#i’ve just been given so many pages of notes that i have no idea how to solve. both in the time we have and also in general

[callixton]

wow. okay well i guess we all have to go through the gamut of having our work completely torn apart by a mentor i just wish this had happened three weeks ago and not three days before tech

[gin-juice-tonic]

So, for Starters: Book Of Bill Spoilers warning. Another opinion from me below. This new one is about the lost journal pages again, of course.

Originally, I wanted to make a super big crazy essay about all the reasons I think the journal pages in BOB (The Book of Bill’s given name) are fake, and show off my super-cool totally completely sound deductive reasoning techniques in the process.  

Unfortunately, knowing myself I’m not sure I’m actually capable of accomplishing such a feat. You all know how I tend to post things in parts, sometimes out of order, often never finished. However I would like to share something in particular that’s been eating at me that I’ve seen… partially discussed, but only partially. And certainly not the part that I would like to discuss. 

It’s about the rats.

You know, the rats.

I saw these rats being talked about since before I was even able to have a look at the book myself. 

But before I get further into it all, I would like to start off with a joke: 

Why did dead rats, eggnog, a land orca, shrimp colors, It’s a Small World After All, and an Anti-Cipherite Suit cross the road? 

Well, that’s easy. To get to the other side. 

Of the book, that is. 

If you’re anything like me, you probably skipped right to the journal pages upon contact with the book. And if you’re even MORE like me, you were probably left a little confounded by them. Not only did they seem… wrong somehow. But they also felt random. Full of odd choices of subject that didn’t make a lot of sense. Could these pages really have come from journal 3? If so, why do parts of them feel so… completely out of context? 

And this is where the rats come in. As I mentioned before, I saw many people discussing them. In particular, they were noting a connection to this passage from earlier in the book:

Many of the related discussions also felt odd to me. Though I lacked the knowledge to be able to articulate why at the time. UNTIL, I read the book for myself from start to finish. That's when I realized something:  This is not the only time something from earlier in the book connects back to the journal pages. In fact, it happens many, many times throughout the earlier passages. (Here is a small collection of them for your perusal.)

And then it started clicking into place. The reasons the pages felt like they were so abnormally out of context… is because they WERE lacking context!

Now, before you can finish saying “Gin, you’re an idiot.” I would like you to ponder these three questions: 

1) Why, if these pages were taken from Journal 3, should they require context from outside of it to be able to be completely understood?

2) Why is it that this context can be found in what Bill Cipher has been writing in the preceding passages up till now? 

3) If you put food in a mogwai’s mouth at midnight EST but drive it over the CST time zone line back to 11PM before it can swallow, will it still transform into a gremlin? 

Okay, you caught me, that third one is unrelated. But the first two I believe require further thinking. So let’s delve a little further into the idea. Consider this the real third question: 

3) Are we to seriously believe that these, the only pages of J3 still lost to us, just so happen to tie into the new topics from the rest of the Book of Bill over and over like this?  

And since you’ve done so well thinking thus far, I’ll ask a fourth question: 

4) Are you aware of the concepts of Watsonian and Doyalist analysis? 

Assuming you don’t and you won’t google it, I’ll skip to the important part. Watsonian analysis is to analyze a story from within it, as if you yourself were Watson making deductions in a Sherlock Holmes novel.  

Now, from a Watsonian point of view, what happens when we try to answer our earlier questions? Why should it be that the Book of Bill provides so many of these points of reference to the journal pages? 

One possible line of thought could be that Bill wrote the earlier passages of his book *around* the idea of what was contained in the pages, but I think this doesn’t work for a few reasons. For one thing, the purpose of the book is to get the reader to make a deal, not to take a whole novel to set the stage for a 3 day mini Ford adventure. For another, not all of what I described prior is really fit to be called “context”, is it? The rats, the “Small World” cassette, and the Bill-Suit are one thing, but Eggnog? Shrimp colors? Land Orcas? I certainly wouldn’t define them that way. If anything, they’d be better suited to being called “references”. And unlike the more contextual ideas, there’d be no real need for Bill to sneak mere references to the pages into his grand story.  And lastly, there are a great deal of Bill pages that have nothing to do with the content in the journal pages at all.

So what exactly am I trying to say here? 

If we do intend to think of the callbacks outlined above as references, the only logical conclusion within the story is that the journal pages themselves are referencing back to the Book of Bill, not the other way around.

But… how? And why? Something Ford has written in the 80’s shouldn't be able to reference something Bill is writing post-weirdmageddon certainly. 

That’s because “Ford” isn’t referencing it at all!

And as for why… Well, have you ever noticed when you're writing a story on the fly, things you wrote earlier all come crashing back to you as you try to wrap things up? I believe personally that the journal pages are not pages actually written by Ford, but more a strange endcap on Bill’s crazy train of thought! That Bill is the one writing them, and the "references" are just fuel that further the pages creation. Almost as if, to quote someone much more knowledgeable than me on this subject…

(This single paragraph has been inserted a good deal after the original writing of this post.) I would like to clarify, I am not trying to claim the ideas presented in the pages have no basis in reality whatsoever. Ultimately, what I'm saying is I think Bill wrote them, and they should be taken with suspicion instead of as complete fact. "Did this event happen exactly this way?", "Does some of this feel distorted?", "Did this part even happen at all?" I think those are questions worth examining with the events detailed on these pages.

In the end, all I've described above (as well as other aspects of the pages I've not mentioned here) leave me with the impression the pages are not real.

As I stated only a bit earlier, the idea that these pages, the only pages of J3 purported to be lost, should be so connected to the rest of the book is beyond coincidence to me. Not to mention that in order to take these pages as total truth, you must give credence to several other passages of Bill's book as well. And I'm not too keen on having to trust him that much.

To all who have read this far, even to those who may have scoffed at the ideas in here or think I've only written up nonsense. Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts.

I am not saying anyone must agree with me on this. I know some people have found the pages to be important and meaningful to them, and I do not wish to give the impression that I think my view is the end all be all correct one, or that I think lesser of those who believe them to be Ford's own writings. I only want to share my own thoughts on them. And to anyone else who found the pages to feel "off" somehow, possibly validate their feelings too.

[sloanesallow]

Sebastian Sallow Headcanons

So I've seen some of my moots do one of these and decided it was my turn, even if nobody asked. 🤣

These are all ideas that are present in stories I’ve already published, or ones that are forthcoming in Void. A lot of this is word-vomit LOL. I’ve credited anyone that I’ve been inspired by, but otherwise, similar head-canons to other creators are coincidental.

Disclaimer: My opinions are mine. They might also be yours! They might also be somebody else’s. Or not. That’s the fun thing about fandom. We can all have our own thoughts! Disagree? Cool! Just don’t be mean about it. :)

Sebastian is left-handed.

Actually, ambidextrous. So while it’s probably an error in-game, if you take Sebastian with you to Hogsmeade, in the Three-Broomsticks he stands up to defend you with his wand in his left hand. I’ve just decided to run with it and think his left is more dominant than his right, but he can use both.

Sebastian is on the spectrum.

Because I am on the spectrum, it’s hard not to write this nerdy little boy as somebody who obsesses over data and information. Sebastian is a numbers guy. Counts stuff in his head; keeps lists. Obsessive about his note-taking and will throw away a page if he thinks his penmanship isn’t perfect enough. I put in a previous post that he’d be the type to stare at a jar of jelly beans and know how many are inside with one glance.

Sebastian is very intelligent but oh so stupid (affectionately)

For some reason, the only comparison I can think of right now is a weird combination of Abed and Troy from Community. You know the friend that seems to always be in weird, preventable situations and says the most out-of-pocket things but will turn around and quote Shakespeare. He probably is the smartest person in the room but isn’t humble about it. Sebastian is book-smart and thinks he’s street-smart (insert John Mullaney here) but his life experience is actually quite limited. Yes, his parents died (and he may have witnessed it to some degree), but I do think he might have been sheltered in some capacity. Which brings me to my next point:

Sebastian’s feelings are intense, and sometimes misguided

Sebastian would benefit from therapy, no joke. He likely wasn’t given the space to process his parent’s death, so it’s no wonder he SPIRALS when Anne gets sick. His desperation comes from a place of fear, but his inability to cope leads to some very unfortunate circumstances. And yes, Sebastian can be deceptive and manipulative, but I don’t think he acts this way on purpose, but because he doesn’t know any better. He acts first, thinks later, and this can lead to tension in his friendships (MC/Ominis). It’s also why so many authors write him as somewhat possessive when pairing him romantically with MC (or anyone, really). I tend to write him as being disinterested in romance (too busy) until it smacks him in the face and he chases that high obsessively. However, I think it takes a long time for Sebastian to recognize what real, healthy love is.

Sebastian would never be an Auror

I’ll die on this hill. Sebastian would probably not ever want to work for the Ministry, and distrusts authority, even as he ages and matures. Regardless if you think he acted in self-defense or not, he still killed his uncle with an unforgivable. That’s scary. And dangerous. A kid knowing and practicing Dark Magic? Even if he never does it again, he wouldn’t risk his life by flaunting himself in front of the Ministry. Also, Solomon was an Auror. Now, I’ll admit I have him working with the Ministry in some capacity in my fics (curse breaker), but for the most part, he is a free agent and does what he wants (in true Sebastian fashion).

Pocket cookies

Always has some kind of snack in his pockets for emergencies. I’ve had this come up several times now in my fics (see below) and it’s a running joke. I just love the idea of him pulling out a cookie to offer somebody in their time of need.

Other little things:

Triple Scorpio??? I did this on accident when making a birthday (November 8 1873) for him and CoStar said based on my made-up birth chart he was Scorpio Sun/Moon/Ascending which according to my astrology babes, is uhhhhh insane.  

Allergic to lavender???? Don’t ask.

He's just a silly, goofy guy, okay?

[mysticsparklewings]

OhuHueVember Prompt List

Finally, I can share the surprise I’ve been working on! 😆 (Though admittedly later in the day than I really wanted...)

After years of wanting to try out Huevmber, I finally thought of a way to make it work for me, all because I spend far too much time thinking about markers. 🤪 And I did my best to make it easy for others to join in, if you want to!

I tried to get all the essential information on the images themselves but y’all know me by now��If you need more information, I’ve got a MUCH longer write-up hiding behind the "Keep Reading" button + a Spreadsheet, if you need it, too! ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Before I get into my usual long-winded description (and trust, it will be long), if you want to actually follow this prompt list—Or the Weekly version—here's what you need to know (some of which is already stated in the image, but I want to keep things as clear and easy to understand as possible!):

Here's the "Official" Spreadsheet that has all of the color codes, Honolulu color names, and some additional information like recommended Light/Dark blend pairings for each color typed out, both in case the image format doesn't work for you and also because some things like the Light/Dark blends just wouldn't all fit in one image. [A sample photo of the Light/Dark blend pairings will also be available soon, and I'll add a link here when they are, but I unfortunately ran out of time to have them ready to post alongside the list

As the upper right corner says: This challenge is not officially affiliated or sponsored by Ohuhu, I just like the markers and have had them on the brain a lot lately!

This is open to all mediums! While this challenge was inspired by working with Ohuhu markers traditionally, as the image says: If you don't have these specific markers or colors, use what you do have! This includes doing the challenge digitally if digital tools are what you have, or whatever other medium you're comfortable with and have access to: Original Art, Coloring Pages, Card Crafting, etc. The point is to play with color and have fun, so as long as you're doing that, pretty much anything goes!

Likewise, as the image says: The idea is to focus on 1 Color ("Hue") Everyday in November, but you can use as many colors as you want each day as long as the "Color of the Day" is the main focus/main visible color.

I've provided a Weekly version of the list in case the full 30 is too much, but you can pick-and-choose words from the full list however you'd like if you're not crazy about the colors I picked for the Weekly version, or if you want to shorten the challenge in a different way. - Do note though that the 5 colors I chose for the Weekly version were selected to specifically work well as a 5-color "mixing" palette to make those 5 colors stretch farther as a limited palette, if you're up for a little extra challenge. Based on this video by Peter Donahue.

Tagging me is appreciated, but not required! However, do note that I will Like & Share posts that I can easily identify as being related to the challenge on platforms where I'm able to do those things. If you want me to see and share what you made, Tagging me makes it easier!

Remember that my views on these Month-Long Daily Challenges is that it's about the challenge of completing a certain amount of creative pieces in the time given...And that's pretty much it, so as long as you're doing that and having fun, I'm really not bothered about how you choose to follow the list! My Inktober motto has always been "work smarter, not harder," and this is no different!

I think that's all the stuff you need to know to participate, but if you're curious in hearing more about my thoughts/process in putting this challenge together, read on!

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Would you Sparklers believe that I was so excited about sharing this that I had trouble staying asleep until time to get up this morning? 😆 It's true!

Either way, some of you are probably wondering just as much as I am what exactly has gotten into me lately: First I make my own prompt list for October—something I can't say I ever previously thought I'd do—and now here I am just having finished that list with yet another daily, month-long challenge...And I made this list, too! 😱

Some of you may have noticed that as we went through Obscutober this year, there were various points where I hinted at working on something marker-related and/or something for November. If you haven't figured it out already, this is what that was about! 🤭

And you'd think I would have learned my lesson about taking on one Daily Challenge after another back in 2021...

I'm sorry, Sparklers, I just had the mid-typing realization that the last time I took on a daily challenge in November was also immediately after the last time I did Obscutober instead of Inktober and my brain froze for a second. How did I not notice that before??

What was I saying? Oh.

At that time, I took on @ProjectEducate's 30 Days of Art Challenge, but I also attempted to dial things way back for myself by using it as an excuse to playing more Animal Crossing: New Horizons rather that making full-blown artwork everyday..And while that did help, it still turned out to be my challenging than I expected. 😅

That's one of the primary [ha] reasons I've never participated in the "traditional" Huevember challenge for November, even though I found it very appealing when I discovered it existed. I know myself, and just the same as I typically don't have the stamina to do Inktober in a "normal" way, I know I definitely don't have the stamina to do Huevember in a "normal" way immediately following Inktober (even if I do account for the fact that I do Inktober in weird ways).

Making my own list makes that no different, but then...What are we doing here? 🤔

Well, all of this really stems from the fact that—as I believe I've mentioned somewhere before, maybe multiple places—I've been spending quite a lot of time over on Reddit discussing and answering questions about Ohuhu Markers. As it stands, Ohuhu themselves doesn't provide a ton of resources for the markers, so it largely falls back on the user community to fill in the gaps, and it happens that I know, keep track of, or otherwise have close-at-hand a lot of "gap" information specifically for the purposes of keeping my Ohuhu Swatch Chart up to date.

I also do just really like the markers, so as much of a chore as it can be to keep track of all the information at times, I really don't mind getting the opportunity to just nerd out about them a few times a week.

The thing is, as is not too difficult to notice if you look at my art posting history, I haven't actually had a whole lot of time or allowed myself as much opportunity as I'd like to make actual art with my Ohuhu markers.

So back in September while I was trying to figure out what in the world to do for Inktober this year and one of my friends offhandedly suggested a "Swatch Challenge" for Inktober, in a matter of minutes my brain connected dots from "Swatches" to > "Colors" to > "Huevember" to > "Ohuhu" to > "OhuHUE"!! "Huevember but with Ohuhu markers, specifically!!" 💡

While obviously not really at all helpful for figuring out Inktober, that did sound like a great way to take advantage of how much the markers have been on my mind lately and participate in the Ohuhu community some more beyond being, essentially, a sentient FAQ page. 😆

So, as crazy of a move as it felt—and still does—What time I wasn't planning for and then working on Obscutober during September and October (and wasn't spent either dealing with IRL things or giving myself some much-needed break time in between), I spent trying to pull things together to make this challenge possible.

Those things included (not really in a particular order as a lot of these things I went back-and-forth with at various stages):

Picking the 30 colors that would be featured. The more natural choice probably would have been to "match" Ohuhu colors to the existing Huevember colors, but after thinking it over, I decided it would be better to try and keep things more accessible, if I could. Not everyone will have the big 320 set of Ohuhu Honolulu colors to choose from, but I know a lot of people will probably have at least the "standard" 48 colors that the Honolulu line started with—Either because like me, that's the set they started with, or because those 48 colors are all included in quite a few other "standard" sets.

For what it's worth, I did consider starting with the 24-count Honolulu set colors to try and make the colors even more accessible, but that set has NO orange in it for some reason and I wanted this challenge to be as colorful as possible, so I didn't really want to include black or grey if I could help it.

In the other direction; I very nearly included R13 from the 72 set to try and flesh out the purple sleections more, but I noticed that while I was putting the suggested blends together, the light/dark blends that make the most sense with R13 made the trio-blend look nearly identical to the trio blend for PB2. So in the end, I decided to just shift the Dark blend on PB2 to a slightly more purple-y blue and leave R13 out after all.

In exchange, P3 got added to the list...which made things a little harder in figuring out the trio blends for P4, but my only other option for purple in the 48 set was R11, and in my blend testing it proved even trickier to deal with. 🙃

Picking said Light/Dark blend for each color. This most involved a lot of swatching and test blends, which was easily the longest and most laborious part of the process.

And as stated at the top of the description, I fully intended to have a sample photo to show you those blends in action—I have swatch cards all labelled and everything!—but I simply ran out of time to have that ready to post alongside the list today. 😅

I'm still going to do the samples, it'll just be either later today or tomorrow before they're ready. Either way, I'll post a link here when they are!

I'll spare you the nitty-gritty on the process of picking out said blends, but suffice to say there was a LOT of back-and-forth that took up 5 pieces of cardstock—some of them front and back—because I wanted blends that stayed "true" to the hue of each color, and still actually showed variation in the lightness or darkness of the color, but also were relatively "easy" blends that didn't take too much work to look smooth. At least on the type of paper I like to use (60-80 lb. cardstock or 80-100+ lb. mixed media paper). I did learn from another test that these blends do still mostly work on plain printer paper, for example, but it's not quite the same, so your mileage will vary a little bit on how easy the blends really are. Why did I find this step even necessary to bother with, for as much trouble as it was? Call it a symptom of the wider Ohuhu and alcohol-marker using community. People are always wondering what/how to blend clothes together well, and between that and trying to provide what accessibility to the challenge I can, offering pre-selected blends seemed like a good idea. [And, if I'm being totally honest, I didn't realize exactly how much work figuring the blends out would be and thought getting the chance to just play with color blends sounded fun when I made the decision to do it. 😅]

To that end, I also of course Determined reasonable Hex Code "matches" for each color. Again, this was largely an accessibility thing trying to account for people that either don't have the specific colors/markers listed and want to attempt to match the colors in some way, and to provide an option for any digital artists just in case any see the list and want to give it a try, especially since digital brushes that mimic alcohol marker behavior have become more popular in recent years.

As noted in the Spreadsheet, I both looked at multiple swatches of the actual real marker colors and was using some of those digital "alcohol marker" brushes to text how the selected digital color would behave. I'm quite sure some of my final choices aren't completely perfect picks, especially if you're working in a different program than I was (Procreate), but I at least stand by them as "reasonably close" options.

And just in case anyone passed by this post and is wondering, because I know I've seen people ask for it—I would in fact like to one day provide "reasonably close' Hex code matches for all of the Ohuhu Honolulu markers, but that is definitely a far-off project you should not expect from me any time soon after seeing just how challenging it was to do for these 30 alone. 🫠

Worth an additional here that I actually originally wanted to include hex matches for the Light and Dark blends to make "Light" and "Dark" versions of the prompt list itself for people who do have access to the 320 range and maybe wanted to play with color in different ways than the "base" tones, but again: Figuring out the hex matches for these 30 was trouble enough and I could tell I really, really was not going to have time to do that and the other prep work I still had left to do at that point.

Speaking of, I had to Determine Oahu matches or "close enough" alternatives for each color. Yet again the magic word is accessibility, and I've also noticed that the Oahu (no brush tip) markers just sorted get left out when it comes to Community Ohuhu Resources. Since we now have a Spreadsheet reportedly from Ohuhu themselves listing which Oahu and Honolulu colors match, it was important to me to include them, even if it was a little more work.

For all of the colors that had 1:1 matches, it really wasn't too bad. What through me for a loop was the few colors that didn't have 1:1 matches, so I had to go track down some swatch examples and make an educated guess which other Oahu colors would be closest. So there's your acknowledgement right now, just like the image says, I know at least a few of the Oahu colors aren't exact matches. Both because exact matches don't exist, but also the "closest" matches I did pick may not be fully accurate either since I don't own the Oahus and had to pick based on swatches over the internet. I'm sorry, this is the best I could do!

And of course, what I consider a key component of making Month-Long challenges accessible: I had to Put together a Weekly version!

As noted at the beginning and in the description for the Weekly version: I chose for the Weekly version were selected to specifically work well as a 5-color "mixing" palette to make those 5 colors stretch farther as a limited palette, if you're up for a little extra challenge. Based on this video by Peter Donahue. I had actually previously picked out 5 colors from the 320 Honolulu range after seeing Pete's video purely for fun. Alcohol markers notoriously aren't usually good for "mixing" to get new colors the way you would paints or pencils, but I was intrigued by his limited palette since he was working with oil paints, which kind of notoriously don't mix as vibrantly as other media. For the record, my original 320 set picks for the 5 colors are:

Y080

B070

PB2

RV080

YR3

Two of which were already in my selection of 30 for this challenge, and B070 was naturally super close to PB7. Initially, RP1 was a closer match to RV080, but in testing I found that R10 mixed better for this selection.

So really the only color I had to make a big compromise on was Y080. There's really nothing else quite like in the entire Honolulu range, but in my testing GY6 worked better than I expected as a substitute, considering the limited options I had to choose from here. And then I just lucked out that November technically takes up 5 weeks on the calendar, I just had to figure out the "spacing" so each color would get a reasonable number of days to work with, the same way that I adjusted the days for the Weekly version of Obscutober. [And frankly, that was easier to do here since November has 30 days and 30 divides evenly by 5.]

I did briefly re-visit the idea of sticking just to colors from the 24 Honolulu set so the Weekly version could be as accessible as possible, but long story short the longer I look at the color selections for that set, the weirder the stranger they seem, so I ultimately I couldn't help myself and just went with the colors I thought would be more versatile even if they're not likely to be as accessible.

I mean, after all, I was going to have a disclaimer that you can use whatever you want even if you don't have these specific colors anyway, so hopefully it won't be too big of a deal that I opted for the palette that I personally saw more use in. Oh, and for what it's worth: I did consider making a "Lite"/every-other-day version of this list like I did last month, but after seeing the "Lite" version was not a popular choice last month and acknowledging I already had my work cut out for me, I decided it didn't really seem worth the extra effort when I fully believe everyone is capable of skipping days on their own as they see fit.

And then, of course, another step that ended up being trickier than I expected: I had to figure out how to compile all of this information, or at least most of it, in a single image. (Well, okay, two images including the Weekly version, but you get the idea.)

Again, I'll spare you the nitty-gritty, but I will say that while I did clearly figure something out, I nearly completed another version in a more typical list format before deciding I didn't like how little you could actually see the colors themselves in it. I don't know about you Sparklers, but "Huevember" makes me think colorful, so that's how I wanted the list/post image to be.

In the midst of trying to figure out a better way to do the list for maximum information + maximum color + maximum clarity, I paused to work on the wrap-up template for this year's Obscutober (which yes, is still a thing I'm going to do, probably tomorrow), and it was from doing the calendar format for that from which sprang the idea to try a calendar format for this! 😃

If you look at one of my usual Inktober wrap-ups, you'll notice it's still not 1:1 because I had a lot more text information that needed to be here, but y'know I think it was a pretty great solution, all things considered. 😊

Though, for the record, the Weekly version was originally going to have the bars for each "week" in proper calendar format too—spread over the actual calendar days each one would take up—but that was scrapped because the longer I looked, the more confusing that layout looked for the actual information. So I sacrificed the cheekiness in the name of making it clear and easy to get the information you need from that version.

You might have guesses that even though I was working on this in the background for nearly two months that I still maybe bit off more than I could chew by the fact this is going up both on November 1st instead of a couple of days in advance (like I was very fortunately able to manage with Obscutober) and it's also going up in the very-late "afternoon" instead of more like around lunchtime. 😅

I really, really did my best to have everything ready before now, but the last couple of weeks of October proved much busier than I expected. I probably should've seen that coming because that always seems to happen when I'm working on a time-sensitive project that's big and important to me, but I can't see the future and I can't just never work on another big, important project again because I'm afraid that'll happen, so... 🤷‍♀️

I just have to accept this is the way things turned out and try not to be too hard on myself about it. It was a lot of work and still deserve credit for that, at least!

Speaking of: Some of you might be wondering about that long-ago mentioned point: "I know myself, and just the same as I typically don't have the stamina to do Inktober in a "normal" way, I know I definitely don't have the stamina to do Huevember in a "normal" way immediately following Inktober..." That is still true, and I do not plan to approach my challenge here in a "normal" way either, for that reason.

But, much like my logic of "well, I made the list, I should use it," for Obscutober, after all the work I put into this, I am still going to use the list/participate, and not just the Weekly version either. [Though I fully admit just doing the Weekly version would probably be the smarter thing to do for me...]

I'll try and keep this brief since the description is certainly enough of a book already and the sooner I can wrap this up and get it posted so other people can actually participate if they want to, the better, but:

I've been wanting to get back into just coloring in Adult Coloring books (or single pages made for that audience) occasionally, as I've unintentionally moved away from that hobby for a few years when I used to do it all the time. When I first started, the hobby was still pretty new and niche, and sharing finished pages felt "wrong" to try and mix in with my regular art posts, but things have noticeably changed since then.

And in particular, using Ohuhu markers in adult coloring books has actually become pretty common.

So that's the first part of what I'm going to do to try and scale this challenge back so I can still particpate be hopefully not overwhelm myself: After some consideration of options, I've printed out some of Johanna Basford's similar illustrations on small, 2.5" x 3.5" cuts of my favorite mixed media paper—Artist Trading Card size!—and those are what I'm going to color for the month.

The second part of how I'm going to scale back is that, while I am going to actually color something every day for the challenge, I'm only going to post my finished results once a week. Because I found/remembered during Obscutober that since I both like to type out these long descriptions (even when it's not really necessary) and cross-post to about a dozen places, the actual posting-everyday-process is what really wears me out and gets me down, often far more than making the art itself typically does. 🫠

I admittedly had much grander plans and was hoping to still post every day in some way when I first set out to make this challenge, but I think if you've read the description this far, you'll understand why I had to change course for my own sake. 😅

Speaking of...Let me think for a moment if this might be it, if I've explained everything I wanted to both about the challenge itself and my approach to it...

I think so, but there was a lot to cover so hopefully if I did leave anything out, it wasn't that important and I can either edit this description or just touch on it at some later point during the month.

Either way, I hope if anyone does want to participate—as I am boldly assuming at least a few people will—I hope you're not too upset and/or can forgive me for not being able to post this sooner so you could get started sooner. As discussed, I did my best and I feel any frustration or disappointment you may have with the posting time of the list, 100%. But I am unfortunately only one human that can only do so much in a day's time that does not have the budget to hire an assistant to help me do stuff like this at this point in my life. 🙃

Oh! For the record, I don't plan to make this a yearly thing, which is why I've not put a year on the image or in the title. Mainly because having to pick all-new colors would really mess with the various points of accessibility I've tried so hard to keep, so if this does turn out to be a thing people want to do again, my plan would honestly be to just use the same list in perpetuity, and maybe just add onto it with some of the things and ideas I didn't have time to flesh out the way I wanted this year. However, that said, I'm not fully opposed to revisiting the idea of wholly new color assortments in the future if this version proves successful enough. What exactly that "enough" is I won't know until I see it, but I did just want to lay all my cards on the table for people who might be curious about long-terms plans here. Now, if you all will excuse me, I best go ahead and get this cross-posted while there is still some sun in the sky and, as mentioned, after that I still have a few other things on my plate that need my attention for the day—including my own participation in the challenge!

So, whether you choose to participate or not: Here's to starting the month off strong and having fun! 🥂 And good luck to us all!

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List Design  © me, MysticSparklewings

This Challenge is not officially affiliated with or sponsored by Ohuhu

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[lady-bess]

Fallout - Chapter 8 "Back to Basics"

Jack Daniels x F!Reader Explicit/18+ (Minors DNI please) Chapter Word Count: 6.4k Chapter Tags: Trauma response, description of training, description of weaponry, use of a gun, PTSD/Trauma flashbacks, traumatic reaction, grounding, slight intimacy, description of wounds/scars, beginning of a friendship, drinking, eluding to being drunk at times (sensibly).

Series Masterlist | A03 Link | Tumblr Masterlist

<- Previous Chapter (Ch. 7 - "An Encounter")

Training Jack proved to be somewhat difficult - especially when he finally had a weapon placed back in his hands.

A/N: Thinking of changing the artwork for this series...thoughts? Also I'm officially scrapping an upload schedule. I started this as an every Wednesday idea, but I've found it too restrictive. I'm now just going to upload whenever I had a chapter ready! It'll still be regularly that this series gets updated, but that just gives me a bit more freedom!

Your time spent in the bar after work was somewhat different to how you first imagined it to be. Rather than the tipsy affair you had in your head, instead you opted for nursing a whiskey while plotting what training you could offer Jack. You swilled the contents of the glass around briefly as you contemplated what you had planned, your eyes scanning over scrawled notes littering the book you’d been using, before you were joined by a familiar southern drawl. 

“How’s it coming along?” Tequila had asked as he slid into the booth with you, a cold beer in hand. He took a swig of the drink as he got himself settled in next to you as you both awaited the rest of your party to join.

“I think I’ve got it nailed down. Here,” you pushed your notepad over towards Tequila, “have a look and see what you think?”. 

Tequila took another swig from his bottle before setting it down on a coaster and turning his attention to the book you’d been jotting down notes in all evening. Although your meeting with Jack was brief, combined with what Tequila had already told you about his rehabilitation after Jack had left had given you a good framework to start plotting with. You knew before Tex had given you more information that this would have to be a very different training plan, but you hadn’t anticipated just how different. 

Time. That was going to be the main difference - even in spite of the fact Jack had been a very well respected, and highly trained, agent for so many years, there was not an element of this that you could rush. Normally your goal was to get recruits to a high standard as fast as possible, and as you only ever dealt with the weapons training it was simple for you to streamline the process. All your training could be simplified as the more you practise, the better you get.

But Jack would have to be different. The kind of trauma he had faced over his life, totally unchecked too, made you take a different approach. You wouldn’t even dare put a weapon in his hands for a few weeks at least, and only would on the advice of Loretta. 

Tequila nodded slowly as he read over your notes, following the words with his finger - an endearing trait about Tex you’d picked up on when he told you about his dyslexia, and the struggles he sometimes had when it came to the admin side of his job. He’d found ways to make it work for him, and never didn’t turn in his reports, but there were still times you’d see him struggle. Your handwriting probably didn’t help, either…

“Looks good, London,” he said, smiling as he handed you the book back, “are you gonna start training him right away?” he asked. You nodded, placing your ribbon page marker into the book before closing the cover and tucking the book back in your bag. 

“No point delaying things. I imagine Jack’ll want to get going soon anyway. Sounds like he’s been itching to get back out there,” you said, returning to nursing your drink. Tequila chuckled as he took a sip of his drink. 

“You’re not wrong there. For months he was fine, and didn’t want to really think about it. But these last few weeks he’s turned a corner and there’s been a huge shift in him - and for the better, too. He’ll be pleased to know you’ll want to start immediately.” 

You smiled at Tex, finishing the last of your drink. 

“It’s good to have you back. I missed you; we all did,” you said. He pulled you in for a side hug, squeezing you tight into his solid frame. He planted a soft kiss in your hair, then released you. 

“I missed you too, kid.”

You’d spent the rest of that evening catching up with Tequila, finding out about his life in the UK with Astrid, who when she joined the table the two of you both almost broke down in tears after finally being reunited. She coddled you in her arms and it was like no time had passed at all - suddenly it was over two years ago,  the night before you found out where you were being stationed, and the two of you were drunkenly hugging like your lives depended on it. 

Tequila and Astrid would be staying States-side for a while, but that didn’t stop the two of you treating that night like you’d never see each other again. By the time the morning rolled around, and you peeled yourself off your bed, you cursed the fact you’d let Astrid talk you into three rounds of shots to finish the night off. Getting up to brew a pot of coffee, you thanked your lucky stars you’d told Jack to not meet you until the afternoon, and opted to type up his training plan from your work laptop at home so you could at the very least nurse your hangover in the comfort of your sweatpants and no bra. 

Jack’s training plan was a solid one, and this was probably the most thought you’d ever put into a recruit’s programme. Which sounded bad, given that for over a year it had been your job to train the next generation of recruits - but Jack was complicated, he wasn’t a fresh slate like so many who walked in through the doors of your office. There were so many adjustments you needed to make before you could confidently loosen the reins with him like your other students, even if he did technically have more experience than you in this line of work. 

The major adjustment you’d had to make with him was significantly dialling back on the combat and weapons side of things. Having spoken to both Tex and Loretta to get an idea of the kind of rehab programme he’d been undertaking, it was clear that the very last thing you should consider was putting a weapon in his hand. Which was something you knew anyway, but after re-reading his therapy notes once the caffeine hit your system that morning, you thought twice about also getting him involved in physical combat. 

That afternoon, once you’d made yourself look somewhat presentable, you’d started at ground level with Jack, and so began the next two months of you being his 1-on-1 trainer. Meeting at your office, he’d then been given a tour to the site as if he were a fresh-faced twenty-something who had been poached by Statesman, with no prior secret service training under his belt. He’d met all his new colleagues, some of whom he already knew , and learnt about all the recent developments that had happened since he’d been taken off active duty. 

Then, the admin work. How you didn’t pull your hair out with him you’d never quite understand - for a man who had been in a job literally engulfed with technology for the best part of two decades, it was like watching a fawn how to walk on ice when it came to him getting to grips with the new system and the way in which things were filed. Long gone were the days of brown envelopes containing classified information, a system he was so comfortable with, and in with digital. 

After the twelfth consecutive training day of getting him used to the system, you almost lost your rag at him. You were behind on your own paperwork now, with Jack’s training slowly becoming to the detriment of your own cases. At just turned four o’clock one afternoon, with your head in your hands, you grumbled at him. 

“How did you manage before?” you’d asked, genuinely curious how he’d gotten by if he was this shit with technology. He’d just shrugged, wiping his hands across his face in equal frustration at the fact he couldn’t grasp it. 

“I’d had assistants for years! I never needed to worry about any of this shit,” he’d said, which suddenly answered a lot of your questions. 

Jack was the biggest pain in your ass you’d ever known. You thought that for someone who had been given a second chance at life that he might be a little more grateful to the training you were giving him – and in the discreet manner in which you were giving it. Jack didn’t make it easy for you; for as much as you were happy with the cover story that he was brand new to Statesman, the former senior agent spent a fair bit of his time out chatting to other colleagues in a way where it was very obvious he clearly had a past with the company.

But still, you persevered. Sticking to your word, you didn’t tell anyone who he really was, even when you were asked about it. Schmidt had enquired about him on a few occasions.

“Tex says he’s new, but I’m not convinced y’know. Is there more to it?” he’d asked one afternoon you’d gone to get coffees. You’d just shrugged it off, answering with a non-committal, “Not that I’ve been told”.

But in spite of how much you wanted to ring his fucking neck some days, Jack gradually got the hand of it. He saw how much effort you’d put in, and when he’d noticed you not leaving your office one night just to catch up on your own work, he’d seen the sacrifice you were making to your own caseload just to make sure that he was getting the training he’d needed. 

Filled with guilt, he’d brought you a latte that next morning ( with an extra shot of espresso) , and had started pulling extra hours himself to make sure he had it nailed. He would repeat anything he didn’t understand time and time again until he cracked it. You found him one night cooped up in the library by himself in the corner, desperately typing away on a laptop. The smallest quip of a grin could be seen on his face, and you slinked away that evening with a sense of pride that he’d finally started getting it. 

After that night, spending time with Jack slowly got more tolerable. You’d be lying if you said that the two of you hadn’t got off to a rocky start - he was someone who had been so used to getting any privileges handed to him on a silver platter, and now for the first time in years he was actually having to work for it. It had obviously ground his gears, and he’d resented you somewhat while he was getting to grips with everything anew. As his training officer, you became the face of all his misfortune, in his mind you were the reason that he wasn’t progressing faster. 

But once he got over himself and let his ego calm down, he started to see that none of this was your fault, and instead you were doing everything in your power to help speed this along. In a way he started to admire you - how you held yourself, how kind you were, and how far you had come with Statesman in such a short amount of time. The two of you might have still butted heads from time to time, but on the whole it was getting to be a much more amicable relationship the two of you had. 

Finally, Jack started making progress in leaps and bounds. Not only was he finally getting the hand of filing the paperwork, and making record time for some of it now after hours of practice, but Loretta had finally cleared him for using firearms. 

“There ain’t a guarantee he’s totally ready. There never will be, child. But his sessions have been the most positive since I met the guy. I’d say it’s worth a try ,” she’d said. 

You were nervous about the prospect of Jack handling a weapon - you’d read his file and knew what a marksman he used to be, and how he could handle himself in seemingly any situation. Of all the agents who were serving with the organisation at the time of his accident, Jack had suffered the fewest injuries across the entire team, even in spite of how long he had worked here. There was a part of you who worried that he’d try and relive his glory days, and go too far too soon, and you wouldn’t be able to stop him. 

But you trusted Loretta, and if she said his sessions were becoming more positive, and that this was worth trialling, you had no reason to not believe her. She was an honest woman, worth her weight in salt, and would never suggest Jack do something if she didn’t think he was ready to take on the challenge from a mental standpoint. 

So, just over two months after your formal introduction, you were finally in the weapons department. Jack marvelled at how the room had changed since his time in here last - even though this is where the two of you had met, he hadn’t really paid much attention to what this room was like. His focus had more so been pinned on the woman in a waistcoat who was to be his training officer for the foreseeable future… 

There were so many safety features installed here in comparison to when he was last in here for official training duties. He swallowed a lump in his throat as he took in the dozens of additional locks and biometric keypads that now covered the cases of weapons and internal doors to the weapons room, a clear indicator of what went wrong with him. 

You let him have a session just getting used to the feel of the weapons room now - even if Loretta had said he could try the weapons, you were in no hurry to put a gun in his hand on the first day. You’d been strict about it, locking away all bullets and magazines behind a biometric lock tailored to you before his session had even begun, just to make sure that he couldn’t suddenly flip a switch and go all trigger-happy. 

But to your great relief, he didn’t. He happily took in his new surroundings, made notes as to the newer weapons that had come in since his time, as well as just get a feel for what a gun felt like again. 

Jack smiled taut down at the small silver revolver, engraved with Statesman’s ‘S’ on the leather handle. It was not all too dissimilar to the kind of pistols he once carried. It was almost bittersweet to handle them once again, and you stood back and watched how he reacted to having them in his grasp once more. 

“You alright?” you’d asked him. Jack had simply nodded, caressing the metal with his thumb gently, before putting them back in their allocated holder. 

“Yes, ma’am. With your permission, I think I’d be ready for us to start using them in training, if you saw fit,” he’d said. 

Truthfully, you no longer had a reason to say no. Loretta had cleared him, and after a couple of sessions where any and all ammunition had been under lock and key, you were satisfied that he was as ready as he could be to start that part of the training now. 

So, you agreed. 

But when it came to those sessions, you were instantly regretting your decisions. For the first time in weeks you were seeing the cockier side of Jack again, the side you’d come to learn  would come out in a situation when he thought he was the only person who could know the answer. It wasn’t very often he would drag up his prior stint with the agency in a session with you, mainly due to the risk of someone overhearing who was not meant to know anything about his former moniker. But also because he’d agreed, along with yourself, Champ, and Loretta, that he’d likely fare better if he didn’t focus on what once was, and instead only looked forward to what would be. 

You weren’t sure what exactly got into him this morning to make him such a colossal ass , but you had no fucking patience for it anymore. You were almost ready to call the session to an early close, but after making him wait for so long to give this a go, you figured you owed it to your student to at least let him have a go. 

That didn’t mean he remotely appreciated your generosity. 

“I know how to hold a fuckin’ gun, Mimosa,” Jack said, anger evident in his tone and an annoyance seeping in. You rolled your eyes ( for the fifteenth time this session, you might add ) and sighed as Jack gripped the handle on the pistol. 

“You used to know, Seltzer,” you said, earning you a disapproving grunt from the former senior agent. You knew it pissed him off no end to be called by anything other than Jack, or Whiskey, but that was a title his own stupidity has forfeited. You’d happily remind him of that whenever he so needed it - it helped to bring him down a little bit, you found. Normally you’d call him Jack, but today you couldn’t be fucking bothered with his childish attitude. 

“Stop callin’ me that,” Jack murmured under his breath as he started loading the pistol for the first round of shots. He had hoped you wouldn’t notice, but unfortunately for him your hearing was significantly sharper than what he gave you credit for.

“Seltzer, I’ll have less of that,” you said. Jack’s eyes darted up to meet yours, a flush creeping up his neck and onto his cheeks as he realised he’d been made. You couldn’t help but chuckle under your breath as you caught the agent, virtually red handed, embarrassed that he’d been found out. 

Or slightly angry. You weren’t sure. 

“Sorry,” he said coyly, breaking eye contact. He rolled his shoulders back, warming up his muscles to get into position and start firing the pistol at the target.

You furrowed your brow as you watched how he held himself, lining his body up for the shot. The muscles in his shoulders tensed all wrong, his arms weren’t bent properly, and his feet were far too close together. You leant back against the bench at the back of the room, lined with weapons and ammunition, and crossed your arms across your chest. Jack wouldn’t hurt himself if he took a shot like this, so you didn’t need to intervene from a health and safety point of view. But you wondered if he took a shot like this, which would inevitably be off-target, it might make him realise he needed more help than he imagined. 

Jack got into position, albeit the wrong one, and inhaled sharply. He knew something wasn’t right, he could feel it. The gun felt too heavy, his arms were locked up, and his body felt like it was twisting in a manner that was now foreign to him. This was something he’d done day in, day out, for over two decades. He plainly refused to accept that he’d forgotten this ability, and instead of doing the sensible thing and asking for a correction, he carried on.

Like an angry bull going after a bull rider.  

He inhaled sharply and squeezed the trigger, releasing a bullet from the barrel, his breath never exhaling as he took the shot. The sensation of the bullet flying out the barrel careered up Jack’s arms and left a shaking feeling coursing round his body, his muscles still locked up and not releasing even once the bullet was out from the barrel. Time seemed to slow down as he watched the bullet fly out across the room, and avoid the target completely. 

Jack sighed at the miss, but what frightened him more than the disappointment that he’d failed was the feeling he was left with after. Not anger, not frustration - but anxiety. Even long after the sound from the shot firing had ceased ricocheting around the bunker the two of you were in, the noise continued to ring in his ear. 

The pitch of the bullet ringing around in his head got louder and more high pitched with every passing moment, and he screwed up his eyes to try and make it go away. It felt like the beginning of a sharp migraine piercing through his skull, and he’d not felt pain like this in a long time. It all concentrated near his temple, where the scar from his accident stood prevalent. 

A few seconds after the failed shot, you looked to Jack and saw that he wasn’t making any effort to move. Not just to get into a better position, but to do anything. He wasn’t reloading the gun, he looked as though he was barely breathing; the only thing that was moving was his face, which was painted with a pained expression. 

“Seltzer?” you said, pushing off the bench to step closer to him. He still held his position, but you could see that something else was taking over control over his body. 

He didn’t respond to your voice. Truthfully, he didn’t hear it. The ringing of the gunshot ran around his head, bouncing off the sides of his mind and sending a piercing shriek through him. Jack grunted, faltering on his stance, and fumbled with his weapon slightly as he tried not to drop it from the pain the noise brought him. He panted, quickly flicking the gun to have its safety mechanism on, before dropping it to the ground in a panic. 

“ Jack ?!” you said, now actually worried. At the use of his real name he seemed to snap out of whatever haze he was in, and his eyes darted around to meet yours. Your heart shattered as you looked in them, and all you could see reflected back was fear. 

“I- that’s never- I don’t know-,” he stammered, his mouth dry and making it almost impossible for him to form a coherent sentence. You unfurled your arms from across your chest and went up to him, reaching out and gently placing your hands around his trigger hand to comfort him. 

Jack shook throughout his body, and beneath your palms you felt every nervous quake which ran down through to his fingers. You gently applied some pressure, trying your best to ground him, employing techniques you’d picked up at MI5 for trauma responses within your colleagues. You’d all seen some shit in your time, and it had become rather useful you’d found. 

Jack closed his eyes, his ears still ringing and the world around him spinning while he stood in place. His heart thudded in his chest and he could hear every beat as blood rushed through his ears. He found himself clinging to you like a lifeline, finding that your touch was the only thing keeping him from completely spiralling. 

With your other hand, you softly interlocked your fingers with his which rested by his side. His hand gripped yours tighter and you watched as he screwed up his eyes to try and calm himself, his breaths deep and steady. With a gentle voice, and getting closer so that you could speak in just a whisper, you spoke. 

“You’re alright, Jack. I’ve got you,” you said. He had no reason to trust you yet on a deeper level, aside from the fact you’d kept the secret about his identity for over two years. But in this one act alone he learned more about you than he perhaps knew about some of his colleagues whom he’d been working with for several years. He’d spiralled a few times over these last two years, and had to learn on his own how best to bring himself back to square one - but perhaps with you by his side, that might be easier. He never imagined that somebody else might be able to quell his troubled mind in any way, let alone how he so desperately needed. 

Slowly, the grip Jack had on you began to loosen, and his eyes opened. You smiled softly up at him, never once letting go of him as he regulated his breathing and began to calm down. He shot you a watery smile once he was calm anew, and you felt him trying to retract from your grip. You let him, pulling your hands away. 

“You alright?” you asked, letting his hands slide out from yours. Jack nodded. 

“Yeah, I- I think so. I’m sorry, ‘bout that…,” he said, looking almost perplexed as to what had just happened. You smiled softly and tipped your head towards a bench at the side of the training room, notioning for him to join you. He followed you to the bench and watched you remove your Stetson, setting it down on the seat to your left, before beckoning for him to take the one on your left. 

“When did you last fire a gun, Jack?” you asked. He shrugged, then sighed. He took his own hat off now, revealing the head of thick brown hair beneath it - albeit slightly more grey at the roots than what you recall from seeing in that photograph of him just over a decade ago. 

“On the day I got injured. One of the last things I heard was gunfire, before I-,” he sighed, again, “-yeah…”. 

“I’m sorry, Jack. Tequila eventually gave me the details of what happened that day,” you said, looking up at him. It was then, without his hat on and so close to you, that you saw the scar on his temple. You gently raised your hand and brushed your fingertips over the scar, and Jack grimaced as you did. Deep down he didn’t hate how the feeling of your soft touch was on his skin, but he couldn’t show such weakness. Not when he was trying all he could to appear tough. 

He sighed solemnly, letting his tough facade slowly fade from view. Of all people, there was no point hiding this side of himself from you - you needed to know as much about how he was doing in order to help him, and he’d be damned if he was about to face setbacks all because he didn’t want his pride to get damaged. 

You retracted your hand from his scar, not wanting to draw too much attention to the area, and instead reached over to take Jack’s hand in yours. Your fingers softly slid between his, but it was Jack who responded with a tightening grip. 

He smiled faintly down at your intertwined hands, the feeling now so foreign to him. It had been a long time since anyone had shown Jack physical affection, and even longer since that affection felt like it came from a place of love and care. After his wife passed he’d not wanted anything with women beyond meaningless hookups, and the second things began to feel more intimate, he’d shut things down. On a couple of occasions he’d entertained the idea, but those relationships never lasted longer than a few months, and as soon as he felt as though she cared more for him than he felt he deserved , he ended things. 

So something as simple as having his hand held, while completely clothed, was almost bizarre. But he noted, as he watched your fingers softly curl around his, and your thumb caress the back of his, that he didn’t hate the way this felt. 

“Thank you, Mimosa,” he said softly, “You’re a credit to this organisation, you know?”.

“Yeah?” you asked, turning to now look at Jack. He turned his head and smiled at you, a pair of deep brown eyes boring into you and making you feel warm and comforted from the inside. Even though it was you who was helping him right now, you yourself took comfort in the gentleness that was reflected back at you. 

“Yes. Tequila really undersold you,” he chuckled. You rolled your eyes, not remotely surprised. 

“Oh jeez, do I want to know what he said about me though?” you giggled, and Jack laughed with you now. 

“Only good things, Mimosa. I promise!” he explained. 

“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” you snorted. 

“Oh, stop,” Jack chuckled, his hand gripping yours tighter, “I very much got the impression that the two of you enjoy winding each other up. So for him to still be able to sing your praises? Yeah, I trusted that he meant every word. And he wasn’t wrong; not about a single thing.” 

“Thank you, Jack. That means a lot to hear,” you smiled. 

Jack nodded, then cleared his throat and loosened his grip on your hand. He’d calmed down enough now that he felt as though he could clear up in here for the day, and didn’t want to burden you any longer with his feeling of not being alright. He’d make a point to go and see Loretta after your session, he thought, and as you let him retract his hand from yours, both of you grabbed your stetsons and stood up. 

“You feelin’ better?” you asked, and Jack nodded, putting his hat back on his head. 

“Yes, ma’am. I’m gonna head and see Loretta before our next session, just to go over today. But I think for now I’m gonna have to throw the towel in,” he smiled. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologise,” you said, shaking your head. “This was always going to be a strange adjustment, and a big step to take. See Loretta, and perhaps next session we’ll do more work in weapons that don’t involve guns.” 

“Sounds like a plan. Got anything in mind?” he asked. You grinned, looking over to one of the wall panels which was filled with ropes and lassos. 

“I might have some ideas cooking up, yeah,” you chuckled. 

Jack followed your gaze to the cabinet, and he would be lying if he said he didn’t get a twinge of excitement at the thought of gripping a lasso again. It was one of the parts of his job that he missed the most, the power that came from being so nimble with a whip or lasso. 

He noticed, as he turned back to look at you, the way your fingers danced over the handle of your own whip. He’d seen it before, but he grinned as he watched you fiddle with it, he noticed it was a very similar model to the one he once owned. The way the small switch stood out on the end, signifying yours would turn electric at a moment’s notice, had a buzz go through Jack at the thought of you using it. 

He’d been wanting to ask for a few weeks why you chose that weapon - it wasn’t exactly conventional when he made the choice, and with the amount of technological advancements that had come along since his time he very much doubted that it was any more preferable now. You turned back to look at him and were greeted with a cheeky grin, a far cry to the face of the man who you had just seen almost broken not ten minutes before you. You furrowed your eyebrows in curiosity, and folded your arms across your chest in defence.

“What made you decide to have a whip as your signature weapon, by the way?” he asked, that playful smirk never diminishing. 

Ah, fuck. Busted. 

You cleared your throat, a warmth dancing across your cheeks at the reality you were now faced with. You knew that your decision to carry this weapon out of slight admiration was bound to come up one day, but you had hoped it would be much further down the line than this. You began trying to pace away from Jack, your feet moving towards the door. 

But something stopped you. 

Jack reached out and placed his hand on your arm, effectively stopping you in your tracks. Now you were really done for. You dared to make eye contact with the cowboy again, and butterflies swirled in your stomach as you did. 

“Well? Come on, don’t keep me waitin’. I don’t know many that would choose such a weapon. Colour me intrigued!” he said. 

You rolled your eyes, but chuckled to yourself. You figured there was no better time than the present to rip this bandaid off, anyway…

“Fine, fine! Twist my arm, why don’t you,” you began, clearing your throat and inhaling sharply before continuing. 

“I read your file before I knew about you from Tequila, and your stats impressed me immensely. Your success rate, how little you got injured, and the kind of missions you were involved with. From a professional standpoint, I admired the work you did,” you said. “And then I finally got the chance to speak to Tex about you. He told me so much about you, but one detail that always stood out was your choice of weapon. I’ll admit, I was intrigued.”

“Really?!” Jack said, dropping his hand from your arm and replacing playful smirk for a smile of genuine joy. You chuckled as you watched him, slightly giddy, at the prospect that you might have for a second been inspired by him.  

“Yes, really . I couldn’t get my head around the benefit of a weapon like this,” you gestured to the whip by tapping the handle that was hooked to your hip, “But I was interested in finding out. So, on the downlow, I had my training officer show me the way with one”. 

“Who was your T.O?” Jack asked, the two of you now heading towards the exit. 

“Eve. She’s just got back from a prolonged, and well deserved, break. Have you ever worked with her?” you asked. Jack smiled and nodded.

“Yes, I’ve had the pleasure. Does explain a whole lot about you and your training style though, given she shaped you into an agent.”

“She’s the best. I’ve missed her these last couple of months, but it’s been nice to not be worried about her getting injured recently,” you said. Jack shrugged before opening the door for you, allowing you to step out of the weapons room, then followed by him. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure. From what I recall Eve seemed to have a knack for getting herself into a pickle even when she wasn’t working!”. 

You laughed to yourself as you locked the weapons room door behind the two of you, turning the key in the lock and then entering the code 719002 into the door. He wasn’t wrong about Eve - even if he hadn’t worked with her for a couple of years, his assessment was alarmingly accurate. She was the best agent you’d ever worked with, but her ability to get caught up in minor self-inflicted accidents was almost comical. 

“You’re not wrong, I’ve seen her trip over thin air before,” you said, still giggling. Jack laughed with you, and then softened as you turned to look at him. 

“Thank you, for today. And for your patience in general. I know I haven’t been the easiest agent to train,” Jack said. You chuckled. 

“You can say that again,” you told him, winking playfully as you tucked the key to the weapons room in the inner pocket of your jacket. 

“Sorry,” he winced. 

“It’s nothing, Jack. You’re a pain in my ass, but… I’m coming to like having to deal with your… quirks ,” you chuckled. 

“ Quirks ?!” he said, not able to hold back a laugh. 

“Yes, quirks! You’re bloody impossible sometimes!”. 

Jack laughed with you, then shook his head in amusement. He knew you weren’t wrong, and that he had been reluctant to some of the changes which had been made recently, but every day he was grateful for the attention and devotion you showed him. 

“Okay, okay, fine . I’ll admit it!” he said, raising his hands as though he was in surrender. You giggled, playfully patting the side of his right rib cage gently as a physical way of telling him to knock it off. 

Jack smiled down at you, feeling totally relaxed in your presence. There hadn’t been many instances in the last two years where he’d felt like he was genuinely calm, or at peace. But something about this friendship that was blossoming between the two of you made him feel like nothing had ever gone awry, and that life wasn’t perfect. 

He had to drop his arms down to his sides fairly quickly, as he found the longer he stayed fooling around with you like this, the more he had the urge to pull you in for a huge hug. Something told him that you might not be totally against that, given the fact you’d already not shied away from using physical touch with him where needed, but that was a line he knew he shouldn’t cross. 

“Go see Loretta, Jack. And have tomorrow off, or use it for database study. I don’t want to overwhelm you given today,” you said. Jack nodded. 

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll let you know when I’ve had my session,” he said. 

“Thank you. I’ll liaise with Champ and Tequila, and let them know about this too. You just get yourself some rest,” you insisted. 

“Thank you, Mimosa. I’ll see you soon,” he smiled, and then the two of you parted ways, heading off into respective parts of the building for the rest of the afternoon.

Even in spite of the drawback Jack had faced today, he was able to walk away optimistic, and with a spring in his step. He knew he still had a long way to go, and the hours he’d need to put into it would be nothing short of monumental. But with you as his T.O, he could actually begin to imagine his life after this was over. 

A second chance. Not one he ever thought he’d deserved, but one he was slowly beginning to earn. 

Series Masterlist | A03 Link | Tumblr Masterlist

Next Chapter (Ch. 9 - "Collision") ->

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[ruvastuon]

Writer Questionnaire Tag

Thanks for the tag @renasdoodles !

What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you’ve ever had?

I really don’t know honestly, there have been so many that I’ve been scared to touch for years at this point. I couldn't pin down a favorite though, my top favorites are all there for different reasons.

Is there a question you’ve been asked in the past that really stands out to you, and you still think about sometimes? 

‘Are you a cat person or a dog person?’ This one always gets me conflicted because by all accounts I would say a cat person because I am far closer with them, but I also really like dogs. It’s a bit of a stupid question to keep thinking on, but it keeps popping back in my head at the most random times. 

What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

I love being able to write the stories that I want to read, sometimes I go back to a draft that I abandoned months ago and re-read it to find that I'm really interested in what happens next, and that's a really fun experience. 

What I don’t particularly enjoy is probably when I leave notes for myself to fill stuff in later and it really isn’t enough information to know what in the world I was intending to write. 

What is your greatest motivation to Write/create? 

When It comes down to it I really want to be able to reach a point where I can write the stories from my mind in a way that does them justice. I also want to be able to draw the things that are rattling around in my head.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever heard or been given as a writer? 

First drafts aren’t meant to be perfect, you are just getting the ideas down on the page and setting the ground work for your story to start solidifying your next steps. I particularly struggle with this one since I want to have everything perfectly in place but for my writing style that just isn’t realistic. 

What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

Don’t be scared to ruin your stories, just write them. If you get to scared to even try working on something it will die in your mind forever unspoken and for me that is worse than failing because I gain almost nothing from the wasted creativity.  

What is your favorite story you’ve written to completion? Link it if you’d like and can!

Honestly, I’ve disappointingly only been able to finish a couple of fan fictions since I developed a really bad habit of abandoning story ideas out of fear for the results. I’m trying to get myself back on track but it’s just a bit of a task to keep myself in line. ;-; Sometimes I wonder if the writer part of my brain got switched with that of a hyperactive child. Of the Fan Fictions I've managed to post on Ao3 'A Bit of Clean Water' Fandom: Vampyr (Video Game) is short little story that I'm pretty happy with.

Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so, and how do you particularly feel about their ideals? 

I won't mention the character but their mindset is that people are inherently weak short minded creatures that are incapable of governing themselves. No matter how great a thing they might make it can be devastated in the span of a generation because their will could not be inherited by their successor. The character believes that because of this people are inferior and do not deserve to stand at the top of the food chain.

I personally understand some of where he's coming from because it is pretty scary how easily something great can be destroyed by a bad successor no matter how great the founder might have been, but I feel like this character is a bit to critical of the race and extreme with his execution.

If you when you first started writing met you now, what would younger you think? 

Probably be a bit horrified at first, but the first story I wrote before I was ten ended with the main character dying in a car crash after someone cut her breaks for a petty reason, so I like to think that my younger self would at least somewhat understand where i'm coming from with my writing. As for my personality... That would probably be a much harder sell. (Younger me could barely play mobile games that had any community features, knowing that I put my writing out for people to see might give younger me a heart attack)

No pressure Tagging:

@kuebiko-writing @wyked-ao3 @creatrackers @davycoquette,

@somethingclevermahogony @laisley-writes @flurrysahin @zaynabameen,

+Open Tag

[rallamajoop]

The RE8 Timeline: Mia and Miranda

As mentioned in my post on Donna Beneviento, the other RE8 timeline question that’s been eating at me is just how long Miranda has been posing as Mia before Chris busts in on her.

It’s fascinating how many obscure clues you can find about the days leading up to the start of the game – and if that doesn’t grab you, I’ve also got some lovely fridge-horror-logic to share about why a bunch of jars of baby food and a note about Rose’s recent half-birthday may be some of the most subtly sinister details in the game.

To reiterate again up front, I really doubt there are any definitive, ‘canonical’ answers here. The whole game is a campy, fairy-tale fever dream, and if anyone had a clear timeline in mind, lord knows if the rest of the team were on the same page. Details from in-game documents may contradict cutscene dialogue, may contradict environmental clues, etc. But analysing all those clues still turns up some interesting details, so here we go.

To begin with, in the game’s opening scenes, we learn several significant things about “Mia”:

She’s ‘gone local’ (using local recipes, reading a ‘local fairy tale’ to Rose, etc)

She doesn’t want to talk about what happened in Louisianna (RE7)

She makes most of Rose’s food by hand

She and Ethan have been fighting

Something is very wrong with her

That last point is mostly a vibe, but it is strong. The idea that creepy ‘local’ tale is suitable bedtime reading is suspicious, and her tone of voice when she insists ‘there’s nothing wrong with my memory!’ is bizarrely defensive. Something is off.

All of this makes perfect sense in retrospect, knowing this is Miranda-posing-as-Mia. She’s doesn’t want to talk about the past, because what she "doesn’t remember" could give her away. She’s "gone local" because she is local. She makes baby-food by hand because she’s an overbearing mother from the early 1900s. And she and Ethan have been fighting because she’s a stranger masquerading as his wife.

Now, some of these things may be true of the real Mia as well, if to a lesser degree – there was already tension between Ethan and Mia, the Baker Incident Report talks about Mia learning local recipes, etc. And that does makes sense, if Ethan didn’t immediately notice the change – but we’ll come back to that stuff later.

Mostly what I want to point to is one detail you can find in the house that seems innocent out of context, but was a big oh shit moment for me with all that weirdness leading up.

Oh fuck, what has not!Mia been feeding Rose???

This is also the detail that convinced me ‘Mia’ hasn’t been Mia for some time. Because if Mia’s been making all the baby food for Rose since she started solids (presumably in the last couple of months), why would they be buying these jars at all? Which suggests it’s a recent change to her behaviour, that Ethan hasn’t quite adjusted to yet when he goes out for groceries ‒ we're probably talking at least a couple of weeks, maybe longer. And given that Mia isn't Mia anymore, every recent change to her behaviour becomes pretty suspect. (I mean, you can totally come up with other explanations where it’s some kind of nervous-new-parents-over-buying thing, or a ‘just in case Mia needs a break’-emergency supply that never actually gets used, but c’mon, this is horror: lemme have the freaky version!)

After all, we just heard a dark fairy tale in which a demonic bat and a monster fish ‘helpfully’ feed a little girl parts of their own bodies. Feeding people gross, corrupted food was a major horror element of the Baker family from RE7 too. Heck, there’s even arguably other canonical suggestions that ‘local food’ sourced around the village can enhance the powers of a mould-infected individual, given how food the Duke can make for Ethan boosts his stats (which is definitely me thinking too hard about a shallow game-mechanic, but shut up, this all works on so many levels!)

The opening also features one scene with real!Mia: the flashback/dream sequence Ethan experiences before waking up next to the crashed van. We know this is the real Mia, because she’s anxious about Rose and Ethan in a way that makes no sense for Miranda – in particular about something Ethan won’t face about himself (Ethan accuses her of keeping things from him, tells her they should talk about it, then blows off the conversation for a call from work).

It’s not clear how long ago this was – or even that it’s necessarily a real memory. It could just be a dream Ethan’s having, mixing up multiple different memories and some of his own anxieties (most of what happens in Donna’s basement could be taken the same way). But if it is a memory, the other key plot point is that Ethan receives a phone call about Rose’s test results. Put a pin in that one for later too.

There’s one more relevant detail that comes up when Chris finds the real Mia in Miranda’s lab, where she says she was captured and used in experiments. This is the kind of line it’s best not to get too carried away with, since it’s mostly here to explain why Miranda would have kept Mia alive at all. But if she’s had time for experiments, that does suggest Miranda’s had time to sneak back and forth between Ethan’s house and the village while posing as Mia, which does change the picture a little. I mean, you could say those experiments were performed by one of the four lords or some other assistant, of course, but it’s not the most obvious interpretation.

How Chris discovered Miranda was posing as Mia isn’t clearly explained (and is probably the kind of question you're not supposed to ask), though it’s vaguely hinted in dialogue that his team figured out her plan through 'recon'. Possibly, they had Miranda under surveillance, though it can’t have been very thorough – they obviously didn’t witness Mia’s abduction, for one, or they’d have known she might still be alive.

Then again, if Miranda has been sneaking back and forth from the village while posing as Mia, that might give Chris’ team more chances to spot her doing it and follow her back to the Winters’. Or maybe they’re not good enough to tail Miranda, and found out her plan from a third party, or one of those remarkably convenient diaries that RE characters are forever leaving lying around. Lots of possibilities, no real answers.

A few firmer details about Miranda’s movements come from the diary of Eugen, a peasant in the village. From this and other assorted documents, we can put together a partial timeline of events surrounding Mia’s kidnapping. The list below doesn’t cover every recent date mentioned in the game, just those I caught that looked significant.

February 2: Rose’s half-birthday (she was born on August 2, 2020).

February 3: Miranda requests Eugen find her a list of ‘drugs and tools’ in the next few days (that she presumably needs for her plans for Rose).

February 6: Ethan mentions a fight with Mia (or ‘Mia’) at the hospital in his diary.

February 8: Chris Redfield kills ‘Mia’ and kidnaps Rose and Ethan.

February 9: Eugen is instructed to deliver the tools to Miranda’s ceremony at dawn, where she divides Rose into four pieces. Ethan wakes up outside the village, and the main events of the game take place.

February 10: Miranda's ceremony to revive Rose/Eva takes place at dawn. Final boss battle and ending.

This timeline can’t give us an exact date for Mia’s kidnapping, but we do know from Eugen, that there was ‘no sign of Mother Miranda’ on the 8th (a hint she was off impersonating Mia), but she was in the village on the 3rd of February, about a week before the game begins. He also sacrificed two goats to Miranda on the 1st, but doesn’t specify whether she was personally present.

Now, it’s possible Miranda snuck back to visit the village on the 3rd while posing as Mia, but the more obvious read is that this is before Mia was taken. Either way, it’s safe to assume Miranda’s plans are well underway.

That’s about all the game gives us explicitly, but there are a few other clues.

The note in Ethan’s diary from the 6th about arguing with Mia ‘at the hospital’ provides no context for why he was at the hospital, but in the dream/flashback, we see him making an appointment to collect Rose’s test results ‘next Thursday’. Significantly, those test results can be found in a nearby drawer, signed ‘Applefeld Memorial Hospital’. So that much all adds up: the 6th was Thursday,* they were at the hospital to pick up Rose's test results. When Ethan refers to having “another” fight with Mia in his diary for the 6th, the argument from the flashback could well be the specific previous incident he’s thinking of.

This all matters, because we can be pretty confident the Mia from the flashback was the real thing: Mia can only have been replaced after that call took place. So when was that?

Rose’s test results are undated in the file text, but if you look closely at the in-game asset (screencap above), you might make out the date 28/1/2021. It’s not totally clear whether this is the date the tests were conducted, or the date the report was returned to the doctor. But it does make good sense for Rose to have been due for a check-up, as there are photos and notes about her ‘half-birthday’ on the 2nd Feb, making her just on 6 months old.

From this, we can make a decent guess when the flashback happened. The appointment is made for ‘next week’ and ‘next Thursday’ in dialogue, so the call must have been somewhere between Jan 26 (Mon) and Feb 2 (Sun) the previous week. And if the results themselves are dated to Jan 28, then the call can’t have come through before then, so that gives us between Jan 28 (Wed) and Feb 2 (Sun). Since the doctor says she's 'just received' Rose's test results on the phone, that date on the report (Jan 28) may well be the date of the call.

Either way, Miranda logically can’t have replaced Mia before the 28th – eleven days before the events of the game begin. (Still with me?)

There’s another, more sinister reason why Rose’s check-up might be significant: the BSAA was involved. The text of the report specifies “Results for additional fungal pathogen tests will be provided by BSAA.” The in-game image of the report has a “BSAA Europe Medical Division” logo as its header. And the end of the game contains a lot of hints that the BSAA is no longer to be trusted, and that Miranda may well have contacts in the organisation. So it’s disturbingly plausible that the results of the check-up were deliberately leaked to Miranda – maybe even results of those additional ‘fungal pathogen tests’ too, long before anything ever made it back to Ethan. Perhaps those 6-month-test-results were even the reason Miranda takes an interest in Rose.

All that said, there’s also good reason to suppose Miranda’s had her eye on Rose for much longer than a mere week or two – the fact the Winters were moved to Romania at all could suggest she’s been pulling strings there for some time. So maybe these latest tests only confirmed what she already suspected for a long time.

Either way, it’s very possible that leaked info from Rose’s 6-month-medical-check-up was a key inciting incident behind the events of the game. Happy half-birthday, Rose!

Lord knows how much of all that subtext was even intentional, but if it was, that is some subtle shit, and I applaud it.

But getting back to the point, let’s just expand that timeline a little.

January 28 (Tuesday): Date on Rose’s medical report. Earliest date that Mother Miranda could have replaced Mia.

January 28-February 2: Ethan receives a call from the hospital, making an appointment to come pick up his daughter’s test results on the 6th (Thursday). He and Mia have the argument from the flashback scene.

February 2 (Sunday): Rose’s half-birthday (she was born on August 2, 2020).

February 3 (Monday): Miranda requests Eugen find her a list of ‘drugs and tools’ in the next few days (that she presumably needs for her plans for Rose).

February 6 (Thursday): Ethan and Mia (or possibly Miranda-as-Mia) visit the hospital to pick up Rose’s medical report. They have the fight mentioned in Ethan’s diary.

February 8 (Saturday): Chris Redfield “kills” Miranda-as-Mia and kidnaps Rose and Ethan. Miranda revives, overturns the truck carrying Ethan and Rose, and abducts Rose.

February 9 (Sunday): Eugen is instructed to deliver the tools to Miranda’s ceremony at dawn, where she divides Rose into four pieces. Ethan wakes up outside the village, and the main events of the game take place.

February 10 (Monday): Final boss battle and ending.

There’s plenty of wiggle room in this timeline for other interpretations, but what little info the game gives us mostly seems to add up to this sequence. The 28th remains a plausible earliest date for Mia’s replacement, meaning she’s been posing as Mia for no more than 11 days at the very most. If we take it from Eugen’s diary that Miranda was still in the village on the 3rd, then we’re looking at less than one week.

And that’s just a little disappointing to me, because it doesn’t give a lot of time for stuff like, oh, you know, for all those jars of baby food to build up, while Miranda cooks baby Rose the kind of specially formulated diet that would make Marguerite Baker proud.

See, whatever timeline the in-game dates may suggest, I still like the idea of a Miranda who’s been playing a much longer con: pulling strings to get the Winters moved closer to her, and spending time impersonating Mia, rather than simply absconding with Rose at the first opportunity. That gives her time to make sure Rose is the vessel she needs and prepare for her ceremony before bringing the wrath of Chris Redfield down on her head (and that of anyone else who might take offense at Rose’s abduction).

It gives her time, moreover, to play at being Rose’s mother, while already working to mould Rose into her own daughter. She’ll eat what Eva ate, hear the bedtime stories Eva heard, be cradled in the loving arms of the same mother who mourned Eva’s death.

To that end, imagine a Miranda who may have befriended Mia long before replacing her, using one or more shapeshifted guises to learn more about her and her family, preparing to impersonate her believably. Maybe Miranda’s even the one who taught Mia some of those ‘local recipes’ – recipes she'll go on cooking after taking her place.

The game doesn’t dwell on the horror from Mia’s POV, and that’s a shame, because damn: being abducted and imprisoned, subjected to god-knows-what kind of experimentation – knowing all the while that you won’t be missed, because the monster who abducted you is now living in your home, wearing your face and sleeping beside your husband, who won't even know you’re gone? That is some A-grade shit.

For which matter, how do we know Mia was the only one Miranda was experimenting on? What if one of the reasons Ethan wants to talk about the Bakers at the start of the game is that he’s been having this horrific series of “nightmares” where he wakes up back in the dark, restrained and helpless, while a ‘possessed’ Mia leans over him with a grin and a scalpel? (We know his body would heal any evidence away, and we know Miranda was sourcing drugs – and why would she need drugs to crystalise and divide Rose?)

Basically, I’m 100% here for a Miranda who’s been insinuating herself into the Winters’ lives for at least the maximum nominal period the timeline backs up. It makes so much narrative sense, and the horror possibilities are wonderful.

But this is all just circling around the more character-significant question: how much of the tension in Ethan and Mia’s marriage was really thanks to Miranda, and how much was there to begin with?

The short answer is always going to be that it’s down to interpretation. The “Mia” who argued with Ethan at the hospital may or may not have been the real thing: nothing definitive points one way or the other. There’s definitely evidence things were tense pre-Miranda, given their interactions in the flashback scene. But there's also some evidence those arguments have taken a different character since Mia was replaced.

Miranda’s “Mia” is snidely dismissive of Ethan’s desire to talk about the past, claiming she just wants to put it all behind them. The real Mia from the flashback is anxious and depressed: tired of going back over past trauma, but at the same time frustrated with the aspects they don’t talk about (ie. Ethan). The Mia we hear worrying on the radio in Donna’s basement seems to suffer from a lot of the same anxieties. In the flashback, it’s Ethan being dismissive, insisting “Rose is fine, everything’s fine, what else matters?”

To argue about character inconsistencies here is to miss the point: they’re both worried about what their past means for Rose, and it’s all bubbling over now Rose is due for her 6-month tests. Given all that underlying tension and the weight of past trauma, it’s not unbelievable for the two of them have effectively been taking turns to be the one-who-worries and the one-who-brushes-those-worries-off. Sometimes, that's just how mutual anxieties work in a relationship bubble.

But the jump from the Mia of the flashback to the Mia of the Ethan’s diary – who blows up at the mere mention of events of three years ago – seems unlikely as the same Mia who was so anxious in that flashback, and so clearly still wants to talk about something they haven’t addressed. It’s hardly impossible Mia-from-the-hospital could be the real Mia (Ethan’s summary is very brief, and days have passed in between), but she makes far more sense to me as Miranda’s Mia, who quickly gets defensive when Ethan broaches the subject at all.

In summary: no, Miranda is not the only reason things have been tense between Ethan and Mia lately. But I doubt the argument "Mia" has with Ethan at the opening of the game is all that representative of what things have really been like between them. And the real issues are a lot more nuanced than the generic Mia-told-lies-and-is-mean take, but that’s really a subject for another post.

It’s only fair to admit here that one of the reasons I like the idea of Miranda replacing Mia earlier is because I’d like to be able to blame her for more of the problems Ethan and “Mia” have been having, because I like them both as characters, and I like them together. But then again, if you’re in the opposite camp, maybe you like the implications of the idea that things are already so awkward in the Winters household that Ethan could even go weeks without even realising Mia had been replaced by an imposter – it’s really all in the spin.

Because at the end of the day, the implications for Ethan and Mia’s relationship aren’t the point. There's just so much potential for atmosphere and twisted horror storytelling that comes with a scenario where Miranda has kept up her ruse for much longer than the nominal timeline suggests.

11 days? Oh, Mother Miranda is just getting started.

*Just to confuse things a little, the actual 6th February 2021 was a Saturday, not a Thursday, but the writers probably didn't bother to check: this is Resident Evil, not Lord of the Rings or something.

[caulfect]

life is strange : dust opinions, featuring issue one only .

note : i’ve read through all the max and chloe centric comics before, and this is mostly a reread. i was sick when i first comsumed the material and rushed it in many ways, so i wanted to give it a second shot. it should be said that my max is not comic max, as their paths are completely different due to how much the comics and double exposure contradict each other. if you like the comics or abide by them, you’re valid! they are canon! but i follow a different universe and a different possibility, so they’re not ‘canon’ to my max, if that makes sense. still, i have many opinions due to my love for the series and max herself.

messages at 3:23 pm.

‘and in a multiverse of infinite possibilities, this is one version of what happened next …’

it will never not kill me that the comics give this disclaimer in every issue, every volume, etc. and yet people still cry about double exposure just existing lol

messages at 3:31 pm.

‘i used to wonder as a kid ; if the butterfly knew what it was doing, the damage it was causing … would it keep on flying?’

this is a nice thought and all, but i’m pretty sure the game made it clear that max never really dwelled on the butterfly effect ( which they say is also chaos theory ) and needed chloe to explain it to her. this first page seems so heavy handed and edgy but i’m going to try and suspend my disbelief a little bit

‘i wasn’t the butterfly. i never was.’ well yes. chloe’s the butterfly.

messages at 3:45 pm.

so. long winded thought time given the consensus the comic is trying to give in the first page! i think i’ve offhandedly mentioned before, when discussing vinh’s blackwell au with you, that max’s choice in saving chloe wasn’t just about chloe herself. chloe was a huge part of it, as was selfishness, but there was another thing i wasn’t commenting on which has been echoed by save bae truthers for years. i do think that in that moment, when presented with two impossible realities ( as max says in de ), that a strong drive was the unfairness of it all … i do not think max saw this choice as fair, nor did she view what fate / the storm wanted as fair. i do agree that for a couple of seconds max is gripped with this addicting spiral of : no, this isn’t my fault, this wasn’t me, and it wasn’t chloe, and why do we have to pay for it? it is a sense of injustice as well as a desperate dodge of responsibility : max is nothing but horrified at the idea this is her fault, can even refuse to say it herself until warren implies it for her … she does not want to believe she’s caused this with her power, which is her initial thought before chloe realizes it’s her being alive that’s causing everything. max is distraught on the cliff, at the beach, tortures herself about it until chloe snaps her out of it … it is weighing on her significantly, and then chloe says it’s both of their faults, essentially, and that max has to fix their mistake.

max, notoriously, puts herself down and puts chloe up. not even in a particularly resentful way, just in general. this is how she functions and works … so then this new idea, that chloe’s at fault just as much as max is, and that the price is chloe’s life, well. it changes things. it isn’t fair. it’s too severe of a consequence for it to be fair. the universe gave max powers to save chloe, and then punished them both for daring to play the game? for doing what it wanted? i do think it’s telling that max’s reaction, if you save chloe, is initially full of an almost frustrated anger as she impulsively rips the photo and says ‘not anymore’ to chloe’s ‘it’s time.’ i think ripping the photo is max not wanting to bend to the will of forces unseen to her, forces who don’t care for her or chloe or anyone else. i’m not explaining it well, but this wounded ‘i wasn’t the butterfly, i was just dust caught up in it’s wings like everything else’ is a sentiment i do think max had at some point. an excuse, a reasonable feeling of betrayal and hurt at the world, etc. but i do not think max carries this opinion for long given her devestation at seeing the storm eat arcadia bay

so this like. feeling now? it feels very weird to me. i think it was easy to justify in the moment ( i’m not playing your games ) when her emotions were so high and extreme, and the pain outweighed all else … but this isn’t an opinion that would last.

i also think the comic leaning into this angle inherently robs max of any responsibility or guilt over her choice. it’s a sort of shrug, a sort of ‘i made the right call’ which i do not think is true. i think it’s okay to acknowledge that saving chloe is the selfish choice and the ‘wrong’ one, just as much as it’s okay to stick by it without regret. i don’t even think max would regret saving chloe, which is why her guilt about her hand in the deaths of all her friends and classmates and chloe’s family is important. if she doesn’t regret sacrificing arcadia bay, if she doesn’t feel guilty about her choice … then what’s left? the comics never answer this outside of a vague ‘grief’ max feels for the people and town she loved. a grief that isn’t explored, a grief that centers around chloe, etc. this is the same girl who took kate’s death as a personal failing, the girl who said she’d trade away her powers forever if it meant kate would still be here … for someone who feels so inherently responsible and is brutalized by the death of a girl she didn’t help kill, then you’d imagine max would be almost comatose and numb after causing the deaths of hundreds all because she used her powers poorly and couldn’t part with one soul to save many.

gestures. i don’t know. i think these comics in particular irritate me because they really cater to bae truthers’ dreams of pricefield healing without the actual steps to do so. but i digress

messages at 3:53 pm.

pixie : it’s like you have magic powers.

max, suddenly uncomfortable : they’re … they’re just photos.

i do enjoy this scene. and i do like max taking photos as a side hustle while staying with her parents if i remember correctly. baffles me that people were so mad about max taking up photography again in double exposure because of the jefferson trauma, yet said nothing about the comics doing the same thing. this is a running theme i’ve noticed, which i’ll keep pointing out

chloe’s ‘time is a construct’ graffiti and subsequent tortured expression is a nice touch. it sure is, chloe.

messages at 4:25 pm.

ah, yes. the arcadia bay rebuild project. perhaps i’m too cruel but i still highly doubt that blackwell wasn’t completely demolished in the storm … when max recieves her first vision about it, at the very start of the game, there is an orange blackwell banner draped across the lighthouse’s information board. the storm is also referred to as rachel’s, her revenge, and i find it hard to believe that she wouldn’t level blackwell for all the good it did her … if you’re to view the storm as rachel’s rather than max’s. i think blackwell in particular being nothing but rubble is a bit more poetic? it’s the setting we spend the most in, it’s max’s home in arcadia bay, it’s where rachel and chloe and nathan and kate and victoria were. a majority of our relationships and major players hail from blackwell and i think such a profound place in max’s adolescence no longer existing or being salvageable is important in many ways. i do not like that the comics show a picture of blackwell and it’s recognizable? and barely damaged? it feels like a cop out to me … just like how much of this plot really takes away from the totality of sacrificing arcadia bay. for example, the prescotts live. even though the storm came out of nowhere and there was barely any time to make it to a bunker. i suppose i can forgive sean’s and caroline’s lives, if it weren’t for the fact they’re rebuilding arcadia bay … i know it’s disrespectful on purpose, but the idea of any rebuilding ( again ) really takes away from the choice in my eyes. it makes it easier to swallow, destroying the town for the girl, because hey, the town can be rebuilt but chloe can’t! forget how warren can’t be rebuilt, or joyce, or how everything they remake will never be what it was, now devoid of the rich history behind it and the people who lived there for years. i also don’t see why sean would be interested in this? yes, he wanted to give the town a do-over, but given the death of his heir and the impractical debris of everything, would it not be easier to go somewhere else? start anew? there is also no town to control anymore either. almost everyone sead had under his thumb is dead. he’d have to build a town and put new people in it and restart from scratch without any promise of a prescott continuation once he’s gone … again, i just don’t like it. there’s stuff to be done with the prescotts after destroying the bay, but i just don’t know if this angle is it.

i’d be more interested learning more about about kristine prescott and how she’s holding up after everything than sean or caroline.

like, the prescotts seem like another scapegoat here in the sense that they are the villains again. for rebuilding the town. for dedicating it to nathan, whom they believed to die in the storm. there is nothing to be said about how max gave sean prescott exactly what he needed to turn the bay into his vision, nothing that compares the two … it is just so simple.

messages at 4:34 pm.

‘bathroom break?’ / ‘bathroom break.’

i think chloe and max should have a secret third love language which is commonly accompanying each other to the bathroom under lieu of dump taking but it’s actually just them talking privately. and also because chloe going to the bathroom alone makes max nervous due to trauma

‘why do we hold memorial events to remember awful things?’

‘so that we’re never allowed to forget.’

again, the comic does such heavy lifting to imply max’s choice was not a choice she willingly made, knowing the consequences of it. they have new characters complain about the one year arcadia bay storm anniversary and imply it’s to torment the survivors of it, when in fact it’s to honor the lives and town lost because of such tragic circumstances. it’s max and chloe who are rendered inconsolable due to guilt because not only are they survivors, but they’re the ones who let this happen to begin with. they should feel bad about it. it’s good that they do, and that these are feelings they can’t run away from and have to sit with. to just never think about arcadia bay would be cruel. idk. i just think this exchange here perfectly encapsulates a lot of my issues with the comics in general in terms of storytelling and themes … they do not want to approach heavy topics too deeply and they never want the reader to feel ‘bad’ for the choices they made to get this universe. i find it rather cowardly to suck all the nuance and moral grayness out of the final choices of the game, but perhaps that’s just me.

messages at 4:41 pm.

‘you’d think i’d never want to find solace in a bathroom again. why the hell do they still feel so safe?’ / ‘because i saved you in one?’

chloe has a complex about bathrooms too confirmed. i think she should believe this is true and forget the very important max elememt of it all, then go into a bathroom alone and have a breakdown in fear. and she also gets mad about this because what the hell, max, she wants to take dumps all by herself.

to preface : i do not mind chloe still hating nathan. she has every right to. but the fact she’s more mad about nathan’s ‘storm caused death’ story seems rather heartless because yeah, that’s a lie. what really happened to nathan was that he gave up and was murdered by that ‘piece of shit’ jefferson who then hid his body where no one could find it. it just seems so odd she’s mad about nathan’s dark room involvement being covered up, when their choice ensured that it would be … while also condemning nathan prescott to death. he is dead. he likely died scared. there is nothing more you could do to punish him so the insistence of people knowing about what he did is strange … nathan wasn’t even liked at blackwell anyway. so.

‘they’re all gone now. however they went, they’re gone. none of that matters anymore.’

max speaking the truth as always

messages at 4:51 pm.

max telling chloe how much she missed her while away, how happy she was to come back and see her is very, very adorable. but max devaluing her genuine giddiness to go to blackwell ( ‘you’re why i’m so happy in that photo’ ) once again ties back into everything i keep saying lol.

i do agree with chloe’s sentiment that everyone they lost deserves to be remembered outside of their choice, and the storm related tragedy they birthed. obviously, so much horror happened leading up to it … the tornado was almost a accumulation of everything else, of all the pain and hurt and suffering. just because it was the final nail in many people’s coffins, it wasn’t all there was and that is important to remember. max and chloe have many issues to work through on their own time without the storm : max’s dark room trauma, chloe’s multiple deaths, rachel’s death, kate’s attempted or successful suicide, etc. i think the inherent extreme trauma of the storm can coexist with their other traumas, and that every aspect of those wounds deserves individual exploration.

chloe’s concern and anger over max possibly using her powers is very valid ... and then her saying, ‘you were walking away,’ is nice foreshadowing to the rest of the comic. how max is the one running away. how she’s the one really unable to handle everything, not chloe. which does align vaguely with my views on pricefield post save bae.

on that note, max’s total meltdown when chloe isn’t in her line of sight for a second / chloe didn’t let her know where she was going deserves a special callout. chloe is all she has. chloe is her number one priority. chloe is what she chose, what she let everything else die for … it always ties back to max’s codependency i think. and there is a trauma response inherent in it too, this fear that chloe could crawl away just to go die somewhere max can’t save her. idk! there’s a lot there.

[honeybeezgobzzzzz]

𓅨 Your Fate is Sealed With Mine: Chapter Forty-Three

Your Fate is Sealed With Mine: Y/N Burgess is the granddaughter of Alex and Paul, and after having spent so many summers at their manor and always wondering why she was forbidden from entering the basement, she descends the steps into the world of the Order. She broke out the being that had been trapped in that glass cage, but what does he want with her now that he is free?

Warnings: Language, Talk of Sexual Abuse (Calliope), Morpheus Eavesdrops, Real Talk (Morpheus Flat Out Asks Reader About Kids)(Potential Trigger-Reader Does Want Kids).

To Note: Morpheus/Dream x Female!GranddaughterReader, based on Netflix’s ‘The Sandman’, Reader now has long-ish hair for plot reasons (Just so Morpheus can tug on it later).

Word Count: ~2.9k

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Hemponia and Lantana had been elated when you had shown up with a sleeping toddler dryad in your arms, even more when they learned that you had created her yourself. Both adult dryads had fawned over the sleeping one and scurried off to the terraria with her to show the rest of the family. That left you to a lovely evening in your sitting room with the book Rose had written in your lap. The king did share similarities with Morpheus, but those similarities were ones of the past, you were sure of it. You found yourself reading through the rest of the evening, the lights around you brightening in glow from their internal clocks. You were turning to the next page when your senses altered you to Morpheus’s presence. Glancing up from your book, you observed Morpheus lurking in the shadows.

“What?” You spoke out. “Do you expect me to bite you?” Amusement flashed in his eyes and he stepped into the room.

“Oh the contrary, my dream, I’ve been warned that your bite is deadly. I should like to tread with caution.” Huffing in amusement yourself, you raised an eyebrow and set the book aside.

“That is reserved for those who threaten what I consider mine, last I knew, you have done no such thing… or have you something you wish to tell me?” You teased before rising to your feet and observing him. “Are you well, Morpheus?”

“Am I well?” He repeated, his eyebrows rising in confusion. “Have I given you cause for concern?”

“No, but you have been dealing with a great deal of changes. Some people have a hard time adjusting to simple ones… you’ve been ruling the Dreaming a certain way for eons. Are you okay with changing how this realm runs?” You explained, walking over to him and looking up into his eyes. He looked down at you for a few moments.

“Perhaps it does feel… wrong, but I have learned that staying true to tradition is not always the best path.” Morpheus said, looking down at you with a hint of a smile. You hummed in reply before wrinkling your nose and reaching up to your hair and tugging at a vine. You had no idea how you were going to get them out without breaking strands…

“It seems your dryad had fun playing around with your hair,” Morpheus mused as his nimble fingers reached up and began working the vines, sticks, and flowers from your hair.

“She has the fascination of a child,” You replied while his fingers worked a braid woven with a vine, free. “Who am I to stifle the creation and fun of such innocence?” You examined his face. “Are you angry that I created a child, rather than an adult?”

“Angry?” Morpheus repeated, pulling his fingers through a strand of your hair. His knuckles brushed against your cheek. “Why would you think that I would be angered by that?”

“Because there are no children here in the Dreaming.” You said in explanation. “You always create fully grown Dreams or Nightmares… and the residents are all grown. There’s no youth in the village, or in the countryside. Is it not youth that brings life and rejuvenation to tired civilizations?” Morpheus stared down at you as he pulled the last flower from your hair, he rotated it between his fingers.

“You’re correct, I have no child creations nor do my citizens have little ones running around to brighten the streets.” He spoke quietly, his mind taking him to somewhere deep within his memories. You remained detached, there was no need for you to pry. Morpheus had still not addressed the death of his son and was sitting on it with his head stuck in the sand. There were no children because it would probably only remind him of what he had lost. He had blocked it from his mind.

“Morpheus, you’ll be angry at me for saying this but I really believe that you should—“ Your words were cut off as an energy waved rippled through your body. You stumbled forwards a step, your hand rising to stop yourself from face planting into his chest. Jerking your head up, you looked into Morpheus’s tense face. “Morpheus what was that? It felt like someone was calling to you…”

“They were,” Morpheus whispered out, his face taking a slightly pained look. “I must—“ You grabbed his hand and held it tight. His eyes looked to yours.

“You are not going anywhere without me.” You said firmly. His head angled down at you in warning and you only squeezed his hand tighter. “This is non-negotiable, Morpheus.” Morpheus looked to be considering arguing back, but his eyebrows soon pulled together and he sighed.

“As you wish, my dream,” There was a rush of power in your veins and Morpheus’s sand swirled around your bodies. You arrived in a room silently with only a light hush signaling your arrival. There was a woman standing at the window. She had brown hair and wore only a silk sheath dress, but even you could see that her beauty was beyond comparison. Her name was leaving your lips just as she turned to you.

“Calliope,” You whispered softly. It was her that had made the call for help. But what muse would need help? It was not for you to ask so you glanced at Morpheus who was standing stiffly next to you. The emotions you were receiving from him were that of a typhoon. A swirling mix of rage, distraught, and pain. “I shall leave you two to talk,” You told him, disconnecting your hands and moving to the door. You knew that Morpheus’s eyes, as much as they followed you, wouldn’t stray from the woman standing in front of him. You unlocked the door and breezed over the threshold. Shutting the door behind you, you took to examining the paintings on the walls, throwing up just enough of a wall to protect yourself from Morpheus’s emotions.

He cared deeply for all those that he loved, love to him was the depths of the universe in its ever expanding domain. Ceaseless and passionate. Unending. That was why it hurt him so much when his relationships fell apart. You’d be a fool to think that he would simply let all those feelings go just because you were bound to him. No, you were not a fool. But you did feel green. It was hard not to with such a woman as Calliope. She was so beautiful. Your fingers reached up and brushed against the ruby hanging around your neck as you walked further and further away from the pair. It was only minutes later that Morpheus emerged from the room and came striding towards you. You raised an eyebrow.

“I do hope that you aren’t going to be vicious with Madoc,” You spoke evenly. Morpheus dark filled eyes looked to yours in warning. Your own remained unchanged. “That’s my job.” You reminded him before looking past him to Calliope who lingered. “I shall keep Miss Calliope company while you conduct your business… yes?”

“Then you are in agreement?” Morpheus asked, his tone quite indicative of his fury. Your lips twitched and you tilted your head to the side.

“I am but one call away,” You told him in answer. “My claws are sharp and teeth ready.” No further words were needed between you. Morpheus continued his way to the stairs and descended them. Calliope quietly padded her way over to you. “Words cannot describe how apologetic I am that my people have reduced you to a mere object to abuse.” You told her.

“Your people?” Calliope responded in question. You nodded.

“I was human up until a few months ago, at the very least you deserve a genuine apology from one, or someone who used to be human.” You explained softly before looking around. “You’ve been trapped and abused for over sixty years, no one deserves that treatment.”

“Are you going to hurt him?” Calliope asked, her eyebrows drawing together. Your lips pressed into a firm line.

“If I must, but I doubt it will come down to that, I can feel how Morpheus feels,” You looked in the direction of the stairs. “Unbridled rage. Pain. It’s rather sickening.”

“I didn’t mean to cause him pain by calling him,” You shook your head at her.

“He is being himself. Morpheus feels so much more than he will ever let on, even to me. I have to pry it out of him sometimes and that usually comes after we’ve quarreled. He is quite… stubborn shall we say? I am sure you know all about that…” Calliope managed to crack a small smile. Her face then turned to curiosity.

“How did you and Morpheus come to be?” Calliope asked, her gentle eyes and demeanor shifting once more to a further relaxed state.

“My great-grandfather is the one who imprisoned him. He tried to exploit Morpheus’ power and it backfired.” You explained shortly, rubbing the inside of your wrist. “Roderick performed some spell to bind Morpheus to our lineage, he didn’t take into account that Morpheus could choose who to be bound with.”

“And he chose you,” Nodding, you looked around the hallway again.

“He’s been my shadow since I was but an infant. I’m still getting used to the whole immortality idea.” There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and you knew that it was time for Calliope to be locked up once more. Madoc couldn’t know that she was getting help. Without a word, Calliope turned on her barefoot and silently padded back to her room. You followed behind her, your footsteps equally as silent. Entering the room, you shut it behind you and wiggled your fingers, sliding the locks all back into place.

“You should go before he get’s back.” Calliope uttered softly. You nodded solemnly, knowing that you would have to leave her once more at the hands of Madoc.

“What was he like, your son?” You asked, preparing to leave. Calliope smiled sadly.

“He was a wonderful musician and a great poet, and a husband who loved his wife very much.” She responded sadly. “His love was his undoing. He was the image of his father and his love all the same.”

Just like his father you suspected… to have a little Morpheus running around with his starry eyes and obsidian hair. What an image to think of. But this wasn’t about you or your desire for a loving family. This was about Calliope and Morpheus sorting out their emotional baggage they had held onto for eons.

“He has his lyre in the hall of antiquities, you know.” Calliope’s eyes glimmered ever so slightly and she nodded in acknowledgement. She and Morpheus wouldn’t be clearing up their issues this night, but there was hope for them yet. Calliope seemed to consider something for a moment before speaking again.

“Do you wish for children?” You weren’t expecting that question and it caught you off guard.

“I—“ You stuttered in your answer. “Yes, I wouldn’t mind one or two.” You softly answered before your smile turned a little mischievous and your eyes sparkled. “Especially if they get their father’s eyes, I can just picture a miniature version of Morpheus running bare bottomed around the palace in refusal to wear his trousers… it would be a sight I think I should like to enjoy.” You shared one final smile together as sand started swirling around your feet. Calliope spoke her last words.

“Morpheus has patience, if he chose you to bind himself to, he must have seen something special within you.” Her gentle gaze was the last thing you saw before the sands took you home. You were left standing in the throne room with turbulent thoughts and a tingling feeling running through your body. Had she just— Did you— Your cheeks felt hot and you slapped your hands to them in flustered mess.

“Did I just get blessed by a muse to have a child?” You whispered to yourself, the mortification that it was Calliope of all muses who had given you the blessing, Morpheus’ ex-wife. For a woman such as her, one so beautiful and renowned… you felt inadequate to be Morpheus’ wife. Out of all his relationships, you had to be the most plain, simple, and common of them. You rubbed your cheeks grumpily. “Insecurity is a bitch you will not give into, Y/N Burgess!”

Turning on your heel, you strode out of the throne room and headed back for your wing, determined to get back to your book and chase away all of the silly thoughts of insecurity of being a human married to an Endless. Married. Married. Married. Had you even taken the time to acknowledge the fact that Morpheus considered you married? No. You didn’t, you were too busy being mad at him to care. Or in love. You were smitten with him.

“Bloody hell I’m a mess,” You whispered out while scurrying up the marbled stairs to your wing. Marriage. Children. Did all of that even matter to an Endless such as Morpheus? Would Morpheus even want another child after loosing Orpheus? “And now I am over thinking it again.” Smacking your face once more, you strode into your lounge and picked up the book you had set down, prepared to dive back into it. Something held you back from opening the book, and setting it back down, you turned around.

Morpheus looked like a cold, wet puppy tossed out into the rain.

You said nothing as you walked up to him and wrapped your arms around his torso. He was stiff for a few moments before doing the same with your body and burying his face in your hair.

“She’s stronger than you think, Morpheus,” You told him, reaching up and running your fingers through his hair. “Women are always stronger then men think.”

His embrace tightened for a moment and you felt several thoughts rush through his mind.

“You shouldn’t have to be,” You didn’t refute his words, this was something you knew he would not give on, now, a century, or a millennia from this moment. His mind wouldn’t stray from that belief. Sighing, you took his face in hand and looked him in the eyes.

“Clearly,” You stated before getting down to it. “So, did you put the fear of god in him or am I due for a visit?” Morpheus’ eyes turned thunderous.

“You are not to go near that human, Y/N, and he is never to be in your presence.” Morpheus bit out like just talking about Richard Madoc put a bad taste in his mouth. You hummed in response, knowing that it was best to not poke the bear when he was already angered.

“Very well, my love,” You aired out, agreeing to his wishes. That made his body relax against yours and you just kept stroking his hair knowing that it was probably going to be a while before the energy that was currently running through his body dissipated. His love was nearly palpable in the room and you had to admit that it was getting to you. You were going to have to say something. “You might want to reign yourself in, Morpheus, you’re working me up.” You said, shifting place and trying not to think how your shared emotions was making your body feel. Hot and bothered.

 “You cannot fault me for my emotions, my dream, since it was you who are the cause of them,” I beg your pardon, Morpheus? How was my fault? Pulling back, you looked at him with narrowed eyes.

“Oh? Please enlighten me because I can’t recall taunting you in recent memory,” You questioned him with a raised eyebrow. Morpheus stared down into your eyes.

“There is still plenty I have to learn about your desires, my dream, and it is my wish to make them obtainable.” He spoke quietly in that tone of his you just loved. You knew where he was going with this.

“You eavesdropped on our conversation, didn’t you,” His gaze remained unblinking to your accusation.

“I will not leave those I care for, alone in a house owned by him. Least of all my wife and bonded.” That would be a yes on the eavesdropping…

“How much of our conversation did you hear?” You softly asked him, fear trickling into your veins. Had you and Calliope inadvertently caused him more pain by talking about children? Clearly he was still hurting from loosing Orpheus. “If you are upset that I want—“

Morpheus was shifting his arm to press his thumb against your lower lip, silencing you.

“You asked me why there are no children in the Dreaming, it is because I could not bare to be reminded of what I have lost, even after all this time.” Morpheus explained. “Do you wish to have children, my dream?”

Oh dear god, were you really having this conversation right now!?

“I’ve always wanted one or two.” You admitted quietly, your eyes dropping from his. “I want to raise them in a loving home where they weren’t treated like I was. Where they could feel safe to express themselves however that may be. Where they can dream whatever they so wish.”

His eyebrow went up and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“I believe I can help you with that.”

Date Published: 1/6/23

Last Edit: 8/23/23

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[cookieek]

So, like many others I sat down to watch the recent hbomberguy video, and watching it has made me think back to about how I’ve handled my folklore inspiration for wayward.

Notably that I ended up taking heavily inspiration from the illustrations by Katarina Strömgård in Per Gustavssons (2006) ”Sägenresan” when it came to the designs for the skogsrå, Snurra, and the sjörå. (Pictured bellow, Strömgårds illustrations to the left, my sketches to the right)

I did not do this with the intent of plagiarism, I know that I mentioned getting inspired by illustrations from a folk lore book in one of my authors notes for Wayward and that I did share Strömgårds illustrations of the troll drawing that inspired snurra and the sjörå on the red shoes discord and mentioning that I used them as inspiration (I could only find me mentioning the illustration for the skogsrå on the discord server when I went looking, I had to find the actual picture from the dms with another person in the server). However I do feel that I might not have been clear enough about this inspiration, and that looking back I, possibly out of some form of laziness, did at the very least not do enough with the characters in my sketches to visually distinguish them from the designs pictured in Strömgårds work, especially when it comes to the Skogsrå.

I doubt that Strömgård will ever see this, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about it, and I’m planning to edit the posts that features the characters to link to this post in order to give proper credits to the artist who was at the heart of those designs. Sägenresan and it’s illustrations has been with me since I was a child, it’s hard not to feel disappointed in myself, and I am sorry.

If you’re curious about Strömgårds work, then I recommend looking at her website (where she’s got coloured versions of some of the books illustrations for a recent web project under the same name as the book by Gustavsson!):

She also has an instagram under the handle strmgrd!

I should at this point also note that unless I was taking inspiration from stories told by my mom or just general ideas of folklore that I’ve heard while growing up, a big source for the folklore bits in wayward which I talk about in the authors notes for the chapters is Per Gustavssons (2006) “Sägenresan”, though I did not always reread the stories from it in question. And though I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that the herbal magic in wayward was inspired by stories from a childrens flora book, I figure I should be more clear and reference to it as Bissa Falk och Lena Kallenbergs ”Barnens flora” and ”Barnens flora 2” (both of my copies of these books are missing their copyright page so I can’t say their specific release date for sure, but I do know the original editions seemed to have been published 1982 and 1983 as those are the dates given to the first editions of the work on Libris, Alex.se and worldcat (though worldcat only seemed to have the first book of the two and the edition which collects the books into one)). When I get the time I’ll try to go through the authors notes for Wayward to make sure these are given their proper credit, and I’m sorry for not doing that before. Also, when I’m already on the topic, please don’t take Edda using real life herbs in for the healing magic as health advice, and if you decide to get into herbal medicine then I beg you to be safe about it, understand it’s limits and just go to the doctor of you’re dealing with something serious. There are many quacks out there, many dangerous ideas and ‘cure-alls’ that at best doesn’t work and at worst are actively harmful. Saint john’s wort will not cure your cancer.

Finally, when I’m already here I should also mention that an notable inspiration for even considering the regency au that eventually became “A Lord and Lace” was sboochi’s Bridgerton inspired Regency au drawings. I realised I was never really open about that and that made me feel a bit scummy, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that this isn’t the fun superhero au synopsis, but when this landed in my mind I really felt like I had to say something about it. I’ll try to get the synopsis out soon, I am still sick, but it seems to be on it’s way out, I hope, either way I hopefully will have that post out sometime next week. And again, I’m sorry for my sloppy work.

I hope everyone nonetheless have a good day.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 28 – Finna by Nino Cipri

This was another slim book I picked up basically blind entirely so I had something fast on hand to read. Unfortunately, didn’t work out nearly so well for me as most of the other’s I’ve read. Which is a shame, because the fundamental idea behind it is incredible, or at least seemed like an excuse for a kind of ridiculous pulpy adventure that was just made for me.

So, the story’s about a pair of 20-something queer dead-enders working at a bigbox furniture story that is similar to but legally distinct from Ikea. The Monday after they broke up, they find themselves both working a shift at the same time. And, even more awkwardly, after a transient wormhole forms and a customer wanders into a parallel universe’s not!Ikea, the two of them are volunteered to go rescue the wold woman. From this follows adventures through wild and deadly alternate realities, self-discovery, realizing how much there is out in the world, post-breakup reconciliation, a moment of dramatic self-actualization-through-heroic-sacrifice, and so on and et cetera.

Now, there are good qualities to this book, but I will be honest that the weeks since I’ve read it have dulled my memory of everything except the petty annoyances. So this review is basically just going to be complaining about what I thought didn’t work or irked me out of all proportion to its significance. Okay? Okay.

So fundamentally this feels like this could have been a fun, cheesy absurd comedy about some #relatable millennials trapped in retail purgatory and all its kafkaesque upbeat cheer. Tragically it was written by someone whose memories or ideas of what that’s like were warped by too many years on twitter and around people being professionally writer for the book to ever really ring true (to me, at least).

Or, possibly better put, it felt like the book was trying to tell me what sort of story it was and what emotional journeys its characters were going on and what it was trying to satirize more than it ever followed through on any of it? Which is pretty unhelpfully vague as a complain, I’m aware.

More concretely, the emotional arc of the two leads just felt incredibly rushed – these did not feel like two people who had had a messy breakup after an incredible hurtful argument three days before! They were, at most, slightly awkward around each other, and inside of fifty pages they were friends again. Which was just deeply emotionally unsatisfying for what the back cover sold the book as, or for my own desire for my messy drama generally. More generally, they both theoretically have flaws, but you only know this because the narration keeps explicitly saying what they are and how they’re growing past them instead of them ever really, like, meaningfully fucking them over or causing them to be unsympathetic.

Our protagonist also just had an utter surfeit of self-knowledge – her internal monologue sometimes reads more like the author’s notes on the character’s passions, neuroses and flaws than anything anyone would actually think about themselves. Especially someone in her position. And all the therapy-speak just really made me grind my teeth (not least because whatever the book says, there’s no way she’d able to afford the regular therapist sessions she apparently has on regular retail wages. Which is a minor thing but a) it really does annoy me, and b) it feels telling.)

And, fundamentally, the book just kind of took itself too seriously? Or, more properly, given how utterly absurd the premise and most of the set-pieces were, it just wasn’t nearly funny enough. Or horrifying enough, if you wanted to go the other way – there’s the raw material for some decent creepypasta style horror there, but that would kind of undercut how wholesome and uplifting nad etc the narrative’s clearly supposed to be.

So yeah, ended up using some amazing conceits and occasionally great visuals to construct a pretty tepid adventure story around an emotional core that didn’t feel real to me. What a pity.

[chris-continues]

Would you teach me?

In which Lilith Clawthorne becomes a mentor for a human who’d stumbled into the Boiling Isles.

WORD COUNT: 1.2K

EXTRA NOTES: Self insert (of myself), Lilith is a bookworm, I’m gonna write more of her because she’s literally me fr (we’re both history nerds and she’s very cool)

The winding corridors of the castle had taken some getting used to- Chris had to be given a mini map in the form of an orb he’d carried around, urged time and time again to never let anyone outside of the coven get ahold of. It floated above his palm, shifting with each movement he made. Better to focus on said item rather than the lingering looks he always got- having never received a coven uniform and instead cloaked in his… usual human clothes.

Very out of place.

Perhaps he could learn magic, as foolish as it seemed. Lilith hadn’t audibly entertained the idea, in fact ever since they’d met she’d been minimal comments and the kindest emotion she’d displayed was obedience towards the emperor.

His free hand reached towards the door, unlocking it with the key he held in his sleeve as he welcomed the sight of the fine room. As a coven leader, she’d been granted lesser inspections and fine luxuries. Tomes and novels lined a large bookshelf and her nightstand, a hot plate resting snugly in a crevice he eyed.

“Hello,” she curtly greeted, legs tucked criss cross with her back against the headboard of her bed. Her hands skimmed the pages of her book. Chris paused before closing the door behind him, briskly walking towards his own bed as he continued to toy with the orb.

“You hold a real fascination for that thing, hm.” She observed, flipping to the next page of her book.

“Yeah.” He swallowed, adjusting his position in bed once more. “Uh, Ms. Lilith?”

“Hm?” She hummed, thumb swiping at the corner of another page.

“Do you think I could learn magic?”

The question weighed heavy in the air as she peered up from her book, “Humans can’t practice magic, for now you’ll have to look for other ways to assist the emperor.” She declared.

Chris sighs.

He’d assumed as much.

He tilted his wrist, the orb following. “If only. Watching you do magic.. it’s really cool.” He admitted, and suddenly her interest was far more piqued.

“You think so?”

“Yeah! There’s a reason why you’re leader of the coven, right?” He shifted the orb once more, “How many years did it take you anyway?”

She cleared her throat, settling her: Eat, Sleep, History, Repeat bookmark into the page she was currently on. “Many. Many years of study- being a witch is a whole feat of itself.“ Ah, lecture mode.

“Could I watch you do magic? Just.. a small spell? And why can’t humans do spells?” Questions continued to tumble from his lips, curiosity building. The Boiling Isles were truly intriguing.

“Presumably, in ancient times witches could cast spells in ways differing from present times. Nowadays, there is a sack at the pericardium of a witch’s heart that holds fluid needed for magic.” Lilith explains, smoothing out her skirt. “That is something only a witch’s anatomy contains.” She concludes, brushing invisible dust off of the cover of her book as she snaps the hardcover shut (with care, of course). “Magic doesn’t simply appear out of nowhere, as most humans like to believe.” She sends a knowing glance up at Chris, quirking her eyebrow.

“I thought it came from like… ancient runes? Or something with power imbued somewhere.. like an energy source..?” He trails off, shrugging his shoulders. Magic wasn’t something he’d pondered a whole lot, the hustle and bustle of everyday life taking priority over whatever fantasy he’d conjured up for a story in his limited free time.

Now, he had all the time to think about it.

“That’s plausible.” She hums, “But alas, cardiac bile is what’s been powering witches as of present.”

Chris’ face hardens slightly,

“Ah! But I’m sure you could.. try?” Her hands are awkwardly midair in some frozen position of reassurance from across the room, “I’ve heard of more far fetched things occurring!” Her voice tapers off awkwardly, tinging into something out of her field.

“That’s plenty reassuring,” he rolls his shoulders, head tipping back, then side to side in a few resounding cracks that reverberate in the room. “Worst case scenario.. there are other things I can try to learn here. I don’t want to just sit around all day doing nothing.”

Lilith’s eyes flit down to the cover of her book once more that lay upon her lap. “That’s… understandable.”

Silence fell between them once more.

“But I’d love to help you in any way I can! And maybe I could learn magic somehow along the way.” Hope filled his eyes as she glanced over once more, hands on her knees moving to clasp each other softly.

“I suppose so.”

He looked so.. so youthful. Something she’d never really considered or given a second thought to.

So… like her. Back when she was just starting in magic. Her eyes cast down to her book, slight smile playing at her lips. A distant memory of when she’d been a young hopeful witch.

“Would you teach me?”

Her head snapped up, “What?”

He curled in on himself, wondering if he’d spoken out of line. “Ah- sorry.” Brows pinching as he took a peculiar interest in his socks rather than the witch across from him. What was he thinking? Some lady he’s barely known just shy of a few days teaching him magic? Something he was biologically not capable of- at least from what he knew. She was a respected leader here, he couldn’t just waltz in and add more to her plate-

“If you find a way, I’ll teach you.”

“Wait- really?” He gasped, hands tapping his knees excitedly, “You would?”

She nods, watching as Chris almost jumps out of his skin (in a good way), buzzing like a bee as his hands flap excitedly. “Could I do research? Like- if there’s a library? Or something like that- or your books, if you don’t mind, of course.” His hands move as he speaks, gaze expectantly meeting Lilith’s.

She raises an index finger in a signal to wait, “Feel free- don’t bend them though, or dog ear any pages, or-“

“Proper book etiquette, of course. I hate when people ruin books.” He frowns in understanding, “I’ll take care of them!”

“Good. May my books rest assured, then.” She hums, leaning back to continue reading, but not before sparing him a warning glance. It didn’t hold too much fire when the victim of said glance was brimming with anticipation on what was to come.

She exhaled, and to her mirth picked up from where she left off in her book.

[gummybugg]

Writer Questions Tag

Thanks for the tag @my-cursed-prince! I decided to make a Separate post because I didn't want to clog things up :')

Tagging these people to hop on in (optionally): @frostedlemonwriter, @another-white-hole, @rickie-the-storyteller, @rhikasa, @talesfromaurea & Anyone else who wants to fill out questions!

1) What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you've ever had?

My all-time Favorite idea is actually just the Creation of the Crater City crew. It’s probably something to do with how the story began as a Joke and then evolved into something a bit More. It’s also a great Break from writing Magniloquent essays :’)

2) Is there a question you've been asked in the past that really stands out to you and you still think about sometimes?

I believe that would be “How did you come up with this?” And this question can Really be referring to formal writing or writing I do as a hobby. Either way, I do not know! Everything is a culmination of my Experiences + a Group of synapses accidentally fist bumping!

🌀🤜🤛🌀

3) What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

I really Love the way that I get to see my characters on the page in Clear writing instead of being Stuck in a sticky, ambiguous Cloud in my head. I also Love when ideas come to me at Random and my Subconscious is in on the action, too. It’s like a party in here! I think the only part I dislike is the time I spend away from writing and how Difficult it is to get back into the Groove.

4) What is your greatest motivation to write/create?

My greatest Motivation is seeing how my characters interact! It fuels me to write more dialogue 💖

I also just enjoy Stringing words together, and Always have since I was a Small child.

5) What is the best piece of advice you've ever read or been given as a writer?

Do not throw away Your writing Scraps because they will/can be relevant Later. No more tears! You can still have this Ending, even if it’ll be in Another timeline! :’)

6) What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

I wish I knew that I didn’t have to Halt creative writing just because I had Writer’s Block for one story. It’s been on Pause since 2017, and I have since Moved on until I am ready to resume. I chalk it up to not having “It” at the moment; i.e., the Mindset to keep writing that WIP.

I also wish I had Every Single draft saved in one app/device. I was young and didn’t know writing apps Existed so I saved everything via the standard Notes App. When I had to Reset my phone, my notes went along with the Reset, aha! So I had to force myself to Remember the Important details early on.

7) What is your favorite story you've written TO COMPLETION? Link it if you'd like and can!

Bold of you to Assume I’ve ever completed a story! But I Would like to complete a story within the next 5 years, Yes.

8) What is your favorite out-of-the-box quote?

Not really Sure where I put that one Quote, but maybe someday it will come to me!

9) Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so and how do you personally feel about their ideals?

Darcy from Crater City has a pretty Controversial mindset. For context, Darcy is a designer baby (for Lack of better words) and was created with the intent that he pull Humanity (Neo-civilization) out of the post-apocalyptic Dark Age. However, his methods of doing so aren’t exactly “Ethical” as many would say.

Darcy Does want to help humanity, it’s true! But in his mind, the only way to save Humanity is by reprogramming Mother Nature, so to speak. It’s not like there’s much Left to work with, he reasons. “Humans were given the gift of insatiable curiosity for a reason. It would be wasteful not to use our God-given potential to take advantage of the cards we were dealt,” he says.

What do I Think of this? Well, I know it’s controversial. If You were in Darcy’s shoes, would You do whatever it takes to save the world no matter the risks?

10) If You when you first started writing met You now, what would younger you think?

I started writing when I was five or six!

I’m not sure what Younger me would think, probably that I’m saying big words and that I’m making no sense at all whatsoever. Perhaps Younger me would show Present me the cool stories I wrote and characters I made up on the spot, and Present me would take notes. Little does Younger me know that I actually have some of my old work saved from all those years ago!

Perhaps Younger me would think that I am So experienced and learned and must have written 10 books by now, but Alas. Maybe someday, Younger me.

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Tagging @writeouswriter for Crater City content!

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Blank questions below!

1) What is your absolute all-time favorite idea you've ever had?

2) Is there a question you've been asked in the past that really stands out to you and you still think about sometimes?

3) What is your favorite part of being a writer? What parts could you take or leave?

4) What is your greatest motivation to write/create?

5) What is the best piece of advice you've ever read or been given as a writer?

6) What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out writing?

7) What is your favorite story you've written TO COMPLETION? Link it if you'd like and can!

8) What is your favorite out-of-the-box quote?

9) Which of your characters would you say has the most controversial mindset? Why do you say so and how do you personally feel about their ideals?

10) If You when you first started writing met You now, what would younger you think?

[systemfailuretpd]

Can you tell me where you get your ideas from? Your designs are really cool!

Whoa boi-

Okay so I’ve been designing characters for my entire life really, it’s one of my favourite things.

Often times I take inspiration from all over the place,

I do take inspiration from others as well, if I like your art and it looks fun, I may try and learn from it and attempt to improve my own work.

That’s how it’s been my whole life, I try to learn from everything to better my own work.

I also learned how to understand the character before really drawing them,

“How would this character dress?”

“How would they wear their hair?”

“Do they look after themselves?”

While also keeping shape language in mind along with physical indicators of personal health, after a while or a little bit depending on how much resources I have and motivation I will come up with a first pass of a character’s design.

First passes tend to be…

Questionable, as taking the inner image and plopping it on a page doesn’t always come out the way I wanted.

However it’s a start. Then I just, keep drawing the character over and over again until I get to a point that I like and that is fun to draw because that’s kinda why I draw when not doing commissions.

For Dsaf characters I already had a lot to go off of, for one I have plenty of examples for their personality while also having enough wiggle room to make my own interpretations as well.

I keep in mind what time period the drawing is taking place in and try to change how a character looks depending on how I think they had or have changed overtime.

You may have noticed Dave has his hair up in the warmups provided, but in every depiction of him that I had posted he has had his hair down or it’s much shorter in one of the requests.

I personally feel he would have no interest in his general looks and would rather just do his own thing than take after his appearance until after he becomes a bit too obsessed with old sport as now he has a genuine reason to.

That or he’s drunk.

The examples given were way before I even started talking about Dsaf on this blog, so I had many attempts to perfect how I drew them overtime.

Some examples of when I was really getting into the grove of having fun and enjoying the looks of old sport and Dave:

Please note that some could be considered spoilers for some of the things to happen in the story I’m making called “Making things right”

I just won’t say what ones are and what ones aren’t

Hope this is what you were wondering, if not just say so and I can try to answer this again in a way that you actually wanted lol

[adventuresinclientservice]

Of the 53 posts I wrote this past year, which one is the most helpful?

It is the early evening hours of December 31, and I am about to wrap up the day’s activities by selecting a blog topic for the first post of 2025.  I won’t issue the result until next week; Account weenie that I am, I already am at work on it.

I begin the process by reviewing the articles I’ve archived from The New York Times and other publications, knowing they often serve as sources of inspiration.  I find there is much to write about, but not much to say, given I lack an observation or insight – some form of value-add -- to supplement what’s already on the page.

At a loss for an idea worth posting – for me more common than not -- I turn to what I’ve already written in 2024.  I note last year’s commentary is negative  and critical– not the ideal way to start 2025 – with a fair amount that’s disposable and dismissible. 

I sort though the remaining possibilities, searching for anything positive, possibly helpful, maybe even hopeful, something worthy of the start of the New Year.

There are three posts I like, the first two of which are about music, each making a point about client service.

Although they’ve been making music for 40 years, I never heard of Cowboy Junkies until I stumbled on their cover of the Lou Reed song, “Sweet Jane.”  Ever since I have devoured whatever is available on YouTube.  My post, however, makes particular note about the creative process, expressed by singer/spokesperson Margo Timmins when she was interviewed as part of the television program A Beautiful Noise.  If you’re curious, you can read the original post here.

Unlike Cowboy Junkies, I have been following Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band he formed more than 50 years ago, and am very familiar with many of his hit songs.  So when the documentary film Road Diary was released last year, chronicling the band’s 2024 tour, I made a point to watch.

What spoke to me is Springsteen and his band serving as testament to loyalty, longevity, and live performance; I’ve written before about the impossible-to- replicate virtues of wisdom earned through experience, the spirit of which is captured and fully embodied by the band, prompting me to write about it.  If you’re curious, you can read the post here. 

If I were compelled to select a single item from last year, however, I would opt for something that provide help directly, something useful not just to agencies but also to clients, which explains why if you have time to read just one post from the year that was, I would suggest it be this one.

Relatively speaking, “Five simple, obvious keys for clients wanting the best possible performance from their advertising and marketing agencies”  is what I think is the most helpful among last year’s post.  Looking at this another way -- the absolute way instead of the relative way -- is it truly of value?

I suspect even if agencies agree with what’s in the post, they will claim there is little they can do to influence their clients’ compliance.  As for clients, most will reject my suggestions out-of-hand, saying they don’t speak to the realities of dealing with agencies day-to-day.  They fail the usefulness test.

As I think back on what I’ve written previously and forward to what I hope to write, I realize that advice directed at clients and their agencies, no matter how well meaning, is not constructive.

I conclude counsel given to institutions is of little help; heading into the new year, I will do my best to offer help to individuals a post like this one, for example -- in the hope my readers can derive some  benefit from it.

[yhwhrulz]

Worthy Brief - November 22, 2024

Don't be overwhelmed with tomorrow!

Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

When I first gave my life to the Lord, like many of us, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. If God would have shown me, at that time, all the things that would have to change about me, I think I would have gone running for dear life!

After over 20 years working in ministry in Israel—where we still keep our ministry house—I’ve spent the last few years traveling.

It's been a wild ride with so many challenges and close encounters with major events that really showed me just how poorly news can be reported. In fact, it got to the point where I couldn't in good conscience link to news stories anymore; we had to start producing all our news content ourselves. That’s how we ended up becoming a full-blown news agency.

If you would have shown me this picture back in the days of my rebellion, I think I would have laughed my head off in unbelief!

But that is the Lord's way. God is a gentleman. He doesn't show us more than He feels we need to know. He knows that we are weak and He's merciful enough not to give us more than we can handle. He desires for us to lay our worries upon Him and trust Him for our future.

God has not given us the power to overcome all the problems we have yet to face. He has given us only the power to overcome what faces us today! Just as the children of Israel could collect only enough manna for one day, the power God gives us to face our trials -- it only comes one day at a time.

God has so many wonderful adventures ahead for us who love Him and are called according to His purpose -- and He will surely give us the strength to endure the trials we'll face with each adventure. Let's trust Him only for today's trials -- and let Him worry about the rest!

Shabbat shalom! Have a wonderful weekend, and see you on Monday!

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Obadiah and Elianna (Melbourne, Florida)

Editor's Note: Last weekend, Worthy News published an in-depth analysis exposing the UN's efforts to influence the global narrative through AI and the media. Shortly after, the article was removed by Facebook. To help our audience understand what’s truly relevant, we’ve launched the Worthy Jail page, showcasing censored news that deserves attention. If you share a Worthy News article and it gets taken down, send us a screenshot—we’ll honor you with a Worthy Facebook Jail T-shirt! Read more …https://worthy.social/worthy-jail/

Editor's Note: Feel free to share any of our content from Worthy, including Devotions, News articles, and more, on your social platforms. You have full permission to copy and repost anything we produce.

Editor's Note: During this war, we have been live blogging throughout the day -- sometimes minute by minute on our Telegram channel. https://t.me/worthywatch/ Be sure to check it out!

Editor's Note: Dear friends — we are going to be heading WEST!!! Now booking in the following states: Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas …. If you know Pastors, Rabbis or Ministry Leaders who might be interested in some powerful Israeli style Hebrew/English worship and a refreshing word from Worthy News about what’s going on in the Land, please let us know how to connect with them and we will do our best to get you on our schedule! You can send an email to george [ @ ] worthyministries.com for more information.