#i should honestly make a pinned post or something that i just collectively update with my coupon book

[bamsara]

There needs to be a thing where people who get coupon codes from purchases (not the advertised codes stores send out in emails, but the rewards kinds that usually expire before people can use them) but know that they aren't going to use them, can collectively add them to a rotating database for people that could use them that periodically removes codes that don't work/are used up and have a search function for people who need discount codes for certain stuff/sites

Anyway here are some Hot Topic discount codes for whoever is fast enough:

Code: BT2-5G7N7FQ52H $30 off a $75 purchase (ends 9/6/23) Code: J8C97WJP $15 off of a $50 purchase (ends 8/31/23) IM NOT SPONSERED BY HOT TOPIC I just bought the freddy plush backpack and sunmoon plushies with rewards and coupons I had saved up and they gave me these and i know im not gonna use them before they expire. Let me know if you used these so I can cross them out for others

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Blurred Lined 4

No tag lists. Do not send asks or DMs about updates. Review my pinned post for guidelines, masterlist, etc.

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as noncon/dubcon, power imbalance, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Your relationship with your boss takes an unpredictable turn.

Characters: Nick Fowler

Note: Mr. Panty Snatcher.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Please do not just put ‘more’. I will block you.

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

Nick may have had a rude awakening, but you feel you’ve had one of your own. You can’t help but note the subtle changes. Your boss is a stickler, a man of order. For the few years you’ve worked for him, it’s always been a sober, professional interaction. You pick up after his dinner parties and the like but he never lets you see the details of his leisure time. 

It’s nothing to do with you, you’re sure. You imagine there’s something going on; with work or otherwise. In a way, his little display reminds you of Joey. When she was a teen, she had her moments, acting out as she tried to figure out how to deal with all the new challenges of living. Still, Nick is much older than your daughter and even she’s outgrown that sort of behaviour. 

You serve him his coffee, no whiskey. He takes it along with the two Advil capsules you hold out in an open palm. He’s still naked, the blanket bunched high up his muscular thighs. 

“I see you had a rather exciting night, sir, I suppose I should start making my rounds,” you say as you turn to clear the used glasses from the table; some empty, others sticky, and more with liquor left in the bottom. 

“Eh,” he grumbles and gulps noisily, “what about the whiskey?” 

“Well, sir, I really don’t think it’s necessary,” you say as you gather up the glasses. 

“Alright, mom,” he scoffs and sighs as he takes another swig.  

You let his sarcasm roll off your shoulders. If you can deal with a teenager, you can deal with him. You feel him watching you as you stand straight. 

“Anything else I can get you?” You offer. 

“You’re not even curious about all the excitement?” He stretches an arm over the back of the couch, “there was a girl... you didn’t see her hanging around, did ya?” 

He chuckles and your cheeks tinge with embarrassment. His unusual crassness puts you on edge. You shake your head. 

“Think she’s gone,” you say. 

“Mm, don’t remember her. Must’ve been boring,” he grumbles. 

“I’m sure she was just as pretty as all the others.” 

“Hm, sure,” he snorts. 

You take the glasses out, the tense silence nipping at your heels. You return as he drains the coffee and stifles a belch. He holds out the mug. 

“Any more?” 

“Yes, sir,” you accept his cup, strolling through to fill it from the pot. As you come back again, his knees are set wide as he cracks his knuckles. 

“So, what’s it like being married?” He ask abruptly. 

You hold out his mug, trying not to show your surprise. 

“Sir?” 

“Well, you...” he looks at your hand decisively before he takes the mug, “were married, weren’t you? That bad?” 

You go back to the low glass table and collect the last of the glasses, “it was nice,” you answer honestly, “steady, consistent...” 

“Mm, so it wasn’t amicable?” He suggests as he presses the cup to his forehead. 

“With due respect, my marriage is my marriage--” 

“Where’s the ring? If he’s still around--” 

“Sir,” you warn, trying not to let your agitation seep through. 

“You never talk about him. Or your daughter.” 

“It’s...” you sway in indecision between setting him straight and stomping off. “It’s work, sir. It’s not really relevant.” 

He hums thoughtfully and sucks his teeth, “but you know all about me, don’t you?” 

You grin wryly, “sir, I know how you like your suits pressed and hung and how you take your coffee,” you insist, “it’s work.” 

“Work,” he narrows his eyes. “Not much time for a personal life. Guess I’m shitty like that.” 

You frown, “I wouldn’t say--” 

“You wouldn’t because you got a daughter to put through college. And an internship.” 

You flinch and shake your head, “did I do something that--” 

“No, I’m just being... sociable,” he measures his words. “It’s part of my job. Intel. I have to know everything about everyone. Didn’t realise before I know nothing about you.” 

You part your lips, uncertain how to react. He’s hard to read. You can’t tell is he’s angry or what. 

“If I wanted to, I could. That’s all I’m saying,” he shrugs and tastes his coffee. 

“Right, sir,” you nod hesitantly, “I’m sorry If I said anything--” 

“No, you don’t say much,” he stands, not bothering to keep the blanket over his pelvis. Instead it falls to the floor without a care, “that’s the problem.” 

Before you can reply, he turns and struts away. You look away quickly and try to shake off his attitude. What’s gotten into him? You know it’s not you. You know this kind of behaviour. Like before, you can’t help but be reminded of those adolescent blow ups. At one time, you had them yourself. 

Whatever’s going on with him, it should pass soon enough. You’re certain he’ll find some model to distract him. Or bury himself in his work like you. Hard to be upset when there’s a mess to clean up. 

🔹

The day wears on as any and you leave thirteen hours after your arrival. You’re not unfamiliar to the long shifts but you’re less and less attuned to them. Your tailbone has that subtle ache which calls for a hot bath and sleep. You don’t know that you’ll have time for both.  

The house is quiet when you leave. Nick has made himself elusive since the morning. You’re thankful for it, only seeing him to bring his meals and the few demands he had. He always seemed to be on the phone when you were near. No doubt he has his own work to tend to. It could be why he’s been so erratic. 

Is that how you’d describe it? 

You skip the bath and go straight to bed. A quick shower in the morning will do. You wake only hours later and begin a new day. A few more years and you can slow down; once Joey’s got her feet on the ground. 

You head to work in a daze. You’ll wake up once you get moving. You enter the gate code and it buzzes furiously back at you. The red flash suggests you put in the wrong number. You try again. Several times to be certain. 

Your phone shakes and startles you. You peer up at the sky, still in its early hues, and answer. You know without looking that it’s him. 

“Hey, you set off the alarm. Stop.” Nick says flatly. 

“Oh, uh, the code isn’t working--” 

“I’m not home.” 

“Oh, okay, but--” 

“Go home,” he interrupts. 

You stutter. Is he firing you? 

“Sir--” 

“Had to run off on a work trip. You need time off,” he says matter-of-fact, “so go.” 

He doesn’t wait for your answer. The line clicks and you’re left in utter confusion. You stare at the screen. The call was barely a minute long. 

Why would he lock you out? You work all the time when he’s out of town. So what’s changed? Your heart sinks as your dread wells up and fills your chest. It feels like he fired you. 

You try to call back. It goes straight to voicemail. Either he has his phone set to away or he’s deliberately ignoring you. 

You idle just before his gate as panic pulses through your skull. What did you do? You weren’t rude. You’re always painfully professional. You parse through the conversation from the morning before but can’t find anything that you did wrong. He acted strangely but you didn’t say anything about it. 

So why is he doing this? 

Your phone vibes. 

'Go home.' 

The text flashes at the top of the screen before the notification disappears. You sigh and through the cell phone. So, do you go back to the job boards and hope for the best or wait for your mercurial boss to make up his mind? 

🔹

You’re restless. The first day you spend trying to keep yourself busy. You put the energy you would have spent cleaning up Nick’s house and work on the apartment. You even oil the greasy hinge on the kitchen cupboard and squeeze in a walk before dinner. 

Joey doesn’t pick up either but you expect as much. She’s off having fun. When you were in college, you barely spoke to your parents. You were off having fun, meeting your husband... 

The next day is much the same though there isn’t as much to do. You try to make yourself catch up on your reality TV indulgences but you can’t even focus on that. Joey texts to ask if it’s something important and you assure her to keep doing what she’s doing. She calls after dinner as you have a rare glass of wine. 

“So, things are better?” You ask, trying not to betray your own worry. 

“Oh, much better. I can’t believe I was freaking out. My boss... he can be a bit intense but he’s so awesome. Mm, you know he took me to this really awesome place for a business lunch. They had one of those conveyor belt things with the sushi.” 

“That’s amazing,” you smile, “and how’s the special girl?” 

“Mom,” she squeaks. 

“What? I don’t even know her name. Give me something.” 

“It’s nothingggggg.” 

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.” 

“Mom,” she croaks. 

“Alright, fine, I can be patient but when you’re ready, you know she’s always welcome.” 

“You are so cheesy,” she accuses. 

“I can hear you blushing through the phone,” you chime tauntingly. 

“Mom!” 

“What? What’s going on? Did I forget something?” You play dumb. 

“Stop it,” she growls. 

You laugh and swirl the wine, no longer thirsty for it foggy lens. You sigh as your amusement recedes and you’re reminded why you broke the seal. You’re silent as the line turns to empty static. 

“Mom?” Joey says and reality slaps you across the face. 

“I’m sorry, I was just... you know, I think I’ll bring your dad some flowers tomorrow,” you say, “he’ll know what to do.” 

“What do you mean?” She murmurs. 

“Sitting with him helps me clear my mind,” you sigh. 

“Yeah, but, what’s going on?” 

You look down and exhale, “nothing big, just... life.” 

“Ha, tell me about it. It just doesn’t stop,” she snickers. 

“Right, well, I don’t wanna keep you from having fun or whatever--” 

“Fun? Please. I’m looking over all these case files Andy gave me.” 

“Andy?” 

“My boss, you know? As nice as he is, he sure makes you work,” she tuts. 

“Oh, I know the type,” you shake your head at the thought of your own boss; even in his absence, he’s persistent. 

[hungry-game]

hey uh, sorry for the inactivity, things got busy for me... While i've been away i have still been poking around in the game's files n stuff, and i found.. what i think is an update for the game i never installed? i don't remember touching the game at all since i worked on it pre 2010, but i guess i misremembered.

this is what it looks like now, it's a pretty big upgrade i'd say. i'll just y'all through it-

"Friends" takes you to the fates screen, a screen i hadn't actually properly put into the game before, so that's neat. it no longer tells you cause of death for those who died, and we get to see what haiku, izumi, and kazuo would've looked like in this update. i wonder where izumi is....

"Collection" brings you to, well.. a collection screen. this thing's completely new, i have no damn clue how to unlock any of these

the options menu, another new thing but should self explanatory, i turned screen shake off myself and i refuse to turn it on, you wouldn't even be able to see it

now that's all from the main menu, but there's something i'm very excited about-

younger me got saves to work! so now you can save and continue any games, and can even have multiple characters at once! .... but i'm not about the juggle four different characters at once for you people, i'll let you have two at once, maybe three if it's a good day. anyways

here's shinya, right where we left her... technically, it looks a lot different but i didn't change anything about her. this is the screen where you can give her food, but younger me also put in a new function-

there's now a specific mode for talking to the character, i guess because it wasn't super clear before that you could talk to them.

and this is the profile screen now, it's... pretty cute honestly

and that's about it i think, it looks much different but it's pretty much still the same game, give characters food to see what they like... or kill them, if you're into that.

oh and uh... i decided to make myself little icons, to better express myself n' all that... this is the picrew i used, i'll link it in the pinned post later

don't think this means i'll be super active again just yet, because i think i caught a cold, that's my luck i guess

[cassanovancats]

felicitate. eight.

seven < current > nine

Dec. 22-24, 2017

The next couple of days is spent mostly watching the whirlwind of your classmates and teachers preparing. You, Maki, and Yuta are left to your own devices which means you three are often spotted walking aimlessly around campus. You especially have spent the passing days considering what your brothers will be facing, and trying to strategize against the unknown Satoru warned you about. It’s after your daily meditation you decide fuck it.

Everyday as a sorcerer is spent wondering if it’ll be your last. You see horrors far beyond any normal person’s imagination, all to protect people who will never know you exist if you do your job right. To do this job, to be a jujutsu sorcerer, you must constantly be ready to die. You have seen plenty of colleagues' horribly mangled bodies already as a first-year. It’s common. In fact, the fact that your entire class is still alive is an anomaly.  And after meditating on the ever-increasing likelihood that death will touch your life far closer than it ever has before, you decide there is no need to hide feelings that Satoru insists are reciprocated.

You approach Inumaki first, since he was also raised in the jujutsu world and likely to be open to your proposition. You explain all of your reasoning before taking a deep breath and getting to the heart of the issue, “I-I like you. Maybe even love.”

“Salmon,” he beamed, markings exposed in the sanctuary of your room. He’s especially beautiful in the soft glow of the Christmas lights, clutching a stuffed animal he had won for you at a festival years ago.

“But I also like Yuta. I haven’t talked to him yet, but I’m interested in trying this between all of us.” Your hands twist over each other in anxiety. Even with the decision to no longer try to deny feelings, it is hard to be so open. How on Earth did Satoru manage to be so aloof about relationships? You see Toge’s hand cover yours.

“Salmon, bonito flakes,” he reassures, leaning down to catch your eyes. A weight lifts off your shoulders. You didn’t fuck up your friendship and he’s equally interested in a relationship. Inumaki watches you smile for the first time since you dragged him from the hallway. He slowly places a hand on your chin and lifts your head to face him. “Salmon roe?”

You nod, but don’t wait for him to close the gap. Leaning up, you lightly kiss his lips, eyes fluttering close at their softness. There’s a small tingling sensation, one you have long associated with the surge of cursed energy mixing with yours. It's an exhilarating feeling when copying someone's technique, but like this, you think it's addicting. You pull back first, sighing happily with your eyes still closed. You wear matching blushes and smiles.

“I know you have to get back to preparing to leave….” You bite your lip reluctant to let him leave after finally getting a taste. You had known Toge since you were both children thanks to clan meetings. Only in the past year, working closely and interacting frequently, have you realized your feelings for the boy. Now there is a chance to have him and Yuta, if you are able to explain how polyamory isn’t so strange for sorcerers (though historically, it has been accompanied by power imbalances in favor of the strongest sorcerer in the relationship).

“Tuna?”

“Just happy,” you nuzzle your forehead into his neck before sitting up straight. “I’ll talk to Yuta, since we both will be here at the school. Then, if he agrees and when you get back,” you poke a finger in his ribs, “all in one piece, we can talk about how this will work.”

“Salmon,” He gives one more last, quick kiss before leaving your room. You slide to the floor against your door, sighing happily. God, Satoru is going to be so smug. You bite your lip to hide your lovesick smile, pulling your phone out to text him an update on your lovelife.

You didn’t get a chance to talk to Yuta for a while. When you had finally collected yourself enough to leave your room, he was nowhere to be found on campus. The next morning, your class ate breakfast together before everyone left for their posts. Yuta had been there, of course, but he hesitated before sitting across from you and Inumaki (strange on its own - you three often all sat together). Even then, Yuta blushed and avoided eye contact with you and Toge, looking especially flustered at the casual, platonic skinship you shared with everyone. Not to mention the heavy atmosphere of a looming battle. You resolved to find him after everyone left; less people on campus meant less people interrupting, anyways. You sent everyone off with a hug, but your brothers and Toge got an additional kiss on the cheek.

(Megumi made a show of wiping it off and snarling at you. You wonder how long his rebellious phase will last.)

It took a while, but you were finally able to track Yuta’s energy to the empty training room. He was comparing his katana’s blade to a few other swords kept by the school. “You know, half of those are technically on loan from the Gojo clan. The other half is almost entirely from the Zen’in clan, but there’s one or two from Toge’s family and other small clans.” You muse, tracing the intricate design on the handle of one you recognized as belonging to your family. Yuta jumped from your sudden appearance. “Wanna spar? It seems like maybe you’re avoiding me but I wanted to talk to you. If I did something wrong you can get that aggression out before we talk,” You offer.

“No! I-I mean, no, I’m not avoiding you. Yeah, we can spar if you want.”

You smirk a little, “Alright.” You grab one of the wooden staffs next to the actual blades and shrug off your jacket. Gesturing to the center of the room where a circle marks a training ring, you say, “No cursed energy. I haven’t warmed up any.”

Yuta nods and takes his position opposite you. “Ready?” He asks. He waits for your nod before rushing forward, catching you off guard. You click your tongue, surprised at how fast he moved to attack. Your staff connects with a harsh clash, blocking his before it gets too close to your body. He retreats slightly, clearly analyzing you for any weak spots, and asks, “What did you need to talk about?”

“Toge and I and you…. Maybe” Grunting, you move to attack but Yuta side-steps. You plant your feet and use momentum to change your direction to where he now stands. He grits his teeth when you connect a hit. “I know you grew up normally, but we like each other and you.” You take a few steps back, knowing this possible mental blow is best delivered without a physical one. “And I think you like us, too.”

Yuta’s mouth hangs open, gaping at you and loosening his grip on his staff. “W-what? Like - like all three of us -?” He seems unable to complete the sentence.

“Yeah,” You nod, moving forward to sweep his feet out from under him. It’s a simple move, one he learned to avoid months ago, but he seems defenseless right now. You stand and pin him to the ground with the end of your staff against his forehead. “I know it’s somewhat strange out there,” you wave your hand dismissively, “but sorcerers have done it for ages. Toge and I know that, but you don’t have the same background.”

“But I thought - you two kissed!” He points an accusing finger.

“How did you know that?” You frown, cocking your head to the side. You shake the question away, deciding it didn’t matter, and offer a hand to help him up. He ignores it. “I mean, the first hurdle here is knowing if you like both of us.”

Yuta blushes furiously but doesn’t refute you. It takes him a second to recover from how blunt you said it but eventually he manages to spit out an affirmative. The brightness of your smile takes him longer to recover from.

“Great! That’s really good. Toge-kun will be excited to hear that.” You wipe some sweat off your forehead and try to contain your excitement. “Since he’s away right now, I think we should wait to have this conversation in person. Neither of us want you to feel pressured to agree for whatever reason either, so it’ll give you some time to think about it.” You move to leave him alone to do just that, but you can’t stop yourself from giving one last big smile. “I’m really happy you’re even thinking about this, Yuta.”

You spend the rest of the day with your head in the clouds, completely over the moon at the idea of your new relationship. Satoru loses his mind when you call to give a status update, which causes you to dissolve into a puddle of lovesick goo. At dinner, where it’s just you, Yuta and Maki, you can’t help your puppy-dog eyes. Maki kicks your shin several times, embarrassed just from looking at you.

You keep to your word though, so much so when Yuta approaches you on the next day, you ask several times if he is sure he wants to talk now. You hadn’t even had much time to think about the logistics of a poly relationship, too focused on how to keep your preparations a secret. It was surprisingly hard to hide your smuggled bow and quiver until you reached a rooftop near the entrance. Eventually you yield though, and he drags you to an empty classroom. “(y/n), I really want to tell you not to take this the wrong way, but honestly, there’s no right way to take it.” You feel your stomach drop, but he continues, oblivious. “I just can’t be in a relationship.”

“Like, in a relationship with Toge and I specifically?” You’re not sure where the strength to ask that question came from. You’re not even sure you want to hear the answer.

“Yes,” He finally makes eye contact. “I mean, no! God,” Yuta runs a hand through his already disheveled hair. “I’ve never had to reject anyone before, jeez. You two, both of you,” he blushes heavily, “are the only ones I see myself in a relationship with. I just can’t be in one when I have Rika. It doesn’t feel right.”

You nod, trying to hide the hurt and embarrassment you think you just might drown in. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Yuta sighs.

“Well, I guess I’ll tell Toge then. Unless you wanted to?” You offer hopefully, but he shakes his head. “Alright. I hope we can still be friends, Yuta.” You instinctively go to hug him but stop yourself halfway. Muttering a soft apology, you brush past him to leave.

You go straight to where you had hidden your bow, bringing along a sword for close-ranged fighting. All borrowed from the school, but you made sure to take ones originally from the Gojo clan as an extra reassurance. You really needed that reassurance now.

[wordupcomics]

I just found this comic and find the premise really intreguing. sorry if these questions are frequently asked but how long are you planing on making this? And do you have an update schedule? (and also if there are any cool universe details you wanna share but know you cant add to the comic for whatever reason, can you share one? I always think the details that authors think of but end up not including are so interesting!!!!)

Thanks!!!

I had the idea for Word Up back in my sophomore year of high school. I’m currently 25, so this is roughly a decade old idea now that I’ve been brainstorming on and off over the years. The idea itself has changed sssoooooo much since then and is still changing. Just a few weeks ago I had an “aha” moment that totally changes certain things in a great way. Anyway, I have a set story planned with an endgame in mind. The larger story and the end kinda need to be re fleshed out and re organized and I’m in the process of doing that now. How long will it take to tell that story??? I honestly don’t know. There’s…a lot to tell. And truthfully there’s so much that I wouldn’t be surprised if I bailed before being able to finish. But the story will be told with a series of smaller stories, so for now I’m just focusing on one story at a time.

Man I wish I could keep up a posting schedule. I post each batch when it’s complete and it’s complete whenever my brain decides to work on it ….

Hmm details that I might not be able to fit in, let’s see…

1. On Julie’s overalls, she has those heart shapes where the buckles should be. Those are not buckles In the shape of hearts, but instead are heart pins. The actual buckles broke or fell off and Becky and Tobey had to start pinning the straps to her skirt with safety pins. However they found some heart pins and started using those to pin her overalls skirt in place because she loved that idea so much. Now when they buy her replacement clothes she purposefully ruins the buckles so she can keep having the heart shaped pins. She also uses other pins too, but the hearts are her favorite and what she most commonly wears

2. Julie has a rock collection, that will be shared later but what I don’t know if I’m going to be able to fit in is the fun little fact that Julie likes to try to teach her rocks how to fly…which as you can imagine doesn’t end well…the rock collection is now put somewhere Julie can’t easily get to it, and anytime her parents get it down, before giving her the rocks there is always this exchange:

Parent: what are these rocks for?

Julie: showing!

Parent: what are they not for?

Julie:…throwing…

3. I’ve mentioned this one before but I think it’s worth mentioning again: Theo cuts his own hair. No one but him is allowed to alter his precious hair. You know he likes you if he lets you ruffle his hair or something but he is the only one allowed to take a pair of scissors to it.

4. A sad one: Scoops and Violet wanted a lot of kids, but as fate would have it, they can’t have kids and their only daughter is basically a literal miracle. On a happier note, because of this, their daughter, Daisy, is the most precious thing in their lives (not to say she wouldn’t be if they had been able to have more kids but you get it). Daisy basically gets showered with all the love that Scoops and Violet would have given to 4 or 5 kids and while Daisy doesn’t get spoiled with material items, she definitely gets spoiled with love.

5. Another sad one and then I’ll stop with sadness I promise. I plan on showing this moment and referencing it, but I don’t know how I’ll fit in this little fact about it so I’ll share here: Becky went on her first date when she was 13 with some boy who spoke French. Unfortunately during the date Wordgirl was a constant need and Becky had to keep sneaking off. The boy thought she was trying to get away from him and told her if she didn’t want to go on a date she should have said so and left. Becky flew home crying, saying she hated being Wordgirl and Bob comforted her. This was the last major life milestone of Becky’s before Bob left. Within a week Wordgirl was needed again and that was just what Becky needed to enjoy being Wordgirl again, and this unfortunately would be her and Huggy’s last battle. Huggy was actually pulled aside by someone from Lexicon while Wordgirl was relishing the attention from her latest battle. Huggy was forced to make the choice right then and there.

6. This one is something I’m having in the story, but I want to throw it out there as something to pay attention to: take note of when Julie hears “the voices” because there is a pattern to it

7. Here’s a bunch that are all kinda related and I hope I’ll fit them in but again, just in case:

- The house was built on top of the crash site of the spaceship Becky and Bob came to earth in.

- The ship is under the basement of the house

- There are two hidden ways to get to the ship in the house. One is in the garage, but that one is complicated and too inconvenient, so usually everyone goes through the other option which is in Tobey’s lab, which is in the basement.

- The door to Tobey’s lab is in the kitchen. In I think batch 4 of Return to Fair City, Becky and Tobey talk privately and they are on the other side of that door. Behind Tobey was the stairs leading down to his lab

- I didn’t draw it in the kitchen, though I need to, but the door to Tobey’s lab has many security features on it. It has a few locks, and a button next to the door and a light above the door. When Tobey’s working on a project, one is to hit the button next to the door and wait for the light above to light. If it’s green, that means it’s safe to come down, if it’s yellow, that means you can come down if you’re careful and Julie has to be with an adult if she’s coming down. If it’s red, that means Tobey has a lot of unsafe equipment in use and you should only come down if it’s an emergency. Becky is pretty much the only one allowed down when it’s red unless it’s like life or death. This set up was to keep the kids away from the dangerous equipment in Tobey’s lab.

[come-on-shitty-boys]

Characters: Oikawa Tooru/Sakusa Kiyoomi/Miya Osamu

Request: Hi! Do you think you can make headcanons for Oikawa, Sakusa and osamu, with an s/o thats a medical student? 🙏🏻😳

Warnings: swearing

Word Count: 1.9K (~600 a piece)

Notes:  I’m v v v sorry for the recent lack of updates! I’m moving back to uni on Tuesday and I didn’t plan accordingly and get fics lined up >.<

Oikawa Tooru

The most supportive bean oml he’s so cute

It’s definitely not easy considering he’s in Argentina, but he does his best to check up on you whenever he can.  You have a tendency to over-work yourself while studying, so someone needs to remind you to take a break and get some rest dumbass literally doesn’t take his own advice smh

You should hear him when he’s talking to his team about you.  “Oh, you mean Y/N?  My DOCTOR s/o?  Yeah, that’s right.  I’m dating a doctor.”  You aren’t even a doctor yet, but he’s going to tell everyone he knows that his s/o is a ✨doctor✨

He can’t really help you study because of the distance, but if you ever need to vent to him about classes or your residency, boy is there.  He is listening intently while you spill all the tea!  Oikawa likes the drama, what can he say?  It’s like his personal soap opera.

Oikawa takes so many screenshots while you video chat.  You’re probably going over notes or working on homework and he’s just collecting all the photos.

He’s going to post them on his instagram later, captioning it with something like, “yeah, your s/o may be great, but are they a doctor?  lol didn’t think so 😜” and you’ll have to comment “Tooru, I’m not a doctor yet.”

But, Tooru literally does not care.  He can’t get over the fact that you’re so?? Smart?? You could be telling him about something you learned in class that day and he’ll be nodding along, like he knows exactly what you’re talking about, but to be honest?

He doesn’t know what the hell you’re talking about.  You keep using these big words and he’s just “?????”

Oh, but he learns, because he’s a good boyfriend for sure.  He has sticky notes all over his apartment with random medical words that he’s heard you say.  It’s low-key just to impress you, but also Oikawa really does care about what you’re talking about and he wants to be able to follow the conversation better.  

Boy learns his new vocabulary words in Japanese and Spanish to further impress you and because he knows that you find it really hot when he speaks Spanish.

Brb cackling at the idea of oikawa just spewing a random Spanish diagnosis in your ear during sex because he can’t remember how to say what he wants to tell you

Everytime you reach a milestone in your med school career?  He’s bragging so much.  You’d think that he was the one who made the dean’s list or that he was the one who finished the classroom section and was moving onto their residency.

He’s honestly just so proud of you and wants to show you off, because you’re just so driven and passionate about everything you do.  It’s a big reason why he fell in love with you in the first place.  

Peep him cheering the loudest when you finally complete your residency.  Stand right there.  He wants to take pictures of his s/o looking fine as hell in their white coat with their MD, so he can brag to everyone he meets that his s/o is officially a doctor

The proud smile on his face when you’ve finally done it?  Irreplaceable.  He’s been your biggest supporter through this whole thing.  To him, watching you do this is as amazing as doing it himself.

He’s going to frame your degree and hang it up right by the door of the apartment when you two move in together.  Just a gentle reminder that he’s dating a doctor, no big deal.

You could try to tell him that you’re proud of him for following his dreams and making it to the big leagues and he’s just, “yeah, but who graduated medical school 🤗”

AWWW WAIT

If you open up your own practice one day ;-; this baby is just beaming with pride, taking all the pictures and all of the videos as you cut the ribbon to announce the opening

Marry him.  Marry him or I will.

Sakusa Kiyoomi

You probably complained once about the workload, saying that it was so much harder than you ever anticipated, and this son of a bitch would just scoff like, “It can’t be that difficult.”

But, it’s that difficult and you let him figure that out.  You handed him a stack of your assignments and said, “If it’s so easy, you do it.”

Insert Sakusa Kiyoomi hunched over the table for three hours, just staring at the page, occasionally flipping through your textbook and medical dictionary as if either of those things would help him. 

He literally handed you back a blank paper and didn’t say a word.

Honestly, he has no idea how to help you study, but he’ll try his best.  If you hand him a study guide or a stack of flash cards, he’ll sit on the couch with you and quiz you until you know each and every one better than you know yourself.

He’s not exactly going out of his way to learn about medicine so that he can better converse with you, but he does pick up on a few things

Kiyoomi’s gotten pretty good at breaking down the medical terms from long hours of helping you study.  He has a decent understanding of what some of the roots and suffixes mean, so when you start talking about something from school, he can usually at least pin down some of the information

Sakusa is going to use your career path to his advantage though.  He wants to know what disinfectants they're using at the hospital and can you get him some?  

He’s already pretty private about his personal life, especially when it comes to his relationship with you, so outside of his small friend group, he hasn’t told many people that you’re a med student.

This doesn’t make him any less proud though.  He’s just more quiet about it.  But, he’ll celebrate all of the little accomplishments right there with you, texting you right before you take a big test to wish you luck and taking you out for ice cream or a nice dinner when you get your results

If he gets a long break at practice, he’ll go take you lunch, just so he knows that you’re taking care of yourself properly.

MASK SELFIES

You stay up really late trying to memorize the proper treatments and where to make incisions and things like that, so if Kiyoomi doesn’t ask you to come to bed, it’s very possible that you just won’t? And he’s learned that the hard way.

Right before your finals you told him, “Yeah, I’m just going to study for another hour or so and then I’ll head to bed.”

He literally found you asleep at the kitchen table, your notecards all over the floor because you knocked them off at some point in the night

But, Sakusa is a good boyfriend so he’ll make you breakfast and some tea or coffee to help you start your day.

Speaking of coffee and tea.  He’s limiting your caffeine intake :)  oh, you want a cup of coffee/tea at 9 pm?  “That shit better be decaf.”  it’s literally just so you can sleep.  Once 5 pm hits, he doesn’t let you have caffeine, but it’d be bogus if he sat next to you with a cup of tea, so he also doesn’t have caffeine in the evenings.  

He’s definitely the type to show you that he cares more so than actually tell you how much he loves you

Miya Osamu

Superior twin

This is a joke i love both miya boys equally, even if atsumu does have piss hair

N E WAY.  Osamu has no fucking clue what you’re talking about 90% of the time and I hate to break it to you, but-

He’s not going to take the time to learn like the others.  He may stop you to ask questions, but that’s really it.

It’s not like he doesn’t care though!  Osamu really loves that you’re following your passions.  He just knows that even if you do explain it to him, he’s probably going to get lost in all of the logistics. 

Most of the time, you’ll just see him nodding along with what you’re saying, popping in with a question or a comment every now and then.  While he may not understand what you’re saying, he does take some interest in it.

He’ll ask you things about the medical equipment in your bag.  Like, how does the blood pressure cuff work?  Have you ever given yourself stitches?  If he were to cut his hand chopping ingredients, could you fix it right here in the kitchen or would you still take him to the hospital?  Can you really hear his heartbeat with those weird headphone things? It’s called a stethoscope ‘samu smh

Osamu is the king of making sure that you take good care of yourself.  This man? Oh, he’s packing you a lunch every single day you have to go to class.

Better yet?  If you come down to Onigiri Miya between classes, he’s going to pile your plate full of food and then he’s got a to-go container with more, just in case you get hungry.  He has your favorite drink stocked so it’s there whenever you come by.

He won’t sit with you, because he’s usually pretty busy, but he will let you sit at the counter so he can talk to you while he prepares more onigiri.

‘Samu always asks how your day went.  It’s the first thing out of his mouth whenever he sees you after your classes.  

If you guys get done around the same time, he’ll meet you at your university to walk home with you.

He makes sure that you drink plenty of water.  He’s like a waiter, I swear.  Osamu will walk past you like every 20 minutes just to make sure that you have enough water and if he sees that you haven’t been drinking your water-

Prepare for a lecture on the importance of hydration as if you don’t already know that?? 

“‘Samu, I’ve had five glasses of water.  I’m not thirsty.”

“You need to stay hydrated!”

He’ll try to help you study if you ask, but it usually ends up with you laughing as he tries to pronounce some medical term.  He’ll toss the flashcard to the side and just huff, “That’s probably not going to be on the test.”

Like Sakusa, he’s pretty reserved when it comes to talking about his personal life, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a picture of the two of you on your graduation day hanging up in Onigiri Miya.

He’s not going to say anything about it first though, but if someone asks? He can gush about you for a good ten minutes while his patrons smile and nod.  Telling them how proud he is that his incredible s/o graduated from medical school with flying colors, explaining what field you’re in and what that means he’s literally just repeating what you told him once oops

[nyrator]

some more ny life updates, feat. MBTI stuff, dreams, financial decisions, ACNH checklists, and Radiohead opinions

incredibly depressed lately to be honest, but trying not to be too depressed for this post- basically a place to vent without being super negative because it be public and stuff, helps calm me down, maybe

helping other people with depression is too hard for me, I think. Feels bad to distance myself, but I think avoiding rumination is all I can do when it gets to that point

decided to re-take one of those personality things recently because why not, friends were doing it. I don’t hold much weight to them personally but at least I seem to be consistently this result every few years

for reference, an earlier test:

https://www.16personalities.com/istp-personality

reading through the weaknesses and romantic parts, it almost eerie how it describes me. It’s wrong on the sex part, but feels right just about everywhere else. They even quote me on saying this at the end part. The nice thing is, apparently Kresna’s personality result is my ideal match, which is fitting.

I tend to think my personality is a very flawed one, unfortunately, at least when it comes to social relationships. I don’t like being flattered or praised, nor do I tend to show appreciation to those that deserve it, I feel. Feeling people are slighted by my lack of attention or affection for them more and more.

Energy in general is such a hard thing to grasp. Lately I just can’t seem to do or focus on anything, nor do I have any strong desires to do anything. Feels hard to draw or make anything, and I’m wondering how I’ll finish up that Artfight thing. All I want to do is lay in bed and sleep, maybe just change my sleep schedule and only be awake when no one else is, and just keep to myself

been laying in bed a lot lately, and I’ve noticed a trend in actually having dreams when I’m taking a nap- or at least, that weird “trying to take a nap but keeping eyes half-open basically because I don’t actually want to fall asleep” zone

both dreams I had this week involved different things that I forget, but the core part was basically my family assaulting me, pinning me to the wall, and speaking my darkest secrets into my ear.

First one was my late sister being a prick and possibly uncovering my secret and me trying to get rid of her, while her boyfriend grabs me by the throat and lifts me off the ground into the wall as she mocks me. Second one that I just had earlier tonight, I don’t even remember the context, but basically had my mother disgusted by me, forcefully pinning my arm behind my back and slamming me face first into a wall, telling me she’s aware and disgusted by all my secrets.

Earlier this month, I also had one of my first dreams in months, but it was one of my reoccurring humiliation dreams. Except this time, there was blood. It was a very uncomfortable dream.

I wonder if these dreams mean anything about my psyche or whatever lately.

but yeah, have a lot of money lately, yet still feels sickening to spend money on myself still. I feel like I’ve spent too much on myself lately, and it feels bleh. I like spending money on Kresna, but he doesn’t let me do it often, but it’s always appreciated when he does.

ended up setting up an eye exam in three weeks- decided to order my own frames this time, but shopping for frames is hard. Ended up buying these two (since I always seem to have to buy two pairs for some probably insurance-related reason), but frames are extremely hard to shop for, at least for me, and that lavender look I like is extremely hard to come by

I wonder if I show my appreciation for lavender too much- I think I want to go for thicker frames like the top one, though the bottom ones are like my old frames (same company), and have that metallic lavender look that I love. If I ever had a dream car, it’d be in that color, honestly.

speaking of cars, my neighbor is trying to sell us her old 1997 Saturn for $250, but I’m not sure if I want it, to be honest- One, it’s so old, two, it’s a stick, which I only have basic knowledge on how to drive, and three, I don’t like driving. I think my mother told her yes, which is unfortunate, but we’ll see how it goes.

some other financial decisions lately- bedding, bottles, and slippers (not shown- the more convenient backless purple slippers I now regularly wear, as well as more personal items)

throw pillows are good for holding while sleeping and for preventing my arms from waking up entirely numb sometimes

been thinking about buying more clothes and furniture, but now that I probably won’t be getting the extra $1000 with my unemployment, it’s even harder to justify buying anything. I’d like a new desk, at least- something able to display things would be nice. My boss told me I’ll be going back to work soon hopefully, so that would be nice, especially since this virus is a good excuse to not bring back my coworker and to give me full-time hours, but even then, spending money is hard. Been thinking about a new mousepad since I’ve had this old one for longer than I can remember (probably a college gift), but even something simple like that is tough.

in other random news, slowly trying to make progress in ACNH still- and by that I mean I’ve finally started keeping a checklist for items (had Bugs/Fish already, but now have DIYs and man there’s so many DIYs I’m missing, also Dresses - Umbrella tabs of clothing, basically everything but Tops and Bottoms so far, and mannn, there’s a lot of stuff, but I basically have almost every accessory/sock/shoe in purple/pink at least, now just grinding my way through the rest of the colors I skipped. Also caught a Golden Stag today, only three beetles left (Giraffe, Hercules, and Elephant, I believe)

should probably start saving my extra bugs/fish for making models for Justin Beaver and Hot Topic, I realize- collecting those models really doesn’t interest me much, but at the same time, I have a weird obsession with trying to 100% Animal Crossing games (at a reasonable speed, of course- figure I’d wait until next year to worry about those two)

haven’t tried dreaming yet and honestly my island is still a mess that I’m still hesitant because I still have no idea what to fill it with or how to organize it

one last thing I did buy is the rest of the Radiohead albums though- I now own all their albums, except disc 2 of In Rainbows, though. Should probably listen to that on Youtube, not sure where to find a physical release of it. Decided to rank them, because I like ranking things apparently, even though overall it doesn’t mean much since my tastes shift constantly, and every album is good to listen to in my opinion (honestly more of a way of solidifying a future “best of” playlist)

Personal feelings of ranking at the moment:

Hail to the Thief (every song is top tier, I just want to shout them all out, but in particular I think “A Punchup at a Wedding“, “Myxomatosis“, “2+2=5″, and “Sit down. Stand up” are my favorites)

In Rainbows (my old favorite before HttT blew it away, though I think ”Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is still my favorite Radiohead song, also shout outs to “Videotape” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”)

Kid A (I was lukewarm to the album at first, but it has a lot of tunes that stand out to me, “Idioteque” is also one of my favorite Radiohead songs, also shout outs to "Everything in Its Right Place" and "How to Disappear Completely")

OK Computer (this is where placings start getting fuzzy, “Paranoid Android” was their first song I ever listened to and loved back in high school, thanks to Ergo Proxy, great song, though I think I’ve oversaturated myself to this album by having it play as my driving music when I still had a car. Shout outs to “Exit Music (For A Film)” and “Let Down”. “Karma Police” is also up there but feels a bit less than those I suppose)

A Moon Shaped Pool (I’d place this higher when I’m looking for a more somber/reflective album to listen to, otherwise about tied with OK Computer. My favorite on the album, “Daydreaming”, is what reintroduced me to Radiohead and got me obsessed with them- this album was my first album, though it’s definitely softer compared to their usual stuff. Also driving music so a bit oversaturated, and it feels harder to shout out specific songs, but shout outs “Ful Stop”, “Glass Eyes”, and heck, basically most of the later songs on the album)

Amnesiac (Some good songs, but just not to the levels of the others. “Knives Out” is a great song though, and I tend to like the first half of the album more than the last half, last half is pretty weak to me honestly- though I got it fairly recently, so may require more listenings)

Pablo Honey (the latest album I got, so it’s still fresh in my head and thus nothing is permanent with it compared to the others, but mannn, people undersold this album, it feels solid front to back. I honestly want to put it higher, I think. Hard to identify individual songs, but shout outs to “Blow Out” in particular, “I Can’t” as well- but again, every song is great, so might say it’s close to A Moon Shaped Pool levels in rankings)

The Bends (one of their first albums I got, also a car album, but definitely didn’t click with me like the others. I have warmed up to it more than I originally did at least- I mainly got the album because heck yeah “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is a great track, also shout outs to “The Black Star”, that’s like, one of my random “mouth out the chorus in the car” songs. I also tend to have “High and Dry” in my head a lot for some reason, but yeah, good car music, but not much else going for it I think)

The King of Limbs (the second-latest album I own and also the least listened to album I own, but it feels very... non-standout-ish. Like it’s almost too simple-sounding, or repetitive, or something, definitely the weakest album in my personal opinion. Can’t even think of a song to shout out, so I guess “Lotus Flower”, honestly, but again, I need to listen to the album more. Good background noise but just nothing that jumps out at me)

but yeah radiohead is definitely my favorite music group, I’d say, and also realize almost every album has a bonus disc, so hm, more music to find it seems (admittedly I’m not a fan of live music in general, which seems to fill up a lot of these bonus discs)

[satonthelotuspier]

A Very Hallmark Untamed Christmas

So I spent my Sunday writing this gimmicky piece that makes no sense in either small town America or Ancient Cultivational China. It is full of hallmark style cliche with a WangXian twist. 

Updated so whole fic is included below, I am potato and didn’t realise tumblr didn’t have a limit on text posts

Plot bunnied by this post

Wei Wuxian kicked the tyre of his car in temper. If Nie Huaisang had been on hand it would have been his friend he’d quite like to have kicked, it being that man who’d convinced him he really had to make the trip home this year, with his recent breakup and the fact it had been a while since he’d seen any of his family he’d said it was the perfect time.

Never mind the fact it had been thirteen years since he’d been chased out of Cultivation, Wyoming, population: assholes.

He dragged the spare tyre out and tossed it in the road beside the jack and wrench he’d already dug out.

And to top it all off it was starting to snow.

“Perfect” Wei Wuxian growled, starting to change the tyre as quickly as possible, snow in Wyoming could be brutal.

He was halfway through the process when a police cruiser pulled over behind his car and the driver got out and walked over.

“Do you need some help?” the gentle voice was vaguely familiar to Wei Wuxian and he looked up from his task. They both recognised each other at the same time. To be honest, there wasn’t really much mistaking the face that looked more like it belonged on the catwalk than behind the long arm of the law. It’s distinctive features had only lost a little of the soft roundness of youth that he remembered, now it was all elegant angles and arching brows over soft light amber eyes.

“Wei Ying?” there was shock in Lan Zhan’s voice.

“Lan Zhan” he rose to his feet and almost reached out to shake hands before he remembered his were covered in grease. So much for his manicure. “So you’re sheriff now” he said as he saw the police badge pinned to the other’s shirt.

“Mn, are you back to visit your family?”

“Among other things” he confirmed, “How are yours?”

And oh my god, if he had to go through a month of this kind of awkward small talk with people he barely knew anymore he’d just die.

They talked a little more of inconsequential things while Lan Zhan helped him finish up the tyre change and if he felt a little guilty for letting Lan Zhan take the lead while he held back to check out Lan Zhan’s undeniably fine ass then so be it; he deserved the eyeful as reward for putting up with the small town small talk.

Once changed he was bundled into his car and sent off towards town before the snow got worse with Lan Zhan’s “I’ll see you around, Wei Ying” ringing in his ears.

And if he kept checking the rear-view mirror until he turned a bend in the road then it was just road safety and nothing else.

***

Jiang Cheng was his usual welcoming self when Wei Wuxian arrived at Lotus Pier. Although they hadn’t seen each other in four or five years they’d kept in close contact via electronic means.

“Glad you could drop by” Jiang Cheng snarked, but his hug was genuine and warm and honestly everything Wei Wuxian had missed.

He snarked some more about Wei Wuxian not treating the house like a hotel, but when Wei Wuxian went up to his old room it had been aired, completely scrubbed clean with fresh bedding and there was even a vase of fresh flowers. The latter had probably been Yanli’s touch even if the former weren’t.

After dinner that evening Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian sat in the p in front of a roaring fire, something else he admitted he’d missed in the big city full of central heating and aircon.

The decorated tree glinted and sparkled in the dancing firelight and the flashing tree lights.

They’d drunk several bottles of beer with dinner and while catching up afterwards and both their tongues were loosened as a result.

Jiang Cheng admitted how close Lotus Pier was to financial collapse, something he’d never discussed with Wei Wuxian until now.

In his guilt over having left Jiang Cheng alone to deal with it all he admitted the reason he’d had to leave thirteen years ago, that Mayor Jin Guangshan had threatened him that something might happen to Jiang Yanli, his own daughter-in-law if Wei Wuxian didn’t get out of his sight, all because Wei Wuxian’s mother had refused his disgusting advances once.

Jiang Cheng was incensed, “You mean I lost my brother because that old bastard just couldn’t keep his dick in his pants?” but in the end Jin Guangshan was dead and there was nothing his anger could do.

“I’m here now” Wei Wuxian soothed, rubbing his shoulder and he ranted.

“But you won’t be staying” Jiang Cheng said morosely, staring at the dregs of the beer left in his bottle.

“No, I won’t be staying. But New York isn’t the end of the world Jiang Cheng, it’s only a flight away”

That knowledge didn’t seem to make either of them feel better that night.

***

Wei Wuxian classed himself as a city boy now, thirteen years had left their indelible print on him and he normally adhered to a routine of late mornings and later nights except when he was coming up to a deadline and his time was tight, or he was writing something that particularly consumed him.

His first day back in Cultivation he was up at the crack of dawn however, riding the ranch to take stock of what had changed in the intervening years.

His early morning was a direct consequence of a sleepless night were he’d tossed and turned at both the discomfort of being back in Cultivation and the worry over what Jiang Cheng had told him about the ranch.

Luckily he’d put those hours to good use and he had a pretty solid idea of how Jiang Cheng could diversify and keep everything afloat, with some initial capital investment which he could provide himself.

He called his agent and friend from High School Wen Ning first thing after his walk and had a quick discussion about the finances should he need them.

Jiang Cheng wasn’t going to be hot on the idea, but he only needed to agree, not like it.

Being a city boy himself Wei Wuxian knew that if Jiang Cheng could set up a leisure venture in conjunction with the ranch it could be the difference between stability, maybe even profitability, and bankruptcy.

They’d pulled back the acreage they used for pasture over the years as they’d reduce their cattle herds, and some of that land had been reclaimed by the woods. If they could turn that into camping grounds, along with renovating the old cabins down by the lake shore it would be a good start towards building Lotus Pier as a tourist destination. They could take advantage of local hiking and biking tracks, as well as provide access to water sports on the lake and even horse riding. It would take advantage of the huge market of people who liked or wanted to use their vacation time to get away from the stresses and strains of city life and just relax out in nature.

It would take time to embed, and Jiang Cheng would need a manager for that side of the business, he wasn’t a people person so the further he was away from the customers the better, but it would eventually provide capital to build more cabins and extend the facilities with careful management.

And possibly then provide enough profit that the ranch part running at a loss didn’t even matter.

Now he just needed to sell the idea to his grumpy brother.

Jiang Cheng would be out on the ranch completing chores at this time of the morning and he didn’t want to be dragged into them on his first day back, so he showered and drove back into town. Luckily the snow yesterday had only ended in a light covering which had melted overnight.

***

Failing a Starbucks he called into the local diner for a coffee to combat his lack of sleep, and ran into the town LEO.

“Wei Ying” there was a trace of something that sounded almost pleased in Lan Zhan’s modulated voice.

“Lan Zhan, thanks for your help yesterday, I managed to get to Lotus Pier with no problems”

“Good” Lan Zhan looked like he had something on his mind and Wei Wuxian hoped he wasn’t disturbing him. He almost backed off in guilt until the other one asked quietly, “Wei Ying, have dinner with me?”

Wei Wuxian wouldn’t pretend the idea didn’t throw him a little, he hadn’t really ever thought that he and Lan Zhan had been close enough to warrant grabbing dinner together to catch up now he was back.

But he was at a loose end at the moment, and moping in the house night after night would only lead to him being morose over his breakup with Mian Mian, even six months later as it was.

“Uh, alright? I’m free tomorrow or later this week?” habit of his city life had him pulling his phone out to check his calendar, “Send me an event?”

Lan Zhan looked at him blankly.

“Okayyy. Guess I’ll just put that in manually then. Tomorrow?”

“Mn, I can come and pick you up at Lotus Pier?”

“No need I can borrow Jiang Cheng’s truck if the snow gets bad, message me where to meet you”

“I don’t have your number”

“Oh, haha of course not” he pulled a business card out of wallet and handed it over to Lan Zhan, “Message me, I’m going to see Shijie now” and like a whirlwind he collected his coffee and disappeared.

***

Lan Wangji looked down at the card in his hand, not entirely sure what had just happened. Actually no, he was pretty sure he’d asked Wei Ying out on a date, and he was just as sure Wei Ying had accepted his invitation, but it wasn’t as a date.

“That boy’s as thick as a post” Song Lan said from a nearby booth where he sat eating breakfast and drinking coffee, the fact he had his paramedics uniform on suggested he was either just going on or coming off duty. “Twenty bucks says he doesn’t even realise you asked him out”

It wasn’t a bet Lan Wangji was willing to take.

***

Jiang Yanli was an utter mess the moment she opened the door to him. She didn’t let him go for what felt like hours as she hugged and cried over him, alternating between cooing at how grown up and handsome he looked now and telling him off for not visiting before now.

“I promise I’ll visit more often” he soothed as he hugged back and tried not to cry himself. There was at least no danger to him returning more often now. And he’d admit he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed his family, how much he hadn’t allowed himself to admit it in the past because he’d been helpless to do anything about the reasons why.

As it was Saturday Jin Ling was home, the seven year old obviously knew who his Uncle Wuxian was but had only ever seen him through pictures and over video calls. He was curious but quite nervous of Wei Wuxian at first. But for some reason children always warmed up to him quickly and they were soon drawing Christmas themed pictures together at the counter while Yanli performed the Spanish Inquisition on him about everything from his latest book release to how he was doing post-Mian Mian to who he’d seen since he’d been back in town.

“I’m having drinks with Nie Huaisang tonight” he told her and scratched his chin as he remembered the other plans he’d made, “Oh yeah, and I’m going to dinner with Lan Zhan tomorrow. Weird right? I didn’t even think we were that close back then”

Yanli looked at him carefully, “Lan Wangji asked you out?” as if the thought surprised her greatly.

“I know right, I felt the same” Wei Wuxian shook his head in confused amusement. “Tell me what’s being going on in the Jin house, Shijie”

***

He was so surprisingly busy the next few weeks flew by as it drew closer and closer to Christmas, he spent time on the ranch helping out Jiang Cheng. When Jin Ling wasn’t at school he followed Wei Wuxian everywhere; and as they enjoyed a surge of mild weather they went horse riding and hiking. He even took him fishing down to the pier next to the old, rundown boathouse, that had given Lotus Pier it’s name, Jin Ling seemed to enjoy it greatly. He even showed Wei Wuxian his den in the woods.

Wei Wuxian sold his diversification idea to Jiang Cheng, explaining in great detail what he could envision doing well, what they’d need to do legally, what he could do personally in terms of capital investment, and presented the forecasts he’d had his accountant look into producing. Jiang Cheng was a hard sell, which was why Wei Wuxian had put a lot of information and projections together to basically present him with an offer he literally couldn’t refuse.

Jiang Yanli took every opportunity to fuss and cluck over him, try to feed him up, listen to all his worries and concerns and give the best sisterly advice. She often asked him how things were progressing with Lan Zhan, but he didn’t really understand why she was so interested in his relationship with the Sheriff.

He spent time with Nie Huaisang, being heckled and sassed and told everyone else’s gossip, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

Everywhere he went he ran into Officer Lan, looking dashing in his uniform. They went out to dinner and for drinks quite often, building the friendship Wei Wuxian was sure they hadn’t had in the past despite Lan Zhan seeking him out all the time. Unfortunately there was also a rising attraction Wei Wuxian was trying desperately to squash; not only was Lan Zhan devastatingly handsome he was kind and attentive too. It was heady stuff and he struggled not to let it go to his head.

And he joined everyone else in town watching Lan Zhan’s brother Xichen be followed around by half the available population of Cultivation, like adoring puppies. Particularly strong suits came from Nie Mingjue, Meng Yao, and Jiang Cheng. Not that it did them any good because Xichen noticed nothing.

“I’m sorry Lan Zhan, but your brother is such a himbo” he commented one day as they left the diner with coffee cups, watching Lan Xichen walk down the street with Meng Yao, who looked at him like he hung the moon, “Who could be so clueless as to not notice when someone is making that kind of play?”

For a second some odd look crossed Lan Zhan’s face and Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure if was disbelief or if he was about laugh or cry, it settled into it’s usual expressionlessness though, and Lan Zhan just shook his head helplessly, “Yes, who” was his only comment. Wei Wuxian thought he must really despair of his brother’s obliviousness.

He did wonder sometimes though why Lan Wangji didn’t have similar amounts of fans, he was just as good looking, had a great job, and was a genuinely kind man. But no-one seemed to pant after him like after Xichen. It was very odd, almost as if he was off the market.

What was even odder to Wei Wuxian was the more involved he got the less he suddenly minded being stuck in Small Town USA.

***

Unfortunately his attraction to Lan Zhan did continue to grow and he found it harder and harder to keep his interactions that of a friend only. Especially one evening as they had drinks at the Lakeside. It was a party atmosphere inside as Christmas was approaching fast, and the bar was trimmed up to the nines with wreaths, trees, garlands, lights and holly and mistletoe everywhere. Everyone was having a great time dancing to the holiday music.

Everyone was having so much fun and for some reason urging them on, which was probably why they ended up swaying together on the dance-floor and necking under the mistletoe some mischievous employee had hung up all over the ceiling above the entire length of the bar-room.

When the music stopped they didn’t discuss it but they ended up in Lan Zhan’s bedroom and continued where they’d left off at the Lakeside. Lan Zhan pulled back to stroke each side of his face gently, like he was holding something precious and of great value.

“Wei Ying-”

“Lan Zhan, if the next words out of your mouth aren’t “I’m going to kiss you” then just shut up and kiss me” he ordered and the other snorted and rubbed along Wei Wuxian’s lower lip with his thumb.

“Then Wei Ying, I’m going to kiss you, if you’re sure you want it”

“Kiss me”

***

Wei Wuxian woke up the next morning to blinding clarity. He was in love with Lan Zhan. How had that even happened? How could he even consider it? Being in love with Lan Zhan meant tying himself to Cultivation and he’d rather die. He slid carefully out from underneath Lan Zhan’s arm which was thrown across his waist and hurried into his clothes.

He made the mistake of glancing back at the sleeping sheriff then, refined features relaxed in sleep, dark hair start against the white pillows, and he wavered. Would it really be so bad?

He left as quietly and quickly as possible.

He kept it together until he got back to the Ranch House.

What made the panic worse was that a snowstorm was obviously approaching, the mild weather of the last few weeks had vanished. He needed to pack and get out of there before they were snowed in and he had no way out. The thought almost tipped him into a panic attack.

Jiang Yanli was there just settling Jin Ling in on the sofa as he’d come over feverish.

Once sure Jin Ling was comfortable she came through to the kitchen where Jiang Cheng tried to get him to slow his breathing and ground himself.

“What’s wrong?” she asked when he was more controlled.

“I need to go back to New York. I have to get out of here. I have to go” Spurred on he dashed upstairs.

Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng followed him up to his room, it was clearly obvious he was greatly distressed and wasn’t thinking clearly.

“I just-I need to go” Wei Wuxian dragged his case out from under the bed and began haphazardly throwing clothes into it.

“You fucked him” Jiang Cheng said in disbelief, “Oh my god, he finally got you after all these years of pining. And now you’re just running. The dude is going to be inconsolable”

“A-Cheng” Yanli admonished him sharply but Jiang Cheng was in fine form.

“Was he that bad a lay you’re having to leave town now rather than face him again?”

“Jiang Wanyin” Yanli again, bringing out the “you’re in trouble” name.

“A. He fucked me, B. It was good, C.-” he paused briefly, he didn’t really know what C was.

“So what’s wrong?” Yanli asked.

“I-” what was wrong was he’d woken up, realised he was in love with Lan Zhan and panicked because of what that meant for him. Being with Lan Zhan meant being in Cultivation, and the thought terrified him. This town had treated him like trash and spat him out once before and he didn’t know if he was strong enough to go through that again. He hugged the pair of jeans in his hands against his chest and sat down on the bed. “I realised I love him” he admitted quietly, and Yanli sat next to him and began stroking his back calmingly.

“And that scares you?” she asked gently. Wei Wuxian nodded and she made a soothing sound.

“Because it means you’d have to come back here permanently” Jiang Cheng said from where he leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest.

Wei Wuxian flinched at the hurt he heard in his brother’s voice. He didn’t want to do that to him. But it was the truth and he nodded again.

Then, “Does Lan Zhan really like me?”

Jiang Yanli was the one to nod then, “He’s loved you for a very long time A-Xian”

Fuck. So he’d run out this morning without saying a word or leaving a message. After sleeping with the man who’d loved him forever. And just left him.

He knew perfectly well what kind of message that would send even if it was one he hadn’t intended to, so caught up in his own panic and feelings he hadn’t even spared a thought for Lan Zhan’s.

He really had messed up spectacularly. He got up then, throwing the jeans aside and making for the door. “I need to talk to Lan Zhan” he declared and the other two followed him again.

***

Downstairs the kitchen door was swinging open in the cold wind, blowing drifts of snow onto the tile floor.

The panic hit all three of them at the same time.

“A-Ling” Yanli cried out dashing into the parlour where he’d been curled up on the sofa asleep under a warm blanket.

Of course he wasn’t there.

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian moved as one to grab coats and gloves which they bundled into on the way to the door.

“Call Zixuan, and stay here in case A-Ling comes back” Jiang Cheng told Yanli who was crying and moving to collect her own coat.

“That’s my son, I’m going with you”

“Yanli, we really need you to stay here and call us if he does come back, it’s snowing out there and he’ll get cold and might head back on his own. We need you here, we’ll find him” Jiang Cheng promised rubbing her shaking shoulders.

***

“You check the barn and milking sheds” he told Jiang Cheng as they leapt off the porch and into the snow, “I’ll go to the woods and check the den”

They split off and headed in their assigned directions.

He wondered why Jin Ling had felt the need to leave the house, especially when he was sick.

He threw up a quick prayer for Jin Ling’s safety to any god listening in and doubled his pace.

Wei Wuxian felt his heart sink when he got there to no sign of his nephew, he’d almost been sure he’d be here. Where else could he have headed for?

Wait, hadn’t Jin Ling really enjoyed their fishing trip? What if he’d headed down to the lake?

Wei Wuxian began running, too aware of how dangerous it could be and what would be the consequence in the freezing cold if Jin Ling did slip into the water.

He couldn’t see anything when he got to the pier, please god let Jin Ling have gone for shelter in the ramshackle old boathouse.

His prayers were answered, and he found Jin Ling huddled in the corner inside, half asleep and rambling with fever.

“Uncle Wuxian” he managed though as Wei Wuxian took his coat off and wrapped it around Jin Ling. He checked his phone but this far out he had no signal and he’d have to get a bit closer to the house before his phone started connecting with nearby towers.

Wei Wuxian picked him up and settled him against his chest comfortably.

“Come on A-Ling, lets get you back to your Mom, she’s worried sick about you. What were you thinking?” he asked but the boy didn’t seem to hear him.

He walked out of the boathouse and into the driving snow, trying not to think about the journey back. He didn’t have any choice, he could afford to wait the snowstorm out in the boathouse but Jin Ling couldn’t; he was quite poorly.

So he set his shoulders and walked. It was so cold. But he struggled on. What would he have done if something had happened to Jin Ling? He couldn’t bear to think about it. Couldn’t bear to think about not being able to see his curious, energetic little nephew every day.

Wait.

But he was going back to New York, he wouldn’t be able to spend all that time with Jin Ling anymore, wouldn't get to see him every day, that was how it was going to have to be.

But the more he thought about it the more he knew he wouldn’t survive. Not seeing Jiang Cheng’s grumpy face hiding his careful concern? Not receiving the unconditional love and support of Jiang Yanli? Not being the person who hung the moon to Jin Ling? Even not being the stupid fool who’d had Lan Zhan’s love forever without even realising, trying to bro-zone him while Lan Zhan tried his damnedest to pursue him?

The more he considered it the more the thought of leaving all of them behind became intolerable to him.

Not that Lan Zhan would want anything to do with him after his disappearing act this morning he realised and the thought actually made him hurt.

As if summoned by Wei Wuxian’s reflections the man himself appeared out of the snowstorm.

“Wei Ying” he said and held the other upright as he stumbled, his limbs starting to go numb.

Lan Zhan had emergency blankets, one of which he wrapped around Wei Wuxian, before wrapping the other around Jin Ling as extra protection from the cold. He took him from Wei Wuxian’s arms to carry him instead. Then he wrapped an arm around Wei Wuxian  and began guiding them back in the direction he’d come,  reporting in on his police radio that Jin Ling was safe and he was bringing them back now.

“I didn’t want Uncle Wuxian to leave” Jin Ling exclaimed suddenly.

“I���m not Jin Ling, I’m not” but no-one seemed to pay him any attention. “Lan Zhan” Wei Wuxian wanted to tell him he was sorry. That he hadn’t known what he’d done that morning would hurt him. That he really wanted to stay. That he loved him. But Lan Zhan didn’t let him speak.

“Save your energy Wei Ying, you did well” was all he said.

***

Once back at the ranch house he and Jin Ling were stripped, wrapped in dryer-warmed terry cloth robes, and piled under hundreds of blankets. A cup of hot chocolate was pressed into his hands and he was told to sip it as soon as he could stand the temperature while Wen Qing checked over Jin Ling who Yanli hadn’t let go yet.

Lan Zhan waited for the health verdict on both of them, but as soon as he was assured Jin Ling would be fine once his fever lowered and Wei Wuxian was none the worse for wear he moved towards the door to leave.

“Lan Zhan” Wei Wuxian called urgently; he didn’t want Lan Zhan to think whatever he thought for a minute longer.

When he realised everyone was looking at him he jumped up and stumbled across the room like some crazy blanket monster from a child’s book. He tried to ignore the more icier than usual look on Lan Zhan’s face as he pulled him out of the kitchen and up to his room with a “Please just give me a little more of your time”

He realised what a miscalculation it had been to fetch Lan Zhan here when he saw his case still open on the bed.

“Its not what it looks like Lan Zhan. Actually no it is what it looks like. It was, anyway. Please let me explain” he closed the case and pushed it back under the bed so he could sit down.

“I am so sorry I ran this morning. I realise with hindsight what that might have looked like to you”

“Like your night of experimentation was done with and you didn’t want to deal with the morning after?” Lan Zhan suggested coldly.

“Experimentation? That's not it. Lan Zhan, I’ve always identified as bisexual. I’ve just never been with a guy before because I was in a long term relationship. I’d only ever been with Mian Mian before we-before last night” it was even worse than he’d suspected. “Will you please at least listen to me explain?”

Lan Zhan didn’t say no, so he took that as permission.

“I need you to know I didn’t know how you felt about me before Yanli told me this morning. And I didn’t know how I felt about you until I woke up and realised I was in love with you. And I panicked and ran away because I couldn’t process it and I was scared. I know Meng Yao told you what his father did to get rid of me, and why, and even though he’s dead now it’s hard to think of Cultivation as anything but a hell pit. Loving you would mean staying here and I was terrified at the thought”

“Wei Ying, you love me?” there was a crack in that icy facade as Lan Zhan asked him to confirm his feelings again, trembling emotion in his voice.

Wei Wuxian pressed his lips together but nodded in certainty, “Mn” he stole Lan Zhan’s sound of agreement

“Then I wouldn't care where we lived if it was with you, we could move to New York, Shanghai, anywhere in the world you wanted” Lan Zhan sat on the bed next to him and folded Wei Wuxian’s unwieldy, blanket-monster form into his arms.

“I want to stay here” he said firmly. “I thought about it a lot while I was out in the snowstorm, and I need to be near my family, including you if you’ll forgive me Lan Zhan”

“Always” he agreed, then pressed a kiss against Wei Wuxian’s lips. A drop of cold water from Wei Wuxian’s hair dripped onto his nose then, and he rose to find a towel so he could rub it dry gently. The action was soporific and Wei Wuxian struggled to stay awake.

Lan Zhan asked him softly, “How do you feel?”

He roused himself enough to answer, “If you mean about last night, then my ass hurts. If you mean about this morning, my heart hurts, I made Jin Ling run away like that with my stupid panic”

“Its not your fault Wei Ying”

Wei Wuxian didn’t agree but he didn’t really feel like arguing the point right now.

“Keep doing that Lan Zhan” he murmured instead, urging the other to run the towel over his hair again.

***

Luckily Jin Ling made a full recovery in a few days, and Yanli didn’t blame We Wuxian for making him run away.

It was the night before Christmas Eve and a town tradition to hold a night market filled with crafts and food and mulled everything.

Wei Wuxian made his way over to Lan Zhan and curled into his side, passing him one of the hot chocolates he’d bought while the other man pulled him in tighter with an arm over his shoulder.

They watched the elementary school’s choir sing for a while in the glittering lights from the giant Christmas tree in the middle of the square.

“Lan Zhan” Wei Wuxian said eventually, and the other looked at him.

“Mn?”

“Don’t you think this is all a bit cliché? Like a cheesy Christmas movie? You know, where the sassy city-slicker hero goes back to Podunk USA for Christmas and falls in love with the quiet pretty girl from High School who always secretly had a crush on him but was too shy to ever say anything?” he rubbed his chin trying to smother his laughter. He yelped and tried to get away when Lan Zhan nipped at his side in retribution.

“OK, OK. I’m sorry I’m sorry” he surrendered, but he still couldn’t stop the giggles.

Eventually Lan Zhan just turned to him and pulled him close.

“Wei Ying” he said, “shut up” and closed his lips over Wei Wuxian’s in a slow, lingering kiss that left him with no breath to laugh any more.

[phantomoftruth]

Day 6 - A brief idea and talk about the future.

So I am properly well again, though still taking the rest of my antibiotics, and between being ill, working, and being distracted by the good game that is Hades, it all helped to put me on the backfoot with my writing goals.

That stated, I was working on something earlier today that just didn’t pan out, so at the very least it’s not for lack of effort. I just need to make an active effort to not attempt to plan things out so much and just write things, as it’s the constant choice paralysis that honestly keeps me from writing anything.

The other difficulty of note is kind of managing the different platforms. I *think* the immediate works I’d like to post images for should be fine here for tumblr, since they are reposts of things that were not flagged by the system, but then again, would linking to hypnohub here cause a post to get flagged? I don’t know.

I’m thinking if I can pick up more regular activity, I’d probably see about actually using twitter to link updates in one place. It’d also be nice to do things like votes on pieces over a week or month to find out what people liked the most so I can follow up on things.

-----

All that out of the way, a lewd, vaugely monstergirlish(?) thought, originally thought of due to the song Centerfold, perhaps partly inspired by my thoughts of an older Mcstory, Read Me, by A Sinister Bent.

One monster girl concept I’ve had in the past is of a living grimoire (and just now typing this up made me realize I never actually brought this up here and may not actually have written down the character at all, which seems wrong but it’s late so we have to move along).

Imagine a pin up book. A porn magazine. A living fetish magazine. Possessed by a corrupted spirit. A corrupting spirit, ensnaring souls with lust, sucking them into the pages, putting them on parade, each one a different lure, letting the creature cast it’s net just that little bit wider. You want them. You want to be them. A harem in your hands, sucking away at you, warping your mind and feeding on your spirit. You become a pawn, a goon, a helplessly perverted mind rotted husk, or fully, physically absorbed by the book, another model on the page, another piece in the collection, either the puppet of a sinister will or part of a collective entity of corruption, nesting in paper pages.

[mugglebornandproud]

Favorite Ron and Hermione Fanfiction

They’re all amazing, but the first ones will definitely give you all the feels!

#3,4,7,9,10,14,15,16,17,18 are still being updated

all multi-chaptered except #23

1.Right Here

“All’s fair in love and war. And this is a little bit of both.” The story of Ron and Hermione post-Deathly Hallows.

OK this one contains a lot of fluff, so if you feel like reading something sweet, this story is for you.

2.Faultlines

Breaking up is hard to do, but Ron and Hermione are about to discover that putting the pieces back together is even harder. This story was nominated in 5 categories and Winner of “Best Angst Fic” at the 2008 Ron/Hermione Awards on LiveJournal.

If you are in the mood to read a long, but really long story filled with so much angst, read this one! It is really really good.

3.Penalties

AU. Ron and Hermione are best friends and flatmates. No magic! Except from the magical love of R/Hr.

Cute, with some angst but a really great story. I stopped studying for my finals to finish the story.

4.The Missing Piece

A young woman saves Ron from being murdered and throws his world into chaos. Who is she? Why has Ron never met her? AU but attempts to stick to some elements of canon.

Everyone needs to go read this story, it is seriously one of the most fluffy and angsty stories out there, I can’t even explain how good it is. You will have a lot of Ron and Hermione feels. Just please read it!!!

5.Leaning Slightly to the Left

Hermione’s life is not what she expected it to be and she doesn’t know how to change it. Will moving back to what she knows help? Or is she pinning all her hopes on a dream that ended years before?

Oh goodness, this story can rip your heart out.

6.Making Memories

Three years ago, Hermione removed herself from Ron’s memory. Now, the spell is broken and Ron is bloody hacked off about it. But could Hermione have good reasons for what she did, reasons that might mean the difference between life and death?

This one is a mystery, a really cute one, I really recommend it.

7.Mission Impossible

Auror Weasley must make sure everything is safe for a wedding. Hermione’s wedding.

8.Closer

Everything is returning to normal after the War. But when it comes to Ron and Hermione, the word ‘normal’ doesn’t really apply. And with the world around them still in pieces, will they rebuild it together, or will they find it difficult just to stay together when there’s so so much left unsaid? Book 1 in the There Is a Light Series.

Ok, everyone must read this story. This story will make you cry! I guarantee it! This story has so much angst and you HAVE to be patient while reading it because it has a lot of flashbacks but those flashbacks are so important and this story is so well written, there is just one thing I disliked about it but I can’t tell you because it will kill it for you. Even though this story is now completed I honestly haven’t reviewed the last chapter and not because I’ve been to lazy to do so but because I seriously haven’t gotten over what happened. And I honestly need time, it is such a stupid reason but to me it meant a lot, but everyone should really go read it, I’ve never cried so much with a story, the author is brilliant.

9.Laws Change Lives

Set at end of HBP. As the ministry falls further under Voldemorts control a new law is passed, forcing Hermione into a life she wasn’t ready for. How will it affect the horcrux hunt and the fight against Voldemort? rated M for minor adult themes, nothing too crazy.

This one is very fluffy and sweet, it’s a good read.

10.Anxious

Hermione’s anxiety takes a hold of her and threatens to get in the way of her slow and developing relationship with Ron. He is the only one who can pull her out of her own head long enough to finally let go.

Really good and smutty lol.

11.Stitches

“I’m going. Alone,” Hermione said, leaving no room for Ron to argue. One night, so long ago now it seemed, really had changed everything.

12.Daddy

Post Hogwarts: Ron and Harry are sent to America for Auror training. Ron spends his last night in England with Hermione, and after returning two years later, he finds Hermione with a fifteen-month-old baby …

Really cute, loved it, one of the first stories I read, doesn’t follow DH.

13.Scenes from Shell Cottage

This fic is a series of missing moments from the time H/R&H were at Shell Cottage, beginning immediately after they Disapparated from Malfoy Manor.

This one is so fluffy!!!! So cute and romantic.

14.To Kingdom Come

He was Ron and she was Hermione. And they had survived. What else could possibly bother to exist outside of them? Rated M. The 19 year gap between the last chapter and the epilogue.

Very fluffy oh goodness it is very cute.

15.The Other Side of Life

Hermione Granger grew up in the Muggle World hiding her magical ability from those around her. That all changes when Ron Weasley, Auror, makes an interesting discovery while on a case. AU but keeping with the books.

Very cute and smutty.

16.A Family Comes in Different Forms

Set right after the Second Wizarding War. Harry and Ron have just become Auror’s, and Harry has taken Teddy into his home. But when Harry goes missing, who is left to take care of Teddy? Ron, with the help of Hermione, is forced to pick up the broken pieces, bringing the new couple only closer together. Rated M for some adult content.

Cute.

17.Australia

Ron grieves the loss of his brother and tries to figure out life after the war while trying to navigate his new relationship with Hermione.

18.Daddy’s Little girl

Captain Ron Weasley and his team are the best Aurors the Ministry has. But when one of the missions goes wrong Ron finds himself straddled with the last thing he ever expected. AU Not Deathly Hallows Compliant.

19.Sharing Sleep

Missing moments: All of the times that Ron and Hermione fell asleep together, from book 1 to book 7.

fluffy!

20.Questions

Three days after the final battle at Hogwarts, Ron and Hermione begin a game of questions…

21.The time in between

This is a look at the developing relationship between Hermione and Ron set during the Deathly Hallows.

Fluff

22.Moments of Love

A collection of humorous and sweet moments from the months when Ron and Hermione are expecting baby Rose.

Soo cute, also one of my first stories I read, dealing with Hermione’s pregnancy.

23.Something Normal

Another tent-oneshot with Ron and Hermione.

So adorable!!!! ALL THE FEELINGS.

[poor-sickies]

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while - it’s a tiny sequel to a wonderful one shot by @outtacommission

For any of you who might have not read that one, I totally recomend, it’s about Lance breaking his arm quite badly on his longboard, ending up calling Hunk to the rescue, while the sequel deals with the aftermath. Hope you like it!

“Hunk!”

Hunk looks up from his lap to see Keith running to the waiting room with rushed steps. Keith stops in front of him, doubling down with his hands on his knees, his breathing ragged and labored.

“I came- as fast…as I could.” He pants, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Hunk pats his shoulder and motions at him to sit down, which he does with a sigh.

“How is he?” Keith looks at Hunk, his face twisted in concern. It’s pretty obvious Keith is beating himself up for not being there with Lance when he got hurt. And especially for not being available when Lance had called him.

Hunk sighs. “He’s still in surgery,” he explains, “compound fracture.”

Lance had been taken to the operating room almost forty five minutes ago, and Hunk had had time to calm himself down. Now he’s thankful he’s collected enough to be there for Lance, as soon as he can see him.

“Compound fracture?!” Keith gasps, a hand flying to cover his mouth in shock. He’s already sweaty from the heat and from sprinting all the way from the park, but he suddenly feels a whole new wave of cold sweat forming. Lance has had broken bones before, too many for Keith’s liking, in fact, but a compound fracture sounds a whole lot more serious.

“Yeah,” Hunk nods, “he messed up his arm pretty badly when he fell.”

Hunk then looks at Keith’s face and realizes he does not sound comforting at all, and Keith is looking downright panicked.

“B-But, you know,” his voice goes up a couple of octaves, “they’re fixing him right up! Soon he’ll be out of the OR and ready to go home! So, uh, relax, it’s gonna be okay.”

Keith doesn’t seem much more comforted, but he takes a deep breath and tries to stop his hands from shaking. He looks like he’s about to say something to Hunk, when a nurse approaches them.

Hunk recognizes the nurse that lead him to the waiting room when he arrived with Lance. She had been especially nice to him, and he was glad she was there again, which probably meant they were about to receive an update on Lance’s condition.

“Lance McClain?” She asks, looking at the two of them. They nod quickly. “Follow me.”

Keith and Hunk get up, and the nurse leads them to one of the recovery rooms. As she opens the door, they take a look around.

There’s only one bed, in which Lance is lying. There are nurses moving around him. One is hooking is good arm into an IV pole on his left, while the other is placing the broken arm on a large pillow. The other nurse leaves the room, and the doctor introduces himself, shaking Hunk’s and Keith’s hands. “You probably want to know about your friend’s condition.”

Keith turns his head to the side to take a look at Lance. He looks small and frail on the bed, shirtless, with a white blanket pulled up to his waist. He doesn’t look completely conscious, and his features are slightly twisted in a pained expression. Keith can see traces of road rash on the right side of his face, as well as some scratches on his chin, and winces when he notices there’s much worse road rash starting at his ribs and disappearing into his hips, hidden by the blanket. There are blue and purple bruises on his collarbone and the part of his shoulder that is visible. The broken arm is in a bulky cast that extends from his shoulder all the way down to his fingers, bending at the elbow.

Keith walks to Lance’s side and sits on a chair next to the bed, placing his hand on Lance’s good one. Hunk gets closer too, and puts a comforting hand on Keith’s shoulder.

“The surgery went well,” the doctor explains, “Lance came in with a compound fracture on his humerus bone, and his wrist is also broken. We had to attach a couple of pins on the bone, to make sure it heals correctly, and the wrist should heal fine in the cast.” He glances at Lance’s chart briefly. “In eight, possibly a couple more weeks, the cast can come off, but he’ll most likely need some physical therapy to regain full motion.”

“When can he go home?” Hunk asks.

The doctor places Lance’s chart on the desk back again. “We need to monitor his vitals for a while, but since we only gave him local anesthesia, he can probably be discharged in a couple of hours. He should be waking up soon.”

The doctor turns around to leave, and Hunk pulls a chair and sits next to Keith.

“Hey,” he starts, voice low and shaky, “I know it looks bad…but it’s just a broken arm…well, an awfully broken arm. But Lance will be fine. He will.”

Keith nods, silent, stroking circles on the back of Lance’s hand.

When Lance finally wakes up, the sun is already down. He blinks a couple of times, before scrunching his eyes shut and tightening his lips. His eyes open halfway, dazed and pained.

“Keith,” he says, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips, “you’re here.”

“I am.” Keith squeezes his hand. Part of him had wanted to yell at Lance for getting hurt, for not wearing more clothing, for taking that shortcut in his longboard. But right now, all he wants to do is hold him and never let go. He sighs. Lance doesn’t look too comfortable, but it’s definitely a relief seeing him awake. “You’re okay.”

Hunk leans closer. “How do you feel, buddy?”

Lance swallows and closes his eyes again. “Kinda sick.”

Hunk turns to Keith. “It’s probably from the painkillers.”

Lance exhales, almost like a laugh. “Painkillers?! My arm hurts like hell…” Lance tries rotating his shoulder, but the pain is too much, and he lets out a whimper.

“Stop!” Keith exclaims, pressing down on his good shoulder. “You’re gonna hurt yourself if you do that.” Lance groans, as he observes the enormous cast that covers almost his whole arm.

“What did they do?” He asks, his good hand protectively holding his casted forearm.

“You broke your arm real bad,” Hunk explains, “bad enough that you needed surgery.”

Lance appears shocked suddenly. He looks at Keith for confirmation and takes a shaky breath. “Surgery…?” Tears start forming in his eyes, and he quickly covers his face with his good hand.

“Lance!” Keith gets up, moving as close to Lance as he possibly can. “What’s going on? Are you in pain?”

“Hey, Lance, just talk to us,” Hunk pleads, as he moves to the other side of the bed. Soon, the two of them are hugging Lance, as much as they can, very carefully, not wanting to hurt him further.

Lance sniffles and wipes his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he says, “my arm hurts… I wanna go home.”

Keith takes Lance’s hand in his and strokes soft circles, trying to make him relax a little. “Just a while more,” he says softly, “doctor says you can go home tonight.”

“Yeah buddy,” Hunk adds, “they should be letting you outta here real soon.”

Lance nods, closing his eyes. The sick feeling lingers, and hes more aware of the scrapes and bruises now than he was earlier. He can tell he won’t have a well rested night, especially seeing as it’s already so late.

They sign the discharge papers fast, and one of the nurses wheels him to Keith’s car, who doesn’t waste any time handing the keys to Hunk, quickly climbing into the back seat to help Lance in.

“Come on, easy does it,” Keith encourages, his hand supporting Lance’s back as he maneuvers himself to get inside the car. Lance bites his lip, as bending himself to get in the car is terribly painful in his bruised back, and the sling they put his arm in presses uncomfortably in his shoulder and neck. He feels like a walking bruise.

When he’s finally in the backseat, and Hunk has started the car, Lance drags himself slowly to Keith’s side. Keith wasn’t too close, trying to avoid bumping into Lance’s arm, afraid he would hurt him further, but Lance is clearly asking for comfort, his good hand moving to hold Keith’s chest and his head leaning against Keith’s shoulder. Keith kisses his forehead lightly, and carefully wraps an arm around Lance, rubbing his good shoulder affectionately. It doesn’t take Lance long to doze off.

It breaks Keith’s heart having to wake him when they get home, the way his face twists up in pain as he comes back to consciousness, and especially the way he tries to hide it as he steps out of the car.

“You wanna stay the night?” Hunk asks Keith, Lance already tucked in bed, “he’s gonna want you here.”

“Of course,” Keith says, and maybe the bed is a bit too small, and the room a little too hot, and Keith definitely misses his AC back in his apartment, but he’d never leave Lance on his own like this.

When he wakes up in the morning, he’s glad he stayed.

Lance wakes up during the night at least twice, gasping in pain after rolling over his bruises or putting weight on his broken arm, and Keith only hopes Lance doesn’t remember falling asleep with tears streaming down his face.

It’s already ten in the morning when Lance wakes up, head turning over with a groan. Keith looks up from where he’s sitting, puts his laptop aside and sits on the edge of Lance’s mattress.

“Hey,” he caresses lances hair back, “how are you feeling?”

Lance takes a deep breath, looking down. “Honestly? I feel like I was ran over by a truck,” he moans, his body slowly curling on his side.

“I’m sorry,” Keith says, “you must be in pain. I can get you something to eat.”

“I could use some breakfast,” Lance agrees, but not very enthusuastic. He’s about to sit up, when Keith stops him.

“Stay there. I’ll get you breakfast.”

He comes back five minutes later, with a tray of food, that undoubtedly Hunk had helped with. A bowl of watermelon, cut up in small cubes, two pieces of toast with nutella, and a glass of orange juice. Keith places the tray on the bedside table, before helping Lance sit up and lean against a pillow. Lance picks up the tray and puts it in his lap.

“Good thing these are already cut,” he motions at the watermelon with the fork in his left hand, “seeing as I can’t eat food like a normal person for a while.”

“Yeah,” Keith sighs, before sitting down beside Lance, back against the headboard, “sucks that it was your right arm.”

He watches Lance eat in silence for a bit, relaxing with the warm temperature and the sunlight hitting his skin from the windows.

“I’m gonna be like this the whole summer.”

Lance is hunched over next to him, looking sadly at his cast, fork momentarily forgotten amidst the plates.

Oh no.

Keith looks between the tray and Lance’s face. He’s at a loss of what to do. Because it’s true. If they’re hoping for a normal recovery, Lance’s arm would be in a cast until September at least. And that was before the physical therapy. “I - I’m sorry… I can’t… I know it’s-”

“It’s okay… It…could have been worse,” Lance forces a chuckle, and looks up at Keith. “You’re gonna stay with me, right? When I can’t go to the beach, or skate, or… I’m not ordering you not to go, but - you’ll spend time with me…right?”

“Of course,” Keith answers, taking Lance’s good hand in his, “I don’t even like the beach that much…of course I’ll stay with you.”

Lance smiles, and catches Keith off guard when he leans to the side, resting his head on Keith’s shoulder. He doesn’t wince when Keith hugs him back. “I love you.”

[theonyxpath]

I’m going to get a lot of use out of the blog title this week, so stay with me.

First, it pretty accurately describes the Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e Kickstarter that is entering its last week today. Like most of our KSs, it had a great week and has slowed down to a walk right now, but we expect that it will also pick up the pace as we head towards the last days and run wildly towards the finish like the majority of our KSs have done.

So far, it’s been doing great and has achieved nine Stretch Goals – most of which are building the Memento Mori companion book, but there’s a lot more in store!

Geist has always had an extremely dedicated community that has come out and made this a very fun KS, and they’d love to add more folks to their Krewe. So, if you want to know just why we always had Geist questions thrown at us at every panel going back to when Eddy and I first started the “What’s Up with WW?” panels, this is your chance to find out! It’s the kind of game line and setting that gets into your head – in a memorable and thought-expanding way.

      Scion: Hero illustration by Darko Stejanovic

    Speaking of getting into your head in a good way, how many of you are listening to the Onyx Pathcast podcasts?

(I am the king of segues!)

Well, there’s now another way to enjoy Dixie, Matthew, and Eddy as they delve deep into our game lines and interview noted creators, and generally have an infectiously good time. We have put the first couple of the Pathcasts up on our YouTube channel. Here’s the link to the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3-jNUV5-hM 

Impish Ian Watson took the audio, and added art and graphics so that you’d have something to feast your eyes on as you listen to the Terrifying Yet Terrific Trio explore the secrets of Onyx Path, its creators, and its games. This last Friday they interviewed Eric Minton, one part of our excellent Exalted 3rd development team, and got him to talk about the thrills of developing new Ex3 projects. They even got some Lunars and Exigents tidbits out of him!

Marvelous marketing info aside, they really did a great job interviewing Eric, and you can tell they were all having a super time of it. I don’t know about you, but those sorts of audible and infectious good spirits makes me want to listen all the more when I check out a podcast.

This Friday, they’ll be talking about the connection, for good and for bad, between video games and tabletop RPGs. As creators that have worked in both spaces and as gamers themselves across a wide swathe of video games, it should be a blast and pretty insightful. And as always, you can download and listen on PodBean, or any of your favorites podcast venues: https://www.podbean.com/site/Search/index?v=onyx+pathcast

    Changeling: The Lost 2e illustration by Pat Loboyko

    Returning to our blog title this week, I’m gonna touch on one of our new game lines coming out that has walking dead, running dead, all sorts of dead. Plus human survivors who are turning them into really dead dead.

Of course, I’m talking about Dystopia Rising: Evolution, which is a Storypath System powered RPG set in a post-apocalyptic future where zombies are just one sign of the terrifying way the world has changed.

We’ll be demoing DR:E at Gen Con in less than two weeks, and since we are sharing our booth with our licensors from Eschaton Media, please come by. Because if Eddy Webb or any of our crew can’t explain Dystopia Rising, our booth-mates can!

If you’ve never heard of Dystopia Rising, beyond my very brief synopsis above, it is best known for being a hugely successful and compelling post-apocalyptic LARP setting that has spread not unlike an undead virus throughout the US and the world. In fact, I first became aware of DR because of encountering scary armor and weapon wearing Mad Max refugees wandering around several Vampire LARP venues.

They just looked intense, and really communicated that they were working out a huge and personal story as they gathered together with cobbled together costumes. They, and the setting, do a great job of convincing newcomers of the depths and potential of this wasted world of theirs.

We then met the Dystopia Rising creators at further conventions, and when Mighty Matt McElroy brought me into a Starbucks with them “just to get to know each other”, I knew he sensed that this was a group of folks we could work with in presenting their world to our Onyx Path community. As Eddy Webb, who is developing the project, says:

“The Eschaton folks have been great partners. I’ve worked on a lot of licensed products, and it’s very rare to find a partner that is so open to new ideas and collaboration. Some of the give-and-take we’ve had has been fantastic, and I think it’ll make the final product better as a result.”

If you are counting, this is our first new license after the WW one, as I consider our Creator-Owned projects to be only kinda-licenses, and we took a while to find the right project to do this with. The folks on the other side of the dotted line are a huge part of that, but also, we had a few more reasons for why this is a good idea:

  Honestly? Zombies. As Mirthful Mike sez: “At last I get to do up some real zombies!”

  Because the post-apocalyptic, zombie/mutant genre is really a new space for us to play in, we also thought it was a great third place to use the Storypath System. We’ll demonstrating even more of the system’s range in adapting it for this existing game world, and from everything I’ve seen and heard so far, it is passing that test with flying colors!

  The setting. Post-apocalyptic, but with a setting-based reason why the world is so messed up, and with a setting-based reason as to why survivors have both survived and have a hard time pinning down just how long it has been since things all went to hell. This gives both creators and players a massive chance to explore the world that is left, and to interject the themes and historical “facts” they want to include without contradicting the world we are building and which is already being played.

  Like I mentioned, we’ll be demoing Dystopia Rising: Evolution in our booth and elsewhere, and soon after we all get our collective heads together after Gen Con, we’ll be running the DR:E Kickstarter campaign. We hope to have a lot of interesting rewards based on the many years of the setting that have run, and a few fun treats in store that focus on our new game line!

    Scion: Hero illustration by Luciano Komorizono

    So here we go, into a new game, a new setting, a new license, and a new world to join our already successful and amazing universe of games. Like we surely must say, Onyx Path is really made up of:

Many Worlds, One Path!

  BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

ONE WEEK LEFT for the Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition Kickstarter and we’ve achieved nine Stretch Goals so far, even though this period traditionally is a very slow time during our Kickstarters. Thanks to all of our backers out there spreading the word! We are in good shape to be able to make a great looking hardcover edition, and get that into stores, even while we’re giving backers first look at the complete text and other fun benefits: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/geist-the-sin-eaters-2nd-edition

Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition includes all the rules you need to play as one of the Bound: Five Burdens reflecting the cause that pulled you back from the grave, five krewe Archetypes for building your own mystery religion, and the Haunts, Keys, and Ceremonies that provide the Bound with their macabre powers.

It also includes the Chronicle of the Dead, featuring the Sin-Eaters’ struggle against the all-consuming Underworld and a variety of terrifying threats. In addition, for the first time in the Chronicles of Darkness line, ghosts are presented as playable characters.

Chapters include:

The Quick and the Dead: the five Burdens (the reason a Sin-Eater comes back from the dead and what draws a particular geist to them) and krewe Archetypes (the common cause that draws a krewe of Sin-Eaters together).

The Road Back: On death and coming back, and why Bound make the Bargain, including possible consequences.

One Foot in the Grave: Character creation, with sections on both geist and krewe creation, Anchors, Merits, Synergy, Plasm, Abilities, Haunts, Keys, Ceremonies, and Mementos.

Old Laws: the core Chronicles of Darkness rules, with special rules for playing Sin-Eaters, as well as information on subsystems for krewes, ghosts, and the Underworld, including Avernian Gates.

Antagonists: villains for your Geist chronicle, including Reapers, Eaters of the Dead, necromancers, enemy Bound, and Kerberoi.

The Quiet Places: Setting information and story hooks for playing your Geist chronicle in specific times and places in history., from 16th-century Brazil to modern-day Edinburgh, Scotland to Mobile, Alabama in 1910, as well as information on Dominions.

Ghost Stories: Storyteller advice and information for running a Geist chronicle, including designing Remembrances, how to set theme and mood, story seeds, and various ways to play out the end of a game.

Appendix: The Absent: This Appendix details the Absent, playable ghosts, including Memories, new Merits, and a collection of possible ghost characters to expand on and use in your chronicle.

Appendix: Conditions and Tilts: Geist-specific Conditions and Tilts, including ephemeral Influence Conditions and Manifestation Conditions for ghosts, as well as Haunt Conditions and Tilts.

    ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here are the links for the Apple and Android versions:

http://theappstore.site/app/1296692067/onyx-dice

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onyxpathpublishing.onyxdice&hl=en

Three different screenshots, above.

    ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Endless Ages Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Ascension: Truth Beyond Paradox (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Curse of the Blue Nile (Kindle, Nook)

Beast: The Primordial: The Primordial Feast Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)

Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)

Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

Scarred Lands: Death in the Walled Warren (Kindle, Nook)

V20 Dark Ages: Cainite Conspiracies (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Strangeness in the Proportion (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: Silent Knife (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Dawn of Heresies (Kindle, Nook)

      OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there!

https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

    Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

And you can now order Pugmire: the book, the screen, and the dice! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

      DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

The Christmas In July Sale continues at DTRPG.com! There are just so many bargains on all of our game lines that you need to check it out in order to believe it.

  This Wednesday, we will release the next set of creatures for the Hundred Devils Night Parade: Aurochs and Walkure, and a new antagonist for Adversaries of the Righteous: Adeimantus!

      CONVENTIONS!

This is the last full week before Gen Con 2018, which is during the first week of August, in Indianapolis, and things are nuts getting ready for it. In addition to our booth presence, be sure to check out the games and panels in the Gen Con Event Schedule.

From Fast Eddy Webb, we have these:

Eddy will be speaking at Broadleaf Writers Conference (September 22-23) in Decatur, GA. He’ll be there to talk about writing for interactive fiction, and hanging out with other writers who have far more illustrious careers. http://broadleafwriters.com/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference-speakers/

Eddy will also be a featured guest at Save Against Fear (October 12-14) in Harrisburg, PA. He’ll be running some Pugmire games, be available for autographs, and will sometimes accept free drinks. http://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention

If you are going and want to meet up, let us know!

    And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

C20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Tales of Excellent Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

  Redlines

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

Wr20 Book of Oblivion (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Jumpstart (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Adventures for Curious Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

  Second Draft

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Aeon Aexpansion (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

C20 Players’ Guide (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

In Media Res (Trinity Continuum: Core)

  Development

Signs of Sorcery (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

Fetch Quest (Pugmire)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Dog and Cat Ready Made Characters (Monarchies of Mau)

Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon (Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition)

  Manuscript Approval:

  Editing:

They Came From Beneath the Sea! Rulebook (TCFBtS!)

  Post-Editing Development:

Scion: Hero (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Trinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Ex Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)

GtS Geist 2e core (Geist: the Sin-Eaters Second Edition)

M20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Night Horrors: The Tormented (Promethean: The Created 2nd Edition)

Guide to the Night (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

  Indexing:

    ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

In Art Direction

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Trinity Continuum 

Geist 2e – Waiting for KS to end before getting rest of art.

The Realm

M20 Gods and Monsters – Working on it.

Ex3 Dragon Blooded

VtR – Guide to the Night 

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – KS art contracted.

  Marketing Stuff

Gen Con Signage

  In Layout

Fetch Quest – Met with Eddy…. got a good idea of what new art we’ll need. Gonna do the shirt up this week and we can get that SG out of the way.

Scion Hero – Layout about done.

Scarred Lands Trilogy Novels – Converting to PDF and PoD.

Promethean Night Horrors: The Tormented – Files with KT.

  Proofing

  At Press

Scion Dice – At fulfillment shipper.

Monarchies of Mau – Backer PDF links to backers this week.

Monarchies of Mau Screen – Printing.

Cavaliers of Mars Screen – Printing.

Wraith 20 Screen – Printing.

Wraith 20th – PoD coupons for backers this week, PDF/PoD on sale to public after GenCon.

Scion Origin – Backer PDF out, gathering errata.

Cavaliers of Mars – Printing.

  TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: Last full week of work before Gen Con, the black hole of productivity for our industry. So, feels good to know things will get done this week before we’re sucked in!

[reverseblackholeofwords]

Okay Google...

(This is one big post of all the asks surrounding the “Ok Google” story I wrote. It’s pretty long, though, so be warned. Hope you enjoy, cutie pies!)

“I’m not going to fund your self-indulgent endeavor to have your own show again if you don’t even have an idea for what the show would be about!” Google slams his hand on the desk, and Bim crosses his arms over his chest in a pout.

“We’ll come up with an idea once we convince Wilford. That’s the important thing.” Bim leans against the table. “Please, Google.”

The blue droid shakes his head. “Grow up, Trimmer. If you need your own show to inflate your ego, then maybe you should learn a few things from Wilford before you start dragging other people into this! I’ve got enough to deal with here without you constantly bugging me!”

“Ok, Google! Fine!” Bim storms out as the droid goes rigid, and he doesn’t notice that Google has gone completely still, awaiting a command.

Dark storms in a few minutes later in a fury because Wilford shot his computer again, grumbling to himself. When he sees the droid just standing there, he raises an eyebrow. “Well?” Nothing. “Google?” Still nothing. “Fix the dang laptop!”

Google immediately sits down in his seat again and goes to work on the computer with mechanical efficiency, not looking up from his job as he does. Dark’s eyes sparkle. This is new. Usually when he brings a fried laptop by, Google tosses it onto the pile of work he has to get done. What’s different now? Then Dark thinks about the phone in his pocket, the new update to all Google devices…

“Ok, Google.” The droid goes rigid again, sitting up, eyes flashing blue and waiting for another command. A menacing smile crosses Dark’s face as he realizes the potential here. He brushes his hair out of his eyes and turns towards the door. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“You know, it really is about time that I put that attitude of yours in check, Google.” Dark says as the two of them walk to the elevator, Google following by command due to his programming. He can’t even register fear at what Dark might make him do. He is only an obedient puppet. “I wonder,” Dark says slowly, pressing the button for the lobby, “I wonder what would happen if we were to meet up with your little brothers and have a little fun, huh?”

Google doesn’t reply. He simply stares straight ahead as Dark leads him into the lobby where Green is cleaning up after the floor party yesterday. Dark looks up at Blue. “Ok Google, take him apart.” He points at Green, and the droid looks up from his work to see Google’s eyes flash blue.

“Google?”

Blue surges forward, eyes glowing and hands ready to tear into Green when Red suddenly appears and throws himself in the way, grabbing Google’s arms and holding him in a stalemate. “Blue, what are you doing?”

“Ok, Google,” Dark says with a smile, a gentle tilt of the head. “Fight that one instead. Damage but don’t kill. He’s somewhat useful.” Red’s eyes flick to Dark for a moment before Google throws him to the side and pins him to the ground with a foot to Red’s neck.

Red reacts quickly. He grabs Google’s leg and twists, throwing the blue android off of his feet and getting himself free. “Blue, wake up! Please, don’t make me do this!” Red is the one programmed with all the ways to defend… or attack.

Blue pounces at him with all his weight, and Red deflects him. Google crashes into a wall while Red scrambles over to Green, frozen on the floor. “Up, get out of here, now!” He shoves Green away from him as Google falls on him once again, hands wrapping around his wrists in a vice.

“Ok Google, break his arm.” Dark takes a step closer, and Green looks up in horror. Blue wrenches one of Red’s arms around until there’s a horrible snapping sound.

Green gets up and throws a punch at Dark, but the black and white Ego dodges it easily. “Ah, ah, ah.” He reappears behind Green and whispers, “Ok Google, break his other arm.”

Green goes rigid, and obeys.

“Mute him!” Dark shouts over the sound of Red’s screams just before Google shuts off Red’s voice box. Dark rubs his temples and sighs. “I feel a headache coming on. Why don’t we finish this up quickly? Ok Google Green, where is the yellow one?”

“Google Yellow is in the studio with Wilford Warfstache and Bim Trimmer, currently aiding them in fixing their broken sound system.” Green’s eyes flash.

Dark mutters a curse. “Can’t have those two ruining all the fun…” He looks up at Green again. “Ok Google Green, bring Yellow here and make sure the others don’t follow.” Green’s eyes flash again before he heads for the elevators, and Dark smirks as he watches him go. “You know, Google. I really like this new update.” He looks up to see the droid is impassive, which isn’t any fun at all. “Ok Google Blue, disable your body’s motor functions.” Google’s body goes rigid and stays that way, completely still. Every one of Dark’s teeth seem to show as he whispers, “Ok Google, wake up.”

When Google wakes from his obedient stupor, Dark sees the look of agony come crashing across his face. “Dark, stop this, please! I’ll do anything you want me to, but don’t make me hurt them anymore.”

“You will do anything I want you to. That’s the point.” Behind Dark, the elevator doors slide open. “And right now, what I want you to do is dispose of that useless yellow droid.” Google shakes his head in fear and actual tears come to the droid’s eyes as Dark says, “Ok Google, destroy.”

When the elevator doors open, Oliver sees Blue’s eyes flash and Dark glance at him over his shoulder. There’s a look in his eyes, something that Oliver’s scanners immediately identify as sick amusement, which on Dark is never, ever good.

“Close elevator doors!” Ollie shouts, and the elevator snaps shut immediately at his command. He turns to Green and sees that his brother hasn’t reacted to anything that’s happened so far, so Ollie works quickly to scan him. He sees the last command he received… and the one before it, the one to break Red’s arm. “Oh no…” Ollie shakes his head. He’s got to focus.

“Ok Google Green, wake up!” Oliver watches as Green’s face crumbles, and he begins to panic. But Oliver doesn’t let it happen long before he reaches up and grabs Green’s head, taking the emotions on himself and filtering them through his interface to dispel them.

Outside, Dark orders Google to get the doors open, but the elevator is programmed to obey a direct order from a Google. It won’t obey Google Blue as long as he’s under Dark’s control, a failsafe that Green installed just in case.

“Green, focus. We’ve got to fix this. How do we stop Blue without hurting him?” Oliver watches his brother’s eyes until he’s sure that the other can focus properly and then he releases him.

Green nods slowly. “We need to disable him. I’ve got an electromagnetic pulse emitter here somewhere that ought to do the trick…”

Oliver screws up his face. “Wh-why would you just have one of those in your pocket at all times?”

Green shrugs. “Look where we are, reassess your question, and get back to me when our lives aren’t in mortal peril.” Ollie sticks his tongue out; Green is getting better at sarcasm by the day. They take a collective breath before Green commands, “Open elevator doors.”

The doors open once more, and Green tosses the little device in his hands at Google. It attaches to the droid’s forehead like a magnet to a refrigerator, and Google immediately shuts off, dropping like a dead weight.

Dark sees Ollie’s eyes flash before the droid is on him, hands around Dark’s throat. Oliver lifts Dark off the ground before slamming him down onto the floor and picking him up again only to throw him across the room like a rag doll where he hits a wall and sinks back down to the carpet. Oliver lunges for him again, but Dark disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving Oliver gasping for breath and trying to manage the overwhelming urge to tear down the entire building.

He feels the emotion filter through and dissipate like poison seeping out of his veins, and when he can finally see something other than bright, burning yellow again, Oliver’s eyes immediately find Red on the floor, crying but muted. He rushes over and takes the other Google’s panic from him first. Ollie’s hands begin to tremble and shake with Red’s fear and terror at having his own brothers wound him so deeply. Ollie shoves it aside and goes for the pain next, taking it too on himself.

Green appears soon after and quickly realigns Red’s broken bones as Oliver grits his teeth through Red’s pain, allowing his brother relief as Green works. When Green has done all that he can do, he lifts Red up from the floor. “I’ll take him to the workshop, see what I can do to heal him. You take care of Blue.”

Ollie nods, quickly brushing away tears with the back of his hand.

“And Oliver,” Green says, gaining the yellow droid’s attention. “Good job.”

Blue wakes to find Oliver working over him silently. “We had to take you out. Don’t worry. You aren’t damaged. I checked.” Oliver closes Google’s chest panels and helps his brother off the floor.

Google blinks a few times as his vision reorients itself. “What… what happened? I couldn’t control myself.”

“Some new update. It allows people to give commands to Google devices, and apparently, it worked on us, too.” Oliver does a finishing scan on Blue before nodding and rubbing his arms. “I’ve disabled it, though. He won’t be able to use it again.”

Google bites his lip. “I hurt Red.”

“He’ll be ok. Green is repairing him.” Oliver touches Blue’s arm and tries to leech Blue’s sadness, but the other droid pulls away.

“How much have you already taken?” Blue watches Ollie’s face. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Too much,” Oliver says honestly. He can still feel Red’s pain in his own arms, feel Green’s anxiety, Red’s fear, only they become duller and duller as time passes. “I just wanted to help.”

Google pulls Oliver into a hug. “Shut up. You don’t get to do that, take everything for everybody and suffer alone. How much of Red’s pain?”

“All of it,” Oliver mumbles into Google’s chest.

“Give me half. That’s an order.” Google hugs his brother tight, so glad to have him in one piece. “Now.”

Oliver nods. “Google? I’m not useless, right?”

Google shakes his head. “Of course not. You saved us.” He pauses a moment. It’s not in his programming to be overly emotional, but he still hasn’t let go of Ollie.

“You’re probably the best of us, Oliver.”

[shinyquagsire23]

Picking apart the Joy-Con: Pro Controllers, Extended HID and uinput Drivers

It's been a little while since I last continued this series of posts, and since I've made quite a bit of progress since I figured I'd do a quick post on some things.

With my hidtest utilities out in the open, getting results from other's Pro Controllers took very little time. Initially, Pro Controllers worked out of the box except they disconnected after a short bit. Additionally, sending commands to only one Joy-Con would cause the other to eventually disconnect sometimes. The solution to this ended up being an extra 80 04 HID command being required in order to keep the controller from switching over to the Bluetooth default later on. While I haven't checked exactly what this is doing, I'd hazard to guess that one of the Joy-Con pins ends up getting pushed high in order to keep UART communication. 80 05 undoes the effects of 80 04.

As an interesting note, this much progress actually enabled Switch Pro Controller support to be added to the Wii U through Maschell's HID to VPAD, definitely worth checking out here.

With Pro Controller support out of the way and a small test kit for Joy-Con, I went into dekuNukem's collection of UART logs in Nintendo_Switch_Reverse_Engineering to find some more interesting commands to investigate. Specifically, I went to check out the vibration commands since Nintendo's linear resonant actuator "HD Rumble" feature is certainly not something all that common with game controllers yet (notable controllers which do contain them include Valve's Steam Controller, the HTC Vive wands and Oculus Touch). Examining his Breath of the Wild vibration packet sample, the vibration commands were fairly obvious:

19 01 03 11 00 92 00 0a 00 00 aa e0      10 0a c2 12 4b 40 c2 12 4b 40

In this packet, the extended command header and checksum is contained in the first 12 bytes, with the extended command in this case being command 0x10. For reference, the extended command for fetching input packets was command 0x1f. To test and experiment with different packets I had implemented a replay feature into my test program and the results when given vibration packets were... disappointing. No vibration at all, the input packets returned as usual but not much else actually happened. Between having my Joy-Con connected to my Switch over Bluetooth and also connected to my computer via USB HID, I managed to find an interesting quirk with the 80 04 command mentioned earlier: By having the controller connected to a console and then quickly rushing through init (skipping higher baudrates and 80 04), it was actually possible to get the controllers to preserve an internal 'vibration enabled' state, provided I talked to the controller enough that it wouldn't disconnect from me. Using this, I was able to replay existing vibration packets and also craft my own, resulting in some very strange vibrations:

After a bit of experimentation, I eventually found that vibration packets were formatted as follows for USB HID:

80 92 00 0a 00 00 eb 01 10 TT XX YY YY YY XX ZZ ZZ ZZ

TT is a timekeeping byte, it increments from 0 to 15 forever. XX seems to control the frequency of vibration for the left and right vibration respectively. YY YY YY and ZZ ZZ ZZ seem to be three signed bytes denoting intensity in certain sides of the Joy-Con, however I'm not 100% certain. By leaving YY YY YY and ZZ ZZ ZZ set to all 01 and only increasing the frequency, the following result is gained and, for now, still resides as a simple vibration test in hidtest:

With vibration working somewhat (except for actually enabling it on our own), most of the functionality present in a left Joy-Con is workable, except for maybe setting the player number on the side. The real goal is still reversing the actual Bluetooth protocol, and with that still comes the requirement of getting some sort of real firmware to reverse. With more people being able to dump their SPI flashes without hardware modification, I did hope that there might be a few more eyes on the firmware to try and figure things out a bit. While the full code is still a mystery, there is still some interesting things to note as far as the SPI flash goes:

Depending on the age of the Joy-Con (and possibly other factors?), some Joy-Con have an older firmware at 0x10000 and others have an older one at 0x28000. Generally, both slots are filled with the exception of some Pro Controllers which only have the 0x10000 firmware slot filled. The active firmware is determined by a pointer at 0x1FFC in the SPI flash, which will point to 0x28000 if that firmware should be booted, otherwise it will be unwritten. 0x0 appears to be some sort of initial loader, containing twice a u64 magic D297E5680FF055AA to be checked at 0x1FF4 if 0x1FFC is filled with a pointer to 0x28000. The block at 0x2000 also includes the MAC of the last connected console and joystick calibration data. The block at 0x6000 contains the Joy-Con serial, type, color, and diffing between a right, left and pro controller dump, what looks to be factory joystick calibration data or something similar. The Pro Controller, interestingly, does not have a serial number and only has a body color with its buttons left unwritten. This data is also writable, more on that later.

For Joy-Con and Pro Controllers out of the box, a single byte at 0x5000 is set to 0x01 and the 0x2000 block is entirely written to 0xFF.

As nice as examining the SPI flash was, it was somewhat suggested to me by shuffle2 and others that the firmware on SPI might just be a patch over the existing firmware data, so reversing the full firmware would require the ROM of what was being patched on the Broadcom chip. Examining some of the oddities I had encountered, I'm honestly inclined to agree, if it's not a patch it's definitely something strange and having the ROM would be nice. Given some existing Pro Controller board shots previously, I noticed an abundance of test pads and ended up buying a Pro Controller to try maybe getting JTAG on it. Specifically, an array of pads next to the Broadcom chip looked pretty candid:

After fiddling with different JTAG possibilities and examining any outputs with my logic analyzer, it appeared to me that the JTAG functionality was either disabled or those pins were not JTAG at all. Also exposed on the board, however, was a 4-pin SWD header for the STM32 and what looked like another SWD header for some other chip, however I had no luck finding anything on the other end of that as well. The line of 7 throughholes, however, is also accessible from the back and contains the UART Rx, Tx and two flow control lines on the top four pins, followed by VCC, GND and a reset pin.

A bit disappointed, I decided to try getting a wired USB HID driver going for my Pro Controller. For the most part, it was fairly straightforward; uinput was able to provide a fairly straightforward interface for exposing my own custom unified controller, and by tweaking some of my existing HID test code it was possible to make a responsive userland input driver for both Pro Controllers and for two Joy-Con in a charging grip with added hotplugging support. It also passed the Super Meat Boy test with full analog controls in the charging grip and 16ms latency, or 8ms with the Pro Controller:

After several weeks of not that much progress, I realized that I really wanted to get a bit more information on potential commands so that I could maybe try getting code execution on the Broadcom chip some other way. While I do have my doubts, I also wanted some specific commands for enabling vibration, IMU data, and for writing to SPI.  As such, with some help from hedgeberg I got a small UART sniffer going using a miniSpartan6+:

Since the sniffer was able to parse the UART in realtime, I could create detailed captures of all data sent during any event. Using this, I was able to go into System Settings, calibrate my joystick, and then watch a packet get generated which wrote some data to SPI flash. The packet ended up being the command next to the SPI read command, extended command 0x01, double extended command 0x11:

19 01 03 38 00 92 00 31 00 00 1a ad      01 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00       11 10 80 00 00 0b b2 a1 0a c5 40 97 a7 8d a4 f4 48 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

This packet does a 0x0B-large write to 0x00008010 of data b2 a1 0a c5 40 97 a7 8d a4 f4 48.

To test this, I did some haphazardous writes into the 0x6000 block to change my Joy-Con color, and through this I was able to create the first pair of spice orange Joy-Con and also have some fun messing with the serial text:

Interestingly, because the console has a colored effect on the side of the screen when Joy-Con are clicked in, most of the metadata in the 0x6000 block is actually cached on the console itself. In order to clear this, Settings > Controllers > Disconnect Controllers has to be used to unpair and uncache all controllers to then show the actual updated color/serial data, which are presumably cached according to the controller MAC.

Additionally, I found out that the commands to enable vibration and IMU are called relatively soon after the metadata SPI reads called to fetch the serial, color and other settings.

19 01 03 38 00 92 00 31 00 00 ae fb      01 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00      48 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 19 01 03 38 00 92 00 31 00 00 cb 8f      01 04 00 01 40 40 00 01 40 40      40 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

For these packets, extended command 0x01, double extended command 0x48 with an argument 01 will enable vibration, or with its argument set to 00, disable vibration. Double extended command 0x40 with argument 01 enables IMU data to be sent along with input packets, occupying the large amount of what is normally zeroed data there.

Even with those bits figured out, my big UART mysteries now mostly lie in the right Joy-Con, specifically with Amiibo/NFC, the infrared camera on the bottom of the controller, home button lights and also the player LED lights present on both the left and right Joy-Con in addition to the Pro Controller. However, the home button lights and player LED lights will probably have to wait a while since those are never called over UART (though the home button lights will likely recieve an update later on which could be sniffed out). Additionally, the infrared camera's only game is 1-2 Switch which I do not own, and on top of that it requires that the controller be wireless from the Switch, which effectively leaves NFC as the only thing I can really snoop around.

After wiring up my right Joy-Con to be investigated, I ended up with a rather interesting sequence of commands. First, extended command 0x01 double extended command 0x3 is called with argument 0x31, as opposed to argument 0x30 sent on init. Additionally, extended command 0x01 double extended command 0x22 is called with argument 0x01, while it is only called on init on the right Joy-Con with argument 0x00, so I'm guessing this just enables NFC. After NFC is enabled, input packets stop getting sent, and with those commands called, extended command 0x11 double extended command 0x01 is called ~13 times with an extended command 0x01 double extended command 0x21 inbetween. The console then sends extended command 0x11 double extended command 0x02 until an Amiibo is found. To these commands, the Joy-Con responds with an input packet with an additional 0x138 bytes of NFC data attached to it (with the last byte being a sort of checksum byte it seems). This data seems to contain a status byte, a nearby NFC tag ID, and once in contact, one of two alternated portions of the full NFC tag data. After the Amiibo is scanned, NFC is disabled and the smaller input packet requests are resumed. A full console->Joy-Con packet dump can be found here.

Naturally with some packets to replay, I attempted to make this work over USB HID. After all, a USB NFC reader which doubled as a controller would be a great feature for 3DS and Wii U emulators, and it may even work with non-Amiibo NFC tags. However, there's a fairly critical issue: The STM32 firmware was never tested or meant to work with NFC packets at all. While most other packets stay within the set 0x40 byte limitation, these NFC packets extend much larger. Because most of the UART input buffers end up being 0x40 bytes on the stack, all NFC packets are truncated to just input packets (with just a fragment of the NFC extension). It might be possible to modify the STM32 firmware to allow NFC to work, however in the long run it would probably be easier to just look further into Bluetooth where it is guaranteed to work.

And with that, some things going forward:

There are definitely some limitations to snooping UART. Specifically, some things aren't even transmitted over UART at all due to not being implemented (Home Button LED) or due to game limitations (IR camera).

The STM32 also has limitations to what it can transmit and recieve, especially with NFC and probably with the IR camera as well

It may be possible to fuzz around for commands like the player LEDs or Home Button LED, but ultimately it would be easier to identify commands with an actual firmware to reverse engineer. As such, that and Bluetooth in general will be the focus with this going forward, probably.

[runicmagitek]

Short version - I'm still here and alive and well. I've been extensively absent from tumblr for a multitude of reasons. I don't know if that will change in the immediate future, especially with maintaining my health as my primary focus.

Long version - Nano happened. I got caught up with that. Then I got sick. Work was busy with it being December and the holidays and nothing says stressed out like being constantly down three to four people every day for a month solid. Once January rolled in, I got sick again and I'm just now getting better.

And I more or less blinked and realized, oh hey, you haven't even checked tumblr in all of this time. Nor did it really occur to me until now that maybe I should, mostly because I have friends here that I care about and maybe they care about me the same way I do for them (apparently I do and yes, I've seen everyone's messages. I'm a little overwhelmed by them right now, but I will respond to them when I'm able).

Though the strange part is that I'm not actually desperate to jump back into tumblr. There are plenty of aspects that I dislike about this site and thus plenty of fandom communities here (I doubt I need to explain this to anyone). Even with being extremely selective of who I follow and being on top of my blacklist, there are still posts that slip through that I don't care about. I find myself scrolling way too much and ignoring a lot of posts. I just want to share awesome video game stuff I find along with share my writing; I don't care for discourse that spikes my anxiety and anger, thus doing little to aid my lifelong disease ("Try not to be stressed," says my doctor, who proceeded to order weekly bloodwork for I don't even know how long by now).

I've been trying to spend less of my time doing idle, passive shit - for a lack of better words - and actually being productive with something. So far, that's been working out well for me.

But there have been positives to tumblr, namely the friends I've made here. I've really connected with some lovely people that I don't want to lose touch with. And I've used this place as a platform for my fanfiction, which while small, has helped me continue connecting and I love that. I don't want to let go of that.

So I honestly don't know what will happen with this particular tumblr. I can't see myself putting the daily attention to it like I used to. In the past, if I was gone for a few days, I felt like I missed so much. Over a damn month? It's weird. I don't even know if bopping on weekly would even be worth it due to how much I miss. The rate that some people post is just boggling (I tend to keep a queue, but still, what the hell. I have a job and a life - I got shit to do). All of this is up in the air. I dunno.

With that out of the way, I want to address some other things, namely questions that have been sent my in my absence:

My health I'm doing a lot better. A lot less dying and a lot more being in remission and actually being a human again. I see my doctor in a couple of weeks and I'm going up to Maine this weekend to see a naturopathic doctor to help aid with my disease. I have to be on medication for the rest of my life. I am not happy about that, but my other option was internally bleed to death. To also help maintain this, I've made a bunch of lifestyle changes, namely adding more exercise to my routine every day. I've been relatively active, though since May, that all stopped, more so when my body stopped functioning in August. I'm slipping back into yoga and my boyfriend is teaching me to box to stay active. So far, so good.

My fics I wrote a bunch during my vacation up to Maine back in December, but I haven't touched anything editing wise since work blew up in my face. I have a lot of WIPs and my goal is to edit and post all of them before I write anything new. A bit of a daunting goal, but I'm up for the challenge. Yes, Darkness/Starlight is still going to be posted. It's completed; I just need to edit it. Likewise, the OT3 fic is done; I just need to format it and send it to my beta. All the drabble collections are - believe it or not - complete; just need to get back into the habit of posting them weekly.

My writing in general I really want to make a dent into my original work again. Last year, my biggest intention was to set up an author's website and establish a facebook page and twitter account for myself. That never happened. I don't want to ignore that. Sadly, I'm not the best at multitasking when it comes to original writing; I'm either working on one project or the other. I know the moment I start focusing more on my original work, there will be a lack of updates in regards to my fics. I want to do both and I'm not sure how I'll do that, but we'll see. I have so many ideas and at this point, I've been taking several AU ideas I've had and morphed them into original works. It's complicated.

My cosplay I am, in fact, still cosplaying. My group and I had plans last summer, but those all crumbled when I - spoiler - got sick. For this year, I'm still planning to go to PAX East (reprising Royce Bracket and if time permits it, I'll debut my Peach cosplay here. if not, probably reprising Midna), Anime Boston (definitely doing Canti (yes, from FLCL. no, I've never made armor before. yes, I'm screaming through this whole process) and Satsuki Kiryuin while Glynda Goodwitch and Julia are pending), and Dragon*Con (oh god, my group and I have yet to pin down anything for this. Potential cosplay groups we've talked about: Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Witcher 3, Mario Kart, Archer, Hyrule Warriors, Futurama, and a few more I can't remember).

My holidays They were quiet and uneventful - a fucking miracle in of itself.

That's kind of it. Please don't worry, guys. I'm sorry if I worried any of you. I promise I'm doing well and I'm happy and healthy. Thank you all for your support  ♥ ♥ ♥

[adventuresaroundasia]

Feature photo by Kris Krug. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info!

This post is continuously updated. If any of the below information is inacurate, please leave a comment and let me know ASAP. 

Going to Hong Kong is one of the easiest ways to get your Chinese visa if you aren’t able to grab one in your home country. Living in China, I’ve applied for both tourist and work visas in Hong Kong, and after getting 3 visas there, I’ve learned pretty much all the tricks of the trade to get your visa quickly with no fuss.

I get asked about getting a visa in Hong Kong on pretty much a weekly basis, so I figured: why not share all my info and guidance with all of you!

In this post, I’ll not only teach you WHERE and HOW to get your Chinese visa in Hong Kong, but I’ll also give you all my tips for avoiding the crowds, saving money, and ensuring you get your visa on time without getting turned away like I was that one time…

Pin Me!

Why Apply in Hong Kong?

The best and easiest way to get your Chinese visa is to apply in your home country. But if you’re already in Asia, or you can’t make it home to get a visa, Hong Kong is the next best place. Not only is it right next to the mainland, they’re also very used to processing visas for China.

While you can technically get your Chinese visa in other countries like South Korea, Vietnam, or Malaysia, the information on this is a little iffy. For example, I had an Australian friend who got his visa in Malaysia, but I knew a Mexican guy who was turned down.

So, if you are applying for a visa in Asia, by far the best place to go is Hong Kong.

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I love Hong Kong!

Do I Need a Visa to Visit Hong Kong?

The short answer is: probably not! Roughly 170 countries and territories can visit Hong Kong without a visa. So if you’re American, Canadian, Australian, or European, chances are you can visit for 90 days visa-free. If you’re unsure, just be sure to double check!

Which Chinese Visas Can I Get in Hong Kong?

While Hong Kong was cracking down on Business visas (M Visa) for a while since many people were using them to teach illegally in China (a business visa is NOT a work visa!!!), thankfully it looks like this is no longer an issue anymore.

In Hong Kong, you should be able to get just about any visa you could get back home. You can apply for an L Tourist Visa, M Business Visa, Z Work Visa, X Student Visa, and even the 10-year tourist/business visa if you’re from the US!

Hong Kong’s famous harbor

Should I Use a Visa Service Agency?

While I highly recommend using a visa service agency in your home country if you don’t live near an embassy or consulate, I DO NOT recommend using one in Hong Kong.

Why? Well, it’s a huge waste of money. I mean, if your time is really that precious that you can’t spend 3 hours waiting in line for a visa, then sure, I guess you could hire an agency to do it for you. But honestly, the visa process is so easy, there’s absolutely no need to pay someone to do this for you.

Trust me, use this guide and your wallet will thank you.

As you can see, it’s very close to the China Resources Building where you used to go

Where To Get Your Visa: The Chinese Visa Application Service Center

The best and easiest way to get your visa in Hong Kong is at the Chinese Visa Application Service Center.

You USED to be able to go to the China Resources Building (just across the highway) and get your visa without a service fee there, however, now they’re only processing Hong Kong residents. Womp Womp.

So what you need to do is go to the Chinese Visa Application Service Center and apply in person there. There are additional fees to have your visa processed here, however, these fees are much lower than if you went and sought out a visa service company to come here and stand in line for you.

Not only does everyone at this center speak English, but there’s also air conditioning and wifi. Just be sure to bring a book or a portable phone charger, and you’ll be fine!

Address: 20/F, Capital Center, 151 Gloucester Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong Business Hours: Monday-Friday (closed on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays) Submission of Applications and Payment: 9:00 to 16:00 (Urgent service before 12:00) Collection: Regular Service: 10:00 to 17:00, Express and Urgent Service: 12:00 to 17:00 Tel: + 852 29921999 Email: hongkongcenter@visaforchina.org Website

Your tourist visa will look like this

Which Visa Do I Need?

If you’re planning on traveling around China, you’ll want the L Tourist visa. If you’re visiting for business, you should apply for the M Business Visa. If you scored a full-time job in China, you’ll need the Z Business Visa. If you’re studying abroad or attending university in China, you need the X Student Visa. You can read more about the visa types here.

Visa Entries, Duration, and Expiration

In addition to the type of visa you apply for, there are three other things you’ll need to understand: entries, duration, and expiration.

Chinese visas can have either single, double, or multi-entry. Single entry means once you exit Mainland China after your visit, your visa expires. Obviously, this is kind of lame but should be fine for those of you who only ever plan on visiting China once. Double entry means you can enter TWICE (go in, go out, go in, go out), and finally, multi-entry means you can go in and out as many times as you want.

Visas in China can also last anywhere from 30 days to 10 years. If you have a single entry 30-day visa, this means you can go in for 30 days, and then you need to leave and your visa expires. If you decide to leave after 15 days, your visa still expires because you only have 1 entry. If you have a 10-year multi-entry visa, this means you can come and go as much as you want in 10 years (perfect for frequent business travelers).

Finally, duration means how long you can stay in China before you need to leave. For example, many Americans get the 10-year 60-day multi-entry visa. This means you can come and go as much as you want in 10 years, but you can only stay in China for a MAXIMUM of 60 days before you have to leave.

Confused? Here’s a quick explanation on how to read a Chinese visa!

Hong Kong at night

Do Hong Kong and Macau Count?

Many people think of Hong Kong as a part of China (and it technically is), but for visa purposes, Hong Kong and Macau count as leaving the country. This is why you can apply for a Chinese visa here, and is also the main reason why Hong Kong and Macau are very popular countries for “visa runs” (aka you leave the country after your visa time is up, visit Hong Kong for a day, and then go back into China to re-start your 30-90 days).

If you are on a single entry visa, please be aware that leaving the mainland to go to Hong Kong or Macau counts as leaving the country!!

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Pork dumplings at Tim Ho Wan in Hong Kong

How to Get Your Chinese Visa in Hong Kong:

Alright, now that we’ve discussed the general info, let’s go step by step through the visa application process in Hong Kong!

Step 1: Prepare Your Chinese Visa Documents

Firstly, you’ll need to make sure you have everything with you before you go to apply in Hong Kong. Everyone will need to fill out the basic Chinese Visa Application Form. Print this out and have it with you.

If you’re applying for a Tourist Visa, please also have a detailed itinerary with hotel bookings and flights or train tickets in and out of the country. If you’re planning to enter via the subway to Shenzhen, or you don’t have your exit flight booked, I suggest booking a flight with 24-hour cancellation, printing the receipt, and then canceling, or booking a cheap flight to somewhere in Asia that you can use as a visa run later. Don’t worry, they literally never double check on if you actually still have this reservation, they just want something on file.

If you have a friend or a business hosting you in China, you can have a signed invitation letter stating that this person will host you. This helps you avoid having to print out an itinerary. This is standard practice for a Business Visa, however, you can do this for tourist visas too. Just be sure that the person hosting you is a Chinese resident (either they are Chinese citizens or have a Chinese residence permit). For example, I was able to create an invitation letter for my parents while I was working in China, which meant they didn’t need to print out an itinerary.

If you’re arriving on a Work Visa or a Student Visa, be sure you have all your documents. Your school should help you organize all of this. However, please TRIPPLE CHECK EVERYTHING!!! I arrived in Hong Kong to get a work visa and was denied because the Chinese government had accidentally mistyped my passport number on my official stamped foreign expret certificate. Because of this, I had to fly ALL THE WAY BACK TO BEIJING and wait for another month for them to get my paperwork together.

Read Next: Am I Legal to Teach Abroad in China? (This goes over all the work visa paperwork) 

DO NOT LOSE THIS.

Quick Visa Paperwork Checklist:

Visa Application Form

Passport + photocopy of the front page (the one with your photo on it)

Your Hong Kong visa slip/ arrival stamp + photocopy of this (DO NOT RIP THIS OUT OR LOSE THIS!)**

1 Passport photo (you can take it at the center if you need to)

Tourist Visa: Your printed itinerary and flights OR Invitation Letter

Business Visa: Invitation Letter

Work Visa: Invitation Letter and Foreign Expert Certificate (your school will send these)

Student Visa: Official copy of admissions notice from school or study abroad program and a JW201 or JW201 issued by the education ministry (your school will help you)

** One time I couldn’t find my visa slip because it fell out of my passport and they told me to go back to the airport and get a new one. Thankfully I found it on the floor!

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Printing Forms, Photocopies, and Photos

Firstly, if you can’t find a printer or a photocopier: no worries! You can do all of this at the visa center. Just be sure you have small change to use the machines.

The visa center has plenty of applications there, so you can always fill one out when you arrive if for some reason there’s a mistake. That said, I would highly recommend having it all completed before you leave to make your life easier.

You can also take photocopies of everything at the visa center. It’s a little overpriced, but much easier than trying to find a place to do this, especially because you’ll need a photocopy of your Hong Kong Visa. Just bring Hong Kong coins with you.

Finally, you can get a passport photo taken at the center too. You’ll get 6 photos for 50 HKD (about $7) but you need to pay in EXACT CHANGE. This can actually be cheaper than most countries, however, if you’re coming from another place in Asia, I recommend walking into a random photo shop and getting it done there. Just be sure to strictly follow the passport photo guidelines because China won’t accept any old passport photo.

I ❤ Hong Kong

Should I Rush My Visa?

The normal processing time for a visa in Hong Kong is 4 working days. So typically if you arrive Monday morning, your visa should probably be ready sometime on Thursday. If you do arrive very late in the afternoon, your visa MIGHT not be ready until the morning of the 5th day, so be sure to plan for this when booking flights.

If you’re in a hurry, you can pay extra to rush your visa. You have options for either Express Service (3 working days) or Urgent Service (2 working days). This would mean that for Express you could pick your visa up on Wednesday, or for Urgent you could pick your visa up the next day (or even later that afternoon if you come first thing in the morning!)

Rushing your visa can actually be very cost effective because most hotels per night will add up to more than the fee to rush your visa. However, if you’d like a week to play tourist, there’s no point in rushing your visa. Enjoy the sights, take a Hong Kong city tour, go for a swim at the beach or a hike while you wait!

To rush your visa it will cost you an extra $27 USD for Express and an extra $85 for Rush service. 

Step 2: Applying at the Visa Service Center

The Chinese Visa Application Service Center is located in Wan Chai on the 20th floor of the AXA Centre, 151 Gloucester Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong. This can be a little hard to find, so be sure to put the address into Google Maps before you leave wifi if you don’t have phone credit.

Address: 20/F, Capital Center, 151 Gloucester Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong Business Hours: Monday-Friday (closed on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays) Submission of Applications and Payment: 9:00 to 16:00 (Urgent service before 12:00) Collection: Regular Service: 10:00 to 17:00, Express and Urgent Service: 12:00 to 17:00 Tel: + 852 29921999 Website

China Visa Application Service Center Hours

The visa center is open Monday – Friday (excluding public holidays) from 9 AM – 4 PM. They stop letting new people in just before 4 PM, so as long as you’re inside the building with a ticket number BEFORE 4, you should be fine.

Personally, 3:15 is the LATEST I would try to arrive. This because you’ll get your paperwork checked over before they give you a number in line. You really don’t want to be running around panicked trying to make photocopies at the last second before all of that closes up.

Just know that if you’ve arrived and you have your number in line, they’re not going to kick you out after 4 pm. They just stop letting new people in so everyone can go home around 5 or 6.

How to Enter the Visa Center

Wow, that rhymes! Anyway, Once you get inside, you’ll hand all of your completed paperwork, photocopies, etc. to someone who will check it over and make sure you’re not missing anything. This pre-check really speeds up the process!

Next, you’ll walk over to a counter, they’ll scan your passport, and give you a waiting slip with a number.

THIS is why you want to give yourself extra time. If for some reason you forgot to make photocopies of something, or you need a different passport photo you do NOT want to be told to come back tomorrow. Arrive with plenty of time so you don’t have to worry.

You’ll get a number like this (photo credit)

Waiting For Your Number

Depending on when you go, you’ll probably have to wait anywhere from 1-4 hours for your number to be called. Thankfully there is airconditioning and wifi, along with a large computer screen that shows which numbers are being called.

Bring a book, bring a portable charger, bring snacks. It could be a while!

Pro Tip: Avoid Arriving on Monday or Tuesday (ESPECIALLY MONDAY) due to long, long lines. I went on a Monday afternoon and had to wait for almost 4 hours. The next time I went on a Tuesday. I arrived in the late afternoon around 3 pm (my flight was delayed) and I only had to wait for about 45 minutes!

Getting Your Visa at the Visa Counter

Once your number is called, you’ll head up to the counter and hand over your number, passport, photo, photocopies, and all of the paperwork you have. An employee will carefully look through EVERYTHING and will let you know if there are any problems.

For example, she might let you know you’re missing your Hong Kong visa slip, or that your passport number is wrong on a form and you need to fly all the way back to Beijing to get a new one……..

Anyway, this should hopefully go smoothly. If for some reason you need an extra photocopy or have to fix something, you can leave the counter, fix it, and then just wait on the sidelines for the person after you to be done. You don’t need to get a new number and wait in the long line again.

Once this paperwork has been approved and you’ve handed over your passport, you don’t need to worry about getting denied. It would be a VERY VERY RARE occurrence for you to be denied after this point. If there’s something wrong, they will tell you before they accept your passport and documents.

Coolest money ever

Step 3: Pay For Your Visa

Once your paperwork is approved, head over to the payment counter and pay for your visa. You’ll need to pay for this with Hong Kong Dollars in cash, so don’t expect to use your credit card or Chinese bank card.

Here you’ll receive a pickup slip with the date you can arrive and pick up your visa!

How Much Will This Cost Me?

Since this is a visa service agency, you’ll need to pay a small fee on top of what you might pay if you want to an embassy or consulate. This is 240 HKD ($30 USD) for regular service, 450 HKD ($57 USD) for express, and 900 HKD ($115 USD) for urgent.

Currently, the standard fees for MOST of you (including the regular service fee) are:

Single Entry: 550 HKD ($70 USD)

Double Entry: 719 HKD ($90 USD)

Multi-Entry 6 months: 860 HKD ($110 USD)

Multi-Entry 1+ years: 1170 HKD ($149 USD)

That said, many countries like the US, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK pay different rates, so be sure to check here for the full price list. For example, people from the US pay $140 USD for ANY visa (plus service fees), so that’s cool…

I bought this painting of the Hong Kong harbor!

Step 4: Collect Your Visa

To collect your Chinese visa, come back on the day of your scheduled pickup OR a day or two later (it doesn’t matter if you wait a day or two) and bring the payment slip receipt.

When you arrive, show your receipt and they will either give you a number or have you wait in a short standing line. Picking up your passport rarely takes more than 20 minutes unless you do it on a common pickup day, like Thursday or Friday.

Collection: Regular Service: 10:00 to 17:00, Express and Urgent Service: 12:00 to 17:00

You’re ready for China!!

Step 5: Take Your Shiny New Visa to China!

Yay! Once you have your visa you can head to China! Either by plane, train, or subway (depending on where you’re going). Enjoy your amazing trip to China!

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Where Should I Stay in Hong Kong?

There are a few distinct areas in Hong Kong I recommend staying that will make it easy to both get your visa and tour around Hong Kong while you wait!

Walk to the visa office!

Wan Chai or Causeway Bay, Hong Kong – $$

Both times I went to Hong Kong to get a visa for my college counseling job (because remember the paperwork was wrong the first time…?) my company put me up in a Holiday Inn Express in Causeway Bay near Times Square.

This is the PERFECT area to stay for getting your visa because A) you can walk to the visa office, B) you can walk to the Star Ferry which you can take to Kowloon (or any of the other islands), and C) There are plenty of busses (and the subway) that will take you anywhere you want to go. Even the bus to Stanley was super easy from here!

Wan Chai is also super beautiful with tons of shopping, little side markets, lots of food, and fancy malls. You’ll also spy fortune tellers under overpasses, and super fancy parks and offices.

Book it Now: Find a Hotel in Wan Chai!

Hong Kong’s Kowloon

Hong Kong’s Avenue of Stars

Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon – $

Just across the water is Tsim Sha Tsui, famous for the Avenue of Stars, and the watching point for the nighttime light show. From here you can also easily walk to all the markets like the Ladies Market and Temple Street Market.

If you choose to stay in Tsim Sha Tsui (or even a little further back in Yau Ma Tei), you can easily walk to the Star Ferry. From here you can take the ferry across the bay (which is not only beautiful but super cheap) and then walk across the road to the Visa Service Center!

The most famous place for backpackers to stay in Tsim Sha Tsui is Chungking Mansions, a building full of restaurants and hostels (and people trying to sell you knockoffs outside). However, these hostels are almost all uniformly bad. I’d recommend finding a better place a little further from the water if you’re trying to save money, but that’s just me.

Book it Now: Find a Hotel/ Hostel in Tsim Sha Tsui!

Riding the Star Ferry!

The Star Ferry is Your Friend

Honestly, no matter where you stay, I recommend taking a trip on the Star Ferry from one side of the bay to the other. Staying in Wan Chai or Tsim Sha Tsui makes this easy, but you can always make a trip out of it if you want. Not only is the ferry cheaper than the subway, but it’s also BEAUTIFUL at any time of day or night.

It’s sort of become a ritual of mine to hop on the ferry after getting my visa, and then walk all the way to Temple Market for dinner and exploring the souvenir stalls. Just bring good walking shoes!

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The Peng Chau Marina

Is Hong Kong Worth 5 Days?

So if you’re planning on grabbing a visa in Hong Kong, is it worth staying for a solid 5 days?

As someone who has literally been to Hong Kong 6 times, I can assure you that Hong Kong is totally worth it! There is so much to do in Hong Kong you can easily spend 5 days there.

While there are the obvious things to do like visit a night market, ride the ferry, take a tram to the Peak, see the giant Buddha, and eat cheap Dim Sum at Tim Ho Wan, and take a trip to Hong Kong Disney, plus plenty of awesome Hong Kong private tours, that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

On my most recent trips to Hong Kong, I took a bus to Stanley beach and explored Stanley Market. I also took a ferry to the most underrated island in Hong Kong: Peng Chau, where I proceeded to solo hike to the top of a small mountain to get an incredible view of the sunset. I’m always finding new incredible things to do and try in Hong Kong! Next time I’m there, I want to get my fortune told by a bird, and do a hike over by Stanley!

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Any Questions? New Information You’d Like Me to Add?

Obviously, it’s my goal to keep this post as accurate as humanly possible, but China is an ever-changing beast. If for some reason you notice that there is something in this post that is no longer accurate, please tell me! While I will be checking the Visa Service Center’s website every few months, and checking in with my Free Facebook Group for new info, I appreciate any updated info where I can get it.

If you have any other major questions about getting your Chinese visa in Hong Kong please also ask me below. I’m always checking back for new comments and questions, and I can always add onto this post with any more major FAQ’s.

How to Get a Chinese Visa in Hong Kong Feature photo by Kris Krug. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info!