#honestly this podcast has changed me in so many ways and i am thankful for it all

[secretlyhuntokar]

Shoutout to the Penumbra Podcast especially PETER NUREYEV and JUNO STEEL and BUDDY AURINKO for helping me be confident in clothes I really wanted to wear but was too scared to before

[thelaurenshippen]

Hey Lauren! I've just finished writing my first novel, I'm also the writer/creator of the audio series Life & Death on the Rim (Star Wars fan audio drama), and I've started my own company Galactic North Productions. What I really want to understand is how other writers/creators who are successful and profitable got there. If there are any insights you can give me I'm all ears, whether that's associations, conventions, marketing, etc etc I just really want to learn. Very determined. Thank you!

hey!!! first off, HUGE congrats on finishing your first novel, that's an incredible feat and you should be unbelievably proud!!!! secondly, I hadn't heard of this podcast before but as a huge fan of both star wars and fan works, I am absolutely putting it on my tbl list right now!!!!

so. this is a great question. and a hard question. and one that I'm probably going to spend way too many words answering, if I know myself at all.

I think this question, in part, depends on what you consider successful and profitable! for me, it's meant being a jack of all trades - a lot of my work has come from being someone who knows how to make a podcast from soup to nuts and from being a person who a lot of people know. you've already done the hard thing: making something. that's your resume, now get the resume out there!

I wish I could give advice about marketing and finding an audience, but honestly it's changed so much since I started out that I hardly know how to find an audience anymore. but the basic approach always stands I think: don't promo, build community. be authentic and enthusiastic, and hang out in online spaces that you're already excited to be in. share your passion with people. clearly you already know how to do that, making a fan podcast!

in terms of getting to know your peers, I always recommend people join the WGA Audio Alliance discord to get to know who else is working in the space and hear about events. I did meet a lot of people at events early on, but unfortunately a lot of those things don't exist anymore (or were one-offs to begin with) or were smaller, invite-only things. if you're in NY, LA, Chicago, or London, there are vibrant AD scenes, so seek those out and go to (or organize!) a meet-up.

knowing your peers is the single most important thing for getting jobs. with the exception of one cold outreach, every job I've ever gotten has been because I met somebody and vibed with them. stay in touch but not too much - don't email your industry contacts all the time, but every 8-18 months, reach out to folks and do a catch up zoom or coffee. but don't network just to network! get to know people whose work you really like. getting to know peers at your same level is just as - if not more - important as networking to those who are further along in success than you.

be incredibly findable. having the facebook page, instagram, etc. is great, but if you're a production company hoping to make money through providing services like producing, directing, writing, etc. (which is primarily how I've made a living - I don't really make money directly from my original podcasts), having a website is a must. if you don't want to pay for squarespace or wix, you can make a website through tumblr and then just buy a url and have it redirect (I wrote about this a bit in my production guide). same deal if you want to be hired as a writer - having a website or some kind of resume is huge. I'm not saying you need to have an instagram detailing your personal life or anything (for me, I get personal about my thoughts on social media, but I never post my family/partner/non-industry friends/etc. some creators have had massive success building mystery (lemony snicket, the team behind midst), but I have no idea how to do that lol

this is already too long, so to summarize: build a community, both in your audience and your colleagues, be very clear and open about the skills you have/services you provide, and, ideally, do a lot of different things that put you in front of a lot of different audiences. try a lot of things and stick with what works.

to speak more on my personal journey, just briefly: 90% of being successful in the art and entertainment industry is luck. I know that people always say that, and it sucks as advice because it's not advice at all, but it is just true. luck and timing. the only way to improve your chances are to make stuff, meet people, and be easily accessible.

I know that's all exceptionally broad advice - if you'd like to share more specifics about your career goals, I'm happy to get more specific too!

[shivusblogsoneverything]

Good Morning ladies and Gents

My first blog and thought let me start of the blog to how I start all my morning routine with a much needed skin care routine. Will also be mentioning my three most essential products which I have been using very recently and wished dearly that I started using way before.

A morning skincare routine typically focuses on cleansing, moisturizing, and protecting your skin for the day ahead. Here are some essential steps and products to consider:

Cleanser: Start your routine by cleansing your face to remove any impurities or residue from the night. Choose a gentle cleanser suitable for your skin type, such as a gel, cream, or foam cleanser for me I have been using Cerave Foaming Cleanser for oily to combination skin, and let me tell you has been a gentle cleanser that has helped with my blemish prone skin and left my skin feel refreshed.

Toner: After cleansing, apply a toner to balance the pH of your skin and prepare it for the next steps. Toners can also help hydrate, soothe, or address specific skin concerns, depending on the formulation.

Serum or Treatment: If you have specific skin concerns like hyperpigmentation, acne, or aging, incorporate a serum or treatment into your routine. Look for products containing active ingredients like Vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, or retinol, depending on your skincare goals. For the Serum I have very recently started using The Ordinary hyaluronic acid and honestly best thing I have done for my skin, leaves my skin feeling hydrated like many others have mentioned and recommended and my skin feels so soft. This product has honestly change my whole skin care routine I would 100% recommend this product. So do yourself a favour and check this product out my girls and gents too.

Moisturizer: Hydrate and nourish your skin with a moisturizer suitable for your skin type. Opt for lightweight formulas for oily or combination skin and richer creams for dry skin. Choose products that provide essential hydration and lock in moisture throughout the day. I have been using this Moisturizing Gel-Cream by a brand Byoma, normally with creams and moisturizers I always feel like I need to reapply any face cream I am using as my skin feel dry or flaky. However, after using this product my skin deffo thanks me, the consistency is lightweight, fast absorbing, moisturizing, not greasy, smooth application and just perfect for this UK weather as all the UK lot know, UK weather changes in a blink of an eye hahaha! but at least the skin care is consistent and also there products too.

Sunscreen: Protect your skin from harmful UV rays by applying a broad-spectrum sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher. Look for a lightweight, non-greasy formula that absorbs easily into the skin. Apply it generously to all exposed areas, including your face, neck, and any other exposed skin. So did a good amount of research on suns screen and have listened to a podcast that sun screen is a must use product even if the sun is not out and after doing more research I found this Korean Suns Screen and let me tell you their products are amazing! Isntree Hyaluronic acid watery sun gel is just what I needed to end my skin care routine with, I used the amount of two finger lengths and apply it all over my face and neck. This product does a real great job to give me a nice glowy and glass skin finish. So these are the products I am currently using. Hope you check them out and please do share you opinions on these products, further tips and if you use these products do let me know your experiences.

Lastly, I am using is for normal to combination skin type so do remember, everyone's skin is unique, so it's important to customize your skincare routine based on your skin type, concerns, and preferences.

Additionally, consult with a dermatologist or skincare professional for personalized recommendations and advice.

Much Love Shivusblogsoneverything...

[chasingcyjs]

Farewell to 2022

I find immense, immense comfort in coming across people who act, think, feel, hurt, and process life in similar ways to me. It feels like tension leaving my body, that tight feeling of isolation— replaced with light and warmth and reassurance. I say this time and time again, and the genre of the past couple of posts here have been entirely the same, probably with reason. 2022 may have been an exciting, eventful year for some, but as far as I know, most people had a hard time this year. I’m almost so sure it’s the inevitable post-Covid effects, the general discomfort of trying to return to some sense of normal after the trauma of what has been the past few years. I know for a fact every single person on this planet has given tough effort to not let this piece of history take away the best of who we are. And that in itself, is a big feat. This is just a post to say, I am thankful that other people exist. I am thankful for the full spectrum of emotions we can face. Despite how complicated and hurtful human relationships can be sometimes, despite how confusing and relentless life may seem at times— I am thankful, no matter how daunting a situation may be, there may be a neighbor or stranger who has also felt the same. Life is scary and hard, but the silver lining (the only one, really) is we don’t go it alone.

Even if people around you may not be experiencing what you’re feeling, take a look around the Internet. Whatever resource it may be— Reddit, YT, IG, books, podcasts. Honestly, no experience is unique. And that’s a really great thing. There are people who have felt what you have and gotten through to the other side. There’s a choir of “me too”s out there. I hope it comforts you as much as it does for me, and that it gives you a feeling of community to keep pressing forward.

-

There’s always a seat available at the table of imperfection and vulnerability. All you have to do is find the courage to sit down. So much of our everyday culture is “suppress and keep busy” and “don’t feel and it’s not real,” — but the thing about running is you’ll be breathless and miss every single part of what was meant to be seen and known. I want to do a slow walk in life, to see everything in it’s vibrancy (and at times, dullness), to know I felt the fullness of a human life— even if that tends to make my journey harder. I refuse to let life take the best of me, no matter how many times it stripped the light/life out of me, and I will continue to try to be tender and share these weaker moments bc I know exposing these things are actually what silences shame and strengthens hope.

-

In the next year, I would like to not let fear or shame drive my decisions. I’d like to be open armed and open hearted to the joys to come, with the acceptance that pain/disappointment is inevitable in life. I’m no longer expecting happiness— I am moreso wanting to accept the things I cannot change and want to find a way in myself to overcome hard things in a positive light.

I hope you have a wonderful year to come in 2023, an easier one. But if that’s not possible, I wish for you the strength to keep grateful and a curiosity for what may come in the future (ie. don’t ever let one bad year, bad years, or hard times weaken your belief in life’s ability to change— bc it almost always certainly will. There is so much more left to your story than the bad season you may currently find yourself in).

With utmost love,

Christine

[danielpowell]

Okay, I'm making the show post cause I have to put my thoughts in one place. Warning you that this is full of spoilers, so don't get mad and say I didn't warn you. This very well could change on a re-watch, honestly. These feelings are rather fresh.

Pros:

The theme visuals look pretty.

Wardrobe is great- I genuinely want Dan's shirt and cardigan look, the film bar one.

Lots of sets look really nice and packed with detail- there's even nods to the podcast and the miniseries.

Certain tracks are nice and the sound design is well done for the most part.

Expanded backstory of the two mains we don't get in the podcast- while I don't necessarily like the ones they are given because of the aspect of ~ they were connected the entire time ~ it was nice to see any at all.

Expanded backstory and personality of the two supporting characters for the main- Mark feels far more involved and while I do think he's supportive and caring in the podcast, I do think the show does a great job at showing his ride or die attitude. Annabelle, Alexa's replacement, is still very queer ! She's a very fun character too. I think her actress did a fantastic job in this role. I would have loved to see her in a relationship with Melody outside of roommate and best friend.

Ratty is there and far more realistic in depiction. Dan barely fighting anything Ratty does is hilarious. He's a disgruntled roomie and puts up with it. I find this dynamic way more enjoyable than in the podcast, in all honesty.

The film restoration bits are sexy. The tech is on point and the tools are pretty fucking accurate if you ask me. Thanks for wearing gloves, Dan. More than I can say for Daniel Powell who doesn't even say the right model and doesn't prep the tapes before playing them.

Speaking of, they have the Otari MX5050 Bii model in the background at one point. Kudos.

The mold is kind of cool, actually. I think it would have worked better if he had noticed it on the tapes sooner. More Mold, please.

I wanna say that many of them give great performances, but genuinely it's hard to tell what I think is bad or good because the writing or directing hinders it. They did a good job with what they were given.

It is apparent they listened to the podcast by all the homages and references thrown in.

They have a Magnetic Fields track in there. It's short, but it did get me as it's one I put in an Archive 81 playlist.

The short segments at the start of each episode are reminiscent of the tapes and in-show ads from the podcast. I thought the killer clown movie one was hilarious and I kind of want to see it.

Mark bludgeons Davenport, go king go.

I'm in the unpopular crowd here, but I'm glad Rat isn't in it. People can't be normal about him. I think if he was people would have rioted anyway.

Cons:

They did in fact erase the sapphic relationship and instead have them as platonic. While Annabelle is unabashedly queer, is teasing and flirty towards Melody, and is present through a large amount of the show, there is nothing that states, alludes, or cements a romantic involvement between her and Melody which is a grevious offense.

Melody mouth kisses Samuel on screen after flirting with him. They go on a date. It's kind of implied they were going to drink and maybe do stuff in the privacy of her apartment. It's very uncomfortable paired with the fact she is now not sapphic.

There is zero confirmation she is a lesbian or sapphic in any way. If anything, it's the opposite.

They do make Cassandra Wall a lesbian, but it's done so in a way that feels... icky. I can't speak much on it as I am neither a woman nor a lesbian.

Melody is now kind of incompetent and a damsel in distress, which is so far removed from the original. She has to be rescued.

She also has a fight with her best friend and gets told she is smothering people for trying to help them. It was very upsetting to witness.

Jesse is both aged down and changed to a girl, for some reason. I think it's to further connect Dan as he has a sister in this portrayal, but it rubs me the wrong way. There are certainly some improvements when it came to antiblackness, but maybe replacing the teenage black boy with a younger girl (with lighter complexion) isn't a good look.

In that same vein, while Jess still runs errands for Visser residents, they completely get rid of any mention of Why. This snippet was supposed to give hints to people gathering ritual components and more importantly, touch on disability and the fact that there are disabled and elderly residents and that the programs in place for their food deliveries suck. It was an important detail to me, but instead it's utilized as an excuse to have Jess around and help groom her as a sacrifice for the cult.

I'm not sure if it's just me, but I found the scenes of her in pain distressing and unnecessary.

Oh yeah. And she lives unlike in the podcast, but she's a nun now :/

On that note, they change the genre from found-footage weird fiction with comedy and cosmic horror elements to a religious horror mystery drama that made me more angry with each bastardization of the religions in question. It feels very satanic panic and uninspired at best and lazy and offensive at worst.

The backstory for the mains quite frankly suck. The connection and involvement between them was wholly unnecessary. I don't care if it makes their connection deeper or whatever. The point was that Dan was isolated and didn't know these people. He was an observer that got strung in thanks to his obsessive and curious nature. Trading this for a tragic backstory and a family connection to Melody was a poor decision to me. I was not a fan.

The dog being the same is dumb ! That's the most generic dog with a red collar I've ever seen. Dan, what the hell are you talking about ?

Melody is a witch now, I guess ? The whole thing with her mom was just, bad. It's bad. I hate stories that try and do genetic witch shit. I'm Irish Pagan and it's by choice, it's not a hereditary thing.

Also, making it to where Melody is instead trying to track down her mom rather than simply gathering stories and staying because she cares and it's her job is a choice they made. It's not a good choice. Isn't Melody supposed to be a social worker ? Or was that not good enough for this re-envisioned story ?

Also, she stays in Visser in this portrayal and doesn't even live in New York. They could have easily kept it to where it was her act of recording and taking the tapes with her that give her a connection to Visser and its Weirdness. But they don't! In fact, the recording only feels important for the sake of letting Dan watch it and go :0

Dan's dad is her therapist because sure, why not ? Let's add threads where there didn't need to be.

Dan also has a history of mental illness and they shove this down your throat many times by having people constantly ask him if he is having a mental health emergency. It feels very modern, I'll give them that, but it only infuriates me further as:

Why the hell is LMG name-dropped in full and why did they try and make them seem any kind of caring ? They are a face-less, heartless corporation.

Dan can get groceries and leave whenever he wants. They eliminate isolation, poor living conditions, and poor nutrition. These were huge factors for his mental decline, why axe them ? You wouldn't have had to rig all the family history and trauma if you had just stuck with this. In fact, it would have been enhanced !

Dan's kind of a huge asshole to Mark for seemingly no reason ? To me, Mark was shown to be supportive and present for Dan when he needed to be. Why is Dan saying to not do stuff for the podcast, you only care about the podcast, when it doesn't look like it was, ever ?? I feel like I missed a scene or a conversation or a line somewhere. Please correct me if I did miss something cause it was not at all spelled out to me. It felt out of place, like they wrote this scene for the end but forgot to actually bring any conflict.

They do scenes where Dan and Melody interact and talk with each other and they are So Awkward. There is no chemistry here, I'm sorry.

For some reason they turned Dan into solely a techie nerd and instead gave the hipster qualities to Thomas (?) and MELODY. If they were trying to make a connecting factor with them, it failed miserably.

Dan finds out he's being watched early on and navigates this by 'hacking' so he can find blindspots. He later destroys the cameras. He is never reprimanded for having visitors or other things, I don't know why this was done at all, please help me understand, this show is somehow so stupid and so convoluted at the same time.

Something about sending both Melody and Annabelle to psych wards "for safety" really doesn't sit well. Like, um, it's pretty obviously bad ? It's bad, right ? Pairing this with people constantly thinking Dan is just having a mental breakdown feels very wrong and kinda ableist. I don't know if that's just me or not.

Ratty was an afterthought. I loved him being there and alive, but he does nothing except serve as a treat for podcast fans. He's barely there. If this was so Rat, could actually be Ratty, that would be hilarious to me.

The theme song sucks, there I said it. I found it boring and even annoying when they played it in scenes. The shrill tones, yuck.

Some tracks are actually painful to listen to. There's one in particular that would trigger headaches. It was also paired with flashing lights at one point which is just asking for trouble.

The dialogue is Bad. It's very stiff and unnatural. Boring, even.

There is some gore and the blood looks like corn syrup. It's not good special effects. At least they had sfx.

The magic CGI also blows.

The sex scene is sudden and unnecessary.

There is one archive and it never said to be the 81st. The title has no relevance to the series.

The last shot where you can see the twin towers reflecting in the windows is COMICALLY BAD.

Overall, I was bored to tears. I multitasked at points and was still wishing I was watching something else.

TL;DR [too long, didn't read]

It's a very bland and uninspired adaptation that makes very bad, stupid decisions for plot and only has a few good things going for it.

I'm proud of Marc and Dan for getting to this point, and I want to support them, but if you are a fan of the podcast I have a strong feeling you won't enjoy this show. But hey, you just might.

Edit: [March 30th, 2024] I'm actually a fagdyke, so this is funny to look back on.

Also, for reference, I now have the screen worn film bar shirt. Huzzah.

[ridiculously-over-obsessed]

Okay this is going to sound SO weird but we’re gonna roll with it sjfkhgdfjkh I’ve been thinking about the bechloe kiss a lot (who isn’t honestly) and how different life was for me a year ago. This is very long and rambly and weird but bear with me jfdghjdfsg. This time last year I was miserable, I was living with my awful mother, I had nothing going for me that I was happy about and I couldn’t see a conceivable future with me in it. 

And then at 3am on December 10th I had a gay panic attack at @djbubblegum and said nothing but “oh my god” for about an hour as we both stared at this video of them kissing. We had been about to go to bed, I think we’d been watching a movie with some other people and we were the only ones left in the vc. We were getting to be good friends, but this was the moment I can pinpoint and say “that’s when we became best friends, that shared WHAT THE FUCK moment bonded us together forever” and whilst there’s been many a memorable 3am conversation with PK since (Becato anyone???) THIS is the one that I look at fondly and say “yeah that’s when I knew we’d be friends for a very long time”

PK did a kiss episode of the Pitch Slapped Podcast that was out not 48 hours later and that was kinda the first time I’d ever really engaged with @chloebeale knowingly (I’d read a whole heap of her fics, they actually got me back into writing because they were just SO GOOD and I wanted to try and make content that was half as good as hers was, I’d just not realised they were one and the same person until then) and I remember having a “!!! ANOTHER NORTHERNER!!!” moment and sending her a really excitable ask that didn’t weird her out, and after that (and another ask that we both remember fondly 😌) we started engaging more with each other and I eventually ended up in her discord server.

Things kinda blur together after that, but I know that Ellie and I got closer, as did PK and I, and as 2021 rolled around and the pandemic restrictions eased I went to stay with Ellie for a week because I just needed a break from my home life and all the shit that went with it, I needed to just breathe. And Ellie gave me that, I have never been that quickly comfortable with someone, that relaxed and happy to just be myself and that changed my life forever. I had the space to think, and I realised that the path I was on was making me fucking miserable, and more importantly I didn’t have to stay on it if I didn’t want to. Ellie changed my life, and I will never be able to thank her enough for everything that she has done and continues to do for me, I am beyond grateful for her and the way she has my back.

As for PK?? Well, she continues to be my best friend, perhaps one of the strongest and kindest people I have ever met, and every day I wake up grateful that we’re friends and aspiring to be a little more like her every day. None of you have any idea how incredible she is (except Ellie obvs dskfhdf) and I can’t wait to have her in my corner for the rest of my life, because I know with her there I can do absolutely anything I set my mind too. 

It’s now a year later, and I don’t recognise the person I was last year. After December 10th 2020 my life changed forever and I now have the biggest support group of beautiful people that I trust my life with (something that seemed inconceivable a year ago). I’m doing the degree course I always wanted to do, I have my own flat, and I’m happy... something that seemed like such a foreign concept and completely unobtainable twelve months ago.

To the people, not just Ellie and PK, that change my life and make me so grateful every day: @chubby-maimaki, @forthosebelow, @accio-sense, @143bc, @snowydot, @icedragone, @trainwrecks-unite, and @trixyougurt to name just a few whose urls I can remember sdfjdsfgdfds, to the people who review my stuff on a regular basis and constantly encourage me to be a better writer, to all of you who take the time to read through this long ass post, thank you so so much, from the bottom of my heart, for being you and for letting me be a part of your lives. I have so much love for all of you and it carries me through the bad days and the long days and the days I don’t really feel like doing anything at all.

And to Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow who will never see this but I just want to put the energy out into the universe, thank you for giving the gays what they wanted and for creating this community of proud little weirdos that have forever changed my life 💖💖💖

[momtaku]

Honestly, it's very weird but the thing I hate most about the leaks isn't the leaks themselves but the fandom's reaction. SNK being ambiguous and showing the darkest of human nature is fascinating but the way so many ppl go "so Eren's death was for nothing?" as if he didn't 1) say himself he didn't know what he did 2) commit //genocide// is seriously disturbing. Eren's death was ALREADY for nothing, THAT'S the tragedy, but now he's being martyred? It's really upsetting

Dude, I have a rant about this and when we record the podcast this weekend I will likely go off. I am exhausted by the mass hysteria and fury these four (FOUR!) pages have created. And the sense of entitlement I’m seeing.

Here’s my hypothesis. If most people had first seen the pages in context without leaks or negative fandom influence, they’d be mostly ok with them. I feel like if I went to basically anyone in the fandom and simply gave the actual new information  (“Did you see the new pages? The focus is the tree where Eren was buried. We see Mikasa growing old while visiting the grave repeatedly with her family. Decades after Mikasa’s death, we see Paradis at war. Then, a century beyond that, we see Eren’s tree towering over the ruins, looking very much like Ymir’s tree, as a child casually out hiking with their dog sees and approaches it. The End.”), I guarantee you nine out ten times the people would laugh and say some version of “Goddammit Isayama! OF COURSE he’d do that!!”

Instead we had a week of hyperbole, trolls and fake leaks that fomented what I can only describe as mass hysteria and rage in certain parts of the fandom that spilled over onto the fandom as a whole. 

Let’s summarize some of those shall we? 

Armin left Annie crying, Mikasa confessed to seeing Eren only as family, Annie hated Historia’s child, Reiner blushed when he saw Historia, Mikasa married Jean, Ymir told Mikasa her love wasn’t enough to end the curse. The weakened centipede was seen crawling away alive, the titan curse wasn’t ended... as I type this quickly these immediately spring to mind as some of the  leaks that were widely distributed and believed. Give me another minute and I’ll be able to add to the list.

Leaks poison the well. They create a narrative that persists even after the pages appear. They inflame emotions, cause discord  and start wars without evidence. It’s so incredibly stupid and the one part of being in the snk fandom that I will not miss.

I’m not saying the complaints about the ending aren’t justified because many of them are. They are valid. But the complaints are not commensurate with the reaction I’ve seen.

I’m about to start another rant so bear with me.

The other thing I’m seeing that disgusts me is the idea that Isayama owed people a specific ending. There’s this baseless and frankly insulting and insane rumor that the editor or else publisher forced Isayama to change the ending. For some, this has fed into the narrative that the “real ending” was “stolen” from them. Because it was “stolen”, they feel justified in trying to reclaim it. 

I don’t mind that they are trying to publish their fanfiction au. Fanfiction exists for this reason, although most fanfic writers understand they are writing something transformative and not a replacement for the original. What’s most disturbing is the actual rage - people saying if they met Isayama they’d punch him. People threatening to storm the sauna and desecrate it. And scariest - sincerely believing he deserves punishment for not being man enough to deliver what they wanted.  

I’m not deliberately trying to draw parallels to recent political events in my country, but it’s hard not to see it.  It’s disheartening. 

Anyway, deep breath. Yeah. What you said.

Thanks for the ask!

[purple-goo-writes]

The Shadows Watching Gotham

Or Watcher as most knows them,is a popular YouTuber and Podcaster and is the outside world's only reliable source of information about the on goings of the Mask Community within the crime ridden city known as Gotham. Aka the No Man's Land and the Crime Capital of the World.

Rumor has it that Watcher is the only way an outsider can contact the Bats. If this is true or not, Superman is about the find out.

Chapter 1: A rattle of bones

The Justice League of America and their younger counterparts watched the monitor in their meeting hall with rapt attention. On it, Barry had pulled up the channel of a popular youtuber, The Shadows Watching Gotham, hoping to get some more intel on the situation on Gotham and the vigilantes that the JLA wished to recruit. Though while the older members were listening with only half an ear, the younger ones were entranced with the hypnotizing and haunting narrative as Watcher spoke. His soft, raspy voice wrapping around them like an intoxicating perfume leaving the Young Justice Members wanting to hear more. Perhaps it was the strange ambient music playing in the background that added to the mystery surrounding Watcher that had them so entranced.

"...Just a friendly reminder for all my Gothamites listening in, Dr. Crane, otherwise known as The Scarecrow, escaped Arkham during last months breakout. Please do not forget your gas masks at home as he is still at large."

Watcher sat at an old and cluttered desk, the only light from an offscreen lamp, possibly a gaslamp, which bathed the teen and his surroundings in a soft golden glow. Though the JL couldn't see anything behind the teen except for pitch blackness, possibly the result of a backdrop. They couldn't see much of the Watcher as his face was blocked by the arm, the pop filter and mic of the studio microphone the teen was using. The teen was wearing a white long sleeved shirt which was rolled up to his elbows, showing off wiry, yet muscular arms covered in an odd variety of scars most Gothamites had littering parts of them, and a pressed red vest with black embroidery swirling across it, a gold tie could be seen just below the arm of the mic. Over all, the Watcher was just as mysterious and cryptic as the vigilantes he talked about.

"Now as the sun rises upon the decrepit bones of our fair city, I must bid you all a fair the well and a hopefully Good Morning. This is Watcher signing off."

And with that the screen went dark, snapping many out of the trance they had fallen into whilst listening to the Watcher speak.

Superman cleared his throat, before standing, "As I was saying. In order to hopefully meet with these vigilantes, I have managed to establish contact with The Watcher, as he is so far our only reliable source on the vigilantes that are not simply rumors spread by the Gotham Gazette or hearsay spread about through the villain network."

Hal frowned, leaning back in his chair rocking it back on two legs, "Yet isn't he just as hard to get a hold of?"

"Which is why I am going to meet him as Clark Kent with Kon acting as my back up in the form of my son shadowing me at work," the man of steel replied, ignoring how his clone/son rolled his eyes and muttered, "Isn't that what I normally fucking do?"

Their relationship was still rocky at time, but Ma Kent was determined to get Clark to do right by the boy. After all they were only on good terms due to Ma Kent. But, Kon was going through what Ma called his rebellious stage and trying to break out of his father's shadow as most teenage sons do. Which lead to snippy comments during meetings and Clark wondering just how Kon managed to get another new piercing, personally he blamed Lex for those because of course the man would figure out how to give a Kryptonian piercings just to piss Superman off.

Clark simply sighed and went back to addressing the others, “The Watcher agreed to meet with us tomorrow evening after I explained that I was writing an article about Gotham and it’s rumored vigilantes and found that he was the only reliable source I could find with recent information. And that I learned about him thanks to my son, Conner.”

“Meaning, I have to watch over fifty videos on Youtube so not to sound stupid when I talk to the dude,” Kon muttered to his best friend, Bart, who giggled softly into his hands. Both ignoring the looks their mentors gave them, though Barry’s was more fond then reprimanding like Clark’s.

“Exactly how will you know if it is this Watcher that you are meeting?” Wonder Woman inquired, a frown settling on her face in contemplation, “After all we do not know what this mysterious Watcher looks like…”

“We will be meeting him at the abandoned opera house within Central Gotham. He said he would know it is him by the red feathers he wears,” Clark sounded confused at this but only shrugged, “It’s the best I could get, he wouldn’t agree to meet outside of Gotham. Due to Gotham being declared No Man’s Land still by the President, even with the major rebuilding done by the Waynes… Most Gothamites don’t leave now.”

He sighed at the confused looks he was getting from the other members, “That was how Watcher explained it to me after I asked.”

The next evening…

Gotham was just as gloomy and foreboding as it was described in all the forums Kon had schemed the night before. What they had failed to mention was the literal stench of despair and fear that hung in the air. Or how Kon felt like the shadows were closing in slowly around him and his sorta-dad/Genetic donor as they hung outside the desolate opera house. Really the building was something out of a horror movie, and that was saying something considering this was Fucking Gotham and most places were probably used as references for horror movie scenery. It was huge and probably had been grand looking back in its prime with its gothic architecture and scale...though now the huge dome of the building was crumbling, slowly caving into itself and the once bright walls of it’s outer shell were now grey and covered in graffiti with most of the stained panels of it’s windows busted out from various villain attacks, bullet holes littered the siding and the once bright letters announcing the next play were broken and mostly missing. Honestly, Kon expected either a ghastly apparition from Hamlet to start monologuing or a serial killer to leap from the crawling shadows of the building looming over them.

He was not expecting someone to fucking sneak up on them out of the shadows and nearly scare Kon into fucking space!

“For an investigative reporter, you aren’t very observant, Mr. Kent,” came a soft, yet raspy voice like smoke behind them, causing both Kents to nearly break cover and leap on top of the building they were standing in front of. A smoky chuckle greeted them as both Kents whirled around just shy of inhuman speeds, “Really, I’ve been standing here watching you two nervously pace for about an hour now.”

An hour?

But how did they not hear him?

Kon was distracted from his thoughts as he took in just who was standing before them. The other teen, as their voice sounded young and didn’t yet have the full changes that signaled adulthood, only came up to Kon’s chin making him around five foot something compared to Kon’s near six feet. (He was so glad they fixed the aging and growing thing. He did not want to be stuck at the height of a thirteen year old forever.) They looked possibly male, but Kon wasn’t going to assign pronouns until they properly introduced themselves it was only polite according to Ma. Kon was still surprised that they managed to sneak up on the two Kents. They were wiry, yet muscular, built mainly for running from what Kon could tell, it was hard to tell with them still somehow blending in with the shadows despite how they were dressed. A white button down, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, with a bright red vest with black embroidery, a golden tie tucked into the vest, black dress slacks and slightly scuffed yet still shiny red loafers. A black trench coat was slung over one shoulder as the person watched them with amused blue eyes, the only part of their face they could see thanks to the bulky, yet futuristic looking, black gas mask with red lights. Kon could only see the person’s eyes thanks to the clear face shield protecting their eyes from foreign objects. Shaggy and long black hair framed the person’s face, the inky blackness of their hair almost blending into the Gotham night if it wasn’t for the bright red feathers tied throughout the inky mass.

Bright red feathers…

Feathers!

“Oh you’re Watcher!” Kon exclaimed being the first to recover, causing the podcaster to chuckle, “Oooh? I see you actually did remember. I was beginning to think that staring was just what Metropolians did.”

[zykaben]

Martin Blackwood Is Gonna Live Manifesto

Okay this is a thought I’ve had since the end of S4 but now I am pretty much absolutely certain of this.

Martin Blackwood will not die (or otherwise be neutralized in such a way that is equivalent to or worse than dying). My reasoning for this is largely based in meta more than like, canon signifiers so bear with me here.

First of all, I am making the assumption that Jonny Sims isn’t going to kill off the deuteragonist of his story without laying some goddamn groundwork and making it feel earned and fitting for Martin.

Why is that? I trust Jonny Sims as a writer to deliver satisfying and cathartic arcs for his characters. Beyond the fact that he’s outright stated he cares more about character arcs than he does being Mysterious and whatnot, he’s done a great job handling the death of some of the main cast. You could see Tim’s death coming from a mile away and he went out in a blaze killing the things that had killed his brother; it was tragic but it was fitting and earned. Peter’s death was so goddamn cathartic, you can’t tell me it wasn’t. Daisy’s death was tragic and harrowing but, again, it wasn’t cruel or anything. We could see it coming, knew it was going to happen, and it made me cry and it felt right.

So yeah, Martin’s end, if it were to happen, would have to be impactful and fitting for his arc.

Taking that into consideration, let’s look at ways Martin could satisfyingly die at this point in the narrative. I’m sure that people’s instant gut reaction is to go “oh, the Lonely! Obviously.” But the thing with that is if it was going to be the Lonely, it would have already happened. Jonny had the PERFECT chance in 159 to write Martin out of the story, have him lost to the Lonely forever. And then again in 170 when Jon literally asks Martin if he’d like to stay in that domain. So both the initial threat of the Lonely and the threat presented by relapse back into the Lonely have been addressed and shot down in turn. Martin getting Got by the Lonely in the back half of the final season after distancing himself from it again not even 10 episodes ago… it just doesn’t seem fitting.

“But Daisy relapsing,” you may point out, to which I will say that, firstly, Daisy was never pulled from the Hunt in the same way Martin was pulled from the Lonely–Daisy was cut off from the Hunt during her stint in the Coffin and from there worked to stop feeding the Hunt until the attack on the Institute where she jumped back into it. Meanwhile, Martin was confronted with love and care in the heart of the Lonely and was pulled out of it and, when the opportunity for relapse was presented, it didn’t come to fruition. Taking that  (as well as the fact that I don’t think Jonny would basically write Daisy’s Arc again but with Martin) into account… yeah, I don’t think Martin is going to get Got by falling back in with the Lonely.

So the Lonely doesn’t really present a satisfying end to Martin. Okay, what’s next? How could Martin die win a satisfying way? Self-sacrifice comes to mind, dying for the greater good, going out in such a way to save Jon or the world at large. But considering that Martin’s entire arc in S4 was “hey self-sacrifice is Bad, actually” I don’t think Jonny is going to just walk back on that in the last 21 episodes of the podcast, especially considering I don’t think Martin’s arc is one about relapse, as stated earlier.

So dying for the cause and relapse into the Lonely are out. What does that leave us in terms of something that fits Martin’s arc? I… can’t really think of anything. Could he just be killed without any solid reason to prove the world is mean and unjust? I mean, yeah, but that doesn’t feel right either, nor is Martin’s arc set up to illustrate this point very well. It’d feel more like a “gotcha!” than an actual satisfying arc.

And, honestly, that doesn’t leave us with many other options. None that I can think of, at least. That doesn’t mean that he definitely won’t or can’t die, but if he does it’s gonna be MEANINGFUL and I can’t think of many ways to do that as of right now.

In my mind, it would be far more fitting, far more painful and satisfying and tragic, if Martin were to be the Sole Survivor. If he alone survives while everyone else is gone. And that would certainly play into Martin Not Being Okay. It’s not gonna be regressive either, I think the tone is gonna be "Everyone is gone and I am alone. But this is not the end. This hurts and I will grieve and I will live." He is alone but he is not Lonely. He has grown and changed and it hurts but he will live. 

Of course, I don’t know for sure if that will even happen but… well. I think it’s far more plausible than him dying to an Entity or in service of Jon.

Also this doesn’t take into account everyone dying and them just wholesale not saving the world, Total Party Kill style. Which, obviously would throw this whole meta out the window but I can’t really predict for that and, again, there hasn’t been a whole lot of setup for it yet, so I’m going with this.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 129

Despite the last couple weeks of work being profoundly exhausting (think 60 hours, easily), I am proud that I’ve been able to keep writing and stay ahead! I literally could not have done that without @baelpenrose, @charlylimph-blog, @the-raven-fae, and @anotherusrname. Y’all are my real-world rocks when everything gets crazy.

***Shameless Plug: @the-raven-fae has the first episode of the podcast up now! you can find it here!! ***

The other thing that has been keeping me going is each and every one of you who has found this story and binged it from start to finish as a speed-run. I can’t even name all of you at this point, but I want you all to know that I see it, and it makes me smile so hard my face hurts.

Now, who is ready for some Charly shenanigans?

A few days later, I had just enough time to sweep dinner off the table in my quarters before Charly unceremoniously dropped a long something in the midst of us with a dull thud.  Immediately, a rusty red cloud rose up and set us all into a fit of tears and coughing.

Out in the hallway, I was eventually able to convince my lungs to at least try to breathe long enough to wheeze out, “Geezus, Charly, what the hell was that?”

“Soooo….” Uh oh. “ItmayneedsomecalibrationthecloudwasntsupposedtobethatbigandIdidntmeanforittogooffbut - “

I shook my head and typed a quick message on my datapad. “Please breathe because right now I don’t think the rest of us can and I would love to know why.”

She stopped rushing out what I think were words long enough to read the message and try again. “Chili powder arrows. I think I need to recalibrate them, though, because it shouldn’t have gone off at less than one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, and there’s no way I set it down that hard.”

“Why?” I rasped, still swallowing as hard as I could and mentally begging Noah to bring us some water or a medical transport.

“Defensive measures,” she insisted. “Scent navigation is really common in the Galactic community, and so is sensitivity to capsaicin, so…”

“Makes sense,” Conor managed to get out as he tried to gasp for air. “Even Noah.”

“Bit much.” I pinched my fingers as closely as I could without touching - which was more difficult than expected considering that I was shaking.

Maverick was the first to get up off the floor of the corridor, just as the medical transport arrived.  He and Charly helped us on before distributing bottles of water to rinse our mouths and eyes. “It was… a good idea…” he panted once we were all seated. “Just… bit overkill…”

“The range of the cloud is only supposed to be five feet,” she insisted fretfully. “And I swear the pressure sensor is supposed to be calibrated to only go off if it’s fired from a bow or swung really, really hard.”

“Who...want...swing?”  I was honestly starting to get dizzy fighting my airways to breathe.

Once we arrived at a medbay, Charly helped a couple of Miys’ bodies get us out of the transport and lying down in berths. In a glitch-like transition, suddenly I could breathe easily and she was joined by Arthur and Coffey in sitting with us.

“Wait… when did… I’m so confused,” I admitted, my voice only slightly strained.

“Lethe field, apparently,” Arthur shrugged. “You didn’t want to be awake for that.”

Conor sat up and rubbed his sternum. “I remember chili pepper arrows - Charly, love, that was brilliant except the, you know, going off bit - and getting off the transport.”

“Respiratory lavage,” Charly winced. “You know, war crime if done incorrectly?”

I shuddered and nodded. “Yep. Didn’t want to be awake for that, thanks.  Glad I can’t remember, don’t ever want to, would rather remember the pepper bomb you set off. At point blank range?”

She snuggled further down in Coffey’s lap as he gently rubbed her scalp with his fingertips.  Arthur spoke in her defense, instead. “She’s sending the schematics to Zach and Derek to find out what went wrong.  Tactically, they were a brilliant idea - she’s right about the large amount of species who would react even worse than you did if hit with one.”

“I only inhale spices figuratively.  I would prefer not to do it literally - like, ever again.”

Maverick sat up and gave Charly a curious look. “You said they can be swung… Unless I saw something wrong, the arrow was only two feet long.  Who would want to swing something like that?”

Coffey and Arthur both held up gas masks and wiggled them. “Between my arm reach and the length of one of those, I could do it, no problem.”

“We aren’t all so fortunate,” Arthur intoned drily. “Plus, that doesn’t mean someone closer isn’t getting hit.”

Conor raised his hand politely before pointing out a potential flaw. “What if they have gas masks?”

“Noah has a topical reaction,” I answered, my mind racing. “And I assume we have other measures in the works?”

“Multiple types of sonic weaponry are being tested,” Coffey intoned with a nod. “Sub- and ultrasonics, infrasound, and just loud music.”

Still in full Devil’s Advocate mode, Conor persisted. “And if they are covered, head to toe, and none of that works?”

A deafening silence filled the medbay. The prospect of being forcibly boarded had only been a known issue for a week, and apparently this prospect hadn’t been covered yet in the defensive planning.

Finally, it was Maverick who spoke up. Had anyone else been talking, we couldn’t have heard him, but in the quiet his whisper echoed like a gunshot. “The interior hull is organic, not magnetic.”

“Mav, we know that. It doesn’t help us.” Conor’s voice was confused.

Arthur, however, looked like he had just seen a travesty occur in front him, unable to stop it. “You’re talking about blowing the airlocks.”

I scrambled to sit up, clawing at the blanket that covered my legs. “What!? Maverick, he’s wrong, right? You aren’t talking about that, right?”

“It makes logical sense,” Charly added, still laying her head against Coffey’s chest. “If someone boards the Ark by force, and they have enough gear that no amount of defense we mount even bothers them, they would be wearing enough gear to survive being blown into space.”

“And they can’t magnetize to the hull,” Maverick confirmed. “Maybe the outside, but not inside.”

“What about Noah?” I demanded. “They are a non-combatant.”

“Noah evolved in vacuum,” Charly pointed out.

“You’re talking a war strategy!” I nearly shouted. “What about Arthur? Coffey? Or Ivan? Are you seriously going to tell me they won’t be the first people charging to defend the Ark?” I pointed at the previously brandished gas masks with a damning glare.

“We are talking about a last-ditch defense to save as many people on this ship as possible,” she whispered.  “I don’t make the decisions, I just make the tools they are going to use. You know, you know I don’t want us to use any of this. And I plan to booby-trap everything within an inch of all our lives to keep us from having to use as much of it as possible.  Hence, arrows. As many kinds as I can make up.”

I started taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. At my heart of hearts, I knew she was sincere - Charly was almost as much of a pacifist as I was, at the end of the day. Even Arthur wasn’t necessarily a warmonger, just… uninhibited in what he defined as ‘the best defense is a good offense’.

Frustrated, I swung my legs over the side of the berth. “I need to go home. I want dinner, and a nap.  Probably a drink.”

Charly reached out and pushed my legs back on to the bed. “You’re under observation for another hour. Dry-drowning risk.”

I groaned and gave her a pleading look. “I’m hungry, and this isn’t my bed.  It’s honestly half the reason I’m in such a bad mood. You and Arthur probably make absolute perfect sense to less-sleepy, fed Sophia, but right now, not so much.”

“Your limey assistant is bringing a change of clothes, your sister, and some food,” Arthur smirked. “So you get to stay right there,  not die, and get some sleep.”

“But Mac…”

“Is at Derek and Sam’s, but very nice try,” he confessed.

“I wanna go home,” I grumbled sullenly.

Maverick nodded, and gulped down some water Charly handed him. “Did someone turn on the scrubbers in there yet?”

Conor and I turned wide eyes to him. The thought apparently never occurred to either of us. “Charly love,” Conor started hesitantly. “How much bigger was the cloud than you thought?”

“I’m not sure,” she confessed, sheepish. “It was pretty big.”

Rubbing my face briskly, I suppressed the urge to sob. “My blankets… the furniture… our clothes…”

“Else is working on it.”

I glanced at Coffey, confused. “Else is? They eat iron.”

Noah’s voice broke in from the ceiling. “Correction. When still a bacterium, Else fed on iron. However, as they have evolved, their needs have expanded to include a more diverse diet.”

“Are you telling me that there are faceless baby chickens flooding our quarters, eating the chili powder?”

“They do show a preference for foods more toxic to the general Galaxy.  We estimate that this is due to their origin within human beings, who share the same marked trait.”

“At least someone is appreciating my hard work,” Charly grumbled.

I strained to suppress a smile. “I’ll make you whatever you want for dinner, for a week, to make up for being ungrateful?”

“Maybe just tell Alistair it was an accident?  He gets upset when you almost die.”

“Both?”

“Both. Both is good.”

<< Prev   Masterlist  Next >>

[stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland]

Come cringe with me - ɟ

Guys… The cringe… The cringe ����😖 I’ve been gone for less than 24 hours and I’m bombarded with news. One that made me very happy (who knows what I mean, gets me 😏 and heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped 🥰😍🤗), and others, most of which are honestly making me cringe to the core.

Point number 1.

Have you learned nothing all these years?

All the people who believe in all those accounts like T, my question is: why? No, seriously, why? Mari sent me screenshots of the list they posted that ‘should belong’ to Scooter, and where are the proofs of what they say? And I don’t mean something that can be easily faked like a Word document, or phone notes. I mean actual proofs.

So why do you fall for it? Because you’re kind-hearted? Because you still believe in Santa Claus? So if I were to write a list based on what people want to hear, would you believe it? Okay, let’s give it a try:

1° Shawmila will break up before Cinderella’s release.

2° Camila will come out as queer after the movie reviews.

3° Lauren’s album will be released in March 2021 around Camila’s birthday.

4° Camren will tell the world about their epic love story in late 2022.

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Guys, come on. What else do you still need to open your eyes? Did you forget all the accounts that turned out to be impostors? I wasn’t here at the time when it happened, but Mari told me about a Lola, Lota? I don’t remember her name. But take her as an example. Or take the story about Lauren’s journal. Remember that one?

For those who don’t know, on September 16, 2016, Lauren tweeted: “So just found out my journal was thrown away in Nevada..there’s no feeling in the world to describe the desolation I feel inside my soul”. And coincidentally, a fan, who along with three of their friends found it after eight hours of searching in the dumpsters, posted a video the next day with this so-called journal belonging to LMJM. The journal was obviously a fake.

It’s easy to fake something nowadays and pass it off as proof. So please don’t be so gullible.

Point number 2.

For all those who still don’t understand how things work behind the scenes.

The music industry, even if it doesn’t seem like it, is as small as a butthole, literally. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone uses everyone. Things are planned months and even years before. Everything has a purpose. Why am I saying this? Because Roger is in touch and has connections with as many people as possible. Even more horrible people than Scotti bRice. Whether you like it or not, he needs to have these connections FOR Camila. Think about this. Camila has always been his priority since 2015. If C is where she is now, if she has and has had this success, it’s also thanks to him.

Point number 3.

As for the Shitshowmila situation and the CS who are leaving because they can no longer bear the weight of their monkey business, guys, okay, go if you really can do it no more. But I want you to think about one thing. Picture the sharks pat you on the back and walk you out the door with a huge smirk plastered on their faces. Because that’s what happens when you play their game, and my friends, although I understand that everyone is free to do and believe what they want, you make them win by leaving.

The days of Shout’s releases are approaching, it’s obvious that everything will be thrown in our face and that everything will be heavier. Because THAT’S HOW IT WORKS. You have to resist. You have to be patient. Do you think that I myself don’t get annoyed to see all that falsehood? It’s more the time that I roll my eyes than the rest.

“It’s all about her”. Yeah, sure, Chin Chin. And what about the relationship you had for two years (2014-2016) with that girl, Lauren Arendese? Didn’t you confirm that in that Q&A in 2017? Didn’t you say you had a girlfriend for two years and write songs about her that day, therefore loooong before this whole made-up comical little story? Ah, no? My bad. *And then I’m sorry but when have you ever write your songs?* And what about the example of the song you used, Treat You Better? Weren’t you together with Lauren at the time? And above all, 🎵 “The second you say you’d like me to” 🎵, didn’t you say you never had the balls to tell her you liked her and that you were going to do it when her PR with Matteush started? 2016 song, 2018 when you were supposed to confess your oh so great love. The math, the math…

There will always be holes in their narratives, guys. There will always be bullshit that they will try to inculcate in us to make us fall into their traps. With any PR. You need to resist. You must not give them any importance. You must not fall into the traps. You need to keep your eyes open. Don’t give up. And above all, don’t give up on hope.

I love you guys. Always with love, F. ❤️

P.S. I’m not 100% back yet, but I couldn’t resist after talking to Mari.

___

Thank you for the necessary wake-up call, because it was something that was not really taken into consideration. But what you're saying is true, although I really don't like the part about Scooby tied to Camila. Disgusting. I think the most basic problem here is that the anons, the fans who leave have been too bombarded by all the circus they see on social networks, because all that shit comes from there. I know, because I do my best to ignore all that mess and nothing happens to me when I ignore everything. I am aware that it is there, that the clowns behind the PR are desperate to sell showmila and do whatever it takes to win that goal, that we can disrupt. It can. Most of us don't believe that circus because we know that they started creating it in 2015 and had to stop because Camila needed to launch her solo career and they took up the circus in 2018. Since that year, there has been talk of a showmila circus on steroids and that. is what we are seeing. Nothing they do or what they say will make us change and believe that Showmila is real because the Diva was never there with Camila. Not in the sense that they want to sell because it wasn't even that way from the beginning. So at least, for those of us who believe that Showmila has been a boosted circus since 2018, nothing they do will make us believe otherwise. Lauren didn't make it with her podcast, no one will. And for the anons who want evidence, I am sorry to say that direct evidence from Camren will never have unless Lauren or Camila want to show us something. Keep in mind, folks. Artists have two lives for a reason. It's to keep your private life private and not transform it into a PR circus like Showmila. And I think we have to respect their decision. At least that's what I've decided. I love both girls too much to risk something as important to them as their privacy. And F, was Loca. That insider was called Loca.

[bisexualoftheblade-old]

how many wips do you have? like what are they all, and not the number of wips in a fandom? what are all the names?

okay. fuck you. fuck you so much. fuck you.

i’m putting this under a read more cut no one else deserves to see this shit. a lot of these are requests, and for those i will just write out the request itself

Shadowhunters:

domestic polycule fluff with tem, jessa, and will because im not a coward

Supernatural

- hehe hoho i request destiel hehehe

- request 61/? cai cai cai cai i need you to rewrite the destiel scene but yk. GOOD. not like i'm in the know about the spn fandom or anything, it's been years for me. but DO IT

Bright Sessions

- caleb/adam grisha AU

- mark bryant vs. united states aka sue the AM

- caleb/adam college fluff

Umbrella Acaademy

- request 31/? i want a ben and klaus drabble please spare me some brotherly bickering

- AND SO BEGINS NIGHT 4 with request 13/? oooh oooh can i get a raymond and allison playlist??? i think their vibes together would SLAP

- hi there night 2 is technically morning 3 but who's counting not me anyway request 5/? can i get a ben moodboard? gotta rep my tua bb

Percy Jackson

- request 9/? can i get a percabeth moodboard or quote edit?? like god they're the og couple goals take me back to high school cai

- For the 100 follower things :D Jercy getting caught in the rain

- request 29/? a drabble about literally anything to do with pjo. i’ll be happy with anyone and anything i’m love these children

- *somersaults in like I’m a real fancy acrobat* hello ello ello may I request some camp half blood chaos possible involving *does a flip* ✨side characters✨ <3

Penumbra Podcast 

- request 52/? drabble about the penumbra podcast. this is for ren bc ren likes it and i don't actually know anything about it. juno? i think? that's the one ren likes. write it for ren

- Tpp ghost hunting / buzzfeed unsolved au

- sad juno smut

- final resting place fic go brrrr

Marvel

- request 6/? i'm going to my roots y'all can i get a spider-man playlist? if not a playlist then i'd honestly be happy with literally anything involving spider-man

- request 15/? i'm going crazy this is recorded evidence of me actually losing it ANYWAY can i get a quote edit for something from iron man? literally anything that man says is gold so cai's choice :D he deserved better in endgame i'm still bitter

- request 42/? do another spidey thing that differs from the other spidey thing

- request 73/? you have Opinions. rant about infinity way and/or endgame. go.

- request 74/? quote edit for deadpool!!

- spideytorch relationship character study

- peter parker as a tired grad student monitoring the young avengers (send help)

Six of Crows

- okay listen i wasn't going to request anything bc i worry about you but also? if you want to/have the time hit me with a playlist for our girl nina zenik

- request 43/? fuckin give me the ending anya should have had. she is alive and with her new son and having a great time

- request 45/? inej moodboard?

- request 47/? will you make literally any meme of your choosing for six of crows?

- request 48/? write a drabble for kaz, my favorite bastard

- okay so i don't actually like nina or mattias that much but i still wanna hear about your thoughts (and also see if you'll change my mind)

- kaz brekker turning 18 fic. birthday party, everyone singing, whole shebang. i need it stat

- religious trauma fic aka i started shipping kaz/alina/inej and i can’t stop

- kaz trauma soup (he has D.I.D. and you can’t prove me wrong)

- my two redacted fics for @grishaversebigbang​

- wesper fake dating

- six of crows bright sessions crossover: everyone gets therapy

TMA

- uhh... s1 gang having a nice time? melanie getting to have some Pride™️? some "fun" horror thing?

- request 7/? spare steph and jason bonding? please sir? spare some for a humble child such as myself?

- okay so this was meant for night 3 but i had midterm shit SO this is honorary night 3 let's DO THIS request 8/? i want a moodboard of extremely out of context magnus archives shit like i mean confuse the FUCK out of me i don't go here i know Nothing about it

- request 11/? OKAY so i need tim stoker meeting tim drake now i need my timmy to meet your tim plus i want to see character differences no i'm not trying to create a tim stoker in my head so i can read a's fic while NOT thinking of tim drake whaaaaaat you're crazy

- request 18(i think)/? i need a quote edit of every time within the first like. 15 eps of tam where jon is like “sounds fake but go off” thank u bb

- request 40/? i challenge you to write a tma drabble based only on the episodes i've heard. i'm currently halfway through episode 23

- Jon being lovingly bullied into taking a break. I'm aware this has been written a million times but it is one of my favorite things.

- spiral!sasha AU

- extinction martin go brrrrr

- high school era timsasha. they've both been friends for years, and everyone always asks when they will be a couple. they decide to fake date, to prove everyone wrong and show what a bad couple they would be. turns out that's a bit trickier than they thought

- after sasha comes back, tim is broken. he can't let go, scared that if he looks away for even a minute he'll lose her again. sasha suggests shibari as a way for him to give up control

- sasha pov mag 19 au, sacrificing herself to save the others, knows that if she gives herself up to the not!them it will let the others live

- this is the "tim finds a polaroid of sasha" trope

- early archives days,, long nights in research,,, clothes sharing,, somft. late nights and falling asleep at their desks warm and safe in the other's presence

- two parts: timsasha as kids, each picking a constellation that is "theirs". just soft kid antics. tim at sasha's grave glancing up to see their constellations

- continuing your job’s a joke (you’re broke)

DC Comics

- TIMSTEPH HADESTOWN AU,,,

- my redacted fic for @batfam-big-bang​

- request for you to get a decent amount of sleep? serious answer, dickkori, SAL's Venus

- request 4/? timsteph morning after 👀 mayhaps?

- a concept: nonbinary stephanie brown

- teehee hi mom, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but can i request damian angst for your accomplishments 100 followers?

- hi you can ignore my first request if you want, or you can ignore this one. but bls possibly write some bikini ra’s? -the bikini bitch

- request 27/? jay is asking through me for a jondami playlist but tbh i also want it so win win yk?

- "I don't know how to help you but I can help you find someone who does" with bruce and jason? im just craving bruce being a good day to jason for once

- “I am putting you in time out because you need to understand the consequences of your actions.” with steph and jason as dumbass disaster bi best friends pretty please?

- request 32/? timsteph patrol date!!!

- request 33/? timsteph *gala* date? mayhaps??

- request 37/? tim drake drabble but make it Edgy cai

- request 39/? drabble of a prank war between tim and damian

- joyfire cuddly fluff please? or like just any outlaw fluff if joyfire isnt your thing (feel free to add every member of the outlaws, dont feel like u gotta stick with jason, kori, roy i love them all)

- barbara and robin! jason fluff? bonding over books or something?

- request 62/? i need a drabble about the chaotic trio jason, tim, and steph i'm love them ty

- request 63/? batfam x mcu crossover. batfam meets ironfam. give me ALL the cliches. ALL OF THEM

- request 64/? young justice x young avengers - jay cuz idk SHIT about the young avengers

- request 66/? jondami moodboard pls and ty

- request 67/? timsteph moodboard!!!!!!

- request 69/? HEHEHE kinky 😏 i would v much like a timsteph drabble of the almost first time. does that make sense? like i don't want you to go all the way NSFW cuz i know that's against the rules and i'm a rule follower. but like they *almost* go all the way. this could be fade to black or some shit i don't care just make it a lil steamy and have Fun

- i request damian angst! all of it

- hmm... maybe i request? jondami?

- mayhaps,,,,some batfam,,,,,committing crimes? ily be gay do crime <3 - lu

- How about a ficlet with Steph and Cass?

Found Family Bingo Prompts

- no powers au

- tunnel

- first day

- join the club

- hurt/comfort

- experiment

- playing favorites

- hold on

- possession

- 10 o’clock

- singing

- road

- snitch

- curfew

- timer

- fantasy au

- zombie au

- dreams

- campfire

- are you okay

- movie night

- games

- scared

Miscellaneous

- a request: Write A Drabble, Coward

- is it too late to request a moodboard for me?

- request 20/? i’m going off book because i’m in a Chaotic Mood™️ can you just absolutely vibe check me like go off cai demolish me

- request 21/? i formally request that you pick a favorite cai. i don’t care what that favorite pertains to, just pick a favorite something

- request 23/? roast me

- request 24/? can i have a buzzfeed unsolved spoopy playlist but spoiler alert it’s not spoopy bc shane doesn’t believe does this make sense it has been a Day™️

- request 25/50 i want a jake and amy fic make it Soft cai i’m love them b99 is so good

- request 28/? i know nothing about the lord of the rings so make something that will confuse the shit out of me

- request 34/? malvie and jaylos moodboards 😈

- request 35/? a moodboard for the bbb mods!! perceive all of us!!!

- request 36/? moodboard for the tua mods too???? mayhaps??

- request 41/? doctor WHO? idk but i want a drabble of him and the one character i know from doctor who which is rose

- request 46/? make an alignment meme with our group, have fun!!!

- request 49/? i want you to kin assign me a character from every fandom you can/want to. go feral

- request 50!!!!/? this is a special request. the most special request. can you make a bastards tbh playlist? i want our vibes encapsulated. i want us in music form. i want to hear those songs and be like "that's me and cai" and smile.

- requests 51/? i know jack shit about good omens. explain it to me in the most confusing way possible. make me know less by the end than i know now

- request 53/? can you write a mel aesthetic? i'm Curious

- request 54/? give me a list of book recs cai i want some good book recs pls

- request 56/? edit a picture of US together too

- request 58/? oooh can i have a disney edit? like. hm. i just really love disney and i want anything to do with disney. like a quote or an aesthetic or an aesthetic edit i just want disney.

- request 59/? i would v much like a recipe for carbonara. i've never had it but it sounds fucking delicious

- request 60/? ooh hey can i get a makeup tutorial? i know you like makeup, i'm shit at doing makeup. teach me

- request 65/? i need the most emo playlist you can make that vibes with dear evan hansen thank you

- request 68/? i want a superwholock moodboard. this can be serious, with the actual fandoms in mind, or literally what the era felt like. the insanity. the horror.

- request 70/? ooh ooh ooh do you have a good bread recipe?? i wanna get that bread

- request 71/? i want a playlist with the vibes of summoning a demon. please don't ask questions. i don't have answers. and if i do, no i don't.

- For the requests, how about writing something based on a friend?

- request 75/? MMMM i want literally anything to do with natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812

- request 76/? i want some healthy recipes. help a girl out

- a feral bbb quote or two?

- you perceive my plant but now I dare thee to perceive mine own visage

- okay this is a two for one request. 1. you did the bee movie script so now we need a shrek two script edit 2. sleep please

- Pansexual mb for my lil queer soul?

- my (probably) final request is just for you to ramble about something, i don't really care what

- HI ILY CONGRATS AS WELL CAUSE IM LATE BUT CONGRATS. could i request a pirates of the caribbean (or just pirates) or whatever you what to do, free range.

- mood board for the beluga whales who got brought to the animal sanctuary in Iceland please?

- 100 follower request: Moodboard for my stuffed cow Oaky?

[themegalosaurus]

Hi I am a long time supernatural fan but got introduced to online fanbase only last year. I discovered many interesting things and one of them was your blog. It's one of my favourite blogs on this site even though you weren't that active because the content on it made up for it. I love the parallels you make, your take on an episode or a scene , discussion on Sam's ugly shirts basically everything.

Being a Sam girl myself I can listen and read what a fellow Sam girl has to say. So I guess I wanted to ask you what are the things that fascinates you about Sam ? What's your favourite season of supernatural and episodes of supernatural and why? What's your favourite Sam arc and why?

I heard you on the 'Conjoined' podcast recently but I couldn't follow your accent. SORRY. But I m gonna try and listen to it again. Have a nice day!

Hey! Thanks for this nice message. I also entered the fandom at a stage when there was lots going on already (back in 2014 towards the end of when season 9 was airing). One of the nice things about SPN is the sheer volume of fan-created content! And thanks for sticking with my blog even though it hasn’t been super-active for the past year or so. I think it was a combo of the general shift from Tumblr to Discord that happened in late 2018 and also just being busy and overwhelmed with life stuff. Still, I seem to have new energy for it now so let’s see how long this lasts!

So: what are the things that fascinate me about Sam? Obviously, he's cute as heck with a smoking body (very important) but that isn't the ONLY thing (!). I'm interested in this ongoing conflict that's generated by his desire for a safe life that isn't full of blood and death and the ways that tugs against his sense of responsibility and his love for Dean. I like that he's funny and snarky and smart, I like when we get a Sam sex scene and see him really let go. I'm fascinated by all his behaviours around eating and working out. I like his ugly shirts. I like how considerate he is of other people. I like how focused and determined he becomes in a crisis. I guess looking back after the finale, I’m interested that we see a Sam at the start of the series who feels like/thinks he has/is trying to get away from and get over his childhood but then gets the confidence beat down and knocked out of him and it’s really not until the very, very end of those 15 seasons that we see him in a place where it seems like he’s gotten it back.

Hard to pick my favourite season of Supernatural; I really love 2, 4 and 5 but I have a weird affection for 8 and 9 as well even though they are so conflict-riddled and Sam suffers so much. Really I like all of them up to S9, think S10-12 are weaker and S13-15 weaker still, but there are still plenty of things I love in those later years. Favourite episodes change minute to minute! I love A Very Supernatural Christmas because it does what it needs to do SO well. I love Mystery Spot, obviously. I love Changing Channels because it's funny but it has a point. I love It's A Terrible Life because Sam Wesson gives such a funny insight into who Sam is. I love Red Meat, SO MUCH. I loved the finale, way more than I expected to. Oh, I love American Nightmare, the episode with Magda (good stuff Davy Perez). I love When The Levee Breaks, lawD. I love Sex and Violence. I just watched the pilot and honestly, I love the pilot. There are MORE.

My favourite Sam arc is everything to do with his demon blood powers; from psychic baby Sam in early seasons to the terrible tragic arc of S4 and 5 to the trauma Sera Gamble spent time with in S6 and S7. And including that moment in S12 when Sam tells Magda that he used to have powers and actually, they didn't make him evil. GROWTH. We love to see it.

Also, thanks for listening to me on that podcast and sorry my British accent was so incomprehensible! I didn't say any of the intelligent things that I thought of immediately after so I don't think you were missing out on much, hahahaha.

[soc-characters-as-songs]

Favorite part of the interviews and a song for all?

ivy: "*he keeps a small polite smile, silently gesturing to the refreshments available as he asks* how have you been finding angeles and the palace, ivy?

*/king doof-ael,/ the title her friend alba had dubbed him with, though she couldn't possibly off that as another name. even if it was interesting, it's only when raphael sits that she notices one of the imposing figures standing a ways behind him. /the divergent man/. seven. he was here? now???"

alaska ("and I walked off an old me/oh me, oh my I thought it was a dream/so it seemed/and now breathe deep, I'm inhaling/you and I, there's air in-between/leave me be, I'm exhaling/you and I, there's air in-between")

meredith: "*he keeps a smile at her* I believe I do prefer celebrations inside, though, knowing how hot it can get in the afternoon here in angeles.

*she feels a bit insensitive when he answers because it's such a huge "duh" moment and she kind of just didn't think about it before she made the comment about all the parties. but she can just add it to her mounting list of little mistakes. she grimaces and nods, murmuring* right, sorry, of course. *she shifts again, reminding herself that she needs to focus more* it's um... colder in northern angeles too. at least where I grew up *she breathes in a sigh because somehow she's turned this into a conversation about the weather, which she feels like is what you do when you're stuck in a waiting room with a stranger and even if that's what the interviews could be likened to she was hoping it wouldn't be like that. she squirms a bit more and honestly a bit of desperation is setting in and meredith unclasps her purse, finally looking down so she can see what she's doing. she hesitates a moment, then reaches a hand inside and pulls out an assorted bag of gummy bears, which she pilfered from the pantry the night before. she quickly closes the purse again, then her hands go to the bag as she opens it, the bag makes that loud plastic crinkly sound. meredith finally looks up at him again and gives him a weak smile, holding up the bag between them, with the opening facing his way* would you like some? *her eyes dart to sam and the cameras, then back to him* it has all the flavors, I think"

good as it gets ("just leave it up to me, to be sad in paradise/I got a good heart but f*ck it for the art/had a good life, I could never really see that/got so bad, lookin' for love in the trash/if I had it, I wouldn't know how to keep it/well, maybe i'm a mess/and maybe I'm depressed/and maybe I'll just find out who I am and I won't like who it is/and I'm a wreck"

diana: "*he shakes his head at her question, not dismissive at all but offering only this* I'm not the cooking or baking type. reading, you could say, is a hobby of mine - basic as it sounds. *he knows it's probably not enough as an answers so he also adds this* podcasts are a good alternative too if I'm moving around on vehicles *he leans back, putting his elbow on his arm rest as he thinks about the baking thing but wanting to confirm his guess he asks* if you don't mind me going back to the cupcakes, were they in celebration of something?

*she shakes her head when he calls his hobby basic* it's not basic at all. I love reading, honestly, it's a luxury to be able to pick up a book on any topic and learn about something new */especially when you never got a formal education past high school/. she thinks it but doesn't say it out loud*"

blind ("but you're a little like me, same type/cancels every date night/stays home, never leaves/just can't find the energy/I stay pretty numb/never fell for anyone/you seem similar/always end up getting hurt/I haven't felt a thing this year/and I'm only tryna be sincere")

dahlia: *elevator music*

alassie: "*he shakes his head at her question, unsure also of how she's approaching this either but he lifts a shoulder up* not exactly, since it was accidentally spilled on me. it's a shame, however, that I don't have the time to change until a few interviews after this. *he waits for her to take a seat properly, gesturing to the seat again* I do ask for your patience to look beyond that for the next five minutes of your time.

*she raises her eyebrows at his gestures, and settles a little more in her current position by crossing her legs. all his fuss over his jacket makes her want to roll her eyes, and she says sarcastically* I'm not sure I can. *she looks towards the camera crew, sounding more polite as she addresses them* can anyone bring us gin? and a dry cloth?"

entertainer ("you thought you had me, didn't you?/when you lied to my face, I could see the truth/every step of the way I knew/how you fooled me, boo/guess you didn’t know that/you were my favorite entertainer/I'd watch you, I'd laugh, I would fuck with you/don’t you take me for a fool/in this game, I own the rules")

ramona: "*he presses his lips together at her last statement, a wry smile on his lips* nothing that the palace laundry couldn't handle. though, it was my lucky shity that got stained.

*she quickly gives him a more sympathetic smile, replying in an almost joking tone* I hope that wasn't an omen for the rest of the day"

meet me at our spot ("i'm not getting younger/but when I'm older/I'll be so much stronger/I'll stay up for longer/meet me at our spot/caught a vibe/baby, are you coming for the ride?/I just wanna look into your eyes/I just wanna stay for the night, night, night")

rhea: "maybe you'll get to work into developing the shows themselves in the artistic team side now *he tilts his head* I'm sorry that you don't get to perform anymore.

*she waves the apology off* developing shows looks like fun - you get some more creativity. *this is what she had rehearsed for. random fact, something near embarrassing, to make her memorable - not something her mother ever said, but something guy of all people had suggested. she leans in with a sly smile* this sounds incredibly nerdy, but I- well, someone I know back home and I- started work on this musical about aliens"

honey ("'cause I'm a beautiful wreck/a colorful mess, but I'm funny/oh, I'm a heartbreak vet/with a stone-cold neck, yeah, I'm charmin'/all the pretty girls in the world/but I'm in this space with you/colored out the lines/I came to find, my fire was fate with you")

cornelia: "I still think invitations are a nice touch, if not the tiny umbrellas stuck on the cherries of the black forest cake. *he bobs his head at the mention of her friends, curious about them* did your friends get to send you off the other day?

*she chuckles because of his words* the tiny umbrellas /are/ a great detail. I didn't know those were something I needed in my life."

like real people do ("I knew that look dear/eyes always seeking/was there in someone/that dug long ago/so I will not ask you/why you were creeping/in some sad way I already know/I will not ask you where you came from/I will not ask you and neither would you")

kaden: "*he thanks her for the coffee, holding it with both of his hands for a bit to let it cool* my previous shirt and jacket have seen better days, and this is a new set of saucers and cups but thankfully not many other casualties *he shakes his head, lifting his mug up* I'd prefer to be drinking coffee or wine rather than have it accidentally on my shirt.

*she finishes to serve her own cup* a thrilling morning you're describing. *she looks up from under her lashes, still amused apparently* perhaps getting rid of the small talk would be for the best."

slow burn ("born in a hurry, always late/haven't been early since '88/texas is hot, I can be cold/grandma cried when I pierced my nose/good in a glass, good on green/good when you're puttin' your hands all over me/I'm alright with a slow burn/takin' my time, let the world turn/I'm gonna do it my way, it'll be alright")

andreia: "*should she look closely, there are coffee stains on the place setting of the coffee table while raffy is in a different shirt and jacket thanks to the wine incident earlier. around them, there are still cameras going off around them, documentation crew really going at it. still, raffy's standing tall with his hands clasped in front of him as she approaches, only offering her his hand when she's close enough to him so he can guide her to her seat. he tries to give her a small smile despite being tired* lady andreia, thank you so much for waiting. my name is raphael, it's a pleasure to meet you.

*being outside all day, with the sun being bright, has not been /ideal/ for andreia, but she's trying her best to ignore the budding headache. she takes his hand when she reaches him, but keeps her other hand in her pocket for the time being, and gives him a small smile in return* just andreia is fine. it's nice to meet you. *once the handshake is done, she takes the other hand out of her pocket, and smiles a little sheepishly before explaining* in iberia, it's rude to show up to someone's house without a gift to give the host *she holds out her hand and in it is a small origami corgi* I know it's not much, but... *she shrugs a little, still with the same sheepish smile*"

valerie ("well, sometimes I go out by myself/and I look across the water/snd I think of all the things of what you're doing/in my head I paint a picture/since I've come home/well, my body's been a mess/and I miss your ginger hair/and the way you like to dress/oh, won't you come on over?/stop making a fool out of me/why don't you come on over, valerie?")

arely: ??????????????

suzy: "*he waits for her to take a seat before taking his own, making a gesture for plato to follow like the besets boy he is and he stays by raffy's feet* he gets mad when he feels underdressed for an event. *he nods at her response to the food, understanding of her wanting to save space for dinner, but is very pleased to hear that she likes the food. he glances at the table, looking for his recommendation and gestures to a green tea bag* I believe some hot green tea would be nice before dinner. cleanses the palate too. *he tilts his head* any favorites from the selection of food earlier?

*she raises her eyebrows, surprised since she tried to dress up bom several times but she ultimately hated being dressed, even if it's a simple bow. she turns her attention to plato and looks down at him* a true gentlepup I see"

505 ("not shy of a spark/the knife twists at the thought that I should fall short of the mark/frightened by the bite, though it's no harsher than the bark/the middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start")

[goose-books]

goose-books productions: a 2020 review

view the image in higher quality here! (open the image in a new tab to zoom in.) thank you to my dearest @yvesdot for the template

transcripts and month-by-month details under the cut! for reference, you can find my projects here :-) overall, new and old followers, thank you for another good year over here! [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your h

january

i spent late 2019-early 2020 working on 2019’s nano project, quark, aka the speculative fiction thing about new york city and prophets and dissections of the chosen one trope and gay people. quark is my second-oldest project (five years!), but it’s also probably the most ambitious, so it’s been... difficult to wrangle into place, and i didn’t end up finishing a first draft. oh, well.

enjoy a snippet that is devastatingly emblematic of everything about quark. the tone. the homoerotic tension. the ensemble cast all talking over each other. the fact that caelum has spent pretty much this entire scene crying. fun autopsy report meeting.

Marble stares at the notebook in Shade’s hands. Or maybe he’s staring at Shade’s hands. Dawn feels a little voyeuristic, so she does what she does and says a dumb and unrelated thing: “Augustus, I think this pizza-on-the-floor thing is hurting my ass.”

Augustus flutters his hands. “Sometimes nonconformity is painful.”

“At least we’re originals,” Caelum mumbles into his sleeve.

“Exactly,” Augustus says.

“True originality doesn’t exist,” Marble says.

“Oh,” Shade deadpans, “it’s going to be a fun autopsy report meeting.”

It isn’t.

february

in january i stressed myself out trying to make the plot of quark work. so in february, i decided to take some time and write something Entirely For Fun. like, entirely for fun, no rules. and. my god. how do i explain the project i started calling “third eye for the bad guy.”

it was an unholy mashup of many of my past hyperfixations, including the gone series, a tale of two cities, warrior cats, and the left hand of darkness. one of the characters was a canon scalie and one was a canon fictionkinnie. it centered around a polycule of wannabe-evil-overlord high schoolers. i only wrote like three chapters but i was lost in the sauce for all of february and then i just… like… wiped it from my mind and moved on? somehow??? one character was a werewolf and that literally wasn’t relevant at ALL

I.

Someone was going to die on these steps.

This had been Ivy Lee Palomo’s thought last year during the all-school photo, and it rose in her mind again now. The one hundred marble stairs leading up to the great double doors of Saint Constantine Academy were the school’s pride and glory, steep as the mountain, sharp as the blade under Ivy Lee’s skirt. With the cutting wind and snow glazing the stone more often than not, with the freshmen wild and wired on their first day of their first year, it was really only a matter of time before someone slipped and cracked their fucking head open.

It wasn’t going to be her. Not when she had Doc Martens and reflexes like an electric coil. Still. Ivy Lee didn’t want to watch someone die. She didn’t get along with dead people.

march

in march, i got back to the project i’d started in 2019 - AMT, my podcast! it’s a shakespeare retelling set in a modern high school; this excerpt is funnier and also more unnerving in context. (double, double, toil and trouble...)

INDRAJIT: What the hell are you doing?

[PAUSE.]

DEE (like she’s lying): Making pasta.

[ALL THREE OF THEM LAUGH.]

NONA: That’s right.

MORA: We have the keys to Mab’s office.

DEE: We’re using her stove.

NONA: To make pasta.

DEE: Do you want some?

[A TENSE PAUSE.]

INDRAJIT: No.

april

and darkling rears its head! all of my other projects have existed for at least a year; darkling (specfic king lear retelling) is... special. it was conceived in april, when i started hyperfixating on king lear, and i still managed to write an absolutely ridiculous amount of content for it. it was like the power of hyperfixation let me speedrun the entire process. which. okay.

iv: control

They say Cressida Stayer was nine years old when she turned her hair to gold. They laid her down in bed blonde, and the next morning, the waves cascading down her shoulders were solid metal, glinting harshly in the sunlight, weighing her down, creating that odd head-cocked expression she still wears now. Nine years old. Two or three years before most people develop enough magic skills to dye a single curl. Much less transfigure their hair into precious metal.

People also say Leovald Stayer’s immediate reaction was to hack it off her head and melt it down for cash. But generally they say that part a lot quieter.

may

in may i wrote AMT episode 15, by which i mean that in may there was a day when i sat in my room with the door shut for literally five straight hours listening to the same three songs on loop as i wrote the climax of one of the plotlines of AMT. so. that sure was… a day.

ISAAC: Do you want… do you want someone to drive you home? Hawk, you’re worrying me -

HAWK (almost cutting him off): Don’t. Don’t say that. I’m here to help. With your… thing.

ISAAC (quietly): I… don’t know if you should be here to see this.

HAWK (a little louder, more audibly upset): Well - what else am I going to do? Go home and - and have my dads talk at me and - and not be able to answer them? Because I can’t? I can’t. I don’t know what to say.

[PAUSE.]

ISAAC (V.O.): I wonder if this is what he feels like, on the outside, looking in at me. Watching someone else hurting. Helpless and afraid.

He still fits perfectly in my arms. I rest my chin on top of his head and pull him close to me, like I can stop him from shaking, like I can stop anything from happening the way I know it’s going to. I bury my face in his hair. He smells so familiar. He’s so warm.

God, Hawk. I love you so much. You shouldn’t be here to see this. Something bad’s gonna happen. And you’re not the kind of person who belongs in a tragedy.

june

okay, honestly, i should talk about “night shift” here, because in june i wrote a whole short story in one night (and then foamed over it for a week), but i am still in the process of submitting it places! so i am terrified to put even a sentence of it online. instead: the other thing i did this month was to finish AMT! (sixteen episodes and somewhere around 175k, iirc, but don’t quote me.) these lines are the opener to the final episode!

RAHMA (V.O.): The combined series of sophomore year disasters stretched through November. It’s June now. It’s taken me… a long time to get this all put together. I was going to make a vlog about it, initially - well, calling it a vlog sounds frivolous. I was going to make a video recounting the whole deal. All of it. From when I kissed Avery Fairchilde to the very last night. I scripted dozens of drafts; I put together dozens of bullet-pointed lists of what to cover… and it was never enough. Because Avery and I weren’t the only ones involved. Even if I was only focused on the two of us, it wasn’t just the two of us.

So… I gathered up everyone else. The whole town of Ellisburg is still talking about the week the town went crazy, but it wasn’t just a week. There was a lot leading up to it. And I think if anyone’s going to talk about it, it should be us. The people who lived it. So here we are. The most ambitious Rahma Ashiq production of all time - at least so far.

july

every july i pause whatever else i’m doing to celebrate the birthday of aurum & argentate, twins from my oldest and dearest WIP The Mortal Realm. july fifteenth! mark your calendars. they’re princes, though argentate would really rather not be; you can read the full birthday piece here.

“Do you… plan to get dressed?” A bit of the usual humor crept back into Aurum’s voice. “Although if you want to speak to the kingdom in your underthings, by all means, you have my full support.”

Argentate scrubbed at his face. He wasn’t dressed, no, but the usual malaise hung over his shoulders like a cloak. Guilt. Nerves. The sick sense that he hadn’t done something he was supposed to. The numb knowledge that it was too late to change a thing.

“I meant to,” he said. “Get dressed, I mean.” The rest went unsaid: I have just been sitting here. On the floor. Thinking about how I should get dressed.

“Ah,” Aurum said, extending his hand. “The traditional route. We’ll save the nude speeches for the future, then.”

Argentate took his hand, stumbling a little as Aurum pulled him to his feet. He steadied himself on the closest wall, taking a few deep breaths. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. His hands found their way to the cross, again and again.

august

this summer, i wrote an entire draft of Valentine Van Velt is Dead, AKA “holden caulfield goes to exposure therapy,” AKA the weird little personal side project i keep tucked into my coat. interesting features include second-person narration from a narrator who doesn’t like the main character all that much. so reading it is kind of like the book wants to kill you? with an added dash of general melancholy.

You used to live here. That’s the thing that’s got you feeling so off.

You didn’t recognize your old house. I mean, you kind of did. You remembered that the road was on a hill. That hill felt like a goddamn forty-five degree angle when you were a kid. But if you didn’t have the address written down you wouldn’t have known it at all. It would have been just another little suburban house in rows of perfect little towns that make your skin crawl.

So now you’re in this diner looking out a gross smudgy window trying to block out the elevator music pumping through the speakers in the ceiling or whatever. I don’t know how speakers work. You’re trying to tune that shit out. The waitress comes over and catches you by surprise so you just point at some coffee thing on the menu so she’ll go away. For the record: you don’t drink coffee.

There’s a public library across the street. A little square building. You probably used to go there. The lady comes over and thunks your coffee on the table and gives you a kind of look, like she wants to know what in the goddamn hell you think you’re doing here and not at school. You sip your coffee and look out the window until she leaves you alone again. And then you spit it back into the cup because, for the record: you don’t drink coffee.

september

i spent september and october prepping for nano, so i was mostly working on darkling...

It’s late spring; still, at this time of night, on a rooftop, there’s a chill. The wind plays with the end of Ruby’s coat, with her hair. She hands the bottle off to Jasper, stares up at the fogged-over sky, wishes she were lying in Dany’s arms in Dany’s bed instead of here. Wishes, even, that Dany were the one on the roof with her. At least then they’d be cold together. At least then she wouldn’t have to imagine what Dany would say; she could just listen, and watch Dany’s flashing smile and her flinty eyes.

(She cuddles. This is another thing Dany does that Dany probably shouldn’t do, based on everything about Dany; it’s not like rattlesnakes cuddle. But Dany likes to nuzzle into Ruby’s side and rest her head on Ruby’s collarbones and toss an arm over Ruby’s chest, and hold her down like she’s worried she’ll float off somewhere. She’ll card her fingers through Ruby’s hair and hum. Even though they could get caught, even though she’s probably got better places to be - Dany cuddles.)

Ruby imagines it, momentarily, both of them on the roof together, sprawled like horrifyingly beautiful gargoyles, sharp teeth flashing, blood running hot. Up here - it’d be like they ruled the world.

But whatever. Jasper’s fun. He’s hot. He’s got a sharp tongue in a lot more ways than one. And she likes when he lets the mask down. She likes seeing the soft bits underneath. She wants to sink her teeth and nails into them so hard she draws blood. Masks don’t bleed. Ruby would know; that’s why she is what she is.

october

...though i was also in creative writing class in school, and thus ended up writing a bunch of poems of varying quality (my teacher had a real thing for poetry) and also one darklingverse short story where rory and cressida hold hands! which you can find here.

Lorelai Rory Flowers is afraid of thunder.

This is a bit of an embarrassing thing to admit, as they’re seventeen (“at least seventeen,” they like to tell people, “maybe two hundred, who’s to say?”) and generally wise beyond their years, or whatever it is that adults say about kids with too much psychological baggage. Being afraid of thunder is not a very wise-beyond-one’s-years trait. And yet the state of affairs remains: loud noises make Rory want to melt into the earth. Back when they still went to school, even the fire alarm sent them scuttling under their desk to hide.

Right now, in the elevator, all they can do is shrink into their sweater.

They haven’t let go of Cressida’s hand yet.

november

and then november of course was nano which was an adventure all the way through. (opening tumblr on the fifth day of nano to find out about d*stiel... was something.)

“Apologize to me. Or get out of my house.”

Gracen’s voice is very, very low. For a moment she thinks he hasn’t heard her at all. Then he spins, eyes blazing. “What did you say?”

Gracen watches her own chest heave. She pushes herself up off the desk, stands with the effort of pushing a mountain off of her back. Leovald is six-foot-four. Gracen is six-foot-two. In her heels, in the heels she must wear to be a professional woman, to be a lady - they are the same height.

Gracen wipes her nose. When she lowers her arm, there’s a streak of blood across the back of her hand. Fire shivers in her chest; her heart rings in her ears; her voice could cut steel.

“I said,” she says, low, slow, volume building, “apologize to me. Or get. Out. Of. My. House.”

december

and finally, the poem i posted this year! it’s called the beast sonnet, and you can find it in its own post over here (with commentary! how sexy.)

i kill the beast and drop down to my knees, my blade stained dark with blood of stygian hue, and for a moment these scarred hands shake free, and hold a world unfurled for me anew. but once-mourned victims, victors, vices find; fear winged me; now its absence strips me bare. my sword now dulls, my legs, my voice, my mind; the beast, pried from my throat, leaves no skill there. and still i hear it laugh, O DEVOTEE— O CHILD DEAR, NO GLORY WITHOUT ME.

i was quite productive this year; i have to think it was because i was avoiding things... the peak of my productivity happened over the summer and in november, AKA, college app hell. (almost done with the last applications! pray for me.)

a general breakdown of what occupied me this year:

(no, i don’t know why the “various other things” category ended up so large... i blame all the one-off projects i wrote a single page for, and also whatever the fuck happened in february. yes, i do know why it looks hideous; it’s because each of my WIPs has a theme color

thank you once again for spending some time at goose-books dot gov this year! what to expect for next year: well, i very much hope i can produce AMT... also hoping to get darkling ready for beta readers, so keep your eyes out!

[randomcanbian]

(re: Fandom Meme) B, D, N, P, R, Y ??? (also if you feel like answering T again about anything else pls do (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) (also let the record know that your first answer was *chef kiss* wonderful and should've been canon imo (╯▽╰ ))

B - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

Felix x fem!Byleth from FE3H... I thought it’d be the same as f!Dimileth (the fandom version of it at least) where the man is like ~~ohhhh I’m a monster I’m so broken ahhh I push people away and go on berserker rages because of my tragic backstory~~ and the woman has to be gentle and kind, the epitome of femininity (despite being a mercenary who had been trained to kill since she was 11...), basically put himself above her on so many levels and the onus is on her to ~~fix him~~~...but apparently not??? The fancontent is so gorgeous and has them as equals, both lonely people who’ve had their childhood taken away from them, both who’ve closed themselves off from the world (or in Byleth’s case, has never known how to open herself up to it), both of them seeing themselves in each other, both taking it upon themselves to meet each other half-way and from thereon help each other process their past and walk forward into the future...damn man, the kinship and the partnership in this ship... (also it really helps that 1. Felix is awed at Byleth’s swordsmanship and tactical mind and pushes himself to surpass it, forming a foundation for a healthy rivalry 2. the fandom does not forget that Byleth is her own person and not just Felix’s partner *cough* Dimileth *cough* Edeleth *cough*)

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t

Hmmmm well sometimes I wished (in general) that I could actively ship mlm couples, just because there’s so much content for them :)) (don’t get me started on how fandom gravitates towards male characters and mlm ships...lmao someone way back then gave me the excuse that it’s because the actual creators put more effort into their male characters and that they end up becoming more complex and interesting and like *looks at my fandoms where there are just as many girls as guys, just as interesting (if not more so) backstories and dynamics and interactions for the female characters, looks at the sheer number of mlm shippers in those fandoms who squeeze the most out of every insignificant moment for their male characters while ignoring the depth and complexity of the female characters* sure)

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

Glee

1. Fanfic with more “out-there” ideas :)) (Don’t get me wrong, there are fanfics that fall far from Glee’s high school/young adult/modern-coming-of-age setting, and even for fics that do fall under those spheres there are some that deal with complex, intricate themes in such an incredible manner or even if not that are just plain enjoyable but like,,, there aren’t enough for my ever-expanding hunger HAHA)(my last couple of fandoms were dark fantasy/sci-fi/whatever The Good Place is so I guess I just got spoiled lmao)

2. More analytical thinking LMAO I guess it just frustrates me that there are so many people in the fandom who take things at face value??? Given how biased the writers are and how shit they are at continuity it really doesn’t make sense to me that so many people take things so literally haha

3. More fanart unu I totally understand though that the fandom isn’t as big as it once was but a girl can dream, you know?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

Something that I had wanted to write for Brittana (since 2012!) but never had the brain cells to: a sailor!AU where the characters live on a flat world and they’re trying to sail towards its edge (encountering so many mythical beasts and legends on the way) (may or may not be inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader haha)

Special mention to this AU since I've used for at least three fandoms by now haha: Pygmalion&Galatea!AU wherein one character creates a statue and her love for it brings it to life :)))

R - A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships

LMAO I went through Bae Doona’s body of work (what was available of it at least) in 2015 and ended up shipping her character Park Hyun-nam with her best friend (Yoon Jang-mi) in 플란다스의 개 (Barking Dogs Never Bite)...I wrote a very small ficlet of them (I literally had to create the section for them in ao3...and lmao I just checked and I am still the only fic in there HAHA)(please don’t look for my account btw all my fics are so self-indulgent and atrocious huhu) and I also made this gifset of them :))) As far as I know I am literally the only one in the entire world who ships them HAHA

Similar story for her character Ri Bun-hui in 코리아 (As One)...although honestly if it turns out that a decent number of people have seen this movie I’d be surprised that no one else shipped Bun-hui with Hyun Jung-hwa??? Because they??? Tennis table rivals from North Korea and South Korea who have to team up to win at the Olympics??? Jung-hwa trying to get Bun-hui and her team to loosen up??? Them becoming closer??? When the Olympics are over and the North Korea team have to go home, and Jung-hwa chases after the bus and tries to reach for Bun-hui’s hand, realizing that they might never see each other again??? I??? (Just...I had to make this gifset of their hands: when they first meet each other, when one takes the other’s for comfort, the last time their fingers will ever touch...)(Also let’s ignore that it’s a re-telling of real life event akjsndaskj haha)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all

(Thank you roseate ;u; I’m glad that you agree and are interested with my headcanons ;o;)

Santana’s a trivia nerd and is the type to deep-dive down Wikipedia pages which is why she makes all those obscure references :))) (Also a more specific version of this headcanon, not something that I’d die defending but like,,, something that I won’t let anyone take away from me lmao is that she’s a TV/movie buff, dabbles in comics (specifically, DC and follows character like Wonder Woman, the Birds of Prey, Poison Ivy/Harleyquinn, Batwoman, and Renee Montoya), and started getting a little into theater/musicals after spending time with Kurt and Rachel :))) She also has a record player back in Lima and has a bunch of vinyl records back home (back in high school she’d play a couple of slow songs and just slow dance with Britt in the privacy of their bedrooms uwu)(imagine this scene and this song playing in the background ;u;)

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)

BTS, because so many of my friends are KPOP fans

Genshin, also because so many of my friends are into it

魔道祖师 (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) because my close friend fangirls over them so much and we just exchange anecdotes with me and Glee/Fire Emblem and her and TGDC

Critical Role and My Brother, My Brother and Me podcast because my gf is a huge fan of them :))

Not quite there yet, but I am looking forward to having Dostoevsky’s extended universe as a secondhand fandom HAHA