#he loves collecting stamps at 10

[m00neroni]

breed that old man applies to 30s remus because he has been an old man since he was born I don't make the rules

[circeyoru]

Collection of Overlords = Requested

[Alastor x Soul Owner of All Overlords!Reader]

The Request

Part 1 (here) — Part 1.5 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5 — Part 6 — Part 7 — Part 8 — Part 9  — Part 10 — Part 11 — Part 12 — Part 13

Overlords. The sovereign rulers of various domains and areas of the Pride Ring. Sinners that rose to power through dealing with souls and troppling over the weak to show who’s the one in power and control. Together, they own millions of souls and representing the controlling powers of the city

Yet what sets them apart from the other demons in power? Why were they the sovereign rulers of their specialty and not another that claims or tries to threaten them so? 

There’s a system, a power even beyond them combined and rival that of the King and Queen’s, that stablizes them. A supporting system, if you will, one that approves of the Overlords’ existence. As other rings have their Sin to impose power and their form of order, Pride has something similar. The founder of the Overlords and owner of their souls; the Collector

To call yourself an Overlord and rule over some form of territory, be it a street, a block, a town, a building complex, you have been approved by the Collector. No, one doesn’t seek the Collector out, the Collector seeks them out. It proves potential, it proves worth, and it proves attention-worthiness. All Overlords know who were the real one by the mark on their souls, a stamp of proof, that they’d take pride in

Rarely to none would the Collector gather Overlords together. So they make their own gatherings to keep track of any new members to their collection. There were times when some would fake their claim, they were viciously shredded where they lied. There was barely any proof, the mere aura and presence was enough to tell

All Overlords were the Collector’s prized souls, their worth to the Collector is shown when their mark remains intact as time goes by. Once the Collector deemed the Overlord as trash, they are let go and the other remaining Overlords will devour to keep the collection worthy

It’s the Overlords’ goal and duty to remain relevant and strive to be stronger. Not only to secure their title as an Overlord, but to also stay within the Collector’s elite collection

“Do you hereby swear your allegiance to me, the Collector, so long as you are in my favour? In return for entering my collection, you will be protected and secured of your authority and strive in your domain. Know that only I am able to throw you away and none other should you fall beyond my interest and favour.”

“I solemnly gage (I solemnly swear).”

“Yes, as you wish.”

“Why, absolutely, Darling!”

“F**k yes!”

“Of course, Dear.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Naturally.”

“Hell’s yes!”

Alastor felt it, his soul like a beating heart when one meets their love. His smile widening and excitement building up within him. At the same time, there was the touch of nervousness too. He quickly made his way down to the lobby where Charlie was seen welcoming a few guest that wanted to be redeemed

Well, the hotel has been gaining popularity after the battle with the exterminators and the fact that they won was no secret or easy feat to pull. Maybe the renovations also played a part. But Charlie was none the wiser whenever someone was expressing a want to be redeemed 

Though to Alastor, it was a bigger deal when he spotted what was among the group of newcomers. There was no mistaken it, it had to be. While you were in disguise, you were still as elegant and commanding as the day he sold his soul to you and be the only one to have gained your attention and favour the fastest among your collection

Alastor held himself back, he wasn’t proper of him to interrupt Charlie’s little welcoming speech and you wouldn’t like it if he did. Luckily, while Charlie was busy with settling the other guest before you, he was given his chance to greet you

“Alastor, pleasure to be in your presence,” Alastor took your hand and kissed your knuckles, his eyes staring up at yours while he bowed low to show respect and the need to please. “Quite the pleasure.”

“Charmed.” You let a smirk form on your face, though it quickly fade to keep up with appearances

“May I inquire as to what brings you to this fine and renewed establishment?”

Charlie arrived in time to greet you as well. Being her usual cheerful and upbeat self even after all these years, and surviving the horrid battle against the angels. If you weren’t in disguise, you would have given her a pat on the head and a hug to comfort her. Yet you stick to your little plan and stayed level headed

It was merely to fine a place to stay, you explained how Vox was someone that had no sense of privacy with how he bugged everything. You kept the spying on you part to yourself, though you knew Alastor caught on when you mentioned Vox’s devices. Then you gestured to Alastor and praised that he was a perfect counter and addition to the hotel building since he cancels out Vox’s devices naturally

Alastor let out annoyed radio static when he learned of Vox displeasing you, how disrespectful. If only Vox could do even worse to be dropped out of the collection, then there’d be a real battle. Since deathly fights between the Overlords was forbidden. Still, Alastor could feel his smile widening at the superiority over Vox he had and praise he received, even with his 7 year disappearance, you didn’t let him go

Vaggie was quick to reject your stay and attempt to push you out when you weren’t even lying to want to be redeemed. Saying that the hotel wasn’t a rent-free place for demons to just show up to crash for their own amusement

Alastor was smart and quick to interject and maybe nearly slap Vaggie lobby but he managed to keep his hands behind his back. He gestured to the other guests as he made a point that turning away guest was rather rude for someone wanting to redeem demons. You added you can pay if it was too much, or just leave. Which gave Alastor a mini panic

Charlie agreed in the end and Vaggie received a look from Alastor while you thanked them with a smile. Alastor followed closely behind you while the tour was underway with the other new residents. When Charlie was arranging everyone’s stay, Alastor immediately had your room key ready, promising that it was the best room the hotel can provide. If you lacked anything, he’ll provide!

Since everything simmered down, you were in your room waiting for Alastor’s knock on your door to bring him to his radio tower that was guaranteed to not be listened in. He showed up at record time and offered you his hand to teleport the two of you to his tower

With a snap of your fingers, you let your disguise fall, revealing you in your glory and natural look. You sat on his desk while Alastor stood. The two of you started chatting then inquiring about the other’s well-being and current entertainment

It was rare, but you do visit your Overlords from time to time just to chat or catch up, it not only shows a want to connect and understand your souls, but also your continued interest in keeping them. There were times when your meeting with them could be a sign of you removing your hold over their soul, then it was a matter of time before the other Overlords knew about this development and hunt them down to own or destroy

An example was Husk. In your observant and keen eyes, you watched as he bet on the power and protection you granted him without a second thought, thinking that he would win back soon enough. Not soon enough for you as it would appear. You didn’t even visit him, you merely let him go without a word of warning. In fact, your patience and the extra time were your warnings

One that he didn’t even realize he was given. So Alastor set out to dominate Husk when he was removed from the collection. With Alastor’s win, he owned Husk’s soul and revealed that he was history to you. The look on Husk’s face was enough of a dedication to you, Alastor returned his dues

Though there were times when you allowed some lesser demons into your circle. Namely the Vees, specifically Valentino. He was at risk of your removal, yet time and time again, he was saved by Vox and Velvette who proved they work better as a team than individually like other Overlords. So to keep Vox and Velvette, Valentino was allowed to stay

That’s until you find more worthy ones

Yet it was in the Overlords’ nature to be the remaining one in your collection. To put down the other as a method of showing their superiority to you. You knew this ploy, so you set that they weren’t to fight or belittle the other with the aim to kill. You didn’t need or want souls that would harm other souls you hand picked

The Vees were your unique case. A case that was fragile to maintain. Wrong moves here and there, disrespectful words spatted out, risky actions committed. And they risk their entire group gone from your collection. Was there one that was save from your removal? Hardly, it was with a comparison does Vox and Velvette appear to be better

“When are you going to show me your wound, Alastor?” You got to your goal. You knew of the battle, you also knew Alastor took up the impossible task of defeating Adam to show you he was strong to remain in your elite. You knew your souls do their best to maintain your interest in them. Alastor was no different, especially when he disappeared for 7 years.

“A mere scratch! Nothing for you to worry over.” Alastor laughed, who was he lying to?

“It wasn’t a question.” You spoke with half-lid eyes staring back at him.

He flinched and bowed his head, slowly undoing his coat and shirt, finally showing you the large bandaged wound that was soaking with more blood by the minute. “It’s… not as bad as it seem…”

You becken him closer to you so you could inspect it. Silence filled the room. Alastor was ashamed, the silence was deafening to him, he can’t handle it. His heart beat fast, his mind wondered if you’re throwing him away like you did Husk. This was the calm before the storm.

His head jerked up when your soft hands pressed against the center of his chest, he’d have felt more of your touch if not for the layers of bandages. A warm feeling covered his wound and he felt energized and relaxed, his knees caving in when your hand retreated

He didn’t even realize his head was in your lap as his ears pinned back while your hands combed through his hair soothingly. His eyes closed from the peace he felt

It reminded him of the time when he first met you. How foolish was he to want to overtake you, to think you were weak, to think that you were only relying on the souls you collected. No, you held real power, power he can’t even imagine

“Alastor, you know I’m never going to let your soul go, right?”

“Thank you, My Liege.”

BONUS!

When another Overlord meeting was held, nearly all were in attendance. The news of your appearance was enough of a goad to draw in the others. Even the Vees were all present

Once everyone was seated, Alastor took the floor. You approached him, he wasn’t released by you, and you were staying where he was. As expected, there was an uproar. How was Alastor this lucky?!

Alastor directed to Vox, retelling your displeasure in his stalking while he defended that it was for protection. More eyes directed to Vox, seeing him as the reason why you weren’t as active as before, you were uncomfortable because of all the devices and camera Vox has around the city

“Hahaha! However you spin this to your favour, you can’t deny that Our Lovely Protector and Liege is vexed by your actions. So much so that Our Liege has seeked me out for haven! Now what’s to be done about that, hm?”

“You little!!!”

Meanwhile, you watched from the comforts of your room while a holographic display. A fond smile on your face and a chuckle of amusement let out, “I’ve collected quite the group, huh? I never get bored with them around.”

Note: Yes~ This is out now!! Wonder if you guys like this one. I'm wondering if I should add 'yandere', but then it's more like that, more of devotion and loyalty. Anyways! Love to hear your thoughts (if you have any)

I got a challenge for you though!! Can you name, in order, all the Overlords that were used to illustrate swearing allegiance to?

Circe Y.

Other Works: MASTERLIST

Taglist:

@aconfusedwonderland

@crowleysthings

@donustellaron

@mistpurpl3

[weaselandfriends]

The Making Of: When I Win the World Ends

(For my previous Making Of post, see The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic.)

I. 1999

It was the year of the cubicle movie. It was the year of Fight Club, of Office Space, of Being John Malkovich, of Three Kings, of The Matrix, and of American Beauty. It was the year of suburban malaise, of eternal sunshine, of ceaseless normality. A year of United States hegemony; a year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.

Before the millennium turned and the towers fell, there was an initial challenge to this order, a completely inconsequential one made consequential by a newly minted 24/7 news media machine running out of noise to fill dead air now that people were sick to bursting of the Clinton impeachment. This challenge came not through war, revolution, or violence, but through entertainment. Children's entertainment.

And I was a child. Unaware of any cultural context, I knew only one thing: I loved Pokémon. I really, really loved Pokémon.

I owned Red Version, Blue Version, Yellow Version, Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Snap, Hey You Pikachu, a Pokémon Tetris sort of puzzle game, even the Pokémon TCG game for Gameboy. I had ten to fifteen strategy guides for the games, an encyclopedia of the 151 Pokémon, a choose your own adventure book, an I Spy-style book. I had Pokémon figurines, Pokémon plushies, toy Poké Balls, toy Pokédexes. I had Pokémon stamps and Pokémon stickers and a deck of Pokémon cards. Not trading cards, just a standard 52-card deck with Pokémon pictures on it. Of course I also had the trading cards. A complete set of the first three runs, plus a special Mew card you could get from I dunno Toys R Us or something as part of some promotion. I had a guide for the card game that explained which cards were good or bad even though I didn't even play the card game. I had a Pokémon Tamagotchi and Pokémon pencils and Pokémon erasers and Ash Ketchum's hat and I dressed up as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Of course I watched every episode of the anime, and in notebooks I drew doodles of existing Pokémon and came up with names for new Pokémon. My father had died that year.

My father was a sports fanatic. Traditional sports. He, too, collected. Sports memorabilia, baseball cards, figures of famous stars. When I was an infant, he drove me on a cross country road trip to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I became a part owner of the Green Bay Packers. He had always wanted me to grow up and pursue professional sports. When I was born, the doctor apparently said to start looking for football colleges, a quote he saved in a scrapbook of baby photos. He had played sports himself, in college; he was a baseball catcher, until a hitter accidentally struck him in the head with a full force swing.

Almost everything I personally remember about him involves him dying. He was sick for a long time, and I remember hospitals and hospital beds and strange smells and gauze. And then one day my mother told me he died.

He was a charismatic man, very social and very popular. He had many friends and a lot of family, all of whom had constantly been around our house. Once he was gone, they stopped coming around. Then it was just me and my mother, who was not a fanatic for anything, except maybe her job as an elementary school teacher, which consumed her time as she assiduously prepared lesson plans and graded tests until late at night. When my father died, she got into some argument with his side of the family, the details of which I still don't fully understand, and afterward they no longer spoke. Her own family lived far away, out-of-state, seen only at Christmas. The house became quiet.

And I… played… Pokémon.

II. The Electric Tale of Pikachu

Toshihiro Ono was a mangaka primarily known for shotacon and futanari hentai. His credits such as Innyou Megami and Anal Justice made him a no-brainer pick for the officially licensed Pokémon manga, Electric Tale of Pikachu, as it too would feature a 10-year-old boy as the protagonist.

This manga would be the foundation for my conception of what Pokémon was, narratively. Though I also had the Pokémon Adventures manga that ran concurrently and which has by now long outlasted it, Electric Tale left a significantly deeper imprint on my memory.

In summary, Electric Tale is a retelling of the first two seasons of the anime. Ash Ketchum is the main character, he's accompanied by Misty and later Brock, his rival is Gary, and Team Rocket harangues him.

What sets Electric Tale apart is its tone, which is far more adult than Adventures and the anime. Obviously, part of this comes from the author's primary area of expertise being hentai. Even in the censored English version, there is a sense of sexual playfulness in how every single female character is an older woman who likes to tease Ash about his romantic interests.

But there are other elements that creep in unrelated to sex, due to the perspective of someone only used to speaking to adults who suddenly has to speak to children. Ono doesn't really get the childish fantasy of leaving at 10 being normal in society, so he introduces an element where Ash can only get a one year deferment from school and will have to return unless he hits it big. Team Rocket are former competitive hopefuls who flamed out and then, with no education or work experience to speak of, had no choice but to turn to crime. The Pokémon are depicted more realistically, often eschewing the toyetic mascot elements of their designs.

And the landscapes are often wistful, even apocalyptic in their presentation:

This more sedate, mature, realistic depiction of Pokémon became what I wanted Pokémon to be, what I projected onto an original Red and Blue version that left everything open to interpretation, and what would increasingly frustrate me with the series as it deviated more toward bombastic villain groups with goofy destroy-the-world plots. (Which was what put me off Pokémon Adventures.)

Amid all this, one panel stuck with me in particular. One panel I would think about ever since I first saw it as a child, that would turn around in my head and keep coming back. That panel would eventually—over two decades later—become the basis for When I Win the World Ends, the seed from which an entire story grew:

III. The Unkillable Demon King

But in the interim, the seed remained dormant. 1999 fell away. I grew up. I played later Pokémon games and increasingly lost interest by around Gen 4 and 5. Then I went to college.

That's when I started playing League of Legends.

I was something of a psychopath in college. I operated on a strict schedule and did not deviate. Wake up, read 50 pages of classic literature, write 2,000 words, go to classes, study, and then by about four in the afternoon all my obligations were done and it was League of Legends until midnight.

I wasn't actually interested in the League of Legends esports scene in its infancy. In 2012, I was actually invited to attend its World Championship in Los Angeles and refused. (When I received this invitation, I had just finished reading Homestuck for the first time, and was caught in a month-long haze in which I could do little but bask within what I considered the greatest artistic achievement I'd seen in my life. It was this month that inspired Modern Cannibals.) I only liked playing the game and watching Dunkey videos.

It wasn't until the next year, when a girl I was interested in recommended I watch, that I tuned in to my first professional League of Legends game, at the 2013 World Championship. It was there that I got to watch this new, hyped, upcoming Korean player who had apparently taken the pro scene by storm that season. That player was Faker.

It has seemingly become essential to the narrative of any sport that there is "the man who always wins." American football has Tom Brady, and the moment Brady retired, he was replaced by Patrick Mahomes. Basketball has LeBron James, picking up the mantle from Michael Jordan. It's as if someone being "the best" validates the skill-based promise of the sport, the fundamental top-down fairness of its premise, the idea that the person who wins is the best and deserved it. Faker would become the backbone of League of Legends esports and his ascendance correlated to that of the sport itself, from its humble roots at small-scale tournaments in places like Jönköping, Sweden, to max capacity arenas in the biggest cities in the world.

It's surprising, though, how the legend of Faker had already begun even before he won his first World Championship. League of Legends was designed as a clone of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a popular mod for Warcraft III that emphasized competitive play. In its infancy, the competitive scene was mostly dominated by players who had migrated from DotA to League. They were older, winning thanks to a fundamental conceptual understanding of the game that was superior to everyone else, and frankly not very good in the aggregate. As League of Legends esports exploded in popularity from 2013 to 2015, these old pros would get filtered out swiftly, with even the biggest and most popular names retiring after only a couple of years in the scene.

Even once the new generation of League-grown talent ascended, though, careers were nasty, brutish, and short. The best players only remained on top for a season, as game patches dramatically changed viable strategies. Internationally the sport was dominated by Koreans, with the Korean regional league sometimes being seen as more difficult to win than the World Championship, where Koreans often breezed through uncompetitive Chinese, European, and North American squads.

This possibly affected the demographics of the professional scene. South Korea has mandatory military service, and leaving the pro scene to join the military was basically the end of a Korean player's career. This meant that it was rare to see a Korean player older than 25. Retiring in your early 20s was and remains common. Korean organizations, which had an infrastructural leg up on other regions due to the popularity of StarCraft 2 esports in the country, became adept at scouting promising players at 15 or 16, building them into top level competitive pros, wringing them dry for a few seasons with brutal training regimens, and spitting them out.

Faker was the exception. Though he had been discovered young by SK Telecom, a major Korean telecommunications company that did esports on the side, and gone through the training regimen, he refused to be spit out. He simply didn't stop. He won in 2013, then with a completely new four-man squad around him won again in 2015 and 2016 before narrowly losing the 2017 finals in a nail biter. Given League of Legends esports had only existed since 2011, he basically accounted for half of the championships up until that point. Nobody else, except for his teammates, had won more than once. And it was like it was known he would be this juggernaut the instant he manifested ex nihilo. Like it was known, even in 2013, that he would always win.

Then, Faker stopped winning.

By 2017, League of Legends esports was a titan. Venture capital firms, seeing the millions of eyeballs, thought that this was the next NBA in its infancy, and decided to get in on the ground floor. Multiple millions of dollars were pumped into the scene as even mediocre players in weak regions like North America pulled seven-digit salaries. In China, where League of Legends had become the national pastime, the nation's richest oligarchs ran teams for fun and vanity, outbidding Korean organizations for top Korean players in pursuit of a trophy that had gone to Korea every year since 2013. Riot, the studio developing the game, pumped tons of money into creating a professional sports product, with skilled announcers, dedicated arenas for regional leagues, live performances by musicians like Imagine Dragons and Lil Nas X, and all the other bells and whistles one might expect from a program watched on ESPN.

In this milieu, it seemed like Faker had finally reached his limit. He was still good, but not the best. Even as an individual, while everyone still considered him the "greatest of all time," he was considered outmatched by newer pros like Chovy and ShowMaker. 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 passed with no championships. In 2022, on a team of mostly rookies, he reached the world finals, but was ultimately beaten. Korea's stranglehold over the sport had been shaken by China, which had finally strung together some championships. People wondered if Faker would retire, although he had managed to avoid mandatory military service by representing Korea in the Olympics-esque Asian Games. He'd dealt with wrist injuries and his level of play dropped year over year. He just didn't seem to be that good anymore, potentially holding back his team of talented young players rather than leading them to victory.

Then, in 2023—

And in 2024—

In the end, never count out Touchdown Tom. 11 years of professional play, 5 world championships.

From this longwinded explanation, you might have realized that after watching that game in 2013, I became a League of Legends esports fanatic, fulfilling the prophecy set before me by my father though perhaps in not the way he would have expected.

And the things I become a fanatic about, I want to write a story about.

IV. Modern Cannibals

There's a deleted scene in Modern Cannibals, as Maximillion is driving Z. and her friends through the Utah desert. He starts to talk about Pokémon.

"I bring it up because my university thesis was about Pokemon in particular how Pokemon has basically trained an entire generation of children to think in a completely different way than preceding generations my generation for instance our fad was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now I don't know how much you know about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but from an educational standpoint we're talking absolute bankrupt complete and utter goose egg but Pokemon now Pokemon you see it's more like there's some substance to it you know that refrain Gotta Catch Em All right?" "..." "Well to most parents it looks like a marketing gimmick you make one hundred fifty-one characters and structure a game around collecting them the merchandising potential is astronomical kids buy one hundred fifty-one trading cards stickers coloring books figurines uh collectable lunchable toys I'm sure you've got some yourself."

He continues:

"But really you look at the game itself before the big toy explosion the game itself the focus is placed less on the collection and more on the catalogue you're given a blank encyclopedia to fill and you fill it by capturing one hundred fifty-one Pokemon but the goal is to create a complete database of each and every one and this is what I argue is the educational core of the Pokemon series." His hands left the wheel to conceive of his idea in the cool air of the car, which remained steady on its ever-forward path. "Our modern era is no longer one of singular isolated knowledge it is one of the catalogue the database which is most clearly personified in the advent of the internet because now all knowledge can be at the fingertips of any one human being all that is needed is someone to go and put the catalogue together and presto whiz bang it's there think about it Z. when you catch a bunch of Pokemon where do you store them?" Z. didn't need to think long to remember the game's mechanics. "In the PC." "Exactly now isn't that odd consider it in real life terms you have real life creatures made assumedly of flesh and bone and yet you store them in a computer how does that make sense you'd expect a farm or a holding pen but no it's the computer and that too prepares the budding portion of the millennial generation to become cognizant of the linkage between the computer the encyclopedia and the database structure of knowledge in a new era." "So," said Z. "So you're saying Pokemon taught kids how to think in the digital age?"

There's also a deleted character in Modern Cannibals. Well, mostly deleted—he still shows up, unnamed, in a couple of pages. He is Cole Coulter, Z.'s older brother, a popular League of Legends streamer. Before I deleted him, his role was to accompany Mrs. Roddlevan and Frederick in an attempt to bring Z. back home. He had POV scenes that gave insight into the weirdness of his cotravelers, but ultimately, I decided he didn't add anything to the story and removed him almost entirely.

Even then, though, I was already considering the future of Cole Coulter as the protagonist of a story about League of Legends esports. Playing under the ID MadKing, he would be a North American professional top laner, once known for his aggressive duelist style but recently forced into playing boring tanks as the esports metagame became more sophisticated and tactics-based.

The story would be simple, something I envisioned as a "sports story" only about esports instead of regular sports. It would start with Cole's team being relegated from the league, only for Cole to get a last chance signing to a new team with two promising Korean imports. One import, the mid laner, would be a charismatic and eccentric player in the mold of Doinb/Ganked By Mom/Huhi, while the other, an AD carry, would be introverted and pissy and elitist, in the mold of Piglet. The team would initially struggle, cultures would clash, then a mid-season replacement to sign a psychopathic Tyler1/Tarzaned style streamer as jungler would revitalize the team, put them on a major run, and get them to the World Championship. Though they would eventually fall after a miracle run, Cole would get a moment to truly shine on the biggest stage when he won a pivotal game by aggressive split pushing rather than tank play.

Thematically, the story would be about two things. First, a counterpoint to the idea of American exceptionalism, featuring a league where Americans are particularly bad compared to Korean or Chinese players. Second, an exploration of what it means to be exceptional at all. Cole would be an all-around mediocre person. Middling at school, at (real) sports, at the various popularity contests of being a teenager. League of Legends, this niche sub-sport, is the one thing he truly excelled at, the one place where he was good, better than 99.9 percent of all players, and yet even within that statistical greatness he wound up, ultimately, in a professional scene where he was once again mediocre, relegated to "tank duty," to facilitating other players to carry.

What does it mean to be the best? How can someone be so, so good, only to reach a level where they were still nothing special? Is there any way to win if you're not "the man who always wins"?

I remembered that panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu. The last people filtered before the final champion. It's certainly no walk in the zoo!

This idea was pretty detailed for a story I never wound up writing, something I mostly blame on the years 2018 and 2019, when a lot of bad things happened to me and in retrospect I consider it a minor miracle I managed to finish Chicago at all. As a human being, I would be decimated for the next three years, and so a lot of stories I might have written in that time never came to fruition.

Meanwhile, League of Legends esports reached a peak, then the venture capital bubble burst as investors realized there was no monetization scheme in place for any interested party except Riot Games. Money hemorrhaged out, Riot shifted resources to Valorant, and a sport that had been overinflated based on projected exponential growth in perpetuity fell back down to earth.

Also, Players came out.

Players was a 2022 mockumentary about a fictional League of Legends team competing in the North American league. Conceptually, it was doing a lot of what I had planned for my story: following a single team on a rags-to-riches run, focusing on the interpersonal drama of the team members, asking questions about greatness and its pursuit. It's a pretty good show if you're familiar with League of Legends esports at all, with a lot of on-the-ground fidelity that gives it an authentic feel, which is exactly what I had been hoping to use my esports fanaticism to accomplish. It completely took the wind out of my sails; it was like my idea had already been done.

So by 2022, the idea of a League of Legends esports story was dead. But there was still a drive to create something with that spirit, that would delve into those themes.

What remained after all these years of sifting the sieve, letting sand slip through, was that one panel from the manga. The number of people pursuing greatness slowly filtering until only one remained. And if I wasn't going to pursue that idea through League of Legends, maybe I could pursue it through another vehicle. Maybe the vehicle through which the idea had originally been exposed to me. Pokémon. It all came back to Pokémon.

V. Everything Evolving Into Crabs

I knew immediately that if I were to write a Pokémon fic, it would be a tournament arc. This was the natural evolution of my esports story idea. Also, if I were to write Pokémon, I wanted it to be a story about utopia, immersed within Pokémon's near-future ideal world, where everything is clean and healthy, where society is neat and ordered.

This idea caused me to remember the novel Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, which I had read a few years back. A mostly autobiographical bildungsroman written on the precipice of World War II, the novel ends with the young protagonist on a journey to Central America, where he meets an idealistic doctor who believes sport to be a proper substitution for war. He tells the story of two tribes locked in internecine conflict through generations, able to replace that violence with soccer matches.

And wasn't that what the world of Pokémon was, a utopia revolving around neutralizing weapons of war by using them for competitive sport?

This tournament, I envisioned, would not simply be about deciding who was best, but an ideological battle for the future of the Pokémon world. To that end, I imagined a war between an entrenched trainer class, who competed as philosopher-warriors, intense individuals with deep connections to their Pokémon, and an upstart commercialization that sought to replace the ideological underpinnings that made their society so safe and prosperous with economic accumulation. It was from this kernel that the character who would become Aracely Sosa arose: charismatic, appealing, human-empathic, and propped up by a support staff who did all the hard work of teambuilding for her.

I imagined the story having an ensemble cast, focusing on nearly every competitor equally, with the Aracely character not having any especial focus until her improbable rise to the top. I imagined a final round where she faced off against "the man who always wins," and though she would lose to him, she would seem to have won the ideological battle, altering the course of society as major corporations scrambled to employ her formula for success at a much grander scale. The story would end with this realization of the earth-shattering importance behind her run, only for Aracely to sink in disappointment. Because in the end, all she really wanted was to win.

The more I thought about it, though, the less I liked the idea of an ensemble cast. The ensemble cast element of Chicago hadn't gone over very well (though I like it), and I figured it would wind up inflating the length of the story considerably. I was coming to the end of Cleveland Quixotic, after all, and once more wanted to write something smaller, tighter, and denser.

So I oriented my thinking to instead have the story revolve around Aracely and one major rival, to give an interpersonal mirror to the ideological war being waged. Thus, Toril came about as an antithesis to everything I had imagined Aracely to be: gruff, antisocial, independent. Their rivalry would culminate in a semifinals battle, before Aracely went on to fight "the man who always wins" in the finals.

I forget exactly when the gender theme came into the equation, but it evolved as an outgrowth of (once again) my competitive League of Legends expertise, where women are essentially nonexistent despite there seemingly being no biological blocks against them. This dovetailed nicely with Pokémon, a world where women seemingly could be powerful competitors, but where—in the anime at least—none ever are. For instance, look at this chart of every major tournament in the anime:

Every known winner is male. Every known finalist and semifinalist is male. Only a handful of female characters have reached the quarterfinals. What possible in-universe justification could there be for that?

This question was actually far more prominent in early planning and drafting than it wound up being in the final work. Initially, I had Aracely's personal motivation revolve around a drive to be the first female trainer to win; this would increase the ideological conflict between her and Toril, who attempted to ignore that she was female altogether. Over time, this theme would see diminished importance in face of the last piece of the thematic puzzle: cults.

It came from reading Underground by Haruki Murakami, a nonfiction journalistic account of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks carried out by the cult Aum Shinrikyo under the direction of its leader Shoko Asahara. Japan in the 90s was experiencing its own End of History, one taken literally by those disaffected with modern society's grand narrative. The prophecies of Nostradamus became fashionable among the young, who believed that 1999 would be the final year before the world was destroyed. Murakami interviewed both survivors of the gas attack and members of Aum Shinrikyo, collecting worldviews of people who simply thought they were "different" and who were willing to give everything in their lives to the one place that seemed to accept that difference.

The 1995 attacks were a watershed moment in Japanese culture. In their wake would come pivotal works of Japanese pop media, like the titan of otaku culture, Neon Genesis Evangelion:

(What's scary about Nostradamus' prophecy is that it might not come true. A year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.)

Pokémon, whose first games released in Japan in 1996, also emerged within this post-Aum world where fixation on the minutiae of pop media was becoming a primary pillar of meaning for the youth, and it's hard not to see echoes of cultism in the evil teams that dot the series' landscape. Even Team Rocket, originally more modeled on organized crime than occultism, veers that direction in Gold and Silver, and afterward the organizations and their world-ending plots become increasingly absurd, to the point where it starts to become unclear why anyone would ever follow, say, Lysandre.

As I mentioned earlier, my personal interest in Pokémon was at odds with these clownish, Saturday morning cartoon villain organizations, but Murakami's account of the Aum attacks recontextualized them for me, made them make sense even within the framework of a "realistic" utopian world. The last elements snapped into place, and I knew my main character would be the member of one of these cults. A cult dedicated to, what else? Evolution. A core element of the Pokémon series, a perfect metaphor for the frustrating lack of movement of the End of History 90s. I imagined a cult leader as a surrogate mother figure for Aracely, who would have a strained relationship with both of her own parents, and deciding on that, the idea of making Pokémon's canon evil mother Lusamine the villain was a no-brainer. I imagined a post-SuMo Lusamine, unable to move on from her experience merged with Nihilego, languishing in Kanto after being sent there to consult with Bill, who had his own experience being merged with a Pokémon... It didn't take long to figure out how all these pieces connected.

The full form of the story had taken shape.

VI. Showdown

I knew immediately I would be following Showdown rules for the battles. No alternative even crossed my mind. I had dabbled in Showdown a few times over the years, first in Gen 3 OUs, then later in Gen 7 OUs, and I knew from experience that Pokémon is a monumentally more interesting competitive game when operating at a high level compared to either its depiction in the anime (shounen logic, mid-fight evolutions) or the general playing experience (spam your best move on your overleveled starter). I knew I would use competitive rulesets before I even considered the thematic or worldbuilding aspect I would eventually take in the story itself (i.e., that the specific rulesets prevent battles from becoming bloodsport and enforce order on the world). I simply thought doing battles this way would be far more entertaining.

To prepare, I started playing Gen 9 OUs under the guidance of a few friends who were into the competitive scene. I grinded the ladder for months, eventually getting a good enough grasp on the metagame to reach 1500 Elo on the Showdown ladder, which is not very good but generally higher than someone can reach with dumb luck.

Crafting the tournament format and rulesets used in the story wasn't difficult. I modeled the tournament format on the League of Legends World Championship, with region-based seeds (having been selected due to performance in regional tournaments) competing in four groups before the highest performers advanced to a single elimination bracket. Initially, I envisioned a 32-competitor bracket instead of the 16-competitor bracket that would appear in the final draft, but otherwise the format came quickly and easily.

In terms of the rulesets and available Pokémon, my considerations were made primarily in terms of what would be most entertaining to read. I decided to include Mega Evolutions and not include Z Moves, Dynamax, or Terastallization, because Mega Evolutions are cool and those other gimmicks are not. The bring-9-pick-6 format, while unusual in Showdown rulesets, is similar to the rules in Pokémon Stadium and VGC tournaments, and also adds a level of intrigue to which Pokémon each competitor uses. (It also enabled Red's Zapdos at the climax of the story, which was something I knew I would bring out from very early on.)

With the help of one of my friends who knew competitive Pokémon, I scripted out each battle assiduously before I wrote them. Every battle was tested using Showdown itself, with only a few turns mocked up to account for luck. For instance, in Aracely versus Jinjiao, Slowking is meant to stay asleep for three turns. Rather than rely on luck to ensure Slowking actually slept that long during the test, I could give Slowking a useless move and have him use that instead to simulate being asleep.

The only thing that couldn't be tested in Showdown was the 7 PP Kingambit trick Red uses at the end of the story, because it's impossible to set a Pokémon to have fewer than max PP in Showdown. This led to one of the bigger mistakes of the story, as it turns out that Encore would simply wear off if Kingambit ran out of PP, rather than forcing him to use Struggle like I assumed. Luckily, even if this were the case, it wouldn't change the outcome of the battle, so it's not an error I lose too much sleep over.

Character teams were chosen to thread the needle between a few considerations. The team needed to be competitively viable, reflect the character's personality in some way, and be distinct from other teams for the sake of variety. (Variety is somewhat unrealistic in real top-level competitive Pokémon, where you'll often see many almost identical teams in the top ranks. But that would be boring.) Some lack of optimization was allowed under the conceit that actually training these Pokémon to peak form would take a lot of time in the real world, compared to Showdown were optimization can be determined quickly due to the ability to immediately adjust stats and builds.

I also tried to give some preference for Pokémon that would be more familiar to layman fans, though this was difficult because Gen 8 and 9 have outrageous power creep and many popular early generation Pokémon have been completely phased out. (Using Megas helped with this issue.) It was this consideration that led to Azumarill being Aracely's ace. There was also an innate challenge to imagining what the competitive scene would look like without legendary Pokémon. Zapdos and Landorus-Therian have been inexorable staples of the competitive scene for generations. What happens in a world where they aren't used at all?

In the original 32-person bracket, I imagined Aracely competing against Jinjiao in the first round, then minor characters Adrian da Cunha and Jacq Ray Johnson in the next two rounds, before facing Toril in semifinals. I imagined Adrian da Cunha as a "hometown hero" whose team wasn't great but he was plucky with a lot of grit, and Jacq Ray Johnson as a self-aware heel who liked to use cheesy strategies and gimmicky Pokémon like Smeargle and Ditto. Condensing from 32 to 16 occurred around the same time I had settled on Lusamine as my villain/cult leader, which led to replacing those two with Gladion. I developed full brackets for both the 32-man and 16-man iterations, with character names and regions, just in case I ever needed to mention them.

All that was left to do was write the story.

VII. Unbroken Line of History

I began writing in September 2023 under the tentative title Unbroken Line of History, which I would later change to simply Lines. In the original drafts, I opened the story with a modified version of the panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu detailing how people are filtered over time in their pursuit of being the best, this time starting with all 8 billion people in the world until only one remains. The story then cut to Aracely's perspective in the restroom as she mentally prepared for her final group stage match.

At this point I was more set on Aracely being the clear protagonist of the story, so she had a few facets of her personality designed around that. First, as I mentioned before, there was a feminist angle where she was motivated specifically to be the first female trainer to win the championship. Secondly, I threw in some more generic nervousness/fear of failure. The other major difference is that I did not lead with the cult prophecy of the world ending. I originally envisioned the cult reveal to be a mid-story twist, and only obliquely hinted at it.

The scene still played out with Toril appearing and the two getting off to a bad start. Then, Cely's father tried to talk strategy with her while she ignored him, before the battle transpired in much the same form as it does in the final draft.

I showed this early draft to my friends and most disliked it. My girlfriend at the time told me Cely sounded like an edgy 13-year-old boy, while my neuroscientist friend whose aspirational idol is Bondrewd from Made in Abyss wanted to know more about the oblique hints of a cult, finding everything else boring. Another friend said it was stupid that there were 30 seconds between turns during the battle and that the Pokémon should just go at each other; nobody would actually want to watch a battle that was paced so slowly. (I vehemently disagreed with that take. Basically every popular sport balances between slow-paced moments of strategy and fast-paced moments of action and execution.) Some people I showed it to did enjoy it, though. Gazemaize, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory, was especially enamored by the Brittany/Gardevoir reveal and the Bud Light Analyst Desk, and implored me to keep both of those elements at all costs. 7th, one of my friends who helped me with the Showdown stuff, was so into it she drew fan art of all the characters (which I've posted before) and also wrote eight pornographic short stories about them.

I rewrote the same opening scene several times across October and November, though these were minor iterations without significant adjustments. Frustrated with the lack of progress, I decided to take a break from writing to simply think about the story for a few months.

During this time, to fix Aracely's edgy 13-year-old voice, I decided to lean into her being from Pokémon Los Angeles (with her native region, Visia, being a play on "visual" as a reference to Hollywood) and gave her a Valley Girl accent. To prepare for this, I listened to hours and hours of ASMR videos of people speaking like Valley Girls and took notes on their inflection and syntax. It was here where I decided on Aracely's underlining quirk, as a way of capturing the unique style of emphasis Valley Girls used.

This also made me realize I needed to adjust Aracely's personality. Despite the tone of her voice, she was still acting antisocially. She didn't want to talk to her father, she didn't want to talk to Lachlan Nguyen, she didn't even really want to talk to Toril. Toril herself was a lump of coal. My own misanthropy kept leaking into the characters, even when I conceptually didn't want them to have it. I thought back to Cleveland Quixotic, and how what made the Jay and Viviendre romance work was that they actually both liked each other, and figured—even though I didn't have explicitly romantic plans for Aracely and Toril—that I needed to do something similar to make their rivalry truly pop. Rather than avoid people, Aracely would lean into talking to them, even if they were annoying. Although Toril remained frigid, there would be a part of her yearning for emotional contact, a way to coax her out of her shell.

I also thought deeply about the structure of my stories in general, and my inability to come up with good hooks. It was around this time that someone I knew was reading Chicago. They pointed out that the plot of Chicago doesn't really start until Chapter 26; that I was "burying the lede." I considered this. My logic, when writing Chicago, was that the Empire moving to take over Washington would be a twist, something that would shock and excite people and change their perception of the entire story.

But did that make sense, when really the story was "about" that twist? Didn't that just make everything before the twist harder to get into for a reader? Chicago might look radically different if I revealed the Empire's goals immediately, but it would also probably be a more immediately engaging work. I'm a big fan of delayed gratification in storytelling, but had I taken it too far?

This was a major revelation for me, and immediately I understood what I needed to do for my Pokémon story: move up the cult plotline. Place it front and center. Name the whole story after it even. I decided on framing the opening scene from Toril's perspective, depicting Aracely initially more as an alien other, emphasizing the fact that she was in a cult rather than hide it behind foreshadowing. This could also lead to Aracely and Toril having more of a dual protagonist setup, which would make my planned two-half finale (one half where Aracely battled "the man who always wins," one half where Toril got involved in stopping the cult's doomsday plot) work even better.

Confidence resurged. At the end of January 2024, my girlfriend of seven years  and I broke up. A few days later, I started writing the sixth—and ultimately final—draft of When I Win the World Ends.

VIII. When I Win the World Ends

Now it's the part of the Making Of where I actually make the thing I'm supposed to be making, but there's a lot less to say about it. Once I have a plan, the actual writing of the story is the easy part, and most of what I wrote—with a few exceptions—looks similar to the story as it exists now.

There were some oddities. I wrote the first seven chapters (everything up to the end of the Jinjiao battle) and then had to take a two week break to write a short piece for a writing contest I had entered in December as part of an effort to stop overthinking WIW. After this interruption, I returned to WIW writing perhaps a bit more perfunctorily than I usually would, leading to an original version of Chapter 8 (the chapter where MOTHER makes her first real appearance) that was short and abbreviated. Later, in editing, I would rewrite most of this chapter.

A few ideas emerged while writing, like the motif of serendipity/Logos, which I felt tied nicely to the ideas of evolution and history. It was also in this draft that I introduced Cely's friends Haydn and Charlie, as a nod to an earlier work of mine also featuring a fashion-obsessed girl from Los Angeles. (Speaking of nods to earlier works, in the original 32-man bracket, Cole Coulter featured as one of the competitors, but he didn't make the 16-man cut.)

The process went smoothly. I finished the draft at the end of May, a little under four months after I started it. I had envisioned the full story as being about 70,000 words, but the draft ended up closer to 115,000. Underestimating story length is just an essential element of the trade, though.

A few days after finishing the draft I went on a four-day Oklahoma Darkness Retreat where I had access to zero electronics. The goal was to think about my story deeply and how it could be improved in the editing process.

In this time chamber, where I did nothing except complete crossword puzzles and read The Recognitions by William Gaddis, I came to a realization. There was one element the story needed that wasn't already there.

That element was Sabrina. In the original draft, Sabrina was not present during the scene where Aracely meets the Old Man. She was mentioned obliquely a couple of times in conjunction with Aracely's "psychic powers," but it never really built to anything. There was still a scene where Aracely was interrogated due to her relationship with MOTHER, but only by nameless goons, and the scene lacked tension as it was clear Aracely could talk circles around them.

When I returned from Oklahoma, I prepared for my conception of Sabrina as a character by writing an 8,000 word short story from her perspective, which hashed out an entire backstory for her. Then, I started editing the draft.

For me, a lot of editing is just polish. Usually, cutting out needless sentences and fixing clunky ones, as well as emphasizing a few of the more understated themes and motifs. For instance, during editing, I made slight additions to emphasize the thematic connection between Aracely's suicide attempt and the global war that almost destroyed the world, as well as the connection between the moon and cyclical insanity (lunacy, etymologically, being related to the moon). I made the Old Man more of a Walt Disney-esque figure (from my notes: "a dying Disney"), rewriting much of his dialogue to either be direct quotes or to evoke his ideals. I also expanded on several of the scenes where Toril and Aracely interact to make their relationship more complex and nuanced. I gave MOTHER some new dialogue, including her speech in Chapter 18 about loving a child for the potential it promises, while also paradoxically wanting it to remain a child forever.

The largest changes were in the three chapters I almost fully rewrote. The first was Chapter 8, which as I mentioned earlier was overly terse. In the original draft, it depicted MOTHER as more pathetic, more dependent on Aracely. I decided to make her a more threatening figure, and incorporated a few references to the Moloch sacrifice scene from Valle Verde to make her seem more like a false idol. Similarly, I rewrote Chapter 12, which was originally a very short chapter that focused solely on a conversation between MOTHER and Nilufer that ended with the order to kidnap Aracely. In rewriting the chapter to include Fiorella, I gave myself more opportunity to flesh out the respective philosophies of her and MOTHER (including some of the story's most salient discussions about why cults exist), as well as give more of an insight into the inner workings of RISE as an organization. And lastly, I fully rewrote Chapter 19 to include Sabrina.

The last changes I made in editing were to the final chapter. When I finished the final draft of the story, I sent it to several readers, many of whom had looked at the original drafts of the first chapter, as well as julirites, the author of a Fargo fan fiction called London. There was an immediate and minor backlash to the final chapter, which was originally much more pessimistic, from most people who read it. In the original version, Aracely and Toril were not still in communication. (Fiorella was also dying of cancer instead of jockeying to replace the Old Man.) The finale had a much more somber, sedate, tragic note. Juli and 7th disliked this sad ending, while Gazemaize wanted me to cut the final chapter altogether. I felt confident that the final chapter was necessary, though, and revised it to its current version, which was much better liked.

And then... the story was finished, near the end of July. I crunched the numbers and realized that if I posted two chapters to start and then did a twice-weekly posting schedule, I could end the story serendipitously on October 12. So I did.

IX. Names and Special Thanks

In my Making Of post for Cleveland Quixotic, I had a fairly extensive list of where I got all the character and place names from. The list is a lot less extensive here; most names I constructed for the purpose of sounding evocative, rather than taking them from someplace specific. For instance, I chose the name Aracely Sosa because it sounds like whistling with its repeated S sounds, compared to Toril Lund which is a lot harsher with its consonants. You can see a similar rationale behind names like Fiorella Fiorina, Yui Matsui, and even some of the background characters, like Jacq Ray Johnson, Jr., where there is a lot of emphasis on alliteration and rhyme.

There are a couple of exceptions. Jinjiao is the in-game ID of a longtime Chinese League of Legends pro of middling notability. He picked the name (which means "Golden Horn") as a reference to the Golden Horned King, a villain from Journey to the West.

Lutz, Fiorella's cameraman, was named after an extremely minor character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, who is not playable and only appears in a singular cutscene before being killed. They are so irrelevant that despite naming a character after them, I actually forgot their name, which is Lotz, not Lutz.

Haydn is named after the famous classical composer.

Special thanks to 7th and Elick320 for helping me with the teams and battles. Thanks to Gazemaize and julirites, among others unnamed, for reading and providing feedback. And thank you all for enjoying the story.

[wildlife4life]

Tease Tidbit Tuesday

*A nylon gloved hand reaches out of a dark hole that smells like toothpaste and medical grade cleaner. In its trembling fingers is a wrinkled torn out note page. At the top there are crossed out chart notes and below that are the words NFL Buck snippet*

I LIVE!!!!!!!!! What up my buddie peeps? Making a surprise NFL Buck tidbit drop between studying and having my fingers in people's mouths (I am not a crazy person, I am in Dental Assisting school and doing my clinical rounds). The writing beans woke up for once and I had to share! But this does not mean a new chapter is going to drop any time soon. I am nearing the end of my schooling, on top of being a mom and running a household, so the time to actually sit and write, and have the writing beans working is very rare these days. BUT! NFL Buck is still in the works and another chapter is coming, just need to be patient with me. To those who are being patient and have stuck around for this fic, thank you.

Tagged by the super lovely and super talented @spaceprincessem. I am ever patient and beyond excited for your upcoming mockingjay buddie fic!

"Drinks are on me tonight." Eddie states firmly before Chimney could finishing reaching back for his wallet. The older man looks back and does a mental count of everyone that came along after their very rough shift and can't hide his small wince, "You sure Diaz? Including Athena, thats 10 weary firefighter bar tabs you'll be covering." And Chimney knows better than most how much just one thirsty civil servant can put away, let alone 10. Eddie shrugs one shoulder and gives him a small smirk, "Oh yea. I mean technically drinks are on Buck tonight, as thanks for saving me after the whole 'reckless spider-man' routine." His right hand throws up air quotes while his left is pulling his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. Gifting an expensive coffee machine for the firehouse was one thing and knowing the basic financial logistics of Eddie's upcoming birthday golf trip was another. But having the funds on hand for an on the whim night out with several thirsty hard working men and women, was tipping onto the side of skeptical. And Chimney needed to voice it. "Doesn't he have an expensive birthday trip for you to save up for?" Chim quirks an eyebrow. The Texas native's smirk broadens. Instead of vocally answering him, Eddie opens his wallet and pulls out a fucking black American Express card. Chimney's jaw literally drops, as the bar lights reflect off the silver EDMUNDO DIAZ stamped at the bottom. Next to him, Hen audibly gasps before quickly collecting herself and shouting out, "118, drinks are on Diaz!" And is immediately met with loud hollers and cheers. Rich man Diaz laughs loud and reaches past a still stunned Chimney to hand the prized card to the wide eyed bar tender. In a hook and ladder joint, a card like Eddie's has probably never even come close to even the block of the bar and Chimney's only seen a black Amex in movies and tv shows. "No restrictions." Eddie tells the bar tender, "And I'll start with whatever IPA is on tap." He looks back at Chimney, "What'll have Han?" And folds up his fucking Burberry leather wallet before sliding it back into his back pocket.

For those who are not familiar with this fic, please go check the first two chapters of Three Taps for the Lombardi. All other snippets and posts for NFL Buck can be found here. Warning, there are a lot! Hope you enjoyed!

Tagging (no pressure!): @hippolotamus @dangerpronebuddie @daffi-990 @tizniz @rainbow-nerdss

@elvensorceress @monsterrae1 @eddiebabygirldiaz @lonelychicago @spotsandsocks

@diazheartsbuckley @diazsdimples @exhuastedpigeon @cal-daisies-and-briars @watchyourbuck

@glorious-spoon @prosperdemeter2 @bekkachaos @tidesreach @kitteneddiediaz

@eddiestummy @aroeddiediaz @lemonzestywrites @bi-buck-coded @lover-of-mine

@beyourownanchor6 @honestlydarkprincess @bucks-daddy-issues @inell

@pansysgothgf @smilingbuckley

[cosmerelists]

If Cosmere characters had mundane hobbies...

And by “mundane” I just mean “non-extreme” (aka, no base jumping, no paragliding); we’re talking, like, doing puzzles or going for a pleasant hike. If all these hobbies existed and Cosmere characters weren’t busy fending for their lives all the time, what might they get up to?

1. Szeth: Frisbee golf

We already know that Szeth is great at paintball; I just feel like he’d be weirdly good at frisbee golf as well.

2. Renarin: Speed Rubik’s Cube

Renarin likes to fiddle and have something for his hands to do--I think solving a Rubik’s Cube would be fun for him. And I threw in “speed” (aka, trying to do it as fast as possible) because Renarin loves to jump into things wholeheartedly.

3. Kaladin: Indoor Rock Climbing

Kaladin has already gone rock climbing in two books--he makes his own rock wall in the chasms in Book 1 and climbs down Urithiru in Book 4. He even knows that he should be using “rock dust” for his hands. I think some nice, non-extreme, indoor rock climbing would be good for Kaladin. Bonus: he’s not afraid of heights!

4. Shai: Stamp Collecting

(I’m sorry)

5. Eshonai: Hiking

Eshonai loves to go out into the woods and explore, see new places and people and things. I can see her getting into hiking.

6. Raoden: Coding

Before he even had powers, Raoden already liked to memorize Aons--and from what I understand, AonDor is basically coding. 

7. Tien: Rock Collecting

I mean, this is literally just canon. I have to imagine that he’d also enjoy whittling since that is again, simply canon. 

8. Shallan: Crochet

Okay, so Shallan does already have hobbies in canon: like drawing, for example. But I think she’d also enjoy crochet--all those patterns coming together, her Spren humming excitedly...

9. Adolin: Sewing

Even while trapped in Shadesmar, Adolin is able to sew himself a new outfit. If he had time and materials, he could definitely make some cool clothing. 

10. Mare: Gardening

I mean, she loves flowers. If she were alive when her planet could support flowers, I think she’d love to grow some.

11. Sixth of the Dusk: Birdwatching

If he wasn’t, you know, desperately trying to survive at all times, I feel like Sixth of the Dusk might enjoy some nice, relaxed birdwatching. 

12. Wax: Puzzling

Normally Wax is putting together the pieces of deadly mysteries that will impact the fate of his planet. Maybe he’d find it a nice change of pace to just put together colorful cardboard instead!

13. Rysn: Extreme Couponing

Listen, Rysn once leapt off of a cliff to talk to a god to make a deal. Clipping coupons would at least have the advantage of being safer than that, no matter how “extreme” she gets.

14. Rlain: Amateur Radio

Amateur radio tends to use morse code, which is a form of communication Rlain might find comfortingly rhythmic. Plus, amateur radio lets you connect with people, but no one can see you or judge you for being a crab person. 

15. Vin: Parkour

Even without powers, I can see Vin running across buildings and climbing things she’s not supposed to climb. I think she’d have a good time.

16. Jasnah: Crossword puzzles

Yes, I am basically calling Jasnah a nerd here, but also, I think she’d probably really like crossword puzzles--knowing things, understanding obscure trivia, solving puzzles that aren’t about the end of the world...

17. Dalinar: Tunnelling

I dunno if this is just a Reddit phenomenon, but apparently some people just really like to dig long tunnels underground? And Dalinar sure had a great time digging out that latrine that one time. Perhaps that was a sign that his true love is burrowing deep, deep underground.

18. Taravangian: Fantasy Football

I don’t know a whole lot about Fantasy Football, but I believe it involves creating your own imaginary team of players and then using their actual, real-life performance to get points. So you have to be good at predicting how people will act, skilled at long-term planning, and have a deep desire to win. It’s like Taravangian’s diagram, only nobody (hopefully) dies!

[catdragonstella]

Wenner the main character

Height: 7"11'

Gender: Male

Specie: Fish...just fish

Hobbies: Doodling, Collecting stamps, ball games

Owner: Blanka Sinkie

Design n personality

Wenner is the basic design levibot with purple marks and more simplistic traits. He Always wears his jacket his owner gave him, no matter how many guys tells him he looks like a underpaid Worker. Wenner is incredibly Sweet and kind levibot with a little snarky side who choses empathy and talking instead of violence thanks to being a levibot of a 10 year old girl Blanka Sinkie. Wenner is really protective of her small owner and would do anything to make his bestest friend happy no matter what. Even if it means to do something he doesn't like.

Story details

Wenner belongs to a small family which he was a birthday gift to a small Blanka when she was still six. They did everything together and Wenner loves the company of his owner is true pacifist with a heart made out of gold. But this small peaceful time was Shattered when the company Blanka's family went bankrupt. Like if fate had a sick sense of humor, Blanka's health issues she had since she was born, but was able to keep in check due to taking medication, dropped down and now without a proper medication and health care, she might not make it. So Wenner decided to compete and become a Champion of the water colloseum to get enough money to safe his best friend. No matter how he hates violence, he hates seeing his bestest friend suffer.

Authors note: I know, I know. Main character storyline is basic, the "Getting money to sick/hurt important person with a boring main character is overused." Yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, I happend to like classics and I want to tell this story with my own twists and turns and characters and Wenner's own character development. Thank you for understanding. (Also FINALLY! I introduced the main character of Water colloseum after over year of Water colloseum introduction. Hale fucking luja)

[yetitakinginventory]

McDonalds HappyMeal Toys

In this post I will be refering to the toys based on their packaging and distribution centers. The International packaging is the clear plastic bag with printing in multiple languages, when a region has a specific packaging design I will refer to this based on that region.

I have a UK kid's meal box that I keep my unopened International set in, this box has several fun kids activities on it and you can punch out each section to collect the Guardians. This box also has a coupon for the Movie Novelization. the McDonalds logo on the cover is not a sticker but part of the printing, making this a variant cover.

There will be several aditions to this including packaging and box designs from different regions but for now I'm just covering the toys.

The most complex one first, Bunnymund has 2 different versions of his toy. Regional version and the International version. Although I call this the regional version the design was primaily localized in the U.S packaging, Canada (Le Reveil Gardiens) Packaging and the Latin American ( El Origen de los Guardianes) Packaging, it is not to imply that all regional packaging recieved this version, but I have seen it outside of packaging on French second hand stores and calling it simply North American would be excluding the Latin American region that also destributed this model.

If you have a Bunnymund toy shout out your region and which model you have, I'd love to see which version had which distribution range!

The Regional version has a larger bandolier with a slot cut out to hold his boomerang.

He can then reach back and grasp it to toss when you press the button.

The international design has a smaller boomerang permanently fused to his hand, he cannot toss it and pressing the button only creates a karate chop action.

However the International Bunnymund toy comes with the character card and the regional Bunnymund does not.

Because of these changes the arm designs on each figure are slightly different, the Regional one being thicker and bent at a tighter angle. The International version also has a softer airbrush look to the face where the Regional has very clean lines.

Their lot numbers are also placed in different locations, Regional being on the side of the bandolier while the International is on the bottom of the bandolier. Copyright stamp is on the bottom of the foot for both versions.

Bunnymund usually sells for under $10, depending on the region and the model you want you should expect to pay more if you factor in shipping, the International Bunnymund toy with the character card is worth more to U.S. collectors.

Next we have the two keepsake boxes released internationally after the initial 4 toys. These are mostly found in the International packaging but are pictured on regional boxes so if you see them in a regional packaging let me know!

The crowning jewel of a ROTG toy collection is the Jack Frost keepsake box, sold internationally you can expect $30 from this new in the bag, it would sell for more but most buyers have to factor in shipping costs, so selling it with the other toys helps a buyer make the purchase. (this is where the elf and globe toys carry their weight)

The Keepsake box is a blue octogon with Jack Frost on the front holding his staff. His number is on the bottom just above the screws.

To unlock the box remove the staff from Jack's hands and turn it in the snowflake on the side.

Inside the box is a small puzzle of all the Guardians on North's sleigh with the workshop dome in the background.

if you live i the UK this box is easy to find for very low prices, but as it was not released in all regions, particularly the US, it becomes the most valuable peice of the set.

Tooth's keepsake box is similairly as hard to find in the global collectors community, but has less demand.

Her box is shapped like the Toothboxes from the movie and includes three fliptops shapped like the fairies in purple, blue, and teal.

It comes with a paper insert with Jamie's face on it, which slides into the front slot. Directly under where his portrait goes in the number for this toy.

Tooth's keepsake box can go for $15-20 new in the bag.

[j4m3s-b4k3r]

CREEPY Steve

2024 is the 50th anniversary of Stephen King’s first published novel, CARRIE. The story of a bullied telekinetic teen, who gets blood-soaked payback at her prom. Since then, he's written 65 novels, 200 short stories, and 5 nonfiction books. A freakish feat, almost worthy of one of his supernatural characters.

King’s first published story was when he was 19 years old. He continued selling short stories after graduating from the University of Maine, and while teaching English at a public high school, all later collected in NIGHT SHIFT. He's averaged more than a book a year since 1974. Many of his novels were initially released under a pseudonym, lest their sheer number dilute his ‘brand’. I became aware of King via the early movie adaptations of his books. CARRIE, THE SHINING, and THE DEAD ZONE. A great introduction, as those early films were all good, whereas most adaptations of his work are terrible, sadly. 

During one of the Halloweens in the covid era, Julia & I got into a CREEPY STEVE frame of mind. Watching the better film adaptations, and listening to audiobooks. Those narrated by Will Patton were faves, as he really brings the characters to life. The Bill Hodges trilogy - Mr MERCEDES, FINDERS KEEPERS and END OF WATCH - were all marvellous, and introduced the wonderful character Holly Gibney. Who then appeared in further stories of her own. 

There are 10 Stephen King short story collections, and all that I’ve read contain several gems. JUST AFTER SUNSET has the terrifying (yet somehow hilarious) tale of a man trapped and left for dead in a capsized porta-potty. DIFFERENT SEASONS contains the stories that inspired THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and STAND BY ME. Donald Sutherland starred in a great film entitled Mr HARRIGAN’S PHONE, taken from IF IT BLEEDS. Which also contains another great Holly Gibney story. 

ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT, is an engaging book, narrated by the author himself. Part memoir and part how-to instructional. Reminding me of William Goldman’s ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE, in that it can’t truly deliver the secrets to making the magic that it promises, but serves up entertaining & revealing autobiographical anecdotes instead.

We are now used to seeing vampires in contemporary settings, so some of the 1970s impact of SALEM’S LOT has been lost. But both the book and its movie adaptation have many indelible images. Such as a vampire child hovering at the window.. (an inspiration for John Ajvide Lindqvist perhaps?)

After listening to book after book of King’s, and loving their brilliantly observed characters, and wonderful dialog, DARK TOWER was conspicuous for not having the elements that are normally intriguing in his books. Maybe I’ll give this series another shot someday, as friends swear it gets better. 

We read THE SHINING and its sequel, DOCTOR SLEEP, watching & enjoying both movie adaptations. King apparently despises Kubrick’s version of THE SHINING - "The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice. In the book, there's an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance, trying to be good, and little by little he moves over to this place where he's crazy. And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the movie, Jack was crazy from the first scene.” 

After reading the book, I understand King’s critiques, and agree with his second point. Jack Nicholson seems already about detonate on his drive to the hotel. Whereas King’s Jack was driven to madness by the malignant spirits within it. However, Kubrick’s film is so indelibly stamped into my mind, that I cannot unsee it. Nor unlike it neither (sorry, Stephen).

“Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored.” - Stephen King.

I work in storytelling too, but in my biz it’s the dullard’s choice all the way - everything plotted & discussed, ad infinitum. King apparently starts with the merest idea, then writes straight ahead, surprising himself as he goes. A magician pulling a string of goodies out of his own head. At his best, this approach produces stories that feel naturalistic, with surprising twists and turns. 

At his worst, it can be rambling, meandering and self indulgent. Especially when he struggled with addiction. Apparently, King was so out of control in the late 1980s, that he was confronted by an intervention after finishing the TOMMYKNOCKERS manuscript. A pity then that the editor wasn’t given more latitude in tidying up that waffling mess before it went to print..

Stephen himself agrees - “I mean, The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, “There’s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.” The book is about 700 pages long, and I’m thinking, “There’s probably a good 350-page novel in there.”

We enjoyed the screen adaptations of IT, CHRISTINE, 1922, THE MIST, and 11.22.63. After soaking in worlds King has created, on page & screen, it became clear that the recent NETFLIX hit, STRANGER THINGS, is merely glorified Stephen King fan fiction. By the end of the pandemic, we’d chewed through many stories, yet only a mere fraction of The King Catalog. 

King is thought of as a master of the paranormal, but his real genius is for the everyday. Some of my favourites King stories are his straight crime fiction, or stories about real life. Even his famous horror stories are grounded by settings in relatable blue collar situations.. The writer Peter Straub even compared King to Dickens: “Both are novelists of vast popularity and enormous bibliographies, both are beloved writers with a pronounced taste for the morbid and grotesque, both display a deep interest in the underclass."

How does a man who’s been a millionaire for decades, with a very recognisable face, keep an ear for dialog patterns of common folk? Does he wear a disguise, and lurk in truck stops, diners, dive bars, and greyhound bus stations, taking notes?

 “He's one of the first people to talk about real Americans and how they live, to capture real American dialogue in all its, like, foulmouthed grandeur... He has a deadly ear for the way people speak... …Surface-wise, King's work is a bit televisual, but there's really a lot going on." - David Foster Wallace

Lately, we’ve embarked on yet another quest to chip away at the KING oeuvre. Having already fallen in love with Bill Hodges & Holly Gibney, it was fun to watch the Mr MERCEDES TV series. Even though the filmmakers took liberties with the characterisations. Rather than the shy, smoking, middle aged, OCD woman of the novels, the TV Holly is a perky & cute 30 something. An autistic variation on the manic pixie dream girl trope. (sigh..)

Taken from a short story collection entitled EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL, the gripping movie 1408, starring John Cusack & Samuel L. Jackson, is the creepy story of a skeptical paranormal investigator, whose cynicism is challenged by spending a harrowing night in an actual haunted hotel room.

In THINNER a selfish fat lawyer is cursed into anorexia by a gypsy. Entertaining, in 'the guy deserves everything he gets' manner of a parable from the Twighlight Zone. It seems to have inspired Sam Raimi's DRAG ME TO HELL.

GERALD’S GAME seemed like a story written on a bet, or an author’s exercise - “write a novel where the protagonist never leaves their bed for most of the story.” To me it felt like it might have worked better as a short story. When King fails (for me, anyway) it's when there hasn't been enough editing.

King has apparently said that PET SEMATARY was his book that scared him the most, and it is extremely creepy, but for me, MISERY was even more terrifying. I'd already seen the film, and Kathy Bates’ Oscar winning performance, but the book is even scarier somehow. There’s nothing paranormal about this story. There is utter horror, but it is the worst kind that there is - the twists & turns of the human mind.

Despite, or perhaps because of, King’s great popularity, literary critics long damned him with faint praise. In 2003, when he received the National Book Foundation’s ‘Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters’, some became openly hostile:

"The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life… ..What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis." - Harold Bloom

Bloom is dead, so King gets the last word - “A lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired".

In 1999, Stephen King was flattened by a vehicle while walking along a highway - "After the accident, I was totally incapable of writing. At first it was as if I'd never done this in my life. ...It was like starting over again from square one." As someone who was been flattened too (but in a very different way) one of the many inspiring things about King is how he recovered from that terrible accident, to do some of his very best work.

CREEPY STEVE is a one-man multimedia idea engine, keeping the publishing & Hollywood machines running. We are still enjoying poring through the King library (listening to THE INSTITUTE now) so if any of you have further recommendations, please let me know in the comments!

[nopeferatu]

saw you post a lot of brokeback mountain content so i want to know if you have a list of your favorite brokeback mountain fanfic :)

I do post a lot abt Brokeback Mountain, but I've never actually sat down and made a formal, ranked list of all the Brokeback fics I love?? I have a collection on ao3 called "My Favorite Fanfics" which is where I put fics that I like beyond a simple bookmark, and there are more BBM fics in there than any other fandom I've read for haha. Unfortunately, this list isn't actually comprehensive as there are many that were either exclusively posted to the old BBM LiveJournal groups, or they were posted to LJ then later deleted and are now word documents that get passed around by email.

If I were to rank my fave BBM fics in a top 10 list, it'd look like this:

10. Once Upon a Time by rhye

A happy-ending ranch AU composed of short chapters based on fairy tale themes. As in fairy tales, some plot elements may be far-fetched, the angst runs deep, there is fluff, and they all lived happily ever after.

9. Life Ain't Easy by Creed Cascade (creedcascade)

Jack convinces Ennis to come work on the Twist Ranch after they leave Brokeback Mountain, but life ain’t easy.

8. Come Hell or High Water by Just_K

Ennis Del Mar makes the decision to leave his simple life behind and follow the brazen Jack Twist across the state of Wyoming. With life in Texas heavy on their mind, the two come to realize that dreaming big comes with a price. Will they be able to hold together when the past threatens to tear them apart, or does love truly conquer all?

7. A Place to Hide by Way2

A possible portrait of Jack's relationship with Lureen during the years prior to his reunion with Ennis.

6. it could get easier (if you want it to) by biblionerd07

Ennis decides he has more to say after their fight at the trailhead, so he makes a phone call. And it changes his life.

5. A Various Language by Destina

This is the happy ending they deserved.

4. The Sky Above by mediumorange

August, 1983. Ennis’ postcard to Jack has come back stamped ‘Return to Sender.’ He finds Jack in Lightning Flat, determined to help his father save the failing Twist ranch. His father does not want to be saved.

3. Roots by 271horses

This story tells the complete life story of Earl and Rich. It follows them from deprived childhoods, through the maturation process, the events that bring them together, and the deep, abiding love that grows between them.

Unfortunately I can't link this one as it lives in a word doc, getting passed around from email to email after 271horses purged his LJ acc. It's fantastic, tho! A lot of users on the old Brokeback forums hold it in high regards, as you'll see lots of posts mentioning the great BBM Earl/Rich prequel fic and how good it is.

2. Somebody, Somewhere by mediumorange

If you can't fix it, you've got to stand it. Slowly but surely, Ennis finds a way to stand it.

1. Widower for One Year by 271horses

This story concentrates on what would have become of Ennis after he was left alone trying to deal with the finality of his loss in that beaten up old trailer, still mired in his miserable life.

This one is another one of those that gets passed around through email and I consider it one of the greatest tragedies of the fandom bc it is, no joke, the BEST fic I have ever read in my god damned life, but it was never finished. 271horses purged his LJ acc before finishing it. I actually stopped reading once I got close to the end bc I don't want to deal with the fact that it will never be completed, so for me to confidently call it the best fic ever without actually having finished it says a lot.

[dearinglovebot]

oml hi! what are your headcanons for claire and owen when they were at school? here are some of mine:

claire would defnitely be on good tersm with everyone, i feel like she'd be popular in the way that she knew everyone

but she's classify everyone as aquaintences though and call it 'networking'

would be super annoyed by everyone in her class constantly talking abt marriage and kids like thats the only option for her (alas i wish she was in my class i'd have someone to survive those trenches with 😔)

straight A+ student ofc

owen wouldn't really care for school i think

he'd get like alright grades

he'd be like 55% class clown if that makes sense?

super good at PE tho like he'd be the Pe Kid (TM)

i think he had a pet dog or cat (or both?) but they died

i kinda hc that his parents were pretty shitty. idk why but i do. (shhh let me project)

constantly getting into fights with vic hoskins but everyone agrees vic is annoying as HELL so eh he gets a pass socially-speaking

also:

in dodgeball the teachers always put claire and owen on the same team bc the two of them against each other means the match lasts FOREVER and if it does end it's a tie followed by an argument of who won that lasts for two weeks. like claire vs owen in dodgeball would be legendary. and like +340% hype bc everyone's 10 and dodgeball matches are IT when ur ten (can u tell i miss primary school dodgeball 😔)

hello anonnie! brace yourself cause this is a level 5 yapnado

I don’t agree with EoC a lot (...most things) but it hits my high school headcanons very well. that is to say, she is weird and off-putting to the general public. particularly sheltered midwestern kids who absolutely will be raised on the housewife/breadwinner-husband cool-aid in the 90s. they’re all obsessed with settling down with kids in the same town they were raised in while she’s trying to escape to a big city and get a master's degree. they’re doing the 90s equivalent of calling her woke blue hair liberal with pronouns. not outright bullying her but like... side-eyeing her. she's not really being invited to parties. which is fine! (it is not fine. she is lonely).

she has sooooo many autistic traits that i do just consider it part of my personal canon and that will NOT help her. her hyperfixation is going to college and she stims by doing homework (exaggerating. but only partially). i love my queen dearly but she does not have cool autism that makes you do cool art installations. she has collecting alaskan postage stamps from the 1800s type autism. she is a loser that few will truly appreciate <33 like fine wine

claire being from no-where wisconsin in the 80s-90s is sooo vital to understanding why she is #likethat. small town midwest is basically the deep south politically except in the south people will straight up say "women belong in the kitchen" and in the north they'll go "oh. you want a degree? how quaint [condescending tone]". she's used to everything being a backhanded compliment and proving that she deserves what she has. it makes her super defensive and lean towards interpreting things as malicious even when they're not. which is why, on the island, people don't really like her. she's the mean boss lady who won't even do small talk with her peasants

she absolutely is a straight A student. that is PRESIDENT of the debate club to you. she's a teacher's pet who Will do the extra credit work every time and has perfectly chosen her extra curriculars based on what will look best on her college application.

i also think she'd start working about as soon as she legally could. not only is that the smart financial move (start saving as soon as possible) but it looks amazing on college applications too. she is absolutely maximizing what she is able to accomplish in a day

overall, it really isn't an experience she thinks of fondly. she spends most of her teenhood devoted to trying to escape the poor, rural lifestyle she was born into. it's another stepping stone in her 10 stage plan to conquer a small nation. and she wouldn't regret any of it until her life inevitably comes crashing down (indominus incident) because only then does she realize she's been chasing material wealth instead of internal happiness for her entire life

owen has none of the crazy ambition claire does bc he's normal. he would take it one day at a time with vague goals of where he wants to end up. as long as he does the bare minimum of passing the class then he's doing pretty good. best subject science, worst subject literature

owen is from the 80-90s deep south which also heavily influences how i view his characterization. as a funny guy who enjoys very traditionally masculine things like construction and sports, he's going to be very well liked. everyone likes someone who makes you laugh. but overall it's pretty surface level. nobody asks about his day. he's gonna be like "damn is this really all i am to them??". but it's not like he can say that cause then he's being weird and emotional (toxic masculinity culture). so whatever. he keeps balling. (represses vulnerability and compensates by going even harder into funny sport guy routine)

so really he's the guy everyone "knows" but they're gonna lose contact the moment he leaves town. which is whatever. he has his wholeeeee life ahead of him to make some #real friends (his only long term friends include barry, the raptors, and sometimes claire)

he has proven time and time again he has no problem speaking his mind so yeah he's punching every hoskins that comes along and getting a few days suspension over it. he would not gaf tho bc his internal sense of justice is stronger than any school related punishment

he's the kind of kid who mows the lawn for your mom for pocket change and volunteers at the animal shelter

not the worst but yeah he's not that interested in reliving that

not including much about their individual family dynamics because thats an entirely different yap session

also:

in a hypothetical au where they're in the same high school, i believe it would go like this: claire is brilliant and smart in every class they share meaning he's enamored with her big words, she thinks all sports guys are meathead jocks and actively avoids them, she tutors for extra cash after school and he's on the verge of failing lit, she takes him on as a client and he's like wowza the whole time, she's like can you focus on the themes of shakespeare already and stop looking into my eyes longingly every few minutes i'm starting to think you aren't even interested in the deeper meanings of the rivalry between the veronas and capulets (she isn't picking up on a single hint), and now he is actively pretending like he doesn't understand any of the assignments to "get her guidance" on them (she still doesn't get the hint and is wondering if he got a concussion at some point)

[brb-on-a-quest]

felt-tip, stapler, stamp, scrapbook

felt tip (describe your aesthetic): "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats - the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill - The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it - and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage." (Tolkien took my aesthetic and gave it to biblo, minus the hole in the ground). Think like... soft and cozy and a bit academic and warm and inviting and there's always a pot brewing for you and we can sit and do nothing or go on an adventure together dearie.

stapler (who you're closest to): shout to the bestie of seven years at this point!! (shaking crying how has it been 7 years already, hopefully get to spend the rest of my life with her 💜). We've had so many weird adventures together, and she has wonderfully influenced my life.

stamp (pick a special date and why is it special): I don't really remember things most of the timeunless its like...certain people's birthdays (and that's really most of the time unlikely) so not really any date special but Dec 13 this year I will be officially done with higher level education (part one) and I finally get first graduation (thx covid) May 10th. Will they remain special to me? Probably not. but they are special to me now and later in life I will have new special events to commemmerate that will actually be important and I will celebrate those :)

scrapbook: the ocean. I miss the ocean so much. i used to live 15 minutes (or less) away from the beach my entire childhood and now it's been like almost 10 years since I've seen a real ocean. I loved finding sea glass or sand dollars (used to have a collection of them (rip because we moved a lot). I love being in the sand and being in the water and having it push back on you playfully like it's alive, i love when the water is more tranquil and you can just deadman's float face up and let the sun warm your face as you experience actual peace for the first time. I miss being a menace and splashing my siblings (they deserved it). Do not miss Red Tide but Eh win some lose some.

[stitchwraith-stingers]

3, 10, and 22 if you don’t mind :3 it can be any fandom, whichever you think will be easier when answering it !!

3 - screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

"anemone is so dogshit because she became mean for some reason" ohh so close, thats a kid who was kept close by her mom all her life and got manipulated by an old guy and was scared of her own powers, honorable mention to "hazels mom is a therapist she shouldve talked to him in the finale"

10 - worst part of fanon

i cant explain it, like, how bizzare it is?? like looking at fanon discussions is so fascinting because half of the time its like being smashed in the face by a bookshelf

the rampant misogyny is one thing i talk abt often, but theres stuff like how people will bend over backwards and you look at the canon and its just so drastically different from whatever the media is, also how suddenly people just cant some up with bullshit for some characters but then others who are cardboard boxes theres 5 billion pages of yaoi in fanworks of them, like what the hell is stopping is my question

(i understand ppl who want peri to be this badass who adopts dev and everything is great and i get the appeal i also love me some found family dynamics, however to me it just sometimes feels kinda forced? not saying you cant do that its just i dont think that peri would snap at dale and hate him directly, theres probably other stuff similar to this that ive seen in works but i cant recall, this was more common during 2014-2019 though)

also just how ship focused it is, now idk if im one to say this i love me some pairs i had a huge deviantart stamp collection that was half my page of ones i liked and i still do, however theyre so wildly out of character or its so obvious to see which ones people ONLY like for a ship and not outside their own character (stares directly at hazel)

theres probably more im missing but its 4 am rn, just the way they handle characters speicifcally and how wrong they can be even if something directly happened into the camara is soooo ????/

22 - your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

i cant rlly think of anythin new so ill repeat the answer i gave to the same question like acouple of months ago

i think the fop fandom can benefit from like, paying attention to the random worldbuilding????

theres atleast 4 different ways faries power the source to their magic and if 1 is dimished so are the rest like christmas lights, theres a substitute teacher whos a pretty gnarly fairy hunter (with a published book series), theres an entire country that appeared in the middle of america the contitnent that will dissapear, theres probably afew people timmy wished up that were on the run up untill he lost his fae which ment those people dissapeared, the grim reaper works in a fairy pet shop, crocker and the princible apparently had a thing going on??? betty and gray which im still mad they dropped after 4 episodes, chloe is all almost most of the time and even when her parnts come by theyre still jackasses enough to tell her to stop having fun, KEVIN CROCKER?? WHO I LOVE BUT IS SUCH A BIZZARE INCLUSION, anti cosmo and head pixie have (implied) raised a baby themselves?, the (not rlly) alien princess mark was supposed to marry who hunted him for sport for what i assume is months, veronicas whole identity crisis spheal, a fairy actress died on stage with such an ugly outfit that not even one person watched the damn movie after that, walking dino electrician, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH A ANIMATRONIC AND A GUY ON THE STREET ARE BUDDYS AND THEYRE LIKE A BUTCH NONBINARY LESBIAN PUNK FURRY AND A CISHET GUY IN HIS MID 50S, aliens that exist on earth plotline for the 2nd time, theres two mother natures and while yeah they couldve retconned one of them ive decided are wives, THE WELLS' LANDLORDS ARE WERIDO END OF THE EARTH DUDES AND THE PARENTS GET ALONG BUT THEIR KIDS DONT WHY HAVENT I SEEN ANYTHING ABT THIS

[gayphob1a]

STWG Daily Drabble 10/1/23

Prompt: moving day

tags: 18+ NSFW, ass eating, overstimulation, bruises

“We should christen every room in the house.” Eddie playfully pulls at Steve’s waist, trying to connect their hips in a grind.

“Babe, we absolutely can NOT do that.” Steve tries to fix his features in a stern gaze, but even flaccid and fully clothed, Eddie knows how to move in ways that reduce Steve to putty in his hands.

“Come on sweetheart,” he says with another cruel roll of his hips. Steve can feel his dick twitch curiously, far more enticed by Eddie’s shenanigans than the logical part of his brain is comfortable with. When Eddie’s hand bites down on a bruise in the shape of his fingers on Steve’s hip, he gasps, allowing Eddie to lick into his mouth languidly. The pain and pleasure mix and thrust Steve into a memory of where that tongue had been the previous night.

Steve is splayed out on his back, his legs hooked over Eddie’s shoulders as he comes back down to earth after being fucked within an inch of his life. He can feel Eddie’s spend leaking out of him and Eddie is staring with that look that means he’s not done yet. It courses through him like the first hit of nicotine in the morning, setting his bones alight in a glorious hum.

Suddenly, Eddie’s grip is tightening on Steve’s hips, flipping him over onto his chest, and he knows it’s going to leave a bruise. God, he can’t fucking wait. Eddie loves to tease Steve, call him a slut for markings. And yeah, Steve likes to be a brat about it, loves to pretend he hates when Eddie is so mean to him, but Steve could never actually be upset about it when it was so deeply and wholeheartedly the truth.

Eddie handles Steve, propping his knees up under him and spreading his cheeks. He vaguely thinks maybe Eddie is going to take a picture of him like this – all boneless and leaking – for his collection, but then, oh. Oh god. Eddie is blowing a steady stream of cool air onto Steve’s hot, swollen hole. Steve mewls, feels wanton with lust from just the faint sensation, desperate for more he isn’t sure he can take right now. He’s seconds away from mustering up the energy to wiggle his hips back against Eddie’s grip when he feels a hot wet stripe from his balls all the way up to the dimples in his back. There’s a vile slurping noise as Eddie collects the cum on his tongue and swallows.

“Ohhh fuck,” Steve wines. “More. Please.”

Eddie laughs at him, the way that makes Steve’s entire body heat up and recoil in shame. He doesn’t move his lips from the place where he’s been sucking a pretty pink mark into Steve’s skin like a tramp stamp. “Yeah, baby? You like that? Want to lay there like a little pillow princess while I lick myself out of you?”

“Yes!” Steve breathes, but Eddie’s lips leave him. He feels the tickle of Eddie’s hair leaning against his ass cheek. That cocky little shit.

“Is that how we ask for what we want?”

Steve feels another glob of Eddie leak out of him, still warm from Steve’s body heat, and he knows what Eddie wants to hear so he can feel that delicious sensation again. “Please, sir. Need it! Need your tongue on me, need it IN me.”

Eddie lets out an animalistic growl, palming Steve’s cheeks in those big, calloused hands. “There we go, honey. Can’t let you forget your manners now.” And he drops his head down between Steve’s legs. Eddie’s tongue ghosts over Steve’s perineum, lapping up the dripping cum and swirling it around his abused hole. The sensation is heavenly, soothing the aching ring of muscle with a gentle tickle, and then all at once, Eddie’s tongue plunges inside as deep as it can go. Steve clenches around the intrusion and Eddie brings a hand down on Steve’s ass.

“Relax, brat,” Eddie says quickly, wasting no time in diving right back in. His tongue curls against Steve’s walls. Eddie hums inside of him and the feeling sends shockwaves through Steve’s poor overused nerves. His cock is trying desperately to respond, but beyond a pitiful twitch, he’s too spent to do anything but sit there and take the overstimulation. Steve’s mouth hangs open against the pillow, laying in a pool of his own drool, unable to muster up a noise aside from soft little whines and punched out moans. They keep going like that until Steve is swatting at Eddie’s face, silently begging him to pull out from the shocks of painful electricity running up his spine.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Eddie asks sweetly, genuine concern painting his features. Steve wants to fold. He wants to let Eddie drop his pants and take him in every room of this house, unloading the moving truck be damned. But he has just slightly more sense than that.

“You’re an evil man, you know that?” Steve says, his tone betraying the fondness he feels.

“So you were thinking about it then.”

“Eddie, we still very much can not do it.”

Eddie pouts, which usually gets him what he wants, but Steve just gives him a lovingly annoyed eye roll.

“But Stevieee! Why not?”

Steve playfully shoves his shoulder and laughs. “Because asshole, this isn’t even our house and I doubt Robbie and Nance would be too happy about us coming all over their living room.

Just then the door bursts open and the two women appear holding boxes labeled ‘Nancy’s clothes’ and ‘Robin’s boots’. “Yes, please keep it in your pants,” Robin says. “At the very least until we get the guest room set up.”

[evilhasnever]

Time for a wedding, set in the same reincarnation AU as this and this ficlet by me and this (by @lansplaining)! Btw, I have collected all previous parts in a series on Ao3 for ease of reading: Memory Lane (get it?)

A few people wanted to see what would happen if JGY recovered his memories, which means there is angst coming up... (this drabble turned into 3000 words, so Ao3 link if you prefer!)

For all that Lan Xichen knows his past life, he cannot tell the future. And the future seems dead set on tripping him up, as if holding a grudge in order to counterbalance whatever advantage his past memories may give him. 

That is to say, Meng Yao disappears the morning they are supposed to get married. 

It was not meant to be a big affair, but even a small modern ceremony ends up being a complex production when overzealous friends and overly-traditional relatives are involved. Lan Huan and Meng Yao had agreed to go to the venue separately, both to appease the loudest aunties and to build up some excitement for their own reunion as husbands. This means Lan Huan has slept at Wangji’s place for the past two days, leaving Meng Yao alone in the apartment they share, and has forced himself not to text him constantly over the past forty-eight hours.

At 10 in the morning on the day of the ceremony, Lan Huan is sweating in his tux on the way to the venue, driven by Wangji; he’s fruitlessly trying to meditate to keep calm, but he can’t quite stamp down his eagerness. For once his nerves are of the positive, tickling variety reserved for happy occasions - he doesn’t expect anything to go wrong today, considering A-Yao planned everything. 

He should have known better. 

When they are ten minutes away, Lan Huan’s cell phone rings, spooking both brothers out of their meditative silence. It’s Meng Shi, calling from the reception hall. It sounds like she has a hand on the receiver so as not to be overheard.

"A-Huan, A-Yao is not here."

Lan Xichen blanches. “He is what…?”

“He is not here. He is always here first, heavens knows he would be checking every single napkin even on his own wedding day, but today…”

“ I’m sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. Didn’t you go the venue together?”

“No, he called me a taxi. He said he had an errand to run, but that was two hours ago and he is not answering his phone. He always tells me where he is, A-Huan, and now…!”

“Perhaps he is just late,” Lan Xichen murmurs, his pulse already picking up speed because the very idea is absurd. “What kind of errand? The cake? A-Yao is always very particular about catering…”

“He didn’t say. A-Huan, did something happen?”

“Not that I know of, but I didn’t see him yesterday, we wanted to play up the anticipation a little…” Lan Huan admits. “Did you see him for dinner last night?” 

“Yes, I did… A-Yao said he wasn’t feeling well, but I thought it was just nerves,” Meng Shi carefully says, and Lan Huan can almost imagine her pursing her lips. “He said he ran out on his own stag party. I didn’t think much of it, A-Yao has never liked surprise parties.”

Lan Xichen’s brow furrows. “I’ll make some calls. Please wait there, and call me if he arrives.”

He tries A-Yao’s number, but it goes straight to voicemail. He leaves a quick message, just to be safe: “A-Yao, are you ok? I’m almost at the venue. Let me know if something happened, alright? I love you.”

Carefully ignoring Wangji’s glance in the rear view mirror, he shoots a text to Mingjue and another to Jin Zixuan, asking if A-Yao is coming with them by any chance. Huaisang calls him back from his brother’s phone immediately. “Xichen-ge, did you lose your fiance?”

“Miscommunication,” Lan Xichen replies tightly. “What happened at the stag party, Huaisang?” 

“Ayo, I don’t know anything! Xuanyu and I put him in the car and he freaked out as if we were some gangsters coming for his family. He was absolutely no fun the whole evening, after I prepared all the decorations and even the stripper–I mean, the entertainment!”

Lan Xichen pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling the grasping hands of a migraine growing in the back of his skull. “We will discuss this at a later time, Huaisang. Did A-Yao do or say anything strange at the party?”

“He hardly said anything at all, and then he just up and left when we tried to put a veil on him for the photos! Total spoilsport. Did he get cold feet?”

“He is late.”

Huaisang gasps in horror. 

“I just want to make sure he is safe. Do you know where he was yesterday afternoon, before you kidnapped him?”

“I resent that wording! Anyway, I think he went to pick up his wedding tux with Jin Zixuan. Trying to be a good brother wa—y too late if you ask me.”

“Alright, thanks. See you at the reception, Huaisang.”

“Is it… still on? Just wondering if I need to get dressed.”

“I’d appreciate yours and your brother’s presence either way,” Lan Xichen says, wryly. 

“'mkay, ge. Best of luck.”

When they reach the wedding venue, they are momentarily intercepted by Shufu - Lan Xichen smiles and dodges him, ear glued to his phone as Wangji shadows him to the waiting room and locks the door. 

When they are alone, Lan Huan turns to his brother. “Wangji. A-Yao should already be here, but I can’t track him down.”

Wangji’s gaze hardens imperceptibly, and Lan Xichen takes a deep breath and lifts his hands in a pacifying gesture. “I am worried about him. His mother doesn’t know where he is either.” 

“Why would he flee?” Wangji asks. 

“We should not jump to conclusions,” Lan Xichen cautions, “He… he should have no reason to do so.” 

“The reasons may be unrelated to the past,” Wangji offers, after a thoughtful moment. “Car accident, panic attack.” 

“Alright, let’s… one thing at a time,” Lan Huan chuckles nervously, trying to push down the bubble of fear growing in his stomach.

For the next few minutes, they both busy themselves calling local hospitals. Thankfully, nobody that looks like A-Yao has been taken to any of the city ERs this morning. Lan Xichen exhales, then dials A-Yao’s number again, letting it ring off the hook. 

When it goes to voicemail again, he decides to try his luck and call Jin Zixuan’s number, which he has only because he is very thorough and always prepared for emergencies - or so he thought, at any rate.

“Ah, Lan Xichen,” Zixuan answers on the third ring. “Are you calling to tell me not to come to the wedding? Because A-Li and I are almost there! I already left several apologies on A-Yao’s answering machine, but I don’t know how my brother’s mind works…”

“Why would you apologize?” Lan Xichen asks, suddenly alert. “Did something happen yesterday?”

“It was odd,” Zixuan grunts, and there are background baby noises for a short while - Lan Xichen holds his breath until Zixuan resumes speaking. “One moment he was all dimples, then when he tried on his wedding tux he stopped dead and looked like he’d short-circuited. Stuck like a mannequin. I’ve never seen him not frenetic, which is why I asked him if he perhaps didn’t like the suit? Told him if we paid extra we could get him another one in time for the wedding, though it would not be custom-made… he wasn’t listening at all, just doing this wide-eyed face in the mirror. I had told him that white was not his color, but the reaction seemed extreme!”

“Zixuan, I need to know exactly what he said. Word for word, if you could be so kind.”

Another long sigh, more baby noises. “Well. I forgive him, because god knows I was panicking the day before my wedding, but–he said I should be dead.”

Oh . 

“I have to go,” Lan Xichen whispers, and hangs up.

He turns swiftly to his brother. “Wangji. I need you to ask your boyfriend to track A-Yao’s phone, stat.”

Wangji’s eyebrows rise in unadulterated shock, but to his credit he doesn't deny that Wei Wuxian can absolutely do that.

“I… I don’t know where he would go,” Lan Huan admits. “Not in this life.” Where would he run? The uncertainty makes him feel unmoored, like he’s being pulled down by a turbulent sea and can’t keep himself afloat. “I think it’s a... memory emergency.”

“I will ask Wei Ying.”

It takes what feels like an eternity, though in truth Lan Xichen is aware that Wei Wuxian accomplishes the task in a criminally speedy manner, and without asking any questions. Not while he’s in earshot, anyway.

“I sent you the last known location,” Wei Wuxian shrugs at last, “but I dunno if he still has the phone on him or he dumped it.” 

“Thank you, Wei Wuxian. Wangji… can I take your car?”

“Mn.” For a moment, Lan Huan can see his brother wants to offer to go with him, so he shakes his head in silence. Wangji hands over the keys and squints at him. “Brother… remember the rule.”

“I know. The past is not the present. The present is not the future. I know, Wangji.” 

“Sooo… what do we do with the wedding?" Wei Wuxian interjects, apparently not grasping the gravity of the situation. "We have the venue booked until 2pm but I’m sure they have people lined up for later…”

“I’m sure you’ll think of some way to buy time,” Lan Xichen smiles tightly. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way back.”

“Did you hear that, Lan er-gege? We gotta think of a distraction~ you got any ideas?” 

Lan Xichen is out of the door and behind the wheel as fast as he can be. He keeps an eye on his phone, but the only updates he gets are from Meng Shi saying A-Yao isn’t there yet, and Shufu reminding him of the schedule and cancellation fees. 

He tracks down the coordinates to an off-season beach two hours south, a straight line from the city. There’s a parking lot nearby, but it’s empty - A-Yao doesn’t have a car. He pictures him telling an Uber driver to just drive until he tells him to stop, and his heart aches. Still, some irrational hope nestles inside him, whispering that perhaps A-Yao hasn’t thrown away his phone yet. That he may want to be found. 

Lan Xichen parks hurriedly across two spaces and hurries out to the sea, sinking in the sand with every step. He pauses to kick off his dress shoes, then resumes running down the seashore. With immense relief, he spots A-Yao, a tiny white-clad figure in the distance, a few hundred meters down the desolate stretch of sea. 

Is it embedded somewhere in A-Yao’s soul to run away to the sea, despite knowing that in this life he cannot swim?

“A-Yao!” he calls out, waving his arms clumsily. There is absolutely nobody else out in January, no umbrellas and no chairs, so A-Yao will certainly see him coming from afar - no point making his approach cautious. Lan Xichen had half expected A-Yao to turn tail and make him chase him, but miraculously he does not.

“A-Yao,” he gasps again when he catches up to him, tugging at his collar. “Are you alright, A-Yao?”

His A-Yao turns, dark-rimmed eyes and windswept hair, terse like a winter morning. He’s undone his bowtie and popped a few buttons at his collar, the tuxedo jacket thrown over his shoulder. 

“The last time I saw you, you would not call me that anymore,” Jin Guangyao says, his voice raspy from the wind. 

“You saw me yesterday morning, A-Yao,” Lan Huan soothes, stepping towards him with his hand outstretched. 

“Right.” A-Yao chuckles humorlessly, and draws a circle in the sand with a naked foot. The hem of his pants is caked in wet sand, but he does not seem to mind. “I meant… before.” 

He looks down, a strange smile on his face, then takes off his engagement ring and holds it out towards Lan Xichen, without looking up at him. “I should return this.”

Despite the fear gripping his heart, Lan Huan shakes his head firmly. “It’s yours. You don't have to keep it, but I don’t want it back.”

A-Yao’s hand lowers, a little hesitantly. Then his razorblade gaze snaps up and pierces Lan Xichen where he stands. “Er-ge. Can you tell me why every wedding of mine comes with a side of lies?” 

Lan Xichen stands to attention. “I never lied to you, A-Yao.”

“You never told me you remembered the past.” It is not a question, so Lan Xichen does not treat it as such.

“Would you have wanted to know?” he asks instead.

A-Yao doesn’t reply for a moment, gaze returning to the gray wintry sea. “What I don’t understand,” he says to the waves, “is why you sought me out, if you remembered.” 

“A-Yao... Even if we’d been complete strangers, I would still have fallen for you. But all the more because I remembered you, how could I not seek you out?” Lan Xichen frowns at his poor wording; he had prepared this speech a million times, but now it scatters like sand in the breeze. “My family has a rule against approaching people from the past, did you know? But A-Yao…  what do I have these memories for, if not to find you?”

A-Yao’s gaze drops to the sand at his feet, the cold waves lapping at his ankles. “Even after everything?”

Lan Xichen closes his eyes briefly. He’s had a lot of time to think about this. “I’m here, aren’t I?’

The reply seems to strike true. A-Yao looks taken aback, but Lan Xichen dares to hope it's a good kind of surprise. Like that time he surprised A-Yao at the airport with flowers, or the time he offered to teach him to play the qin. He hazards another step closer to him, a mere arm’s length from A-Yao. He aches to touch him, but he can’t. Not yet. 

“Mother’s treatment,” A-Yao says abruptly. “Tell me straight.”

“Yes,” Lan Xichen inclines his head. “You and I hadn’t met yet, so I asked a friend to make an anonymous donation in my place.” 

A-Yao purses his lips. “I suppose I must thank you.”

“I didn't do it to earn your thanks,” Lan Xichen sighs. “Knowing and not acting would have been unthinkable, that is all.”

“Still, thank you. My mother is… she is everything.” A-Yao looks younger, vulnerable for the space of a breath.

Lan Xichen smiles. “I care for her too. Your mother is wonderful.”

A-Yao almost smiles at that, but it fades before it can reach the top half of his face, his eyes narrowing again in scrutiny. 

“You introduced me to Qin Su at June’s charity luncheon. Did you invite her?” 

Lan Xichen swallows, painfully. “I did not invite her, but she was there.” He bites his lip. “I looked into it. You are… not related, in this life.” 

A-Yao makes a little ‘hah’ sound, as swift as paper ripping. “I’m happy for her. But why did you go out of your way to introduce her to me? You and I had just started dating.”

All Lan Huan can do is shrug, his shoulders stiff and frozen in the confines of his tuxedo. “Tempting fate, I suppose.” 

“Still unfailingly selfless,” A-Yao hums, and it is a little too dry to feel like praise.

They look at a pair of seagulls chasing each other among cacophonous screams. They sound particularly shrill, drawing playful circles in the air and around each other.

“It is selfishness,” Lan Xichen eventually admits. “I just wanted to make sure that… I just wanted to make sure.” 

A-Yao shakes his head with a small exhale, barely a chuckle. He drops his jacket on the sand and lifts both arms to cup Lan Xichen’s jaw, pulling him slightly closer. His fingers are frozen cold, his eyes dark and serious, with an intensity that halts Lan Xichen’s breath halfway up his throat. 

“Lan Xichen, Lan Xichen... in a world in which I can marry you, how could I ever not?” The words, carefully enunciated, hit Lan Xichen’s chilled face in small, warm puffs of breath. A-Yao is not smiling, and that, for some reason, puts Lan Huan’s heart at ease. It gives his words the resonance of unfailing truth, a timeless verdict.

“We still could,” he hopefully offers. “Well, if Wei Wuxian managed to stall enough.” 

A-Yao snorts softly, then shakes his head. “Not now. I think… I need to get away.”

He surely notices the sheer horror on Lan Xichen’s face, because his brows knit together in an apologetic squint. “Not forever, gege. Just for a little while, to get my head in order.”

Lan Xichen folds his arms behind his back, and leans into A-Yao’s hands cupping his jaw. “We still have the honeymoon to Japan booked for tomorrow…”

A-Yao chuckles, breathless and disbelieving. Then his dark, half-lidded eyes scan Lan Xichen’s face, considering. “...You’d come?”

“Unquestioningly,” Lan Xichen says. “Right now, if you wanted to.”

“With no luggage?”

“I don’t need anything.”

The answer seems to please A-Yao, because his smile turns a shade more secretive, lashes lowering on his cheeks.

Still, he hedges, thumb tracing Lan Xichen’s chin in direct contradiction with his words. “Er-ge… I can’t ask you to…” 

“You need not to ask,” Lan Xichen smiles, eager, desperate to give away his heart. “If we drive to the airport now, we can catch an earlier flight. I’ll call on the way there.”

“A honeymoon while we are still not married,” A-Yao smirks. “What would your shufu say?”

Lan Xichen grins at him with infinite tenderness. “We can marry anytime, but we can only elope once.”

A little skittish, A-Yao puts his hand in his nonetheless, tugging him along as they amble towards the parking lot. They shake the sand off their pants, exchanging half smiles at the state of their attire. They spend an awkward minute tracking down their discared shoes.

When they’re safely in the car, Lan Xichen offers his smartphone to him. “I’m all for eloping, but call your mother and Wangji to make sure they don’t worry, will you?” 

A-Yao brushes Lan Xichen’s knuckles delicately before taking his phone from him, and laughs. It’s small, but as wonderful as the first time.

[uldahstreetrat]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers (ू•���̫•ू⑅)♡

okay well I got a bunch of these today too so we'll do a second round of them aha - this time I was also sent/tagged in this by @communitycatboy, @captainqster, @avaritia-ffxiv, @amalthea-felsblood, and @wpip-raham!

story telling! which for me includes extensive world building, writing, and drawing - I have a google doc of world building notes so long that it lags, dont ever let it be said that I dont think way too much about things that dont matter

stamps! this is a much more recent one, but I have started stamp collecting and have a very lovely binder for it and I'm thrilled about it

my blog here on tumblr also makes me very happy because it's a great social outlet for me and I genuinely just love love love getting to see and talk to people about their ocs and blorbos, the community here is great and im so glad to have found my little corner in it all

elden ring, though I have played little of it so far because im a huge coward but it is very fun! it took me two hours to figure out how to level up but hey i havent died yet

I also just fuckin love bugs aha much to my husband's annoyance cause he fucking hates them but at least we can compromise with my butterflies lmao I actually have a necklace that's a real butterfly wing pressed and soldered between two sheets of glass, it was a gift from my sister a couple years ago and I wear it all the time <3

[scratchandplaster]

Hello! This is for the Ask Game for Elliot, Morris, Shepard, Ben, and Lukas

👕Appearance

7

19

📦Objects

4

8

10

14

17

🍽️Food and Drink

10

15

💓Mind, Body and Soul

1

8

19

Ask game

Yay, a long one. More fun facts!

👕Is there someone your character tries to look similar to?

Elliot: is forced to wear formal apparel for every performance he does. All fancy with a suit and tie, but he tries to make himself look casual wearing it, like a bad boy pianist to scare the squares in the audience 😌

Morris: also tries to look badass and mysterious in his leather jacket. He only got a handful of shirts and pants, though, so his options are limited.

Shepard: has to look harmless and inviting for strangers to trust him. That's why he's sporting the grandpa look right now. Luke describes it as "the poor man's Mr. Rogers".

Ben: likes for his loved one's too dress him up. He even tried Avery's outfits on (they didn't fit right) and is excited to experiment with style.

Lukas: is happy when he finds textiles that don't make him feel uncomfortable. Looks don't matter to him.

👕If your character had to get a tattoo what would it be?

Elliot: wants a little stylized bunny on his ankle. RIP Daisy.

Morris: Thank god he's on the run, otherwise every of his obsessions would get a place on his body. Down his arm it would just be like: X Y Z Paul Amber Elliot

Shepard: gets a tramp stamp 💔CLAIRE❤️‍🔥

Ben: wants to look cool, so he'd pick a flaming skull down his back before Lukas and Avery drag him out of the studio.

Lukas: is scared of needles. But the temporary ones are fun, especially if they have rock themed motives. And with rock, I mean stones.

📦Is there an item your character liked that they can’t get back? 

Elliot: HIS DAMN NERVE CONDUCTION! Or his wrist brace, Chris' DIY version sucks.

Morris: His job. Wait, that's not an object. Does his innocence count?

Shepard: Claire got cremated in her favorite clothing. If Shepard hadn't been nearly going insane back then, he'd kept it to make a pillow case out of it or something like that. He could still hold her close.

Ben: Trunks. He gifted her to the triplets and he doesn't like to take gifts back.

Lukas: When he left, he forgot his birth certificate. He didn't think it was important, so that decision only brought problems with it.

📦What would it take for your character to give up an item they really like?

Elliot: If his parents need it. Otherwise, he requires a pretty good reason to share. This damn only child, smh.

Morris: If he's into you: nothing. If he's not, you won't get it.

Shepard: likes to share. But what will you give in return?

Ben: Just ask nicely and give him a hug.

Lukas: NO! DON'T TOUCH HIS STUFF!

📦Is there a type of object your character doesn’t like?

Elliot: Pet toys that are a danger to them.

Morris: All these self-help books the algorithm always suggests to him. So weird.

Shepard: Things he can't make into money.

Ben: Placenta, I guess 😭

Lukas: The ones with weird texture. If it's wet or sticky, he doesn't want it. It's nearly impossible to make him gifts he likes, only Shepard and Ben managed to.

📦Is there an item your character is embarrassed they own or want?

Elliot: can sometimes be a bit much with his bunny obsession. But he'd never be ashamed of it.

Morris: still got a blankie from his childhood somewhere hidden in his apartment. He'd never admit it, though, HE'S A MAN!

Shepard: thought about pressing Claire's ashes into a diamond. Jewelry doesn't fit his image, sadly.

Ben: always wanted to try out these...adult objects...he heard Avery talk about.

Lukas: still hopes to expand his geode collection if his budget allows it.

📦What is most important to your character when shopping?

Elliot: Smelling shampoos in the drug store.

Morris: Hiding from any cameras, so the cops won't catch his ass.

Shepard: Buying some treats for his boys.

Ben: Looking at new things.

Lukas: That it's cheap.

🍽️What is a childhood meal your character cherishes?

Elliot: Christmas cookies he baked with his mom.

Morris: Little Debbie snack cakes.

Shepard: His Polish nanny made him these delicious little dumplings once, but he never found them again.

Ben: The first meal Shepard ever cooked for him - chicken soup.

Lukas: The ones Dad left the spicy seasoning out of. He gave up spices long ago.

🍽️What food or drink does your character consider a treat?

Elliot: Sometimes his abuelita sends over a care package with Coco Rico and other snacks.

Morris: When his ramen package comes with extra sauce.

Shepard: A glass of wine he sometimes drinks in the office. Don't tell the others, they have addicts on the property.

Ben: Pumpkin butter 😬 He's a huge fan.

Lukas: I'm gonna make it canon that Shepard makes him snacks like these

💓What is a habit your character has that others might find cute?

Elliot: seduced so many people with his piano skills. Also with his pets, his caring nature attracts plenty of people. For better or worse...

Morris: He tries. He really does. Maybe someone will find that cute enough to ignore the red flags some day.

Shepard: let the boys paint the entire camper's inside with acrylic paint. Generally, how he acts around children and how patient he is with them.

Ben: hugs a lot.

Lukas: cleans and properly places things where they belong. It's not really a habit, more of a compulsion.

💓What scents does your character find comforting?

Elliot: Cloves and all-spice.

Morris: Elliot's 😊 So wholesome.

Shepard: Claire's ☹️ He still got a bottle of her perfume.

Ben: Fresh rain and honey.

Lukas: Pine and lemon balm.

💓Are there scents your character dislikes?

Elliot: Hospitals.

Morris: Amber's 👁️ She's such a bitch.

Shepard: When the new residents claim they don't need to use deodorant.

Ben: Wet felting 😳 It stinks so bad.

Lukas: Animals.