding that. I can only wonder, and in reality, none of what I wonder really matters because it's over.

Again, I do feel bad. I remember when the trial arc was going on and the whole Eris reveal happened and I had that sinking feeling in my stomach that maybe the comic wasn't all it was cracked up to be, that maybe it wasn't going where I had been hoping and assuming it would go. I imagine there are a lot of people feeling that exact same thing right now. I do hope, at the very least, they find their closure through whatever future projects Rachel does or through other comics that fill the void left by LO. I'm definitely hoping the same for myself, tbh, now that the comic is actually over for good I feel like I can finally put my obsession with it to rest, even just a little. Although tbf I'm really just refocusing that obsession onto Rekindled, which I have a much more positive relationship with LMAO but I'm very thankful to have it and I owe that to LO, in all its perks and quirks and flaws.

[egophiliac]

Hi!

What's your favourite Disney movie? And does your preference for the dorms have any influence on their movies and vice versa? Like I know you love Diasomnia so is Sleeping Beauty high up there for you?

I'm just asking because Snow White is actually my favourite Disney Princess and her movie is my favourite yet Pomefiore is my least favourite dorm (but Lion King and Savanaclaw are both in my top two) and I was wondering if it's similar for you?

yessss someone else whose favorite princess is Snow! ❄️

that said, it's hard to say what my favorite movie is, because I'm one of those annoying people who's like "well it depends" (on different aspects, on my mood, on the phase of the moon, etc). though out of the ones represented in Twst, I think it probably is Sleeping Beauty! I think it's really pretty and just a delightful movie! it hits a nice sweet spot for me of being kind of...gently grounded while still having that floaty-fairytale feeling, if that makes sense also I might have had a huge villaincrush on Maleficent that is being massively projected onto Meleanor, shh

although I actually sort of hated Diasomnia at first (l-look, they didn't have cards at first and all we had to go on were the website descriptions that make everyone sound horrible). so I dunno, maybe the influence helped win me over to them! or maybe just because, like everything else in Twst, they were unexpectedly enjoyable in practice?

(I don't think there are any that had a negative influence either, because I am also one of those annoying people who's like "well I don't have a least favorite, I like everybody!") (sob. it's true though.) (I just, I just love characters so much --)

[seaslugfanclub]

Hi! I really love your Disney Villains x reader content! Especially the "Scaredy Villain", "Time in the Spotlight", and the "No, I'm their favorite" one. Speaking of that, I remember Hades mentioned that he was one of the first to meet Y/N, which got me wondering, what were Y/N's first interactions with each of the villains like? 🤔

Once again, I love all of your works! And I can't wait to see you do more in the future at your own pace and time! 😊 💕

So I’ve actually gotten a couple asks about this, so decided to answer all of them with this! Since all the Villains meeting (Y/N) would take way too long to write in one post, I’ve decided to make this a series of one shots, so stay tuned!

I, of course have to start with Hades. (Since his introduction is my most fleshed out) but I’m slowly but surely getting all the Villains interactions in order! Hope you enjoy 💙

Meeting the Villains: Prt. 1

Hades

TW: panic attack

—————————————

It was (Y/N)s first day working at the Disney Parks, and they were on the verge of the panic attack of the century

The crying babies, excited children, sickly smell of sweat mixed with the food stands, multicolored rides, and the unrelenting heat all melted together to create the perfect sensory overload

They felt like they’re about to throw up. Or pass out. Or throw up and then pass out. Screw employee training, they needed to get out of here.

Near hyperventilation, (Y/N) quickly stumbled to the quietest location they could find, leading them to a skinny alleyway between two buildings. Immediately they got on the ground, putting their head between their legs and taking deep breaths

Slowly (Y/N) began to calm down, the relative silence of the alleyway a balm to their ears, and the nostalgic scent of cigar smoke really helped ground them— wait….

Lifting their head up to make a spare glance to their left made (Y/N) scramble onto their feet. There — hidden in the shadows of the alleyway was the lord of the dead himself, his most lugubriousness, Hades, smoking a lengthy cigar and staring down at (Y/N) with a sardonic grin.

(Y/N)’s heard about these “holograms” Disney released into their parks, hell, it’s all they’ve heard about since they’ve been hired. And sure, (Y/N)’s seen a couple characters from afar as their employment trainer toured them around the park. But to see an actual one up close? This was a first.

Hades looked so… real. The blue flames atop his head flickered into the air, fanned by the light breeze of the afternoon. His skin was chipped and pitted, a similar texture to granite. Even his chiton looked like something spun from the finest silks, his whole body too detailed to be a simple projection of light.

…..

“So are you just gonna stare at me like an idiot, or…?” Hades took a drag of his cigar, blowing the smoke in (Y/N)’s face, causing them to hack in response.

“ *cough*—Sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, it’s just—“

“Ya first time seeing one of us?” Hades interrupted, “yeah, I figured. And lemme guess, it’s your first day at the circus, huh? Don’t think you’ll last long if you abandon your post because your a little nervous~”

(Y/N) grimaced at Hades jab, retreating into this alleyway was supposed to be a brief respite. Their brain was too fried to think about the consequences of talking back to one of Disneys prized characters, the only thing (Y/N) felt looking up at Hades was indignation

“Oh please, I’m not the only one here who’s supposed to be somewhere else. And smoking??? At THE Disney parks??? It’s my first day, I’ll get off easy, but you? If we’re caught, I’m only gonna get chewed out once.”

A multitude of expressions passed over Hades face. Surprise, anger, disgust, amusement, before finally settling into one of forced resignation. It was a hard pill to swallow knowing he wasn’t the one in charge here. The fucking mouse was.

“Ohoho, I bet. I’m sure any consequence of yours will be dropped if you go off and tattle on me~” Hades seethed, finishing the cigar off in one drag as his flames sparked red.

(Y/N) huffed, going to lean against the wall again, “Are you kidding me? I’m not a narc.” They waved off the imaginary scenario, “I’m here the same reason you are, so why not make a deal. You like those don’t you? If you won’t say anything, I won’t either. Let’s just enjoy what little privacy we can in peace.”

Hades stood in silence for a bit, he didn’t want to sound stereotypical, but this newbie wasn’t like the other park employees he’s had to deal with.

Usually the park members would act one of three ways; either they’d cower in fear, submissive towards his biting remarks (his favorite), they’d fail to see his sentience and pass him off as a lifeless hologram (his least favorite), or act all high and mighty always admonishing anything he enjoys.

But to have someone talk back to him, but not follow the parks rules to a T? Well, Hades had to see where this went.

“Y’know what, kid? It’s a deal.”

————————————————————————

I can’t wait to share with you all what I have planned, I’m so excited!!! I also want to thank you all for your continued support of my work, I seriously didn’t expect so many people to like my silly writing, but here you are!!!

I see all of your asks and I promise I’m working on them! Just expect turnout rate to slow down with my college’s spring semester rolling around❤️

[sickly-qt]

Whatever you've got planned for Mila/Remy and Drew/Finn will be wonderful, but I have to admit I kind of hope Mila does get pregnant - the opportunities for Remy as caretaker are just so good, lol. And I feel like Drew and Finn are actually ready to step up to be parents themselves. But like I said, whatever you decide is great.

In the meantime, Mila has to catch Jules' bug and then pass it on to Remy, right? And Julian takes care of them both? Hmm?

AH I'm so sorry it took me so long to get around to this. But you are SO right, Mila totally has to catch Jules' bug (which happened here for anyone who missed it) and don't worry Remy isn't going to make it out unscathed he's going to suffer soon. However, for now it's Mila's turn.

I hope you enjoy!

~~~

“Feeling okay?” Remy asked, looking at Mila over his glasses.

She was coming down the stairs, her auburn hair damp and hanging in loose waves over her shoulders. What really caught his attention was the way her arms were wrapped around herself and the uncomfortable look on her face

“My stomach is upset.” Mila shrugged, then collapsed onto the couch and laid her head on Remy’s shoulder, looking at the iPad on his lap, “What are you working on?”

“Just putting together some projections for a meeting later this week. Boring stuff.” 

“Don’t you ever stop working, it’s 7pm on a Saturday. You should be paying attention to me and your kids.” She complained.

“By kids you mean the one who’s still sleeping off a stomach bug from hell and the other that can’t be bothered with me because she’s distracted by some new gadget my mom got her?” Remy teased, “I work when I can find the time, and right at this moment, my time is for you.” He closed his iPad case and set it on the coffee table before wrapping his arms around Mila. “You’re warm.” Remy pushed her hair away from her face.

“I am? That’s great, I’ve probably caught what Jules is recovering from.” Mila nuzzled in closer to his side and sighed, “I really don’t feel well.”

“I know, Love. Let me get you something for that fever.”

Mila took the pills with no complaints and promptly passed out on the couch while Remy cleaned up dinner and got Leah bathed and settled for bed. After all of his dad duties he returned to his boyfriend duties and sat on the edge of the couch in front of Mila, gently shaking her awake.

She scrunched up her face and groaned, clearly not happy with having been woken up. 

“C’mon, M. Let’s head up to bed.” He said quietly, tucking her hair behind her ear. He frowned, noticing the heat still radiating off her skin. 

“I feel sick,” she whined.

“Nauseous sick or fever and achy sick?”

“Yes.” she sighed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes.

Mila slowly sat up and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth muffling a small burp. Remy looked at her with raised eyebrows. 

“I’m gonna throw up.”

“Now?”

She shook her head, “I’ll make it upstairs.” She hiccupped, then grimaced and swallowed hard.

“Okay, c’mon. I actually rather like this carpet down here.”

Remy walked behind her upstairs, his hand hovering by the small of her back as she made her way to their bedroom. 

He peeked in on Jules and Leah to make sure they were both sleeping before trailing Mila into the room where he found her hovering over the toilet in their en-suite. 

“How are we doing, Lovely?” Remy asked gently, filling a glass with water and sitting it on the edge of the sink before grabbing a claw clip out of the vanity drawer.

Mila shook her head, hiccupping. A small burp came up and she gagged a trail of spit hanging from her lips into the water. 

“I don’t feel good.” She stated the obvious.

“I know.” He cooed, gathering all her hair and twisting it up into the clip. Remy settled on the edge of the tub rubbing small circles across her shoulders. 

It didn’t take long for her spine to curl and dinner to make a reappearance in the bowl.

She coughed and sputtered, small burps wracking her until a larger wave came up quickly followed by another. 

“You’re alright, M. Get it all up.” Remy continued rubbing her back. 

Strands of her hair were coming out of the claw clip and he pushed them out of her face, his hand holding her forehead. 

“Ughhh, fuck.” Mila groaned, sniffling. She reached up and flushed the toilet, sitting back. 

“Want some water?” Remy asked quietly.

She nodded, “Please?”

When she drinks some water and keeps it down for a little while they move to bed, Remy sitting the trashcan near her side of the bed just in case. 

“I’m a big girl, I can make it to the bathroom.” She mumbled tiredly.

“I know, I know. It’s just in case, M.” He crawled into bed and she quickly curled up next to him, nestling her head in his neck. 

Remy was exhausted, holding Mila’s hair back as she puked into the trashcan for the second time that night. He could only imagine how tired she was. She had run out of energy to run back and forth to the bathroom after the third trip. 

Mila hiccupped and whined, water and bile trickling into the bin hugged to her chest. 

“This is hell.” She complained, “Can you hand me some water?”

Remy reached around her and grabbed the water bottle off of the nightstand, opening it before handing it to her. She took a couple sips before burping over the trashcan. 

“You’re doing great, Love. You’re a trooper.”

“If I keep puking I’m going to scream”

“As long as you keep drinking water I think we can avoid a trip to the doctor. I just don’t want you getting as dehydrated as Jules… your fever seems to be sitting around 100.3.”

Mila took a couple more sips of water and hovered over the bin for a couple more minutes before she sat it on the floor and laid back down with a sigh.

“I’m going to apologize ahead of time for when you catch this.” She said, staring at the ceiling.

“I’ll live, just like you will. Nothing could keep me from holding back your hair while you’re puking your pretty little guts up.”

“Oh my god, shut up.” Mila rolled over, laying her head on Remy’s chest. 

“I’m serious.” He ran his fingers up and down her arm, “nothing in the world could keep me from staying up all night taking care of my vomiting girlfriend.”

“You’re ridiculous… I love you.” 

“I love you too.” Remy pressed a kiss into her hair, “Get some rest, Love.”

[bloggingboutburgers]

Reading your blog, I'm starting to see my relationship with my bf differently (we've been together for over a decade). Like, I've been questioning my romantic orientation for some time, suspecting I might be somewhere on the aromantic spectrum. But I realise I don't really have a clear image of what romance actually is and if it's something I have in my relationship. Like, he's my best friend. But what makes it different that a very close friendship? Apart, you know, the fact we live together and see each other every day. I'm also asexual so we don't really have sex, but for the very rare time I feel like doing something for him, but it's not really something we do, though I know sex and romance are to different things, straight people tend to say that the difference between friendship and dating is sex. I've heard allos saying "if I don't have sex with my s/o, what are we? Friends?" Anyway, I'm just more and more confused by what those criterias are for defining what is and what is not a romantic relationship. Love? I mean, love can have so many forms, how am I to regognise which one I feel? I just care about my bf. I like spending time together. We help each other on a daily basis. And when one of us need alone time we give as much time as the other needs. We do our things each in our corners and meet in the middle when we want company. We're happy this way. And that's great! I just can't comprehend what this all means. Sometimes I'm confused about the feelings I get for other people. Am I attracted to them or do I just want to smother them with my intense friendship? Which is hard. I sometimes feel like I love my friend to hard and I shy away during our interactions for fear to overwhelm them with my love. What's the difference between the two? Between my relationship with my bf and the friendship with those people I have to keep away sometime for fear to be "too much"? I'm sorry for these ramblings. You probably don't have the answers to this, but I needed to tell all this to someone that might understand at least some of it. I love your blog btw.

Sorry I'm replying so late – but thank you so much for all of this input, it's actually so interesting to hear your take on your own experience.

You're right, I don't have the answers, because every experience is very personal and I don't wanna project onto others, but there's a lot of points I actually relate to very much – like, I don't have a clear idea of what romance even is either, I just feel in my gut that it's not what I have with my queerplatonic partner. I guess in my own case I've also always had a bit of trouble with the idea of a "best friend" (like, I HAVE entertained the idea that this or that person might be my "best friend" at some points in my life, but I always end up coming back to the thought that I don't feel OK putting one person above others in my head – I work more in tiers made out of several people at once).

I might also be overthinking things but I often hear in the long-term-relationship discourse that romantic partnerships often wind up turning into friendship over time and that's OK – no idea how that works but it's interesting to think about, and I wonder if there's any truth to that on an aromantic spectrum basis? Like maybe... If both of us are on the aromantic spectrum, then maybe we just didn't get the "romantic high" part because we don't feel romantic attraction or feel it less than most people, and we're straight to that "friendship" part people talk about? ...Either way, what you describe with your bf sounds like a vibe, a healthy vibe to me. Sounds like you guys have it figured out and I wish you the best, honestly.

Also lol it really IS a useful and sobering reminder that to most allo people, the "sex = romance" idea is probably very prevalent still... Makes it even harder to figure ourselves out

Either way sorry for rambling and thank you SO MUCH for sharing your self-reflection, honestly, whatever conclusion you come to I hope life is good for you^^

[formosusiniquis]

In a turn of events surprising exactly no one among the group, it's Dustin's who starts the whole thing. He calls a formal party meeting, and an hour after the message goes out over the walkie Steve has a living room full of anxious freshman and Eddie Munson -- and him and Robin who are mostly there because the meeting had to be held at Steve's house for some reason.

Dustin's sense of dramatics have come to rival Eddie's, and he waits until they're all seated before he even bothers coming out from where he hid himself with a manilla folder under one arm and the only white sheet in Steve's house, that had definitely come from off of his parent's bed, under the other. He doesn't say a word as he throws the sheet over the entertainment center and comes back again wheeling in an overhead projector. Steve can still faintly make out O'Donnell written on the side. "I'm sure you're wondering why I've gathered you all here today," Dustin punctuated his sentence with the heavy click of the projector being switched on.

The fan doesn't drown out the screaming from the crowd.

"You made it sound like an emergency."

"How did you get that here?"

"How did you get it at all?"

"Please," Dustin interrupts, "save all questions for the end." From his manilla folder he slaps a pre-written laminate down on the light table. Projecting, enlarged for everyone to see, 'Why Lucien is secretly the big bad of the whole campaign: a presentation by Dustin Henderson."

"This is the lamest reason for petty theft ever." Eddie gripes. Clearly more upset than Henderson had actually figured the plot twist out, Steve remembers how proud of himself he'd been when he talked himself through it weeks ago.

"Did you help him do this?" Steve asks, afraid of the answer. 

"Obviously not, why would I spoil my own-"

"The projector, Eddie."

"I mean barely, I was more of a getaway driver. Really, if she wanted to keep her projector she shouldn't have moved it out into the hallway so they could wax the floors. I didn't know he was going to use it for evil."

Henderson clears his throat, a disgusting phlegmy hem-hem, "If you're going to talk through the presentation, you'll be asked to leave."

The attitude on the kid, really.

It becomes a thing after that. Steve already has the projector, it's not like he can bring it back to the highschool. What would he even say, 'Sorry about the confusion, my overhead projector looks just like this one.' When there's nothing good at Family Video to rent or it's raining too hard to use the pool, they'll all go to different corners of the house with a stack of ten laminate sheets, a wet erase marker, and a vague theme. Then they come back and share what they've come up with.

The group is incapable of not instigating some kind of competition, at the end of the night they'd fight and argue over whose presentation was best. Steve participated half the time, but more often than not let himself be talked into playing referee to make sure no one's feelings got too hurt. On those nights he'd add onto Robin's. His favorite: why star trek is better than star wars (with footnotes from Steve)

It's at least twice as gay, kirk and spock are basically alien married and uhura definitely had a thing for spock's wife. All star wars has is the robots and they're barely main characters.

Steve note: Spock's half-vulcan status can be looked at the same as being bi or genderqueer, not feeling like you belong right in either half of your identity cause you aren't enough of one or the other -- Luke is just a twink with a nice wardrobe.

The Party could argue about anything, but Steve wasn't exactly surprised when the young adults got in on the fun too. The projector didn't usually come out until they were all drunk or stoned enough to admit that they had been waiting all night to make their presentations. Unlike the kids who mostly treat the games like debate team: who's the most powerful fictional character, what's the best PC class, what character from star wars would survive the Upside Down (he thought Erica's presentation: why the my little ponies could take down tiamat but wouldn't because they're too civilized, was especially inspired). The older teens treated it more like an amped up game of truth or dare, making up things that someone else in the group should have to do and encouraging the rest of the group to join in too.

They started the night off with Argyle's "Why Steve should give me his secret brownie recipe" which turned out to be mostly about how good they would taste as weed brownies and Eddie and Jon were quick to join his side.

They go around like that advocating for bad decisions like consequences don't exist, like they could be kids again. Robin thinks they should get tattoos, Steve is easily swayed. Jon proposes a road trip back to California. Nancy says they should all move to Boston with her. Eddie thinks the core four should start a band. Steve waits for his turn.

Steve has had his pages written and waiting for days. He knows exactly how long it takes his friends every time they meet to get wasted enough to give in to the temptation to wheel out his contraband projector. Once Robin is finished shouting at Eddie about how they're the only ones with any musical gifts he takes his turn.

"Why Eddie Munson should go out with me: a presentation by Steve Harrington."

[adrealucia]

hii ! ive been obsessing over sean diaz for years and you might have a lot of requests from me soooo, I was wondering if you could do sean diaz (pre-accident) hard on crushing on reader who's like the popular kid who usually doesnt really notice him until he gets their number and turns out reader is actually funny and pretty nice despite popular beliefs :))

ah i have been dying to write this request ever since i got it, this idea is just really cute and i could totally see this being canon !!! I hope you like it

Popular Misconceptions

Sean Diaz glanced across the cafeteria, his eyes locking onto the table where you sat, surrounded by a group of friends. You, the popular girl, laughed and chatted animatedly, effortlessly commanding the attention of everyone around you. Sean couldn't help but feel a pang of envy mixed with curiosity. He had always admired you from afar, never quite daring to believe he could be part of your world.

"Hey, Sean, you zoning out again?" Lyla's voice broke through his thoughts, and he turned back to his best friend.

"Yeah, sorry," he mumbled, taking a bite of his sandwich. "Just thinking."

Lyla followed his gaze and raised an eyebrow. "Thinking about her, huh?"

Sean blushed, looking down at his tray. "I mean, she's... interesting."

"Interesting, huh?" Lyla smirked. "Well, why don't you go talk to her? She's not as unapproachable as you think."

Sean shook his head. "Yeah, right. Like she'd even notice me."

"Hey, you'd be surprised. She's in your art class, right? You've got a reason to talk to her."

Sean sighed. "Maybe."

Later that day, Sean found himself in the art room, his sanctuary. He was sketching absentmindedly, lost in the details of his drawing, when he heard footsteps approaching. Looking up, he was surprised to see you standing there, a friendly smile on your face.

"Hey, Sean, right?" you asked, your voice breaking the quiet hum of the room.

Sean's heart skipped a beat. "Uh, yeah. Hi."

You held out your phone. "I was wondering if you could help me with this art project. I heard you're really good."

"Sure," Sean replied, trying to keep his voice steady. "What do you need?"

You sat down next to him, placing your sketchbook on the table. "I need some advice on shading. I can never get it to look right."

Sean glanced at your work and immediately saw the potential. "You're actually really good. Just need a few tweaks here and there."

You smiled, a genuine warmth in your eyes. "Thanks, that means a lot coming from you."

As you both worked on your projects, Sean found himself relaxing. You were genuinely nice, and as you started talking more, he discovered you had a great sense of humor. You cracked jokes and shared stories, making him laugh more than he had in a long time.

"Did you hear about Mr. Johnson's car getting covered in post-it notes?" you asked, giggling.

Sean chuckled. "Yeah, I saw it. Who even has the patience for that?"

You shrugged, grinning. "Probably someone with a lot of time and a lot of post-it notes."

Sean found himself enjoying your company more than he expected. Over the next few weeks, you and Sean grew closer. You'd text each other about everything and nothing, your conversations filled with banter and mutual interests. Sean realized how wrong he'd been about you. Despite your popularity, you were down-to-earth and kind, breaking every stereotype he'd had.

One afternoon, you both sat under a tree in the school courtyard, enjoying the rare sunny day. You were telling a particularly funny story about a recent party, and Sean couldn't stop laughing.

"See? You're not just some quiet artist," you teased, nudging him playfully. "You're actually fun to be around."

Sean's cheeks flushed. "Thanks. You're pretty cool too. I never thought I'd get to know the real you."

You leaned back against the tree, looking thoughtful. "You know, people always assume things about me because I'm 'popular.' But I get tired of all the pretending sometimes. With you, I can just be myself."

Sean's heart swelled at your words. "I'm glad. I like getting to know the real you."

You smiled, a genuine warmth in your eyes. "Well, I'm glad you did. And for the record, I've always noticed you. It just took a while for our paths to cross."

Sean looked at you, surprised. "Really? I thought you were too busy with your friends and... well, everything."

You laughed softly. "Appearances can be deceiving. I've seen your art in the hallways. You're really talented. And you've always seemed like a nice guy."

Sean's heart swelled with happiness. "Thanks. That means a lot."

"Hey, anytime," you said, nudging him gently. "So, you want to hang out more? Outside of art projects, I mean."

Sean's eyes lit up. "I'd like that. A lot."

As the sun set, casting a warm glow over the courtyard, Sean realized that maybe, just maybe, this crush wasn't so impossible after all.

[gothic-thoughts]

Safer With A Stranger

(still writing mythical creatures 😋)

Soap Mactavish x Black GN Reader Angst

Fairy!Reader, MeetCute

CW: Soap finding, comforting and taking in a fairy, height difference(duh 😭), shy reader

TW: Suffocation/passing out, torture mention(it'snotbadipromise), ptsd symptoms

Word Count: 1442 (give or take)

Every human they captured had their own cell just outside the office but since I’m only about 5 inches tall, my “cell” was nothing but a jar on one of the scientists' desks. One night, for some reason, all of them were panicking about something going on in the building, leading them to trash the office and kill every human. One scientist came back in with a wet paper towel and placed it on top of the lid with a sinister grin before running back out the room. 

I was now all alone, sitting at the bottom of the jar as I wondered what all the loud bangs and shouting were about. It suddenly becomes hard to breathe; each breath feeling more and more forced as my mutilated wings droop. I lay on my back with strained breaths when I noticed the reason the air was so thin; the last scientist had covered the air holes. I could only stare up at it since I was so weak, not able to care about the volume of heavy footsteps increasing. 

"What...” A rough Scottish voice spoke, “What... the fuck....” 

I roll over onto my side and weakly look in the direction of the voice to see a very confused man dressed in all black.

"What the fuck... you gotta be some kind of..." He quickly grabs some kind of device on his shoulder, "Command, this is Soap, over. I think I found the enemy's... project?"

In a staticky voice, another person answers. "Copy that. Is it a super soldier?"

"Uh, no... I-it’s a... a..."

"Can you describe it?"

"It has wings and... I don't really know, it looks like a fairy. It's gotta be a tiny robot of some kind."

I listen to the man and the box talk for a couple more seconds breathing shakily as I roll back onto my torn wings, desperate for air. I let out one last shallow exhale, my hand becoming limp against the cold glass as everything started to go black.

"Shit, nevermind, it's not a robot!” He quickly takes off the paper towel, “Repeat, it's not a robot, I think it's actually a fuckin' fairy, over!"

Despite the airholes being exposed, my eyes were already shut by the time the Scottish man held up the jar to his eye level. The last thing I heard was more of his little black box crackling with static as I feel air finally rushing into the glass container.

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

7 hours later, I woke up alone in another office except this one was well-lit. I sit up, looking around and seeing I was in the middle of a folded towel on top of a desk again but at least I was free from the jar. My relief was very short-lived when I looked back at my wings sadly, seeing they still had holes poked through them. 

I look through the window on the door seeing a huge medical bay full of giant, some walking and others on beds. The office door opens slowly opens as a blonde woman with her hands in the pockets of that lab coat walks in, eyes landing on me looking. I inhale sharply.

"Oh, hey little one,” She smiled, “You're finally up."

I crawl back, keeping my eyes trained on her hands and eyes, watching for any sudden movements but her eyes just widen with surprise. The woman takes slow steps forward but stops when I start to flap my wings in vain, hoping to fly away.

"Hey, hey, I'm not here to hurt you." She says, holding her empty hands up in surrender, “I’m a nurse.”

I squint at her skeptically, panting as I stare anxiously at the dreaded lab coat on her body. She pauses for a moment, eyes slowly glancing over to my body as a wave of realization washes over her. She squats by the door, now closer to my level, and looks me dead in my terrified eyes.

“I bet you want to talk to the soldier who saved you.”

My eyebrows furrow as I stop crawling, “S-saved...?”

"Yes, the Sergeant brought you here from that horrible lab. He rescued you and brought you here to get you better.”

“The... Sergeant?”

“Yeah, he's somewhere else in the base right now, but I could call for him if that'll make you feel better."

I think for a couple of seconds, curious about whether or not it was the man that I first saw in the lab and whether this nurse was tricking me. Realizing I didn’t really have any other options, I pull my legs to my chest and nod slowly to which she gives me another small smile and leaves to find “the Sergeant”. I hesitantly crawl back to the folded towel and sit on it, hoping the nurse is telling the truth.

After a few minutes of thinking to myself, I perk up a little when hearing the familiar Scottish voice of the man from outside. The nurse walked back through the door followed by him— the giant, bearded man in all black that found me— and apparently saved me. I gasped looking over the giant and committing everything from his mohawk to his boots to memory, not realizing I let him get so close to the desk. With a low groan, he crouched until his blue eyes were right in front of me to which my heart fluttered. 

“You...”

"Hey." The Scottish soldier smiled, placing his hands on his knees, "You remember me?”

“Yeah... you let me faint...”

"I... I'm sorry ‘bout that. I had no idea you were even... real, I just thought you were a..." He trailed off, “Nevermind. I brought ya here to get better... you okay?"

I nod slowly, “Yeah.”

"Good. How ’bout your wings? Doctors said they're the only part of you that was completely damaged like that. You know why?"

“So..." I begin to tear up, remembering my fate, "So I wouldn't fly away.”

"Oh...makes sense. Do ya...” He slowly reached out one finger to carefully feel the rips in my wings, “Ya think you could ever fly again?"

“No...”

The Sergeant takes a slow breath, "I'm so sorry, little one. Don’tcha got anybody else? A fairy family, colony, somethin'?”

“Yeah, but...”

"Great, so maybe when we get ya home, your people will know what to do."

I choke up sobs, “I can’t.”

His eyes suddenly widen, looking over at the nurse who only responds with a shrug.

“Uh, why’s that?”

“My entire kingdom's even built in a way that you need wings to get around. Besides, if I don’t fly, they’ll think I’m a pixie pretending to be a fairy.”

"Oh... okay then..."

"We're enemies."

"Oh... right... got it."

I’ve never cried in front of a human before but I couldn’t help it with the weight of knowing I was not only homeless but flightless. I cover my face and turn away from him as I begin sobbing quietly, hearing him hum pensively over my sniffles and gasps. I gasped in shock at the sound of the office door closing and moved my hands to see the nurse was no longer in the room, just me and the Scottish man. He slowly reaches over with his finger and rubs up and down my back while shushing me, soothingly.

"Hey, hey. It's alright, you can stay here in the base, with me.”

My eyebrows furrow, “Here?”

"If you're not allowed to be with pixies or even fairies, you can stay with me.” He uses his finger to gently wipe tears from my cheeks, “We can figure the rest out later, but it's better than ya being stuck out there on your own, yeah?"

“Yeah, I guess so..”

"Look, you may not completely trust me yet, but I’m the one that saved ya and I'm gonna do everything in my power to make sure you stay safe."

“O-okay...” I wipe my tears with my arm, “Alright~”

"Now we're gettin' somewhere." He stands up and rests his hand on the desk in front of me, "C'mon, the doc said you're malnourished so let's go get some food in ya, yeah?"

I nod happily as I sit in his palm, my legs hanging off the edge. He moves his thumb securely behind my back, raising me close to his body as he starts to walk, leaving the office. I just look up at him the whole time, unable to stop myself.

"Oh, name’s Soap, by the way."

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(a/n): ik i've been making a lot of angst lately (im going through sumn and writing's the only way to cope unfortunately)

[frodo-with-glasses]

25 Questions with Phil Dragash: YES, SERIOUSLY!

So y'all know how I was reviewing Phil Dragash's audiobook of LotR last year, but kinda fell off somewhere in the middle of Rohan?? Well, guess what! A couple weeks ago, I received a tumblr message from the man himself, saying he'd read through all my reviews, had really enjoyed the little blast from the past, and was open to answering questions if I had any!

So of course, I had LOTS of questions.

The first one being: "Are you actually the real Phil Dragash??"

But I'm delighted to say that after exchanging emails with the work email listed on his website, I can confidently say that it is the real dude, and I've had a blast chatting with him! So for those of you who urged I listen to this audiobook—especially @laurelindorenan for her glowing recommendation—and for everyone else who likes the audiobook and/or enjoyed my reviews: I am delighted to present, ladies and gentlehobbits, this peek behind the curtain!

But of course I'm putting it all below the cut, because this man rambles like I do 🤣

Obligatory disclaimer: All opinions presented by Mr. Dragash are his own, I am not necessarily condoning any of them; please do not come after me for his opinions regarding pineapple on pizza.

25 QUESTIONS, LET'S GO!

1. Tell me how you got into Lord of the Rings!

I was ten years old when my dad took me to the library, and found a VHS copy of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings film. I was already a fan of the “Chronicles of Narnia” and my dad just handed the tape to me and said “Look, C.S. Lewis’s friend made this”. I watched it, and had no idea what was going on. It was so hard to understand.

Fast forward to the year 2002 when “Fellowship” was out on DVD, and we had a movie night at my older cousin’s place, and watched the film for the first time. My 13 year old self was enraptured by it. Dad bought the DVD first thing the next day, and I’ve been a fan ever since! I, my brother, and our dad watched “Return of the King” in theaters four times, which was saying something, considering we only ever saw a movie once in cinemas. Between “The Return of the King” opening in December ‘03, I picked up the books and read (as well as I could) through them. A lot of friends kept joking “tell us how the damn story ends!”, good times.

2. When and how did you decide to make this audiobook? What’s the story behind the entire project? 

I was a very ambitious lad, and my first and biggest interest was filmmaking. I used to direct short films with my friends ever since my 11th birthday, and was the youngest in class at the filmschool I attended a few years later. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I had massive ambitions to direct “the Hobbit”, which is silly in retrospect considering I was 16 years old at the time. I even sent my portfolio and DVDs of my films to Peter Jackson’s manager (who actually got back to me with a wonderful response, despite not being able to accept my ‘completely reasonable’ offer) When I was heartbroken and torn to pieces knowing I wouldn’t be directing the movie, a few more years went by, and I decided to reread some chapters of the “Lord of the Rings” books. I remember really well that this was late at night, laying in bed, and going through “King of the Golden Hall” and seeing how close to the movies it was, but also far more expanded. I thought “my extensive home-made short movies experience with sound design and sound mixing could work here, and I could just read a few chapters and try to make the soundscape as realistic as possible. Why not try it?” 

So, the next day I tried. The first two chapters I tried were “King of the Golden Hall” and “A Journey in the Dark” (which partly answers your other question about that chapter). I was so absolutely surprised by how well it was going, that I decided to upload them onto YouTube in March 2010 I think. I got a fairly good response, and I was planning on doing a few more random chapters. I never intended to do the whole thing. But this one comment on YouTube I’ll always remember, it said: “I think you should go from start to finish, because you’ll probably get used to the characters and sounds and people can also follow along in the story gradually”.

Taking that suggestion to heart, in August 2010 I went from Chapter 1 onward. 

3. Were you inspired by any other audiobook versions of LotR (such as the BBC radio drama)?

I was not, I actually haven’t listened to the BBC Radio drama until far ahead into the project I was doing. I did some research on what other audio productions anyone did with LOTR, from The Mind’s Eye edition, to the ‘60s Hobbit Radio Play; so I felt pretty confident. I just fell in love with the way the films brought Middle-Earth to life and seeing their incredible dedication for authenticity (from the props department, to the music), you really couldn’t do any better than that visually or audibly - at least in my opinion. I just wanted to hear Tolkien’s text but with the realisation of the films. 

However, if you listen to Chapter 1 of TTT, and hear how Legolas laments their absence from not being there to help Boromir at Amon Hen, you can clearly hear the inflection from the BBC Radio play’s version. I just lifted that because I thought it was a fantastic way to deliver the line.

4. Did you have any rituals for “getting into character” before recording?

If I were to show you the raw unedited recording sessions, you’d probably be surprised at how underdeveloped it is! I had no real rituals or warmups, I just went for it. Usually went in cold, and tried reading the entire chapter and doing all the voices at once. Then I’d be exhausted, and afterwards start cutting all the mistakes, and separating each character into different tracks – and then re-recording 50%-70% of it, as I was laying in the sounds. 

I think any character just needs a few words for me to say in their voice, and that helps for the rest of their dialogue. For Aragorn it was usually: “You cannot wield it! None of us can.” for Pippin it was: “Sometimes”, just random things that make things ‘click’ in my head. If I got lost or didn’t feel like the performances were working, I’d simply just watch scenes from the films to hear the real actors again!

5. Who was your favorite character to voice? Who was your least favorite? And why?

People who know me, know I love doing the villains. Sauron, the orcs, the Nazgûl, etc. I just love the idea of personifying things that scare you. Something completely the opposite of who you are. Always a fun time! Any character I can nail extremely accurately always makes me happy, but I’m always very critical of my own work, so it’s a rare thing.

My least favorite characters to voice are: Imrahil, Denethor, Arwen, Celeborn, Galadriel, Erestor, Lindir, Haldir, Goldberry, Gildor… I think the pattern is pretty obvious if you realize that I am incapable of providing a satisfactory voice that feels unique enough. They just sound to me like “I wish I had a broader range. They weren’t done justice.” I have feelings for most of the characters in this situation, but I’m a mere mortal. I can’t do all of them as well as I wish I could. I wish Aragorn was more like Viggo Mortensen’s voice (I tried with the nasally yells you mentioned!), I wish Gandalf had a richer tone, I wish Saruman sounded more majestic, and I wish Frodo was - in retrospect- more older sounding, too. There’s so much I wish I could do better, but to hell with it, I tried.

Fun fact: my least-favorite to voice are also Orcs because they destroy my throat after a while. Which is ironic, because of my first statement.

6. I noticed that you gave the men of Rohan and Gondor slightly different dialects! Are you pulling from any real-world accents to make that happen?

I did try to listen to Anglo-Saxon, and ancient norse but I just tried to make Rohan and Gondor slightly distinct in any way I could. I never really tried to make things too obvious, but admittedly, I think I just used my intuition (smoothing the R’s for the Rohirrim, making the Gondorians more ‘proper’, etc.). I do want to emphasize that this was a one-person project and keeping things together or consistent is definitely an extraneous exercise when you’re just trying to get something finished by yourself! 

7. Some characters (like Beregond and Quickbeam, to name a couple of my favorites) aren’t in the movies, so they don’t have an actor for you to imitate. How did you decide what they would sound like?

Well, in the case of Beregond, I realized he was just “your ordinary guy”, and seeing Minas Tirith through his eyes (and Pippin’s)  is such an amazing and interesting opportunity. It made the city feel so real, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I think I started with a ‘generic’ voice, but when I re-recorded him knowing more and more of the context and what he was saying to Pippin, and as a result who he is, made me adjust what I felt were more his personality. But still that ‘ordinary guy’ idea was the bedrock, and it’s been years since I heard that chapter, but I hope it holds up! (I just remembered Bergil is in that too, another voice I wish I could have done better) 

Another fun fact: when Pippin scares the kids in Minas Tirith, the audio was from something I videotaped when I was 10 years old with my friends, it had the perfect “kids-going-aaah!” sound.

If I had it my way, I’d have a cast of dozens in this Audiobook, so a lot of times I never felt like my voice was enough to truly capture the “We’re in Middle-Earth, we just have microphones to record it” idea. So I have to make compromises since I was the only one doing the voices. That being said, Quickbeam was a fun surprise because he felt like, as you said “young treebeard”, and these things just worked out through experimentation! I think Quickbeam turned out pretty nice. I like Quickbeam.

8. HOW—I ask with great enthusiasm—DID YOU DO TREEBEARD’S VOICE? How did you get that resonance and woody sound? Did you send your voice through a wooden box and re-record it on the other side like they did in the movies?

It’s really great that you know all the behind the scenes stories from the films! Especially what Ethan Van der Ryn, David Farmer, and the late Michael Hopkins have done with their incredible creativity. I had no such resources to produce Treebeard’s sound. What I did was a digital facsimile: a special ‘room’ reverb, with some other equalizing effects to boost the bass and (maybe, I can’t remember) another higher pitched track of the same voice faintly in there. 

You won’t believe this, but I was not going to do The Two Towers audiobook unless I could do a good Treebeard voice. In 2011 after finishing “Fellowship”, I was on the fence about continuing, and only committed once I knew I could do Treebeard right. Treebeard was the key to all this. This should come to no surprise to the ones who played the game, but I used a lot of sound effects from ‘Battle for Middle-Earth’ which contained a lot of clean sounds for ents, trolls, the balrog, the ringwraiths, and other monsters from the films. I used the ent’s footsteps from the games, and recorded my own foley for some of the trees snapping and leaves rustling as well. The “fart” sounds were the low creaking of tree branches, and - as they stated in the making-of for the films - very pitched down cow moos. 

9. Tell me about the foley work! Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been that nerd who watched the Behind The Scenes featurettes for fun, so I’m very interested to hear how you made the sound effects for footsteps and whistling arrows and jangling horse harnesses and such. 

I’m glad you are! I’ve collected sound libraries (ripped from video games, and finding and buying sound packs) for a literal decade, because I always needed sounds for the short films I made when I was younger. I just kept learning about how to mix sounds together, and it’s very creative and very enjoyable! That being said, the foley work itself is mostly recorded by me. If I can’t find a sound in the library I have, I will record it. Clothing rustles, and touch are all recorded while I listen to the audiobook playback and ‘perform’ each character. It’s a really arduous process, but I think it adds so much life into the sound. 

I went out into the woods (or backyard) with my mic to record footsteps, sometimes I would listen to the audiobook with headphones while performing the footsteps. When I would have traveled somewhere with different terrain I would be sure to record more foley (rocks being moved, or pebbles being stepped on) knowing I’ll use it for certain chapters. I do not want to reveal a huge secret about the predominant foley for the character's clothes, but an old backpack I used were 90% of the characters’ ‘movements’. Some wingflaps of the fell beasts were just my jeans. It’s a really creative process trying to find things that ‘sound’ right for an environment or action. The magic is putting them all together and hearing the result. Also, yes Sam’s pan is my grandma’s frying pan, and I know it’s sometimes annoying, but - look - Sam has a lot of stuff to carry.

I start with the background sounds (wind, tree rustles, water if there is any, etc.) lots of layers of them just to make them sound unique and not the same. Then I move to selective and nearer environmental background sounds. Then, the ‘hero’ sounds, the effects that are integral to the story (if it’s sword clashes, or an explosion, or who knows what), and finally the foley (footsteps, clothing rustles, breaths, etc.) - I had a friend record her own horses breathing and moving for a lot of closeups of the horses in the audiobooks. I think even if you can’t really hear some of their low breaths, their presence is still ‘there’. I personally think I got a lot better by the end of LOTR than when I started! 

I wanted to add, the sounds for little Elanor in the very last scene of “The Return of the King” (the baby sounds), I was not happy with the stock baby sounds I had, and asked my older cousin (an audio person too!) to send me recordings he made of his then-1-year-old daughter in a studio. So, my first-cousin-once-removed is Elanor! She’s 22 now. I feel old.

10. Do you have a favorite sound effect from this project? Mine is the “pat-pat” against cloth that’s used to denote a hug.

Absolutely, do you remember the two “watchers” before the tower of Cirith Ungol? The vulture-like statues that block the hobbit’s path out? The alarm sound is a wholly original sound design I did, and I’m really happy with it. It’s just ugly sounding, and that’s the point. I always wished I had more Nazgul, and I think the worst moments I had with mixing were the battle scenes. There’s just too much to handle and make it sound good. But I really tried.

I’m very glad you heard the ‘pat-pat’s. I try my best to perform every character when recording foley, and want even some of the sounds to convey something in the telling of the story.

11. What's the thought process behind your use of the various musical motifs from Howard Shore's score? (Read: Why do you use the Shire theme so often, and why does it get me in the heart every single time?)

I want everyone to know that this is a really important and valuable question, and one I never really get to talk about: To me, Howard Shore’s music is one of the very best things to come out of the films. He truly made an opera out of the story, and all his leitmotifs and orchestrations are a stroke of genius. They work on their own, and when reading the books as well, and as a nerd for films and all that stuff, I wanted to put a lot of care into how I’m placing the score, and for what scene, emotionally and leitmotivically, if that’s a word.

The Audiobook I did is obviously a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ situation, so I can’t credit myself for the majority of the Audiobook I did, but I wanted to use all my filmmaking intuition to properly use the music to enhance the telling of the story. So, just like the filmmakers had to change and mix lines from the book, or make changes to make it work as a film, I felt like a lot of instances happened with the music for the audiobook. Obviously, I used the score when applicable to the intended scenes, but there are very often cases where they won’t work. I read as much as I could in the past about what the motifs were and where Shore used them in the movies, so I followed that trajectory for the most part. Gondor is Gondor, Rohan is Rohan, Mordor is Mordor, etc. 

Changes happen when I feel the emotions for a scene in the books do not match up to the ones in the films, and then there are brand new scenes and characters not in the movies at all, that I have to figure out! Take the pause from music between Gandalf falling into the chasm with the Balrog, and the fellowship successfully escaping. It’s perfect in the film, but I knew I couldn’t put the lamenting heartbreaking music in there yet, since the descriptions all drive the idea that escape is paramount. So I treated it as a ‘shock’ moment. No music until they’re completely out of the mountain, then the grief comes in. Things like that, a lot of fun creative thinking to get those emotions working!

I recall you mentioning the ‘Gimli / Legolas drinking game’ statement and how I used the hell out of it throughout the Audiobook, which is a good example. I pitched it up and down, for different moments, and it just has that hobbit mundane and jolly quality to it. So, in it goes to fill moments from the books. 

I also edited and modified existing motifs for completely different scenes and ideas. One of my favorites is when Treebeard talks about the Entwives. I needed this melancholy yearning sound that was really essential, and found it by reversing Eowyn’s theme, and pitching it down so the violin sounds like a cello/bass. To me it just felt extremely appropriate for the sound of a long-lost relationship while portraying a larger-than-life creature. 

Let’s also say Bombadil. I made up the idea that the last statement in the credits for “Return of the King”, was Bombadil’s theme. It’s actually just a reference to Der Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner, a very verbose beautiful crescendo, but I thought “I’ll pretend like it’s Bombadil, he’s last in the score even though he’s the first in Arda”. So I used that musical progression in his songs, that’s his leitmotif now (to me, anyway) He sings in that wavy up-and-down melody. Which is why you hear a lot of that in those chapters.

I also try to use recordings not from the original score: I looked far and wide for alternative recordings, predominantly the album by the Royal Prague Philharmonic, and the “LOTR Symphony”, just to make the Audiobooks feel different. I pitched down and moved and reassembled a lot of different cues for different scenes as well.

There are not a lot of instances of music from other movies, however, they do exist! I used music from “Battle for Middle-Earth”, the game “War in the North”, and for the last few chapters, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” since it just came out at the time. I used a lot of music from Howard Shore’s “Seven” and “The Game” during Shelob (I think), and for the Barrow-Downs. I used a tiny bit of underscore from the brilliant Don Davis’s “The Matrix Reloaded”, it had a really eerie choir which made me feel like it would be perfect for the fatigue and dizzying unreality of Mordor when Sam and Frodo were on their last leg, trying to get to Mt. Doom. Lastly, I used a little bit of music from Howard Shore’s “Twilight: Eclipse” for some dialogue scenes during Return of the King! And music from the independent film “Mongol” by Tuomas Kantelinen for the Woses when Theoden has to get help from Ghan-Buri-Ghan. Also the ending of ROTK has a few cues from “The Lord of the Rings musical”, lovely stuff.

It may surprise you that there is a small amount of score I actually ‘wrote’ with help from my brother (he’s a musician). It’s in the coronation of Elessar. It’s not very good but I needed something. There is also a cello version of “to the edge of night”, which I kindly asked permission to use by YouTube celloist, but I sadly don't think that video is up anymore.

Lastly, I use the Shire music so much because - just like Howard Shore said - it becomes a ‘hymn’ or an ‘anthem’ for the hobbits as they leave their comforts behind and are in a wide and unfamiliar world. Every little bit that reminds them of home, or relates to each of them, usually deserves a little ‘shire’ statement here and there. I feel if it’s in the characters’ hearts and minds, it has to be expressed in the music!

12. Out of all the chapters I’ve listened to so far on the Internet Archive, “A Journey in the Dark” is the one most plagued with editing issues; Sam’s temper tantrum over leaving Bill the Pony is cut out entirely. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to hearing your take on that. (Is it strange to say that I wanted to hear you break down into blubbering tears? Probably. Let’s ignore that and move on.) Is there any chance that you have a cleaner edit of that chapter somewhere?

I think you’ll be very unsurprised to know that “A Journey in the Dark” is the first chapter I ever recorded. I think you’ll also need to know that I did FOTR when I was 21 years old, and my grasp on doing better sound mixing or even getting the characters right was still a work in progress. I learned so much going chapter-by-chapter and felt that each succeeding one improves from the former. As a demo-run, I did “King of the Golden Hall '' and “Journey in the Dark” in early 2010 (in fact, I did only the first half of “JITD” back then. Stopping right after they are barred inside the mines, as the Watcher destroys the gate. I did the second half once I caught up with the story going chapter-by-chapter.)

There are so many issues with it, and I haven’t listened to it since. If you have headphones you’ll also notice that none of the voices really pan from left to right, or feel like they’re ever anywhere else except the dead-center. I was lazy back then. 

When I read the chapters, at the time, I was sharing an ‘office room’ with my younger brother, and as a teenaged younger brother does - continues strumming his guitar no matter what the other brother is doing. It was really fun, and funny and I was extremely sloppy with editing things out, and taking it too seriously. So, for sure you can hear ‘someone’ in the background during the early parts of FOTR, and I was too lazy to re-record or edit out the noises that weren’t supposed to be there.

Forgive me if this part is a lot longer, but now that you mention it, I want to get on my soap-box and rant about how many things I agree with about the Audiobook’s shortcomings and how many things have changed since the wee days of 2010: 

I didn’t really get a grasp on the characters, and I had no idea I was going to do the entire book. I did not take enough care with sound mixing (it’s a highly technical and rigorous practice, I’ve discovered. Even now, ten plus years later - it’s too technical for me to fully understand yet), and I did not thoroughly re-listen to the chapter when I was done with an edit or a sound-effects pass. Therefore there’s always been mistakes still in there, and just unpleasantly careless placement of sounds and music. I have often thought about re-recording it to get it up to scratch, but it’s been over a decade and I haven’t properly preserved all the sound stems without having to re-sound-mix the whole chapter again, and there is that little thing called ‘burnout’ which is hard to ignore. So, I apologize to everyone who has to suffer through that huge drop in quality with “A Journey in the Dark”. It quite literally was my first attempt, and it definitely shows. 

The good news is that a fan asked me the same thing about the missing piece in that chapter (the one you mentioned! With Sam and Bill!), and I’ve heard the same comments about it throughout the years. Why is it missing? I don’t know why! I recorded it, but in my loose run-and-gun past when I was a wee lad, I was careless, and just had the mp3 with that part missing. A rendering error, perhaps! Stupid 21 year old Phil just hodgepoging everything.

A Few months ago, I did get another email about that missing piece. I thought “okay, once and for all, I’m going to find that missing part.” - and I searched my old harddrives for some kind of archival copy with that part in it. Amazingly, it was a lot harder to find than I thought. Every rendered version of JITD either stopped right before that scene, or had it omitted. I actually found one half of it as a ‘demo’ piece I rendered years ago for a ‘sound trailer’, and then I finally found the original YouTube video I made - which had it intact! Now the hardest part was stitching it together with the rest. Took longer than I thought, but I finally amended this horrible incompetence. And yes, I will share the link to you! And be prepared to be disappointed at the 2010-era quality!

I don’t know if anyone knows this, but with the mp3s circling around, I have taken the liberty of re-recording and re-working some chapters from their original versions. I try my best to preserve the originals, but I also wish people to listen to the re-records. I have actually re-recorded and re-mastered “A Long-Expected Party” three times. 2011, 2013, and 2014. I re-recorded “King of the Golden Hall” in 2013, and “Shadow of the Past” in 2014. I usually try labelling the dates on the mp3 files themselves. The one I’m most proud of re-recording bits of, is “The Pyre of Denethor” as the first time I had Denethor say his last words he was mildly raising his voice, but I listened to it again one day and went “this man should be at the edge of sanity.” - so he absolutely yells now, and it’s such a night-and-day comparison.

Another addendum: I completely understand the complaints about ‘the sound/music drowning out the dialogue’. It’s been the #1 complaint over the decade. I completely understand. I never had professional sound mixing gear, nor did I have proper mixing headphones or speakers or a proper studio (most of the audiobook was recorded at my grandmother’s house!). The balance of the audio making it sound immersive, (like you are there!) and having clear dialogue to hear is - like I said - an extremely technical and complex process that I’ve never had the ability or tech to master. Let alone for a book that’s 48 hours long, and has so much sound and music to it. Nothing would bring me more joy than to work with an experienced sound mixer, and find all my audio stems, and for us to work together to clear up any and all issues. But as this project was a simple fan-made work, and I haven’t distributed it myself for a decade, who knows?

This is also why I never went on to do “The Hobbit”. Burnout is real, and I’ve never recovered from LOTR. The burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

13. What was your favorite scene to record and mix?

Mount Doom. Can’t get better than trying to make the climax as horrible and eucatastrophic as that. It all led up to this, and it was such a rush to work on. I remember how I was at the edge of my seat watching ROTK in cinemas for the first time, and how amazingly they pulled it off, and I wanted to definitely imitate that, but using Tolkien’s own writing. Just so cool.

I have two favorite chapters: The first one is “The Scouring of the Shire”. I remember well, when I was working on it, I realized this has never been ‘dramatized’ before. At least not in full. I felt so special being the first one (probably) to do it. I could imagine the entire chapter in my head like a film, and I could bring it to life with very little outside influence. Such a poignant and shocking chapter. 

I don’t think I would have done it as well without the experience I gained doing the rest of the Audiobook. Showing the strength of the four hobbits, portraying the dignity and resolve of their kind, giving that pathetic yet dangerous authenticity to Sharkey, and the ruffians, illustrating the battle of bywater with sound… this was done in 2013, so we all were able to listen to new music by Howard Shore (for The Hobbit), and I would be able to transpose motifs from that, into “Scouring”, and honestly I wouldn’t know how it would have worked out if the Hobbit films didn’t come out just at the right time. I think the score fits so well with the events of “Scouring”, there is a ‘mordor’ theme but it feels ‘unfinished’, like the remnant of an old defeated foe; there’s that wily progression for Radagast in the films, that I used for the hobbit’s rebellion and the conflict, and there’s a new ‘hobbit/shire’ motif that worked so perfectly for a ‘wounded, but recovering’ Shire. I feel so silly talking about decisions I made for this, but I always wanted to share some thoughts I had! 

Fun fact: I had a wonderful person ask if she would be able to play Rosie Cotton back in 2013, and I asked her to perform her lines. She was great, but I realized a very strange thing: when I put her in the audio mix, it would actually break the immersion, because you can hear a voice that wasn’t mine, and as a result - I couldn’t help but keep thinking - my voice for Rosie’s mother sounded like a Monty Python skit in comparison! And thus her lines had to be unused. It kind of just opened the fourth wall, breaking the illusion. Which is a shame, because I always dream of having a fully-cast LOTR Audiobook, maybe someday officially.

The other favorite is “The Tower of Cirith Ungol” just because I listened to it one day in 2014, and heard no errors. I was so proud. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to change substantially. No one dislikes all the errors more than I do!

14. What’s your best memory from this entire project?

My late dad drove me and my brother out into a clearing at midnight in the forest. The sky was so clear and starry. And we were here simply to just yell at the top of our lungs to record material for “Helm’s Deep”. All the clear yells: “Elendil!!!” “Gúthwinë! Gúthwinë For the Mark!”etc. Etc. - I lost my voice, it was a fun time. He held the microphone for me as I splashed around a stream (for Gollum), once again at midnight since there were fewer background sounds.

I also tell this story a lot: A friend of mine who was listening to the chapters as I finished them - she hated the sound of knuckles cracking. And hated spiders. So, obviously, Shelob would have to have knuckle-cracking sounds for her limbs. So I recorded my own knuckles cracking and tried using it as much as I could for Shelob’s legs moving about. My friend was soooo ecstatic to know this fact.

15. If you could do it all again today, what would you change?

I would consider doing a ground-up re-recording of everything. With a budget, with a cast, with a lot more understanding of the story and intentions behind them. With VR sound options. With extra original music. That’s the dream. 

If we’re back to reality, I guess I’d just re-record a bunch of chapters since they could always be better, and tighten all the technical errors. But that would require a lot of assembling of the raw archived files, and re-building of sounds, and re-recording of lines. Also, as I stated before, I do not want to distribute my unofficial fan work just because I know that it’s a copyright nightmare. And burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

I like taking other people’s opinions to heart, such as the issues with Frodo’s youth or inflections and intonations for certain scenes that I didn’t quite fully grasp the first time. I would love to adjust things and make it closer to the book now.

- - - - -

And now! The Silly Questions Lightning Round!

(With thoughts from Lady Glasses in parentheses and italics!)

1. In Fellowship, long stretches of dialogue would often have someone randomly cough in the background. Tell me about the Cough. Why is the Cough there?

No one hates the coughs more than me. That’s either my brother minding his own business in the other end of our ‘office room’. I think you now know I was 21, I didn’t care, so these things are just left in because I was careless. However, sometimes there are intentional coughs to make it feel more realistic. It’s been years since I listened to it, so unless I somehow do a massive commentary stream someday (thinking about it), your guess will be as good as mine! The coughs heavily subsided once I did Two Towers, since I was by myself.

2. During the dinner scene with Farmer Cotton, someone burps. Who was that?

Mine. I have no regrets with that one. Or Pippin. I guess it could be Pippin.

(Darn! And here I thought it was Farmer Cotton, LOL)

3. How did you manage to make Bill Ferny’s voice so perfectly obnoxious?

I imagined Bill as an obnoxious guy. The image in my head gives me a good idea of what he’d sound like, and I’m so glad he’s so obnoxious that you had to mention it.

(He sounds perfectly punchable. Thanks, I hate it.)

4. Did you crack yourself up at any point in the recording?

Oh yes, in fact I have a whole outtake reel just for you!

(Warning to anyone who clicks the link: the April Fool's audio had me ON THE FLOOR)

5. Voice acting aside, who is your favorite character in LotR and why?

If you asked me in 2002 it would be the Balrog, if you asked me now it would be difficult because so many of them mean so much to me, and each of their aspects have something to aspire to. Gandalf, Aragorn, Sam, Frodo, Galadriel, the list goes on and on.

(That's beautiful, and so true. The story really grows with us, doesn't it?)

6. What’s your favorite color?

Blue. Always has been.

(Blue is a good color! 💙)

7. Political question: Pineapples on pizza, yes or no?

Yes, I still don’t get what the fuss is about

(Oooh, controversial)

8. Is a hotdog a sandwich?

No, it’s a hotdog!

(Counterpoint: A hotdog is a taco.)

9. What’s your opinion on geese?

They’re racist

(Racist against the entire human race, apparently)

10. How much would I have to pay you to say “I love boats!” in Merry’s voice? (It’s an inside joke with my friends.)

Nothing, it’s on the house!

(HOLY CRAP I LOVE YOU)

- - - - -

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us! What are you working on nowadays?

I’ve actually had a few people ask me if I’ll ever do more audiobooks like this, and I seem to have tapped something. Yes, in fact! I’m working with a few creative collaborators on a small company to do the exact same sonic experience with other books! Since we’re very small, we are starting with stories in the Public Domain, and have successfully kickstarted (and finished) “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling. Which will be out (hopefully, officially) by early September! I’m really excited and hope this will lead to more projects, and - hopefully- back to Tolkien someday, in an official manner. Please follow my Instagram or Facebook for more info about it. (I also have a Twitter and Tumblr and more, but they’re all completely unrelated to LOTR and are just me drawing doodles and being a nerd, very unlike the Audiobooks I did, which is a bit confusing, I admit.)

- - - - -

And that concludes our interview! As I told Phil, it was so much fun to discuss a fellow fan's passion project like this. The more I read about it, the more I realized just how similar it was to my own experiences as a fan creator. We all start out as just a noob with a few unpolished skills, making something because we love it, and we learn and grow and hone our talents along the way. It's legitimately inspiring.

Needless to say, I am stoked to finish listening to the rest of this audiobook! Is it a bit weird knowing the creator of the thing might drop in and read my reviews?? Yes. Yes it is. But I'm gonna do it anyway. No holds barred! If I hear another cough, you're gonna know about it, Phil!

Also I may or may not do something with that audio of Merry because I'M STILL DYING OF LAUGHTER HELP

Anyway! If you made it to the end of this, you deserve a cookie! Everybody say thank you to Mr. Dragash, and go check out the other stuff he's doing nowadays! Namárië!

[rey-jake-therapist]

(Just here to give more info) Anyways, the person who met Miv was the one who actually brought him up first. Miv only responded and it was 'immediately' which makes me wonder if she's been bombarded with questions about C and now she just gives that response to whomever asks. She did say that she can't talk anymore about it and that's that. I feel bad for her honestly. That's like when ppl (before they learned and stopped doing it) would only ask Charlie about haladriel. Like can we not put these kinds of burden and expectations on actors who are just doing their jobs? Write fics, make headcanons, make art, fancast whomever but it becomes a very slippery slope when some overeager fans start trying to push their shipping agenda on actors, especially when the actor is in this hard spot where she can't exactly deny or deflect the type of question otherwise it might make her look bad to the public. The more you really think about it, the more icky and potentially harmful this type of validating-seeking-from-actors behavior is.

The difference between Miv and Charlie is that at least Charlie has the leeway to gently redirect shipping questions thanks to who he portrays. Morfydd doesn't get that kind of luxury and I fear that once Cel does show up, we're going to start seeing actual unhinged behavior from Q&As that make both actors uncomfortable. I've seen it happen to so many other actors in shows. People start being unable to differentiate between the ship and the actors, and start only focusing on asking shipping stuff instead of being interested in the actors individually and what they like/dislike about things. Like at least we know where we're headed and we know how to keep those two things separate by now. But for a canon ship that some people like only to spite and to project their own ideas onto one of the characters, it's not easy to keep yourself in check. And I'm saying all this because I've seen some unhinged witchhunts on twt by the same group of fans that are in that celeborn stan grp. At least strict lorebros will prbly stop their whining once Cel shows up and they see him with her. But these stans? Nah. Imagine getting a once in a lifetime chance to meet Morfyyd, you can talk about almost anything, and you can't even politely refrain from bringing up a character that hasn't even been casted yet as if that's the only thing you care about now when it comes to a powerful nuanced character like Galadriel. Yikes. 😬

Yep.

[crimsonhydrangeavn]

GENUINE QUESTION, this is going to sound so silly, oh God........but was making Teagan a redhead on purpose (actually, I just thought of the possibility of them dyeing their...)? I mean, don't get me wrong, I like the color red but “full of red flags + DANGEROUS + IS a readhead = Teagan”. Their whole self and background is so interesting to me, it makes me wonder what inspired you to create them (apologies if something similar was asked and answered). There isn't much but man, I can't wait for the next updates! Thank you for your hard work <3

Please don't feel silly or apologize for asking your question! I really am so honored to hear that you're so invested in learning more about Teagan and have thought so deeply about them!

To get the easy part of your question out of your way, no Teagan isn't a natural redhead. They actually dye their hair all the time (Their hair was actually bright blue before they dying it red.)

As for the redhead = red flags + danger equation, I honestly can't deny that didn't cross my mind when I was creating them. Though you know what else is red? Herrings. ;)

As for the second part of your question, Teagan was honestly inspired by a lot of different sources.

One of the main sources of inspiration from Teagan are from a few toxic/manipulative friendships I had growing up. You see, I was a huge people pleaser/ pushover as a child and I would always give people the benefit of the doubt even when they didn't always deserve it.

Now that I'm older, I can look back on those toxic friendships and immediately spot those bright red flags that I missed as a kid. Of course, after seeing and learning of the home life that they had, I can understand why they developed those toxic traits in the first place.

Of course that doesn't excuse it, but it explains their actions and helped me realize that I wasn't the only reason why they acted the way that they did. It was their own slew of internal, and sometimes external, issues that caused them to act out.

Teagan also embodies the abandonment issues I developed after those toxic friendships inevitably failed. ( Not always by my own choice, even though in retrospect it was a net positive for me.) Granted, Teagan's issues dwarf my own, but they're rooted in the same fears and insecurities that I am still working on to this day. ( Unlike Teagan, I actively work on my issues and try my best NOT to project them onto others)

Of course, they were also loosely inspired by a lot of other yandere visual novels I've played. If you look at fanart I've made on my main accounts you'll probably get a hint of which specific games I drew some inspiration from haha.

I will say that even though Teagan is a manifestation of a variety of issues I've dealt with over the years, they are obviously 100x more toxic than anything I've experienced in IRL.

I've also found some sick enjoyment in coming up with creative and increasingly more messed up scenarios on how to make Teagan as toxic as humanly possible.

It's almost cathartic in a way, being able to control these fictional scenarios instead of being forced into them by outside sources.

That being said, I also believe in everyone's innate ability to heal, change for the better, and grow as a person. Of course I don't want to give too much away, but just know that my belief extends to Crimson Hydrangea as well. <3

[cherubchoirs]

I think its very interesting how god is a cookie cutter bad/abusive parent (i'm having a course on the psychology of good and bad parenting and holy smokes the amount of red flags the father has) that thought does also bring up the interesting psychology on how parentified Lucifer is. Like instead of raising the archangels himself he tasks his kid who's barely any older than the others to guide and raise 4 kids that arent his own by being a mentor with an emotional distance close enough but not enough to be a father to them. Thats gotta be painful, especially Michael and Lucifer since they seem to be the closest to having a father son bond or Lucifer who wants to love unconditionally but has to restrain cuz yk he's a mentor, not family. Also makes me wonder, did the archangels ever see god as a genuine father? Like not THE father but A father in the family bond sense

(contains a little bit of discussion on the kinds of abuse found in fundamentalist circles - it's pretty vague but i'm not sure how to tag it, so wanted to give a head's up!)

that really is the kind of dynamic i want to portray with them, as i view heaven, in context of gabriel's story, to reflect the pain and suffering perpetuated in fundamentalist households/communities. it's a reading i find very critical to gabriel's character and how the narrative is structured, so i wanted to carry that through with lucifer and the other archangels. and just like you say, lucifer is seen by god as an extension of himself - just slightly older than the archangels, especially by immortal terms, lucifer is given the responsibility of their development and overseeing their growth as god immediately becomes preoccupied with further populating his new universe. lucifer took to the work because he loved them so deeply, he wanted to see them thrive, but truly it wasn't a burden he was equipped for given his own limited experience. naively he had to do all he could to maintain his role model status, he constantly concerned himself with setting the right example, but he also could become overly volatile at times because he really wasn't that much different from them. they actually matured together, with michael becoming particularly close with him because lucifer, doing his job so well, was everything michael wanted to be. he was proud to be lucifer's second, he saw him as the ideal...but like so often happens, the family splintered. lucifer saw evil in it and grew to understand what he had been molded in. and it fell apart.

lucifer rebelled against the father's law and was cast out. michael became the model son, burying himself in the faith, embracing fundamentalism, and denouncing the evil, sinful nature of lucifer despite how he had once loved him. raphael became a peacekeeper, always tending to everyone's emotions and giving little regard to his own - his only priority is maintaining harmony, wanting to never again see anyone go through what they once did with lucifer. uriel became a recluse, withdrawn and given entirely over to his work, his study, he stays out of the way so much that many in the host of heaven forget there even is a fourth archangel, and he just quietly does as god asks of him. then gabriel is the popular public face, faithful but much warmer than michael, projecting an image of absolute radiance to cover up knowing he's different, knowing that lucifer had vaguely approached him before the fall. their illusion has been shattered by lucifer's loss, his absence tears at their family like a ghost, oppressive, unrelenting, always just out of sight but impossible to broach. there is so much evil here, each of them trying to put it off solely onto lucifer and told so many lies about him in his estrangement that they begin to believe them on some level. any pain their family had to endure, any distress they've felt at the dissent, any anxiety they have about their happy lives giving way, is all pinned on lucifer. and so the answer then, is keep the faith, work hard, think always of lucifer and strive to be everything he was not, but above all...be grateful for god's love.

i don't think angels have the same ideas of familial relationships, only thinking of each other as siblings when made in a set and not really having the concept of a true "parent" since they all come from the same source....but, like i mentioned in the previous ask about lucifer's feelings on having a child, he does have a similar paternal energy as god. and while something in god wants to fill this role to all things he creates, he is far too distant, far too terrifying, far too abstract and untouchable. to love him is ritualistic, and the love he returns is all-consuming yet entirely dependent on that ritual, a devouring and yet conditional love. lucifer, in sharp contrast, projected that same overwhelming love but was right there, guiding, teaching, sharing in their excitement, their wonder. he never asked to be worshiped, he did not demand specific prayer or exact behaviors, and instead his love was given freely. and so god was like the sun, beautiful and brilliant but only safe so far away where it could never burn them, while lucifer was the dawn it brought. and while i don't think they ever consciously thought of one another as family, lucifer more or less acted as the guiding force in heaven, with particular attachment to the archangels given how closely they would have worked with him. through him, the love of god was accessible, yet it was uniquely as lucifer decided to give it and shape it. so while they may not have an idea of a father in a human sense, lucifer played the part of their mentor, their protector, and their counselor...which is as close as they could ever get

[wetcatspellcaster]

Writer Interview Game

thank you so much for tagging me @eraserspiral !!!!

When did you start writing?

I wrote a lot of 'original fiction' as a teen, including a couple of TERRIBLE novels, that were essentially just a grab bag of all the books i was reading at the time. School (and in hindsight, grief) stopped this around 16-18, and then a very high pressure degree at a high profile university seemingly killed off my love of writing entirely.

I got back into writing at 26... weirdly?? just before the panini?? (january 2020, did past-me feel something in the water and know i'd need to hold onto any crumb of serotonin for dear life??) I had just finished my PhD applications, and after sinking so many hours and so many words into the most joy sucking series of forms I've ever encountered, I decided I wanted to write something fun for a change!

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I don't write smut. I read a LOT of smut.

But in terms of themes, I tend to write in worlds/fantasy settings where we can all pretend that capitalism doesn't exist, or that if it does exist, the protagonist is winning at it. I really like speculative fiction (sf and fantasy) that tackles capitalistic themes/poverty well - this has been on my mind recently bc of an arc in a D&D game I've been playing, where my wonderful DM has essentially gone 'capitalism bad' but then let us do something about it <3

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I find it hard to know what my writing 'is like'... not bc it's wildly unique or anything, but just bc I don't think I can see my own influences that clearly (if anyone wants to drop me some comparisons in the askbox, go for it, I'm curious!)

But in terms of writers I want to emulate, at the chatty/colloquial end it's T Kingfisher and Sarah Rees Brennan, who have a good handle on when to hit emotionally or on high fantasy register, and then when to have really grounded/human moments that make their characters incredibly relatable (and often very funny). At the high fantasy end, it's Shannon Chakraborty, Ann Leckie, Nghi Vo, Silvia Moreno Garcia. They write haunting and engaging narratives!

And, of course, I'm always trying to muster an ounce of whatever the fuck Howl/Sophie had going on.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I use my desk for work/thesis and want to exclusively keep it that way, so my writing space is actually just on the corner of the sofa in my living room, with my legs crossed, a blanket, and a cup of tea. No music, pure autistic silence (but also bc my laptop speaker is broken). Scotland gets dark for a long time in the winter, so it's usually pretty cosy vibes. It's probably not good for me, as I get a LOT of leg cramp.

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Honestly, not to be tsundere about it... but maybe ignore the muse a little? If you've burned out or you're trying to brute force a scene, all you're doing is guilting yourself into being productive. With fic writing, especially, you should be doing it to have fun, not bc you feel like you have to. So if the words aren't coming, do other things for a bit. Go on a day trip, hang out with friends, do chores or read something. In my experience, my brain doesn't stay quiet for long, and ideas for my current project will come to me when i'm not trying to squeeze them out of myself like toothpaste.

Sometimes the well runs dry! Rather than feel terrible about it, be kind to yourself, and wait for rain x

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Hahahahaha, let's not talk about how I keep placing people into the worst versions of themselves and then have them improve and earn love anyway, regardless of if they deserve it. Or how I'm interested in characters who feel a wealth of emotion they hide from everyone behind a mask of either performed indifference, wilful charm, or simply bc they can't articulate it in the socially correct way. Or women who think 'if I cannot be beautiful or loveable, I will be competent', and the men who-

Anyway, introvert x extrovert pairings, amirite? Everything else is shown to me in a vision (my therapist reaches a dead end in my session as I insist nothing is wrong, asks me about my fanfic, and then delivers me a laundry list of the stuff I'm currently coping with. Lowest point: being told im IDing through the fucking DARKLING, on one project. That man is a war criminal, and I dont look like Ben Barnes).

What is your reason for writing?

In the beginning, I think it was pure comfort. I'd just come out of a period of extreme depression, and wanted to hallucinate some characters in love.

But recently, and going forward, I think it is a genuine exercise in proficiency. I thought my writing was so terrible that I said 'I couldn't write', for so fucking long. I now genuinely think this is something I'm good at, and that is something it has taken me so very long to believe, and even longer to say. I am a very self-deprecating person. I have so few things I feel good at, or that I think bring something worthwhile to the table. As academia delivers me blow after blow and the world leaves me feeling worthless, I am going to cling to this until my hands bleed.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

focusing on the 'motivation' part of this question... I think the comments that happen to land on the one specific thing that matters to me, those are the ones that hit hardest. It happens rarer than you'd think. part of the joy of fanfiction comments is the wealth of different reader interpretations, with people seeing things in your own work that you've never noticed. All interpretations are amazing, especially the ones that show you a blindspot you never considered. But when a reader hits the nail fucking on the head (gets a 'gold star in reading comprehension'), that's the most motivating, and makes me want to open my document and write the next chapter. Because I know then that at least one person out there 'gets it', and is fully on board with the story I want to tell.

But that is a very selfish, specific feeling. All comments are motivation, and all reader interpretations have value!

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Idk if this seems weird or a disingenuous answer but... as a person?? Writing a story for fun? Pieces was a very cool and special experience, but it was very unexpected. I wasn't and never considered myself to be a 'big name fan'. I never want to enter any kind of popularity contest, and I never want to be beholden to people who are reading a story I am writing for fun. Very funny to have a story blow up when you have weird feelings about attention lmfao. Like don't get me wrong, absolutely amazing to ride such a huge tide of support, but this was meant to be my silly introvert hobby :')

I also hope they think my writing is good!! obviously!! i know it can't be everything everyone wants all the time, but you know!! i think it's neat!! I hope y'all think it's neat!! plz and thank!!!

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

lmao eraserspiral's reply to this question was a fucking mood. (just deleted it in my template to make space).

I guess... I know how to flesh out a character, and a character voice. I think I can establish a character's personality, their strengths and their flaws, and have them consistently become the vehicle for both progression and some very real, understandable mistakes. I think chapters from different perspectives feel distinct, and that when development in either direction (bad or good) happens, it feels earned.

idk man, this is a hard one to answer when depressed :')

How do you feel about your own writing?

At the end of the day, it's a lifeline. Sometimes I keep very much to myself and I protect it fiercely, because it's one of the only things that kept me going at certain points in the last few years. At my lowest, I've often wondered for what, if anything, I'll be remembered for or what I'll leave behind... and now I actually have things! 12 whole stories, where once there was nothing! Sure, it's fanfic! But some people's favourite fanfic. None of it is perfect, but it all matters to me, and we're now at the point (4 years in) where I am starting to slowly realise how it has changed me as a person, and will continue to change me going forward.

I want to start on some original ideas once my thesis is over, vivaed and done, but I don't currently see my writing as anything something I can make into a career, bc I need to keep the joy in it as the joy literally keeps me alive :')

tagging: @imscissorbladez, @pricemarshfield, @blarfshnorgull, @violacae, @dededrabbles, @brabblesblog - no pressure, just trying to share this tag game to more groups/social circles! :) x