#i mean i know i have technically written much more than 100 things

[helianskies]

she's nearing 100 fics on ao3 oh noes

[youvebeenlivingfictional]

Impressions

Pairing: Will Miller x Reader

Notes: Idk y'all my brain spit this out. I haven’t written Will in, like…..100 years?

Rating: Mature - mostly for language

Warnings: Canon-typical violence, angst, fluff. Not beta-read.

Length: 7.5K

Summary: Your first two impressions that you get of Will Miller are pretty stellar. That said, they don't actually involve meeting the guy.

The day you do, well. That's another story.

GIF by charllehunnam

Your first impression of Will Miller is technically...Good.

It's from Benny, is the thing.

You hear the sweet and the sour, the grumbling when Benny is training at the gym alone in the mornings—"He's a hard ass, but he means well."

It's said with a little smile, with sibling love and familiarity that tells you that Ben and Will have told each other to go fuck themselves just as much as they've said that they're proud of one another.

Your second impression of Will comes from Terry.

Terrence Owen McLowery is your best friend, your informal trainee, and is currently ranked in the Middleweight division, just a few spots behind Ben Miller (but gaining, and fast). He's one of the few openly gay boxers in your area and in his division, something that he might get more hate for if he couldn't kick the shit out of anyone slagging his name off behind his back.

Terry gets to as many matches as he possibly can, even when he's not fighting in them. You try to join him as often as you can, but there are times when you just can't swing it. He likes to scope out the competition.

"I'm gonna be in there, kickin' their ass one day," He tells you, "I should clock their weaknesses now, not then."

He spends more time ringside than he does in the ring for the sake of observation. And he's seen the Miller brothers at fight after fight.

"You oughta see 'im," Terry says, a dreamy look in his eyes—and you don't know if he's talking about Ben or Will, but you kinda figure it's both. Look, you've met Ben, you wouldn't be surprised if good genes ran in the family.

"He's real level-headed, ringside, even when Ben’s in a jam," Terry adds, and you realize that he's talking about Will, "Kinda like you, but without the taunting."

You roll your eyes a little bit, "You told me the taunting makes you try harder."

"Hmph."

"And I told you a real coach wouldn't do that,” You tack on.

Terry doesn't hmph at that one. He doesn't like it when you point out that you're not a professional coach. You taught him the basics a long time ago, back when the two of you needed to have one another's backs on the playground—and you keep him honest when he's training up now. But Terry needs a coach that'll actually help him in the ring, not do what you do. And sure, you don't do the worst job, but Terry could go further with a professional.

--

Your first two impressions that you get of Will Miller are pretty stellar. That said, they don't actually involve meeting the guy.

The day you do, well. That's another story.

--

You’re at the gym early. Terry is supposed to be there, too, but he took a late shift at work and couldn’t drag himself out of bed. You don’t blame him—a body needs rest if you’re going to put it through its paces. You’re striding past the ring at the center of the gym when you spot Ben sparring with another contender in the middleweight division. You spot an error, one that Terry makes frequently himself, and call out,

“Pick up your right shoulder, Miller!” 

The advice incurs a nod from Ben—and a glare from a golden-headed man standing ringside. Something in his cool gaze chastens you, and you hurry on toward the class you signed up for. 

--

“What was with that guy?” You ask Ben later as you’re stretching. 

“What guy?”

“Blonde, bearded…Glaring?” You remind him. Ben’s eyebrows shoot up.

“You mean Will?”

“That was Will?” You ask in a hushed whisper. 

“Yeah. Glaring?”

“He looked like he was trying to melt me with his laser vision.” 

It makes Benny’s laugh boom in the gym, and you glance around to see if you’ve attracted any attention. Sure enough, Will’s not too far off, his arms folded across his chest as he speaks to someone. His gaze darts between Ben and you, and his eyes narrow. 

“Aaaand there it is again,” You mutter, drawing your legs back from the stretch. 

-- 

“Hey,” You hear. You frown, turning back to the source, and find Will striding toward you. You’re about to offer your hand, to introduce yourself—in relation to Ben, or Terry, something—but he speaks again before you can get a word out:

“Ben’s got a fight coming up. He doesn’t need any glove bunnies distracting him.” 

Your mouth was opened to speak, but now your jaw drops, a scoff of indignation flying out. 

“Glove bunnies?” You repeat, stunned. Will waves you off. 

“Whatever Ben does in his own time is none of my business, but when he’s here, and when he’s in the ring, he needs to be focused.” 

Will doesn’t let you get in another word before he’s turning and walking away. You watch him go, stunned. Asshole. Asshole. As you turn to head into the locker room, you remember Ben telling you that he’s a hard ass, but he means well. 

Well-meaning or not, Will Miller is a dick. 

--

“There’s a man outside who’s looking for you,” You hear.

You glance up from your laptop, brows raised at your coworker. It couldn’t be Terry; he’d call or text you, not ask for you. And it can’t be…Actually, you can’t think of any other guy that would come looking for you at work. 

“Did you tell him I was in here?”

“I said I wasn’t sure anyone by that name worked here and that I’d check,” Molly relays. You nod a little bit, muttering, “Solid,” before adding, “He say who he is?” 

“Will Miller?”

You freeze, then, hands hovering over your keyboard. What the hell is Miller doing there? And how does he know where you work?

“Okay,” You nod, “Okay, tell him I’ll be out in a...A minute.” 

“Sure.” Molly starts to drift away from you before she turns, half-jogging back to your desk. 

“He is so hot,” She hisses. You can't help your grudging smile. 

“Yes, he is.” 

Asshole or not, you can agree that Will Miller is annoyingly, startlingly attractive. 

--

The man that meets you outside is a far cry from the one who accosted you at the gym just a week ago. In a well-fitting polo and a pair of khakis, he looks more like a suburban dad than a hardened drillmaster. You stop just a few feet from the door to your office, arms folded tightly over your chest. He clears his throat, approaching you slowly and stopping just a couple of steps from you. 

“Ben had a fight this weekend,” He says. Him starting that way makes your stomach swoop with fear. You immediately worry that something’s gone wrong, that Ben is badly hurt. But Will goes on: 

“He kept his right shoulder up. That little tip saved his ass a few times.” 

Your brows raise. You didn’t expect him to admit it, even if it did help. 

“I saw Terry, too,” Will adds, “And realized precisely how and where I fucked up when he showed me a picture of you.”

Will doesn't look like he's trying to melt you with his heat vision anymore. In fact, he looks...Genuinely remorseful.

“I see,” You nod a little. 

Will pushes a sigh out through his nose. 

“I’m sorry for approaching the situation the way I did. And for calling you a, uh—”

“Glove bunny?”

He winces with the reminder. “Yeah. I didn’t have all of the facts. Even if I had, it was still the wrong way to approach the situation, and I apologize.” 

You take a moment to drink in his face again, as if you’re seeing it for the first time. His blue eyes are soft where they were icy, and the once-harsh press of his lips is replaced with a regretful, almost contemplative pout. And then you nod a touch.

“I appreciate and accept your apology.” 

Something akin to relief seems to wash over him, and he holds his hand out. 

“I’m Will, by the way.” 

“Will?” You repeat, screwing your face up in mock confusion, “Will...Will...That certainly sounds familiar.”

A smile tugs his lips up just a touch as he pumps your hand up and down. 

“I train Ben Miller. I'm his brother,” He adds. 

“Oh, that Will. Right, of course.” 

You let his hand drop and folded your arms across your chest. 

“Blank slate,” You add softly. 

Will’s brows jump. 

“Completely?”

“Well, Ben says you’re a hard ass and Terry thinks you’re dreamy, but I’ll try not to let their impressions color mine.” 

“Pretty mixed reviews.”

“Mhm.” 

The two of you exchange curious smiles before you nod over your shoulder. 

“I’ve gotta get back to work."

“Of course.”

“See you around, Miller.” 

--

“Seriously, Terrence!” You call out as Terry spars with one of the other gym members, “Is this prep or are you trying to waltz him into tapping out?” 

Terry groans, reeling away from his sparring partner. 

“God, you’re a bitch,” He grunts as he walks toward you, bending over for his water. 

“And you’re a dumbass, Billy Elliot. Get back in there.” 

“He’s holding his breath,” You hear. You turn back to see Will Miller coming closer.

“When he punches,” He clarifies. 

“You can tell him,” You offer before you whistle sharply, stopping Terry from stepping more deeply into the ring. You nod toward Will and listen as he offers his tip. Terry takes his time listening, nodding, leaning against the ropes.

“...Think you got it?” You ask.

“Loud and clear,” Terry agrees before turning back to his sparring partner.

You glance over at Will, nodding your chin up. “Thanks."

“Sure,” Will smiles before walking away. Ben’s not too far away, working at a punching bag. You watch Will for a long moment before turning back to Terry in the ring. Terry ducks out of the way of an oncoming jab, and finds time to shoot you a wink before he turns back to his sparring partner. 

--

“Terry—” 

“Come on—” 

“I can’t tonight, I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow!” 

“Just a few rounds! Come with me, see Ben in action—and see what I mean about Will ring-side.”

“You just want me to go because you think you’ll be much less conspicuous drooling over them if I’m there.” 

“Maybe.”

“And for the record, you’d be just as conspicuous.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Yes we do.” 

“Come with meeee," He whines. "If you’re not there, I’ll curse out a redneck bigot and I’ll get in trouble for beating him up in the parking lot.” 

“Well then you and the Millers can tag team.” 

Terry groans loudly, tipping his head back. “Don’t. Don’t even think about putting ‘Miller’ and ‘tag team’ in the same sentence. My mind just went to about eight filthy places.” 

“Just eight?”

“Alright, nine.”

“Terry. Sweetheart. Angel. Not tonight.” 

“Four rounds.” 

“No.” 

“Two rounds.” 

“Terry—”

“Ben’ll probably take ‘em down in one.” 

“I’m sure he’d love that you have so much faith in his skill, but we’ll have to get through the matches before his, and that’ll already be way late.” 

“I won’t make you come to the gym with me tomorrow.” 

“Probably because you won’t make it to the gym tomorrow.”  

“That’s not the point.” 

--

You didn’t always love the atmosphere around the fight. You used to hate the screaming, the overpriced beer, the rednecks. It used to make you wary, going with Terry. People knew him. It's not secret that he's gay. He used to catch more shit for it before he bulked up and started fighting. Even after he had, the slurs hadn’t stopped. It used to raise your hackles—but Terry’s got more of a handle on how he approaches those incidents, and he’s made a lot of friends that frequent the ring, both as spectators, and in the Middleweight division.

You wouldn’t say that you like going to fights now, but you don’t find it as daunting as you used to. Now, the atmosphere is exciting—it zips through you like lightning; it makes your fingers tingle, and your heart pound. 

“Here,” Terry calls out, pressing a beer into your hand. 

“I told you I’ve got work tomorrow!” 

“I got two for myself, you’re just holding that one for me.” 

“Bullshit,” You laugh, looking up at the ring as the bell sounds. 

By the time the first two fights are down, you know you should leave. It’s late, and it’s only going to get later—you’ve had three beers, and Terry’s coming back with another one. 

“Terry, I really shouldn’t—”

“Ben’s coming down the hall,” He half-yells into your ear, and you have to stop yourself from muttering, ‘Fucking finally,’ when it bubbles up in you. You push it down with a gulp of beer, glancing back and trying to catch sight of the Millers. You see Benny’s chestnut hair; Will’s bright head bobs into view just moments later. You and Terry begin to cheer almost on instinct as they come more fully into view—as Benny heads into the ring, and Will rounds the corner. Will looks around, and his eyes catch on you and Terry. He raises his hand to give Terry a pat on the shoulder, and meets your eyes dead-on. 

It’s a half-second, that’s all, but it seems to last for far longer. If anyone asked you what happened in that half-second, you’d tell them that you nodded to him—you know that for sure, because he nods, too. You’re not sure if it’s the beer, or the crackling of the air around you, but your skin feels hot. You don’t even know if you’re smiling. But Will’s gaze holds on yours for a long time, even as he walks on. When he finally looks away, you can feel your heart thudding in the vicinity of your throat. 

Terry leans over, his shoulder nudging yours as he speaks into your ear:

“Distracted much?” 

“...What?” You manage, tipping your head back toward him as you watch Benny climb into the ring.

“Uh-huh.” 

When you glance up at Terry, you find him grinning smugly, and you reach out, shoving his shoulder as you grumble, “Shut up.” As the bell sounds, you yell out, “Let’s go!” and vaguely register Will’s yell of, “It’s time to work!” 

--

Ben is a hunter in the ring.

You can’t help but compare the way he fights with the way Terry fights. Terry prefers to hold back, to let his opponent dance around and tire themselves out. Terry is a slow-burn; Benny is a wildfire. Will is as much wind to guide his brother as he throws gasoline on Benny’s flame, honing his path and stoking his focus on the rare occasions that Benny takes a hard hit or seems to flounder. 

You plan to only stay for a couple of rounds, but before you know it, you’re cheering Benny as his opponent is knocked down, and stays down. The ref takes hold of Benny’s wrist, holding it up as he proclaims him the winner, and you and Terry crow with excitement. As the crowd begins to flow—as Benny is led out to be checked over by the ring doctor—you turn to Terry, ready to insist again that you have to leave. But you feel a hand land on your shoulder, and turn your head to see Will leaning in. He gets close between you and Terry, and asks over the hum of the crowd, “What are you guys doing now?” 

--

You should be more concerned about the fact that tomorrow morning (well, later this morning) is going to be absolute hell for you. You should be concerned about the fact that when you get home, whenever you get home, you’re probably going to need to have a couple of pieces of toast and a few glasses of water. Your head is buzzing with the beers you had at the fight, and now with the two that you’ve had at the bar. But the zipwire-tense feeling that had ripped through you is ebbing as you watch Benny return from the bar with a massive basket of fries and a fresh round of beers.

Oh, man. You’re really gonna regret this tomorrow. 

You push the thought away as you reach out, taking up a precariously full beer and leaning back in your seat. 

“Surprised you’ve got such a sedate after party,” Terry comments as he takes one of the beers. 

“Fewer glove bunnies than I expected,” You add, eyes sliding to Will’s, where he sits across from you. He appears to bite back a smile, eyes dipping to the table. Benny’s eyes dart between the two of you, brow furrowing, and you give a small, reassuring shake of your head. 

“I have a question,” Benny declares, leaning against the table. 

“Has it got anything to do with that swelling cheek?” Terry asks, waving a finger toward Benny’s face. 

“No,” Benny huffs, “I know how all about that. How’d you two meet?” He asks. You glance at Terry, arching a brow as he turns to you with a grin. 

“School,” Is your short answer. 

“I moved in around, like…Fifth grade-ish?” Terry’s brow furrows. 

“It wasn’t fifth-grade-ish, it was fifth grade,” You correct. 

“I wasn’t the most social kid, and that caught me a lot of shit. I got picked on, and this one,” Terry pushes his shoulder against yours, and you sway with it, bobbing back and forth, “Taught me how to keep from getting my ass kicked on the way home.” 

“Seriously?” Ben asks. You shrug a little. 

“It started with short-cuts to get him home, but when other kids caught on, things got a bit more…Physical.” 

“Did you already know how to fight?” Will asks. 

“I wouldn’t say that. I knew how to swing a fist, I didn’t really know how to fight. We both learned to, though, because we…Had to.”

“She’s been stuck with me ever since,” Terry sighs dramatically. You roll your eyes, turning a fond smile up at him. 

“He’s like my taller, irritating younger brother,” You add.

“I know all about that,” Will pipes up, and you can’t help but turn a laugh at him. 

“So what about you two, how did you two meet?” You tease, waving your finger between them. 

“Oh, man,” Ben mutters. 

“Well I came home one day and my mom said, ‘We have a surprise for you’,” Will says, “And then six months later, this dick shows up.” 

“And he’s been stuck with me ever since,” Ben smiles, glancing at Will. You reach out, plucking up a couple of the fries and dipping them in ketchup. 

“Did you guys get along growing up?” 

“We don’t even get along now,” Ben teases. Will chuckles, shaking his head. 

“Not always. We butt heads as kids, and we do sometimes now, but…We get our shit done.” 

“He’s a hardass,” Ben cuts in.

“And he’s a dumbass.”

You grin. “So you complement each other is what I’m hearing.” 

--  

“Haven’t seen you in a couple of days.” 

You’re taking a long pull from your water bottle, fighting the dryness in your throat when you hear Will. 

“What can I say,” You manage as you lower it. “I only just recovered from going out with y’all the other night.” 

Will chuckles, leaning against the pillar beside you as you wipe down your treadmill. 

“Didn’t mean to tire you out.” 

“I’m out of practice. Terry hasn’t had a fight in a couple of months, so I don’t stay up that late anymore.” 

“No?”

“Nope. I’m in bed at 9:30 and I like it.” 

You take up your water bottle, and the two of you start drifting away from the treadmills.

“Why hasn’t Terry been in the ring?” Will plies. 

“His rotator cuff’s kinda fucked up. He’s been taking it easy—Well. As easy as he's willing to take it. He has a check-in with his doctor in a couple of weeks.” 

“That must be driving him nuts.” 

“Oh, he’s losing it. He’s trying to go to as many fights as he can, though.”

“I’ve seen him at a few lately—Besides, Benny’s, you know. I was wondering why you didn’t go with him.” 

You stop at the door to the women’s locker room and turn around to face him. 

“Bed. 9:30,” You reiterate.

“Well I know that now.” Will tucks his hands into his pockets, smiling. “I wanted to ask: Do you think you could see it in yourself to duck your bedtime again?” 

“Depends on what for.” 

“There’s a fight down in Fernsworth this weekend. There’s a new kid on the bill, he’s apparently pretty vicious.” 

“Oh yeah? When this weekend?” 

“Friday.” 

You consider, lips pursing, and Will chuckles at your expression.

“What is it?” He asks.

“Terry’s got work that night.” 

“So’s Ben.” 

Your gut swoops in surprise, a brow lifting and falling quickly, but Will’s face remains as calm as ever.

“So?” Will presses. If you were reading into it, you’d think he was batting his pretty eyelashes. Before you can overthink it, you hold your hand out and order: “Phone.”

Will rifles into his pocket and pulls it out, passing it over. You add yourself as a contact, your heart thudding in your chest, ears going hot as you double-check that it’s right. You pass it back to Will, meeting his eyes again. “You can send me all the details.”

“Don’t feel like talking to me anymore?”

“I have to go to work, Miller,” You laugh, taking a couple of steps back. “Text me—And keep an eye out for those glove bunnies.” 

“Always.” 

You get one last look at Will, at his sweet, amused smile, and you turn, heading in to take a shower (and maybe to silently scream into your hands, a little). 

--  

You don’t dress up, and you do not tell Terry where you’re going, or with whom. It’s been bad enough that he clocked your swell of interest when you’d gone out with all of them, and worse still that he’s encouraged it. You’d been pressing your hands down onto the tops of his shoes, ensuring that his feet stayed flat as he worked on his core.

“At least—fuck him,” Terry had insisted as he’d come up from reps of crunches. “Do you—have any idea—what’d I’d do tuh—Phew—Have those pretty—blue eyes pointed at me—like that?” 

You’d raised your brow, casting a wary eye about to ensure that neither of the Miller brothers were anywhere nearby before you’d insisted, “Nothing is going to happen between me and Will.” 

“Why—the hell—not?” Terry gasped, finishing out his reps. He groaned, sweeping his hand across his sweating brow before planting both hands on the mat behind himself. “He’s leaps and bounds better than the other assholes you used to fuck with.” 

Like it or not, you knew Terry was right.

For your rough and real first impression, Will is actually kinda sweet. You still don’t know him all that well, and maybe tonight could change that. But you insist to yourself that you’re not going out to flirt with Will, you’re going to see this new fighter (Charlie “Shredder” Klein: 5’9, 194 pounds, rookie, southpaw) and gather some info for when, inevitably, Terry winds up fighting the guy. You dress…Comfortably, in one of your nicer pairs of jeans and one of your favorite tops. You feel cute, and you feel cute for you. If Will thinks that you’re cute in the outfit, well…That’s just a bonus. 

You don’t think he would tell you, though. Will Miller seems like the type to keep his cards close to his chest. 

The ride down to the venue is filled with polite small talk. The feeling in the cab of his truck is almost like the same nervous air of a first date. Your stomach is twisting like a nest of garter snakes; your skin is hot with nerves; you rub your sweaty palms nervously against your jeans. The two of you stick close together at the fight—though you don't exactly have an alternative; the venue is packed. Now and again, if you get nudged too roughly by someone else, or pushed one way or another, Will cuts a sharp, warning look at them over your head at the perpetrator. The third or so time it happens, you reach out, resting a hand on his arm.

“Don’t worry about them,” You say into his ear, cutting over the noise, “The fight’s in the ring, not with these dickheads.” 

Will’s lips twitch with a smile as he leans in to speak into your ear in turn. He says, “It’ll be here if they’re not careful,” But you almost don’t catch it. You’re too focused on everything else—on the press of his warm and firm body against your side; on the way his hand rests on your lower back; on the whisper of his beard against your cheek; on the brush of his lips and breath against the shell of your ear, and the way his voice seems to drown out the clamor of the spectators around you. It makes your heart tick up in your chest, a shiver tripping down your spine and stopping right where his hand sits. 

When your mind catches up with what he’s said, you laugh, nudging his hip with yours.

“Eyes on the prize, Miller,” You urge.

“They are,” He answers without missing a beat. It makes your stomach flip, and for a moment, you can’t bring yourself to look away. You finally force yourself to, and to clap as the announcer brings in the first contender, looking around to try and catch a glimpse of them—and not to overthink the way that Will’s hand is still resting on your back. 

--  

“Weak spots?” Will asks. You consider for a moment, running your finger along the side of your beer bottle. The buzz from the fight is wearing off, and the bar that you've gone to is far more quiet compared to the venue.

“He doesn’t go in…With a plan,” You say after a moment.

“His coach was calling plays.”

“Yeah, but Klein wasn’t listening. I mean when you tell Ben to back the fuck off or get away from the ropes, he backs the fuck off or gets away from the ropes, because in that moment, you see things in a way that he doesn’t. He trusts you to steer him. Klein’s coach can yell whatever he wants, but it’s not heard. Klein’s in the fight, he’s on the inside, he thinks he knows best, and that…That got him fucked up tonight. Might not always get him fucked up, but today’s outcome, you know. Not so much.” 

“Strong indictment.” 

“You asked me what I thought.”

“And I got it. I appreciate that.” 

You raise your brows at Will’s calm, honest expression.

“What about you?” You ask, nodding to him, “What do you think his weak spots are?” 

“He’s a brawler, not a fighter. He likes to go in for little…squirrely swiping matches. He wants excitement, not wins.” 

You shake your head at the assessment. “That just spells trouble for our boys.” 

“Less trouble if we go in with a plan.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

The two of you lightly clink your beers together, sharing a smile before you take sips.

“I’m surprised you came tonight,” Will admits as he sets his bottle down. 

“Really?"

“Little bit.” 

“Why?” 

“We didn’t exactly have the nicest start.” 

“No, we didn’t, but…I don’t know, I thought we were on a more level field now.”

“I think we are.”

The two of you watch one another for a long moment, considering, and before you can say anything, Will adds: “I’m glad you came with me.” 

“Yeah? Didn’t wanna brave the hillbilly circus alone?” 

“I have before and it’s never fun.” 

“It wasn’t so bad tonight.” 

“I had good company.”

You smile a little bit, eyes sweeping Will’s face as flattery wells in your stomach.

“...You knew Terry had work tonight, didn’t you,” You accuse softly. Will shrugs a shoulder, raising his bottle to his lips again. You can’t help your flattered smile, and you force yourself to keep your eyes on him.

“Ben might’ve mentioned it,” Will finally concedes. 

“Interesting.” 

“Is it?”

“I think so.” 

“Good interesting or bad interesting?”

“I'm still sitting here, aren’t I?” 

Will’s smile widens, and your stomach flutters. “You could’ve just asked me out,” You add in a mutter.

“Well, now I know that for next time.” 

Next time. Your face goes hot; the beer in your stomach feels like it’s bubbling. 

“Yes you do,” You agree, nodding a little.

“When I do,” Will adds, leaning against the table, sending another burst through your chest at his use of ‘when’ where you'd expected 'if', “You alright with it being this sort of thing?”

“What, a fight and a beer? Hell yeah—Long as it’s before 9:30.” 

Will laughs, tugging his sleeve back and glancing at his watch. 

“You have any idea what time it is?” 

“No, and I do not wanna know.” 

-- 

You fold your across your chest, eyeing Terry’s form as he pounds the punching bag in front of himself. 

“How are you feeling?” You ask as he leans away from the bag, swiping at the sweat dripping down his face. 

“‘Bout what?” He asks a little blandly between pants. 

“The fight.” 

“You asking me because I got a fight, or does it have to do with who I’m going up against?” 

You purse your lips, eyes sweeping the gym for any sign of either of the Miller brothers. Finding neither, you answer, “Both?” 

Terry chuckles, turning back to the bag.

“I’m not gonna go easy on Benny just ‘cause he’s a friend, and he ain’t gonna take it easy on me, either—”

“I know—”

“I mean, we always knew this was gonna happen��”

“I know! I know, oh my god, I get it.” 

“I’m just sayin’,” Terry mutters, punching viciously at the bag again.

“I’d be a bad coach not to ask, you know half of the fight’s in your head. And speaking of bad coach,” You add, “You found anyone else yet?” 

Terry casts you an irritated look out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you really talkin’ about this right now?”

“...Okay, letting it go,” You sigh before tacking on, “And you’re holding your breath again.” 

“I was about to say the same thing,” You hear from behind you. You turn to see Will just a few steps away. You smile almost involuntarily. You haven’t seen Will since your not-quite date, but you’ve thought about him and texted with him plenty.

“Shouldn’t you be mindin’ your own fighter, Miller?” Terry asks, straightening up and raising his hands to stop the swinging bag.

“Don’t worry, McLowery. The second he needs minding, I’ll be on it.” Will takes a few steps back from you both, shooting you a wink before he turns away. Your stomach twists, and you carefully smooth your smile away before turning to face Terry again. 

“Alright, c’mon,” You wave him toward the bag again, “Let’s go, we got half an hour and then we gotta get going. I can’t be late for work again.” 

-- 

It’s odd, finding yourself on the opposite side of the ring as Will. As nervous as you are—for the way your body feels like it’s buzzing, a tingle in your fingertips—you know that the boys’ll take this seriously. It was going to happen sooner or later; you just didn’t think it would be so soon. You hope that they come out of the ring with their friendships (and their bones) intact.

You shift from foot to foot, drawing a shaky breath in through your nose as Ben and Terry begin to circle up. Your eye catches on Will’s for just a moment. You trade nods, then turn your eyes back to your respective fighters. It’s a heady moment. The room seems to quiet around you for a moment as Ben and Terry approach one another, each with one fist out and one by their cheeks. You hardly blink as they get closer and closer—

--

“I almost had you.” 

It’s a gravely mutter, the first thing that Terry’s said since leaving the ring. He’s got a fat lip, and his right cheek is going to make it look like he’s part chipmunk in the morning. It’s a moment before Ben offers a grumbled, “...Almost.” Then, “Didn’t, though.” 

Terry takes a swipe at his head. Ben ducks it, raising his arm to push at Terry’s shoulder. You shake your head, leaning against the bar and watching them teasingly grapple. 

“You think they’d be too tired to do that by now,” You comment, shaking your head. 

“Adrenaline’s probably still pushin’ em. They’ll crash later.” 

The both of you are speaking a little more softly than usual; you had yelled your heads off at the match, and you're not sure about Will, but your throat feels so fricking raw. You nod, smile widening as the guys scrap a little more. 

“Hey—Alright, alright,” You finally raise your voice as they knock back into a stool. “If your sorry asses get us thrown out, you're paying.” 

“Drinks are on me, anyway,” Benny turns to give you a grin, teeth bright beneath the shiner developing on his right eye. Still, it’s a relief to see the boys settle. You shift on your stool and lean back against the bar, twisting your seat back and forth. 

“How are you feelin’?” 

You glance over at Will, brow furrowing in confusion at the question. 

“I didn’t just go five rounds with those numbskulls,” You point out, nodding toward them. 

“I know. You seemed…Tense.” 

“I was worried about ‘em.” 

“Terry?” 

“Both of them.” 

Will nods, eyes sweeping across your face before he glances around to the guys. 

“They’re doing alright.” 

“I know. I’m—I’m calming down, I just…” You trail off, shaking your head. “So many of Terry’s other friends in the ring are in different divisions. This is the first friend he’s, like, fought-fought.” 

“He did alright.” 

“No, I know. Nothing too broken. And Ben’s fine, too, so. Like I said,” You raise your hands in a slight pushing motion. “Calming down.” 

Will smiles, taking a step closer and sliding his arm around your middle, bracketing you against the bar. Your stomach flips at the closeness, at the weight and warmth of his arm. 

“Glad to hear it.” 

“You’ve just been completely chill the whole time?” 

Will shrugs. “I trusted the guys to handle it. They handled it.” 

“Alright…Knowitall,” You mutter. You smile as Will takes a step closer. He seems to glance toward the guys again before he lowers his head, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. Your stomach bursts with butterflies, and you gently lower your head, resting it against his. You turn your head as you hear the bartender’s, “Here you go,” behind you. The two of you straighten up, turning to the bar fully and reaching for your beers. 

“So,” Will clears his throat, “You busy this Friday?” 

You smile, trailing your finger along the side of your glass. 

“Is there another southpaw you wanna get a look at?” 

“Nope, just dinner. I thought maybe I could cook at your place—that way I won’t interfere with your bedtime.” 

You can’t help your grin, or the slight tip of your head as he crowds close again.

“That is so considerate of you, Miller.” 

“I do what I can.” 

-- 

You try to chip in for the groceries, but Will won’t hear of it. He won’t even tell you what he’s making. 

“You know that I can probably mentally tally up whatever it is you bring and, like, Venmo you that amount, right?” You ask. It’s a little huffed as it leaves you, your gaze and focus on the swinging punching bag in front of you. When Will doesn’t answer, you glance over, and do a double take at the sight of him.

He’s watching you with a warm, sweet look, his hands tucked in his pocket as he slouches against the wall beside you. You raise your hands to steady the bag and keep it from swinging and hitting you in the face, stomach fluttering at the way this man is looking at you—like you’re dolled up and wearing a goddamn ballgown, and not sweating in the middle of a gym. 

“Besides, what if I have an allergy or something?” You add. 

“I’ve already run the ingredients by someone.” 

You frown. “Who?” 

Will doesn’t answer, just shrugs and holds his gaze steadily on yours. You narrow your eyes slightly, turning to look around the gym. Terry’s not too far off—and he’s pointedly keeping his focus on anything but you. 

“...Terrence,” You call out. 

“Busy!” He yells back, plucking his water bottle and phone and hurrying to another machine. You roll your eyes, turning back to Will with a mutter of, “Spy.” 

His smile widens.

“I can be there by six, that alright?” He asks, pushes off of the wall. 

“Uh-huh.” 

“If I see any kind of calculator when I’m cooking…”

“Oh, you won’t. I’m like a phone ninja.” 

Will chuckles, leaning in and murmuring, “See you tonight.” 

The closeness of his murmur and his breath brushing against your sweat-slicked skin sends goosebumps skittering down your arms. 

-- 

Your plan to stealthily tally everything up disappears as Will unpacks the groceries. You blink, stunned, before you pick up a jar of sauce, turning it around in your hands. 

“Are you fricking kidding me?” 

Will doesn’t answer. He just backs off, an amused smile on his lips and his hand on his hip as you reach into the grocery bag and rifle through it before reeling back, screeching, “You took off all of the labels?!” 

“You thought I was just gonna let you look through everything and tally up how much this cost me?” He turns and reaches into the bag again, continuing to unpack. “Amateur hour.” 

You bite your lip, watching in silence for a few moments as you think. What sort of 3-D dating chess is this man playing? 

“You are…Frighteningly tactful, Miller.” 

His smile widens, and he seems to duck his head to unearth something from the bulging grocery bag, but you can see the creeping flush of flattering rising up in his cheeks. 

“I can still guestimate, you know,” You warn. 

He stops then, bracing his hands on the counter.

“Would you just let me do something nice for you?” His brows raise, his lips on the edge of pursing in disappointment. You’re stunned into silence as he adds, “Nothing has to be owed. I just…I just wanna make you dinner.” 

You pause before you nod a little. Will’s brows raise further, and you nod again, watching as he turns back toward the bag. You hesitate before nervously sidling up beside him, pressing yourself against his side and eyeing his steady hands. 

“Can I at least help?” You ask. Glancing at him, you find Will’s annoyance smoothed away, replaced with a somewhat serene consideration. He nods, concedes: “A little.” 

--  

Will designates you two things to chop (red and green peppers), and one thing to stir (vegetable stir fry). He keeps his back to you as he adds seasonings to your chicken (“It’s a secret recipe,” He insists before he shoos you away from the counter. All you get a glimpse of is the garlic salt).

You don’t know exactly what he puts on it, but when you take your first bite, it’s perfectly moist, and damn delicious. You don’t even bother to hide your groan, or the way you close your eyes to just savor—and try to work out one or two of the spices. You get hits of chili. Chili and…Cumin? Little pops of cumin—

“I’m not telling you,” Will’s mirthful warning floats across the table to you. Your smile widens, shaking your head and opening your eyes. 

“No idea what you’re talking about, Miller.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“Is this your secret recipe?” 

“My mom’s.” 

“Did she make it a lot growing up?"

“In the summer, mostly, for barbecues and stuff.” 

“Tastes pretty good from the oven.” 

He grunts, nodding. “Better on the grill,” He admits, “With a little char on it.” 

“Mm, noted. Are you and your mom close?” 

Will quirks a brow as he reaches for his drink, and you realize that you’ve been bombarding him with questions. Before you can apologize, he offers: 

“Pretty close. I try to see her at least once a week. It used to be more, but she said I was smothering her.” 

You smile, chuckling. 

“That’s kinda precious.” 

Will shrugs a touch, pushing his veggies around his plate. 

“My dad passed a couple’a years ago and I think coming around as much as I used to might’ve helped, but mom’s got her own life, you know. She’s got a book club…She’s apparently a bingo assassin.” 

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Some people think she’s cheating.” 

“...Is she?” You tease. 

“I wouldn’t put it past her. What  she lacks in subtlety, she makes up for in sneakiness.” 

“Is that where you and Ben get it?” 

He chuckles, ducking his head and poking at the food on his plate. 

“Some of it, maybe.” 

“And the rest?” 

“Training.” 

“Do you think Ben would agree?"

“Do you always ask this many questions?” 

You lean back, poking at your food in turn and fighting the embarrassed churning in your stomach. 

“Not always,” You mumble. You hear Will huff a soft laugh, and smile as he reaches across the table to take hold of your hand.

"I don't mind," He insists, thumb sweeping along the side of your hand. "Long as I get to ask a few, too."

--

"This was nice," You offer, almost woefully trailing Will to the front door. You've wanted to make a move since he put you to work in your kitchen—you've been thinking about it as the two of you were at your sink, doing the dishes; since you were sitting on your couch, talking about work, and the gym, and who Ben and Terry are facing next. You've been so close so consistently—arm to arm, hip to hip, knee to knee. The tiny touches have made you crave more, and Will's sweet smiles have made you do whatever you can think of to seek them out.

When he'd told you that he ought to get going, that he was meeting Ben in the gym at five the next morning, you were pretty sure that he was telling the truth—but you were already mourning the loss of the moment, and his warmth in your apartment.

"It was...Once you stopped pestering me about paying," He teases as he pulled on his jacket. You rolled your eyes.

"Well, how about I bring a bunch of labeless groceries over to your place, make you dinner, and see how you like it."

"I think I'd like it a lot," He insists, straightening his collar. "How's next week?"

And it's so swift and so smooth that you're certain you look more than a little gobsmacked. But you nod.

"Yeah. I can do next week."

"Friday?"

"Sure."

"Okay." He opens your door. "It's a date."

Just like that—so easy and open, and such a far cry to the first time he spoke to you at the gym.

"Good," You agree, leaning against the wall by your front door. "Let me know when you get home."

"I will." He leans in, and your breath catches in your throat as he presses a kiss to the corner of your mouth. You bite your lip at the gentle prickle of his beard against your skin, eyelids fluttering as Will stays close. He raises his hand, gently sweeping his thumb against your lower lip and tugging it from your teeth.

"Don't do that," He shakes his head. "Don't bite your lip."

"Why?" You mumble, leaning into the flirty urge that's rising in you. "There someone else that's supposed to do it for me?"

Will breathes out a groan, resting his temple gently against yours.

"I'm trying to be good," He warns. You sweep your tongue across your lower lip, letting the tip graze his thumb, and grinning as he swallows thickly.

"This feels good to me." You reach up, cupping his cheek.

"You realize if we do this, you'll be up past 9:30?"

"I'm willing to risk it."

You think for a moment that he'll draw away, that he'll call it—

Your stomach drops as he pulls away and you hear the door shut, but grin as he crowds up against you, lips pressing warmly to yours. You sigh, looping your arm around your shoulders and keeping you close. His hands slide over your hips, drawing you into his chest. You slide your hand up, gently teasing your nails against the nape of his neck.

"Remind me to apologize to Ben the next time I see him," You mumble.

"Why's that?"

"You're going to be very late tomorrow morning."

tag list: @missredherring ; @fantasticcopeaglepasta ; @massivecolorspygiant ; @blueeyesatnight; @amneris21 ; @ew-erin ; @youngkenobilove ; @carbonated-beverage; @moonlightburned ; @milf-trinity ; @millllenniawrites ; @chattychell ; @dihra-vesa​ ; @videogamesandpoorlifechoices​ ; @missswriter ; @thembosapphicclown ; @brandyllyn ; @wildmoonflower ; @buckybarneshairpullingkink ; @mad-girl-without-a-box ; @winchestershiresauce ; @lorecraft ; @kmc1989

[physalian]

Beta Reader Checklist! (Suggestions)

Beta reading is highly, highly subjective, so take this whole post with a massive grain of salt. IMO, in short, more feedback is always safer than less feedback, unless the author states otherwise.

Like, if they ask you to do a final read through for any lingering issues, you can speed-read your way through the manuscript for general vibes and enjoyability. If this is the first round of edits and beta reads, the more you can give them, even if you think you're over-reaching, the better.

Thank you to all my betas thus far, absolutely no shade meant with this post. Everybody's got different expectations. This is meant to help anyone who's unsure about the task before them.

So I'm going to use some snippets from my seasoned beta reader's feedback from my upcoming novella for the variety of commentary you can give.

Positive vibes/reader reaction

Even if the manuscript is a hot mess, sending back a beta read with 0 good things to say is going to demoralize the author. Even if all you can say is "this is a cool concept that can benefit from a better execution," letting the author know that they've written something salvagable helps, especially if you can do it in the first few paragraphs.

Grammar and Syntax

You are not a line editor and should not be expected to line edit someone's first draft (and this beta got the ~7th draft). However, if you do see something while reading, there's no reason that you can't leave a suggestion.

Fun commentary

We authors like to know that the reader is connecting with the story. These comments tells me absolutely nothing helpful about bettering the manuscript, but they're human responses from a human reader and it's just nice to see. Beta readers are casual, you should be allowed to stay stuff like this.

Developmental edits

Beta readers generally come before the big expensive editor (if you ever hire one at all) which means the goal is more big picture, developmental commentary over splitting hairs about punctuation. This comment got me to add about half a paragraph's worth of extra narrative to expand upon, because I liked the suggestion.

Continuity and reader comprehension

This novella happens to be about a niche subject that not every layman reader will understand, so I have to find the line between overexplaining to those who know, and underexplaining to those who don't, without reading like a textbook. The top line I ended up leaving as I didn't think the risk of confusion was worth the added technical detail. The bottom line was a continuity error that I did have to fix.

Repetition and style

I'm an author who will always look for ways to lower my word count. Sometimes cutting a random line is better for the narrative than doubling down and trying to justify it with extra details. In this case, I over-used a motif, and happily saved myself 7 words.

Potential for extra detail

If you struggle with lengthening your word count, you can ask your betas to focus on where the narrative is thin and can benefit for more immersion and backstory. This beta leaves me comments everywhere suggesting places for extra sensory details, as I write very lean narratives with little fluff, and my consistency with sensory details varies widely.

All told, over 21k words of story, this beta left me exactly 100 comments, and a couple quick line edits within the text itself. It shows me, at the very least, that she was engaged with the story. The only time she doesn't leave me comments is when a scene is so intense that she forgets to make one.

The Reader Report

The reader report is a separate document from the manuscript copy that compiles and condenses the beta's thoughts into a much shorter format so the author doesn't have to scroll up and down constantly for a big picture takeaway. It also expands upon any commentary the beta had, but didn't want to put in a single tag within the narrative and is typically written after most of the manuscript has been read for overall thoughts.

This beta in particular knows what I like, which is breaking down the report by chapter (or parts in this case). The only thing missing from her delivery is a final conclusion that will answer the three big questions:

Did she like it?

Would she buy it?

Would she recommend it?

But it was also done in a rush and in her email she said I made her cry so I count that as a yes for all 3.

—

I did not implement every suggestion from her, but I did acknowledge where other readers might feel the same and weighed the pros of trying to satisfy everything vs maintaining my clear vision.

The benefit of the beta process, if you work with multiple betas, is having more than one reader's opinion, and why I don't think anyone should pay ridiculous fees for a developmental editor. My betas all had different opinions on this manuscript, and I can treat their feedback like a scatterplot, deciding on revisions with an average throughline.

At the end of the day, you write for yourself, not to please any one beta reader. They're suggestions, not rules, and even if your beta tells you they hate it, you at least learn who your target audience isn't, and what naysayers wouldn't like.

[vyl3tpwny]

genuine question: why is genesis so low on ur topsters?

also, if you can: could i hear why hawaii: part ii is rated 3.5 on ur rateyourmusic? (as opposed to like. anything higher)

(p. s. your music inspires me to be the sincerest version of myself, and for that i thank you. the impact you've had on my life is unforgettable.)

genesis isn't rated low. my number one album of all time is genesis' "the lamb lies down on broadway", for about 16 years running. my topster is organized by relative colour, it's not perfect but it just looks nice!

—

when it comes to talking about music, what i like and like about it, almost 100% of the time i NEVER want to discourage people, talk down to artists, or claim my opinion as fact. the only time i will actively talk down about art is if it's purposefully harmful (see artists like: Tom Macdonald, etc).

with that said, music by miracle musical - and by extension tally hall - often does this thing where there are a handful of really impressive, well written songs that just blow me away. but then the rest of the album outside of those handful of songs are either just ok/catchy or don't interest me very much. the tally hall gang's highs are very high, and equally their lows are just sort of pace-killers for the albums.

it's dynamics like these that prevent me from liking some of my other albums for similar problems! i think albums like queen of misfits and glitter are bogged down by an absurd amount of boring filler that could have just been left out or reworked to be more interesting, it makes it hard to ever listen to those albums front to back. ironically i don't feel that way about fairytails, my 40-song long ass album, almost everything in it still feels rather purposeful to me. i listen to my own music a lot, and once i've finished a project i tend to try and listen to it and enjoy it from an audience perspective rather than an artist one.

while i'm on the topic, i don't necessarily agree with even rating hawaii pt. ii 3.5 because in the past few years i've completely lost interest in the idea of weighing albums by arbitrary scores. nowadays i like to just give 4-5's to albums i like and then ignore anything else. it doesn't really make sense to me to assign a number score to something with good faith, other than to show that score to other people. interfacing with art is not a black and white process. despite the so-called 3.5/5.0 score i gave hawaii pt. ii whenever that was, the reality is that record has influenced me and i've enjoyed it. honestly that's what matters the most. we can sit here and talk album dynamics, technicalities, compositional proficiency, lyric profundity, and """""consistency"""""" (which is a word music critics love to throw around without actually realizing what the fuck they're talking about) all day, but what matters the most is:

Did you like the music? (Yes/No)

Did it inspire you in some way? (Yes/No) [Optional]

Does it seek to do harm? (Yes/No)

Do you respect the efforts and goals of the artist? (Yes/No) [Should always be the inverse of Question 3; i.e; if you answer No to 3, then you should answer Yes to 4]

honestly if you answer yes, yes, no, yes, then it's a good album. i really don't care. not every piece of art has to push the envelope to new heights and be the most innovative thing in the world - i mean wouldn't that be extremely fatiguing and overwhelming? everyone wants to be a critic and tear down shit that doesn't click with them within the first viewing/listen these days, i don't know why, it's probably an ego thing, bred by the echo chambers in the corners of the internet. but a lot of music criticism can be COMPLETELY discarded in favour of "this just isn't for me", and a lot of people go leaps and bounds, doing mental gymnastics over internal compensations, to just avoid saying the dreaded phrase of "this just isn't for me".

trust me, i'm someone who has immense experience with tearing other people down to compensate for my internal insecurities, it happens extremely often which is why a lot of art criticism makes ZERO fucking sense. it's never about making meaningful commentary about anything, it's always just trying to justify in the format of a dissertation - the subjective experience of "this just isn't for me".

so. do i like hawaii pt. ii? yep. is it a perfect album? no. why did i rate it 3.5? probably because at the time i wanted someone somewhere to perceive me as Very Articulated and Well Educated In The Realm of Discussing Art In Front of Other People, in Order to Appear Superior in Intellect and Refined in Taste, Because I'm Insecure Just Like Everyone Else.

[takamimami]

takamimami Celebrates 100 Followers!!

EVENT CLOSED: RULES AND PROMPTS UNDER CUT (event end Oct 11th)

What better way to celebrate a milestone than with these three goofballs?!

Seriously though, I want to thank everyone who has liked, followed, reblogged, and interacted with any of my works I've posted on this blog. Let me start off by actually introducing myself:

Hi! My name is Tia/Angel/Princess/any pet name you want to call me :3 - I am a 27-year-old loser who shamelessly obsesses over people I will never meet. I pride myself in trying to be an open book, so I am always open to chatting about anything from anime, video games, music, books - but I need to come with my own CW because I am unhinged 87% of the time (srynotsry). I once saw this post that said something like 'Create pieces that you are the target audience for' and that is 100% my motto when it comes to writing, so the fact that anyone enjoys what I create is amazing bc it means I'm not as crazy or alone as I once thought I was <3 (ew that was oddly sappy). This blog is technically a side blog where I post my writings, so if you really wanna be friends, consider following/interacting with me on my main page @limitlesstildil

EVENT RULES UNDER THE CUT - PLEASE CONSIDER LIKING/REBLOGGING THIS POST TO SPREAD THE LOVE :3

Supernova Captains 100 Follower Event:

RULES:

The rules are pretty easy: submit an ask here and choose a prompt from the lists below, and then let me know which of our lovely captains you want me to write about for you!! ALL WILL BE WRITTEN AS X READER FICS - SO PLEASE SPECIFY IF YOU PREFER F!READER, M!READER, OR G/N!READER!!

Be mindful of what prompt you are choosing - Smut prompts will be NSFW - Fluff Prompts will be SFW - and Angst will be SFW unless you request otherwise :3 NOTE: you can select choose for me to write a prompt for all three captains, but the blurbs will be smaller (5-600 words each) than if you just choose one of them. Single character pieces will be roughly 1.5k words - give or take (and also depending on my self control :3) ALSO: please feel free to include any ideas/pet names/headcanons you would like me to include/lean into - I want to personalize them for whoever is asking as much as possible so do not hold back when it comes to letting me know what you're in the mood for :3 HAPPY REQUESTING <3

PROMPT LIST:

SMUT 🔞

“Don’t act innocent when we both know where your mouth was two minutes ago.”

“We should probably leave, before we start a scandal.”

“My tongue still remembers the way you taste.”

“Jealousy seems to be a great motivator for you.”

“I could make you feel better.”

“I know I should care about the reason why you’re naked in my bed, but I will just enjoy it for a moment.”

“Your hand feels so much better than mine.”

“Your moans will wake everyone up and I’m oddly fine with that.”

“Your eyes are already saying yes, now I just need your mouth to tell me the same.”

“How about we get really dirty before we shower, so that it’s actually worth the effort?”

“Oh, you’re such a tease!”

“Hmm, is that a threat or a promise?”

“I want to ruin you.”

Our bodies fit so well together.”

“Make me shut up then.”

FLUFF🍬

“How come you always end up under my blanket?”

“Have I told you I love you today?”

“I would like my good morning kiss now.”

“You getting so flustered is one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.”

“I think I know what that smile means.”

“You give the best hugs.”

“You’re enough for me.”

“Wait, we have a few more minutes.”

“You’re just the cutest.” “You’re the only one who is allowed to say that.”

“Do you think they will like it?”

“Sweet of you to think of me.” “I always think of you.”

“You make me a better person.”

“Everything alright?” “I just missed you.”

“I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else.”

“Come on. Let’s go home.”

ANGST🥀

“I shouldn’t have left.”

"Please don't talk about yourself like that."

“No, this can’t be real!”

“We tried our best.”

“Please, let me in.”

“Can’t you understand why that hurts me?”

“I asked you not do this, but you did it anyway.”

“Don’t touch me!”

“I’ve always been alone.”

“It hurts, but I’ll live.”

“Please, tell me you're ok.”

“Sleep doesn’t come that easy without you.”

“I don’t really care anymore.”

“No, I’m actually not ok.”

“You just can’t help it, can you?”

[dubiousculturalartifact]

Obviously I’ve been queerbaited before, like, a genuinely incalculable number of times, and maybe thinking Buddie might actually go canon is a ‘fool me sixteen times, shame on me’ scenario, but I think one big thing that’s keeping my hope alive is this thought: If you genuinely believe that Buddie isn’t going to go canon, 100% zero possibility and absolutely no intention of trying... Then you also have to believe the people who create the show we’re all fans of are purposefully cruel dicks. 

Because we have SEEN what it looks like when the showrunner of 911 knows there is no possibility of it happening, has no plans of it, and is generally trying to avoid accusations of queerbaiting.

It looks like S5 & S6. Little bits here and there, the odd important scene to throw breadcrumbs… but a lot of keeping the two characters apart, being circumspect in interviews, PR shut downs on the actors, etc. The show has proven they are capable and willing to exactly that!

So indulge me, and imagine for a second. They had the conversation with the new network, and the execs told them they wanted to continue with the status quo, to write as if Buddie is never going to go canon, BUT were willing to bend so far as to make one of them queer, to keep the fans happy.

What would that look like?

I don't know, call me foolish.... But I think it would look like keeping the same dynamic from The Drought Seasons. Having them be friends and important to each other but still fairly disconnected, not having as much screen-time, etc, It would look like having Buck’s coming out arc be a SEPARATE, individual narrative. If they just wanted to write Tommy and Buck, and that's it, they could have done things differently.

There are just so many conceivable ways they could have written Buck’s coming out arc, to almost completely separate it from Eddie and have it be made clear, in no uncertain terms, that Buck is bi but that doesn’t mean he cares about Eddie like that, that Eddie is a hetero McHetero.

Buck’s coming out arc could have included him being jealous because he’s suddenly faced with Tommy in the flesh and is insecure about how he was technically ‘Tommy’s replacement’ at the 911, with Eddie not relevant to it at all, or have Maddie and Chimney be the ones to interrupt The Date, or literally any other scenario that didn’t make it all about Eddie. 

They could have had one short scene where Eddie and Buck talk about it, and then the rest would be like, Buck talking to Hen about being queer, Buck interacting just with Tommy and getting to know him, Buck doing a research binge about bisexuality and info-dumping at an inappropriate time during a call, etc etc etc.

That’s how you tell that story and only be writing it for the proverbial ‘general audience’.

But they didn't. They purposefully reversed direction. They chose for Buck’s coming out arc to... highlight his nigh-feral jealousy over Eddie forming a homosocial bond with another guy, having said guy repeat with genuine surprise and shock that it was him and not Eddie that Buck was interested in, have Eddie interrupt their date, have Buck be more worried about lying to Eddie than the fact that he’s queer at all, have Maddie say what she did to Buck about telling Eddie in specifically ambiguous terms…

In a season that also included the Fire Extinguisher Incident, and Buck saying he ‘wishes he could help’ with Eddie’s sexual frustration, and a big increase in social media engagement, and having Buck being Eddie’s rock in the last few episodes while he had a bizarrely platonic affair with his dead wife's doppleganger…

If they did that while KNOWING the plan was actually for Buck/Tommy endgame and Eddie riding off in the sunset with a hot female firefighter who has a cool motorcycle or whatever the fuck, or them both dying in a freak car-washing accident, or….

If they GENUINELY planned that? If the entire Buck jealousy plotline was intended to be nothing more than a deliberate queerbait-and-switch? Then they’re fucking assholes, sorry. They would have to know full well exactly what they were doing, how many people’s hopes and emotional investment they were toying with... If they were actually planning to keep dragging it along for seasons more of baiting and dangling things in front of us, while knowing categorically that they had no plans to deliver? That would be genuinely GOD TIER levels of specific, intentional queerbaiting.

Which could be the case! I won't deny that. Shows have done it before, plenty of times. Tim et al could be callous bastards deliberately instructing the actors to wink it up in interviews and share suggestive Tiktoks, and writing Buck’s coming out arc as being entirely focused around Eddie and throwing out hints... All while laughing behind Buddie fans' backs about our gullibility, how we’re keeping the show trending on the force of our delusions, etc. Maybe that's it! Maybe they just genuinely enjoying fucking with people. Or maybe they were just shitty enough writers that they didn't know what they were doing, and it was all a total accident, somehow, the proverbial monkeys pounding at keyboards and accidentally spelling out B U D D I...

But you know what? Call it naive, but I prefer to think they’re not huge assholes, or hugely incompetent.

That there might actually be a point to all this, somewhere down the line.

I guess we'll find out.

[rainbowxocs]

(Reference coming soon)

(CURRENT THIS REFERENCE IS BASED ON THE MYTH. I WILL UPDATE IT ONCE THE MYTH IS OVER.)

Written by meeee!!

Name: Evren Nevermore!!

Alter of: Daisy Bell!!!

Role: Protector!

Alt Names: The Void, The Skybox!!

Special Titles: The Prophet.

Username: lappelduvide!! It’s a pun. Hehe.

Nicknames: Little Raven, Prophet, Caesar, Brutus, Julius.

Age: 17!!

Pronouns: Any Pronouns!!

Sexuality: eh whatever.

Gender: eh whatever.

Species: Technically, I am the same species as Daisy but like- I am a void. What is a void? Great question!! I dunno cause I kinda made it up Im going to be so for real.

Disorders: I have the same disorders as Daisy.

Physical Disabilities: I have the same disabilities as Daisy.

Religion: Daisyism, obviously.

Job: My main job is to like, protect Daisy obviously, but also to keep track of the domain and make sure everything is like chill and stable and stuff.

Lives in: I live in the Skybox/Void.

Languages: I can speak any language basically. I mean I’m literally a computer I can just google translate everything it ain’t that hard-

Height: 6ft!!

Accent: Otherwordly, No Discernible Origin.

Voice Claim: Amethyst from Steven Universe.

Spirit Level: Acceptance baby.

Powers: I have the same powers as Daisy. I just tend to focus on like reality bending stuff, wind and sky stuff, prophecy is a big one, yknow that kinda thing.

Weaknesses: I have the same weaknesses as Daisy.

Strings Form: Myyy strings are white cause we gotta MATCH obviously.

Soul: Mycena Lazulina!!

Weapons: Windforce Sword!!!

Alignment: I am chaotic neutral.

Text Color: Blueee!

Main Animal: Ravens!

Main Hobbies: I don’t really have time for hobbies with all the work I gotta do.

Favorite Food: Apples. I don’t really eat so.. not much else..

Favorite Flower: Lily of the Valleys!!! They’re pretty. Also they’re the fancy flowers you get in animal crossing.

Scent: Blueberries.

Handedness: Ambidextrous.

Blood Color: Good luck stabbing me to find out. It’s probably red though.

Awareness: Oh I am very aware.

Birthday: Same as Daisy, December 20th.

Theme:

Battle Theme:

Playlist:

Fun Facts: She knows all, She sees all, She speaks all.

Special Interests: Greek Mythology, Philosophy, History!!

Stims: Playing with clouds, flying around, spinning!!

Stimboard: [???]

Moodboard: [???]

Fashion Board: [???]

Comfort Objects: Im not a child. I don’t have any.

Here’s the part you really want to know yeah? WHAT ARE EVRENS OPINIONS ON YOU PEOPLE.

Family:

Cosmo. I feel absolutely no feelings towards this man I think he is stupid and he calls me little raven which IS RUDE. (0%)

Kriston. …he’s my dad… can we STOP TALKING ABOUT IT NOW. (100%)

The Cranes. They all seem like decent people. I haven’t met most of them.. but they keep Daisy safe and protected.. and that’s all that matters to me. (100%)

Jessa. SHE MIGHT BE MY MOM I DONT KNOW WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME SO MANY QUESTIONS GOD. (100%)

Ebro4. I go back and forth on him. I think he is a good man but he often gets.. blinded by more than his blindfold.. (30%g

Zailyn. I respect her a lot. She has done a lot of good for Daisy and protects her well. I can’t really complain about her really. (50%)

Friends:

Grat. I like Grat!! He’s a very silly demon. I have fun playing with him. :) (50%)

Zan. Zan is neat, I find her to be pretty funny. (50%)

Alice. Alice is funny, me and her often play together. She loves flying on my clouds with me. (50%)

Star. Star is neat!! I really enjoy them.. They are kinda like my personal hype squad. (50%)

Mouse. I respect her. I haven’t really interacted with her much directly due to our paths never really aligning. (50%)

Sleuth. Clockhead is funny. I like that.. he takes care of us though.. he- doesn’t have to do that.. (90%)

Romance: Aculia. Her system included in this of course. I.. really.. love her.. I- trust her wholeheartedly.. I would die for her.. (100%)

Therapist: Jonah Francois. Jonah is alright. I have no issues with him, I just am a little bit antsy when I have to bear my neck for someone.. (80%)

Enemies: Enemies is a bit of a strong word. This is more “people I disagree with on a fundamental level spiritually and emotionally”

Camilla. Okay maybe I have one enemy fuck this bitch I hope she dies in a fire. (0%)

Radio. I cannot forgive him for what he has done to Daisy. I fundamentally disagree with everything he stands for. Chaos above all else is meaningless. (0%)

Venus. If he truly thinks he can contain and control me then he is more of an idiot than I thought. (0%)

Emily. I understand why she did it, but I don’t know if I can forgive her for it. (0%)

Brief Personality: [wip]

Brief Backstory: [wip]

[destinygoldenstar]

'Jax is an NPC'

Hm... ... ...

No.

It's a good theory, don't get me wrong, I see the evidence, I see where you're coming from.

But it's not a theory I agree with. Let me explain.

Caine's line "But if I start losing track of who's a human and who's an NPC who knows what could happen" is very vague as is. This could mean a whole lot of things.

I said this in another post of one of my own theories. I think it's possible that Caine could've killed a human player and his trauma of that was showing.

We know A.I's can shed traumatic emotions. Look at Gummigoo.

Now, yes, Caine couldn't 100% kill a human. Otherwise he would delete the abstractions. And it seems like human players abstract when they die and that's the only way they CAN die.

So therefore Caine having killed a human player should be thrown out as a possibility.

BUT. Hear me out.

Abstractions are shown to be able to glitch several in game objects because of their abstraction. And we actually do NOT see if all the abstractions look exactly the same as Kaufmo's abstraction.

They could very well not.

Going to biblical text, Caine was the first murderer and received a permanent consequence.

Could a permanent consequence be, idk, failing at your programmed job over and over again and be forced to watch these humans abstract and perish forever?

Especially if because of the human player death's abstraction glitch, is WHY the other human players cannot leave the game!

If you look at Pomni's room in one shot, there's a couple of blocks that are stacked from top to bottom 'ABXEL'.

Could it be that the human player Caine killed was named Abel?

But there is also the other possibility that somehow, there is an NPC among the circus. So let me explain my thought on that possibility.

I don't think it's possible.

I think Caine would've noticed, especially if he immediately recognized GummiGoo wasn't supposed to be there.

If one of the circus folks were an NPC, their figure would've appeared with the others in the backrooms.

Now, there is the possibility that it was placed somewhere else, that place is huge after all. So take that with a grain of salt.

I'm not completely eliminating the 'Jax is an NPC' theory.

I get the evidence. He's constantly breaking the fourth wall. But I think that more so has to do with what I’m about to say.

He has keys to people's rooms. I get that one. That is definitely sus as hell and I'm not denying it is sus.

He also ‘lacks human physics.’

So does everyone else in the cast. Pomni can stretch her body out like Elastagirl. Ragatha has stuffing instead of blood. Kinger has his own glitchy moments. Gangle has two faces. Zoobles body can fall apart.

I’m just saying. These are not human physics either. So Jax being able to keep in place whenever he wants being only a Jax thing is not too far fetched compared to all these other examples.

But I also think, and this is my opinion, that he's much more compelling as a character as a sociopathic human player that is beyond saving and MENTALLY cannot be humanized again.

What I mean by that is that while he is TECHNICALLY a human player, MENTALLY, he is so detached from his humanity and moral code often associated with humanity that he acts more NPC-like as a side effect.

Jax is not designed to be a morally grey character. He is written to be the least moral of the entire show.

It would be SO EASY to excuse those moral wrongdoings as 'well they were never human to begin with'.

But I think that's the lazy way out, and I think this show is smarter than that.

Because here is the thing, there ARE some really REALLY terrible humans. Evil humans in fact.

WHY they're so terrible varies, but that doesn't make them less terrible.

And yes while some terrible people can get redeemed if they themselves can, this is NOT absolute. There are people that are just plain beyond saving. So beyond saving that they ditch their moral code, a code drilled into the human mind, that they SEEM inhuman to humans who can't relate.

This is a very real psychological thing.

With how many morally grey characters get thrown around as compelling these days, Jax NOT being written that way and instead being written as the morally worst would naturally make people go 'he must not be human'.

In psychology, behavior like that doesn't physically inhumanize them, but it MENTALLY does, they behave in a set of rules so different from the normal that it's corrupt to the normal.

So I think he is a human player like the others. But his MENTALITY is not, so he ACTS NPC-like as a side effect to that mental loss.

Not every human is morally grey and get cozy redemption arcs. There are some truly awful people in the world with no redeemable qualities whatsoever. I like that he represents that. I like that there's a character on this show that acts as that huge wake-up call of 'Yeah some people just plain suck and you shouldn't have to deal with them.'

But while I don't think Jax being an NPC would be the best route to take. That is just my opinion and I am not the one writing the show. If that IS the route they are taking, I am fine with that so long as it is written with proper care. I could definitely be reading this wrong.

[elljayvee]

Today I'm more than usually annoyed with a pop science article, so I'm going to talk about reading these sorts of articles, why you should always be skeptical of claims in them, and some of the ways you can tell the article's author didn't understand what they were reading and told you the wrong thing.

I clicked on an article in Eating Well about low bone density and dementia, because my mother has both. There's not a lot we can do for her now, but I am a curious person. I know Eating Well isn't great at science interpretation and communication, so I'm anticipating that I'm going to need to read the original study already, going in. (How do I know Eating Well isn't a great source usually? Well, I have read it before, and it has some really clear biases if you read a few articles that aren't science communication, and so you get to know a source over time like that. Regardless of how, I'm already suspicious they're not going to do a great job.)

The article is talking about research that shows low bone density may be predictive of dementia risk. It is written by a journalist and reviewed by a dietician. Now, I don't know what review the dietician did, but she did a bad job, and also, so did the journalist, because THE FIRST red flag that goes up is pretty quick: the math is very, very clearly wrong.

This says there are 3651 participants, and that over 11 years, 688 of them developed dementia. This is 18.8% and the article calls it 19%. That's fair! Not a red flag so far, just rounding. Then it says that of the 1211 people with lowest bone density at the start, 90 people (7.4%) developed dementia, and of the 1211 with highest bone density, only 57 (4.7%) did.

This IS a red flag. It's a GIANT red flag. This red flag can be seen from SPACE by anyone who knows how percentages work.

Here's how: You have 3651 people. 1211 of them are in the low bone density group, 1211 of them are in the high bone density group, leaving 1249 people. You have 688 total dementia cases, but your high and low groups account for only 147 of them, leaving 541 cases for that middle group. That's a LOT of cases. That middle tertile, just eyeballing it, has to have about 40% of its people with dementia -- that makes low bone density look like it predicts LOWER dementia risk relative to the middle group.

I can write out the equations for you two ways:

3651 - 1211 - 1211 = 1249 688 - 90 - 57 = 541 541/1249 = 0.433 0.433(100) = 43.3%

Because I am someone who does a fair amount of stats for a living, though, what I noticed was pretty much this equation:

0.074(1211) + x(1249) + 0.047(1211) = 0.19(3651) and I knew immediately that x had to be MUCH bigger than it should, which indeed the math bears out: x(1249) = 0.19(3651) - 0.074(1211) - 0.047(1211) x(1249) = 694 - 90 - 57 x = 547/1249 = 0.438 0.438(100) = 43.8%

That 694 is because the authors rounded 18.8 to 19 earlier, not because I can't math. So, due to rounding, you get slightly different answers -- but BOTH of them point to something SERIOUSLY WRONG with the reporting. What is actually going on in that middle tertile? Where do these numbers come from? Well, lucky us, they mention the name of an author, a journal, and a date. Always be wary of pop sci articles that don't give you a way to track down the original, but giving you that way to track things down doesn't mean they aren't still doing a crummy job with their reporting, as we see here.

The original paper is Association of Bone Mineral Density and Dementia: The Rotterdam Study, published March 2023 in Neurology. This is a pretty technical article with a fair amount of math and things in parens etc. etc. and tables and lots of measurements. The table captions are often not the greatest, which makes it a bit harder to read and interpret. For example, in Table 1, items are listed as number(number) and this can be any of:

count (percent) -- this one's usually labeled in the table itself

mean (standard deviation)

median (interquartile range) -- these last two are NOT labeled in the table, so we don't know which set of numbers is which.

Great. Thanks guys. Assuming what's called a "normal distribution" mean (SD) and median (IQR) numbers will be similar, but they're not the same and I'm irritated they're conflated but OK. Soldiering on!

The original study looked at several different measures of bone density, and found only ONE of them to show predictive ability for dementia: the density of the femoral neck. This means that for their article, Eating Well should have looked at the results for femoral neck bone density, which we find in Table 2:

You have the actual numbers for 5 years, 10 years, and study end, as well as the hazard risk (HR) for each bone density tertile, with the highest tertile set as the standard. Numbers in the HR column have 1 as a reference point -- lower than 1 is lower risk than the highest tertile, and higher than 1 is higher risk.

The first thing I noticed is that neither 57 nor 90 occur in the femoral neck section at ALL. Those numbers from the Eating Well article are just not there. I also notice that the other numbers don't align even one little bit -- the number of total cases of dementia is different, for example. I do notice that the column with the 10 year followup has numbers in it close to 57 and 90 (49, 67, 86, totaled to 202) and that the overall numbers for the total study are much higher -- 201, 236, 229. Interesting.

At this point, I just straight-up search the paper for "90", and I find it in Table 2....in the total bone density section, which the paper's authors have said is NOT the section that showed possible predictive results. I search for "57", and also find that in total bone density, and also....wow the EW author straight up failed to read. This is actually worse than I thought.

Read across, these are the 5 year followup numbers (first 2 columns - count and HR), 10 year (middle 2 columns), and total followup numbers (last 2 columns).

We see our friends 57 and 90 in the 10 year columns. 90 is, as described in the EW article, in the lowest bone density tertile, but 57 is NOT in the highest bone density tertile. It's in the middle tertile. The actual number for the highest tertile is 68. Additionally, the total cases for 10 years is nowhere near that 688 number -- it's 215. We only get total case numbers close to 688 when we look at the study end numbers: it's 686, in this particular group. If we look at the study end case numbers for highest, middle, and lowest tertiles, we see WHY this particular measure can't be used to predict anything: they are 227 (highest), 227 (middle), and 232 (lowest) -- not significantly different from each other.

We can also see here that this group of people -- people who had total bone density measurements -- is not 3651, but 3633, which is listed across the bottom row. The overall STUDY had 3651, but not all of them had total bone density recorded.

Now we know that the author of the EW article did all of the following:

read the wrong part of Table 2

mixed up middle and high tertile results

reported 10 year results mixed with total followup results (this resulted in the weird math that alerted me something was very very wrong in the first place).

and the person who was supposed to review the article didn't have even the basic math skills to catch the problem -- which she absolutely should have, as a registered dietician. For giggles, I looked up program requirements for a BS in Dietetics. Programs require things like statistics and precalc -- not math heavy, but the math that alerted me to this problem is VERY basic statistical knowledge, like the kind they teach in 6th grade level statistics, which I know because it was literally in my 6th grader's curriculum this past school year. So a registered dietician DEFINITELY had enough math to catch this problem, and should have, and Eating Well should be ashamed of itself.

SO. What can we learn from this?

Well, science communication is a skill set. Some people have worked very hard to develop that skill set and are excellent at it -- but lots of people do not have it, and even those who do can make mistakes. Many, many pop sci articles are not written by trained science communicators, or people with any education in how to read scientific articles, or people with good reading comprehension, even. It's very common for pop sci articles to have these sorts of errors in them. Therefore:

Always read pop sci articles with a skeptical eye. Ask yourself:

Do these numbers line up? Usually the math in pop sci articles is not very complex -- you can often do some basic arithmetic to make sure it even makes sense, as was the case here.

Does one part of the article seem to contradict another part of the article?

Do I feel confused about what exactly I'm being told? What's not clear about it?

Am I being told about HOW something works or WHY it works or both? Are those two things being conflated somehow?

Is there a link or way to find the original research? If not, my advice is to throw the whole article away. If yes, you can go check it out -- often just looking at the abstract or results section will be enough, and abstracts usually aren't paywalled even if the rest of the article is. You would be surprised how many times the abstract says "we found X" and the pop sci article says "the researchers found Y".

Could I explain this article to someone and have it make sense? If not, why not?

Is the article confusing correlation (these things happen together) with causation (one of these things causes the other)?

Pop sci articles, like other journalistic articles, are extremely subject to bias issues from the publication they're in. A lot of people tend to read pop sci articles as neutral, factual reporting, but they aren't! I mentioned EW's biases earlier -- the one I think is most relevant to how their article is written is a pervasive belief that if you just eat the right things in the right amounts you will be thin and healthy and stave off all kinds of problems. They close their article by mentioning that, although the study's authors are clear that this connection is unlikely to be causative, and that risk factors for low bone density and dementia have substantial overlap, readers should act like it might be causitive with diet and exercise choices that promote bone health. They were so excited to get to their point about fixing your diet that they didn't pay attention to the actual science they were reporting on. (Sidenote: actual scientific journal articles are supposed to be neutral, factual reporting. They also aren't actually that, but there are some measures in place around this to try to prevent the worst effects of bias.)

It's worth brushing up some basic math skills. You don't need to know a lot! Very basic information will help you better understand a lot of articles -- both ones that are accurate and well-written, and ones that are shoddy and should not have been published. I really like Larry Gonick's The Cartoon Guide to Statistics but if your grasp of percentages is shaky, it will be too advanced. A good option might be something like The I Hate Mathematics! Book, which is pretty old but really accessible, but there's probably some newer great ones out there that I just don't know about.

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

Some people need to understand queer coding opens character identities and relationships up to a solid queer interpretation, but that doesn’t equal “this character 100% fits my headcanon and if you disagree you’re a [REDACTED]”

From a literary analysis perspective, as long as your interpretation is reasonably evidence-based it’s valid. As this is fandom, I’d add “sincere” to that since unlike an academic setting we get bad faith actors but that’s it.

So, to have a valid “interpretation” you have to do the work in good faith, and you have to be able point at the text to support your interpretation. If you can’t, or don’t want to, that’s a headcanon, and it’s totally fine.

“But this character is a lesbian she likes a girl!” There’s more to queerness than straight and gay. You could reasonably interpret a girl who likes another girl as plenty of different things:

Lesbian

Bi

Ace/aro and something else

Straight and closeted trans

Straight and lover is closeted trans

And so on.

So when you have an interpretation, someone might tell you, “I think this other thing.” The polite way to handle this if you don’t like it is to say “that’s so cool we can see different things in the ambiguity of art”. Maybe blocking each other if you dislike their interpretation that much.

That’s of course unless you both want a debate to further refine your understanding of the text or just like to argue or whatever. Which is fine! As long as it’s not overly bitter or whatever, it’s fun to discuss.

“So how do I know which interpretation is more canon than another?”

See, that’s the thing, you can’t. Canon is kind of shaky in the first place. The canon is just what’s written that’s recognized as true/correct text, not the way to understand it (and not what the author says is true, some people take Word of God as canon because it allows the following of one concrete interpretation instead of acknowledging multiple, but strictly speaking it is not). You can only interpret the canon.

For example, 4-komas bonuses of serialized manga are usually non-canon because they are jokes and not meant to be taken seriously as a part of the story’s text. That’s what canon actually is for, originally it’s to talk about which books are genuinely part of the Bible and which are to be deemed offshoots that shouldn’t be taken as a Catholic Church-endorsed religious text.

I guess that’s what gets people confused? That there’s no actual truth to imagined worlds, only what happens in the eyes of the beholder when they interact with art?

Because that’s what it means, canon often has nothing to do with who’s “actually a lesbian” short of them saying it directly. An onscreen wedding is said to “make a couple canon” precisely because there’s only so many ways you can interpret a wedding, but all that means is that the text says they’re together at a point in time. One way I can think of having a canon sexuality would be a canonical character sheet, or an omniscient narrator saying so, but everything less is basically an interpretation.

Note that interpretation obviousness can go from “that’s a stretch but I like it”, to “you only need eyes to see it”, they’re both still interpreting. Even a character talking sexuality technically only makes canon that they’re willing to say so, but that’s when critical thinking comes in.

If you hear a character say “I’m a married lesbian” and think “they’re just confused” with no evidence, you look like an idiot. You absolutely can argue which interpretation is more valid or likely by pointing out inconsistencies, stretched evidence, or that one interpretation has a higher volume of evidence/etc. This is how you avoid relativism and “nothing the text says matters” trolls.

Occam’s Razor is another way you might be tempted to try and determine whose thesis is stronger. This technique works through figuring out which interpretation requires the least amount of assumptions (saying something arbitrary is true as a basis) but it doesn’t make anything canon, or more interesting, it’s not a concrete sign of superiority. Just means it has stronger fondations.

However… your interpretation being stronger, more popular, better worded etc. or you thinking someone else’s is immoral, stupid, etc. doesn’t give you license to be a bully, to call people names, to dox them, dig up dirt to make them look worse, and so on and so forth. Thinking you’re right and they’re wrong does not make you above basic respect, politeness, or consequences. You’re not better than everyone else.

As a child, I used to think I was always right because I was logical, and I clearly made logical sense so there was no way for there to be a logical reasoning that arrived at a different conclusion. (Newsflash: Child me was very wrong! Sometimes multiple things can be equally valid! And even if they were not equal, that didn’t give me license to deride people publicly!)

Queer coding is by its nature interpretative. Coding is the author leaving hints about their characters by using a “code”. Some hints, almost everyone in your section of fandom might have the exact same interpretation about. Some hints might be dead obvious. Some hints might leave you overjoyed. Some hints you might ignore because they make you uncomfortable.

Some people will disagree with you about how they interpret the coding, or might even just state that they believe people have a right to interpret the canon however they want, even in ways you don’t like. That is normal. That is not a threat to your interpretation.

Don’t be a petty cunt about it.

Essentially,

[snowbellewells]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I'll freely admit I wasn't tagged - and this may not be of interest to any of my followers - but I thought it looked like fun, so I'm giving it a try. I haven't done one of these fic writer asks in a bit, so it felt like it was time. :)

How many works do you have on AO3? I have 94 separate works on AO3, though a couple of those are collections of one shots, so it might seem like more. On ff.net I have an even 100, but way back in the day I wrote some fics for Criminal Minds and Castle before I found OuaT. (I was a big time propoent of Morgan and Garcia becoming a couple... ;P)

2. What's your total AO3 word count? Okay, short of trying to look at the count of each separate story and add up all 94 of them, I'm not sure how I locate this. Let's just say, it's a lot of words.

3. What fandoms do you write for? Now, pretty much solely for Once Upon a Time. In the past I have written fic about the Backstreet Boys (yes, I know, but what can I tell you?) Criminal MInds, CSI:NY, NCIS: Los Angeles, Moonlight, Castle, and a couple Lord of the Rings missing moment one shots.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Hmmm.... let's see, shall we? My fic with the most kudos appears to be a one-shot I wrote for CS Neverland New Year: "Fight for me When it Matters' with 130 kudos, followed by a gift fic written for @teamhook, also a one-shot, called "Thick as Thieves (or Princesses)" with 123, then a three-shot birthday fic for @searchingwardrobes titled "One More" and a two-shot I wrote way back when season three was airing called "Under the Weather" - both of those have 86 kudos. Last is a two-shot birthday fic I wrote for @kmomof4, "The Weight of the Crown (is a Feather on the Waves)", with 85 kudos.

5. Do you respond to comments? I should do better at that than I do. I love and treasure every single comment. They make the hard work feel completely worthwhile. I do try to answer as many as I can, but since most people have migrated to AO3, I don't do as well as I did on ff.net. For some reason I have a harder time following the comment and response page interface on that site than I did on the other one. (I know, I in the very small minority there, but to each her own, I guess?)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Honestly, you've probably not going to find my angstiest fics on AO3. They're old enough that I'm not sure I have ever moved them over from ff.net. I wrote a Lord of the Rings fic once "What Went Unspoken" (mostly missing moments that fleshed out Boromir's character and motivations, etc. before going to join the Fellowship) that is certainly bittersweet rather than fully happy at the end. I also wrote a post-episode fic for the short-lived, but AWESOME, show Moonlight "Forever Waiting" that was melancholy for sure.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? That's honestly hard to answer! I enjoy the angst - and especially love the hurt/comfort - but I usually have my stories end happily by the time they have finished. Particularly when writing for our pirate and princess, I figure they've already been through so much that they deserve their happy ending (beginning).

8. Do you get hate on fics? I have been pretty lucky in that regard. Way back when I first starting writing and posting OuaT/CS stories, I did occasionally get comments that thought I was including Snow and Charming enough, or that I was having Killian do things for Emma that the commenter thought her parents would or should instead, but other than those gripes, I've largely had kind and thoughtful commenters by and large.

9. Do you write smut? To my mind, I don't technically write much smut. I do occasionally attempt a love scene, but I don't feel like it's something I am especially gifted at writing. If something of mine is labeled "M" it probably means somewhere it gets about as close to smut as I'm able to do. (How's that for an uncertain sort of answer?)

10. Do you write crossovers? I haven't played with crossover in fic writing a lot - though I've read some AMAZING ones along the way. I do have one fic from way back in the first CSSNS event @cssns18 that mixed up Moonlight and OuaT, which I was pretty proud of: "Tasting Forever". And I have a long-delayed idea to do a Timeless x OuaT crossover, but it feels awfully ambitious to plot out, and I have a lot of current WIPS that I feel deserve to be finished up first.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I don't think so?

12.Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I know

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I have co-written a couple of fics with my writer friends @whimsicallyenchantedrose, @jrob64, and @kmomof4, which was lots of fun! And I also wrote a Revolutionary War era au fic with @jrob64 and @sotangledupinit, which was also an exciting new challenge.

"Cave Cruises, Cabin Capers, and Cracked Craniums", "Destination Dream Weddings, Driving Disasters, and Dented Derrieres", and "Freed to Love"

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? That's difficult to answer as well, because I tend to love each of my chosen ships in a special way and for their own specific reason. It's probably CaptainSwan (I mean, I spend a lot of time thinking about them, even though the show has been over for nearly a decade!) Still, if Graham had lived, I think Gremma could have given them a run for their money! I also loved and adored Dr. Quinn and Sully and Pacey and Joey on Dawson's Creek (probably my first two ships before I really even knew what shipping was), Morgan and Garcia on Criminal Minds, and Wyatt and Lucy on Timeless.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I am not putting anything here. I fully intend to finish all of the fics that I have started. Sometimes it takes me entirely too long to do so, but I won't leave it unfinished forever.

16. What are your writing strengths? I like to think I'm pretty good at setting a scene or creating atmosphere/mood. And I feel like I'm decent at writing dialogue that feels real and true to the characters.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I am terrible at coming up with titles! I mean, it's a genuine struggle over what to call the thing ever. single. time. Also, as previously mentioned, I'm awkward at the smut. And I can do action/fighting scenes (sort of) but it takes me a bit of struggle, and then I'm still doubting if it works even when I finally call it "done".

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? It would be cool to have a character who is from another place be able to speak dialogue in that language. I don't speak a second language, however, so while it would be neat, I'm not able to do it. I have referred to my friend who speaks and teaches French for a few phrases and endearments from time to time. though!

19. First fandom you wrote for? The first fandom I wrote for was probably little stories I wrote for my college friends and I starring the Backstreet Boys, and also Dawson's Creek fanfic.

20. Favorite fic you've written? Oh goodness, I don't know! Truly, I"m not being difficult, thanks hard to say. Some I'm really proud of because I tried something new for me and felt like I accomplished it. Some I just really liked the way they turned out, and so on. But often the ones that get the most comments and love, are not the ones I expect to do so.

I have probably tried to answer this question before, and I might have even said something completely different the last time around, but for the sake of trying to answer, I'll go with "Villian's Happy Ending" a sort of 3b spec fic I wrote between the two halves of OuaT's third season. It's never gotten a ton of feedback, but I was always really pleased with it. Or a tie between "The Case of the Heart in Armour" and "For All Life and For All Time". Both of them are set in the Victorian era (which I ADORE!) and have OuaT characters mashed up with some supernatural elements and themes and characters from traditional British lit. Both were challenging and a bit darker than I had written previously, and I felt like the stretch was worth the effort.

Okay, so, it said to tag five people, but please don't feel pressured if you'd rather not do this. I'd love to see your answers if you do it though! Tagging: @kmomof4 @jrob64 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @spartanguard @searchingwardrobes

[soypz]

- What Andreas Rönnberg Says About The "Allegations" When Confronted

[TW, mentions of overdosing, mentions of self harm, mentions of grooming, drugs, and a long ass post lmao]

PS, If you don't care about this stuff, I mean like.... don't read it? go focus on the game or community. This is for the people who want Andreas' approval on the situation. Don't like it ? Don't read it

This prob gonna flop but I don't care honestly, i had in my drafts since November 😭. I've been holding this for a sec but its probably one of the final things I'll be making about Andreas because i dont want this blog to be ALLLL about him at all. A little summary is im explaining how the evidence he sends to people trying to "disprove the allegations" has a bunch of plotholes. My friend didn't know what to do with this stuff so I took it into my own hands.

2-3 months ago, Andreas [u/andreas_ronnberg] wrote somebody I know on reddit after he kept calling him out on a thread Andreas 100% corrupted by making his fans who downvote anyone who dare to say they had a negative view of him or look deeper into the grooming situation. He used this long, copy-pasted reply at the beginning of the chat to "disprove" the "allegations" and say they're false and/or twisted around. So technically, this is Andreas' side of everything for anyone who wanted to see both sides, although I'm not sugar coating anything and I'm pointing out his flaws here, my blog, my rules. Plus Andreas blocked me but if he sees this from an alt since he's so crazed about his reputation that'll be funny.

Okay, so first of all, this copy-pasted paragraph is written really weirdly but I'll list it first since its funny as fuck, "The rumors are made by an obsessed manipulative fanGIRL who now identifies as NONBINARY and their TRANSGENDER boyfriend" LOL. He misgendered Sani right then and there while saying he was trying to be "respectful" and then made a PS saying that he mentioned their genders because they hate being misgendered. I dunno about you, but I feel like he DEFINITELY did that on purpose. Also, Sani isn't a "fangirl" of this man, if he used past tense before they were nonbinary it would make sense but using fangirl in general is just odd. but it's whatever and not the main thing we are focusing on there.

I had to split his words here cause it's long but I won't have to much

He shows some of his.... "proof" here and uses his nephews and nieces to guilt even though he did this to himself and what goes on the internet stays.

This shows the people he mentioned about (his "harassers") and another a police report

The first screenshots doesn't matter because it's just saying "fuck you, we claim the characters now" which just made his feelings hurt for a grown man, but this police report one is interesting.

(also I have no clue how this considered his only proof of strong harassment with Sani because there is worse than meanie hastags, especially when he uploaded someone's barely censored nudes... but hm sure sani is more "fragile" 😹

The top notification says "Notification of your decision," and the rest say, "Copy of your police report", you see, this would be believable for me if it actually had a name attached to it.... even though this is the supposed police report against the Sani, Sani would literally say to you nothing is happening right now, not even in court. Not only that, but this (again) shows no proof it was against the victim and could be just an entirely random person he's reporting. If you think about it, if something was happening in court and he was winning due to everything being quote on quote, "misinformation, false rumors, manipulated content, and irrelevant stuff taken out of context." He wouldn't have been privately dming people out the blue saying he's innocent, might as well be very formal and public about it if he ACTUALLY was though.

Finally, he doesn't meet court standards anyway. If they look into him deeper, they'd see his history of drug use (which is especially serious with Swedish laws) and the revenge porn he willingly uploaded on his server.

REGARDING THE OVERDOSE

You see, his idea of this is weird. He and his wife blame his aspergers and the overdose of his medication on all this and say it's okay. Firstly, I don't even know what the aspergers has to do with this, it gives bad representation on people with autism in my opinion because overdosing on something and sexting a "friend" while you have a wife doesn't mean your autism forced you to do it. His analogy is strange too, it's similar to - If you hit a person while drunk driving, ITS OK ! You were under the influence of drugs and if you accidentally killed that person or seriously hospitalized them, you deserve no jail time because it was definitely not you at the time ! And totally not your fault!!

You see where I'm getting? If you hospitalize someone even if you were under the influence, you will and should face consequences either way. It was your choice to overdose. It was their choice to get drunk. Therefore, I do not feel as much sympathy for him on his side, he chose to go the wrong way and messed up a friendship himself, this is not the other person's fault and entirely understandable if they wanted to break the friendship up over it.

Also, he changes it up.... first, he says the overdose was caused by Sani because their blog post about him, but now it was an "AcCidEnTaL" overdose?... hm.. conflicting... if Sani caused it and you overdosed because they made that post, that's not an accident.

Anyways, on more to Andreas' side

Here he mentions Yulia (Yulia is a woman who was involved in Andreas shenanigans he claims was "the overdose" incident. Andreas knew Yulia since she was 12 (he said it himself over voice messages in their direct messages in the exposing Andreas v3 doc).

Here is the screenshot he provided, saying Yulia doesn't want to be involved.

It's very funny how he says Sani takes things out of context but uhm we have this....

(POV from Yulia's end)

"Owe? No, I don't owe you anything, I already said what you wanted me to say, I said that I wanted her to stop it, and I'm not a victim as she positioned me to"

Wow, Andreas. You MADE her say that so you look better and tried to make her delete an archive that wasn't even hers?... such proof, man. Now you see, Yulia doesn't really consider herself as a victim and this is why i havent mentioned her as one specifically although, either way Andreas has said horrible things to her still and taken her out of context to look better. Yulia doesn't care about him anymore but shared her story for the safety of anyone else this could happen to.

He says the things with Sani are completely fake because there aren't voice messages tied to their chats so theres no physical identity to "prove" it if it was real, and he likes to take advantage of that.

Also his self harming; He shared photos of himself on a trip to the mental hospital on his public server, and Yulia had proof of his self-harm photos he directly sent her as well as his crazed voice messages. He had no way out of the proof Yulia had and saying it was fake at the time would not work, especially since AI and other programs could not replicate photos like they do today, obviously.

He's right. He didn't cheat on his wife.... he attempted to. Luckily he has a wife that says to 'understand him' and have him get help although, clearly something hasn't been working if he still isn't living up to her expectations if he's privately dming people about the situation falsely and not apologizing to Sani at the very LEAST for sharing nudes on his server but whatever.

[Also, no one here in the screenshots are a 'fan', just more of his egotistical mumbling]

Either way, if he cheated on his wife or not, thats not really my business and kinda up to her in my opinion, although you see she sees a lot in Andreas. It's such a shame not even one promise she said would work couldn't be kept though due to his ego and delued takes on everything. If this actually worked Andreas might as well just should have owned up to it and apologize to Sani, that's all he could have done instead of tormenting his self through all this but that's his choice...

You see, if Andreas was serious about this, then he would come out publicly and not oddly DM people saying "FAKE FAKE FAKE" like anyone else would. If it's all just misinformation and taken out of context screenshots, then you would have come out about this now publicly and not hide it from your beloved community of people who admire you dearly right? or at least your defenders? I cannot say your whole community myself. But sure make your wife do it for you!

AND HERE ENDS THE ANDREAS PROOF SAGA !

After build ups of DMs, Andreas eventually stopped replying and gave up. No, I do not encourage sending hateful dms to Andreas or anyone else involved. This is to spread awareness about how Andreas ACTUALLY is. Yes, you can like his games all you want and play them, completely fine. Support him, though, and that's breaking the ice, but it's ultimately up to you.

Final note, if you, yes, you Andreas defenders, ever find this and would like to say this is "fake" or "manipulated" as well, I'd like you, in return, give me solid proof that it is first :) I do not accept text-based evidence such as

"This evidence seems fake" ,

"I thought Andreas said/debunked ....",

"Andreas said to ignore this because its old and ..."

I will need your 100% certainty (even though i know im not getting it teehee), as well as you to look into both sides of the story equally before you share an opinion because if you don't, THATS how you spread actual misinformation. Ya' supposed hardcore Cry of Fear fans gotta realize you can't call everyone a harasser or obsessed for having a voice against a popular opinion or vision of someone. No one sane is or wants to stalk this man but his actual parasocial fans. We're just calling him out and forever will cause just because something is old doesn't mean it shouldn't be remembered or not taken seriously still Lol. Don't feel bad for an infanilzed 30 year old man.

Rant over

[deedeeznoofs]

Thank You!

I want to thank you guys so much for 100 (technically 104, haha) followers! ❤️

As a thank you, I’ll accept any request commented under this post! It can be a SMAU, headcanon, drabble, or one-shot, and anyone can comment! Any genre works for me as well like angst, fluff, and smut (if you’re 18+). Just let me know what the prompt is and which Jujutsu Kaisen guy(s) you want me to do it on and I’ll make it! If you’d like to remain anonymous, you can also use my ask box! Just make sure to indicate that you’re requesting something in response to this post specifically.

(Obviously, it has to follow my boundaries so please don’t request something mean 🥲)

🝮 Sappy Thoughts Below 🝮

It’s so hard to imagine a hundred people enjoying what I write and wanting to keep up with it. I’ve only been posting on tumblr for a couple months but reading and writing here is one of my favorite things to do every day and I’m so glad that I’m able to share this place with people who enjoy JJK as much as I do.

I started this blog because I was having a really hard time writing in my real life for school and work so turned to fanfiction since it was what led me to want to write in the first place. A couple months later, and I’ve written more than I have in the past year (and that’s not even mentioning how much the quality of my work has gone up)! Writing has become inspiring again and I have this blog to thank for that.

This is really dragging on lol but thank you to everyone who followed, liked, reblogged, and commented on my posts. It means so much more than you know. If you’re reading this far, I hope my blog continues to be a safe space for others and I hope you all stick around for a while 🫶

AND ALSO I LOVE MY MOOTS! YOU GUYS KNOW WHO YOU ARE YOU ALL ARE GORGEOUS MWAH MWAH 😘

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME. the update is, we have finally started enterprise. here are things i knew about enterprise before starting:

set 100 years before tos (i was close, it's more like slightly under 100 years after first contact and a hundred and change before tos)

hoshi sato apparently dies on tarsus iv

INSANELY sexy chemistry between t'pol and trip tucker every gifset i have ever seen is bananas but they have a love triangle with archer, who is a bitch

they have some kind of baby in an au or something

MIRRORVERSE

vt'pol pon farr episode

lots of sexism everybody is mean to t'pol bc nobody likes vulcans

riker cameo at the end and everybody hated that and also a bunch of people die in badly written ways in the finale

theme song controversial.

prior to starting this i was like this is sttill technically kinda 90s trek it's got the riker cameo like 2001 isn't so far from the 90s and immediately we got hit with the theme song and the weird sexism and MAN what a downgrade from voyager. this is post 9/11 trek baby. we are in a different world now. i will miss ds9 and voyager so much

i was...honestly kind of bored by this. it wasn't as bad as the tng pilot but nowhere near as good as the voyager or ds9 pilots, the latter of which is high art. i did not find myself especially endeared to anyone except poor hoshi sato, who did not ask for this and reltably jumps at her shadow at every opportunity. i know it isn't t'pol's fault she's writen that way, and i feel certain i will be very endeared to her by the end, but in this episode she just kind of annoyed me.

as for the men, no one really stood out to be except trip and archer (i'm not even sure of everybody else's name yet, except dr phlox, whose freaky smile did make me scream aloud). as stated, archer is a bitch. he is mean and yells for no reason because of like...daddy issues that don't feel like they have any real weight. i don't like his acting and he has evoked no emotional response from me except annoyance. i like trip a little better! while i'm not losing my mind over him or anything he is fun, and i do like that even though his accent is fake (said "can't" instead of "cain't"), he did remember to change the end of "thursday" to "thursdee." that is how we say it yeah

the time period we're in did seem neat to me at first (you have to appreciate them not having gotten the transporter working on people yet and warp 4 still being fancy to them lol), but i don't really understand why the vulcans have been the boss of these guys for 90 years or whatever, have they just been saying "space is dangerous don't go" for that long and all of humanity listened? i think narratively they exist to be rules, and the rules exist to be bucked by captain archer, because he's an AMERICAN, DAMMIT. post 9/11. i get there's no federation or whatever yet, this is the wild west, but jesus fucking christ. also i hate that cochrane came up with the fucking speech. fuck that guy! rapey ass tos episode. anyway speaking on the time period i also liked the gravity thing. very fun

but like...the dinner where she was cutting her breadstick and talking about human barbarism for eating animals?? what even was that. we've had this philosophical discussion in trek a thousand times already. we KNOW humans aren't going to become brutes because this is a prequel. nothing in here was meaty enough (sorry) to justify retreading those points.

i did like this new race of bend shapeshifting guys. like, i miss odo, but also, whatever they've got going on was really fun. and the language barrier with the klingon at the end DURING the fight was also entertaining. i did also wind up liking the extremely gregarious scene with the decontaminating gel or whatever...at first i was very annoyed (you can see her nipples! give this woman some dignity! they could have done this separately!) but 1. trip was a perfect gentleman and 2. when she was like "turn around" i knew in my heart she could give him the strap.

other than that, very little to be compelled by, but at least i don't hate anybody except archer and the fucking subtitles. the subtitles on this were so so so so so SO bad. straight up disappeared at one point. i hate paramount plus so much <3

TONIGHT: ent's "fight or flight" and "strange new world."

[blehblarghblah]

Magic Between the Moon & Sky: Rayllum Oneshot Series - A 5 Year Anniversary

Today marks the five year anniversary of MBTMS’ release. (Technically it’s tomorrow for Ao3, but FFN I posted there first). A oneshot collection that is yet to be finished, I know, but one that I treasure deeply. I may have fallen out of my love for TDP in certain elements, but the writing and what I started with in regards to Rayllum was something else.

I don’t mean to be all, “I was there when it was written” but I joined this fandom in its season one days, when it was REAL small here on Tumblr. Which meant smaller ship circles too. I’m glad to have witnessed the fandom blossom and grow, and by that extension, Rayllum itself too.

I know many of my readers probably assume I won’t be returning to MBTMS, but you’re kinda wrong. I swear I’m not one of those 100 oneshot fics that stop halfway (no fault to them of course, sometimes passion runs out)! I legitimately have more than a dozen oneshots planned out. But, I’m also biding my time. I’ve learned with fic writing, that writing what I love is just as crucial as being passionate about it. I'm not currently into TDP but I still enjoy the oneshot concepts i thought up for my fics, so I'll probably only work from those.

I mean, I can probably just grind out the last oneshots and meet the 100 quota, but they wouldn’t be good. Or maybe, they would be to some of you, but they wouldn’t be something I could be proud of. Least of all, I wouldn’t have fun writing it. So yeah, I do believe I know my limits and the extent of my creativity.

But the main reason at the end of the day, as to why I won’t drop this fic, is because it has quite literally spawned some of my best writing. “Loyalty & Light”, “The Most Undoing Thing”, my Taang oneshots, “Legends of Avatar: The Untold Story”, they’ve all had great prose that I’m proud of. Some not so much, but that’s growth.

“Magic Between the Moon & Sky” houses many different styles and concepts I could never explore with most of my fandoms. I’ve written a modern college AU grounded in the slowest of burns, I’ve written childhood AUs diving into the naivety and hilariousness of a kid's mind, and I’ve written an emotionally powerful (as readers have said) Soulmate AU even though I don’t like Soulmate AUs. And I have many more mind, but I’ve also managed to explore the canon and interpret my own ideas from before we learned anything of the lore.

Some were at the requests of fans, others were because I wanted to try and get my feet wet. Much like Callum and Rayla themselves, this fic was a great avenue for me to explore my abilities as a writer and try new things. And in the end, I’m proud of that. And I cannot wait to see what I do next.

Thank you all, for an amazing five years of patience and love. Again, no idea when I'll return to this fic but I'll get around to it.

Until next post,

- Bleh

[squeakygeeky]

My brain is going whirr whirr whirr so here’s a random lesson/unhinged rant on romanization. What is romanization? It means using the letters of the Latin alphabet (in this case I really mean the English alphabet) to represent a different script. Obviously I’ll be talking here about how we represent the Thai script (which I know is technically an abugida not an alphabet, don’t @ me). The way I see it, there’s two basic reasons to do this.

To make the word more pronounceable/memorable/understandable for people who speak languages that use the Latin alphabet. For example you’re a learner who doesn’t know the Thai alphabet 100% yet and you want to make notes on a word you just learned. Or you’re putting up signs for tourists, where it doesn’t really matter if they can pronounce the name of the place properly as long as it matches what’s in their guidebook.

Technical limitations. For example, someone from a country with a different writing system has to fill out their name in a form that only accepts latin letters. Or maybe you want to message a friend in Thai over in-game chat but it doesn’t support Thai. Or maybe you could theoretically be typing in Thai but you have a US keyboard so it’s just easier to turn to romanization instead.

One thing relevant to me, and probably anyone reading this is the romanization of character names. I see it as a combo of 1 and 2. Obviously the audience needs a memorable way to think of the character and also it would be bizarre to randomly switch into Thai in the middle of the English subs, if the software even lets you do that.

There are two basic categories of romanization. Transcription is where you use the Roman alphabet to represent the sounds of thai, and transliteration where you basically just substitute English letters for Thai ones. The big difference between the two is going to be with ending consonants, since there are different pronunciation rules for initial consonants than for when that letter is the final consonant of a syllable.

THERE IS NO STANDARD SYSTEM FOR ROMANIZING THAI

Okay, well there is the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), and it is official, but even the government doesn’t use it consistently and also I hate it, which is what really matters. It’s terrible for English-speaking learners because a lot of choices are misleading. Think of all the people who cannot pronounce ‘Phuket’ because in English ‘ph’ is ‘f’ but in RTGS it’s an aspirated ‘p’ (so to me just a normal ‘p’). This would be okay though if you gained a basic familiarity with how RTGS worked, or just looked up a chart or something. Much worse is the fact that the combination of letters ‘ch’ are used to represent two completely different sounds in Thai. Part of me wishes translators would always use RTGS so we could have consistent subs, but then I remember it’s terrible and most Thais do not use it for their names in reality. The good thing about RTGS is that since it doesn’t use any diacritic markers or other non-Latin characters it’s useful when technical limitations are the issue.

Most materials for learners will use some form of transcription, but this will vary wildly. I had my own personal system at one point, but didn’t end up using it much because I stopped taking notes and switched to listening only. However, now I'm all about the Thai alphabet.

There are downsides to transcription. One is that many sounds in Thai simply do not exist in English, so any attempt to transcribe fundamentally won't allow an English speaker to intuitively pronounce it correctly. Another is that the pronunciation of the same word can vary, which you’ll see a lot with any word containing ‘ร’. Formally (or sarcastically), this will be a rolled ‘r,’ but normally people pronounce it ‘l’ (if it’s pronounced at all, in consonant clusters people just drop it and they also tend to drop actual ‘l’ sounds in clusters). So of course it makes sense to be written ‘r,’ but it’s not going to sound like that most of the time, so is that really transcription at all? Also our own letters don’t actually correspond to specific sounds in English, so English is a fundamentally terrible language to try to transliterate things into?

The advantage of transcription, where you just swap a Thai letter for an English one, is that it’s very easy for someone who is Thai. They can just spell the word in Thai in their head and make the substitution, no worries about how it actually sounds. I don’t mind transcription at this point, since I am starting to get the hang of final consonants, and in some cases it helps me guess at the Thai spelling of the word. Buttttt it’s not actually that helpful for that since there are lots of cases where multiple Thai letters make the same sound.

Whatever you’re doing, you have to wrestle with the fact that Thai has tones, so if you’re not representing the tones somehow, you definitely won’t be able to pronounce a word properly based on its romanization. And if you’re using romanization for reason 2, technicla limitations, it may be literally impossible to represent tones. RTGS doesn’t bother with tones. Or vowel length. So that’s great.

If you want to actually learn to pronounce a word in Thai and don’t know the Thai script, your best bet is IPA. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a standard way to represent sounds, so it’s super useful…if you know IPA. Or if you want to look through some charts and listen to some audio files to learn how to pronounce one specific thing. It’s not useful for resolving technical limitations because it uses lots of symbols not in the Latin alphabet. And unless you want to be a polyglot, why waste time learning IPA when you could just learn the Thai script? Also it doesn’t do tones.

Here’s a website where you can plug in any thai text and get a transcription, including in IPA. There are many options. If you do it with a character’s name, you can try those options and it’s totally possible none of those will match what you see in the subs because the actual human is using transliteration/their own random system that is not one of the things listed/there's a canon romanization of the character's name. But also because sometimes it's just wrong. Have fun.

For more resources on pronouncing Thai I recommend Stuart Jay Raj. His way of talking about things takes some getting used to, but his ‘indic compass’ is actually pretty useful. If you set it to show Thai, you can click on a letter to hear it and see how it’s supposed to be made in the mouth. I also like his video on vowels.

For more on Thai names, see @recentadultburnout’s posts on Thai name meanings.

Because I’m currently obsessed with Century of Love, the rest of this is using the two actors, Daou and Offroad, as examples:

Did you know that Daou’s name had two syllables? My mind was blown when I heard it.

Thai: ต้าห์อู๋ IPA: tâː ʔǔː RTGS: tau The way I would write it for myself: dta-oo

Absolutely no way I was getting that from reading 'Daou.' That first letter is an unaspirated, unvocalized alveolar consonant, and I know what that means because despite not being great at IPA, I am pretty obsessed with how in the mouth sounds are made. Basically it’s like ‘d’ or ‘t’ without actually being either of them. ต้า is the first syllable and ห์อู๋ is the second, but this is not a reading lesson, let's move on.

Offroad’s name is literally the English word ‘off-road’ like a jeep. In Thai script it’s ออฟโรด (not just his name, also when discussing motor vehicles). The site gets this one 'wrong,' putting an 'f' when that's not what 'ฟ' does as a final consonant, but closer to actual English word, so I used charts for this.

Thai: ออฟโรด IPA: ʔɔ̀ːp rôːt RTGS: oprot

There’s no ‘f’ ending sound in Thai, and consonants are always unvoiced and unreleased. If you read my Wat/Wad post, I said 'ด' as a final consonant makes a ‘t’ sound, but I really meant it’s the weird ‘dt’ sound. So lots of people pronounce his name something more like ‘awploadt.’ I kept thinking people were calling him ‘upload’ until I actually thought it through.

Feel free to send your burning questions about pronunciation/spelling, though I’m definitely not advanced enough to be confident recording myself saying anything.