#i only ever really just lurk on the explore page i don’t actively use it

[goldensunset]

every so often i open instagram to see if my siblings have sent me funny things via direct messages and instead i am forced to see people my age whom i haven’t heard from since middle school getting married. i am entitled to some form of compensation for this

[adarlingwrites]

Leave it to the Wind

Summary: Between deadlines, an awful transport system, and aswangs lurking about in the shadows, you have much to worry about as a college student in Manila, and it's so much that your social life is practically dead. Your wind people roommates want to help you remedy that.

Words: 9343

Relationships: The Kambal/Reader (Crispin/Reader/Basilio)

Warnings: Adult content, alcohol, brief scene of sexual harassment

Author’s Notes: God, the fandom is so thirsty for the Kambal, and so am I. Finally, some Filipino himbo representation.

The premise is: Hannah and Amie decides to play matchmaker. Hilarity ensues. Smut ensues. Please be nice, I based the characterizations of the character on the Netflix series and Trese wiki pages since I couldn't get my hands on the original comics yet oof. Some words, like terms of endearment and curse words, will remain in Filipino. Translations are provided. Reader is AFAB and is referred to with female pronouns.

Reposting this from AO3 with all three chapters in one post. A Filipino (Taglish) translation is in the works!

I

You don’t know how they managed to convince you, to be honest.

You rarely ever go out at night anymore. So many strange incidents transpire in Manila’s narrow streets. Just recently, you’ve heard of a new story about a tikbalang who allegedly participated in illegal street races.

So when your roommates and friends Amie and Hannah invited you for a night out, you hesitated. You gave them every excuse you can think of; you needed to do laundry, you needed to study, you needed to finish a project, and so on.

You know that the two of them are wind people, but you can’t help but think. Which of the various stories you had been hearing are real? What else in this world you haven’t witnessed yet?

“Aw, you’re such a buzzkill! Pretty please? You don’t go out with us as often. Enjoy yourself a little,” Amie whines, lying on the sofa of your living room.

On the other hand, Hannah turns to you with a mischievous grin on her face. “C’mon, get dressed already,” she commanded. “There are some total hotties we’d like you to meet! One of them might catch your eye!”

“I told you, I don’t need a relationship. You two try this every week. How do you even know so many people?” you retort, laughing softly at yourself.

“Well, our night lives are active,” Hannah retorted. “Don’t forget our sex lives!” the other added. Hearing those words, you felt your face get flushed with heat.

You needed a good fuck.

“Damn it, fine! As long as you pay for me.”

They finally got you to say yes.

As the night went on, you went to several bars, and you swore that you had explored every crevice of the city. It doesn’t help that the guy Amie and Hannah were with, a tall, dark and handsome man with flowing locks of black hair, drove like a demon. You got around quickly in no time.

Around an hour after midnight, you’re all exhausted from a night of dancing and mingling. None of the people your friends introduced to you caught your attention. At that point, you just wanted a stiff drink to unwind.

Voicing it to your drinking buddies, they nod in agreement.

“I know just the place, in Malate,” the man you’re with said. “Quiet. Discreet. I can take you there, if you want.”

“You mean The Diabolical, right? Let’s go! Text Crispin and Basilio, they might be hangin’ there too,” Amie croons.

A chuckle escapes your lips upon hearing their names. “Huh? Were they named after the characters in Jose Rizal’s novel?”

“I think so? Whatever! But seriously though… Those two can totally make you scream their names louder than Sisa ever did! Best lay I ever had!”

The remark made you laugh so hard, you swore you can be heard in the next city. “What the fuck! Amie, gaga ka, Sisa was their mom! The context of that scene was rough.”

Hannah’s mischievous grin spreads on her face once more, and she gently elbows your side. “Well, if you’re lucky, in this context you’d be crying their names while your eyes roll to the back of your head.”

You’ll never admit it, but you had hoped all their teasing would come true.

It didn’t take long for the four of you to reach your destination. As you enter The Diabolical, a strange chill envelopes you. The air feels different inside; it’s almost as if you stepped in a different world. Perhaps it’s the alcohol, but when you looked around, you saw a duwende sitting by the bar. Or was it called a nuno? At the end of the bar, you saw them; two men both dressed in black suits. One has short hair, while the other one has longer, reaching past his shoulders. However, they’re facing away from you. Only the back of their head and part of their cheeks were visible where you stood.

You snapped out of it when the man you three are with spoke up. “I’m gonna call it a night. Have fun, you three.”

“For real? Wow Maliksi, this is the first time I ever saw you wanting to leave early. Aren’t you gonna stop by and say hi to Alex?” Hannah asks him.

“Maybe next time,” Maliksi answers back, a somber expression on his face. “Oh em gee, did you two fight? Wait, what are you two?” Amie asks.

“Whatever. It’s complicated. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Your friends nodded and let Maliksi be. He waves at your group, and heads out the door. The engine of his car roars to life, and his car screeches away.

As the car moved farther away though, it seems that the screeching of the tires turned into hoofbeats.

Perhaps it’s just your imagination.

“Amie! Hannah! Have a drink! Hey, who’s that with you? Is that the person you’ve been wanting us to meet for ages now?”

Your head turns to where the voice was coming from; one of the men in the suits, the one with short hair in particular. You finally had a good look on their faces.

Twins?

“Crispin! Meet our friend! This is…”

As Amie and Hannah introduce you to the Twins, you can’t help but stare. You took the sight of their features in; they’re tall, with broad shoulders, and hard muscle underneath that black suit and white tie ensemble. They have wide noses with a high bridge, prominent bone structure, and a prominent widow’s peak.

Merciful Bathala, they’re gorgeous.

What caught your attention the most are their eyes. They're pitch black, save for the small reflection of light.

Are these people even human?

“Stare at them like that any longer and they might melt,” Amie teases. The two of your friends are giving you an ear-splitting grin due to your reaction to the Twins.

“I, uh-” you stuttered, and you could feel the heat rising in your cheeks.

“Hey, don’t be shy. You can sit between us, miss. We’re all friends here,” the twin with the longer hair says. If the other one is Crispin, then this must be Basilio.

Behind you, your friends are already giggling. They took their places next to the twins and leaned on their biceps. Across from you, the bartender comes to take your order.

“What’ll it be, kid?” he asks.

For some reason, you’re panicking. Maybe it’s because of the alcohol in your system. Or maybe it’s because you’re sandwiched between the twins. “Uh, what would you recommend, manong?”

Laughter erupted from the twins. “Hank, she called you manong!” Basilio teases while grinning like a fucking dog. “Geez, are you really that old?” Crispin eggs him on, giving him a shit-eating grin. Hank takes a wet rag he uses to wipe down the countertop and strikes the two down. “You goddamn assholes!”

You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing with them.

“Ow! Alright, we’re sorry, we’re sorry. Get them the best seller, Hank. We’ll pay for their tab,” Basilio says, and Hannah and Amie squeals with joy.

“Oh em gee, you boys are so sweet! Thank youuu!”

As Hank prepares you a drink, you try conversing with the twins. “You two seem fun to have as drinking buddies.”

Hank turns around to reach a bottle from the shelf. “Those two are mischievous little shits, that’s for sure. You know, when these two were kids...”

“Hey man, don’t embarrass us like that in front of our new friend,” Crispin whines.

While the three continues fucking around, you leaned back slightly to glimpse at Amie, who was trying to get your attention for a while now. She points to her phone, and you fetch yours from your bag.

You read your group chat with them. “Soooo, do you like, like them?” Hannah’s message said.

“You’re into them aren’t you? You got so shy around them, it’s so cute!” Amie’s message said.

“Right? It’s rare to see you so flustered!”

You typed away furiously at your phone, cautious to not let the twins beside you see the conversation.

“Well, they’re an improvement from the ones you introduced me to earlier. Easier on the eyes, too…”

Your friends giggled, and as their drinks arrived, they stood up. “Girl, we’re gonna leave you with them, there’s some super hot tikbalangs who just came in the bar. Byeeee!”

“Hey, wait!”

They didn’t heed your words and went to sit on the tikbalangs’ laps.

Fuck, tikbalangs are real? Is Maliksi a tikbalang too?

“And off they go, flirting with those beasts after they’ve used us for drinks,” Crispin laments, voice dripping with light-hearted sarcasm.

“It’s not like it’s the first time we got used by them though,” Basilio adds, cringing.

You can’t help but laugh.  “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

Basilio’s head whips towards you, sweat gathering on his brow. “Seriously?! Shit, what did they say about us?”

“All good things, don’t you worry,” you answered.

“Nah, I need to hear what they said word for word,” the twin with long hair responds. “This is making me paranoid!”

Crispin moves closer to you, Basilio puts a friendly arm around your shoulder, and you can only smile. All of you are inebriated and if you were sober, and if someone else dared to get this close to you, you might’ve slapped them. But you feel good about the Twins, and your roommates never put you in harm’s way, so your trust for them extended to the brothers, somehow.

“Just tell us already,” Crispin slurs. “Tell us what they said about us. We’re curious.”

“Fine, fine. Okay, Amie and Hannah mentioned your names when Maliksi suggested that we head here to drink. Then, I mentioned that your names came from Rizal’s novels.”

“Then Amie said,” you continued, pausing briefly to come up with an impression of your roommate’s speech. “‘Seriously though… Those two can totally make you scream their names louder than Sisa ever did! Best lay I ever had!’ Fuck, it was so messed up!”

“That’s messed up, alright,” Basilio sputters, his face a deep shade of crimson. “I’m this hot and those are the only details they can spare?!”

“Ok, but that Sisa joke was kind of funny though. But it was still fucked up,” Crispin adds, and he takes a sip of his drink.

“Hold your horses, the story’s not done yet,” you say. You’re starting to feel more confident around the two.

Your conversation went places, until you found yourselves drinking until three in the morning, and at that point, it’s only just the four of you in the bar; Hank, the Twins, and you. Even Hannah and Amie are nowhere to be seen. Knowing them, they probably took the tikbalangs they were flirting with back to your apartment.

They didn’t even wait for you. Looks like they’re really setting you up tonight. Maybe they wanted the apartment to themselves tonight, and they got exactly what they wanted.

You had planned on getting up to go to the restroom, but when you tried standing up, you almost fell from the chair. The Twins caught you before you landed face first against the floor.

“She’s had enough to drink,” Hank comments. They set you on a chair with a backrest. “How will she get home? We can’t send her off in a cab at this rate. The train doesn't run this late either.”

“Hannah left her behind too,” Crispin adds.

“Hey, how are we gonna deal with this?” Basilio asks. “We can get you home once we sober up a little. It’s fine if you-”

Basilio never got to finish what he was going to say, because you nodded off against his stomach, and puked your lunch out.

You don’t remember anything after that.

When you awaken, the sun is already high up, and the first thing that greets you is the fan in the ceiling. Your muscles are screaming at you, and your throat feels dry. Memories of last night came crashing back and you started sweating in horror. Maybe it’s just a drunken dream, but it felt all too real.

You were flirting with these gorgeous twins, had too much to drink, and at some point puked all over one of the twins’ shoes.

And now, you don’t know whose bedroom you are in. You check yourself, and you’re still wearing the same clothes, with nothing out of place. There are no bruises or marks on your body either. You looked around you, but there was no one else in the room.

The doors crack open slightly, and you see two pairs of void-black eyes.

“I… um… good morning?”

“It’s… already 2 in the afternoon,” one of them says. He has long hair. This one is the twin you threw up on.

“Why don’t you have some lunch?” the other one said.

You just nodded and said nothing else, ashamed of yourself. You threw up on one of them and now you’re eating at their table. You just wanted the ground to swallow you alive.

“Sorry for puking on you last night,” you near-whispered to Basilio after you swallowed your first bite of food.

The silence broke when Crispin roared with laughter, tears pooling at the corner of his eyes. Meanwhile, Basilio was glaring daggers at his brother. He’s frowning like a child whose toy got taken from him. “Sure, keep laughing, kuya.”

“I’ll never show my face here again, I promise,” you say to them, hiding your face behind your hands.

“What’re you talking about? Forget about it. We’re friends now, right?” Basilio tells you, smiling. “But next time, vomit on my brother too.”

“No one’s throwing up because I won’t be allowing any of you to get wasted that bad ever again,” Hank announces as he enters the room with a carafe in his hand. “Bossing’s not gonna like it if the bar ends up smelling as bad as Basilio’s room. Here, have some coffee.”

“We should introduce you to bossing next time too. She’s not here at the moment,” Crispin adds. “Let’s do this again next week.”

The invitation made you smile, and you poured yourself a cup of coffee. You continued eating the rest of your meal.

“...my room doesn’t smell that, right?” Basilio asks after a few moments of silence.

“Gago, it stinks so bad. It’s why we made the guest stay at my room, because if she stayed at yours she could’ve died from how bad it is,” Crispin exclaims. “Seriously, how can you live with bringing women to your room at that point?”

“Kuya, you’re embarrassing me to our guest!”

Translations for non-Filipino speaking folks:

bossing: a somewhat affectionate way to say “boss”. Comes from the old tradition of adding -eng or -ing to ones name to make a nickname, e.g. Luciana - Lucing

Gago/gaga (ka): (you) idiot/moron - someone stupid, foolish or ignorant

Tikbalang: creature from Filipino mythology similar to a centaur. They are hulking beasts with a horse's head.

manong: a term for endearment to an elderly male relative, or elderly men in general. Originally an Ilokano term referring to the first born son in a nuclear family.

kuya: big brother. Can be used to refer to one's own older brother, someone else's older brother, or an older peer or male acquaintance.

II

Author’s Notes: This chapter was heavily inspired by Bita and the Botflies' song Manghuhula.

Warnings: brief scene of sexual harrassment

After washing up, the Twins accompanied you to the gate, exchanging glances at each other behind your back. Little did they know, you definitely noticed it.

“Wait,” Basilio says, tapping your shoulder lightly with a large hand.

Crispin takes his phone out of his pocket. His younger brother proceeds to do the same. “Give us your phone. We’ll add our numbers, and you can text us if something happens,” he says.

“Or when you get home safe,” Basilio adds.

You look at the two of them back and forth. “This isn’t just an elaborate excuse for the two of you to get my number, right?”

Neither of the two spoke, giving each other a nervous glance.

Their reaction made you laugh out loud, and you took out your phone from your bag. “Here. I’ll give you my Facespace too.”

With the tension broken, the three of you exchange a chuckle. You punch in your number in their phones, while they did the same to yours. Crispin looks over his brother’s shoulder and frowns.

“Epal,” Crispin says to his brother, snatching your phone away from him. The older twin types something in, and it’s the younger one’s turn to stick his nose in. Basilio attempts to get the phone back, cursing all the time.

“You’re going to break her phone, gago,” the older twin curses, pushing a palm against Basilio’s face. “Then let it go! You’re the epal, I wasn’t done yet,” the younger one snaps back.

You give them a look of irritation, and check out what they’re arguing about.

“What the hell are you two grown-ass men fighting about?” you ask as you butt in to look at what they’re doing.

A loud snort bubbles from you as you see it; Basilio added “the hot twin” next to his contact name. Crispin added “the hotter twin”. Now, the former wanted to outdo his older brother.

Against your better judgment, you say, “You’re twins. You look like each other. You’re both hot. Now stop fighting over my phone.”

Perhaps it’s the afternoon heat, but there is a tinge of red in their cheeks after your remark. You waved them goodbye as you got in a tricycle that’ll get you to the nearest train station.

The MRT, in some strange miraculous twist of fate, isn’t as packed as usual. It’s still populated, but there were a few seats waiting to be taken. You sit down somewhere away from direct sunlight, and you take out your phone to tell Hannah and Amie that you’re on the way home.

The first thing you see is a text from Basilio. Then, a text from Crispin. You tell them both that you’re on the train now, completely forgetting about messaging your roommates. To pass the time, you launch the Facespace app and decide to look up their profiles, only to find out that they’ve already sent you a friend request.

Upon seeing Crispin’s profile, you did your damn best to stifle a laugh.

His work description says “works at the Krusty Krab,” but that wasn’t the craziest thing about his profile. At first, the Bible verse in his bio caught you off guard, thinking that someone like him didn’t seem religious, but when you quickly looked up “Ezekiel 23:20,” you did your best not to howl with laughter.

Basilio’s isn’t any better.

In his work description, he put “Model at For Her Magazine,” and “edi sa puso mo.” Then you scroll down to see a thirst trap of him pulling his shirt up with his teeth, and you can feel the heat rising to your cheeks again. Well, at least that work description is believable.

They’re- what was that term your younger university friends were using again?- himbos.

They’re definitely himbos.

Arriving at your place, you slot your key inside the doorknob and twist. As you enter the door, the heavy, musky scent of sex and sweat hits your face, and you regret getting too wasted last night and losing your chance to hook up with one of the Twins.

Or both.

Both?

Regardless, at least they’ve invited you again to hang out next week.

You raise your eyebrow and cross your arms at the scene before you. Cans of beer litter the living room, and your roommates are taking a nap by the couch. A tikbalang comes out of the bathroom, glamor off, and you snort as you watch him duck under the door frame because of his massive height.

“It’s already four in the afternoon. Time to go, big guy.”

He nods awkwardly in acknowledgment, morphing into his human disguise, and exiting your apartment.

You sit between your roommates, rousing them from their sleep. “I’m not going to clean this mess up,” you tell them, motioning to the trashed state of the living room, and reaching for the remote to turn the TV on. You just want to take a shower afterwards and sleep in your own bed tonight.

After rubbing the sleep from their eyes, your roommates near-tackles you on the couch, a curious, excited look on their faces. You forgot all about what you were watching and stared at them in surprise.

“So how did it go? Did you get to hook up with any of them?” Amie asks.

“Or both of them?” Hannah adds.

“Gaga, nothing like that happened.”

The two of them let you go with disappointed looks on their faces. “So sayang! Here we were thinking you finally have a sex life,” one of them says as you lean back on the backrest, closing your eyes as they continue to pester you for details.

“Why are you two so determined to get me to screw someone?” you finally snapped, amused and irked at the same time.

“Because you’ve been doing nothing but totally stressing yourself out! See how super fun it is to let go every now and then?”

“Thanks for the new drinking buddies, girls, but I have my fingers to keep me company. Hookups are too much work,” you lie to them, eyes still closed.

“That’s a toe-curling, full-body orgasm you’re missing out on, girl!”

“That’s assuming that the person I’m with knows what they’re doing,” you retorted.

One of them pokes your side with an elbow, and you assume it’s Hannah. “The Twins do.”

You opened your eyes, and you guessed right; it’s Hannah. You give her a look, before rolling your eyes, appearing to look disinterested. The smirk tugging at the edge of your lips says otherwise, though.

“So what happened last night?” Amie asks.

“I got wasted and threw up on Basilio’s shoes. Then, I ended up sleeping in Crispin’s room. When I woke up, they fed me and sent me home,” you tell them. Your roommates giggle at the story.

“Ah, speaking of which, I gotta let them know I got home,” you said off-hand, and somehow the remark only spurred your wind people roommates on.

“Yieee, you’re friends with them on Facespace already!” Amie quips, leaning in to see what you’re typing. Playfully, you move your phone away from her to conceal what you’re typing.

“Make a group chat with them!” Hannah exclaims, taking your phone away from you. You tried taking it back, but Amie joins in the mischief and blocks you from doing so.

When you got your phone back, the deed was done, and the chat was renamed to a single eggplant emoji. The like button was replaced by an eggplant emoji too.

Panicking, you add your roommates to the group to avoid looking suspicious, and swiftly type up a defense.

“Please ignore that, Hannah made this chat using my account.”

The teasing never stopped after that.

Weeks passed and you never bothered to change it, though.

It’s been about two months since your first encounter with the Twins. You’re becoming a familiar face at The Diabolical, going every Saturday to see them. Sometimes Hannah and Amie didn’t accompany you anymore. You’ve met the Twins’ bossing a few times, who turned out to be none other than Alexandra Trese. You’ve heard of her exploits and the two imposing bodyguards who were almost always with her. It surprised you that they’re none other than the Twins you knew, but it made perfect sense. Those two were jacked, and those muscles aren’t only for show.

Of course, because of your increasing presence in the bar, it didn’t take long for the rumors to circulate. Word on the street is both of the Twins had a thing for you, and neither is making a move out of consideration for the other. They are waiting for you to move.

You elected to ignore them, perfectly happy with your arrangement of having two handsome men to keep you company while you unwind. The thought of getting together with one of them, or even both of them did cross your mind a few times, however.

Ultimately, you wouldn’t know what to do if the day comes that you’ll have to confront how you feel and choose between the two.

Do you have to?

Crispin and Basilio are twins, but they’re distinct from each other. The older is more serious, with a dryer sense of humor, while the younger is goofier, and somewhat softer. One complements the other, and they’re both good company despite their differences.

Speak of the devil. Your phone buzzes and you see that the eggplant chat is active. The Twins are inviting you to The Diabolical again.

“See you guys at eight,” you type in. Someone reacts with an eggplant to your message. Then the next few messages were nothing but eggplant emojis, followed by Basilio sending “#TeamTalong”. Crispin cusses him out for it, but sends the same message right after.

Yeah, that became a thing among the five of you.

You and the wind girls got dressed and took a taxi to the bar, your favorite jacket draped over your shoulders. Pressured by your roommates, you wore something nicer tonight; a black faux leather dress that hugs your figure deliciously. The shiny fabric added to the effect. The six bottles of Pulang Tikbalang beer the three of you shared before going out might’ve contributed to your newfound bravado.

But now that you’re actually wearing it outside your apartment, you feel a little reluctant.

“Maybe wearing this is a bad idea,” you mutter to no one in particular, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear out of self-consciousness.

Amie taps you from behind. “Oh hush, that outfit is totally sexy,” she comments. “Finally ready to get dicked down tonight, girl?”

“Shhh, gaga ka, manong driver can hear you.”

That didn’t deter them from making more inappropriate comments, much to the manong's ire.

It’s nine already when you get there, you’re in the Philippines after all. The merriment is already in full swing when you step through the door. Hannah and Amie went ahead and sat next to their lay of the week. The Twins wave you over from their usual spot, but before you can reach them, a man you’ve never seen before tries to get your attention, snaking an arm around your waist.

“Hey baby. You’re a regular here, right? Want to drink with me?”

“Sorry, I’m here with someone else,” you tell him, moving away.

“Ah, here to see the Twins? Why don’t you ditch them for a change of pace and come with me, babe?”

“Not interested,” you flat out said. “Please move, or I’ll make you move.”

To your surprise, the man drops his glamor and reveals himself to be a kapre. He looms over you, cigar in his mouth, and you can feel the tension rising. People are starting to stare, and your friends took notice of it too.

“Try,” he huffs, puffing smoke to your face. You give him a sour glare while trying not to cough.

Before your roommates or the Twins could come to your aid, you panicked and saw an empty bottle of Pulang Tikbalang on a nearby table. Emboldened by the alcohol in your veins, you shatter the bottle and point the jagged edge at the hulking beast, hands shaking. You are a tiny thing compared to the enormous creature before you, after all.

“Don’t you dare look down on me.”

“Already doing that, honey.”

“I’m not your honey,” you say as you press the edge against his stomach, not enough to draw blood, but hard enough to hurt.

“I love it when they fight back,” the kapre croons.

Under the haze of alcohol, you were more than ready to shove the edge in, consequences be damned.

Before things could escalate, Crispin takes the broken bottle off of your hands and steers you away from the stranger, while Basilio steps in to defuse the tension. “Hey, why don’t you back off, pal? Our friend said no. You wouldn’t want us to tell our bossing to ban you from the place because of this misunderstanding now, don’t you?”

Heart in your throat, you turn to the Twins, then to the kapre. The tree giant pauses, looking at the three of you, then smirks.

“Heh. Fine. But if you torpe whelps don’t make a move, I will.”

The giant puts his glamor back on and skulks away.

“Wow, what a jerk! He only left you alone when the boys stepped in,” Hannah quips, tossing her hair in indignation.

“You almost didn’t need rescuing, but I’d hate to help Hank mop the blood off the floor later,” Basilio comments, nudging you gently with an elbow. His eyes go a little lower from your face, and you see him look away.

You realized Crispin hasn’t let go of you yet.

“C’mon, let’s just go,” you tell everyone. Crispin proceeds to remove his hand away from your shoulder, and you take your usual seats by the bar.

The bar is loud, but the silence between the three of you is deafening. Even Hank seems to have taken notice, eyeing your usually loud and cheerful group.

“What’s up with you three? What happened back there?” the older man asks, leaning over the bar top.

“Just a handsy kapre who couldn’t take no for an answer. I won’t let it spoil the night,” you answer him.

“That’s the spirit. Holler if he tries something like that again, I’ll have him kicked out,” Hank replies, setting down three ice-cold beers in front of you guys.

Yet somehow, the conversation never livened up.

Three bottles of Pulang Tikbalang later, you’ve had enough.

“This is about what that kapre said, isn’t it?” you finally say, slightly pissed.

The Twins look at each other with guilty expressions, and simultaneously nod.

“Do you boys wanna talk about it?”

They look at each other again. “Shit, this is awkward,” Crispin comments, scratching his head. Basilio nods in agreement, uncharacteristically silent. “We didn’t want to pressure you into anything you didn’t want to do,” the older twin continues.

“Look, I don’t want to ruin my relationship with my kuya just because we’re interested in the same girl,” Basilio says. “Same here,” Crispin adds.

“So we were waiting for you to make your own move,” Basilio continues.

“Ah. So the rumors are true,” you sighed.

“We’ll accept whatever outcome there is. If you choose me, or Basilio, or neither because this is fucking messy, we totally get it,” the older twin says, leaning back to stare at the ceiling.

Now the decision rests in your hands.

“Why don’t we talk about this somewhere more private?” you ask them.

You watch as both of them gulp. “Where do you wanna talk?” Basilio asks.

“Anywhere private.”

“I just cleaned my room earlier. Why don’t we continue this there?”

You nod, and they lead you away from the bar.

Looks like it’s going to be a long night.

Translations for non-Filipino speakers:

epal: in Filipino slang, usually refers to a person who inappropriately presents himself in a situation or butts into a conversation.

kapre: a tree-giant from Filipino mythology. Often described as very tall, dark, and hairy. Almost never seen without a cigar.

sayang: literally means waste. Can be used alone as an expression similar to "what a waste!"

torpe: someone who cannot spit their romantic or sexual feelings out to a crush or love interest

III

Author’s Notes:

Warnings: Smut. Filthy smut. Writer-is-definitely-going-to-the-second-circle-of-the-Seven-Circles-of-Hell-levels-of-filthy smut. Bawal bata, tulog na. If you're under 18 please turn back.

After the door closes behind the three of you, you sit on the bed, while Crispin sits on a chair near his brother’s desk. Basilio locks the door, and leans against it, unable to look at you.

“Right. So. How are we going to deal with this?” you ask them, crossing your legs.

“Don’t ask us,” Crispin says, swiveling the chair to face you. “You’re the one caught in the middle after all.”

Curse his choice of words.

“This is too weird,” Basilio speaks up. “If you want me to unlock the door, just say the word. We can walk out of this like nothing happened.”

“And then what? Things are going to be awkward between the three of us, I just know it,” you say to him, palming the back of your neck. “Things might get awkward with Amie and Hannah too, and I live with them. I don’t want our tropa to disband just because of relationship drama.”

“What about Amie and Hannah? Is it because we have history with those two?” Crispin asks.

“They’ve been trying to set me up with either of you. The fact that they also slept with you in the past also doesn’t help. Shit, this is messy.”

“Er, um,” Basilio stutters. “That might’ve been our fault.”

You furrow your brow and cross your arms. “Keep going.”

The Twins look at each other, as if gauging who should explain the situation. “So, we remained in contact after being used as a prize for bossing’s race with Maliksi, right?” Crispin starts.

“Uh huh.”

“Well, they mentioned a third roommate in passing and joked about lending us to her. Of course we blew them off, then Amie showed us a picture of you. We got curious and asked them to introduce you,” Basilio continues.

“I didn’t expect us five to become friends. And now we’re in this mess,” Crispin adds.

You look at them back and forth, and laugh in resignation. Elbows digging against your lap and palms pressed against your face, you rub your face and run it through your hair. “Amazing. Just amazing. See, I have a problem too.”

The Twins didn’t respond, eyes fixated on you.

“I like the two of you.”

You feel the air shift around you. Basilio’s standing upright by the door now, and Crispin straightened up too. The room is so quiet, you can hear them gulp in anticipation for what will happen next.

“There. I said it. The reason why I haven’t made a move at all is because of this exact moment that I was dreading. I didn’t want to choose,” you admit, feeling the blood rush to your head. “I just wanted for us three to stay like that, drinking buddies sprinkled with sexual tension.”

“And you’re in the middle, enjoying our attention,” Crispin says, crossing his arms.

“Selfish, I know,” you admit, head hanging low.

This is it, the moment that can make or break you three.

“Us three. If only...” you whisper, only for the words to fall flat on your tongue

You stand up, gathering your things and carrying your bag. “Nevermind. What a mess we’re in. I’ll go so you two can sort things out between the two of you. It’s been a fun ride.”

Basilio doesn’t move from the door, and behind you, you can hear Crispin getting up from his seat.

“We can still make this work, right kuya?” Basilio starts, looking over your head to give his brother a knowing look.

“Yeah, I think so,” Crispin replies. “What was that you said? The three of us?”

Your eyes widen, and you look at them back and forth. Their bodies are dangerously close to yours. Now you’re literally caught in the middle.

“I- uh…”

“I think we can work out an arrangement,” Basilio whispers, one hand moving to hold yours.

“Only if you want to,” Crispin adds, his breath kissing the back of your neck.

“I don’t want to lose either of you,” Basilio adds.

“Same here.”

Damn it all.

Giving in to your darkest, most hidden desires, you lean in to capture Basilio’s lips with yours, leaving his black eyes wide open in surprise. They flutter close, and he savors the kiss, slipping a tongue in. Then you turn to Crispin, and you give him the same sweet kiss as well.

“Damn, I didn’t mean like, now,” Basilio mutters, feeling the front of his trousers get tighter as he watches you make out with his brother.

Bringing your attention back to the younger twin, you loosen his tie, while you push out your ass to grind against Crispin. “Are you complaining?”

“Not at all.”

“Wait, are you sure about this? All of us drank tonight… we don’t want you to do something you’ll regret,” Crispin says, moving his hips away from you. Basilio pauses too, and wraps his hands around your wrists to still your hands, a look of concern on his face.

“Kuya’s right.”

“I’m a grown woman. I might’ve had a few bottles, but I know what I want,” you reassure them, waiting for the two to make a move. “I know I want you two for months.”

Basilio lets go of your hands and lets you do as you please, a cocky smirk on his lips. Behind you, you can feel Crispin’s gloved hands reaching for the zipper of your dress. “Really? How much do you want us? C’mon, say it,” Basilio asks, moving in to place kisses on your neck.

“I wanna hear it too,” Crispin whispers against your shoulder, and he punctuates it with a light kiss.

All of a sudden, you felt shy at the prospect of confessing your fantasies out loud. “Why don’t I just show you boys?”

“Oh no, you’re not getting out of this one,” Basilio teases. “Consider it as payback for throwing up all over my shoes.”

“You’re still- ah!- mad about that?” you ask him, gasping in the middle of doing so when you felt a hand snake between your legs from behind. The older twin slips his fingers past your underwear, circling your clit with slow strokes.

“Not mad, I just want things to be fair,” Basilio teases, pulling your dress down. He gives your breasts a squeeze, fondling and rolling your nipples until they harden, and he seals his lips over your right one. Crispin moves from behind you and he takes his place next to his twin, lathing his tongue over the left. All four of their hands pawed at your flesh greedily.

You were at a loss for words because of how good they’re making you feel, soft moans bubbling from your throat.

“Speechless already, huh?” Crispin mumbles against your skin.

“Ngh! The wind girls weren’t lying, you two know what you’re doing,” you gasped, face flushed as you watched the Twins lavish their attention on your breasts.

“Shhh, stop changing the subject. Play along, or neither of us will make you cum,” he adds, pausing to give you a teasing lick, and resting his tongue on top of the hardened bud. On the other hand, Basilio is sucking like a starved babe while squeezing your still clothed behind.

You fake a scoff of indignation and grin. “Fine. I- oh fuck- want you two so much, I’ve been fantasizing for weeks.”

Basilio pauses to address you. “Describe them.”

You’re a little mortified, but the alcohol in your system pushes you to be bolder. “I imagined Basilio punishing me for ruining his shoes.”

“And how did he do that?” Crispin’s voice.

“He asked me to suck him off,” you start, and a pinch on your bottom from the subject of your fantasy tells you that he wanted to hear more details. “He fucked my face while pulling my hair and told me how good I was the whole time and that he forgave me.”

“What about me? What fantasies did you have?” Crispin asks again.

Your breath hitched in your throat but you pushed on. “Hearing how you scolded Basilio, I imagined you taking me from behind and saying the meanest, dirtiest things possible.”

The Twins looked at each other, and stopped, their lips leaving your breasts with a lewd pop. “You want to make them all come true?” Basilio asks.

Cheeks burning, you give them a curt nod.

The two of them lead you to the bed, where Crispin puts you on all fours, and he takes his place from behind. On the other hand, Basilio is standing near the edge of the bed, the bulge in his pants inches away from your face. You stare at it, licking your lips.

As you undid Basilio’s pants, he shrugs off his suit jacket and takes off his tie, then he takes off his dress shirt, revealing his abs and the trail of dark hair on his lower abdomen, disappearing into his briefs. From behind, you hear fabric shifting, then Crispin peels your panties off of you. He brings a gloved hand against your skin in a loud smack, making you cry out.

“Ah, wait, we need a safeword,” Crispin mentions, soothingly squeezing your skin.

“What about Eternos?” Basilio suggests, and Crispin cocks an eyebrow. “Wait, you mean, like the game?”

You stifle a laugh. “I’m fine with it,” you say to them, and they take it as a signal to continue.

The older twin dips a gloved finger between your folds, gathering your wetness, and tsked. “Look at you, already so fucking wet. You want this so much, huh?”

You nod frantically, then Basilio stills your head. “Open your mouth, baby. Tongue out.”

You oblige, and Basilio fishes his cock out of his briefs. Your eyes grow wider as you take in the sight of it; girthy, with a nice length, and a few veins running on the underside. You wonder if Crispin’s is the same. The twin in front of you lightly smacks his member against your tongue, and you proceed to lick it, running from the base to the tip, slicking it with saliva. You swirl your tongue around it, then try to slide it in your mouth as smoothly as possible.

As Basilio begins to breathe harder with each bob of your head, Crispin pulls your ass towards his face, and a choked moan escapes your lips as you feel his mouth on your heat, toying with your folds before he finally finds that sensitive nub. The older twin proceeds to lick and suck at it, eating you out like you’re the best damn meal of his life.

Meanwhile, you push a palm against Basilio’s thigh to make him pause, and before he can ask you if you’re fine, you take his balls in your mouth and fondle him with your tongue. Your hand pumps his neglected cock as you did so.

“Shit! Your mouth feels so damn good,” he hisses, breathing hard. When you take his dick back into your mouth, Basilio gathers your hair and uses it as a handle, watching his length disappear in your mouth over and over, his black eyes hazy with lust and his mouth whispering words of praise.

Crispin looks at his brother with a hint of envy, cock painfully hard against his trousers. He unzips it for relief, and proceeds to stroke himself as he continues to prepare you.

“Hey, Basilio, got any lube?”

“Um, there’s- ungh- a bottle of it under the pillow.”

“...you keep lube under your pillow? What the- and condoms? Can’t you put them in your drawers or something?”

Basilio doesn’t give his brother a response and focuses his attention on you. You gasp against his cock as you felt a cold, gloved hand prod against your asshole, and goosebumps formed on your flesh as you felt the cold lubricant smearing against your entrance. Crispin pushes his lubed thumb in, and you cry out in pleasure, your jaw opening wider for Basilio to claim. Then, two more fingers prod at your pussy, and you swear you can see stars as they slid in. The older twin toys with you while eating you out, and you feel a knot forming at the base of your stomach, threatening to uncoil at any moment.

You couldn’t take it. Basilio’s cock slides out of your mouth and you look over your shoulder, moaning and panting.

Crispin pauses from eating you out to ask you a question. “You’re gonna cum? You wanna cum on my fingers like the filthy slut you are?”

“Yes, please, please, let me cum,” you begged, and with a devilish smirk, Crispin dives right back in to finish the job.

You squeezed your eyes shut as the pleasure inside you exploded, shameless moans coming from your throat as your first orgasm hits you. Basilio watches the look of pleasure on your face as Crispin makes you cum, making his cock twitch.

“Now that’s how you please a woman,” Crispin teases, shooting his brother a challenging look while wiping your juices off of his face.

“Wait until it’s my turn,” Basilio replies, smirking.

Panting, legs wobbling, you didn’t get to rest as Crispin takes his cock and slides it in you. In front of you, Basilio cups your face and directs you back to his cock, smirking. “You’re doing so well, baby. You’re taking us like a champ, you know that?”

“Fuck,” Crispin hisses from behind you. “You like this, you little slut? You like being fucked by two cocks at the same time?” he asks you, each word punctuated with a hard thrust.

Now you’re really caught in the middle.

Basilio’s panting heavily now, his thrusts becoming erratic against your mouth. You know he’s close, and you brace yourself for what’s coming. Eyes screwed shut, he lets out a low groan as he spills inside of your mouth, his cum painting your tongue white. You try to swallow it all, but a few stray drops dribble down your chin. The younger twin cleans you up, and kisses you deeply, not minding his taste on your mouth. He sits on the bed to catch his breath, and allows you to rest on his thighs.

Behind you, Crispin begins to rut faster, his thumb still in your ass as he pounded you. You writhe and cry against Basilio’s lap, bracing yourself from each harsh thrust. The younger twin pets your hair, but he moves his hand away when Crispin pushes your head against his brother’s lap.

“Take it all of it,” Crispin groans. “Ungh, you make me so horny, you little slut.”

Not wanting to miss out on the fun, Basilio gets an idea.

“Hey, kuya. Hold her up.”

Crispin blinks before obliging his brother’s request, clamping a hand around your throat. “Is this fine?” he asks you, and you nod a few times. He tightens his hold and pulls you to his toned chest, your hair sticking to his skin from your sweat. Basilio kisses you, then latches on one of your breasts. One gloved hand fondles and pulls at your nipples, while the other moves south to stroke you.

“Ah! I think I’m gonna cum again…” you choked, face red and tears forming at the edge of your eyes.

“Say our names,” Crispin whispers against your ear in a low growl.

You mutter their names at first, but it turns to full blown cries as your climax fast approaches.

“Crispin! Basilio!”

It hits you so hard, your eyes roll to the back of your head. You cried shamelessly, and Crispin places a kiss on your open mouth, tongue slipping in and teeth clashing with yours. He pulls out and finishes on your back, cock resting between the valley of your cheeks, still half-hard.

The Twins move to clean you up, looking around for tissues and anything to wipe you with.

“So,” Basilio says. “One more round?”

Your eyes widen, and you look down to see that Basilio is hard again.

“How- what the fuck? What are you two?”

Crispin sighs. “Hannah and Amie never told you? We’re demigods.”

“We don’t get sick and our injuries heal really fast. Talagbusao is our dad,” Basilio adds, and you give him a disbelieving glare.

“You didn’t need to let that last detail slip out, gago,” Crispin berates him as he pulls you close to his muscular chest. He lay down on a pillow, one arm propping his head up.

After a few seconds of silence, you say something. “At least let me have some water first.”

“Right.”

The Twins stare at each other.

“One of us has to fetch it,” Crispin says.

“What? Why me?” Basilio complains, scratching his head.

“Because I’m older, and I’ve worked hard to give her two orgasms in a row.”

“Hey! I’m sure that last one was thanks to me.”

You groan, grabbing a pillow to cover your face. “Ugh, please don’t turn this into a competition about who made me cum the most. Just get me my water, pretty please, Basilio?”

At the request, Basilio smiles and dresses haphazardly to get it for you. “Don’t start without me.”

You close your eyes with a smile. Crispin buries his face against your hair and plays with it. “You have him wrapped around your finger, you know?”

You chuckle at the remark, and Crispin kisses your temple. “Just don’t hurt my little brother.”

“I have no intention of hurting either of you,” you tell him.

Basilio comes back with a pitcher and some glasses, and once everyone’s hydrated and ready, the night continues.

The Twins spoil you with their attention, hands roaming your body as they planted kisses on your skin. Basilio sucks on your collarbone, biting experimentally and leaving marks that would darken in the morning, which draws a whine from your throat. Not wanting to be outdone, Crispin kisses your back, then the back of your neck, and he found a sweet spot that made you moan at that place where your ear connects to your neck. Basilio observes this and does the same to the other side.

“Hey, um, can I do it in your ass?” Crispin whispers in your ear, almost sheepishly, and you stare at him for a few seconds before nodding.

“Sure. Be gentle. And use a condom.”

“Of course. You go on top. What’s our safeword again?” he asks you, testing your knowledge.

You roll your eyes and try not to laugh. “Eternos.”

“Good girl,” Basilio says.

Flipping yourself around, you lean into Crispin’s lap. “Here, let me help,” you say as you grasp his cock and start to pump. The younger twin behind you reaches for the lube and prepares your ass. You sigh with pleasure as you feel the cold sensation of the product on your skin. Crispin sighs as you slide his length between your lips, head bobbing up and down, and you feel him grow inside your mouth. You give the tip a small lick before doing the same thing you did to Basilio, cupping his balls with your mouth and fondling them with your tongue.

“I want you now,” Crispin rasps, tugging your hair to get you off of him.

You smirk, turning around to give him a great view of your ass. He reaches around for a condom, finds one, and tears the foil open. After sliding the rubber down his shaft, he positions himself against your hole, pressing against the tight ring of muscle. You wince in pain as he starts penetrating you, prompting him to squeeze more lube to relieve your discomfort.

“Relax,” Basilio instructs you, planting soothing kisses at your jaw. You did as he said and unclenched your muscles, entrusting yourself to the two of them.

As Crispin pushes past the ring of muscle, you sigh in relief, discomfort replaced with the feeling of fullness. You lean back into his hard chest, a soft sigh leaving your lips as he starts to move. Meanwhile, Basilio kneels between your legs, rubbing your clit with the head of his dripping cock, but he freezes before he slides it in.

“What?” you ask with concern.

“We’re out of condoms.”

“Just pull out,” you tell him with a strained voice, gasping as Crispin moves inside you.

“No, you don’t understand. We’re demigods. Our… um.. Yeah, we’re really potent.”

You smirk at him. “I’ll ask the girls for something in the morning,” you say against your better judgment. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take. Cum all over me.”

His cock twitches at your last suggestion.

“Ugh, Basilio, you’re really killing the mood here,” Crispin strains to say, holding you gently by the neck. “I pulled out too, remember? Make up your mind already. I wouldn’t mind having her to myself for now, though.”

“Not a chance,” Basilio retorts, sliding the tip of his cock past your folds and pushing inside.

A loud cry rips from your throat at the sensations, feeling stuffed to the maximum as two cocks start to pump inside you. Crispin’s grip on your neck tightens, while you tangle your hands through Basilio’s hair, pulling him closer and kissing him.

Soon, The Twins find a steady rhythm, syncing their movement so you can feel the full force of their thrusts. Basilio throws one of your legs over his shoulder and begins to massage your clit with his thumb, while Crispin fondles your breasts with his free hand, using the tip of his fingers to roll, squeeze, and pull at your nubs. With every thrust they give, you clench, drawing a groan from both of them as they felt themselves being squeezed by your muscles.

“Oh God,” you whine. “Fuck, you both feel so good.”

“Say our names,” Basilio growls, and you oblige.

You chant their names like a prayer, underscored by the slapping of skin as the Twins fucked both of your holes. Hearing their names only spurred them on, and their movements became more desperate, sweat rolling off of your bodies.

“Basilio! Crispin!”

Underneath you, Crispin gropes at your breast harder, beads of sweat rolling off of his forehead and dripping to your skin. “Your ass feels too good, I’m gonna cum,” he hissed between clenched teeth, and you silently thank Bathala that he’s near his limit. The lube is starting to wash off.

With a few more rough thrusts, he cums, shooting inside the rubber. Crispin cups your jaw and kisses you, deep and sweet, tasting your tongue. You’re on the verge of climax now too, and you give Basilio a desperate look. He understood what you meant.

The younger twin thrusts harder and faster while still rubbing that sensitive nub between your legs furiously, and the older one helps by stimulating your nipples once again. The bombardment of sensation is too much, and you feel white hot heat racing through your body as you cum one last time, voice hoarse as a throaty moan escapes past your open mouth.

The spasm of your muscles is enough to send Basilio over the edge too, pulling out of you and spilling his load all over the mound of your pussy, and your stomach. You feel Crispin slip out of you too. Basilio leans in to kiss you, almost tenderly, but still full of desperation, tongue and teeth.

After a quick cleanup and another drink of water, the three of you lay in a heap of limbs, exhausted. Crispin doesn’t shift at all, content on letting you lie next to him, while Basilio moves next to you, effectively sandwiching you between the two of them on the narrow bed.

Everyone is sated, and with your eyes growing heavy, you wanted nothing but sleep.

“So, who’s better?”

You don’t know who said it, but you raised your hand to give him a middle finger. “Tangina niyo, you’re both good. End of discussion. Now please let me sleep.”

Thank Bathala that they did.

The next morning, all three of you wake up sweaty, stinking, and really, really hungry.

“Good morning to you two,” you sigh, snaking your arms around theirs. Each of them gave you a kiss on your temple. “Damn, I’m starving,” you said, sitting up. “Let’s take a shower and grab something to e-”

Underneath the three of you, the bed’s legs give out, and a loud thud can be heard throughout the house. As you three scramble for purchase, frantic footsteps are approaching, and the door bursts open.

“What was that? Crispin is missing from his room and-” Hank blurts, toting his good ol’ triple barrel shotgun "Ama, Anak, at, Espiritu Santo". Funnily enough, when he sees the tangle of limbs before him, he utters the same words and quickly turns away. Alexandra arrives shortly after, gives them a quick glance, and shuts the door.

Breakfast with their bossing is filled with a mortifying quiet.

You barely touch your food, embarrassment burning your cheeks, and you shoot a glance at your twin lovers.

“Next time, lock the door,” Alex finally says, getting up from the table with a coffee in her hands. She’s too fucking exhausted to deal with this.

“It’s Basilio’s fault!” Crispin yells after her. Basilio made no attempts to defend himself, knowing that he forgot to lock the door again after he came back with the water.

Grumbling, you finally take a bite of your breakfast, jacket draped over your shoulders despite the heat to hide the bruises on your body. “The girls are gonna have a field day when they see me like this.”

“I need to replace the bed,” Basilio mumbles, stuffing his mouth with rice.

The three of you looked at each other, and laughed.

“So, see you next week?” Crispin asks with a smile, and Basilio gives you a pleading, doe-eyed look.

“Yeah. See you two next week.”

Translations for non-English speakers:

tropa: ground of friends. People you chill with

tangina niyo: Filipino profanity. Roughly translates to "you sons of bitches"

Ama, Anak, at Espiritu Santo: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s Hank’s weapon’s actual name in the comics.

[mggssocks]

Followed

Not My Gif!

Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid

Content Warnings: None just fluff :)

Summary: Spencer makes an Instagram and stumbles across reader’s page.

Word Count: 1,899 words

A/N: This is Season 10 Spencer with Season 13 looks. Also, instead of it being Kate on the team, i put Emily instead because who doesn’t love the season 3-7 team? Also I might make a part 2 depending on how much this blows up. Honestly i’d be happy if i got one like. Anyways.. hope you enjoy!!!

masterlist // part 2 // part 3

It was 8:00 in the morning. Spencer walked in the doors of the bullpen to the bau. He sat his satchel down and began to settle in for a long day of work. It was pretty early so the team wasn’t in yet. Except for Aaron Hotchner who had gotten in an hour prior to Spencer and been in his office ever since. Apparently others had the same ‘get to work early’ mindset as Spencer. Spencer opened a case file but his attention was quickly whipped away due to the sound of the door opening. He sees Penelope Garcia with all her attention focused on her phone. Spencer quirked his eyebrows when she bumped into a fellow coworker and her attention remained on her phone while quickly mumbling a quick “sorry”. As she passed his desk, Spencer decided it would be the great time to speak. 

“Hey, Garcia.” Her feet came to a stop and her head snapped up at him. 

“Boy wonder! I’m so glad you’re here. I really need someone to talk to because if I don’t I’m going to explode!” She sits in the chair across from his desk. 

“Is everything alright?” He leaned back in his chair. 

“No… no everything is not alright. If anything.. everything is all wrong. Very very wrong. I-“ she takes in a deep breath “I was stalking Kevin’s page because the other day I seen him at the mall with another girl. And while I was 56 weeks down in his page, I accidentally liked a picture.” She explained, in a huff. 

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Spencer was even more confused now than before she started. 

“I liked a picture that he posted 56 weeks ago!” Her eyes were wide.

“How is that a bad thing?” His lips pouted as he’d never understand social media. 

“Ugh! Reid, you really need to get with the program and get you an Instagram. That means his picture was old and now he knows that I was looking at his page. You understand now?” She asked. 

“Oh. Yeah I understand. It’s bad that he knows you were looking at his page.” He asked as Prentiss, JJ, and Morgan had walked in. 

“Yes. And now I must go into the bat cave and wait for him to call or text me and ask what me lurking on his page was about.” She whined as she stomped her way to her office. 

“What was that about?” Prentiss asked, setting her bags down on her desk. 

“Uhh- rough morning” Spencer shrugged, still not really understanding the whole social media thing. 

“Hey do you guys have an Instagram?” He asked the three. 

“Yeah but I’m barely on it.” Prentiss answered.

“Same here” says Morgan as he takes a seat at his desk. 

“Yeah but I only get on to post the boys and myself sometimes” answers JJ. 

“What about Hotch and Rossi?” He asked.

“Yup! Rossi likes to post about his expensive wine and cigars. Hotch posts Jack every once in a while and a throwback Thursday.” JJ says. 

Spencer’s eyebrows furrowed for what seems to be the 100th time that day. 

“He doesn’t know what that is” Prentiss looks over to JJ.

“It’s something you post like an old picture of yourself every Thursday.” Morgan explains.

“Do you guys do that?” Spencer asked.

“I did last Thursday.” JJ pulls out her phone and opened the app. “This was right after Emily, Penelope, and I caught a guy who was trying to pick up Prentiss by pretending to be an FBI agent a few years ago.” She chuckled showing him a picture. 

Spencer takes her phone in his hand and examines the post. 142 likes. 57 comments. He clicks on her name which takes it to her page. 302 followers. As he scrolls, he sees a picture the team took a while ago and sees a little person profile thing the corner and clicks on it causing other names tagged to each individual team member. Except him. After he examined all of their profiles, he gives JJ back her phone and gets to work like the rest of them. He felt a little left out but he knew it was because of his own decisions and not his team. He liked that they didn’t press him about having a social media because they new he was more old school than anything. And it was ironic because he wastage youngest member of the team with the more old school habits. 

When Spencer got home he decided he wanted the social media app. The idea of being able to share with his friends and only his friends excited him. Being able to post about his favorite things for his friends to see without talking their ears off.

He opened his phone and went to the app store, typing “instagram” into the search bar. He followed the sites instructions as he made his account. Using a snapshot he took of his bookshelf as his profile picture. He sees the option to add the people in his contact list which was only his team, mom, and his mother’s caretaker. But everyone’s profile popped up and he quickly followed each and every one of them. Except for his mom and her caretaker of course. 

Soon enough, he got a follow back from Garcia, Hotch, Rossi, and JJ in that order. Morgan and Prentiss weren’t lying when they said they weren’t on often.

After two weeks, Spencer hasn’t posted anything yet, not knowing what should go on his profile. Morgan and Prentiss ended up following him back and the app ended up adjusting to his interests. Nothing but accounts about interesting facts, books, and doctor who. 

It was Friday night and the team had just got back from a case in Chicago. Spencer opened the door to his apartment and set his satchel down on the couch, exhausted. His mind wonders to get something to eat being that he wonders to get something to eat being that he hasn’t ate since before they caught the unsub. Which was about 5 hours and 7 minutes ago but he still needed to get something into his system. Spencer opened his fridge and sees 3 day old Chinese takeout. He shrugs and pops it into the microwave while looking for a book of his to reread while he eats. After he finishes dinner, he gets on his phone and subconsciously pulls up the app. He clicks onto his explore page to discover something else he likes. While scrolling, he sees a picture of someone reading and clicks on it.

765 likes

Yourfriend’sig whenever people ask me what to give you for your birthday or Christmas, I always tell them to get you a book or something green and it works every single time. Happy Birthday to my best buddy, @yourinstagram !

View all 84 comments

Spencer smiles and clicks the heart button and bookmarks it to look at later.  He liked the picture. Both the picture and caption reminded him a lot of his own love for books and the color green (hence his apartment). 

Once he got out of the shower, he brushed his teeth. He found himself subconsciously scrolling through his instagram bookmarks to find her post. He doesn’t know what it was but something about the picture brought comfort to him. As he brushed his teeth, he clicked on the post once again.This time, he actually clicked on your account. It was a private account with 186 followers. The bio read:

Y/N... bookworm.

Her profile picture consisted of a black cat surrounded by either a bunch of well taken care of plants or artificial ones. His finger hovered over the blue “follow” button. As he bent down to spit his toothpaste out, his thumb accidentally clicked the follow button. But he didn't realize so until he looked down again to see the “follow” button replaced with “requested”. His heart basically drops out of his ass. He quickly clicks the button again, taking back his follow. 

It was now one in the morning, Spencer laid in bed awake staring at his ceiling. Once again, he clicks onto the app. He scrolled down his timeline and saw a picture Penelope posted of one of her new desk animals with the caption “Got her at a thrift shop! Isn’t she cute??”. He saw that Hotch and JJ liked 45 other people. JJ also commented with two red hearts. Spencer likes the post and keeps scrolling. His thoughts wander to the post about the girl again. He’s never thought about a social media post this much since he’s created an account. He wonders what sparked his interest so much about this one. As he makes his way to the post, clicking on her account. Debating if he should follow her. She’s a total stranger. Do the others follow strangers? There’s no way JJ knows 302 people in real life. He mentally shrugs and presses the follow button. Requested. Again.

He swipes out of her account back onto the post now seeing that she commented on it.

yourinstagram thank you, bubs! ily to the moon n back <3333

It was commented thirty six seconds ago. Meaning she’s currently active. Again, Spencer’s heart sinks and he immediately regrets his decision. Going back and unfollowing her. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s a mess. Over a stranger. But he feels like an idiot. Reacting the way that he did just because he saw that she was online. So he goes and follows her.... again.

After clearing out all of his apps, he turns off his phone and lays down trying to get some sleep before work in a few hours. His thoughts wander to her. What she was like. if she was nice or mean. If she was socially awkward or very outgoing. Before his thoughts could get too far into what she was like, he receives a notification from instagram. He opens his phone and clicks on the notification. His heart began to pound when he saw it.

yourinstagram would like to send you a message! 

He clicks on it.

yourinstagram You’ve followed and unfollowed me about 5 times in the past 3 hours. Is there something I can help you with?

Spencer completely forgot that other people got notifications and now he felt like some kind of creep.

spencerreid I’m sorry. I came across your friend’s Instagram post wishing you a happy birthday and i guess i got curious and wanted to follow you if that makes any sense. 

He felt so dumb. 

yourinstagram and following me once wasn’t enough for some reason???

spencerreid Sorry about that. I’m new to this whole social media thing and don’t follow any strangers. You are the first person I’m following that I don’t know in real life. Again, my apologies for the disturbance. I’ll unfollow you’re account If you’re uncomfortable with me. 

yourinstagram i just hope that you’re not one of my raging exes, someone trying to catfish me, or a psychopath lol.

Spencer smiled.

spencerreid Nope. Just me.

She leaves him one read. Spencer’s smile fades when he doesn’t see any three loading dots. She wasn’t texting him back. As he’s about to exit the app, he sees two notifications. 

yourinstagram has accepted your follow request!

yourinstagram has requested to follow you.

********

I hoped you like this!!! If this blows up,i will do another chapter!

[itsclydebitches]

I've never played WOW, but my friends into it. I might as well try. Any advice for someone who's never touched a MMO?

Oh, fun question! It’s actually hard for me to think of things I’d have wanted to know when starting out because I started playing MMOs around age... 9? So in some respects I grew up alongside the genre, rather than trying to learn it after the fact, but some things I’d highlight about WoW now is:

Don’t worry about your race/class. There is SO MUCH about the “right” and “wrong” way to create a character, but at the end of the day you should choose whatever interests and appeals to you most. The caveat to that is that picking a tank or a healer class will put a bit more responsibility on your shoulders  — whether you like it or not at times  — so just be aware of that. Some people like taking on a specific role, others (me) do not. There are also classes that are better suited to soloing as much of the game as possible, if that’s something you’re interested in. 

Regardless, you will have to play with others eventually. If your friends are already into WoW it sounds like you have a good community/potential guild to turn to, but I’d recommend waiting until you feel confident in playing your character before entering groups with strangers. Frankly, the WoW community can be pretty damn toxic. I’m no expert, but I’ve played it long enough to feel confident in my abilities and I’m still cursed out by pissed off dungeon groups if we wipe. Raids will expect you to have learned the fights via youtube prior to coming in and when many inevitably haven’t (because it’s a game and homework shouldn’t be required lol) they’ll start yelling too. PvP is just a mess of accusations and slurs, depending on how badly it’s going... so yeah. I don’t want to make it sound like WoW is made up of nothing but assholes, but there are enough to make an impression. It’s something to avoid if you’re not feeling up to it, but given how much of the later content requires working with others, wait until you’re geared, have a good handle on your class, and are in a good head space before diving in. Or stick to playing with friends. 

Speaking of friends, if you do want to play with them I’d recommend picking their faction (Horde or Alliance). That will allow you to visit each other in major cities, help with the same quests, queue up for activities together, etc. Though the story has moved away from the Horde vs. Alliance rivalry recently, the gameplay still very much divides them. 

Check out everything you can (without getting too overwhelmed!) WoW has a LOT going on and while very little is required, much of it is beneficial while also being easy to miss, just by virtue of there being so much to do. Pick up any quests you find, explore as much of the world as you can, talk to NPCs, save the loot you get, etc. You can always get rid of something  — drop a quest, destroy/sell an item  — but it’s a bummer if you just go and sell everything only to realize you actually needed all that stuff for something else. So go slow and check out your options before making decisions. 

To help with that, I recommend WoWhead and Icy Veins for info, or just good old-fashioned plugging the thing into google with “wow” next to it. How often do I look stuff up? Constantly. MMOs don’t have cheating culture the way a single-player game might (I mean, there’s absolutely cheating, just not in the same way), so don’t be afraid to just google anything and everything you want. The comment sections of a page are your best friend. Whereas the official description may give you an overwhelming amount of information you don’t actually need, player comments tend to focus on what others really want to know: here’s where to find this NPC, yes this quest is bugged, make sure you do X before Y, etc. WoW has become a lot more accessible over the years in terms of helping players figure things out, but it’s still confusing at times, so make use of any resource you please. 

Another “cheat” is to use addons. I’d recommend grabbing WoWMatrix which will allow you to (safely) download addons without any of the hassle of putting it in the correct folders. I’d recommend Bagnon (makes all your bags open as a single window so you can see all your loot at once), Bartender (allows you to customize your action bar), Coordinates (puts a tiny, movable coordinates button on your screen which is basically necessary at this point to find things. Players will almost always provide coordinates when giving locations), HandyNotes (provides lots of info on your map, like how you go about summoning a rare mob), Pawn (helps you compare gear to see what’s best for your class/specialization), and if you do any PvP, Healers Have to Die, or HHTD, which marks all healers with a cross so they’re easy to spot in battle (always kill healers first! :D). WoWMatrix is SUPER easy to use  — just search for the addons you want via the application, download them, delete if you don’t like ‘em, and open it once in a while to “Update All” — and the various addons you can use are an absolute godsend. They make playing the base game that much better. 

If you’re someone invested in the story side of games, lore is going to be very weird here, just because WoW is 16 years old and you’ll be entering into the 8th expansion. I’ve played WoW since it came out and I don’t know wtf is going on a lot of the time lol. So just roll with it, or if you’re interested, make use of wikis, the novels, etc. But it’s not the sort of game where you’re in trouble if you have no idea who this person is or what battle they’re talking about. Just accept whatever they want you to do and pick up the story wherever you came in. 

You’re going to die a lot. A lot, a lot. That’s fine, everyone does. Again, not the sort of game where that’s a problem. Just know that you can either return to your corpse (flying there as a ghost) or rez at the graveyard you appear in if you’re willing to deal with a bad debuff for like 10 minutes. Also, all armor has durability that goes down over time, but it goes down faster the more you die, so you’ll want to repair (finding an NPC with the anvil icon) soon afterwards. 

There’s lots of little things to learn like that: a brown bag icon means you can sell to this person, blue exclamation marks are quests that will reappear daily, items with a gray name (as opposed to white, green, blue, or purple) are pretty much just junk and you can always sell them... there’s a lot. Pick things up as you go, keeping in mind that you’ll be given SO MUCH INFORMATION and no, you’re not going to learn it all at once. Part of the fun is figuring stuff out and seeing yourself improve. Feel free to ask questions too (there’s a chat box and you can speak to an entire zone at once), though frankly it’s a 50/50 chance whether someone will give an actual answer, or just roast you lol 

If you ever want to play “seriously,” I’d kinda recommend learning WoW with keybinding early on  — AKA, creating button shortcuts for various spells/skills so your mouse is only used for camera movement and targeting, rather than wasting time looking for the action you want to click on. I say “kinda” because I don’t do that. At this point my click method is too ingrained in my muscle memory for anything else, but I recognize that I’m in the minority for saying that’s an “okay” way to play. 

Anything is okay though. Do whatever. I mean, the above aside, literally my best advice is to just throw yourself headfirst into the game, accept that you’re going to mess so much up, shrug, and have fun with it. I spent an hour of my life running a Tourghast floor today... and then wasn’t able to beat the final boss. So I “wasted” that time since I didn’t get the loot, but who cares? It was fun! Literally do whatever and don’t let any of the assholes get to you. Someone sends a message you don’t like? Block them (right click their name in the chat box to get the option). Group is making you uncomfortable? Leave. Don’t know how to do something? Google it! The best thing about an MMO is also the most overwhelming: it’s a whole world with (almost) endless options, so though that freedom is exciting, it also means you have to curate your own experience. It’s a bit like being here on tumblr. Figure out all the nuances at you own pace, lurk as long as you’d like, and if someone is being annoying, google how to keep them out of your inbox. 

Idk how helpful any of these tips are, but I hope you enjoy it!! 😊

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Real Story Behind The Babadook (2014), And 17 Weirdest Bogeymen From Around The World That Might Be Hiding Under Your Bed Right Now

Strange times we live in.

It’s a Saturday night, and I’m hauled up at home eating a vegetarian lasagne whilst my mother asks me for the 37th time why I’ve decided to give up meat, when really, if there was no global pandemic, I’d be hauled up at home eating a vegetarian lasagne whilst my mother asks me for the 37th time why I’ve decided to give up meat.

It really is a strange time we live in.

But, in my attempt to protect the vulnerable groups in society and halt the spread of the latest Twitter hashtag in its tracks, I decided to catch up on the horror films hadn’t found the time to press play on just yet.

So, a bucket of popcorn and some mild trauma later, I could finally join in the conversation about The Babadook.

6 years too late.

Nevertheless! Once I’d emotionally recovered, I finally had my Sex And The City moment. No, not the ones with feminism that would make Emilline Pankhurst perform the equivalent of a Viennese Waltz in her grave - the one where Carrie sits in her NYC apartment and thinks about men at her computer.

“I couldn’t help but wonder: could the Babadook be based on a true story? ”

Unfortunately, I discovered that the Babadook is based on the concept of the boogeyman, an urban legend that has a greater global reach than Covid-19. 

So, to distract you from the global pandemic with the threat of a creature lurking under your bed and waiting to snatch an ankle, I thought I’d let you in on the reality behind this queer icon.

First, let’s talk ‘bout The Babadook.

It was one of the biggest hits of the 2010s, combining the classic trope of creepy children with the classic colour palette of depression. Our story follows a single mother and her son who begins to be visited by an imaginary creature fresh from the pages of a children’s book.

With spiky talon-like hands, a cloaked figure, a jaw crammed full of teeth, a face paler than that time you bought that foundation on a whim in TK Maxx - all crowned with a dusty hat - the Babadook the child was seeing certainly had a sense of style.

The child, Sam, begins to create intricate traps and weapons designed to stop the Babadook, all the while the book predicts the mother’s rather dark future. It becomes clear that the Bababook is preying on the mother and essentially possessing her, a diagnosis that is confirmed when the mother attempts to kill Sam.

She then regurgitates a black inky substance evocative of ectoplasm, and is released from its grip. 

The film ends on the happy family feeding the Babadook as it lives in their basement.

This indie horror - once it had finished polishing the 5 awards on it’s mantelpiece - might have woven a intricate plot deviating from the simple basis of international man of mystery James Bond The Boogeyman, but the basis still sticks out more than that wardrobe in the corner of your bedroom you’re now highly conscious of.

Simply put, the Babadook matches the basic concept of the boogeyman:

There’s some weird, dark creature that knicks kids and eats ‘em if they wander alone or don’t go to bed or misbehave. Just like Krampus, the bogeyman is a legend propagated by parents to convince kids to stay in line.

That being said, the mythical creature isn’t the only inspo behind this cinema-hit.

Specifically, the brains behind the film, Jennifer Kent, claimed it was about a deep-rooted fear we all have: that of going mad. On top of this, it seeks to show parenting from a real perspective.

The film focuses on a single mother as she faces one of the most difficult challenges in life: she loses her husband whilst going to give birth to her son, and then has to raise him alone. But that is not all.

Kent also spoke of a real encounter with the bogeyman. 

Basics, her bestie’s son was being plagued by an imaginary monster, so she pretended to talk to it to calm his concerns. Sure, this tale might not have kickstarted the real terror engaged with in this movie, but it invited us into the reality behind the bogeyman.

But beyond this, the movie also detracts from the Babadook, and instead looks for the primal instincts in the mother - it looks for the bogeyman within us all.

That’s right - the real horror that was inside us all along.

Yawn.

But the thing is, it also brings up hell of a lot of paranormal activity that is remarkably accurate to theories of the supernatural.

      Let’s start with the introduction of the Babadook.

He arrives in the form of a creepy children’s book no one’s seen or heard of. Armed with a chilling nursery rhyme and an aesthetic last seen in 2007, the Babadook follows the basic principles of a basic haunting: ghost does spooky stuff, ghost spooks humans, humans invite it in following the consent laws of the universe by interacting with it, ghost spooky powers intensify.

This begins with the book itself. Although the film doesn’t consider if he is a paranormal being aligning with the concept of demons and spirits (etc.), this book follows the concept of haunted objects.

By opening the book and reading it - or, interacting with it - they invite in the Babadook. And when she tries to destroy it, it crops up again, fully intact and conveniently lying on her doorstep.

No ‘sorry we missed you card’ needed.

This closely follows the theory of the haunted object, something more on-trend than tutting at empty shelves in the grocery store. Haunted objects have a habit of failing to be destroyed, and by engaging with them, such as not asking permission for taking a picture of a haunted doll, you enter communication with them.

From there, you’ve basically consented to a full possession. The object is a vessel for a spirit or a demon until a new, better, breathing vessel can be found.

You can find out more about this here.

I can’t find anything about haunted books specifically online, but as a variety of haunted objects exist, from bunk beds to boxes, I’m sure there’s potential for it.

     Next is the eventual possession of the mother.

One of the most dramatic moments we witness is when the mother coughs up this black bile which represents the removal of the Babadook. This bears a striking resemblance to ectoplasm, a white liquid often released by those experiencing intense paranormal activity.

When mediums experience a trance-like state, they supposedly release a fabric-like or thick substance that darkens as physic energy is intensified. It allows those in the supernatural realm to interact with the physical realm, and for spirits to represent themselves to the audience of a seance.

This film was one of the first to explore the potential paranormal explanations behind the bogeyman, and give some basis to a beast that has haunted communities since the beginning of time.

Speaking of the beast…

Who is the bogeyman?

It’s sometime in the 1500s.

We are in the middle of a small country called England, struggling to make ends meet between the near constant famine, the anxiety of being cursed by a witch, or some war with [insert european nation that may or may not exist anymore].

Either way, when we aren’t trying to spell everything with an ‘e’ at the end, we are being taunted by hobgoblins.

These pesky beasts made their name in tormenting Englishmen, playing pranks on them or simply just being foul.

Hobgoblins are the OG bogeymen, or are the first we can trace back to recorded sources. But they were no means the last. And they were by no means the only ones in the world.

As a simple definition, the bogeyman is a mythical creature that makes sure kids are staying in line, and was made up by parents. The thing is, the bogeyman features in every culture that has ever been created.

And given the realm of the paranormal explored so far on this blog, perhaps your local Babadook isn’t so out of the question.

The bogeyman has always claimed a rather vague existence, representing a non-specific terror that has even extended to just ‘being the devil’ in some cases. The origins of the name are no different: ‘bogge’ comes from middle english, meaning ‘something frightening’ or ‘scarecrow’.

It has even been interpreted to mean ‘goat’ which can be traced to relations to the devil.

Appearance wise, the bogeyman has several broad features that stretch across cultures. Standard features include sharp teeth, talon or claw-like hands, hooves for feet, and even bug-like features. The Babadook might have shared in a few of these #basic-bogeyman traits, but it’s not all about looks.

How does his personality fair?

The bogeyman can pick between three personality types: something that punishes misbehaving children; one that is just violent for the hell of it which includes stealing kids, and eating them and/or taking them back to hell; or one that protects the innocent.

“So what you’re saying is, this is a vague looking creature with a vague personality with vague ambitions that is made up by parents who are tired of their kids interrupting their vague post-marital sex?”

Okay, fine, the bogeyman bears little resemblance to the basic concept of the bogeyman. But this is what makes him the international man of mystery. It’s the regional divergences between each nation’s own Babadook that makes this creature quite so peculiar.

You see, I assumed the bogeyman would be a universal concept draped in more black clothes than a kid that was in the throes of that scene where Edward leaves Bella. 

Turns out that there’s actually a band of bogeymen which can be specified by their not-so-casual racism and genitalia.

But as the 195 countries dotted across the globe have fostered their own child-eating monster, I thought I’d cut to the chase and fill you in on the world’s weirdest bogeymen.

*Rolls up sleeves of Team Edward hoodie*

     The Sack Man

Making his cinematic debut in The Nightmare Before Christmas, the Sack Man is the international symbol for the bogeyman. Whether he himself is draped in sack-like materials, or is lugging one around with him, Hombre Del Saco uses his luggage to capture and carry naughty children away to, uh, somewhere.

Most popular in Latin countries and Eastern Europe, the Sack Man is the most well travelled bogeyman on this list.

     Babaroga

The original inspiration behind the Babadook - note the similar name - Babaroga is a resident of Serbia and its neighbouring countries. However, the mood board for the Babadook’s inspiration stopped there.

Babaroga literally translates to “old woman with horns”.

And this pensioner spends her time finding children, putting them in a sack (how original), bringing them to her cave, and eating them. Or, to shake things up, she pulls childrens through small holes in the ceiling.

     El Coco

When he’s not featuring in lovable Disney hits, El Coco is snatching kids that don’t get to sleep when they should. With nursery rhymes detailing the legend - a chilling similarity to the Babadook - spanish-language countries across the globe are versed in reportedly seeing a coconut-like face hiding under their beds.

With a brown hairy face and body, and glowing red eyes to match, this famous humanoid might be closer than you think.

“Que viene el Coco y te comerá” 

 - A line from the traditional Spanish nursery rhyme.

     The Mamma

Pakistan gets its fair share of attention on the news cycle, but aside from the war going on, no one has ever noted the rather peculiar beast haunting the nation’s young women.

The Mamma isn’t the mothering being the name suggests, but is a large ape that lives in the mountains and only comes to the civilised world when in need of a young girl. Once he’s kidnapped ‘em and taken ‘em back to his cave, he licks their hands and feet so they can’t escape.

I have a strong feeling that what happens next to these innocent women isn’t as silly as someone licking your feet.

     La Tulievieja

Bringing together the award-winning aesthetic of The Ring and the naseau-inducing aesthetic of Cats, La Tulievieja is Panama’s warning for naughty children. Legend has it she is a spirit cursed by God for drowning her child.

The thing is, God’s curse was, uh, confused. Her monstrous form consists of acne scarring, long hair, claws for hands, a cat’s body and a farmyard animal’s hooved feet. On top of that, she also looks like the child she drowned.

Yep, confused.

     The Jersey Devil

Most countries suffer from multiple bogeymen - here in the UK, for example, we have 12 varieties - and America is no different. The Jersey Devil is actually one of 4 variants, and, like La Tulievieja, is also confused.

Fresh from the jaws of New Jersey, this beast has a horse’s head, bat wings, hooves, and a snake’s tail. First spotted in the 18th century and then again in 1909, it is believed that this legend was actually manufactured as a real estate hoax to coax residents into lowering their selling prices.

You might be able to deny the existence of this beast, but the Cipelahq (a large owl), the Long Black Being that makes a habit of slithering round like a snake, and Bloody Bones (a dancing skeleton and a separate skull) have yet to be disproven.

     The Copperpenis Owl

Hungary has 3 different bogeyman, and most fit the description of the international beast: there’s one with a sack, there’s one which is just a-bit-beasty, and then there’s the giant owl with a penis made of copper.

I personally feel a Babadook with rose gold genitalia circa 2013 might have detracted from the overall feel of the film.

     Ijiraq and the Qalupalik

Iniut communities also follow beliefs in the bogeyman, and probably focus on them more than others because if you wander off in the Arctic you will either get mauled by a bear and die, or freeze.

And then you’ll die.

They actually have 2 resident bogeymen. There’s the Ijiraq, a shapeshifter that kidnaps kids. You know, pretty basic bitch stuff. And then there’s the Qalupalik who is slightly more spooky.

This is a mermaid laden with green skin, long fingernails, and ratty hair that carry babies away in amauti (pouches or sacks for carrying kids) and bring them to live in their underwater world.

     Butzemann

Remember when I mentioned that thing about casual racism? It’s a bit of grey area, ironically.

Germany’s very own bogeyman is known as The Black Man.

(You can see my point.)

That being said, this probably doesn’t actually refer to the colour of his skin as most Germans during the Middle Ages hadn’t actually seen anyone from the African continent. Instead, his outdated nickname was actually down to his preference for dark corners.

The closet, under the bed, in forests during the early hours... If it’s spooky, you’ll find him here.

     Babau

Germany isn’t the only country with politically incorrect bogeyman. Italy has its very own Black Man, a mysterious figure which often features as a black man (gasp) or a black ghost. Only this entity has no legs.

The Marabbecca on the other hand is specific to Sicily, and mirrors the mythology of the Inuits.

Don’t play too close to the water, kids, or a Marabbecca will swim up and drag you to your watery grave!

     The Kropeman

Our final iconic bogeyman isn’t like the other girls, even if his fellow Luxembourgian monsters are. There’s yet another Black Man, and there’s something about an uncle, but it's the Kropeman which has me sleeping with the lights on.

Under the streets of this small country roams a man with a long hook.

When he’s not busy dodging rats in the sewers, he’s grabbing kids by their nose via the hook, and dragging ‘em down into the storm drains.

So - which one is hiding in your closet?

(Aside from the queerness your inner 14 year old hasn’t fully unleashed yet like a big bisexual dragon spewing flames of gender-neutralness.)

(Don’t worry, I’m fine.)

Are you a whore for horror? Passionate about the paranormal? Do you want to see a new real ghost story every day? Then you have to follow this blog.

Read this post next!

[ghostgothgeek]

Space.

Another for the Phic Phight! @currently-lurking Here’s a short one for Team Human. @frootysparkycakes wanted some Danny and Dani bonding. 

Words: 842, complete

Rated: K, it’s just super soft stuff

“Wait, you really want to hang out with me today? You’re not too busy?”

Danny laughed and nodded, “sure, why not? We haven’t really gotten to hang out much since you showed up, and you’re family. Plus, I’m sure Vlad never took you to a museum before.”

“Nope, he’s always too busy working on his creepy experiments. I really think he just forgets that I’m a kid, not just a clone.” Danielle frowned.

“Hey, you’re definitely more than a kid or a clone, and you know it.” Danny pulled out the museum tickets from his pocket. “No sadness today, though. This is our day off.” He smiled as she glanced at the tickets.

“A science museum? Really? Cool!! Thanks, cuz.” She looked up at him in adoration.

“Yeah. It was Sam’s idea, she bought the tickets. Said I needed a day off and I should take you instead of her or Tucker. I think it’s partially because I was annoying her when she wanted to finish reading her book, though. But hey, we still get to go and have some fun.”

“I don’t really care about the reason, I’m excited!” Dani bounced up and down before going ghost, “let’s go right now!”

Danny laughed and transformed as well, both of them flying to downtown Chicago, only a short distance north of Amity Park. They landed and transformed back to their human forms, entering the Museum of Science and Industry.

“Wow, so this is your first time coming to a museum, huh?” Danny watched his cousin as she grabbed a map and began paging through the exhibits.

“Yep!”

“Well, this is a cool museum. It’s great for science fans like us. My parents used to bring me here all the time for my birthday when I was a kid...well, younger than 14 anyways.” He shrugged and looked at at the high ceiling, viewing the airplanes tethered up there. “I think Sam mentioned something about a new space exhibit-”

Dani’s face lit up, “why am I looking through this stupid map then?! Let’s do that!” She grabbed Danny’s arm and began tugging him towards the stairs leading up to the exhibit.

Danny chuckled and climbed the stairs with her, trying to contain his excitement as well. “It’s been so long since I’ve been here. I have to admit, I’m pretty stoked too.”

Both glanced up, mouths agape and eyes widened, at the space exhibit in front of them. Posters of rockets were plastered all over the walls, a large replica of the solar system was off to their right, and in the center sat a sign advertising the recreation of the surface of the moon.

“Race you to the moon!” Dani shouted before bolting off in that direction.

“Hey no fair! We actually have to start at the same time!” He ran after her, catching up quickly, though she still beat him there.

They walked around the moon’s surface for awhile, touring the inside of an old rocket ship halfway through.

Danny watched the videos of the inside of the international space station. “I can’t wait to do this for real some day.”

Dani nodded, “as long as I’m right behind you, cuz.”

He grinned at her, “I’m so excited I have someone to talk to about space now. Most people tune me out when I start talking about it. I’m usually just reading books on the subject and exploring programs in my free time.” Dani looked at him quizzically. “Well, when I used to have free time anyways.” He pursed his lips and looked at the rocket again. “Lately I’ve been feeling like I’ll never actually make it there.” Danny sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Sure you will! I’m sure you never thought you’d become half ghost either. Anything can happen. You’ll get there.”

Danny smiled softly at his optimistic cousin. “I guess that’s true. Thanks.”

They continued to wander around the space exhibit, doing each activity multiple times and ignoring the rest of the museum. They stayed until they were practically kicked out, and even then, they considered going intangible and exploring the exhibit while invisible.

The two ended up at Navy Pier. Dani was trying her first ever cotton candy. Danny had to keep reminding himself that she was experiencing all these activities for the first time, whereas most kids, himself included, grew up doing these sorts of things so often it almost became mundane. He admired Dani’s enthusiasm. Some of it had even rubbed off on him. He couldn’t remember the last time he was able to take a day off and have this much fun. He really needed to thank his friends and his sister for covering for him.

As the sun began to set and the moon began to rise, they took a ride in the Ferris wheel and admired the moon’s soft glow illuminating the tops of the city buildings.

Danny smiled, “I can’t wait to be the first halfa on the moon.”

Dani smirked at him, “not if I get there first.”

[practicingsomewriting]

11 Blocks

Based on Wrabel’s 11 Blocks

You squeezed your fiancee’s hand a little tighter when you walked past Travis’s place. It’d been three years since you broke up, but your heart fluttered anytime you walked past it. Travis lived 11 blocks away from the doorstep of your condo, right before your favourite vintage store. Three years ago you spent almost every night at his place. In the morning, you’d both grab coffee at your usual spot, and head off to work. At night you’d go for walks, hand-in-hand exploring the neighbourhood. Other nights you’d cuddle inside watching the world outside through his balcony.

Getting over him was the hardest thing you ever had to do. Travis was the love of your life, and it wasn’t an easy decision to leave him. Constant rumours of him cheating swirled online. Of course you believed him, but you couldn’t get them out of your head. They consumed your life. Suddenly, you had become super obsessed with your appearance. When you had the opportunity, you tried to check his messages for suspicious activity. When he went out with his friends, you’d be on Twitter refreshing the page to see if anyone said anything.

It was a cold March evening when you hit your breaking point. Travis was playing the Sens when Twitter exploded with allegations of his ex-girlfriend being at the game. That was it. How could you live your life constantly worrying about your boyfriend potentially cheating on you? Crying and shaking, you packed up everything you had at Travis’s place and got out of there. When he got back from the trip, Travis was in shock.

The two of you met one morning at your usual coffee shop, where you explained the events of the night you left. Travis buried his head in his hands, he struggled to understand your argument. “You do realize I don’t control what she does?” he questioned you. “It’s not only about her, Travis! Lately it’s become an obsession. I can’t deal with it,” you cried to him. “So that’s it?” he continued, “you’re just going to pack up and leave. That’s all I get after all this time?” Unable to provide him with and answer, you kissed him on the cheek and left the coffee shop.

Jake came into your life a year after you’d broken up with Travis. At first, you were hesitant about committing to a serious relationship so soon, but you fell in love. Everything about him was perfect. From his successful career as a marketing professional to his sandy blonde hair, Jake was the epitome of a perfect boyfriend. The more you fell in love, the easier it was to forget about Travis. Or so you thought. Closure was supposed to come full circle when you went to donate an old jacket Travis left at your place, one that you couldn’t seem to let go of before. When you arrived at the donation box, you realized that weren’t able to let go of it. All your feelings and emotions had come back.  Tonight, walking by his apartment, something hit you hard in the feels again.

“Congratulations!” Jake’s CEO yelled into your ear and held up your hand to observe the large, shiny diamond. “A rock like this proves that we pay him a little too much,” she jokingly winked at you. “I think it actually proves I love Y/N a little too much,” he argued as he lifted your right hand to his mouth and kissed it. You leaned into him. The diamond was beautiful. He proposed to you in NYC, right after a fancy dinner. He popped open the classic blue box and got down on one knee. It wasn’t the proposal you imagined, but you couldn’t say no.

“I’ll go grab us some drinks,” Jake said and left your side. This was the perfect opportunity to sneak out onto the balcony.

You stepped out onto the terrace of the Bellevue Hotel. Taller buildings blocked your view, but you still saw a bit of Trav’s condo. “Hey,” Jake said placing a hand on your lower back and handing you a drink, “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah of course! I just needed to step out for a moment. It was getting warm in there,” you lied trying not to shiver.  

“You always tense up when we’re near his apartment,” Jake began. You took a sip of the cocktail in your hand.

“It’s hard,” you replied, “It’s not like I can hate him. I’m the one that wanted out. He never did anything to me.”

“Do you regret it?” Jake asks, genuinely awaiting a reply.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” You took in a big breath of the cold winter air.

“I think you should go talk to him.”

After nearly spitting out your drink, you stared at your fiancee with wide eyes and questioned his sanity.

“I trust you,” he continued, “and I think it would be good for you. I don’t want you to have any regrets when we get married. I don’t want this to be the reason our marriage doesn’t work out.” How could he be so understanding? Where did you find this man? He takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over you. “Go on. I’ll cover for you.”

With that, you were in the elevator going down. Bellevue was 14 blocks away from TK’s place. You decided to walk to the apartment to give yourself time to prepare. What would you even say? Would Travis even let you in? You began your stroll.

It was a Friday night and there was a lot of traffic on the sidewalk. You weaved through the crowds of tourists and students, and picked up the pace- the cold was getting to you. Finally, you were two blocks away. “What am I doing?” you said to yourself. Back at the hotel you had the most incredible fiancee waiting for you, and here you were, cold and alone, lurking around your ex’s neighbourhood.

“Y/N?” a voice behind you asked.

There he stood under the Philadelphia streetlight, bag of beer in hand. He looked so good- he always did. His hair was trimmed and his facial hair very groomed.

 “What are you doing here?” Travis asked. You lifted your hand to show your ring “I met someone. I think I’m in love,” you blurted out.

Travis scoffed, “So what? You came here to rub it in? Didn’t you hurt me enough?”

“No, Travis. That’s not it at all. I’m here because I can’t get over you. I thought I could, I thought I did. But, but…you’re like a drug. Recently it’s been so hard.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to say. Need I remind you that you’re the one that gave up on us.” 

Travis pushed past you and started to walk to his place. You weren’t sure of what to do next. After about five seconds of walking he paused and turned around.

 “Are you coming? Or are you just going to stand here in the cold?”

TBC (if you guys want)

[chrismerle]

so I decided I would get in some practice writing in second person, which was mistake A, because I am Not Great at second person (granted, I guess that’s why it’s practice). and then I decided ‘okay, we’ll use @digitalmoriarty‘s Ashley for this experiment.’ which was mistake B, because I haven’t written Ashley all that much in a couple, uh...years.

so this is what happened.

I don’t hate it? but it didn’t really turn into what I wanted it to be. *SHRUGS LOUDLY* anywhere, here’s Ashley and Shai both handling the situation badly.

You…have been gone for some time. It takes a few days for you to realize exactly how long, and when you do you suppose Shai’s reaction makes more sense. You’re not sure you would take it fabulously well if they disappeared for over two years without any warning before popping back up out of the aether. But they don’t know the circumstances. They don’t know the full story. If they did, they would be kinder. You tell yourself that, but much has changed. You have changed.

Shai has changed.

It takes time for you to begin to realize quite how much. You can’t get close, after all. Being close upsets them, and your desire to avoid that outweighs your desire to explain the full story. For now. But you do keep track of them. To stay near, even if out of eyesight.

The townhouse is easy enough to find, and you know that while it is always filled, they are rarely there. It seems a good place to start figuring out their schedule.

But when you knock, you are not expecting a middle-aged woman, harried and trailed by a gaggle of curious children, to answer the door with an impatient, “Yes? Out with it.”

You clear your throat and recover quickly. “I’m looking for Shaicarus Ilthanuel?” you say, just the slightest uptick at the end. If you seem unsure, then there are fewer walls to wiggle past.

The woman’s eyes narrow slightly and she gives you a shrewd once over. One of the more daring children clutches at her skirt and peers around her, and her hand falls to the girl’s head.

“The professor ain’t here, my lord,” the woman replies. “Who’s askin’?”

There’s a beat while you fit that word into your ever-complicated mental map—professor—before you offer a name. It’s fake. You pulled it out of a hat. Based on the last meeting, if it could even be called as much, you know that Shai won’t take it well if someone tells them that ‘Ashley’ was asking after them. And then you bid the woman a good evening and carry on your way.

You suppose the university is the next logical place to check, though that means you still need to narrow down which one.

——

You know their schedule. You have seen the company they keep—the zailor, the soldier, the devil, the singer, the functionary, the forger, the fawning gaggle of Veilgarden, their students, their aunt—and you have read their work, fictional and academic. You hear what people say about them. You don’t like to rely on gossip, but you’ll take what you can.

The more you learn, the more concerned you get.

They have died in your absence. (Several times, actually.) Worse, they have found a sense of curiosity. You hope eventually you can save them from it, but you don’t know when or how. In the meantime, it seems likely that they’ll keep indulging it. They have not yet been to the Cave, but you know that it is coming, and you try to put together plans to waylay it.

You have even seen them with some of the Masters. They are cordial with Pages. They are downright cheeky with Wines. But given how deeply entrenched they are in the Correspondence, you suppose you can’t be surprised.

You know more than most what sorts of things lurk in the darkest parts of London, and just how quickly they can snatch you away and flip your entire life upside down. You know where their explorations could lead them. But how are you supposed to keep them safe if you can’t see them?

——

You behave. At first. For weeks, you are good. You leave them be, keeping at a distance. But your willpower only stretches so far before it breaks.

You have heard people discuss their lectures and classes at Benthic. You’ve tried to content yourself with gossip and secondhand information, until you decide it will be fine if you listen in on one. You can just stay in the corridor. And it goes well enough at first, but it’s just…so Shai.

They are loud and vibrant and active. They laugh when their students challenge what they say, and relish the chance to go into more detail. They have an enormous silver tabby draped over their shoulders for the whole class, like a fluffy scarf. It takes you until nearly the end of the lecture to realize it’s Victus. She was scarcely the size of a soup bowl the last time you saw her.

They whisper amongst each other every so often, when the class is otherwise occupied with their work. It is after one such hushed conversation that Shai looks straight at the door out to the corridor, and you know you have been found out. For a moment, you consider leaving, but they make no mention of you and call no attention to your presence. They simply carry on with the class. And against your better judgement, you stay. You wait. You’re so tense you barely catch another word of what they say, and only realize the class has ended when students begin trailing out of the room.

Shai is at the back of the group, standing a full head taller than most of them. A full head and shoulders over some of them. They have always been tall, but they dress to emphasize it now. You might come up to their chin. Possibly.

They’re speaking with a woman roughly their age as they get closer, and you only pick up the tail end of their conversation.

“Honestly, just ignore everything everyone else has ever said about gut-feelings. Translation is as much a feeling as a process. Now, if you’ll excuse me…?”

The woman blinks at them. Then looks at you. And understanding dawns in her eyes.

“Ah. Right. Next time, then.”

“Of course. Say hi to Danny. Tell him you’re doing well only by my good graces.”

She flips them off as she leaves, and they call a merry, “Be seeing you, Henri!” after her back. They hold their smile until she rounds the corner and the two of you are alone, and then their expression goes blank.

“I would ask if you found it informative, but you’ve always been good at being better than me,” they remark after a moment, and it stings in a way you can’t quite put your finger on.

“Shaicarus—“

“Don’t.” They reach up as if to pinch their nose, only to remember their claws and instead pull their goggles off. “What do you want?” they ask, studiously cleaning their goggles with the corner of their jacket.

A good question, all things considered. You don’t really know the answer to it. Or you do, just not for this specific moment. You find yourself saying, almost unbidden, “Just…a moment. Let me look at you.”

They pause for a moment, and then they loop their goggles around their neck and let their hands fall to their sides. They don’t say anything, but you take the gesture as permission.

Much has changed.

Only one of their arms was prosthetic, before. And it had claws, true enough, but they were…decorative. Not like these…gauntlets. They’re broader across the shoulders, as well. You suspect the gauntlets are heavy.

Their ears were round, before. They’re pointed, now, and you find yourself reaching towards one of them before you can quite help it.

They snap their teeth a few millimeters from your finger tips, in a way that seems partly instinct but mostly honest intent. You pull your hand back sharply, startled less at almost losing a finger tip and more about how sharp their teeth have become. And how long ago must it have happened, for it to be an ingrained habit to use them as a weapon?

“Do you ever truly sleep?” you ask fretfully. You’re more or less expecting it when they snort at you, and they don’t offer a real answer. You can probably take that as an answer on its own. They’re tapping their claws against their thumbs at their sides, rapid-fire succession back and forth, and they won’t quite look at you.

“I just…” You pause. Try again. They finally offer you their full attention. “I want…” No good. At least not while they’re looking at you like that, guarded and expectant. Some things don’t change, apparently.

Finally, they sigh. “You don’t know me, Ash,” they offer, and for once it doesn’t sound accusatory. It’s…a small comfort. “Not anymore, at least.” They laugh quietly, but rather than explain what’s so funny, they shake their head.

“We’ll speak again,” they decide. “Soon. Probably.” They shrug one shoulder, and you know the dismissiveness is calculated, but it nags at you all the same. “I can’t promise you anything more than that.”

You should say something—you want to say something—but you don’t get the chance. They’re on the move a second later, long strides carrying them down the corridor and away from you. You could follow them, but your gut tells you that the gesture wouldn’t be taken charitably.

So you stand there, stiff as a gargoyle, watching their back until they reach the end of the corridor and turn the corner.

You aren’t sure what you expected to happen.

[elizabethrobertajones]

like? i honestly don't get people (haters and those who stopped watching) who say spn has bad writing? of course not ever episode will be as good, but for a show at it's THIRTEENTH season the writing hasn't let up at all (it's just more simplified), sfter all those years i still find the dialogue utterly fascinating. i really don't get it but maybe i'm just biased :/

Yeah, and the thing is the show has gradually moved from what was good writing for season 1 or 4 or whatever, to whatever makes it still work after 8 or 13 seasons… 

Like, the internal mirroring in season 1? It’s there, it’s good, there’s a lot more than you think and you’d basically have to watch the season twice, once forwards and once backwards as soon as you’re done before you forget all the little details to catch all the stuff. I mean there’s some things which are obvious like the Mary and Jess dying either end of their episode things. And then there’s stuff like 1x09 and 1x17 both having Sam and Dean obsessed with drawing something that they’re trying to capture on a piece of motel notepaper or whatever. Little motifs that barely mean anything but give a sort of coherency and nod to earlier writing, which is basically just stuff you do to assure the viewer there’s a sense of having things under control. 

Cycle all the way up to season 13 and you can have so many nuanced references going on that just the MotW in 13x05 mirrors 5 different season 1 episodes, a season 8 main arc thing, a random season 11 motw, or 7x19 even, for the house full of ghosts thing… and probably some other stuff I can’t even remember now, and that’s before we get to the main plot half, and the emotional arcs. And those references aren’t just in there as a competency check, but because it means stuff and it’s relevant. The parallel to Lucas the mute kid in 1x03 who Dean related to? SUPER RELEVANT to his emotional state now. For like the entire season we’ve had 1x02′s “saving people, hunting things” speech lurking around in Dean’s actions visibly decayed and broken from its original meaning. 1x10 was visually referenced and that is important because of the Sam and Dean at odds stuff, and some of their most important yelling at each other about how they see each other and how John affected them and how they see John through each other happened there, all of which is being recycled in how they’re treating Jack. I could keep going but point is, the writing is good surface viewing, and a really rich soup of past canon references for people who want to analyse it, because just showing they understand the story they’re telling is a huge sign of good writing, and makes me confident to assume they do mean basically everything they imply. 

But on the other hand in season 1 you can really feel scared and alone and confused and like the entire universe around them is too big and filled with evil and they’re small and incompetent and just want to find their dad and go home, and that aesthetic is excellent, but you can’t keep going with that past even season 1, so they start to get more people in their lives, even just passing acquaintances at first, and a couple of settled locations. And the story can’t just be the same simple goals over and over again or what’s the point in setting up a big looming battle between good and evil from the very start if it’s just escalating and deescalating clashes with a few important demons, a 4 episode per season main arc about family, and then a bunch  of monster hunts? For one thing they’d run out of hunts :P So more plot, more characters, and it all starts eroding the original aesthetic because better writing for what they’re working with means abandoning what originally made the show good because it can NEVER make the show good again IN THAT WAY.

And by season 6 the mytharc is all concluded, and you basically have to pick the show up and turn it around, and start telling it all backwards, and make it personal instead, because not only is escalating threat meaningless after the victory in season 5, but they have a massive world full of characters and resources and KNOWLEDGE and you can’t have the Winchesters alone against the world. There’s jokes about how in season 1 they wouldn’t know a vampire if it bit them on the arse but then in season 8 Dean just goes and clears a house of them out for his vampire BFF. Or season 1 Dean vs demons and then just cut to him and Crowley drinking together. Like… it’s experience and competence and also just the story can’t maintain itself if it never explores new avenues where monsters stop being scary for being monsters and start being scary for what they say about the characters… Which 2x03 does for Dean, and everything since has been post-picking up the story and turning it around. I mean, that can happen at any point really, but the season 1 approach to monsters was completely unsustainable because they’d run out of monsters. Look at how werewolves never came back until season 8 and when they did, Robbie retconned the crap out of them so they could be used in different stories. Werewolves who transform unknown to themselves and can be monsters without ever knowing it? Are good for like 1 story only, and that was the one they told in Heart. And until you suck it up and retcon it, you can NEVER use werewolves even as incidental monsters. We didn’t even see them in season 6. 

And all these changes are happening all the time, and bit by bit things like “can’t have the Winchesters without any reoccurring side characters to help/hinder them” and “monsters aren’t all evil” and “escalate the mytharc at least a notch higher than previously or start over but make it personal” and all these changes happen one at a time for good reasons, until you end up with a show which looks nothing like the original one but still has its DNA. It’s just grown up into an adult version of itself that can carry its own weight. And that’s good long-form writing.

I don’t actually think the writing has simplified, it’s just behaving in a different way now. Season 1 and 2 were pretty raw and full of character dynamic stuff but the main plot was very simple and tropey because it could afford to be because the show was a bunch of world building and a focus on the MotW episodes, and the main plot was a bonus and a mystery to string us through episode to episode, so the main pull WAS the character stuff between Sam and Dean as an identifying feature of the show. But you can’t tell that story over and over where they don’t know what’s happening and it never comes near them until shit hits the fan. For one thing, they blew all their cards ages ago on things seeded into their life from birth that they had no idea about but were always fated to happen, unless there’s something that happened to Dean that’s just been idly ticking away waiting for him to hit 40 for him to be slapped with some ancient curse Millie Winchester activated poking around with artefacts Henry brought home from work or something. Again, once the demon blood reveal comes you basically pick up the show, turn it around, and start telling in the other direction from the build up to that reveal, and we’re still going in that same direction that Sam’s been reacting to since 2x21. That’s the hugest thing to happen in their family history in terms of plot so everything has to loop around that somehow, and new reveals are just “why” ones not “what” ones, in 4x03 and 5x13.

The show the hardcore original couple of seasons fans are longing for is one that wrote itself out of existence with its OWN good writing. Sam and Dean DEMANDED more characters to interact with to show more facets of themselves and for them to be challenged, so they got Ruby and then Cas. The plot was rolling along building up steam so excitingly that it COULD go to an epic fated apocalypse, and sell that our guys were the ones caught in the middle and ready to save the world. They weren’t the same dweebs as season 1. 

And instead you get this INCREDIBLE character writing… Like, Sam and Dean leap off the page as it were right from the start, and without them being good characters the show would never have amounted to anything because Sam and Dean was all the show depended on to start with. And it’s still going on their charisma and chemistry, but it’s FAR from all that now. They get characters thrown at them to see what sticks, and increasingly characters begin to stick. Characters would basically never be seen again originally. And then a few began to show up over and over after Bobby and then the Roadhouse lot, and season 3 had a whole bunch of actual reoccurring characters and stuff like surprise returns for the Trickster or whatever - things that began to make it feel like the world was populated with more than the Winchesters. And by season 8 when the narrative shifts to being primarily character-based and action driven, repeat characters are allowed to show up and stay in ways that they never would have in the past. You get in season 8 Garth, Kevin and Charlie all coming back since season 7 first appearances, Cas and Crowley get their first season they’re actually both in all the way through at the same time, and then there’s repeat characters introduced in that season for its story. Amelia and Benny, and Abaddon and Metatron. It’s CROWDED. The Winchesters are being defined by the people around them and it’s how they react and make their decisions that affects the story. Which allows for delving right down into them and doing masses of character building because all the plot stuff is affected by character things.

And I think Destiel gets so compelling around this time because the shift to emotional storytelling means it’s less what they do and more how what they do affects them and each other. Everyone’s getting defined more by the people around them but Cas and Dean have this whole weird profound thing going already. 

As we go through all that the story becomes more and more self-reflective. 6x01 and 8x01 both reboot the story in weird various ways, going back to the pilot for inspiration. 6x01 just again is about picking up the story and turning it around and telling it in another direction, but 8x01 gets really meta about it… Dabb era snuck up on us because it starts somewhere in the middle-end of season 11, but the end of season 11 is another pick up and turn around moment, but instead of re-telling it begins to completely deconstruct and break down everything that the story had been previously defined by. Which means in many ways the drift back to trying to tell simpler episodes with season 1 themes and style makes it look simpler, but after you stick out 12 years of the show and then get to it, if you look at what they’re doing, part of the reason why the episodes feel SO good, is because there’s a deep intelligence to it all, at least in storytelling terms. Finding what is fresh by taking the things which are worn down and tiresome and trying to do something with them. Subtly, in season 12… A bit louder for the people in the back in season 13 :P But there’s a clever purpose behind it, and the episodes are engaging for other reasons and as a bonus we’re seeing the characters in ways we haven’t really seen them before. Or as we haven’t seen them for a long long time. 

I think a lot of intelligence in good writing is not forgetting the beginning of the story halfway through or at the end or anything. Which is a serious problem when the show is so long. It’s why you sometimes get lines like in 5x21 where Sam and Dean have an exchange where they talk about remember when we used to just hunt Wendigo (*takes a shot*) or in 12x06 why that was the monster they had that game about… It’s meta commentary for mentioning it to go back to the start, to examine their lives (as we were doing to Asa) and remember how it all began. To get a sense of context and continuity that these are the same guys from the start of the show, who have been through *all that* and are still here, being themselves, in their further adventures. 

I think the style has obviously, necessarily, changed a lot but I don’t think it’s simplified anywhere, just that the changes and evolution it’s been through means that the way it’s told now is different, in this case blending nostalgia with trying to convince us we need to keep watching, still, after 13 years, for some of the weird ideas they have going forwards… I think that involves a LOT of character emphasis like being able to take most of 13x01 to mourn Cas when we know he’s coming back, or this whole grief arc, really. Or look at the evolution of Dean worrying about Cas in season 8, 11 and 12 when he’s missing/possessed and how each time it was significantly louder and more important as what Dean was dealing with and how it was affecting him and how important it was to the narrative as a whole. It’s like someone saying a sentence over and over but repeating it with different emphasis. And louder. And the longer the show goes on the less it can rely on one type of telling and the more it has to rely on the other, although I sort of feel like season 13 is hitting a point where I’m not sure where else they GO from here :P 

It’s flipped right back to season 1 in a way, that there’s very little “main plot” intruding on them, right now, except via grief or having Jack around, which of course just elicits a bunch more character development and emotional arc stuff. But the entire history and complexity of the show is still there, so a regular MotW can turn into a chat with Death, who talks to Dean about cosmic matters. Their world is never not going to be huge now after it’s been escalated so far, but on the other hand, you can go back to that season 1 feeling where character development was basically all they had lying around… It’s all massively complex, but on a sublime lower level to what’s going on in the main plot. 

Same as last year, the plot stuff all just served the emotional arcs and it could be literally anything as long as it gave the right nudges to the characters. So far this season it’s been going much better, probably because it feels simpler and there’s been less direct main plot nonsense going on and letting the characters breathe and deal with the emotional stuff… 

Idk, tl:dr I sort of feel like everything season 11 onwards has just been rewarding fans of the show who kept watching that long, made by people who love the show and are delighted it’s been around this long… Like, if anything, the writing might seem simplified because they’ve written so much show that it’s like a self-fuelling self-nostalgia perpetual motion machine for the last couple of seasons. But the very fact it seems easy and simple is betraying how intelligent some of the writing actually is, because at no point has it let up on the depth it’s written at, and with more show it just means MORE stuff to mirror, parallel and build off of. The writing is probably proportionately better than it ever has been because it’s not a level playing field, it’s a MASSIVE MOUNTAIN of past canon all the new writers have to wrangle, learn, and love before they can start writing. And they show that they HAVE and produce great episodes out of it. 

[brazenbells]

Writer/WIP Meme

I was tagged by @raisingcain-onceagain and @thelioninmybed, thanks guys for enabling my procrastination! :D

1) How many works in progress do you currently have? 14 "active" ones in the WIP folder, for a given value of active (i.e. I still plan to work on them at some point, theoretically). ~10 that I have dropped into a subfolder of "I'm giving up on these but I don't want to toss them." Approximately a million more ideas that I haven't actually put down on paper but are lurking in the "someday" category.

I think I only have four where some part is posted, though, so that's something. At least I'm not making people wait on all 14.

2) Do you/would you write fanfiction? Mostly fanfiction, these days, although I'm trying really hard to get somewhere with that ofic right now.

3) Do you prefer paper books or ebooks? For reading, ebooks. I can acquire them pretty much the instant I decide I want to read them, take them anywhere, search for my fav parts to reread, carry them all in a device that weighs less than a single paper book, and if my arms are in the blanket and it's too cold to reach out I can still turn the page just by bumping my nose against the screen.

But just for HAVING, paper books. I am still weak for beautiful hardbacks and keeping shelves full of them.

4) When did you start writing? I'd done some poetry and stuff but I started writing fiction when, at twelve, I met my best friend and she was writing this post-apocalyptic epic about people we went to school with. Years' worth of phone calls followed where we'd spend hours reading one another whatever we were working on. We started with fanfic, then moved to "original" fic which was basically just AU fic with name changes, and eventually started writing ACTUAL original stuff.

5) Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with? I mean, finished stuff I share with as many people as I can force to read it. @belegsghost is my go-to for sharing snippets, asking for help on plot points, and generalized WIP-related flailing, as well as mine & @ilye-elf's "fanfic writers who are now working on original stuff" support group over on Slack.

6) Where is your favourite place to write? Curled up in bed with the laptop. In warmer seasons, curled up on the chaise in the solarium with the laptop, but it's not insulated so for now bed is the place to be.

7) Favorite childhood book? My childhood was long and full of books, I can't begin to think of how to pick just one. Graeme Base, Chris van Allsburg, Sherryl Jordan, Jane Yolen, Bruce Coville, and Robin McKinley all featured heavily, though.

8) Writing for fun or publication? Fun, largely, though there is a small press I'd like to shop Tiger Prince to if it ever gets finished.

9) Pen and paper or computer? Computer, no question. My process requires a ton of as-I-go editing that's just not possible with pen and paper, and I've found when I try NOT to write that way, it just kills my productivity. At best, I scribble several pages and then edit them down to a paragraph when I'm transcribing them; at worst, I look at what I wrote down and go "this is totally off-base" and trash all of it.

10) Have you ever taken any writing classes? I mean, sort of? I took a semester of Creative Writing as part of my junior-year English credit in high school, and a writing elective in college. Neither were particularly challenging or useful--they were both base-level courses and basically assumed you'd never written anything that wasn't assigned before.

11) What inspires you to write? Music is the number one thing, but a lot of stuff? Reading a fic where I liked the idea but not how they implemented it, or even where I liked the fic but it made me think of a similar scenario that I want to explore. Sometimes weather or a Big Mood I want to capture? (There are at least two fics in A Heart Can't Be Helped that came out of 'ugh, the weather is giving me Feelings, let's dispel them by writing them onto other people')

Tagging @nicxan, @chestnut-podfic, @crackinthecup, @roadgoeson, @kanafinwhy, @confusedpumpkin, I think @feanope might have already done it but if not you're tagged!

[georgeavillart]

Visual and Cultural Hierarchies

Noel Fielding

Fielding claims that he could never make a choice between fine art and comedy, it was always his ambition to make comedy with an art-school slant, and art that could be funny instead of po-faced. His work resembles that of someone who’s subconscious is very close to the surface, reality and imagination is constantly the same. Fielding’s artwork was the first contemporary paintings I ever really understood, they ultimately drove to me to start making my first serious pieces of work- by serious I mean completely ridiculous morphs of my friends and blocks of cheese as I’s imagined in a dream. Fielding is extensively important as a reminder that art doesn’t always have to be quite so serious and political, it can be themed by nothing other than spontaneity, it can be whatever you’ve got knocking about in your head right at that moment.

Martin Parr

Martin Parr is one of Britain’s most significant photographers, best known for his sharp eye and sense of humour. Over his thirty-year career he has focused on capturing ordinary people doing ordinary things – at the seaside, in supermarkets, at village country fairs or on holiday abroad. Often highly saturated and brightly coloured Parr has become known as a commentator and recorder of Britain’s finely nuanced class system. His series ‘Signs of the Times’, based on the TV series of the same name, directed by Nick Barker, is a vintage look at personal taste in the British home, exploring the extraordinary range of emotions that lie behind our household decor. Parr's photography complements Barker’s survey of contemporary perceptions of good and bad taste.

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry is an English contemporary artist who is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene. Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects that juxtapose with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, and "Alan Measles", his childhood teddy bear, often appear. Grayson Perry has been cross-dressing since he was a child, using it to step into a fantasy world where he felt safer. He describes himself as a transvestite and for him cross-dressing has an exciting, sexual aspect but he has no desire to become a female, nor to dress as a woman full-time. After many years of experimenting with cross-dressing and wearing conventional female clothes, Grayson became dissatisfied with the lack of reaction he provoked. In response, he developed the persona known as Claire, as her he can dress in an outrageously flamboyant way and enjoy the reaction she causes. Perry represents the important comedic element of drag, it is an art form but it shouldn’t always been taken seriously. Drag is a safe space but also a production of femininity, whatever you want femininity to be. Perry has inspired my future drag project greatly.

Nadia Lee Cohen

Nadia Lee Cohen's photographs and films, heavily inspired by Americana and Britain in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, are veritable visions of saturated, surreal dreamscapes. Drawing upon the duality of the female form, fine art photographer and filmmaker Lee Cohen locks our optics upon the twisted paradise that lurks within her mind. She explores the paradoxical standoff between strength and fragility within womankind. Lee believes in living within her work and has gained notoriety through her quirky colourful online presence on social media; in which she plays dress up and curates interesting imagery of her day to day inspirations. My own work with film photography and photomontage is most notably influenced by Lee Cohen depictions of confused domestic scenes in her short films.

John Waters

John Waters is an American artist best known for his satirical and raunchy movies. He is also a visual artist, Waters’ photography, sculpture, and installations pieces humorously recontextualize art and popular culture. Born in 1946 in Baltimore, Waters briefly attended NYU for film but was kicked out for what he claims was the “first ever marijuana scandal on a university campus.” Waters then returned to Baltimore in 1966 where he began collaborating on films with his long-time friend and muse Harris Glenn Milstead, also known as Divine. He gained a cult following in the 1970s with his transgressive films Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), as well as the box office hit Hairspray (1988). In his 50-year career Waters has accrued an enviable array of hideous honorifics, all worn with pride as he mocks those who look to certain subcultures with vulgarity, by presenting them in the most grotesque ways imaginable.

Linder Sterling

Linder’s photomontage aesthetic lent itself to the DIY philosophy of Punk: layering images, body politics, feminist discourse and the referencing of historical events. Her work draws on influences from Dadaism, Surrealism and Old Master paintings; and from fashion photography to performance art. A radical feminist and an active figure of the Manchester punk and post-punk scene, Sterling is known for her photomontages which combine images found in pornographic, fashion and interior design magazines, as well as from print documentation of ballet and film. Sterling's works often highlight the cultural expectations of women and the exploitation of the female body as pure commodity. When she first started creating these photomontages, many of her works were published in the post-punk photomontage fanzine 'The Secret Public'.

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler's biggest contribution to the art world lies in her ability to present imagery that spotlights the veil between facade and reality, comfort and discomfort, and the myriad ways we keep our eyes wide shut or wide open. During the Feminist art movement of the 1970s, she explored the imposed versus exposed injustices of being a woman. As a member of the Pop art movement, she highlighted the media's targeted seduction of people into a more consumerist-driven lifestyle. Today, she continues to focus on our still inbred aptitude for replacing dire global realities such as war with fluffy faux-reality distractions like reality television and advertisement-driven personal entertainments. Her work often focuses on political issues such as war or injustice but in a way that challenges us to bring these topics into a more personal sphere, not just relegated to the pages of a magazine or a prime time news report. She asks us to pay attention to what is happening even if it is not occurring within our own environments and to consider the role that the media has in controlling how we perceive world events. Rosler became a leading figure in the Feminist art movement because much of her work revealed the divide between how women were portrayed as individuals whose only place was within the confines of home, marriage, kitchen, and motherhood and the way they actually felt by being pigeonholed into said domestic roles. She also used brave new technologies such as video to differentiate herself from the male art stars and their traditional mediums that had come before.

David Lynch

David Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style which has been dubbed "Lynchian" and is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound design. The surreal and, in many cases, violent elements to his films have earned them the reputation that they "disturb, offend or mystify" their audiences. What Lynch sees, and then puts on screen for viewers to see, is one of the great enigmas of cinema, one that has launched a thousand film studies PhDs. When he looks at a manicured lawn, his mind’s eye tunnels beneath it to hidden mystery, mysticism and depravity – visions he has turned into mind-bending television and film. It’s an oeuvre people tend to love or detest, and even devotees don’t claim to fully understand.

Amanda Charchian

Amanda Charchian creates work with a feminine sensuality that is simultaneously epic and intimate. In 2018 she exhibited a new body of work at Fahey/Klein Gallery entitled "7 Types of Love" which presents mediations on the seven categories of love as described by Canadian psychologist John Allen Lee based on Greek ideas. Her photographs create visual narratives on romantic, spiritual and dutiful love through a feminine lens.  Charchian captures intimacy and the connection between herself and the women she photographs translating the subtlety of the moment. I most value the delicate and warm nature that she presents women in along with her view that inforcing themes can be restrictive and arbitrary; her photography is about capturing vivacious characters, the charm, the mystery, the strange thigs that make these women individual.

Ellen Von Unwerth

Unwerth is one of the most noted fashion photographers in the industry, pushing the limits of female sexuality. The model turned photographer has now shot for all of the of top fashion publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Interview, The Face, Arena, and i-D, and published dozens of books of personal work from exhibitions around the world. Unwerth has an innate ability to capture female sensuality in any setting by relating to the model’s state of mind and her confidence in female playfulness and sexuality. I am hugely appreciative of her role in the fashion world in making women feel comfortable with their sexuality thus confident in themselves and their talent. Unwerth is consistently using her voice to help further the stature of other females.

[ruleandruinrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, SIDNEY!

You have been accepted for the role of RITA JAKOV. Admin Bree: The competition for Rita was tough, and our attention-loving tailor would smile to know it. But not as much as I smiled while reading your application, Sidney—really, it only got better with every word you wrote. It was your para samples that really sold me above all else, though, the way you portrayed her insecurities, vanity, and constant pursuit of perfection, ever-elusive. It was so intriguing to look inside her pretty little head and see what goes through it every time she looks in the mirror, and where it all began. This application was beautiful, so genuine I felt as though my Rita might jump off the page. Congratulations! You have 24 HOURS to send in your account. Also, remember to look at the CHECKLIST. Welcome to Ravka!

OUT OF CHARACTER ALIAS: Sidney! PREFERRED PRONOUNS: She/her. AGE: Twenty. TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m in EST for the summer! I’ll have a lot of free time this summer since I’m home. I do have a part time job this season, but it is just that: part time! So it really shouldn’t interfere and I’ll certainly be able to check in daily and I’m usually always around to plot. As for when the fall semester starts, I go full time and work part time, but I’m usually pretty good at keeping up with things. I can usually respond to threads within 1-2 days and am usually always lurking lol. On a numerical scale, I’d say 7-9/10 in the summer and 6-8/10 during school semesters!

 IN CHARACTER DESIRED CHARACTER: Rita Jakov. Rita - Short form of Margherita. In many languages, it translates literally to pearl, but most notably black pearl in Persian. Antonia - A name of Roman origin given to the women of the Antonius family. Literally translated, it means priceless, praiseworthy and beautiful. Jakov - A family name of many different origins, but most commonly referred to the Hebrew origins supplanter, or “to trip up or overthrow.”

 WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS CHARACTER? To be perfectly honest, Rita stole my heart from the moment I read her teaser. But I will admit, I was hesitant back then because there were so many lovely teasers being released and once bios dropped, I was swept away by so many different characters! But I’ve come to the conclusion that I was wrong to be apprehensive! She’s everything I could have wanted in a Grisha character. And there’s already so much development in her past that I’m really excited where the current events in the plot will take her! What stood out for me most was this quote: “—the type of woman who was loved by all who knew her but understood by none.” I’m not sure if I see a little of myself within Rita or if I’m simply one of the many who love her, but I want to explore her nonetheless. She’s soft and kind and gentle underneath it all—which is deeply rooted in her home life and the way she was raised—but her time at the Little Palace and around fellow Grisha has really shaped and molded the tough exterior she now sports. 

A walking puzzle, doe-eyed and hopeful, she entered the Small Science late to the game, picked from the bunch last and she’d been treated as such. But it didn’t take her long to find her footing, to live greedily, to choose beauty above all else. And I think that’s what I find so interesting about her! Most characters who want to paint the world in watercolors, who want to remove all of the Earth’s blemishes, have a selfless ambition. They have a mission and it is to make the world a better place for everyone, but that simply is not Rita. She’s been spoiled rotten by her own abilities and so have those who dare to cover up their indiscretions with the flick of her wrist or the tug of her finger. And though some may call her obsessive, or shallow, or downright empty and see those qualities as a sign of weakness, I see it all as unprecedented and true strength. Even after years of trying desperately to offset and ultimately fix such savagery, with her delicate hands capable of contorting even the ugliest of beasts into magnificent beings (in other words, putting a mere bandaid onto a gunshot wound), the world has revealed itself for what it really is, ugly and wrought with pain. But if her time at the Little Palace has taught her anything, it is that the beauty she so wishes could cure disease and heal the wounded can corrupt just as wholly as darkness can.

There’s something so appealing to me about her. She’s a gentle soul with an affinity for the finer things in life, from what she reads to what she wears, and most importantly, how she looks. But waging a war against all things odious and vile and egregious, and claiming her cause as righteous one has left her disappointed, hollow, rotten. Perhaps it is time for her to embrace these monsters and this darkness; time for her to find the beauty in the pain and the elegance in destruction.

 WHAT FUTURE PLOT IDEAS DID YOU HAVE IN MIND? ONE: Nothing gold can stay. It has taken Rita years to understand that beauty is temporary. It is a quick fix, a vain indulgence to cover up what truly lies beneath: rot. She was not raised to believe this; in fact, she was raised to be that quick fix, that vain indulgence. She was meant to be admired, but never really touched for all things lovely and charming seem to be the most vulnerable; they seem to bruise as easily as does a peach. And so she remained unattainable, just out of reach. Not out of fear, but necessity. Beauty is temporary, this she’s learned. But to those around her, it is demanded. I really love this quote from her bio: “monsters so love to be made to look as though they’re anything but.” It really resonates with me and gives me lots of thoughts on Rita as a person. I don’t want to change her; I love her the way she is: magnificent and dangerous with beauty literally resting at her fingertips, ready to be put to use, but she’s grown so much and not all for the better. In a way, I think she attributes a lot of the cruelty and pain she’s come to witness as her fault because what she offers does not last. It is almost as if she herself has become a drug, one she is not only addicted to (of which she will most likely never recover), but especially to those she’s tweaked and toned and tailored. And it is that very reason that I believe she’ll struggle with continuing on as this so-called magic wand of Ravka. They demand she erase their deformities away, but monstrousness always has a way of creeping back in even bigger and badder than before. So I’d love to explore the inner turmoil she will inevitably have. Simply put, all she’s ever wanted was to beautify all the ugliness she’s seen, only to discover beauty, something she can control, offer, and give willingly, can corrupt even the purest of things. And perhaps, it is time she take a good look in the mirror. Does she still see the same little girl who turned a village into a kingdom? Can she even recognize the face staring back at her? And more importantly, I want to find out what it means if the answers are no. 

TWO: Superficial, at best. Shallow, vapid, vain—she has been called it all, and much, much worse. Hatred follows around the conventionally beautiful like a lion stalks a gazelle, strategically and thirsty for blood. Rita has always prided herself on her looks, that much is clear. Even before she left her home to join the Second Army, she saw beauty wherever she went. Whether it was pure imagination or wishful thinking, it did not stop her from charming elegance out of everyone and everything around her. Don’t you want to be beautiful? A young Rita would ask and the adults would laugh, tossing their heads back in admiration for the wildly imaginative Jakov girl, with long golden hair and perfectly sun-kissed cheeks. I would love to explore what lies underneath. There are so many layers to a girl like her, each one more complex than the rest, but she’s changed herself so much over the years, claiming each adjustment—each nip here, each tuck there—was done in the name is seeking absolute perfection. And she found it for a time. She became so achingly attractive, so superbly beautiful people almost feared her. They gazed at her from afar with a look one can only describe as wonder. And maybe that’s why she turned her efforts outward instead of in, choosing to perfect those around her as best she could. She’ll claim it was selfless, but a part of me wonders if she only did that so she’d be surrounded by beauty as well. But what are her true motivations? Does she even have any? Or are all her desires, her wants, her needs really that hollow? Some say beauty is skin deep and what matters is on the inside, but Rita has tweaked and remade and even created her skin more times than she can count, over and over, and each time is somehow more beautiful than the last. But what if that’s all she is? What if that is all she’s good for? As her bio states, she’s never fought in a real fight, never wielded a real weapon. I want to see her amount to more than just outer appearances. I want to know what’s underneath it all because, if one day, she is called to fight and she isn’t prepared, her treasured beauty will be the first thing to suffer. So I’d love to explore her maybe getting more physically strong, and learning a little about beauty as a strength within. 

THREE: A lonely person. I hate to be that person who keeps going back and quoting the bio, but I can’t resist! “She became so beautiful it hurt.” This sentence alone, if it were all I had to describe Rita, I think it does it perfectly. If you throw away all the cliches—most notably: beauty is pain—and you focus on the meaning behind it, I think you’ll find Rita Jakov. I see her as a strike of lightning, wondrous and loud and capable of decimation. People look to her and gape; they stare; they lust after her; they long to have her, to own her, to be her. But for all the effort she puts into making other people happier with themselves, she cannot find happiness within. It is a lonely road, this one she’s walking down. It may be beautiful and pristine and lathered in honey and sweet-little-nothings from passersby, but at the end of the day, she is still alone. The moments she relishes, the ones she wishes would last an eternity are inevitably fleeting. So I would love to explore her desire for friendship, love, etc., wherever it may be found. And furthermore, I think her desire to find love, to be loved could be preyed upon, if you think about it. Rita has never been desperate; everything has come easily to her simply because of the advantages the conventionally attractive receive, but I believe she is the perfect candidate for some hardcore manipulation. She could easily get swept away in the affection from a person, believing it to be true. Deep down, I think she hopes for all the glances and stares to mean that people truly love her, but there’s such a monumental difference between love and adoration. The latter has kept her fed for so long now; for years she took praise and pocketed it. She held it close and revisited it any time the decay began to creep in. Perhaps it kept her sane, perhaps it is what drove her mad. But either way, it is all she can see now—in everywhere she looks, in everyone she sees. I would love to see and explore her lack of ability to relate to those around her. It is almost as if she has been wearing goggles since the day she was born. And for a while, all they showed her was the magnificence and grandeur she was capable of. But her vision has changed. Or more importantly, the world has demanded she see its truth. Her goggles have been forcibly cracked and putrefaction has settled in; and it is ravenous, this decay. It isolates her; makes her second guess herself; steals her confidence like a thief in the night. People: they have always been what she has loved most, but now they seem to only cause her pain and heartache. But I believe that longing companionship will remain. In fact, I think it is what will keep her grounded in these new uncharted waters of despair. As of right now, she seems to be trapped in a cage of destruction, alone and incapable of connecting with anyone, provided with only one weapon to defend herself: beauty. And so many others demand she use it constantly, and with reckless abandon. And they will take until nothing of her is left.

 WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTER DIE?: Yes. It would probably depend on muse mostly, if I’ve lost it or something. And if it would help further along the plot!

 IN DEPTH IN CHARACTER PARA SAMPLE(S): She watches her closely, taking note of her every move: the way her hand sits perfectly still as her fingers do all the magic; the way her mouth points downward, slightly agape whenever she touches up her eyes; the way each and every little thing she does makes her more perfect than the moment before. Rita has always thought her mother was beautiful, with hair as silky smooth as honey and perfect, unblemished olive skin. She has always been a sight for sore eyes, turning head wherever she goes—men, women, it made no difference. All eyes were on her. 

“You’re beautiful, Mama,” a tiny little Rita gushes atop her mother’s lap, elbows resting atop the counter, eyes trained onto her face through the mirror. Her hands gently cupped at her tiny chin and she watched her mother, absolutely mesmerized. 

“Thank you, baby,” she smiles, eyes never leaving her own reflection. She has a tiny jar resting between the index finger and the thumb of her left hand, and she dabs her middle finger into the maroon concoction. It stains her fingertip and Rita’s brows furrow with confusion. 

“What’s that?” Disbelief is apparent in her tone, but it only elicits a light-hearted chuckle from her mother and a small shake of her head.  

“Shadow. For the eyes,” she raises her arm and sweeps the tip of her finger gently along one of her eyelids, then does the same to the other. The color is now smeared along her skin and she pauses for a moment, only to wipe away the remaining color from her fingers. And then she returns to her lids, spreading the shadow smoothly, evenly until all that remains is a soft glow of red. Her green eyes pop against the contrast of the colors and Rita gasps. 

“How did you do that?!” She whips her head around and gazes up with absolute wonder at her mother and her appearance, jealous of her beauty and wishing she could take it from her. Turning back, she faces the mirror and leans in, observing her own face and takes note of at least three shortcomings—something no nine year old girl should ever do. 

“Here,” her mother interrupts her thoughts, gesturing for her to hop up onto the table. Rita does as is suggested and her mother leans to her left and rummages through her trunk. It’s filled with at least thirty jars of all different small shapes and sizes, each one a different color and texture, but all are complementary to her mother’s skin tone, of course.  

“Let’s try…” she trails off as she searches, clinking and clanking within the box until she clicks her tongue and looks back to Rita, “this one.” It’s magenta, but more purple than pink and it’s reminiscent of Rita’s favorite dress in the way it shines when it hits the light. 

Slowly and carefully, her mother executes the same routine she had done on herself, dipping her finger into the now uncorked jar and then sweeping it gently along Rita’s eyelids. She wipes away the remaining shade, but quickly returns to spread it out evenly. Rita sits as patiently as any child can when far too excited and her mother has to scold her at least three times before she finally does sit still. 

They follow the same routine. First, her mother applies on herself, then chooses the perfect color for Rita. It is never a match, never the same colors. “Each woman has a different palette,” her mother grasps her wrist lightly and holds her arm up side-by-side to her own. “Your skin is much lighter than mine,” this time her tone hurts; it’s edgy and clipped and filled with a hint of jealousy. But Rita quickly excuses it away. Perhaps all women are jealous of one another, she thinks. Just as I was jealous of her moments earlier. 

But it is a very dangerous thought, a dangerous way to excuse the bad behavior of a parent. No mother is ever supposed to resent their child, let alone scold their daughter for having fairer skin or being prettier. But Yekaterina Jakov was no ordinary mother, and she will do anything to make sure her daughter is no ordinary girl.  

“Now, Rita, you mustn’t let anyone see you without your face.” 

“Without my face?” The girl stares up at her mother, wide-eyed and quizzical. “But I always have my face.” 

“No, Rita. This is your face,” her mother holds up her arm, encompassing the girl’s face entirely with her hand as she speaks. “This is what you show people. Nothing less than perfection.” 

Rita turns back to look into the mirror, her eyes scanning every perfect corner of the visage staring back at her. She takes note in the purple on her eyelids, at the rose petal pink lacquered onto her plump lips, at the dark charcoal black outlining her azure hues. She didn’t look like herself; she was nearly unrecognizable, but at least she was beautiful. 

—————

She sits in front of a mirror, her mirror, the one she uses every single day. And today is a day like any other. She rises early despite her protests, bathes and begins her morning routine, though it seems more like a ritual—like she’s praying to a deity. The god of beauty, but Rita is painfully unaware of the sacrifice Aphrodite demands: nothing too extravagant, only your soul. And so it starts with a tug here, a lift of her brow to give her more of a perfect arch, and it ends with a face she barely recognizes. But it’s one they will demand to see. They’ll gawk and stare and whisper as she walks past, secrets of lust or promises of hatred, it makes no difference. At least they will be discussing her. They’ll be envious of her beauty, of her grace and everything in between.

Tentatively, she reaches into the familiar wooden chest. It was her mother’s; a gift for her eighteenth birthday. She’d spent a fortune to send it to Rita, even left it filled with supplies, and now it was her most prized possession—aside from its contents, of course. But the sentiment behind the gift was left unanswered. Her letter had been left unanswered as well. It wasn’t that Rita couldn’t find the words; she knew exactly what she wanted to say to her mother if she had the chance. She wanted to yell and cry and scream. She wanted to blame her mother for it all, to rest the weight of the world’s transgressions atop her shoulders so Rita would no longer have to bear it alone. But the solution lies at the surface, not within. Simply, Rita did not want to waste her time. There would be no use in writing a nasty letter to the woman who left her ill prepared to face life; her efforts could be put to far better use. Her time was precious, highly sought after and she needn’t waste it on those she no longer cares about. As far as she’s concerned, both her parents have died.  

Slowly, she twists the cap off of her new favorite shade: a subtle pink sherbet. But as she places the finishing touches atop her lids, a tiny thought pops into her head. This would look better if my eyes were green today. And it takes no more than that mere suggestion. She sets down the tiny jar, twists the cap back on and then focuses her fingertips attention toward her blue hues. But in time, and with a few blinks, the ocean calmly morphs into a beautiful pasture—subtle and serene and most importantly, green. That’s better, she thinks, a smile forming along her rosy lips. But there’s a tiny wrinkle in her nose whenever her reflection squints back at her. Quickly and with wild determination, she brushes away the small crease in her skin with the pad of her finger, a look in her eye as if she’s an artist laying magnificent waste to a fresh blank canvas. A few swipes of her paintbrush and the wrinkle vanishes completely.  

It’s an uphill battle, this war against imperfection, but it is one she’s spent what feels like a lifetime waging—and winning. But it is dangerous, this ability she possesses. The ability to erase, to change, to intensify. Beauty lies in wait atop her fingertips, never truly admitting the immense power that comes along with such a form of defense. And those around her, those who wish to erase, wish to change, wish to intensify; they submit willingly, and Rita obliges them with absolute delight.  

But what of herself? Who defends her against this beast she has created, this monster that lies within? No one ever warned her that the most dangerous enemy is yourself. It doesn’t show in the way she looks, the way she dresses, or even the way she carries herself. All they see is beauty, is perfection, is transcendence—so that is all she sees, too. She sits in front of this mirror, day-in and day-out. She adjusts, she tweaks, she changes completely. Each morning she rises, each day she is reborn anew. What remains? Nothing, she thinks. I am no one. 

She sucks in a sharp breath and closes the box in front of her, locking it tightly and setting it into the drawer on her left. But she isn’t finished. She realizes this when her eyes land back on her reflection. Her hair, it glistens in the morning light; it shines as the trees whip in the wind, blocking the sun every now and then. But it doesn’t look perfect. Not with these brand new green eyes. Brown looks best with green, she thinks. Maybe a light chestnut. Slowly she reached into the top drawer to her right and retrieved a small brush made of bone. With the other she pulled out a familiar tiny jar filled with crushed cinnamon. Bringing the jar up and over the crown of her head, she tapped the side of it lightly, letting the light brown flakes descend atop her blonde hair. She follows this by running the brush through her curls, and the color bleeds from the flakes. It blends and molds into her natural hair color, changing right before her eyes until every last strand has been made anew.  

Perfect, she thinks, but takes note of her brows once more, too light and mismatched to the color of her hair. A frustrated sigh escapes her slightly parted lips. And therein lies Rita’s biggest and longest lasting problem. Her work is never finished, and there always seems to be room for improvement. Perfection—which her mother always told her is of the utmost most importance—does not last. There will always be far more ugly than there is beauty. 

 CHARACTER HEADCANONS: 1. Rita is a Libra. Born September 27th on the precipice of fall. Strengths of Libras: cooperative, tactful, kind, giving and highly sociable. Weaknesses of Libras: Prone to self-pity, detest confrontations and/or fights, can carry a grudge and harbor unmentioned hatred quite easily. Being born under the air sign of Libra, it has bestowed upon Rita a great love of people, especially those who pique her interest. She loves when things go smoothly and appreciates the gentler things in life such as peace and harmony. She whole-heartedly detests violence and consequently injustice. Seeing those around her suffer has always brought her great pain and perhaps this is where her love of beautification and tailoring stems from.

2. Rita’s personality falls under that of the ENFP type, which makes her The Campaigner. “You can change the world with just an idea.” While this applies to many different people who fall under this same personality type, for Rita, it happens to be true. Her idea: douse the world in elegance and decadence. And for a while, she did just that. ENFPs are sociable creatures; they strive being the life of the party and the center of attention. Rita loves to be both. She must grab the attention of an entire room when she enters. And each person within that room must take an interest in her. Otherwise she has not succeeded. ENFPs struggle to connect with those around them, despite their craving for social interaction. This stems from their inability to see the world as anything but complex, like the hardest puzzle known to man, and Rita is determined to put it together—piece by disgusting piece. Rita also struggles with their emotions and compassion; deep down the two conflict immensely. But most importantly, ENFPs like Rita, spend so much time looking for a deeper meaning to life, to their existence, that they forget to enjoy what is happening around them. Though in Rita’s case, perhaps she’s spent too much time noticing, and therefore learned too much and lost a touch of her innocence—of her beauty—along the way.

3. Rita’s character alignment falls under that of neutral good. People that fall under such an alignment are people pleasers; they enjoy helping out those around them, from king’s to peasants, but remain indebted to none. Rita is exactly that. She has always believed, like most like-minded neutral good characters, that law & order are important just as chaos & order are too. And she believes one cannot exist without the other, but rather enjoys in indulging in any of  them. Whether it be following the rules, or bending them to her whims; succumbing to an irresistible desire or denying one’s urges for the greater good, Rita has done it all. And she will again. What she does value however, is freedom above all else. She is a bird, meant to fly and to soar and to roam the earth passionately. But being the true neutral that she is, she always seeks to find a balance. To work hard and play hard. 

4. A girl’s first true love is her father. Papa’s little angel, he would whisper softly. Even today, if Rita closes her eyes, relaxes her thoughts and takes a deep breath, she can almost feel his lips as they graze along her temple. She can feel his strong arms hook under her arms and lift her high above his head. If she concentrates hard enough, she can remember him. The way he smelled, like a gentle rain on a warm, sunny day. The way he felt, like a protector with arms made of steel. The way he loved, with his whole heart. But Rita can never remember his face; she can never see it when she closes her eyes. He is more of a blur rather than a memory, not a complete picture, but a perfect trope of a loving and caring father, if there ever truly was one. He died when she was very  young, around four or so. And I attribute most of her issues, even if she claims to be and seemingly looks perfect. They say a father’s love is like no other, especially when it comes to men loving their daughter’s. A girl needs her father; she needs one man in her life that she can trust. If not, pretty little angels with hair as bright and as yellow as the sun do not turn riper with age. They turn rotten. 

5. I am what you made me. Some say a girl’s best friend is her mother, and if Rita were asked, she would probably say just that. She’d claim she learned everything from her: how to dress, how to act, how to be. Her mother was her teacher, her guide post, and it was her responsibility to shape Rita into a fine young woman. And instead, she created a monster. A beast instilled with the belief that beauty is paramount and should be held in higher regard than anything else. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that she had to raise her all by herself, but something tells me Yekaterina Jakov couldn’t and wouldn’t have done any better. She sees Rita as the perfect girl; mysterious and beautiful: everything it took her far too long to figure out how to be. But everyone knew just how easily Yekaterina collected pretty things, hung them on a shelf and only admired them from afar. And after her father died, this left Rita with no other way to receive adoration or praise or love. One could single-handedly blame Rita for her vanity, her shallow heart, but they’d be remiss to overlook how big a hand her mother played in the woman she became. What sort of woman—what sort of person can you become when your mother treats you as if you are just another collectible? It has been years since she’s even seen her mother, not since she moved to the Little Palace, but still, she’s developed a strong hatred for her the more ugliness she sees, and distantly, if she spends too much time lingering on the fleeting thought of her mother, she wishes Yekaterina had better prepared her for the world instead of handling her with gloves meant to only hold delicate things; it didn’t prepare her for reality.

6. Likes: Rita loves the smell of fresh flowers, the taste of a sweet wine and the warmth of the afternoon sunlight on her face. She has an obsession with lace and silk, specifically the way the latter feels against her skin. Her favorite color is purple, especially when paired with greens and yellows. 

7. Dislikes: Rita detests waking up early, favoring as much beauty sleep as she can get. She hates the way it sounds when people chew with their mouth open, even more so if they begin to speak. Getting dirty, sweating and the stench that follows are just a few of her least favorite things, as well as any sort of physical training or activities. Not to say she’s lazy, but over exertion is not something she enjoys. And lastly, she cannot stand cheap fabric or bad fashion sense. 

8. Romance & sexuality: I know it has been explicitly stated that Rita is pansexual, and while I love that despite her vanity and obsession with how things look, she can look beyond a person’s looks and decidedly find someone attractive based on pure personality, I still think Rita’s sexuality and her experience regarding sex is something that should be explored. Has she ever had sex? I don’t think she has. She may have had encounters of sexual nature, but they have never reached their full potential, so to speak. Perhaps it is difficult for her to give herself wholly to someone the way one must while having sex, or maybe she’s saving herself, waiting for the right person to come along. And in reference to my last plot point, I think it’d be interesting if her first time was given to someone under the ruse of love. Yet another piece of her stolen and tarnished and given back mangled: her heart. And furthermore, Rita’s heart is severely entangled with her sexual desire, and quite possibly cannot engage in one without the other.

 EXTRAS: I didn’t have all the time in the world, but I’m just gonna put a few quotes and things here that remind me of Rita! I would have made a mockblog, but again, not enough time. :/

Quotes that inspired me for Rita: “Her eyes were pearls, which gave her great beauty, but meant she was blind. Her world was the colour of pearls: pale white and pink, and softly glowing.” - Neil Gaiman (x)

“Beauty is transformed over time and not without destruction.” - Terry Tempest Williams

“How soft and gentle her name sounds when I whisper it. It lingers on the tongue, insidious and slow, almost like poison, which is apt indeed. It passes from the tongue to the parched lips, and from the lips back to the heart.” - Daphne du Maurier (x)

“It’s hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they’ll do with it once they have it.” - Nick Burd (x)

“They won’t tell you fairy tales of how girls can be dangerous and still win. They will only tell you stories where girls are sweet and kind and reject all sin. I guess to them it’s a terrifying thought, a red riding hood who knew exactly what she was doing when she invited the wild in.” - Nikita Gill (x)

“I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.” - Catherine M. Valente (x)

Gifs and such that inspired me for Rita: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

 ANYTHING ELSE? Thank y’all for even reading ANOTHER app from me tbh! Love + appreciate y’all so much and I’m just so happy I got to dive into Rita as well. Oh, also! My fave book is Catcher in the Rye.

[archivesdiveronarpg]

Congratulations, LEXIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of BENVOLIO with the approved faceclaim change to DIEGO BONETA. Lexie, you have no idea how happy I am that you’ve taken to Benvolio so passionately, so effortlessly, and so perfectly. Your love for Verona’s peacekeeper was evident and I could honestly not be happier to trust him in your hands. The interview captured the simplicity of Benvolio, while your plots promised to delve into him and bring life to him in a way that I’m somewhat scared to see. Please don’t break my heart with him. Your playlist at the end was perfect for him and you cannot comprehend how ecstatic I am for Benvolio to grace Verona once more. I’m so excited to see him grace our dash! Welcome to Verona! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

                                                                            WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Lexie

Age | 19

Preferred Pronouns | She/her

Activity Level | I only have a week left of classes, then it’s finals week, and I’ll be home on 4/28. I’ll be working throughout the summer, mostly in the mornings and afternoons, so I should be around in the evenings. I think I can consistently keep up around an 8/10 in terms of activity.

Timezone | EST

In Character

Character | Benvolio; Bellamy Santo Domingo. I was hoping to change the faceclaim to Diego Boneta if that’s alright!

What drew you to this character? | I wish I could say that Benvolio was my favorite from the moment I read Romeo and Juliet, but then I would be a liar. I remember rolling my eyes and shaking my head thinking, “C’mon, Benvolio. Just let them tear each other to shreds.” Being older, I’ve come to appreciate and love his character. I myself have been called a “peacemaker.” I don’t like stepping on toes and try to resolve conflict as quickly as it starts. So much so that a family friend has affectionately given me the nickname “Switzerland.” So I can see where Benvolio is coming from. He’s starving for tranquility. Having grown up surrounded by war, suffering losses, knowing death more so than he does life, how could he not be? He sees something that the other characters don’t, and I want to explore what it’s like to so passionately fight for a lost cause with no allies.

Benvolio is loyal above all else, and I highly value loyalty in a person. He is involved in a war he despises, because he is both obedient to his family and fiercely loyal to the Montague name, and I find that admirable. I absolutely adore conflicted characters, like Becket from Jean Anouilh’s play. I love seeing how their limits are tested and how far they are willing to go, especially when these characters are loyal to an authority they don’t fully trust. I want to explore Benvolio’s boundaries.

I also think that Benvolio was a fairly flat side character in the play, and I would love to give him more depth. I love exploring introverted characters, because so much of their characterization relies on their thoughts and feelings rather than what they’re willing to openly express. I think Benvolio is just as secretive as he is secluded. He keeps to himself and is likely writing a treaty in the back of his mind while everyone else has their backs turned. Benvolio’s staple character trait is that he is the peacemaker, but so often Mercutio’s comments about Benvolio are dismissed. Mercutio addresses that Benvolio is just as rash and hot-tempered as the rest of the Montagues. "Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved.“ This is something I would really like to delve into. Mercutio also says that if there were two Benvolios, they would kill each other. He has a dual nature that is not often discussed, and I want to explore the conflicting sides of him. Behind his placid exterior, there’s something in his blood lurking just below the surface that could be fatal. He’s never been one to boast his name, but it’s also something that he can’t escape from. He doesn’t want to be tempted any more. He longs for peace no matter how futile it seems, but maybe he’s just trying to escape himself before he truly lives up to the Montague reputation.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

POWER STRUGGLE | I think that there’s something to explore with Bellamy’s rank in the mob. Being a soldier, he’s not equipped to give orders, so he takes them. But that can’t be something that’s easy to do when all he really wants is to be free from all the struggle and strife the war causes. It isn’t so much Bellamy wants more authority, he’s just grown tired of being brushed off so easily. The people closest to him are neck deep in turmoil, too proud to step back and too bloodthirsty to even consider doing so. Bellamy knows he has to take matters into his own hands; he’s the only one willing to extend an olive branch. That means disobeying, something Bellamy never thought he would be able to do. He’s long tried to make his well-crafted words heard by his higher-ups, but his attempts have been in vain. It’s a sore spot that’s starting to itch.

WHITE FLAG | More or less a pacifist, Bellamy wants nothing more than for the war between the dueling mobs to end. He has a diplomatic nature, and he’s known to craft his words carefully. Some work in paints or clays; Bellamy works in words, shaping and polishing them until they too are a work of art. His words are one of the few things he takes pride in, and they are near to his heart. And while his fellow Montagues would prefer he use them to cut and pierce, he has no way to sharpen them. He has vowed to use them to heal, and he knows he can do so given they fall into the right hands. He’s willing to surrender himself to the Capulets or raise his own army of mediators so long as he can walk the streets of Verona without finding them red with blood.

REPENTANCE | Bellamy escaped bloodshed for four years. How open are the arms that have come to welcome him? Bellamy believes in consequences; he’s been a first-hand witness to many of them. He has a rising suspicion that he’s lost a certain degree of trust from the mob, and he doesn’t blame them for it. How far will he go to regain that trust? What will it take?

In Depth

What is your favorite place in Verona? | We recommend looking at the location page and reading it over to figure out where your character’s favorite place is – if it’s not their own house/room.

Verona… Verona… The word registers again and again, a dull roar grating against the base of his eardrums. It’s not a dream, not a nightmare, just a horrific reality from which he has tried so many times to escape. But there’s no denying it: he’s back. He looks up, swallowing the bitter, chalky taste on the back of his tongue as he forces a dimpled smile.

Verona pales in comparison to the lively streets of Barcelona or Madrid. He can so distinctly see the friendly smiles of street vendors, smiles as sweet as the churros they waved in his face and warm as the woven blankets on display. But he remembers even Spain has its bullfights, and he couldn’t stomach those either.

“Well, that’s hard to say…” He says it because it’s true. Lies never fit in his mouth, anyway.

Is it the Tempest Lounge? Surely not. He spent too many nights crammed in the corner of the night club, saturated in cheap neon and chrome, the air humid and claustrophobic with body heat. The tasteless music blaring from the speakers left him dizzy. He used to look the other way when Marcelo did their lines or when Roman all too indulgently whispered in the ear of the night’s given woman. And by the end of the night, Bellamy was patching up Marcelo’s wounds, the lectures flying off of his tongue falling on deaf ears as Marcelo told him “don’t worry so much” and “it won’t happen again,” until the next evening led to another bar fight.

The Castelvecchio Bridge is gorgeous, clay-stained and surrounded by greenery. But it’s also a painful reminder: a physical manifestation of the divide between Montague and Capulet. At least the waters beneath it are still.

He sees more places in his mind’s eye, each one with a unique list of pros and cons. It would likely be the library if it wasn’t the same place the Montagues conducted business, playing God from the upper floor, looking down upon a world of knowledge so rarely opened. It would be the Phoenix and the Turtle Cafe if it didn’t so often feel stuffy with egos; intellectuals have a wildly intimate relationship with arrogance.

With a sigh that is much heavier than he was initially expecting, he rolls his shoulders. “The roof of my apartment,” he settles on, thumb tracing the handle on his tea mug. As he watches the steam rise from his cup, a small, crooked smile graces one end of his lips. “I like to climb up there at night sometimes… The city isn’t exactly quiet, especially not when it’s so close to the highway… But something about it is calming. If you close your eyes, it almost sounds like the ocean.”

Almost… his thoughts remind him bitterly.

What does your typical day look like?

“Typical is barely in my vocabulary,” Bellamy snickers, sharing an inside joke with himself as he taps his fingers against his cheek. Verona is not a predictable place, it never has been, and Bellamy has finally accepted that it likely will never be.

Still, his heart aches for a time when he won’t fear running into Death in a back alley. They weren’t old friends but civil strangers. Each of their conversations, however, were negotiations. And no matter how many times Bellamy thought his debts were paid, they came face to face time and time again.

He takes a long sip from his tea mug, chamomile and honey running down his throat. It’s meant to soothe him, yet all it really does is mock him. He could drink all the tea in the world and still find himself thirsty. He wonders if he’ll ever be satiated.

“But I generally try to do just enough to please,” he explains simply, glancing back up to the questioner. “If I can help it, I try to keep to myself and my studies… The funny thing about trouble is it always has a way of finding you. No matter how good you are at hiding.”

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?

His heart twists painfully in his chest the moment he hears the question. His throat tightens, breath thinning as he trains an intent stare on the wood of the table at which he’s sitting. It feels like a trap. He isn’t asked how he feels about the war often, because what does it matter, anyway? Day in and day out, the streets of Verona become a graveyard, scattered bones like cobblestone on the street. And only a select few see a problem with it.

“It’s tiring,” Bellamy says finally. He’s so used to biting his tongue, it feels odd letting the words out in the open. But some days he worries his mouth will rust shut; something needs to be said.

He shouldn’t say anymore, and he knows it. He nods, trying to recall one of Roman’s old lines, something he would say as he loaded his gun or passed a Capulet on the street. Nothing comes to mind.

“A necessary evil, perhaps.” He doesn’t quite believe himself, but he has no energy to be cheeky or to muster up a lie. So he leaves it at that, checking the watch on his wrist with a crisp, practiced smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I really should get going.”

In-Character Para Sample:

Damiano’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight, and Bellamy steeled himself for the man’s response. For a long, shapeless moment the only sound between them was the hushed sizzle of the burning cigarette tucked neatly between Damiano’s fingers. Damiano pressed the embers against a gaudy silver ash tray atop the mahogany table, twisting it back and forth just to drag out the silence. Bellamy’s breath hitched.

A wolfish smile cut across the hard lines of Damiano’s face as he clicked his tongue fondly, and Bellamy steeled himself again. He expected a fight. Bellamy always expected a fight. Informing the head of the Montague empire he would be abandoning his post to pursue something so trivial as wanderlust felt like treason.

But to his surprise, Damiano was gracious. He offered kind words, or rather words that did not cut deeply. But when they clasped their hands together for an honorable shake, Damiano scowled. Bellamy knew his hand was too warm, too clammy against Damiano’s icy, calloused palm. Bellamy swallowed his apology and instead bowed his head respectfully.

“Just remember, Bellamy…” Damiano spoke at a hoarse, low pitch, his voice a near whisper to which Bellamy was forced to pay strict attention. The tone he used was something threatening, something bold and authoritative that revealed the number of people he had sent to their graves. His eyes were sharp, and his gaze did not falter. His mouth pressed into a patient line for an eerily long moment, chapped lips sticking together before they parted to form the next half of his sentence. “War is in your blood.”

The statement followed Bellamy wherever he went. It became a whisper in the night, a breathy sigh in Spain’s busy streets, a hiss beneath the pitter patter of Irish rain hitting the rooftops. It rang in his ears from the moment his mother called and again throughout the plane ride back to Verona.

And again as he passed the Capital Library on the drive to his apartment.

Everywhere he looked, there was a memory. A building which Roman had climbed too many times, looking over the city as if it rested in his palm; a bar that Marcelo, all open wounds and cynicism, stumbled out of one night. He saw his brothers walking the streets with handguns tucked beneath their shirts, protecting their territory with the civility of feasting lions. Everywhere was a memory for which Bellamy was not nostalgic.

Bellamy caught the taxi driver’s face in his periphery, turning his head fully to see the man’s unamused expression. It took another beat for Bellamy to realize the car was stopped outside the deteriorating walls of his apartment complex. How long they had been sitting in the parked car, he couldn’t be sure. So he offered a forced laugh and an apology, handing a generous tip before making his way up the stairs.

Jamming the key in the lock and ramming his shoulder against the door three times— it always took three times— Bellamy stumbled into the room, door swinging with unexpected force. Wrenching his key from the door, he walked into his living room and sat before the open cage.

“Come on, Isa,” he sighed, running his palms over his thighs through the fabric of his trousers. Isadora did not move from her place, still protesting the new living quarters. Bellamy lied on his stomach, eyes both dull and pleading as he came face-to-face with the feline. “Look, I don’t want to be here any more than you do.”

Isadora locked eyes with Bellamy, staring a long moment. She didn’t budge, feet tucked up beside the swell of her belly. She flicked her tail once, a solitary gesture best described as contempt.

“Isadora,” he said more sternly this time, folding his hands and setting them under his chin. She let out a flustered meow in response. “Isadora Santo Domingo, you will leave this cage this instant before I—”

His cellphone shrieked from his bedroom, tinny ring swelling with urgency. Bellamy was half grateful; he didn’t really have a threat in the first place. Still, he was hoping for one night of peace. Just one before he fully integrated himself back into the world of Verona. A world of cruelty and senselessness.

He fixed Isa with one more warning glance before making his way to the bedroom and snagging his phone off of his bedside table— a box that had once carried his microwave— and interrupted the sixth ring.

“Bellamy here,” he said pleasantly, only to be assaulted with a flurry of vicious verbal attacks. He jerked his phone away from his ear, though he could still hear the speaker’s words with the device three inches away. The insults were creative, at least, an explosion of colors both beautiful and dangerous. Bellamy expected no less from the caller.

He lowered the volume on the device and pressed the phone to his ear with a sigh. “Marcelo,” Bellamy sighed, finally able to get a word in. Bellamy agreed his friend had every right to chastise him. After all, he’d been in the city a full forty-eight hours without contacting the two people that made Verona worthwhile. If Bellamy thought his conversation with Damiano all those years ago was treacherous, this was a mortal sin. “Marcelo, slow down,” Bellamy muttered, already grabbing his wallet to prepare for a night of agony stuffed in the corner of whichever bar was discounting its drinks. “I can’t understand you when you’re shouting like this.”

Extras:

HEADCANONS

BAGGAGE | Bellamy may not have blood on his hands, but that does not mean he is absolved from blame. He has yet to murder anyone on his own, face-to-face, though he feels the day is inevitable. He might kiss his victim’s cheeks and whisper apologies, might try to make the process feel a little more human. The thought is something that keeps him up at night, something that hides at the bottom of bottles and lingers in clouds of nicotine. He’s had a hand in torture, though he’s never been able to stomach it for very long. Several of Verona’s murders can be traced back to him in one way or another, whether he pointed in the victim’s direction like a modern Judas or paid off a hotel manager not to say a word.

TATTOOS | Bellamy was never traditionally rebellious. In a family that promoted murder and violence, how could he be? Nonetheless, he has always had a soft spot for cliches, and he found himself rebelling in the form of body art. His first tattoo was a drunken dare, the result of Bellamy’s sulking, Marcello’s sarcasm, Roman’s leadership, and too many empty whiskey bottles. 

“You act like we’ve branded you, Bel,” Marcello sighed, their clouded eyes rolling so theatrically Bellamy thought he could hear them move in their sockets. 

Roman snorted by their side, and Bellamy met the chortle with a glare far too soft to be taken as a real threat. “Maybe we should brand him properly,” Roman suggested, setting an elbow atop Marcello’s shoulder, meeting their eyes with a sparkle of mischief in his own, much to Bellamy’s dismay.

Before he could follow where the conversation was going, Bellamy found himself on a frumpy old chair in a graffiti-covered, rundown tattoo parlor. The tattoo artist was a young woman with jet-black hair, straight-cut bangs, mulberry-painted, pierced lips, and a snake-like smirk that could rival Marcello’s. She told him to relax while he vaguely worried about disease when she pressed a needle to his skin. 

When Bellamy undressed to shower the next morning, he turned to the mirror and felt his blood run cold. On the raised, reddish skin of his left hip was the Montague family crest in daunting black ink, spread across the bone and kissing the top of his thigh.

Strangely enough, he became a bit addicted to the idea of ink in his skin, and he now has a handful of baby tattoos scattered about his body: an olive branch and flower against his bicep, a patch of stars on his shoulder blade, a bird with outstretched wings on the nape of his neck. They’re nonsense, scribblings on coffee stained napkins, but he loves them dearly.

GUILTY PLEASURES | Bellamy has a very self-destructive nature. Some days he feels God has not held him accountable for his sins. So he finds himself comforted by the way wine tastes crisp and dry in his mouth, enjoys the way whiskey stings his throat and cigarettes leave ash in his lungs. While normally he’s lecturing Roman and Marcelo to stay far from a balcony’s edge, he would be a false witness to say he hasn’t let his feet dangle every now and then. He may be branded a hypocrite, but it’s a title he’s willing to bear. Better to sacrifice his pride than his vices.

RELIGION | Bellamy was raised Roman Catholic. He still attends church nearly every Sunday and does his best to spend at least half an hour a day devoted to scripture. He is a man of God, and the irony is not lost on him: the family business hardly has any room for the Commandments. Bellamy walks up to the altar seeking communion and fearing his sins are too much for even the cross to bear. He is fairly convinced that Heaven has no place for a person like him. Still, he remains faithful. His fate may very well be sealed, but just because he’s going to Hell doesn’t mean he cannot fall gracefully.

LANGUAGE | Bellamy is trilingual. His first languages were Spanish and Italian, and he learned English as a third language in school, working hard to become fluent. He’s finally come around to studying Russian in attempts of helping Roman, but for now he only knows very basic phrases and isn’t of much use. Roman doesn’t need to know how many times Bellamy actually opens up a Russian book to study.

APARTMENT | When Bellamy moved back to Verona, he decided he could not move back into his parents’ home. A home is supposed to be a place of refuge, and if he moved back to a house where the skeletons in his closet overflowed into the corridors, he would never find it. He lives in a small one-bedroom apartment more towards the outskirts of the city. It’s nothing glamorous— Marcelo always has some choice words for it. The lot is run down, his landlord is a shiesty chainsmoker who always has car grease on his shirt, and the walls are paper thin. Some of the carpet is stained, and a thin layer of paint barely covers the graffiti art from a previous owner. But it’s home. There isn’t much complaint from his one and only roommate: his cat, Isadora. 

Bellamy hasn’t unpacked much. In fact, he uses a turned over cardboard box as a pathetic excuse for a coffee table. The only furniture he’s purchased is an overstuffed couch and a rusty bed frame. His suitcases are always partially packed, evidence of his false hope that he will finally leave Verona.

MUSIC | Bellamy adores music. More often than not, he enjoys classical pieces. Sometimes music seems like the only way to properly escape from the world around him. He’ll lie on his mattress with earbuds in his ears, listening away to a ballet or a piece older than even the first battle between Montague and Capulet. He played the violin in both lower and upper secondary school and will bring it out occasionally when he feels particularly stressed. He has an affinity for piano pieces as well.

STUDIES | Bellamy has always enjoyed studying. He very seriously considered becoming a nurse and began some introductory courses in Ireland three years into his travels. Sadly, Alvise’s death brought Bellamy back to Verona before he could fully dedicate himself to this dream. Still, he picked up a handful of skills and knows basic first aid as well as how to stitch a wound.

TRENDS | Bellamy cannot keep up with trends for the life of him. Most slang flies over his head unless Roman and Marcelo have fully explained it to him. An old soul, he doesn’t indulge himself in much pop culture or media. He’s also not the best with keeping an open line of communication. He sent letters back home to his family and the Montagues while he was away. He normally has his phone in the same room, but forgets it facedown on countertops. His friends and family are constantly frustrated with him for ignoring calls and text messages. Many times has he heard the phrase “you have a phone for a goddamn reason, Bellamy.”

MIND GAMES | Being a man of logic, Bellamy almost always fills out Verona Journal’s weekly crossword. In the mornings, if he’s not filling out the crossword, he’s scribbling numbers in a book of sudoku puzzles. His father once tried to appeal to Bellamy’s logical side, explaining the strategy of war with a game of chess. Bellamy was far more interested in the game than the analogy, to his father’s disappointment. He still enjoys a game with his father every now and then. They’re civil during their games, sharing in idle conversation. It’s one of the only ways they can speak without Bellamy’s father bringing up the mob, contrary to their first games.

FRIENDLY GIANT | Bellamy has been tall and lanky from his first growth spurt around age 14. He stands at 6’3”, though even with his stature he’s hardly ever seen as frightening. He never uses his height to intimidate, and people often remember him as shorter than he really is. He also has a reputation for being clumsy. His mother took to calling him Cervato, the Spanish word for fawn, and it baffled Bellamy how his mother could sound so affectionate and so condescending all at once.

FINANCES | Bellamy hates being indebted to anyone. When he left home, traveling was easy to do on his parents’ wealth, but Bellamy worked odd jobs to pay for anything other than his plane tickets. He’s very fiscally responsible and doesn’t spend frivolously. He’s still trying to pay back his family for his traveling expenses, and that is why he lives in such a shanty apartment.

PLAYLIST

[ listen. ]

i. sons of an illustrious father - glass nor stone

I will wear these scars Keep loving when it’s hard But my heart is neither glass nor stone

ii. yeah yeah yeahs - runaway

I was feeling sad Can’t help looking back Highways flew by… Run, run, run away

iii. bastille - bad blood

All this bad blood here Won’t you let it dry? It’s been cold for years Won’t you let it lie?

iv. daughter - tomorrow

By tomorrow we’ll be swimming with the fishes Leave our troubles in the sand And when the sun comes up, We’ll be nothing but dust, Just the outlines of our hands

v. PVRIS - demon limbs

I can feel it, being torn from my, my hands: my innocence This change is all so permanent Can’t you see a change in me? I said, it’s all so permanent

vi. the neighbourhood - float

They show you how to swim Then they throw you in the deep end I’ve been learning since But it doesn’t mean I’ll float

vii. AURORA - warrior

I can’t recall last time I opened my eyes to see the world as beautiful And I built a cage to hide in I’m hiding, I’m trying to battle the night Let love conquer your mind Warrior, warrior

viii. paramore - part ii

What a mess, what a mystery we’ve made Of love and other simple things Learning to forgive Even when it wasn’t a mistake I question every human, who won’t look in my eyes Scars left on my heart formed patterns in my mind

xi. pierce the veil - the new national anthem

Somebody’s supposed to fall in love, but nobody even calls Somebody’s supposed to… Tear this place apart until you find me hiding, silently I wait You’ll be excited just to see me someday Everything’s okay

x. bastille - daniel in the den

And for every king that died Oh they would crown another But it’s harder than you think Telling dreams from one another And you thought the lions were bad Well they tried to kill my brothers

PINTEREST BOARD

[ here. ]

[vieuxnoyesrp]

Charlie. We were so, so excited to see an application for Lydia Martin; whose trademark persona has been sorely missed from our storyline as of late. We like the amount of detail you gave us in your application; especially for the ‘day in the life’ question as well as your para sample. It gave us great insight into your understanding of Miss Martin’s character. Moreover, it was refreshing to see right off the bat that you understand the sheer number of layers and complexity that make up Lydia’s exquisite personality. You saw right through her facades, and your headcanons were thoughtfully-constructed and unique. In particular, we love that you recognized how important the connection is between Lydia and her grandmother. Although strongly hinted in the bio, we don’t know many roleplayers who would - of their own accord - choose to write a sample revolving around Lydia and an elderly woman who is, for the time being, an NPC. It was a unique choice and a fantastic tribute to the importance of this relationship. Well done!

Charlie, thank you very much for applying. As for Lydia…

                 ⚜ ~ WELCOME TO VIEUX NOYÉS!!! ~ ⚜

Wondering what to do next? Click here and let the good times roll!

⚜ Roleplayer:

⤜ Name/alias: Charlie ⤜ Pronouns: She/Her ⤜ Age: 21 ⤜ Timezone: GMT -3 ⤜ Activity: I’m a solid 7/10, I’d like to think, mainly because I’m always around even if it’s through my phone. I work some afternoons and go to Uni every morning, but aside from that, I’m always with my computer around and I can get on most times of the day. ⤜ Best form of contact: Through this Tumblr here, I’m always here lurking since It’s the one I’ve got on my phone right now. ⤜ Any Triggers? Thankfully, no! ⤜ How did you find Vieux Noyés? Through the rp recommendations tag ⤜ What drew you to the RP? The diversity of characters, the intense storyline and the deeply involved and developed plot which just sucks you in from the start. ⤜ What is one subplot/element from the Plot page that you are particularly looking forward to seeing in this roleplay? I am gasping to see the Lost Relic part of the plot developed. I think hunters have it in their nature to stay alert and want to have the upper hand in every situation, that’s why they train and are always prepared, so I can’t wait to see how that gets developed to slowly make a plan to get them up there with the first card to draw against the vampires.

⚜ Desired Character:

⤜ Why do you want this character? Because I think Lydia can often be portrayed and seen as such a flat character who’s the Queen B of the school but when she gets back home she cries all night. And I think she’s so much more than that, she has so many sides of her than just crying. Of course, she suffers just as much as the next guy, but she’s also a fighter and even if she has to hide her wits, she’ll put them all to use when it comes to protecting those she loves. And in this roleplay, there’s also the relationship with her grandmother which is such a big place to develop something relevant, and how she’d help her find and channel the mystery voices in her head and try to open herself and how she is and her true nature out to the world.

⤜ What are your future plans for this character? I think I just wrote a little bit of that, but mainly I wanna give her depth. I want her to develop friendships outside of her comfort zone and even if she is quite a strong personality and maybe sometimes a bit abrasive, she’s also a person and she needs friends in her life. I want to develop the understanding and developing of the voices in her head, I want to see how that could take her to her grandmere and how together, she’d help Lydia realize that she’s been trying to silence this incredible power and all the responsibilities that that comes with.

⤜ Put yourself in your character’s shoes. Give us a few lines to describe a day in the life of your character… Where do they live? Where and how do they spend their time?

In New Orelans, it doesn’t get any nicer than the Mayor’s house. Sure, sometimes she wished she wouldn’t have been followed by cameramen asking her opinion on something her mother had said, or she wished she didn’t have to deal with her step-father and his son, but you grow used to those things in time, don’t you? Lydia certainly has. On a regular day, she wakes up about an hour earlier than she’s supposed to just to make sure her look for school is up to par with her make up. After that hour’s done, she gets in her car and drives to school. And then for seven hours, she plays pretend. It’s class after class where she pretends she doesn’t understand what a latin word in a history book means, how the hardest of algebra pages on textbooks aren’t as easy as the alphabet for her, it’s class upon class to where she feels her brain turning to mush. Her only salvation there are her friends. She hangs out with them as much as she can, and when it’s time to go back home, that’s when she turns back into herself. She goes into her room, avoiding any kind of interaction with her step-father or step-brother, even if she’s finding him a bit more to her liking at times, and switches her brain back into overdrive. She reads latin, both old and modern, she paints, she watches PhD lecutres through YouTube and has even dared to start an application process for Tulane University, but she’d never tell. Only when it’s time for dinner she rejoins her family down at the main dinning room and shares a few hours with them, as little as possible, before going back upstairs and delving into her own world, until it’s time for bed, where she takes as many pills as possible to dull the voices that have been taunting her through the whole day so she can have a decent night rest.

On a weekend, though, she wakes up a bit later and tries to spend as much time as she can with her friends. They go to parks and walk around shopping malls and she’d even go as far as saying she’d even spend a few minutes of her time with her step-brother if he asks. Lydia enjoys spending time at the antique shop. It’s a place where she can go and feel immersed in a different time, as if she had been suddenly thrust into the French 17th century, surrounded by paintings and tea sets and old book smell. It could probably be one of her favorite places in the world, but she’d never speak about it. She’d spend time by herself there, or at auctions for paintings and antiques, buying as much as she fancied only to get a little grief from her mother but then a request for her to buy something for the living room, she had amazing taste and her mother knew it. And at night? Well, she was the most popular girl in school, so party invitations were never scarce. She’d doll up, dress up and drink until the voices left her again.

⤜ Give us three headcanons regarding your character of choice.

Lydia wants to be a doctor. Not a regular “tell me where it hurts“ doctor, but a psychiatrist. She’s smart, and she has seen and read what schizophrenia and paranoia will do to you, and even if she knows that she’s not crazy, her mind would not betray her like that with how smart she was, she wants to be ready and she wants to understand everything about the human mind and how to trick it to stop the voices… if she can.

Lydia has never fallen in love, and honestly does not believe in the idea of love. Her parents were supposed to be in love, and guess what, that didn’t last long. That’s when she started to look into it. Love is a combination of three chemicals in the brain that makes you feel things and suddenly sparks fly in your heart and… For someone as smart as her, she knows it’s not real. Jax has been her on and off boyfriend for the past year, and as much as she thinks she could’ve fallen in love with him, she still knows that love is as much a chemical as oxygen, and she doesn’t have the time to think of that. The voices in her head occupy a much bigger portion than love ever could.

Lydia blames herself for her parents divorce. She wants to see it rationally, as two people who just couldn’t bare to co-exist together anymore. Things like that happen, love isn’t real, so why would two people who don’t even like each other keep on enduring what they hate? Things like that she told herself daily when she saw her mother next to her step-father, but she never could manage to believe it herself. It was all her fault, possibly. The voices, her grandmere, something, but it was related to her.

⤜ What are some plots you’d like to explore with your characater?

I really want to get to develop Lydia’s connection with her voices and her psychic side, maybe develop a little more of the Banshee she is on Teen Wolf, but if that’s not possible then turn what we know about that into a more psychic perspective.

I also wanna develop friendships for her, especially ones with the people she’s friends now, to make her more comfortable around them and they, in that way, would help her unleash her full inner goddess of wisdom and stop being the plastic she is on the outside.

And I’d also love to be able to develop Lydia’s relationship with her grandmother and how that’d be a secret she’d keep to her mother and the rest of her family, how maybe Tyler would be able to play into it and be her confident, and in that way work with the relationship between the two siblings and have them trust each other.

⤜ Para sample:

(Retained for privacy)

⤜ Would you like to be considered for another character if not accepted as your primary choice? Kira Yukimura.

⤜ Have you read the rules? Yes, I have

⤜ Anything else? The first part of the para sample is a little bit of a backstory that managed to get me into a mindset where I could actually write, and then there’s the dialogue part of the para sample. Thank you very much for reading!

[dawnamethyst]

22 May 2020

It recently occurred to me that I’ve been formally studying and practicing UX for over a year now. It seems appropriate that I should reflect on my learnings as a journey, because where I am is different from where I was. Where was I? Where am I now?

Prior to starting the Springboard course, I had explored all of my own ideas related to UX. I was reviewing a project idea from several years prior where my and my ex-boyfriend explored ideas together. From the years 2012-2015. I had removed myself from media and largely, other people’s thoughts. I asked, “With the skills I have now, how can I help the world?” This opened my internal Pandora’s Box.

(I removed myself from other designers thoughts in particular, because I wanted a chance at thinking on my own. So it was only until after my formal UX training did I learn how important it was to involve the user early on and throughout the thinking process.” Who knows if I would have explored and came to the same conclusions, but to this day, I still appreciate those days where I explored in my own little studio in Kingwood, TX.)

Many ideas popped out related to the internet and design... Ride sharing, Pokemon on my phone, an application for creating your own very nice website without knowing code, AR, Education empowering people in their lives, Health & Wellness as a means to self-realization, pulling information from the internet and representing it had many opportunities for application...

What I really keyed in on was the idea of, “The internet is a mess. If I could re-design the internet, what would that be like?” So I delved into my thoughts and worked them out on printer paper one page at a time. It was wonderful to think through abstract ideas in this way. My approach was largely informed by my graphic design training, experience as a web designer from when I was a teenager and also video games + travel.

Whenever I got stuck, I’d share what I had learned and where I was at and what I was questioning with my boyfriend. Invariably, his reflection would spur me on. It was like a radical game of ping pong with very flexible boundaries. It’s the place that designers and engineers are no longer separated or different. They are just people exploring a problem with open minds. My boyfriend understood code to a deeper level than most people in the world. This statement actually came out without so much ego as just plain factual. 20 people in the world can do what he can do.

I knew that I hated ads on web pages. They were distracting and pestering. Hate is a strong word and I hate them. I wondered if there was a way that the idea behind ads could have a symbiotic relationship with the information presented.

I also knew I did not like having a million tabs open and in general, keeping focus and on task was hard. It was not designed into the current system. How could I design for focus?

I also knew “big brother’ was lurking behind the corners of the internet or so I suspected. Or maybe it’s just the facebook.

[user flow from search engine to web page and back to search engine]

I decided that, because I felt the internet was a miracle in education and self-learning, I wanted to organize data around topic. I also think this supports our mental models of the child’s mind for curiosity.

Because I was creating a standard for all of the internet, I got to the point where I needed a topic to apply to my framework to test. Along with this topic, what I really needed was a group of people that were totally in love with that topic.

I knew that my intention for this project couldn’t just be money. I was looking to support humanity as a means to supporting our one home, earth, who I felt so desperately would enjoy our love versus our disrespectful destruction and abuse.

To me, the answer to our sustainability issue is, “Community.” I realized this through a deep dive into practical sustainability called, Permaculture Design.

Just last year, I realized that developing software for community support and development felt like an accumulation of all I had been exploring as a I followed my nose.

Now, with covid-19, I’m kicking myself for not following my heart and getting this going sooner.

But then, I started to think past the platform. Is it really necessary to design a brand new platform? Well, I don’t really like the facebook, but I’ve started to look past this for other possible solutions. Or maybe it’s that I’ve started to observe the users now more than the platform.

---

In more recent years, I thought I had to give up on a career in nature, because there’s just no money in it. As well I don’t want to use it for selfish profit. But I do think understanding how to harness nature is worth a lot of money versus a system that forces her to fit into a box and perform-- that one is exhausting for all parties, because there’s so much control involved. Everything has to go perfect for it to work.

So, I tried to force my design brain into a box called, “UX,” because there’s a big demand for it now and I knew I could be good at it. I was certainly proud of what I had thought out in previous years.

The thing is, I don’t know if I would have ever come to the conclusions I had, if I had followed the same process or method that everyone else does.

So- is what I am a ux designer or am I something more? 

---

I realize now that I cannot give up on my relationship with nature. I know I need to support myself, but creative juices require one to honor their own heart. I just don’t know if people get that creativity thrives in certain conditions and quickly dwindles in others. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have motivation other than money. Even still, the fact that I like a task is not enough to keep me involved. I’ll get bored. Anything can become mundane without passion.

Purpose. What is my purpose? Only I what the answer for me. It will be one that resonates with me inside and out in all that I radiate and in all that I attract.

---

Make enough money to buy land. Well, good in theory, but what about the whole time I’m making that money? Am I to just slog through uninspired in the moment? That sounds awful!

Save earth? That sounds better, but is it realistic?

---

I am still sniffing it out, but very actively and I listen to how my heart responds. She’s never let me down yet.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 28: Devil’s Dungeon (1978) – Tainted Victory.

When the question is asked “What was the first commercial CRPG”, most of the knowledgeable folks around will tell you that it was Beneath Apple Manor. It’s a fair answer: although there were plenty of CRPGs created before 1978, none of them were available in stores.  Of the other commercial CRPGs from 1978 that I’ve played, Dungeon Campaign was created in December at the earliest, and Space is believed by Matt Barton to be a 1979 game (and I ain’t about to argue with Matt Barton on these matters).  There’s one more game that just might qualify though: Devil’s Dungeon.

An appropriately used apostrophe in a game from the 1970s is a rarity to be cherished.

Devil’s Dungeon was created by Dr. Charles William Engel, a maths professor from Florida, and was shown to be available in an ad dating from February 1978. At this point it was simply sold as a 15 page booklet with the BASIC code for the user to enter themselves, but it was available for sale. Whether a booklet of code counts as a commercially available game is up to the reader, I suppose, but as far as I’m concerned it was commercial, which strikes one requirement off the list. Whether it qualifies as a CRPG is another matter entirely.

(For a deeper exploration of this topic, head over to The Golden Age Arcade Historian, who really goes in hard on it.)

I tried to find an Apple II version with no luck, and have settled instead for playing it on a TSR-80 emulator. I’m actually not sure what platform it was originally intended for, or if Engel’s code was even intended for a specific platform. Apple II and TRS-80 would be the most likely options in 1978, so I’m happy with either.

The game itself gives no backstory, but a preamble before the code in Simulating Simulations 2nd edition (a 1979 book featuring the code for a number of Engel’s games) reads as follows: “For many years you have heard rumors of large quantities of gold hidden in a maze of caves whose connecting passageways lead deep beneath the earth of an occasionally active volcano. The stories tell of monsters and demons who roam through the caves, poisonous gas, tremors from the volcano, and one man who returned from these perils alive and named the caves The Devil’s Dungeon. After much searching, you have located the wealthy, solitary man who survived a journey through the dungeon; and he has agreed to see you. Although now very old and in poor health, he tells you everything he can remember about the dungeon.”  That’s a classic 1970s Dungeons & Dragons setup right there: a big hole in the ground full of monsters and treasure. My goal is to get in, survive, and get out with as much loot as possible. It doesn’t get much more basic than that.

The gameplay itself is also pretty basic. It’s entirely text-based, and bears quite a few similarities to Treasure Hunt, which I covered not that long ago. If Treasure Hunt was the adventure game boiled down to its barest essentials, Devil’s Dungeon is the same thing for the CRPG. Each move displays your current status, how deep you are underground, which room you are in, and which rooms the exits lead to. The bulk of the game is simply typing the number of the room you want to explore next, and trying to avoid or fight the various dangers of the caves. All of the command inputs are numbers, as shown on the screenshot below.

A starting character in Level 1, Room 1.

The dungeon is split into levels, and everything I’ve read indicates that you can keep descending infinitely. Every level has 16 rooms. You can explore them using the regular exits, or one-way slides that don’t allow you to return the way you came. Mapping the levels is of limited utility, because there are tremors that happen periodically that rearrange the rooms. These tremors are frequent enough that I gave up on mapping very quickly, and if you can get me to stop mapping a game then it must be a truly futile effort. You can enter ’88’ to bring up a list of the caves you’ve visited and their exits, which is pretty handy.

Some rooms feature “drop-offs”, which can be used to descend to the next level down. Once you go down you can’t get back up again, but you can always escape the dungeon from Room 1 on any level (assuming you can find it). As in most games of this type, it gets more dangerous the deeper you descend, but also more rewarding.

There are monsters lurking around, and you can’t claim the treasure in a room until the monster has been dealt with. Every monster is simply listed as “Monster”, which is disappointing. The player and the monsters have Speed and Strength scores which dictate how effective they are in combat. Battle is not involved at all; you simply hit “0” to fight, and the game tells you if you killed the monster, if it lived, or if you died. The monsters scores are right there in the open, so it’s usually pretty easy to tell if you’re going to win or not. You can flee from any monster, but it has a chance based on your Speed to hit you as you escape.

Killing a “monster”, type unknown.

The final dangers, and the most irritating, are Demons and Poisonous Gas. Each one has a chance to affect you in some way as you leave the room: Gas can drain you of half your Strength, while Demons can drain half your Speed, or steal some of your Gold. There’s no way to avoid these dangers, and little you can do to stop them affecting you once you’ve encountered them. The majority of dungeon rooms feature one or both, so no matter how high your stats get there’s always some chance they’ll get drained back down very quickly.

The only option the player has against the game’s hazards is the Magic Wand. In any room you can use it, and it will destroy every danger in the room as well as creating a drop-off to the next level. It works 60% of the time, but otherwise it backfires and drains both Speed and Strength by 50%. I tend only to use it when I absolutely have to. You can sometimes get into rooms with no exits, and that’s when the wand is essential.

I escaped from a monster, got gassed, and walked right into a room with more gas and some Demons.

The majority of the game consists of moving from room to room, killing monsters for experience points, scooping up gold (which also gives you experience points), and hoping that the gas and the Demons don’t get you too many times. The goal is to amass plenty of experience and gold, then find Room 1 on any level. Room 1 is where you can exchange experience for Speed and Strength. The game is a war of attrition, with monsters and hazards constantly draining you as you try to get enough loot to stay ahead. Even just moving around drains both stats, with each move taking an amount equal to your depth underground.

The best I managed (playing fairly) was to descend to Level 6, and escape the dungeon with a dozen gold pieces. Even when making maps and trying carefully to avoid the hazards I’d already encountered I found the game incredibly difficult. With no way to know when you’re about to stumble into some Demons or gas, and no way to control whether they drain you or not, it’s a tough nut to crack, and seems to be based almost entirely on luck.

See that note in parentheses above? The one that says “playing fairly”? I put it there because I completely broke this game. Whenever you’re about to leave a room, you can enter the number of a room that’s not adjacent to the one you’re in. This takes you to a screen that displays the amount of gold you found in the room, and asks you to enter a valid exit. If you just keep hitting enter on that screen your character keeps on finding gold, over and over again for as long as you like. I used this to amass over 100,000 gold pieces, and jack my character’s stats up to around 20,000 each.

I could have cranked those scores even higher, except that after a while I found myself unable to locate Room 1 on any level. Demon and gas encounters took their toll, as did simple movement, and I died on Level 22 when my Speed was reduced to zero.

Loaded down with “spondooly” as some of my older relatives might say.

In another game I used the above technique to garner a decent amount of gold on Level 1 (enough to raise my stats to about 3,000), then I dropped down a few levels until I found a room that would net me a decent amount of gold. (Rooms will tell you the maximum amount of gold you can earn from them, so it’s easy to know whether a room is worth farming or not.) I quickly amassed over 100,000gp, but once again I found it really hard to find Room 1. I ended up descending to level 12, bouncing from one hazard to the next as my stats got lower and lower, until I eventually lucked onto an exit to Room 1 and escaped with my fortune.

I left the question of whether this game qualifies as a CRPG open at the start of this post, with the intention of returning to it later. It’s certainly an attempt to recreate the play of Dungeons & Dragons, which was the goal of the vast majority of CRPGs of this era. Your character has statistics that determine your success, and can increase those statistics over time by earning experience points. There’s a rudimentary magic system, and very basic combat. As far as I’m concerned it covers most of the bases that other early CRPGS cover, albeit in an extremely simplistic form. So yes, it’s a CRPG. And yes, if Dr, Engel was selling those booklets it was definitely commercial. Unless another, earlier game is unearthed, it looks like Devil’s Dungeon really was the first ever commercial CRPG.

FINAL RATING: Story & Setting: The story is the same old search for treasure in a monster-filled hole, and that hole is described in the most perfunctory way possible. Rating: 1 out of 7. Characters & Monsters: There are no characters in this game, only Demons and other monsters. None of those monsters are individualised with names or types; the only variety here comes from their statistics. I guess that’s all these games do when you get under the hood, but it’s still disappointing. Rating: 1 out of 7. Aesthetics: It’s a text-based game with not even the barest attempt made to give the writing some character or atmosphere. Rating: 1 out of 7. Mechanics: It’s a simple game that does everything it was designed to do, but there’s nothing all that interesting going on. Throw in the game-breaking bug I discovered and I have to knock it down. Rating: 2 out of 7. Challenge: Playing this game fairly I would have described it as too arbitrary and difficult. After discovering the money-making bug it’s much easier, and far too easy if you have the patience for farming gold on Level 1. Rating: 2 out of 7. Innovation and Influence: In terms of influence, I would have to say that Devil’s Dungeon is negligible. It’s barely mentioned on the internet, and these kinds of text-based CRPGs petered out pretty quickly. It’s also not all that innovative, being mostly a slightly more complex variant on Hunt the Wumpus (imagine playing Wumpus without any warnings about where the dangers are, and you have an idea what Devil’s Dungeon is like). It should get some points for being the earliest known commercial CRPG, though. Rating: 5 out of 7. Fun: I’m sorry to say, but I derived very little enjoyment out of the couple of hours I put into this game. There’s just not enough that the player can do to control their fate, and that’s always a frustrating game experience. Rating: 1 out of 7. Bonus point? Are you kidding me? The above scores total 13, which doubled gives a Final Rating of 26. Overall, that puts it even with a couple of Greg Hassett’s adventure games, and above King Tut’s Tomb, Treasure Hunt and Library. King Tut and Library were broken, and earned their place at the bottom. Treasure Hunt is a better game than Devil’s Dungeon, but it’s not as significant. (I’m starting to regret that Innovation and Influence category.) As for the CRPG chart, Devil’s Dungeon is at the bottom, and that’s where it belongs despite it’s significance.

NEXT: The next game on my list is something called The Dragon for the Commodore PET. I was notified about this by regular commenter Brian way back in 2017, but Google isn’t showing any signs of its existence. The same qoes for Quest, which is another one that he told me about. I’ll table those for now, unless Brian can tell me if his leads on those games bore any fruit. That leaves me with Lords of Karma as my next game, a text adventure whose sole aim seems to be the doing of good deeds. I’ll bet you anything that it involves killing things and collecting treasure.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-28-devils-dungeon-1978-tainted-victory/