#i googled how to clean a gravestone

[heybeybey]

Headcanon: Levi visits Petra’s grave at least once a month to clean or tidy it up.

He’d bring her orange flowers, along with a rag and a solution you use to clean the gravestone (I’m not entirely sure how these things go) or maybe trim the overgrown grass around it. 

When he’s satisfied of how clean it is, he’d just sit down in front and not say anything. 

Petra’s father once came over to visit Petra and was surprised when he found Captain Levi cleaning his daughter’s gravestone. He knows that the captain wasn’t much a talker from Petra’s letters so he just watches him. Sometimes he’d help and they both clean Petra’s grave in silence. 

And since her grave is next to Eld, Oluo and Gunther’s, he also cleans up the guys’ gravestones as well and lights a candle for each one of them.

To the Survey Corps soldiers who knows about this (which is few bec. Levi is a private guy), it just looks like his obsessive clean freakness taking over. He might also be doing it because it’s his former subordinates. 

But the truth is that it brings Levi back to the times when he orders his team to clean up their surroundings from the ground up (one of the closest things he’d associate to a “bonding moment” with the OG Spec Ops Squad). 

[aro-aizawa]

nnnnnnnnnot gonna lie i always feel slightly off balance when i think “oh that’s something i think i might be able to do as a job!” bc on one hand, yes! finally! but on the other hand i’m super noncommittal and i really don’t want to say that i’m interested in something, someone take me at my word and think that’s now my lifes goal when it’s smth that i’m only thinking i could do at that moment. i might change my mind or it’ll lose its appeal after a little while.

[andiitom]

I just read your Ramshackle fics?? Heascanons?? For Twisted Wonderland and oh my gods I am invested. All I can imagine is MC, livid and in tears, storming their way through campus to the headmaster’s office (where maybe a prefect meeting was about to start, like they were waiting on MC or something) and MC is pissed. Throwing a diary at the headmaster, cursing him out, claiming he killed them (the previous ramshackle students). Of course everyone is like “wtff 👀” staring at each other before MC takes another diary out of their bag and begins to read the entries (specifically about how they barely have any money for food and such, and that one kid who started the school year with a round healthy face is now very pale and thin). I’m sorry I can’t. Like it never crossed my mind that those graves could belong to previous students and the fact that it’s “covered up” especially in your story. I can also just imagine MC cleaning the gravestones afterwards like you said and the rest of the students checking up on MC. And like how would they react to all the diaries ending on the same date (especially if it’s fast approaching??). But like how would they other students react to the things MC discovered about the Ramshackle dorm in general.

But anyway, I love this. I love your story. It got my brain going, my brain thinking. Take you time, sweetie, but holy fuck I need more. Like shit this is so good!! Like I want to know more. I really want to know more. I can just see Ace, Deuce, Grim, and MC just going on little adventures uncovering the secrets of Ramshackle dorm, like holy shit. What if they found a journal about another student like MC, as in magic-less and essentially coming from a different world/dimension. Keep up the good work sweetie, my mind is completely blown.

A/N: sorry bestie I start rambling towards the end let me know of any Grammer or spelling errors!

If you want more of my ramshackle/other dorms hc or have any of your own I'm just and ask away ♡

CW: mentions of bullying and death!

I am so glad you loved it, bestie! And oh yes, I've come up with so much ramshackle brain rot and the whole there was another MC tidbit, I'll go into that with my own Mc, but I don't want to spoil anything. 

I have it all but its all unorganized in a Google doc But here is a little snippet: 

Crowley turns a blind eye to most things, especially when money and more acclaimed are involved. What's the cost of a few nobodys who can't do magic disappearing? They're just ghosts.. shadows, a blink and they're gone. Only a few remember those faceless, nameless students, and the memories they do have are of them being pushed down stairs or being forced to dance in hot iron shoes. Many of the NRC alumni have fond memories of being sorted into their dorms, making new friends, skipping classes to take a dip in the lake.

Sadly, for the students unlucky enough to be sorted into that dorm overlooking the hill, it was a death sentence. In the past, the dorm residents just dropped out after the first few months, not even making it to the first exams. However, enough stayed one year to warn teach the incoming first years. Most of the teachers were there for the check, and only a few cared about their students. For the ones who cared, seeing the life drain from some of the brightest minds they've seen was gut-wrenching. There was nothing they could do. Crowley turned his back as he counted his money, and all they could do was the same.

I absolutely love it when Disney let's Yana make the twst world dark, even if it's just little sprinkles. Like the gem mines and the two OB dwarfs, or what Leona went through back in the afterglow. I have a lot of stuff that I've written that I don't post much of because I let the intrusive thoughts win and shit gets dark quick. It's the implications of how TWISTED everything is, gets me going. 

The ghosts don't remember a lot of their previous lives, but they feel a calling. So maybe doing that calling would help them remember so they can move on. They're not working because Crowley can cheap out; they're working because it's where they feel the safest. The librarian ghosts are there because, in some long forgotten past, they remember hiding away in the deepest parts of the library. 

I like to play that the whole house is alive trope, but not in the way Casita is, but the way the house from Monster House is. Ramshackle is aware of everything and it's letting Mc solve the mystery of its forgotten past.

Mc didn't need to read the rest of the diaries to know how things went for the other students. They only needed to read one. While flipping through the pages, they noticed dark splotches littered the later entries. They thought it was just a way to censor the lives this school ruined, as the stain always covered the date or a name. 

The log books weren't any better. Mc took note of how every few months the penmanship would change. Neat and flowing cursive to thoughtless and stiff chicken scratch, either the writer would change or they were reading someone else's devolve into insanity. 

Day 45-

We were given our monthly budget … only 300 modals to split between 20 students. I asked the Headmaster if he could increase our amount but all he said he was stretched thin with the building of the new calaseam everyone's budget would be low for the coming months.

Day 49-

I asked around the other leaders and they said their budget had been the same… each of them getting around 3,000,000 modal.. That is 5 times the amount we get. We can only buy bread with the amount we're given.

Then at some point the log book changed from budgeting and general grievance to count how many students they'd lose.

Day 112-

I watched as two of my first years walked into the woods with five Scarabia third years following close behind. only the third years came out.. 18 students remain.

Day 195-

I sent two of my dorm members to collect papers from whoever is the current Savanaclaw dorm leader. It was a mistake as it's been three days and they have yet to return. 14 students remain. 

Those are some of the things of note that I wrote for Ramshackle Lore. Tho the one thing I disagree with is Crowley part bestie... Sure, Crowley can be an ass, but he's shown that he cares about his students. Like during Chap 2, he could have ignored the students getting injured, but he didn't, so he went to the person he trusted the most to solve the case. Crowley knows that if he goes around asking questions, the students will get scared because if the Headmaster is calling the students getting injured into question, that means something bad is happening. Word got back to Leona that he would have to lay low, throwing his entire plan into the fire. So, by getting a student to do the questioning, the culprit would be caught. He also disregards leona's title and reprmands him for his dirty tricks.

I believe the previous headmaster(s) turned a blind eye to the treatment of previous ramshackle students. But it would be a great scene..

An angry Mc bursting into his office during a dorm leader meeting throwing a book at him while spewing vitriol at Crowley because, for all they know, he's been the headmaster. They blam him for the deaths of the students. He knew what was happening and he looked away, and he's going to do the same to them. Crowley shuffles through some of the pages. He can see why Mc would assume the worst. While waiting for them to calm down, he will explains himself.

Ramshackle had long abandoned when he became headmaster. It wasn't like he also wanted to know the history of the decaying dorm. Why do you think he meets with the ramshackle ghosts? Every time he thinks he's getting close to the truth, fifty more mysteries appear. It's all just a misunderstanding. He knows he can be irresponsible and let money blind him. Anyone would do that, but he'd never go as far as to let students hurt others just for the hell of it.

[sailtoafarawayland]

Living a Life (1/2)

Summary: Sometimes the things we see ourselves in most clearly aren’t made from glass, and sometimes death is not the ending we think it is, but a pause of breath that gives life to a new beginning.   

Rating: T for now

AO3 - FF

Chapter 1

Emma didn't really know why she did it, why she stopped at all.

The sidewalks were an icy mess, like the city didn't even care that they were staring a lawsuit in the face, and the clean, shoveled pathway through the cemetery  was just too tempting to pass up. She was exhausted after a day spent at the precinct with her latest collar – some sort of mix up with the payment, or the filing, or whatever nonsense it was this time – and she just wanted to get home.

She didn't like the thought of using the cemetery as a shortcut, but the thought of being out of work for two weeks while she recovered from a sprained ankle was even worse.

Maybe it was because she walked past so many other gravestones that had been recently dusted of snow, the past few days of New England weather not accumulating on top of them, brushed away by the hands of loved ones. Maybe it was because she saw the wreaths leftover from Christmas dotting the quiet cemetery, bright orbs of red peeking through snow sprinkled like icing sugar across them.

But she stopped in front of a gravestone that seemed lonelier than the rest, slightly removed from the path and resting beneath one of the many bare trees, days of hardened snow and ice frozen to its surface.

Looking at it – neglected, ignored – she wondered if that's what her grave would look like when she died.

She should probably get cremated.

She should probably just leave. She had no business here, staring at some stranger's grave like the person lying below it cared about anything – cared that no one had stopped to sweep off the snow, but she didn't.

Instead, she stepped off the clean, salted path and crunched through layers of icy snow, deeper than she had thought. She could feel it crumbling over the tops of her low boots, icy pebbles melting and trickling down her heel. Well, she was stuck for it now.

She crouched down in front of the gravestone, and raising one gloved hand, she began brushing the frozen chunks of snow from its shoulders. Removing the dusting of windblown ice from the engraved front proved to be more work than she had anticipated, but after a few minutes she had most of it cleared, the rest would just have to melt on its own. Her hard work rewarded, she finally took the time to read the face of the stone.

She hadn't been to any funerals in her life, but she knew enough that the brevity of what she saw surprised her.

Liam Jones, 1977 – 2011

Her breath left her body, a chill wind stirring her hair and leaving her feeling somehow exposed, like she was doing something she shouldn't be - peering through the window of someone’s life only to find it was an empty house, abandoned. She had expected an old gravestone, someone with no family left to come sit by them and wipe away the snow.

She hadn't been expecting this.

He was young, not much older than her, and since it was only February, it hadn't even been that long since he'd passed. She glanced at the frozen ground she was squatting above and moved hastily to the side, wondering if there was some kind of graveyard etiquette. There must be. Don't stand in front of the graves where people are...resting, she guessed. She wasn't really sure. She'd never had a family, a grave to visit.

She probably should be thankful for that, less heartache.

Snow removed, job done, she stuck her hand back in her pocket and headed down the path. She wouldn't be back again. He wasn't her family, whoever she was, and she wanted to leave the nagging fear that one day that might be her in the cemetery where it belonged.

Weeks passed and she told herself when she headed down the cemetery path again that it was because another big storm had just blown through Boston, and for some reason known only to the city, they never cleared or salted the sidewalks in this neighborhood.    

But she didn't try to stop herself when she reached his grave again, this time the name Liam Jones clearly visible, a thick blanket of fresh snow cushioning the top. She walked between the first row of graves and to the side of his, taking care not to step where she assumes he's buried. It seemed like the right way to go about it, even if there aren't any rules. She probably should've googled it, but she hadn't planned on coming back.

She really hadn't.

Instead of questioning it too much, she brushed the snow away with her sleeve and tossed a few stray, fallen twigs back to the ground. It wasn't until after she'd thrown them that she thought to make sure she hadn't dropped them onto another resting place – littering on dead people was most definitely poor graveyard etiquette.

When she stopped in spring, she told herself it was just to enjoy the blossoms on the cherry trees that blanket that portion of the cemetery, knowing it was a lie. She knew because she'd bothered to look up cemetery etiquette online, and yes, it was a thing. She was also mildly curious to see if anyone had been to visit him now that the weather was nicer, if she would even be able to tell.  

There were a few graves she'd passed that had small flowers gracing their shoulders, and others with ornate vases built into the stone, colorful blooms filling them. She brushed a scattering of cherry blossoms from the top of Liam's grave and wondered again at the emptiness of it. He must not have had anyone, because if he had, surely they would have written something other than just the year of his birth and death.

Was he a father, a brother? Was he a son? Was he alone, as she was?

“Who were you?” she asked, but no one answered.

The next time she passed through, the cherry trees had long since lost their blooms, and she swept the sickly sweet smelling remains of them from his grave, bending down to tug out the stray clumps of tall grass where the granite sat, immovable. It seemed pretty obvious no one else was visiting, and that not even the groundskeeper had enough hours in the day to really keep everything neat.

They'd had enough dry days that she didn't have to crouch to visit, and found herself sitting back onto the grass between his gravestone and the next.

“Is this...weird?” she asked, glancing around to make sure no one was listening to her talk to a dead person she didn't even know. “I'm sorry no one comes here but me.”

Suddenly she felt self-conscious, the whole situation settling heavily around her, the overpowering perfume of dying flowers clinging to her skin. What the hell was wrong with her that the only connection she'd allow herself was with some stranger's gravestone? Angry with herself, she jumped up and hurried back down the path towards home. She was out of the cemetery and an entire block away when she finally remembered the daisies in her bag. Reaching in, she brushed the crumpled edges of the petals and sighed.

There was another visitor a few graves down when she returned, but they clearly knew enough to not eyeball her or say anything when she walked back over to Liam's grave – mildly flustered – and gently placed the rumpled cluster of flowers on the ledge in front of his name. She brushed her hands roughly on her leather sleeves and left as quickly as she came.

The next time it was a lot easier to talk to him, even if she knew he wasn't listening, and he certainly couldn't talk back. The daisies hadn't lasted very long, so she tossed them and said she'd bring more next time, although she realized she may need to leave something other than flowers. Work had been slow lately, and she wasn't stopping at the precinct all that often to drop off skips – and she couldn't just make a special trip once a week to refresh his flowers.

That would be crazy.

She didn't even know him.

So when her fingers ran across the smooth ridges of the seashell on her windowsill at home, she put it in her pocket.

Spring faded into the suffocating heat of summer, the grass parched and brittle beneath her feet as she crouched next to Liam's grave, brushing away the small ant hills that had formed in the sandy soil with a vengeance she didn't know she had in her for the tiny creatures.

“You know,” she said, and the words hurt before they even left her mouth, “you might be the only person I've got to talk to. How pathetic is that?”

She worked around the back of the grave, tugging up stray weeds she'd missed the last time.

“I brought you something other than flowers. Maybe you weren't even a flower guy, when you were around. I'm not much of a flower girl, I don't think. I've never really had anyone to buy them for me though. There was Neal...but he...well, let's just say he didn't leave me with any good memories, let alone flowers. Is there anyone who has good memories of you? I wish I knew some. It would be nice to know who you were, not just sit here guessing.”

The cemetery was empty, and that's when Emma felt most at ease, most like she could just say what was on her mind without having to worry about anyone listening, or whether they think she's crazy.

She laid the scraggly bunch of weeds at the side of the grave, reminding herself to take it out to the trash can when she leaves.

“Here,” she shrugged, pulling the seashell from her pocket and placing it on the ledge where she last left flowers.

It was a spiral shell, small, but perfect and white with a soft, amber colored center.

“I don't know if you really like seashells either, but...I picked that up a few years ago down at the beach. In the summer, it's always full of families and couples, so I don't go much, but sometimes when it's a little grey and stormy...it's just the most peaceful place to sit and think.”

She didn't say the rest of what she was thinking aloud – that seeing the happy couples and the parents with their kids just made her stomach clench, that all she could think of was how that was never something her mom wanted to go with her.

– was never something she got the chance to do.

That feels like too much to unload, even on a dead guy.

“It's pretty peaceful here too,” she sighed.

Summer relented and fall crept into the city, the once green leaves crisping and drifting to the ground. Despite getting a payday, she was leaving the precinct in a pretty shitty mood. Her skip had almost given her the slip, and she was going to be nursing a bruised shoulder from where she tumbled in an alley trying to keep up with him. By the time she stepped through the archway of the cemetery, the sun had already set, the streetlamps casting cold halos across the damp ground. She heard them before she saw them, and it took her a few seconds to realize they'd gathered just off the path next to Liam's grave.

“Hey!” she snapped, immediately angered by what she was seeing. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Christ, relax, lady,” one of the kids drawled, taking a swig from his beer and clinking it against the gravestone next to Liam's.

Emma didn't know who it belonged to, but it was always well cared for, and she was furious. There were four kids, teenagers, and they'd stomped all over the damp ground in front of the graves, clearly not caring that they were drinking and walking all over someone's remains.

“Look, kid, you and your buddies have about ten seconds to take your crap and get the hell out of here. I just left the precinct, and I've got Chief Humbert on speed dial – ” They didn't need to know how untrue that was, that, in fact, the guy gave her the creeps “ – so I suggest you take your party somewhere else.”

A few eye rolls and snarky comments later and they'd cleared out, leaving Emma feeling both pleased and worried for herself. She plopped down next to Liam's grave, wincing as her palm hit a piece of broken glass.

“Little shits,” she hissed, pulling the chunk of glass from her hand and setting it aside. It was too dark to find all the pieces. “What the hell am I doing?”

She leaned forward and straightened the seashell that was still resting on the stone, glad it had survived Boston's vagrant youths for this long. Wet leaves stuck to the front and sides of the grave, and she pulled off a few that hid his name.

“That's going to be me one day,” she muttered, eyeing the paltry engraving once more. “Emma Swan, time stamp. I'll be lucky if anyone comes to chase delinquents away from my grave.”

Everything was wet and cold, the smell of decomposing leaves rich in the air, and while fall made most people think of pumpkins and Thanksgiving, warm cups of coffee on cold walks – right now she could only think about how dark and cold and oppressively heavy it must be six feet under.

The next time she visited, she left a little fist-sized pumpkin she'd picked up at the bodega. She'd thought about carving it, what with Halloween around the corner, but that was never something she'd done before, and if she messed it up, she'd have nothing.

It didn't take long for the pumpkin to turn into a Thanksgiving feast for the city's squirrels, barely more than a rind left behind like something someone had tossed into the garbage, and she felt bad. She should have come back sooner.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, removing the half-frozen leftovers and pulling the few stray weeds with enough gumption to grow in later November. “Looks like you had quite a bit of furry company while I was gone. If I were a normal person, I'd be home sharing a Thanksgiving meal with my family, or friends – but I don't have either of those, so here I am, talking to you. Happy Thanksgiving, Liam.”

It wasn't long after the first snow hit Boston, and Emma was reminded of that first time she visited the cemetery and wondered who Liam Jones had been, why no one stopped to visit his grave. She could have googled him, but if she was being honest with herself – which she was really trying to be better about these days – she didn't really want to know if he had family that couldn't be bothered to visit. If she didn't know, she couldn't be angry with them for no reason, since she had no right to be.

She didn't know Liam Jones.

She had no right to bear a grudge for him.

As Christmas approached, Emma saw more people visiting, sometimes with family, and other times alone, leaving little battery powered tea lights and wreaths to warm the cold stone. When she saw the bouquet of poinsettias at the bodega, she didn't feel the least bit strange as she placed it on the counter. There aren't any Christmas decorations in her apartment, but she felt like Liam should have something to show that at least one person was thinking about him on the first Christmas he was missing.  

The air was bitter and cold as she made the trek though from her neighborhood to the cemetery, but she didn't mind. When she reached Liam's grave, there was a soft blanket of fresh snow atop it, and she brushed it gently to the ground.

“You know, I really should thank you,” she said quietly, glad for the peace and solitude that hung around her. It made it easier to say the words. “I felt like maybe I was doing something nice for you, remembering you in the way I would want someone to think about me, just so that I wasn't completely forgotten, but I feel like coming here...shit, it'll be a year in a couple months. I think I figured something out. I don't want to be alone, Liam. I know I can't guarantee that I won't be alone one day in the ground, with no one left to care, but...I don't want to feel that way now. I've always kept people at a distance, too afraid to get hurt again, but I'm tired of being alone. I want a life, I want to live it...”

There was no answer, but she hadn't been expecting one.

Instead she leaned down and brushed the snow off the little ledge that still held her seashell, frozen to the stone, and gently placed the poinsettias beside it. She reached out and traced her finger along the carved edge of his name before turning to leave, glancing up at the blue sky between the bare branches of the cherry tree.

“If you're, uh, listening anywhere, well, thanks for everything, Liam. Merry Christmas.”

~ * ~ * ~

When Killian woke, it felt like he was being dragged from the bottom of the sea, every force on earth weighing him down still not enough to keep his blissful, dark peace from being disturbed.

Once the light hit him, it wasn't like in the movies. He didn't wake up groggy, or wondering where he was, confused about the machines beeping around him and the tubes connected to his body.

No, he knew exactly where he was and what led him here, and he wanted nothing more than to sink back down to that darkness that was so complete and starving it devoured every thought before he could think it. He wanted to close his eyes and fall back into that oblivion that had been his only respite from the flashes of memory, the pull of voices.

He didn't want to have to remember the sound that steel makes when it cracks and groans, the way the dock shook beneath their feet as the freighter slid into the crane, the sheer force of it toppling the massive tower of heavy steel as easily as if it were nothing more than a house of cards. He wanted to forget running for his brother, watching the mass of cables and metal come down over them – screaming, screaming his name and trying to reach him, unable to move, unable to breathe...

“Can you hear me? My name is Dr. Whale.”

The voice was leaning over him, his mouth moving, more words floating around him. Killian didn't understand why they wouldn't just leave him alone – he tried to roll onto his side, ignoring the the objections from the doctor, and that's when he felt it – a pain that burned up his arm and into his brain, as if his hand had been crushed by his movement. He jerked his arm, trying to understand what he'd done, why it hurt so badly – and then he saw it.

The bandages, the stump, the strangely shortened arm that most definitely used to have a hand at the end of it – except now there was nothing, and it couldn't possibly be his arm he was looking at, his hand that was missing, because he could feel it. The agony was so real it eclipsed everything else – the pain in his ribs and elsewhere vanishing as he thrashed and tore out lines and catheters.

There were hands on him, holding him – voices shouting, someone screaming. He was screaming, but it was so far away, a sea of darkness rising between him and the place where his hand wasn't, cradling and dragging him back down to that deep oblivion where there was nothing.

Nothing at all.  

Tagging: @justanother-unluckysoul @kmom0f4 @the-darkdragonfly @teamhook @zaharadessert @xarandomdreamx @jrob64 @wefoundloveunderthelight @tiganasummertree @pirateprincessofpizza @lfh1226-linda @alexa-fangirl-forever @alifeofdreams @superchocovian @donteattheappleshook @hollyethecurious @caught-in-the-filter @snowbellewells @itsfabianadocarmo

[adhd-wifi]

MDZS Modern AU Fic Tips (Festivals)

So I asked a while back if anyone was interested in some fic tips for writing Chinese modern AUs, and y’all seemed enthusiastic. But…when I tried putting it all in a single post it got…really…really long…

So I split them into a bunch of posts (Yes I copy-pasted this intro on all of them because I’m lazy)! Here are the links:

Names & Stuff

Modern Chinese Cultural Stuff

Superstitions & Beliefs 

Festivals (You are here)

Living in China

Anyways, these are based on my experiences living in Singapore and China, and I hope these posts are helpful. On to it.

Content Warning: Magpie Bashing

Festivals (Warning: LONG. Good Luck.)

Note: I do not have personal experience with all of these. For those I have celebrated, I’ll indicate with a (*). Also I’ll only be talking about how we celebrate them (typically), because diving into the history and meanings of it all would take like 8 years (not literally but you know). Fee free to look them up, and ask your nearest Chinese human for any extra details. If they know it. You might want to look up what the lunar calendar is too. It’s basically the moon cycle calendar, but I am too bad at memorizing how it works so I just google the dates every single year. 

Also, I’m restricting this post to ONLY Chinese & Singaporean versions of celebrations. Many other regional ethnic groups celebrate the same or similar festivals, but I don’t know enough about their versions of the festivities. Another thing is that my family is from Dalian & Harbin in the NorthEast, so there is more Northern bias in my post so I might have some info that is inaccurate to festivities in the South. I did try to search for some South-specific traditions, since Yunmeng/Hubei is in South China, but I’m not entirely sure how accurate those details are.

Chinese New Year (*) - Late Jan to Early Feb (15 days after CNY day)

Before CNY, often on the eve of the actual date, we decorate our homes with red (don’t you dare skip out on decking your home with RED) decorations such as lanterns, red and orange flowers, those vertical paper banners with auspicious calligraphy on them (what are they called in English???) and whatever these things are

As kids, my sister and I would make those loop paper chains out of red and yellow paper a lot. We never knew what to do with them when the festivities were over

Spring cleaning is extremely important, we usually do it (extensively) from about a month before the festivities (and get yelled at a lot by our Chinese mothers & grandmothers especially) up to CNY Eve

Please don’t do any cleaning, particularly sweeping or throwing the trash out, on the day itself. You’re throwing the new year luck away. 

Other preparations include: buying new clothes, often with at least one red thing, visiting friends during the month prior so you don’t have to do so on the day itself and giving them little gifts and red packets, & burning new year offerings for ancestors

You will probably see lion dances on the streets and during new year parades a lot, sometimes accompanied by dragon dances, though the former is much more common. They also tend to give private performances at a discount during the CNY period, though lion dances aren’t restricted to only perform on CNY and in fact perform for special events in general, not just cultural festivities

On the night of CNY Eve, we have reunion dinners, in which we gather our entire extended family (when possible) and have a really loud, really energetic dinner party while watching the CNY Spring Gala on TV together. Or just eating if we don’t have access to a TV.

Include fish on the menu. At least one major fish main dish, not a side dish. It’s from a lucky saying: 年年有余 - nián nián yǒu yú, meaning something along the lines of “To have more prosperity this year”. The Chinese word for fish (鱼 - yú) sounds the same as 余, therefore we have fish every year. Yes it’s a pun, as many Chinese superstitions and beliefs are

Other menu items you could include: homemade dumplings (a FUCKton of them), uncut noodles, chicken or duck, pork, Chinese radish/carrot cake (side note: why the FUCK do Western articles ALWAYS translate this to “turnip cake” it’s made out of fucking RADISH or CARROT I swear to HELL), Chinese yam cakes, good alcohol and traditional sweets like tang yuan (this is basically the original version of mochi, filled with black or normal sesame filling and served in a clear, sweet soup)

There’s also one Cantonese dish known as (撈起 - Lo Hei) which is basically a salad of shredded carrot, radish, cucumber with strips of sashimi-style fish strips like salmon. You serve it to the table, pour crushed peanuts, fried dough crisps, and sweet sauce all over it, and your entire table reaches in with chopsticks and mixes everything together. It’s more common in Singapore and Malaysia than it actually is in Hong Kong and China, but I’ve had it in China before in the springtime. I fucking hate it. 

By the way, a fun game to play is the coin dumpling game. Basically, when you make the dumplings, put clean coins into some of them, and whoever eats the dumpling with the coins inside are considered super lucky for the year. I wasn’t ever allowed to make them though, my 20 years of dumpling-folding have failed me I still suck at it so everyone knows which ones are mine.

Usually, relatives living overseas would go to China for the New Year if they can, and they would take turns hosting the dinner each year. You would traditionally only have a reunion dinner in a family home, mostly because everything outside is closed

During the celebrations, lighting firecrackers and sparklers is part of the fun. Keep a close eye on the kids. 

Wearing traditional clothing isn’t necessary, but encouraged

At midnight, the younger, unmarried family members will present their married elders with gifts (usually two oranges per person or a small handmade craft) while wishing them well for the year, and in turn the elders will return the wishes and gift the youngsters red packets with money. 

The celebration period lasts for 15 days, but people typically go back to work a day or two after the actual CNY date

Personal note: I have only actually celebrated CNY once in China, back when I was tiny, so most of this is based on Singaporean experiences, what I know my in-China relatives, who live in Dalian, do, and what I’ve double checked online. But CNY is huge in China and many places celebrate it differently, so don’t get too worried about following this to the dot.

The Lantern Festival - Early to Mid Feb

In Singapore it’s actually illegal to celebrate the Lantern Festival traditionally on a large scale because of the potential fire hazards & pollution, so it’s somewhat merged with the Mid-Autumn festival here and thus I don’t know as much about this one in a “proper” Chinese context (I had to go to school in Singapore this time of year)

But anyways

The Lantern Festival comes immediately after CNY, on the 15th day of the first lunar month. It’s seen as a day of freedom for all, so everyone takes to the streets, lighting up the night with candles and lanterns

Lantern-walks are common, in which everyone holds a lantern - there are many kinds to choose from - and just walk up and down the streets together

These lantern-walks often take place alongside the official festival parades 

The dragon dances mentioned earlier are more likely to appear during the lantern festival than CNY, and the lion dances of course come as well

It gets crowded a lot. Hold onto your kids. 

Lantern riddles are fun games, in which they string up lanterns with papers hanging from them. Upon these papers are the riddles, and if you got them right you could win prizes. Or at least bragging rights amongst your family and friend groups

If you’re in a river town, you’ll likely have a chance to see water lanterns, which are also common during the Mid-Autumn Festival. They’re paper lanterns, sometimes made in lotus form, carrying wishes of prosperity. This can come in two forms, an official river lantern parade where they make HUGE lanterns for show, or smaller lanterns that just flow along. Sounds perfect for a Yunmeng Jiang family celebration, don’t you think?

Another one is the sky lanterns, which CQL watchers will recognize. People will gather together, usually on a hill, and release lanterns into the skies. Some will make them themselves, but most people will just buy pre-made ones. Like in CQL, you make a wish upon these lanterns, then sit down and eat tang yuan together.

They apparently eat a lot of tang yuan on this festival

A lot of romantic meet-ups happen on this festival (and the Mid-Autumn Festival) (y’all know what to do with this information)

This is considered the last chance of family time following on from CNY before you all return to your normal lives

The QingMing Festival (*) - Early Apr

AKA the Tomb-Sweeping Festival

To put it very basically, this is when we go to our deceased loved one’s graves and clean said graves 

We go to the cemetery in the early morning, wipe down the gravestones, clear them of debris like leaves and such, then we make offerings of food. A lot of the times, we would basically lay out a feast before the grave(s), lighting incense and also decorating the graves with flowers and such

Please do not ever eat anything in those offerings. It’s not for the living. Therefore, please feel free to stab your chopsticks upright into that bowl of rice.

You can burn offerings like paper too, usually in a burning urn (??? is it an urn?), but in my experience we weren’t allowed to do that at my grandma’s grave since it was a crowded cemetery so I don’t know how it works exactly

In my personal experiences, we usually stayed in the cemetery for about an hour, praying to the deceased and sort of chatting with them, hoping they’re doing well in the afterlife and updating them on our lives

After that’s done, we go have a picnic somewhere down the mountain and fly kites while getting bullied by asshole magpies

They keep stealing my food because apparently even they know you shouldn’t eat the food left out for the dead

One stole my necklace once ;-;

Anyways the food offerings left out are typically cleared the next morning (latest) by us or you pay the cemetery caretakers to dispose of it, but the latter is looked down upon for good reason

It’s really just best to clean it up yourselves when you can. For everyone’s sake.

The Dragon Boat Festival (*) - Late Jun to Early Jul

You could probably make a sports anime about this festival, because the main even at the Dragon Boat Festival is the dragon boat racing (shocking)

Okay all joking aside, during this festival, which is a summer event, dragon boat racers compete with one another in long, narrow wooden canoes with a Chinese dragon head carved out in the front and painted scales on the side, often really brightly coloured

They row to the beat of loud drums, with a drummer sitting at the head of each boat, facing their boat’s rowers, beating the drum as their team rows

People watching the races can do so from the shore, where they’ll be eating glutinous rice with meat/nuts/beans wrapped in large, woven bamboo leaves into a triangle shape, called 粽子 - zòng zi.  (The Malaysians & Indonesians have this too, but they use banana leaves instead)

In some places, you have viewers in viewing boats too, with the race course marked off with buoys. I fell into the water once from one of these. Luckily they make you all wear life-vests. 

Also a limited occurrence but rarer, some places will have sort of official “cheerleading” boats, in which a bunch of colourfully dressed people will shout and cheer for the racers as a whole, often waving flags the same colours as their clothes. They’re often standing, but in the same kind of dragon boats. You have to be affiliated with the local dragon boat community / heritage board to be allowed to be one of these “cheerleaders” though

When the official races aren’t happening though, visitors are often taken around the river. You can technically do this at any time, but the Chinese believe that the time of the Dragon Boat Festival is the best time for traversing the great rivers

Other things people do during this festival include drinking realgar wine, making perfume packets for children, and hanging mosquito-repellent herbs on doors and windows, but I’ve never seen this in practice and couldn’t find much else on these

To be honest, this particular festival is seen as a thing of lingering cultural heritage or just something of a traditional ceremonial practice, but is overall kinda dying as a full-fledged festival, with only the racing surviving the passage of time (In fact, this has become more of a leisure event than a festival in Singapore in recent years)

The QiXi Festival - Mid to Late Aug???

Not gonna lie I didn’t know this one existed until I looked it up

I knew the legend surrounding it (The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl - Please look it up it’s a beautiful story even though it’s not realistic because the magpies aren’t assholes) but didn’t know it was an actual holiday at all

Basically it’s kind of the Chinese version of Valentine’s Day, but it takes place in like August

Traditionally, girls took this time to show off their skills in the “feminine arts” such as weaving, sewing, fruit carving (???), tea-making (?????) and poetry (?????????). I’m confused.

They also ate special pastries and children gave flower garlands to the sacred ox statues

Apparently it’s mostly only celebrated in more traditional/rural areas now because most modern Chinese people just celebrate the Western Valentine’s Day

The legend gets to stay though

The Hungry Ghost Festival (*) - Late Jul to Early Aug (Start) / Late Aug to Early Sept (End)

This one is not a festive festival at all. You shouldn’t be enjoying this festival as a living person. But this is probably the best festival for any fics set in the modern world revolving around dead spirits being active out of everything on this list

This festival lasts the entire 7th month of the lunar calendar, so the Chinese will literally just call it the “Seventh Month (七月 - qī yuè)” or the “Ghost Month (鬼月 - guǐ yuè)” 

I’ve never even heard anyone refer to it by its full name in Chinese, which is apparently 中元节 - zhōng yuán jié or 盂兰盆节 - yú lán pén jié according to Wikipedia

Basically, the Gates of Hell the Afterlife have opened for the month to get the spirits of the deceased ease their suffering for a bit. So, the festival is actually NOT celebrated by the living, instead, it’s “celebrated” by the ghosts of the deceased

Living human practices during this festival include making various food offerings (the main point of the festival) for the spirits, usually much more seriously and/or extravagantly than typical offerings, burning offerings such as paper money, paper houses, paper cars, etc in large quantities because this is the best time for the spirits to receive them, putting on special “performances for the dead” in which performers will dance and sing to a room of empty chairs, and having special family prayer sessions in which we “speak” to the deceased directly (Luckily, they don’t usually answer us)

Nowadays, only the first two of those practices are really still practiced as seriously as they used to be, for individual families at least

Again, if you see food being left out on the side of the street, especially if there’s incense or something next to it, please don’t eat it or even touch it. Don’t be the ignorant guy in a horror movie

People who can see/hear/sense spirits and environmentalists hate this festival, because ghosts can be terrifying even when harmless, and all the burning contributes to climate change

I happen to be both of those. I am also sensitive to smoke. So...

Ironically I don’t actually hate this festival THAT much but...

Personal note: I’ve never been to China during the seventh month, and because they make it a point to not really talk about it, I only know the Singaporean experiences. Telling ghost stories is both encouraged and shunned during this month here. Malaysian-Chinese ghost stories are fucking horrifying. Give me more.

Mid-Autumn Festival (*) - Late Sept to Early Oct

My personal favourite festival on this list. I don’t like crowded places, but I make exceptions for this one when I can. I would call this the most fun and enjoyable festival out of all of them. 

When speaking Chinese, most of the time we’d just shorten it to 秋节 - qiū jié from the full name of 中秋节 - zhōng qiū jié 

When speaking English (in Singapore, but you can use these in English fics and people tend to understand it fine), we also call it the Mooncake Festival, the Autumn Moon Festival, or the Harvest Moon Festival (this one is quite an old name though)

In modern times, this is celebrated very similarly to the famous Natsu Matsuri (Summer Festival) in Japan, in which a huge festival site is fully decorated in colourful lanterns and filled with countless stalls of food, games, and festival products such as more lanterns, traditional dress rentals if you’re lucky, wooden toys, cloth products, “festival” tea & wine, and many more

You are encouraged to wear cheongsam/qipao to the festivities, but honestly most people don’t anymore, but they dress their kids in cultural clothing a lot (in Singapore you’ll also see kiddies running around in other traditional dress, such as yukata, summer hanbok, festive baju kurung, etc.)

In some places, special dragon or lion dances will be performing

Expect to find a FUCKTON of fresh fruit stalls, including pumpkins, melons, pomelos, persimmons, pomegranates, maybe starfruits, dragonfruits & guavas, and probably a heck lot of longans if you’re somewhere in South China. Also expect every individual large fruit to be decorated with red ribbons and colourful wrapping paper

Also out of every five stalls, at least one will be a mooncake stall

Mooncakes come in multiple varieties! The most common are the white lotus bean paste ones, the ones with salted egg yolks (single yolk and double yolk), snowskin ones which as much softer and sweeter, red bean paste cakes, etc.

They make some super cute shapes too!

There are even more savoury options with minced pork filling or prawn/fish filling (not a fan of the fish ones), but they’re made with a flakier pastry than the sweet ones (Note: sometimes we don’t call these mooncakes, but it depends)

Basically the sweet ones use a pastry that’s more like a typical sweet tart shell while the savoury ones use something that’s more like a non-sweetened croissant 

Traditionally, people would make the mooncakes together at home, and offer them to the moon goddess during moon worship, but nowadays most people just buy them and eat them

This festival also shares a lot of the same customs as CNY & the Lantern Festival, such as: 

Having another reunion dinner. Duck is a very common dish, along with seasonal crops. Lotus dishes are also popular around this time, depending on where you are. 

Lanterns everywhere. Water and sky lanterns are also common. You’ll also see people playing with firecrackers and sparklers.

In much more rural areas, you might get to experience the Burning Pagoda tradition, in which they set up a seven-tier tower made up of wood and straw and burn it while dancing around it. This practice is similar to the Bon Odori even in Japan. 

Fun fact: This is also basically the Lantern Festival of Singapore, because the actual Lantern Festival isn’t celebrated here

Bonus: I made a post about the most famous myth of this festival that relates to MDZS.

The ChongYang Festival - Mid to Late Oct

Also known as the Double Ninth Festival (in English) and the Senior Festival (slang)

This is basically the festival of paying respects to our elders, both living and dead

There are...going to be a fuckton of chrysanthemums everywhere. Chrysanthemum flowers decorating the place, chrysanthemum cakes (I don’t recommend googling it if you have severe trypophobia, some of the more traditional cakes have a lot of seeds and stuff on top which may be upsetting, but I would say it’s at least better than a hollow lotus pod), chrysanthemum wine, all of that

Common activities include going on easy hikes or mountain walks with the living elders, and maybe visiting the graves of those who have passed and paying respects

It’s dying in modern times, but still seen as at least a day of relaxing with your elderly family and friends

The DongZhi Festival - Late Dec (just before Christmas mostly)

The Winter Solstice Festival

Nothing much is done, we really mostly just have a special dinner together, eating dumplings, noodle soup, mutton, and hotpot. Alcohol is often present at such dinners, and you would toast to the solstice 

You’d also pray and stuff like most of these festivals, but I think that’s a given by now lol

Modern Chinese people will often get together during this time and merge it with their Christmas dinners

Aside from that, we really just celebrate Christmas, though now you can add a line of cultural significance to those modern AU Christmas fics :3

Bonus Info: There is also a Summer Solstice festival called the Xia Zhi Festival that’s essentially the same as this, except you eat a lot of noodles and go swimming, but it’s not really significant anymore in modern times, the DongZhi festival only really surviving because of Christmas, so I didn’t include it in the list

Alright, that one took like 84 years. I’m tired LMAO. 

[justlightlysedated]

the way to a manes' heart: part two of sugar and spice and everything nice

part one

*

dedicated to @michaels-blackhat 🥰💖🖤

*

Posted on Michael's Instagram at eight forty-six p.m. is a picture of a bouquet of edible flowers set in a beautiful handmade glass vase, full of borage blossoms and lavender and hibiscus and pansies and violets and a rose or two and some sage flowers with some basil and mint and coriander leaves. A small stark white card taped to the front that reads, these are just to repay you for the most delicious dessert i have ever tasted.

The caption reads:

guerinsflowers step one: give the boy some flowers

Followed by the following comment thread almost immediately after posting:

rosa.zombie. 👀

delucastyle 👀👀

valentimcsexy 👀👀👀

iamcamiam 👀👀👀👀

rosa.zombie. @guerinsflowers actually i just read the card and hmmmmmm

rosa.zombie. @guerinsflowers a link to a google document titled proof that michael guerin is an alien

-

Rosa walks in through the back of the bakery, opening the door to the kitchen and is almost smacked in the face with a box.

"I need you to make a delivery," Alex says, voice completely devoid of emotion, but just strained enough for Rosa to know that something is most definitely up.

She grabs the box or risks an Alex Tantrum™️ over her messing up one of his works of art, and then sweeps her gaze over the room, finding the bouquet almost immediately, more depleted than in the picture.

She looks to the counter and spots the carnage of flowers all over.

Rosa turns her gaze back to Alex, eyes wide with delight and Alex raises a hand. "Don't. I'm just thanking him for the flowers."

Rosa raises an eyebrow and walks further into the kitchen setting the box down and opening it amidst heavy protests from Alex, meaning a low whine at the back of his throat.

Rosa opens the box and just barely stops herself from snorting.

Whatever the dessert is is encased in a tempered chocolate coffin, with realistic looking vines and flowers all over it made out of what Rosa assumed is different colored fruit jelly and complete with a tiny fondant gravestone with Michael's name on it.

"What is it?" She asks, and looks up at him curiously.

Alex gives her a look, "It's a coffin."

Rosa gives him a matching look.

He sighs, long suffering, "It's an entremet."

Rosa raises an eyebrow.

"You wouldn't want to eat it," he says, and Rosa rolls her eyes.

She looks back down to the dessert and tilts her head to the side. "How long did it take you to make this?"

Alex doesn't answer which is telling.

"Don't you think sending the boy you want to date a coffin after he gave you a bouquet of flowers is sending him the wrong message?"

She can feel Alex's incredulous stare at the side of her head, "I'm not trying to send any message beside 'thank you' and I'm pretty sure that he'll understand."

 Rosa turns to him then, “Oh?”

Alex’s cheeks flush pink, and he sputters. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?”

Alex just exhales roughly. “He came over last night to give me the bouquet and then challenged me to create a tasty tasting dessert out of it.”

Rosa just huffs out a laugh amazed and looks back to the dessert. “He really does speak Alex,” she says to herself.

Alex pretends not to hear her as he moves towards the other side of the kitchen. He stifles a yawn with the back of his hand as he starts to clean and Rosa just sighs.

“Okay,” she says, and he turns to look at her, brow furrowing. “I’ll take this and then we’re calling in a favor from Maria and she’s going to come help me while you sleep.”

Alex just gives her a look, “I’m fine. All I need is a coffee-”

“Yeah, no,” she says and closes the box up again. “Just get the breads started and donuts proved. I can handle the shop for a day, and you don’t have any orders that can’t wait for another day.”

Alex just sighs and nods his head once before he turns back towards the sink.

Rosa shakes her head and walks back out to her car.

-

Direct Messages between Michael and Alex:

guerinsflowers let me see if i got this right: a basil and mint infused vanilla cake, a cucumber and lemon sorbet with borage blossoms, all encased in a white chocolate rosewater and orange blossom flavored mousse, with lavender, violet and lemon flavored jelly

manelydead You only missed one thing. I’m reluctantly impressed.

guerinsflowers 😁

manelydead 🙄

guerinsflowers do i get a prize if i do guess it all right?

manelydead You can bring me a cup of coffee tomorrow morning and I’ll make you a super secret breakfast pastry.

-

"The chocolate," Michael says, voice making Alex jump as he tries to open the door to the bakery.

He turns towards him, and wonders what the hell he's doing there at barely five in the morning.

"What about the chocolate?" Alex asks feeling confused and like he hasn't drunk nearly enough coffee, because he hasn't drunk nearly enough coffee.

"It was infused with the sage," he says triumphantly, and Alex finally remembers what he's talking about.

"Right," he says and feels something bubbling in the pit of his. Maybe he should eat something before drinking more coffee.

His eyes dart to Michael's hands and he finally notices the two steaming coffees in his hands.

"I guess I owe you a pastry," he says, and Michael smiles, a bright and happy thing, that makes Alex feel really strange, almost like he's lightheaded.

He really needs to eat something before he passes out.

He turns away from Michael and finally gets the door open.

Michael follows after him wordlessly, and Alex leads him through the dark and quiet shop all the way through the double doors and into the kitchen. He flips the light switch on, and pulls off his messenger bag and jacket, hanging them by the backdoor and grabbing his apron.

He turns around and sees that Michael has made himself comfortable in one of the stools surrounding the counter in the middle of the kitchen, right where Alex has the bouquet that he gave him.

Alex puts his apron and stands on the other side of the counter across from him.

Michael smiles at Alex and pushes one of the coffees over to him. 

"The cake was delicious by the way," he says, when Alex just blinks at him, trying to figure out what exactly it is that Michael wants from him, because so far, he's been drawing a great big blank.

"I knew you'd be able to come up with something tasty," he continues.

Alex nods his head slightly, "And what did it taste like?"

Michael closes his eyes like he's remembering the taste of something delicious and sighs. "It tasted like summer."

Which was exactly what Alex had hoped it would taste like.

Alex feels something jump in the pit of his stomach and turns towards the fridge. He did promise Michael a super secret pastry and he really needs to eat something to get rid of this weird feeling.

He’d come early to have more time to bake because he’d given Rosa the day off since Wednesdays were usually slow days.

Which he was glad he’d decided to do that, because there was no way that he would be able to explain away Michael’s appearance, even if he told her the truth, because she would just make assumptions about feelings that he simply did not have.

After the divorce cakes, the donuts were what people usually came to get. Alex would have to limit himself on the decorations today, but he thinks that he could get everything done, and make some savory breakfast pastries as a speciality for the day.

Decision made, Alex pulls out the ingredients he needs making sure that there is still enough from the pastry dough that he had made yesterday.

Alex starts to cook and the rest of the world falls away. He just barely remembers that Michael is in the room, only keeping him in the peripheral of his attention so that he doesn’t do something really embarrassing like start singing and dancing.

Alex cuts shallots and dices some garlic and sets them to simmer with just a little bit of olive oil while he quickly slices several slices of bacon until they’re very thin and then tosses them into the pan, grabbing the handle and moving it around until it’s more or less mixed together. He lowers the heat a little bit and then starts to slice the portabella mushrooms.

Once the mushrooms are in the pan and Alex has mixed everything together with a wooden spoon, he grates the gruyere cheese quickly into a small glass bowl.

Once he’s sure he has enough, he sets it aside and takes the pastry dough out of the fridge.

Alex sprinkles some flour on top of the counter and he looks up, and sort of stops as he catches a glimpse of Michael’s face, stuttering his attention to a standstill.

He’s leaning his head on one hand, elbow hooked on the counter as he stares with wide bright eyes, a look on his face that Alex doesn’t recognize, but makes his heart beat faster.

Alex just shakes his head and refocuses on what he’s doing.

He rolls out the pastry, not too much since he doesn’t want to push down the layers too much, but thin enough that he’d be able to shape it.

He cooks the mushrooms down until they’re not releasing anymore moisture and then sets it aside to cool while he starts to cut out the small square shapes out of the big rectangle of pastry dough.

Alex starts to hum to himself without really realizing it, and is singing beneath his breath by the time he’s filling up the pastries, spooning some of the mushroom mixture and then lifting the corners up to create a little basket.

By the time he's done and he's putting the pastries to prove, he's dancing a little.

Alex loses himself in making the dough for the doughnuts, and it's only when he's putting the dough to prove in three separate bowls that he hears a rhythmic tapping going along to his singing that he remembers that he's not alone. 

Alex stops signing abruptly, but shuts the proving drawer, turning back to the pastries to take them out of the plastic bag he'd left the trays in.

Alex puts one in to bake since they're only just proved and need at least half an hour more, but he's hungry and he's sure that Michael is too.

He sets the timer on and turns to Michael again.

Michael is still staring at him.

"What?" Alex asks when he doesn't stop or say anything.

"You're just," He starts and then stops laughing a little. "You get so lost in your own world while you're cooking. I can see you really love doing this."

Alex makes a face at that. "Isn't the point of slaving your life away for money to find something that you love to do?"

Michael snorts and shakes his head a little before he slides off his seat and makes his way around the counter to where Alex is.

"You're funny," he says as he inches closer.

"Most people find me disturbing," Alex says, his tone obviously calling Michael weird for not finding him disturbing.

"Most people aren't me," he says and stops just right before he bumps into Alex. "And I think you're-"

"Weird?" Alex questions interrupting him.

Michael just shakes his head, "Fascinating."

Alex stops breathing, and blinks at Michael stupidly, trying to come up with a rational explanation for that.

"What do you want from me?" Alex asks before he can stop himself.

Michael licks his lips and moves in a little bit closer, the heat and smell of him sinking into Alex and making him shudder slightly, eyes fluttering.

"I want to know everything about you, and I want to eat every single thing that you cook or bake, but what I really want-"

He leans in closer, reaching up with one hand and brushing his fingers across Alex's cheek.

"You have flour on your cheek," he whispers from way too close. "It was distracting."

Alex sways a little bit closer, eyes darting to Michael's mouth and back up to his eyes, dark and heavy and on Alex like he's hungry, but not for the pastries.

Alex feels tingly all over and a little discombobulated, like he can't think straight.

Michael exhales softly, licking his lips, and moves backwards and Alex thinks, what, no, and follows after him, lifting one hand to Michael's face, fingers brushing across the bristly hair of his stubble and into his hair, pressing his palm down on the side of Michael's face before he's following the instinct urging him deep in his belly, and kisses him.

The kiss is too hard and kind of off center, but Michael makes a low noise at the back of his throat and then tilts his head and kisses Alex back, nipping lightly against his bottom lip and sending sparklers going off behind his eyelids.

Alex moves into Michael, lifting his other hand to drag it into Michael's hair and tugs on the curls a little too hard, but Michael just makes a low noise, almost like a growl, and then he's pushing into the kiss, pushing Alex back until he's pressed against the fridge, magnets rattling down to the floor.

He kisses Alex harder, biting down on his lip and licking into his mouth and Alex loses track of time and space and gravity in a way that never happens unless he's baking.

The timer startles them apart and Michael pulls away, chest heaving, cheeks flushed, hair a mess, mouth red and wet, and Alex feels something shift in his very core.

Oh, he thinks as he tries to catch his breath with equal amounts of anticipation and dread. 

Oh, no.

-

Posted on Michael’s Instagram at eight forty-seven a.m. is a selfie, really zoomed into his face, showing off a huge smile and bright eyes and there is flour in his stubble and on his ear and his hair.

The caption reads:

guerinsflowers sometimes dreams do come true

Followed almost immediately by the following comment thread:

rosa.zombie. SHUT. UP

iamcamiam @delucastyle Call me right now!

lizziethestrange NO WAY!!

delucastyle holy shit

valentimcsexy did you even have to get to step two???

guerinsflowers @valentimcsexy 😉

intergalacticbitch What did I fucking say?

manelydead 🖤

guerinsflowers @manelydead 😍❤❤❤

manelydead @guerinsflowers 🙄 you're blocked

[f4liveblogarchives]

Fantastic Four Vol 1 #240

Thur Dec 17 2020 [11:47 PM] Wack'd: We open on Pietro! He took off running from the Himalayas and has been running for like a week straight, all the way to the Baxter Building. [11:47 PM] Bocaj: He has really good shoes [11:48 PM] Wack'd: Pietro has not stopped for the creepy robot secretary. He has instead approached Ben in the dead of night while he's hiding Franklin's Christmas presents. [11:48 PM] Wack'd: Three guesses what happens next and the first two don't count. [11:49 PM] maxwellelvis: BANG! ZOOM! [11:49 PM] Wack'd: Yeeeeep. [11:49 PM] maxwellelvis: Straight to the Moon! [11:49 PM] Umbramatic: oh no [11:49 PM] Wack'd: No, I don't think the Inhumans are on the moon yet 😛 [11:50 PM] Wack'd: Oh no! Frankie's becoming a gritty antihero to appeal to today's cynical youth!

[11:51 PM] maxwellelvis: DO IT! [11:52 PM] Wack'd: Reed breaks up the fight. Turns out Quicksilver didn't recognize Ben's new face and assumed he was also an intruder. [11:52 PM] Wack'd: Reed is concerned that Ben does not angst when explaining the situation. [11:52 PM] Bocaj: ...... [11:53 PM] Wack'd: I...guess it makes sense? Ben is actually historically very bad at being stoic and closed-off. He mopes! It's what he does [11:54 PM] Umbramatic: Ben Angst™️ [11:54 PM] Wack'd: Anyway, Pietro fills in the backstory, and we're...actually circling back to Medusa having been abducted by a shadowy organization? [11:55 PM] Wack'd: I assumed we'd probably quietly forget about that one. [11:55 PM] Wack'd: So this organization is called The Enclave and they start bombing Attilan, declaring war with the help of their man on the inside. [11:56 PM] Wack'd: Again, three guesses. [11:56 PM] Bocaj: Oh, they're relevant to the avengers annual I'm currently reading for liveblog [11:56 PM] Bocaj: Neat [11:57 PM] maxwellelvis: Ooh! Ooh! I know! I know how their man on the inside is! [11:57 PM] Wack'd: Yes, max? [11:57 PM] maxwellelvis: Correct! [11:57 PM] maxwellelvis: Maximus the Mad, smart guy [11:57 PM] Umbramatic: ITS PIKACHU [11:58 PM] Wack'd: Yeah it's Maximus. [11:58 PM] Umbramatic: FUCK [11:58 PM] maxwellelvis: It's ALWAYS Maximus [11:58 PM] Wack'd: So not only are they at war but now there's also a mysterious illness. [11:58 PM] Bocaj: Hu hu hu [11:58 PM] Wack'd: And Inhumans are dying by the dozens. [11:58 PM] Bocaj: Suuuure [11:59 PM] Bocaj: Do any of them have names is my question [11:59 PM] maxwellelvis: He's like Loki without the Puckish charm [11:59 PM] Bocaj: Yeah Maximus is basically a worse Loki [11:59 PM] Wack'd: @Bocaj Probably not. [11:59 PM] Bocaj: I don't mean more monstrous I just mean. Just less in all regards [12:00 AM] Wack'd: Johnny pokes a hole in this: why the fuck didn't Pietro just take Lockjaw? And apparently Lockjaw is refusing to leave Crystal's side until it's confirmed the Four will turn up. [12:00 AM] Umbramatic: pupper [12:00 AM] Wack'd: (Personally I think Bryne just really liked the image of Pietro running for a week but what do I know) [12:01 AM] Wack'd: And so with the confirmation given Lockjaw arrives and whisks everyone back to Attilan! Everyone except Frankie who still needs to train apparently before she can handle Inhuman stuff. [12:01 AM] Bocaj: Inhuman Quest not unlocked until Lvl 10 [12:01 AM] Wack'd: And Franklin, who's asleep. [12:02 AM] Wack'd: Johnny: Jeez, this place hasn't looked this bad since I--uh--y'know what never mind

[12:03 AM] maxwellelvis: "Rince ROU ried ro rurn rit rown!" [12:04 AM] Bocaj: Thanks Scoob [12:04 AM] Wack'd: You know, normally I'd complain that we've completely skipped the actual story and all the interesting stuff happened off panel, but. This is an Inhumans story. I don't think we missed much.

[12:05 AM] Bocaj: Wow everything really did happen off panel [12:05 AM] Bocaj: Hahah wow [12:05 AM] Wack'd: Not quite! [12:06 AM] Wack'd: Black Bolt is very sick and is using his lifeforce to keep all the Inhumans alive. Uh. Somehow. [12:06 AM] Bocaj: Probably tuning fork magic [12:06 AM] Wack'd: Fortunately it's the same pollution disease Crystal had forever ago which Reed couldn't cure, but now he can, and everything's fine. [12:06 AM] Wack'd: This all happens inside of two pages. [12:06 AM] Umbramatic: s'fine [12:07 AM] Wack'd: OH [12:07 AM] Wack'd: OKAY [12:07 AM] Wack'd: Did not know what happens next was a John Bryne plot point but I guess it is?? [12:07 AM] Wack'd: So Reed says the anecdote is only temporary, and Inhumans will continue to have problems because there is no place left on Earth that truly has clean air. [12:08 AM] Bocaj: Time to go to the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON? [12:08 AM] Wack'd: No place left on Earth. [12:08 AM] Wack'd: Yep! We're doin this [12:10 AM] Wack'd: The same book that gave us the Clone Saga also gave us the idea that you can just move Attilan around, apparently! Wild

[12:10 AM] Wack'd: Thanks, What If #30 [12:11 AM] Bocaj: Cool of you to pose next to the moon, reed [12:12 AM] Bocaj: -google what if 30- Ah, a non what if story where the Eternals help the Inhumans move Attilan. No wonder they had to put it in with a spider story, otherwise nobody would have bought it [12:12 AM] Wack'd: You know, I wouldn't have called this issue good before this point, but it was one where the flaws were entirely technical.

[12:13 AM] Wack'd: A little too much to ask for, I guess [12:13 AM] Bocaj: God [12:13 AM] Wack'd: Don't free your slaves! They're stupid and will die without your noble guidance! [12:13 AM] Wack'd: Jesus. [12:14 AM] Bocaj: So, hey, Byrne. 'Buddy'? This pretty closely echoes actual real world racist rhetoric so maybe don't? [12:15 AM] Wack'd: So, uh, Attilan takes off. Black Bolt takes the time to carve a gravestone for Maximus in the Himalayas. [12:16 AM] Wack'd: SHIELD takes notice. This might be important later. Or it might not. Who knows. [12:19 AM] Bocaj: I don't think its too important to this story but the plot, such as it is, in the Avengers Annual 12 I'm currently on further fills in the holes for this enclave plot and also reveals that when the UN discovers the Inhumans on the Moon they're furious that the FF just. Did that. And didn't tell anyone. [12:19 AM] Wack'd: "I am sworn not to interfere! So, y'know, thanks for dropping a buncha slavers on my doorstep. I'm on a diet, you wanna leave behind a quart of ice cream while you're at it?"

[12:19 AM] Bocaj: Hah [12:19 AM] maxwellelvis: And Byrne takes Uatu back to the weird toddler proportions. [12:20 AM] maxwellelvis: That was a thing when he was on X-Men, too. [12:20 AM] Bocaj: I think I prefer the weird toddler proportions to when he has a man body and a baby head [12:20 AM] Bocaj: its. unpleasant [12:22 AM] Bocaj: Fun pointless trivia: Uatu already has neighbors [12:22 AM] Bocaj: Its going to later be retconned that the Kree and Skrull assholes that killed each other on the moon during the dark phoenix saga [12:22 AM] Bocaj: Didn't die [12:22 AM] Bocaj: And just kept fighting to the death for a year [12:22 AM] Bocaj: In the blue area [12:23 AM] Bocaj: I wonder which neighbors he prefers [12:23 AM] maxwellelvis: Uatu with more realistic proportions looks like Zontar [12:23 AM] Wack'd: And so, the story comes to a heartwarming end with Reed being a racist

[12:23 AM] Bocaj: Panel 1 quicksilver sure is a thing [12:23 AM] Bocaj: The fuck is wrong with his face [12:24 AM] maxwellelvis: John Byrne just really hates him, I think. [12:24 AM] Bocaj: (That applies to panel 1 quicksilver and also zontar uatu) [12:24 AM] Wack'd: And so in Inhumanville they say the Quicksilver's heart grew three sizes that day [12:25 AM] Bocaj: Until later when he took a level up in dickery and tried to expose his Normal Daughter to terrigenesis because he was upset she didn't have powers [12:25 AM] Bocaj: Writers just don't like Pietro [12:25 AM] Wack'd: I feel like I'm gonna have to pace myself on Bryne [12:26 AM] Bocaj: Would you say [12:26 AM] Bocaj: That you feel [12:26 AM] Bocaj: you might get [12:26 AM] Bocaj: Byrned out? [12:38 AM] Wack'd: Very possibly, yes!

[joannie95]

Legacy- Part 12

Pairing: reader x ?????

Summary:  Everyone knows Peggy Carter is a force to be reckoned with, who could have guessed her granddaughter would hold the same ferocity, if not more.This story follows y/n Carter’s life as she faces the obstacles life pitches her.

A/N: Quick disclaimer, I found the image of the gravestone on google, i mean no disrespect to the family or anyone, if anyone is offended by that image feel free to let me know and I will gladly remove it. A big thanks to @welldonebeca and @nasarogers for all your advice on how to fix the chapter

Warnings: Fluff, talk about death and graves and so many tears 

“She hates me”

“She doesn't hate you; she could never hate you. She loves you”

“No Darcy you didn't see the look on her face, she looked so disappointed in me.” You could start to feel the tears running down your face, your breath starting to pick up.

“Y/n you need to calm down, breath.” Phil put his hands on your shoulders, trying to do his best to calm you down.

“I can't calm down Phil, I need to go, I need to go and find her.” You run out of your lab your mind racing trying to figure out where your grandmother could have possibly gone. After searching for hours with no luck and calling your grandma only for it to go to voicemail every time, you go to the only place you can think of.

You walked to the cemetery, you were always able to talk to your grandfather no matter how big or small the problem he was always there for you. Even after his death, he's still one of the few people you can talk to. “Hey grandpa, I messed up and I'm not sure what to do...” You did your best not to cry, you always tried to keep a brave face for him. “I lied to grandma and I'm not sure if she'll forgive me. I thought I was doing the right thing by injecting the serum into myself but now I'm starting to think I did more harm than good.”

Rain started to fall down on you but at this point you didn't care, it’s not like you could get sick anyways. You didn't even notice your grandma walking up behind you.

“I should have told her what I wanted to do from the start, but I was so focused on trying to accomplish what mom and uncle Howard couldn't that I never thought about how she would feel about this. I was trying to be the best and I didn't stop to think of the people I could hurt, I guess that makes me no better than Tony-”

“You stop right there young lady, I never want to hear those words come out of your mouth ever again.”

You saw your grandma standing behind you, and by the look on her face you could tell she's also been crying.

“I don't ever want to hear you comparing yourself to that man, after his parents died, he hurt you and he had no care to who else he hurt. You were just trying to make your parents proud by completing what they weren't able to.”

“I'm sorry I lied to you and I'm sorry I disappointed you.”

Your grandma wiped the tears that began to fall from your face.

"You could never disappoint me. Let me explain something to you, I met and fell in love with a wonderful man, and I lost him because of that serum.”

 Peggy looked down to the gravestone in front of you both.

 “I met, fell in love, married and had a beautiful son with an incredible man but I lost him because of field work.” She looked back up to you and you could see tears in her eyes. “Then I lost your parents because they were trying to recreate that serum. I just don't want to lose you too.”

“You're not going to lose my grandma.”

“Darling, you don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. I have a best friend who I know will always have my back, I have Phil who will do everything in his power even break a couple of rules to make sure I'm safe. I have Nick, even if he doesn’t show it I know he's a big softy who'll take anyone down who tries to hurt me and if all else fails I have you. You taught me everything I would ever need to know.”

At this point you were both crying but neither of you seemed to care.

“You took me in and raised me after my parents died, you made sure I knew every day I was loved. Now it’s my turn to stand on my own two feet. I want to make a difference and with this serum I know I can. I want to make Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes and Dugan proud. I want to make mom, dad and grandpa Sousa proud, but most importantly I want to make you proud.” You looked up and saw the clouds begin to clear and you felt the sun begin to shine down on you both.

“Oh, darling, I am proud of you. I always have been, and I always will be. All I wanted is for you to be safe, I know I can’t always protect you and I need to let you do what you think is right. I know everyone we've lost is looking down at you now and they are so proud. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, grandma.”

“Let's get cleaned up and we can head back to your lab so we can all discuss what the next step for you will be.”

Legacy Tags:

@agentmarvel13 @1v-kayla @5sos-wdw @a-dancing-hufflepuff@avngrsinitiative @bradfordsgreekgod @babypink224221 @captainam-erika-trash @carisi-sonny @chook007 @daniellajocelyn @doctoranon @ecamille-xo@ellieababy @futuremissstark @gummiwormsandonedirection @henrietteoaks@hermionie-is-my-queen @ineedmorefanfics @katykyll @klanceiscannon14@littlephoenix-fire @lovemarvelousfics @l0kisbitch @ludwigvonbaethoven@maddie-laufeyson @magnificentsoulecollector @moli1497 @nanajaeminniee@paintballkid711 @pastelpurplexoox @shallowshawn @sillydecoy@spodermanpete @thatweirdchick147 @tienna-laufeeyson16@wishiwasanavenger @xalinx @zaza-jones @izzyisavengersupernaturaltrash

[i-rove-rock-n-roll]

Eden (cause rn there is no better title) Just some writing I felt like sharin.

He dreamt that he was back in prison, the blue walls suffocating, even as he lay in his cell, staring at the ceiling, they closed in on him. A murmur came from the hallway.

“Which prisoner is this?”

“How the hell should I know? All the same to me the damn punks.”

“I think this one's that Southern one. That one with the accent.” The other made a noise of assent and through half closed eyes, Gram saw the guard peer at him through the bars.

“Who cares?” the other guard said, disinterested.

The dream changed to nighttime, and he heard the panting nearby stop abruptly. A shovel was thrown up beside him, as Gram continued to lay, now pressed against the ground rather than the bunk.

“C’mon, Charlie, we gotta get him in the ground.”

“Why do we gotta do it?” The other man, presumably Charlie, whined. Gram felt them pick up his body, lugging it over to the grave, as his mind swirled in a fog not unlike the one surrounding them.

“Bastards got no family. No one to claim ‘im. No one to give a shit, so we get stuck with him.” They dropped Gram into the hole, none too gently, but he felt nothing, staring vacantly at the two men above him.

“Grab a shovel, bud. Get this over with.”

And the dirt covered him.

He awoke in the darkness, unable to breathe, his arms crossed over his chest. Choking on the dirt, he clawed upwards, blindly trying to get out. Finally, Gram’s hand broke out into the air, and he drug his body out.

“Who…” he gasped, “..am I? Fuckin’...Uma Thurman?”

He shivered, taking in his surroundings. The prison yard was gone, the ugly brick building no longer in sight. In fact, the only thing he could see were trees, strangely tall, in a way that made all others look like saplings. The leaves rustled, and the dark fog gleamed as an animal leapt out, followed by another, and another. Men followed, clutching leashes, but they weren’t quite right, each with grotesque faces, their eyes flashing with malice. The dogs smiled with them in unison, all with teeth sharp and hungry growls. It wasn’t hard to guess the goal of the game they wanted to play. Stumbling, Gram began to run. The trees blurred as he ran, even as his chest burned, reminding him of his lack of exercise, he moved. His legs pumped, barely slowing as he hit the river, drenching his knees with an icy rush. Gram stopped, waiting for them to follow. The not-men did not call to their beasts, but an eerie noise followed from the other side of the river. A horn sounded, followed by something dimly resembling a search light, and Gram took off again, lungs empty.

He collapsed once he reached a small clearing, the same one that contained his gravestone. He was back where he started.

Attempting to get his raspy wheezing under control, he leaned against the stone, staring at the clearly cut letters.

Jonathan Denvers. He blinked, the letters shifting. Ingram Niesler. He blinked again and watched the stone crumble.

The clearing was surrounded.

A figure stepped forward, tall and with blank eyes. The dogs at Gram’s back made no move, but growled softly before the figure’s swiveling head quieted it. Its eyes were like glass, seeing something he couldn’t.

“We have a job for him,” hissed a voice from behind, and Gram jumped. The leader of the not-man stopped a foot away, as if unwilling or unable to come closer. The others holding the beasts shifted in agreement, though none stepped up, even as the not-dogs thrashed against the leashes with incredible strength.

“As do we,” said the being with the glass eyes. “I don’t suppose you could wait your turn?” they asked mildly, ignoring the snarl they received in return.

“I don’t even know who you guys are, so I ain’t doin’ shit.” Gram was painfully aware of how high his voice had jumped up. Both pairs of eyes, clear and gleaming, glanced at him, like he were some sort of minor inconvenience.

“You don’t have a choice, Jonathan Denvers.”

“My name is Gram.” He wanted to scream, but his words came out in a squeak. “Not Jonathan,” his voice was stronger now. “Ingram.”

“You are Jonathan, Jehovah’s gift. And you will do as you are told.” The being twitched irritably and the not-man cackled at the look on Gram’s face.

“Feisty, this one. I like him.” The being slung an arm over his shoulder, cold fingers crawling against his skin. The other tensed even more than Gram. He couldn’t pull away. “Listen, kid, can I call you kid? Anyway--”

“Whatever it is, it ain’t happening.”

“Just hear me out, kid, I got a deal--” Gram snorted and the glass eyed figure seemed to smirk for a moment before becoming impassive again.

“Let me guess, I’ll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, cause I think I’m better than you? Well, I ain’t Johnny, bitch, so scram.” His courage didn’t leave, even when the face twisted and the nails made pierce his throat. The glass eyed being moved in an instant, somehow, and had the figure down on its knees, a sword pressed against their Adam’s apple. The apple quivered as they laughed silently, eyes glued to the hard face above them.

“Still got it, don’t you, Mike? I think you’re a few feathers short though--urk!” Came the choke as the blade dug deeper into the not-man’s neck, as the being now known as Mike narrowed its eyes. Somehow, and he had absolutely no idea how, Gram had been so distracted by the appearance of the sword that he missed the enormous wings spreading outward, looking very much like a large, threatening bird, but with some gaps in his feathers. Gram swallowed and.began to inch away.

“This has been fun, but I think I’m gonna go home, now…”

“Oh, kid,” came the amused sigh from the being still on its knees. “You can’t go until we let you.” The glass eyed Mike blinked before Gram’s eyes, reappearing only a few inches away. Gram flinched, unable to see anything but the swirling emptiness in the eyes before him.

“Three days, Jonathan. Nicole had her chance, now it’s yours.”

The gleaming eyed being stood up, rubbing its throat loosely.

“Think on it, Johnny. You only got eternity left if you fail.”

“What are you talking about?” Gram blinked, confused.

“Cleaning up the town. That’s what your little cuz thinks she’s doing. Doing a better job than half my..well, I can’t really call them people, but still.” the being waved a hand dismissively. 

“Think of it as a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.” Mike suggested. 

The figure rolled its eyes, waggling a finger in Gram’s direction. “If you don’t behave Uncle Sammy won’t give you your present.”

“I’ve never been one much for surprises.”

“I know.” The figure rolled its eyes. “Made you such a boring child.”

“I thought your name was Lucifer, anyway.”

“Newsflash, once upon a time I had a different name.” The Devil gave Gram a pointed look. “Sam was my name just as much a Lucifer is now, Jonathan.” Gram opened his mouth, but he held up a hand. “Don’t get so riled. I’m proving a point.”

“A pretty shitty one.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t do any research before picking your name?” Mike said dryly. “Of all the names you could have chosen for yourself, you chose an old Norse name.”

Gram blinked. “Is it? I just liked the sound of it.”

“It means ‘Ing’s raven’. Or ‘raven of peace’. Whichever sounds catchier.”

“You’re like a walking dictionary.”

“No, I just know how to use google.” Gram huffed, muttering something about prison and piece of crap computers. “Why go by Gram? I mean, spelling wise, didn’t that get you into trouble with paperwork?”

“Graham is a type of cracker, and Gram is shorter.”

“I can tell literally no difference when you speak.”

“That’s cause you’re a da--” Lucifer’s eyes flashed.

“Watch your mouth, kid.”

“Geez, jus’ like the swear jar at home.” Now the Devil’s eyes rolled in response, temper forgotten.

“To get back on topic, I did not choose my name by coincidence.” It drummed its fingers briefly. “The name Lucifer means light bringer. Even as Samael I brought this light to you people, yet I also doled out what everyone feared. The Wrath of God.” Their lips quirked in a humorless smile. “I was not a fluffy little cherub with a harp. None of us--them--” They jerked a thumb towards the army of angels not five feet away. “I mean, are.”

“Depending on who you talk to,” Mike said slowly. “Ravens are symbols of good, or of evil. No one gives a shit about where it actually came from anymore, just like they forget my origins and Sammy’s.” Their lips quirked in a humorless smile. “Definitions are tricky bastards, each language you people make creates new ideas and problems.” 

“Are you guys going anywhere with this?” Gram’s head was spinning, but he refused to sit down. “I’d like to be up in time to get some breakfast before Uncle Lou eats it all.” 

“The point, Ingram, is this: You may bear the name, raven of peace, but what side is the raven on? Peace is subjective. What one considers Heaven another considers Hell, as the twerps in your little town have already decided.”

Gram remembered the car ride with his parole officer, and the low whistle that accompanied the impressed statement. 

“Looks like Eden.” He remembered his own words, half serious, half inside joke,

“Well, we call it Hell.”

“You humans have limited concepts.” The Devil said, eyes twinkling with amusement. 

“That’s the way language works. Try goin’ to Spain and see if they treat you any different.” Gram paused. “What do I call you two? Ma’am? Sir? Captain?” Now it was Mike--Michael-- Gram knew, that rolled their eyes. 

“You don’t need to call me anything. Just do your fuckin’ job.”

“Was that a Friday After Next quote?”

“I plead the fifth.”

“Never thought I’d meet an angel with a sense of humor.”

“Archangel.”

“Or an inferiority complex.”

“Comes with the territory, Jonathan Ingram.” The archangel answered briskly, rolling their eyes with the Devil laughed. “Now, wake up”

[viciousvenganza]

11/11/11 tag game (I was tagged by @penzag , gracias gracias)

rules: answer 11 questions, ask 11 questions, tag 11 people!

1. what’s your favorite movie from your childhood? has this movie had an impact on your writing at all? have any movies had an impact on your writing? Hmmm tough question, I can barely remember anything. I’d have to say Treasure Planet. It probably influenced my love for sci-fi and morally grey characters. I definitely can’t pinpoint any specific movies, everything has influence when it has inspiration. 

2. do you struggle to write for any ocs? why? are any of your ocs really easy to write for? I usually struggle write new ocs because I don’t know them very well, and I don’t know what quirks and personality traits can be conveyed through the writing style. I still struggle with writing James although she’s completely fleshed out at this point; I think it’s just because of her complexity and personality that makes it difficult for me. I think Cillian is definitely the easiest of mine to write, although he doesn’t have his own story or anything, but I just know everything about him there it to know. 

3. do you have any big milestones coming up for your wip? (or blog? or work? or whatever?) Not really. I think the milestone will be finally being able to devote more time to some of my wips once I graduate. 

4. what are your favorite writing resources for face claims, picking first names/surnames, etc? (feel free to just pick one resource to share but you’re welcome to share as many as you’d like!) I honestly don’t have any sort of specific resource for face claims or names. The names are usually just random or super specific google searches, like I think once I searched names on gravestones in North Dakota. As for face claims, that just comes from inspiration or watching television shows and movies. 

5. if your ocs had a name for their group of friends, what would it be? (for example, most of y’all have noticed by now that the friend group for b’tzelem elohim is nicknamed “shalomies”) I think for this one, I’ll go for my little trio of Eiza, McKenna, and Tobias, who I refer to as mischievous little shits, but I think they would call themselves the wolf pack because they’re all losers, but they all bite. 

6. on a similar note, would they have a groupchat? (if your world doesn’t have technology, pretend it does!) Oh, they absolutely have a groupchat that really lights up during family dinners. Their groupchat name is originally Sour Patch Kids, but whenever McKenna gets pissed at Tobias for totally reasonable reasons, he’ll usually find the groupchat name changed to Tobias is an @sshole or Sour Patch Girls.

7. how many languages can you speak, if any? how many can your characters speak, if any? I can speak two languages, I guess, despite what my anxiety tells me. And then there’s like three others where one I can use to get around a city with the basics, the other I remember the basics and can read it despite not knowing what it means, and the third one I can read a little more than basic but cannot pronounce it for shit, so whatever that math chalks up to. My characters range in their languages, some speak only one while others are way too smart for their own good and speak like twelve (they absolutely have no life).

8. how much time do you spend planning/researching before starting your wip? This really depends on the wip, but also my impatience because I have a bad habit of latching onto the characters and trying to immediately start but have zero world-building or history to help me (or plot), but there are wips that I’ve slowed down on because they need serious world-building and I’m still planning those. 

9. do you have a preferred area to write? (ie your bedroom, the coffee shop, the library, your kitchen, etc.) Usually at my desk, but I do appreciate coffee shops whenever I actually sit down in them—although a good bit of writing chunks have come from me just writing in class instead of paying attention. 

10. what’s your favorite writing snack or drink? Snacking and writing don’t mix for me because I need my fingers to be free and clean, but as for drink I’d have to say coffee or something a little more like vodka or tequila. 

11. lastly, what should you be doing right now instead of this tag game? (ps: stop procrastinating even though, as i type this, i’m currently procrastinating) Probably homework, although nothing is directly due tomorrow so I guess I’m procrastinating not procrastinating? 

Mis preguntas: 

1. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

2. What character trope do you despise? 

3. What kind of scenes are the hardest to write for you? What kind of scenes are the easiest? 

4. What book have you read more than once? Why? 

5. If your favorite oc faced off in an unbiased fight against your least favorite oc, who would win? 

6. Do you prefer to handwrite your writing or to type? 

7. Which of your ocs would make the best roommates? Which ocs would kill each other as roommates? 

8. Which one of your ocs do you identify the most with? Would they agree? 

9. What is one of your go-to songs for writing? 

10. If you could write a story in any other language than your first, which one would it be? 

11. If you had to pick any of your ocs to be your back up in a zombie apocalypse, who would you choose? 

I don’t have eleven people to tag but I’ll tag @mushroom-slut and anyone else who wants to do it (feel free to tag me with your answers <3)

[alittleblogofwritings]

Short Stories #1: Guess who died?

A/N: First original content post. Enjoy. A bit sad.

I sat on my couch, rummaging through my Facebook feed - mindlessly, while sipping on some apple juice, because coffee never held my taste. I was halfway through the bottomless pit of useless posts, when something caught my eye. It was a co-worker, from three jobs ago - they had posted about an older actor, the words “Rest In Peace” next to their name had made my heart drop.

Ever since I could remember, my siblings and I had this morbid obsession with being the first ones to tell our Dad about certain celebrity deaths. Who ever got to him first would walk up to his spot on the couch, while he watched Judge Judy, and tap his shoulder and say, “Guess who died?”

When we’d tell him who, he’d responded with a “Oh, man”, especially if it was someone he had admired or liked. Thinking about it now, it was sorta odd, the pride we felt when we were the one to tell him the news. 

Who was going to be the one to break the news to Dad?

I remember when Michael Jackson died, I was up North, a few hours away from my family, when I heard the news over the radio. Immediately, I phoned my Dad and he was shocked and I was happy. Happy to be the one to deliver the news, even years after, he’d bring it up and say how he didn’t know until I called him.

So as I googled the actor’s name to confirm his death, a familiar number popped onto my screen. I smile weakly and answered, it was my sister.

“Hey, did you hear about..”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard. So are we going today?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed quietly. “I’m bringing Abel, he got the day off.”

“Okay, I’ll see you guys there.”

…

Four hours later, my sister, brother, and I stood outside in the cold. Being the oldest, I stood in the middle and kneeled down beside the gravestone - it was always clean, we made sure of it. 

Always with fresh flowers too.

“I came the other day,” Abel said. “The rain left some spots, so I cleaned it up.”

“It looks good,” my sister smiled and wrapped a hand around his waist. I looked over my shoulder to my little sister and brother and smiled, before looking down at our father’s tombstone - it had been two years.

“Hey, dad, guess who died.”

[coldwind-shiningstars]

@gloriousmonsters tagged me for the eleven questions meme! He had some very impressive questions, too. My answers follow, and questions too, although I'll go the "say I tagged you if you see it and are interested" route 1. Of all the dreams you've had, which one do you recall the most clearly? I had a dream where I was walking up a long flight of stairs, pulling myself up on the banister. A girl in shorts and sandals was walking next to me; her legs were long and thin. "I don't have any legs," she told me, conversationally. "They took my legs. I don't have any legs." I could see her legs, but was too out of breath to tell her this. 2.Who was the first character you were really drawn to/liked? Probably Martin the Warrior from the Redwall series, if only because he's the first character I remember pretending to be and having elaborate fantasies about being. Terence from the Squire's Tales was a bit later, but the beginning of the more intense identification with a character. 3.What are three of your favorite scents? Lavender, that mix of gasoline and forest floor rot, citrus in general 4. What would you put on your gravestone if you knew you were going to return from the dead at some point in the future? Depends on how I'd return? If I reinhabited the body in my coffin I'd probably say something about "please monitor my grave for signs of motion," but if I appeared suddenly in the forest I'd add something mystic and pretentious that I can't think of right now. 5. What's your favorite nonfiction topic to read about (currently)? Some recent Google rabbit holes: Parasites Immunotherapy Youkai Aerial silks Different colors of tinted lenses for different reasons (Usually searched at 2 AM) sleeping issues 6. If you're a writer, quote 1-2 of your favorite lines you've written recently. It's when you're standing in stocking feet on the dirty tile, resting your cheek against the cool mirror, alone with the knowledge that someone else could enter at any moment, and it's your best friend kissing your wrists in a public bathroom, her lips on your ragged bandaids and faded scabs. It's the way you feel clean after an hour sitting on the shower floor, clean enough that a pair of purple scissors can purify you further. 7.What song have you listened to way too much recently? The Owl City version of "Waving Through A Window," because I like moping. 8. What's your favorite __punk genre, at least in theory? Biopunk! Anything that involves mad science and going genetics experiments on yourself in your kitchen sounds great to me. Solarpunk is neat too. 9. What movie most perfectly expresses your aesthetic? Madoka Magica: Rebellion, probably. Everything distinctly unreal, colors and shapes and things changing when you stop paying attention to them. 10. If you were a Dark Lord, what would your ideal second-in-command be? Ideally /I'd/ Officially be second-in-command, do a lot of behind-the-scenes manipulation while my puppet ruler Dark Lord took all the attention away from me. 11. Would you want to live - not forever, but until the general end of the human race, assuming your brain could cope with it fine? I didn't think I'd live past 15. That's not what you asked, I know, and recently tomorrow has seemed much more plausible than it has before. If you'd asked six months ago I'd have said no. I don't know what I'd want now. My questions: 1. Are you a hoarder, or does having material possessions stress you out? Or something in between? 2. What's the oldest thing you own? Could be "thing you've had the longest," too, and not just "Great Gramma's spoons" 3. Do you like attention? What type of attention? 4. Where's your default source of symbolism (numbers, flowers, etc)? 5. Recommend something that really affected you but you don't talk about much because you don't have the opportunity to 6. What's your favorite type of angst to read about/ write about? 7. Do you define yourself by who you were in the past, or do you focus on who you are now? 8. Is verbal or nonverbal communication easier for you? Receptive or expressive language? 9. How willing are you to modify your environment - the level of light in your room, the thermostat, etc - to accommodate others? 10. Do you find it easy to accept help? 11. Is there something seemingly simple you can't do? Tagging @gloriousmonsters back, because I'm interested, and @rowenabean @wanderersintheshadowedland @the-mirador @paradife-loft @tsunderedgelord @keithjcastillo @voidprincesol @chris-phd @consumptive-sphinx @johnpeter-remember-thepharmacist No pressure to anyone!

[jeremiahdowney]

I found a lost little girl at a Halloween attraction

God, I wish we hadn’t changed our Halloween routine last year.

For three years, ever since they have been old enough, we have done the same thing, go trick or treating in the village with some of my daughter’s school friends. Last year we decided to mix it up a little and try a local Halloween attraction. The girls are bit older now, so we thought we could up the scare factor.

We live in Yorkshire, England, and a manor house near us puts on an event each year. There is a spooky forest walk, a haunted maze, pumpkin carving the works. The highlight is the ghost tour, the house has a long and bloody history. Murders, assassinations, and suicides have all taken place there. Actors take you around the house and grounds to bring the macabre events to life. Tickets are expensive and limited, so we were really looking forward to it.

It is pitch black by five-pm at that time of year. It was a bleak, miserable day with driving rain and a biting wind. A small road takes you to the forlorn and uninviting gatehouse, with its carved stone gargoyles and high spiked wrought-iron fence.

A track then leads to the house through a dark and foreboding stretch of woodland, before opening up to provide the first vista of the manor house. A dark sentinel alone on its hill. A grey stone monolith, master of all it surveys from its lonely isolation. It has a haunting beauty, the type that drives men to murder and worse.

Scarecrows had been set up along the side of the track, each pointing the Halloween revelers to their fate, every head a carved and lit lantern of increasingly gruesome intricacy. I will say this now, we have grown blasé to the sight of a Jack-o-lantern, a symbol of candy and fun now. But here, on a bleak Yorkshire hillside, they instilled a primal fear. Their leering faces shifting and alive in their flickering candlelight.

In the short drive through the covering of the woods, the weather had changed dramatically. An eerie stillness had replaced the buffeting winds and, as is so often the case at this time of year, the ground had given up its moisture to form a thick mist that blanketed the earth reaching out with wispy tendrils and beginning to climb the trees and outbuildings.

The children sat in uncharacteristic silence and I wondered if this was a little much for Seven- and five-year-olds, a little much for me even. Still, once we made it to the parking area the mood changed. People were walking about in costume and the area glowed warmly with the light of hundreds of pumpkin lanterns.

We got out and blended straight in. I’m a traditionalist, so it’s a zombie costume every year for me. I say costume, but truly, all I do is cut up whatever clothes my expanding waistline have made too cozy and liberally douse them with fake blood. The girls dressed as a devil / witch, and as Elsa, with dia del muerto-style face paint. My daughters have eclectic tastes and are far too opinionated for their own good; they get it from their mother.

It was worth the steep ticket price. The girls carved pumpkins and the haunted maze was a blast. Everyone loves a hog roast, and there were hot, baked cinnamon apples.

The night was going great and everyone gathered for the ghost walk.

I was skeptical before the event, but I have to say being there, on that foggy Yorkshire night in such a bleak setting, really added to things. The actors were excellent, sometimes these things get hammed up too much, but they really nailed it. The stories were fascinating and gruesome in equal measure; people really can do the most horrific things to each other.

We were out of the house heading towards ‘the hanging cottage’ when my eldest whispered those fateful words that all parents dread on trips out. “Daddy, I need a poo.”

Going back to the house was a non-starter. It was too far, and we would miss the rest of the tour. We quickly headed into a thicket of trees at the side of the track. We could catch up to the group easily enough. We only went in a little way, just enough to get us out of sight of the group.

It was dark and tangled, I used my mobile phone as a torch, its meagre light allowing us to navigate. We finished and cleaned up, wet wipes are a parent’s best friend, and were about to head back to the group when I heard crying.

It was very close, just a little further into the woods. I took my daughter’s hand. “We’d better see what that is, in case someone needs help.”

The noise was easy to follow despite the oppressive overgrowth and we arrived at an arched gateway, part of an old crumbling wall. The gate itself hung crookedly from just one of its three hinges.

It was a small graveyard, presumably for manor house family members back in the day.

The tombstones were ancient, bent crooked as hags at all angles where the earth had moved and subsided over the years. The blanket of fog was so thick it covered our feet as we walked. At the far end, we could see a small figure behind one of the headstones. It was small, plain stone and unmarked, no engraved name to honor its resident corpse.

“Hello, are you okay?” I asked.

The figure turned, it was a little girl, about my daughter’s age. Her costume was excellent, old fashioned clothes, from the 1960s maybe. But it was the makeup that made it. Her skin was marble-white, her eyes ringed in black, and blood-red tear streaks ran down her cheeks. Across her throat an incredibly realistic slash with just the right amount of fake blood trickling from it.

She didn’t reply.

“Are your mummy or daddy here?” I asked again.

Nothing, she just looked down at the floor. I noticed she had on one of the wrist bands we all received on the way in. It had a space for writing a parent’s phone number on for just such an occasion.

“What’s your name little one?”

Still no reply.

“Can I look at your wristband please sweetheart, see if I can call your parents?”

She held up her arm, her skin was icy to touch when I held it to see the number clearly. Poor thing, I took off my jacket and draped it around her whilst I dialed. It was a landline number which worried me. The parents would have to be at home to take the call which would be impossible if they were here for the night.

The phone rang three times then

“Hello” croaked an old-sounding voice, a grandfather perhaps? The line was crackly and poor, reception not great in this remote location.

“Hi, can I just check I’ve dialed the correct number please, is this 01936 416428?” I wanted to make sure I was talking to the right person before giving out details of a lost child.

“Hello, can you speak up?” he asked. He sounded so old, not what I was expecting at all.

I repeated myself slowly and this time he confirmed I had called the right number.

“I’ve found a little girl who is lost. This was the number on her wristband. Are you missing your daughter or granddaughter?” I said.

“I don’t have a daughter, I don’t have any children” he replied.

“She’s about six or seven, all dressed for Halloween. Vintage 60’s clothes, and a slashed neck.”

There was a long pause, I thought he hadn’t heard me, and I was about to repeat myself when he started to speak.

“I didn’t…. It was an acci…. I never meant it to be like that, to happen that way.”

“Sir, is this your child?”

“She looked so perfect, I wanted her to be mine, but then she struggled. How did you know it was me? All those years, how did you find me now?”

I stood in stunned silence, my mind was reeling. I wasn’t sure what was happening, what I was hearing.

Suddenly, from behind us in the clearing the evocative hoot of an Owl and a flapping of wings. I turned, momentarily distracted, when I turned back the girl was gone.

My coat lay draped over the gravestone. Written on the previously unmarked stone in fresh blood was the name Sally Turnbull.

In my shock, it took a moment to register that the phone had gone dead.

I spent a panicked few minutes looking for the little girl, eventually conceding defeat. I took a photo of the gravestone before scooping my daughter onto my shoulders and running back to find the main group. Every time I tried to redial the man’s number the phone gave an engaged tone, as though the phone were off the hook.

The evening was drawing to a close anyway, so it wasn’t long before I was telling my wife about the incident in the car. My wife googled the name Sally Turnbull; she found an article from a few years ago in the local paper talking about the tragic and unsolved case of six-year-old Sally who went missing in 1967.

We agreed we should call the police, hoping that somehow, this was all some elaborate Halloween prank. They didn’t come out until the next morning, Halloween is a busy night for the police. They took a statement and I saw the annoyed look on their face when I pulled up the photo of the gravestone on my phone and it was unmarked stone. There was no name written on there.

They asked my daughter what happened and that didn’t help. She told them that she and daddy had been in the woods, so she could go to the toilet, but that she couldn’t hear the crying that I could. She said she didn’t see a little girl in the private cemetery, just daddy looking at a gravestone before putting his jacket on it.

The police gave me a lecture about wasting police time, but I insisted they took down the number I had dialed and agreed to follow up on it. I thought they were humoring me until three weeks later when I got a call from the office who had visited us. She said that they identified the number I had dialed as belonging to Mr. Brian Carter a retired widower who lived a couple of villages away. The police went to his house as a routine follow up, but after getting no response and based on an overpowering smell coming from the small cottage forced entry.

Brian was found hanging in his lounge. Next to him, still beeping, the phone, its receiver on the floor. He had written two words on a pad “I’m sorry” and police had timed his death as within an hour of the phone call I made to him on that Halloween night.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #25

It’s gotta be getting on a month right?

 Twenty five of these, generally I do them every night. Sometimes two in a day, but other times I forget to do them at all. Things got confusing in the halls, and I’m not good at math. I can’t even judge time by facial hair now that I’m cleaning up.

 It has to be about a month at this time. Shouldn’t I have seen something from my parents? An email asking how I am, or a Facebook post about a reward for finding me? Fuck, a news article that they died in a plane crashing coming to get me but something.

 Who am I kidding? We both know why Mom and Dad wouldn’t want to talk to me anyway. This extended vacation of mine is probably a relief to them, the longer the better. Who gives a shit?

This isn’t like me, I used to be the chill one. Voice of reason, very type B. Ending conflicts, mediating things. Not starting shit and passing judgment. Now I’m finding shit to be mad at, and I can’t tell you why. I’m just so irritable all the time.

 I don’t know what it is. Maybe this is just who Hobbs is when he stops getting his way. I like to think I’m not that type, but the evidence is stacking up against me. I don’t know how many more confrontations Weylinn and I have, before I finally break his nose. After that, I can’t be the good guy either. I’m just a bully who broke the Mage’s face because he’s too stupid to talk through a dispute.

 I could use “the excuse”. The same line every abusive parent, angry drunk and shitty boyfriend feeds to their loved ones. “No, it can’t be me. It’s not my fault. I’m a good guy, it’s just this shitty world.”

  I’m working really hard to be above “the excuse”.

 This is what I was ruminating on for most of the day. We made money giving the hammer to the blacksmith, and I spent my share getting my sword a bigger handle. It’s odd how mundane that sentence is, I almost forgot that I’m a fucking swordsman. People train years to do the shit I do, and I can see why, it’s really fun.

After getting it back, and practicing it’s not too much different. It takes a little more muscle to move around, but it hurts more. I’ll feel better if I can just make the bad guys hurt more.

In addition, Weylinn had time to tell us about what he wanted to do next. Stuart had time to practice intimidating the shellers. His choice of time wasting was more fun.

 Weylinn was trying very carefully to choose his words in such a way to get us to agree with something we obviously wouldn’t want to. He was talking about a “Lead” he had, where they would meet “Someone” in the direction of “Somewhere north”. Any attempt to get him to elaborate was met with very hostile demands of “What, do you have a better idea?”

The guy fancies himself a dark horse, but he’s a fucking idiot. You realize if you just told us “I want to go meet with someone shady in the desert, you want to come?” we probably would have agreed. We’re all for helping him do mage stuff, it keeps us alive. It’s like he’s going through extra effort to get us paranoid.

 He also told Geheim not to tell us anything. I don’t know that for a fact, but thanks to Anna I know the face Jules makes when she’s dieing to tell you something, and can’t. So yeah, I’m not happy with him. Whatever he’s doing, he should be honest about it. We’re supposed to be a team. The only reason he has to not tell us is if he thinks we’d get upset with him.

 If he’s hiding things out of fear, that means I might be getting to him. He’s still doing cowardly, probably terrible shit. But he’s understanding that there are consequences to his actions. Doesn’t seem to be helping, and I’m not sure it’s what I want. This team isn’t going to work if we all fear and distrust each other. I don’t know what to do about it.

 We get our things, and leave the Jewel again. The same heat, the same sweat, the same canteen and the same sand in my mouth. Maybe I’ll get used to this. Deserts were always cool, Lawrence of Arabia was a great movie. It’s fucking hot, but I don’t mind a little sweat. Stuart seems fine out here. It’s nice.

 We were marching for quite some time, and the night came. Just as the starflowers go over the horizon, you get a few hours of dim light. You can see without squinting, it’s not too hot. I like it, if not for the shifting shadows of possible dust things. It was about this time, where we were setting up camp. I don’t remember who saw him first, but we found the depressed Devily.

 He was just staring at something, and it was too dark to see what he was looking at. I start rushing to catch up with him. Say hi and all, and Weylinn stops me. He wants to check the area for traps and deception. I let him do his magic tricks, and he reconfirms that there’s nothing to worry about.

So with his permission to do exactly what we wanted to do earlier, we approach the Devily. Who starts reciting poetry. A lonely little thing, about traveling the desert. The narrator meets a beast, who greets him as a friend. The beast is eating his heart, and is oddly complacent about it. That’s more or less the poem.

 I thought I recognized it at the time, but I read so much poetry in school it was hard to remember. A quick Google search “Heat, bitter, eating poem.” and it confirms I’d read it before. Stephen Crane, an American realist wrote it ages ago. I’ll save you the lit-crit, but it��s a touching little thing. Either about how God sees man abusing their free will, or how the rational part of your brain confronts the rest of you or whatever else you put into it. I don’t know how the Devily got his hands on a relatively low-key American poet, but I like having other people down here that care for arts.

 The reason he was out doing poetry night in the middle of the fucking desert, was shivering in front of him. A Devily had burned, and laid amongst the wreckage of a raided caravan.

There’s no way of knowing who it is, or why it happened. Maybe the caravan’s owner had been raided and left for dead. Maybe a raider was ashamed of what they did to the caravan owner. Maybe some Devily ran away from all their responsibilities, and almost starved to death. Either way, it left a shivering, naked wretch crouched alone in the sand. Which is I guess what prompted the Devily to remember the verse.

 We talked about it for a while, what it meant to burn and what to do from here. Some of the group began searching for bits of mitral armour or a bow, but I’m fairly sure it couldn’t be Alice. If Alice was going to be consumed with her sins, it would have happened with the Butchery, or sacrificing Caramel’s dad or even just carrying around Violence. We might find her, insane and sinful. But her greatest flaw was not her conscience.

  Sorry I’m having a hard time staying on topic today. I’ve got my brain all scrambled.

 The Devily is deadpanning, as normal. Says he had been standing there, for quite some time. Just thinking of what to do with “her”. Leave her in the desert, to starve. Take her to the nearest town, to waste. Maybe just try to put her out of her misery so he can die doing something technically noble. I don’t know what his plan was.

 Living like that, it can’t be fun. Like, clearly they’re in pain. They have half a head and energy bursting out of satanic symbols burned in their skin. They’re stuck halfway between being a mindless beast and a living gravestone; because every time they are seen, people start theorizing. Oh, I wonder who that was. I wonder what they did. I wonder what they feel like. I wonder what happened to make them burn.

 They don’t have the sense to know they’re being treated like this. At least we think. They’re either reliving whatever made them burn, or just reacting on instinct. I dunno. Just looking at her makes me uncomfortable. Apparently, they do this when the sins of the world are just too much, and they can’t take it anymore. The Devily made it sound almost voluntary. Which makes him a bit of an oddity. If he’s depressed enough to kill himself, shouldn’t there be a similar thing? Maybe the reason he hasn’t killed himself is the same reason keeping him Devily. It’s hard to tell. Anyway, we just watched the thing for a while and the Devily asked us for our opinion. Immidiently fucking Anna turned the question around and asked him for his input. He did the sassing for me on that. We talked about the philosophy on it, and I gave the standard answer. “Life is always protected!” and all that. That’s what I’m supposed to say right? A Paladin—ex Paladin— who lost a loved one to suicide. I’m supposed to wage a war on the concept of depression or something.Star touring schools and talking about how therapy is the best. Fuck it. I don’t even know whose expectations I’m trying to live up anymore. I’m actually glad I’m keeping my own log, so I don’t have to rely on King telling my story. I am curious to what he’s saying. I wonder if I’m as much of a bitch in his story as I am in mine. I wonder if we’re going to see the Berry Golem, and I wonder what I can squeeze out of him in exchange for all the events that happen in his absence. He’s gonna want to see this. Anyway, eventually the Devily makes up his mind to guide the burnt one. He then asks to join us. Well of course he’s going to fucking join us. We’re down someone, we need the extra hands and we fucking owe it to this guy. You don’t get to have someone’s spouse killed and then deny them anything. Weylinn didn’t see it that way. He wasn’t sure if we could trust the Devily. The guy with nothing left to fight for, who cannot sin or deceive us. Weylinn thought he couldn’t trust him. Avram pointed out that he can’t be trusted because he looks like the devil, which is probably racist. Either way, Avram has a demon inside of him, so he’s not exactly in the best position to pass judgment. Anna agreed that we should take him on, and I’m glad I’m not the odd one out. I guilted Weylinn, because of the conversation we had earlier. Geheim promised to make sure he acts more nobly, so I dared him to go report to Geheim that he wanted to turn these two away. Over mistrust. Honestly, the only reason he has to slit our throats is pure spite for having his wife killed, and at that point we kind of deserve it. It’s decided he’d join us, myself and Anna taking the blame if he turns evil on us. He begins to order the burnt one around, and she followed them. I don’t know if all Devilys have this power, or just him. I do remember the Enforcer in the Daredevily settlement took care of burnt ones. They sit by the fire and had something to eat. I didn’t sit by the fire, I didn’t care to. I could see it from where I was sitting. I was happy on my dune, looking out over the sand. I’ve brought it up before, but I’m probably going to die here. I guess if I’m going to have a choice about it, I should get around to deciding how I want to go. Things would have been better, if I died a Paladin-in-training that everyone liked. Now if I die I’ll be a failed jerk, bulling everyone around and giving lectures. I don’t think I want to die fast, and I don’t think I was die easily. I wouldn’t mind dieing painfully if it meant doing something cool. So yeah, I cried a bit. I can claim sand got in my eye, or whatever. I just don’t understand what’s happening, or why any of it is happening. I’m being told on all sides what’s happening is out of my control and doesn’t matter. But then I get blamed personally for what happens, and the consequences are unbearable. I’m just trying to do good out here, but either I’m not a good person, or we’re all not good people. I have to double down on making everyone be better, but I have to do it without being a bully. I can’t stop the headache. I tried writing some songs down, but it didn’t help. This whole situation is pain. I gave up and started rummaging through my bag, and found the bunch of letters from Papa’s. They made me feel significantly better, and it’s hard to explain. Just comforting, you know? I miss him already. Stuart got too hungry to wait any longer, and got bored of intimidating the sun back over the horizon. So he came over to see me. He chirped, I chirped back and we chirped at each other until he got frustrated and tackled me. We both fell off the back of the dune, and tumbled into a pile on the other side. I tried to tickle him, he tried to slobber on me. My idiot bug and I have a great time. I hope I can go a while longer without seeing him bloodied. He’s too good for it. Edit: Addendum The night went absolutely horribly, by the way. A sandstorm moved in, and we had to bundle up very quickly. IN addition to normal sand problems, the sandstorm was full of dust ghosts, moaning and bumping into the caravan. Stuart and I bundled up in wool and sweat through the night, but we made it out. Nobody seemed to get infected, and now I’m even more pissed off about whatever Weylinn is bringing us out here for.

 In the morning, we didn’t speak much. Avram lost the fucking ring in the sandstorm, like an idiot. The Devily and the burnt one were kicking, and helped us set off. We move on.