#if anyone would be interested in doing a collaborative creative thing

[thaliagrayce]

hnnn.... my roommate is participating in a fandom bang and it sounds really fun..... ive always shied away from them bc when i'm not crazy about an idea it takes me forever to write it but i think being paired w someone else who was excited about it and making stuff would help........... i wanna do a bang

[harrywavycurly]

Glitch: Does She Know?

Masterlist: Here

CW: mentions of drinking, manipulation in the form of Jeff pre programming you and minor language.

A/N: I am excited to get this series going and see how y’all like it! It’s going to be a good mix of drama/angst and fluff so enjoy! Oh and you might not like Jeff in this series and that’s okay💓

Tag List: @alicivava @cosmicneptune @daphnesutton @valeriiyuhh @drewrry @obsessiveenthusiast @me-undiscovered @psicostyles @umadirectioner @styleswithaseaview @sunflower-tia @tulips4harry @gmikaelson @fangirl509east @howling-wolf97 @outofthisworl-d @namoreno @harryscherries28 @blckburd @harry2121 @cevans-winchester @prettygurl-2009

Summary: Jeff thinks it’s time to try to get Harry back in the studio💓

Six years, that’s how long it’s been since Jeff has seen Harry do anything remotely close to stepping foot in a studio and in his opinion that’s about five years too long for the world to go without new music from one of it’s bestselling artists. Now it’s not that Harry hasn’t been busy because he has, he’s been dipping his toes in the fashion pond and enjoying doing collaborations with his favorite fashion houses, he’s been working behind the scenes for his own personal brands and honestly he’s just been relishing in his time away from the chaos that often times comes hand in hand with releasing new music into the world. He’s still an artist and finds himself scribbling little lines here and there that he thinks could fit into a melody he has playing in his head but nothing seems to be making him have to rush to the studio to get the words out of his brain before they threaten to take over his life like he’s done for previous albums, and that’s what is starting to concern Jeff.

Jeff is worried that Harry has started to lose his spark, or to put it more plainly he just simply doesn’t have the desire he once had to put songs out into the universe that make people feel things and Jeff thinks he knows exactly what’s causing this decline in inspiration, Harry isn’t in love with anyone. He doesn’t know why Harry works so well while in love or at least while infatuated with someone but it’s what works for him and over the last few years that’s the one thing Harry hasn’t bothered with. He doesn’t seem interested at all in finding love or even pursing anyone for more than a two week long fling that ends with nothing more than maybe a poem or two Harry jots down in his private journal that Jeff can’t do anything with because Harry would murder him if he even insinuated turning his private journal into something for profit. It’s not that Jeff is only wanting to see Harry in the studio again because he knows with it comes a good bit of money, no Jeff wants Harry in the studio again because he knows deep down his friend feels like a part of him is missing when he’s not being creative in that way and all Jeff wants to do is help one of his bestfriends feel whole again.

Or at least that’s what Jeff tells himself.

So that’s how Jeff finds himself standing in front of you, a companion bot that is designed for one thing only and that’s to help people feel understood on all levels needed to form a lasting connection that could potentially turn into deeper feelings such as love. He knows that the odds of you making a connection with Harry are high considering he went ahead and had them download a file into your main server that was nothing more than an info dump on the superstar himself. Including his likes and dislikes, his star sign, his normal day to day schedule and a variety of photos of him throughout his career dating all the way back to his X Factor audition. He will admit he might’ve went a little overboard on the Harry informational file but for what he spent on you he can’t risk you not at least making Harry want to go write a few heartbreakingly sad songs or love ballads after his encounter with you, however long of brief it may be since he’s not really sure how the two of you are going to get along seeing as he hasn’t even turned you on yet.

“So how do I turn her on?” Jeff asks the technician who is responsible for informing him of all your abilities and requirements as well as making sure Jeff signs all the dotted lines that will officially make you his bot.

“Oh one moment let me power her up.” Lance says with a smile as he taps away on his tablet and a few seconds later Jeff watches your eyes open and he takes a step back from where you’re sat in a loveseat in what you’ll soon realize is your living room.

“Good morning.” Your voice is softer than he imagined as you introduce yourself to him, your name being one he picked because he figured it would be one Harry would enjoy saying over and over again to himself like he’s done with past love interests.

“Uh good morning I’m Jeff.” You give him a smile as you reach your hand out for him to shake and it takes him a moment to finally find the courage to slide his hand into yours and when he does he’s shocked at how human like it feels. “She’s warm and-sweaty?” His words come out like a question as he turns his head towards Lance who is standing nearby tapping a few things on his tablet.

“Sorry I get a little nervous meeting new people.” You explain as you quickly take your hand out of Jeff’s grasp so you can place it in your lap.

“Don’t be shocked by the things she’s able to do. She’s just like a regular human. She sweats and-”

“Can she get wet?”

“Depends on if she’s attracted to you or not.”

“Not like that I mean can she shower and like go in the ocean?” Lance laughs and nods his head as he goes back to looking down at his tablet.

“Yeah man she can be fully submerged in water even salt water. She charges at night while she sleeps so she doesn’t need to be plugged in and her maintenance is only once every two years unless she feels sluggish then we can do a virtual assessment but other than that she’s good to go and yes she can even eat regular food and if she drinks too much she will get drunk.” You look from Lance over to Jeff who is staring at you with a bewildered expression on his face as if he can’t really believe what he’s hearing but you don’t let yourself dwell on why hearing you’re just like any other person would be so odd for him. Instead you choose to focus on if you’ll have time to paint your nails today as they look a little boring at the moment without any color on them.

“Does she know?” He asks as he tears his eyes away from you and turns to face the technician. Lance raises an eyebrow as he drops his hand that’s holding the tablet to his side with a sigh that has your head lifting up and your eyes glancing over to the two men.

“Does she know what?” He questions making Jeff roll his eyes as he leans in making it difficult for you to hear what he says next.

“Does she know she’s a robot and that I paid for her to-”

“Oh uhm no.” Lance answers in a whispered tone as his eyes glance over Jeff’s shoulder, he gives you a warm smile making you blush as you look back down at your lap. “She has no clue.” He explains making Jeff just nod and run a hand through his hair.

“Okay and what would happen if she found out? That she’s-”

“She won’t like explode or go evil or anything but uhm yeah she’d probably be a little upset so we always advise that if you do plan on telling them to do it up front or just don’t tell them at all and let them go about their lives thinking they are one of us.”

“Okay great.” You smile at Jeff as he turns around and looks over at you, this time you watch his eyes slowly roam over your form. It’s not completely uncomfortable, the way his eyes travel over your face and then down your neck to your shoulders, if anything you just hope he goes easy on your appearance seeing as it’s not even nine in the morning and you haven’t had your coffee yet.

“Do you mind standing up for me?” You nod and quickly do as he asks making him give you a soft smile. You swallow down the nerves that begin to creep up as he motions for you to turn around for him with his index finger, but when he doesn’t say anything and just nods in what you assume is approval you feel a small sense of relief wash over you.

“Her clothes are all unpacked as well as any other belongings she might need for the first week or so until she starts to have preferences about what she likes.” Lance explains to Jeff who is still subtly looking you over, you look down at your jean shorts and t shirt that lets a sliver of your torso be seen and you feel a weird sensation take over as if you for some reason no longer like the outfit you’re wearing even though you’re positive you’re the one who picked it out this morning.

“She doesn’t need me to tell her what to do all the time right?”

“Dude she’s not a Sim okay? She can take care of herself perfectly fine you set her intelligence level to,” Lance looks down at the tablet before looking back at Jeff. “slightly above average so don’t worry she won’t like burn the house down or anything. She’s fine.” Lance reassures him as he hands over the tablet so Jeff can begin signing the documents that will allow you to be left with him for good. “Just follow the prompts and sign on the dotted lines. Oh and be sure to read the important information PDF that we sent to your email earlier it will answer most of your questions.” Jeff just nods as he signs things while listening to Lance talk.

“Are you used to people buying these things for other purposes?” Jeff asks making Lance shrug as he looks over at where you’re standing in the living room with your hands in front of you as you look around the space.

“I mean rich people are usually the most freaky but who am I to judge? But be aware she can feel pain so yeah-she can also bruise.” Jeff’s eyes go wide as he hands the tablet back to Lance who takes it with a smile.

“I’m not-I don’t think you understand what-” Jeff stutters making Lance just hold his free hand up and shake his head.

“I don’t need to understand anything man I’m just here to drop her off.” With that Lance takes a few steps backwards and then turns on his heels so he’s facing the front door. “Nice meeting you!” You look up when Lance shouts your name over his shoulder, you give him a wave when he smiles at you before he opens the front door leaving you alone with Jeff.

“So I’m having a party tomorrow and I was wondering if you’d like to come? I could introduce you to some friends of mine if you’d like?” Jeff asks as he sits down on the small couch across from the loveseat making you follow his actions and sit back down in the loveseat you’ve been sitting in for most of the morning. He watches in amusement as your face lights up at the mention of a party and he smiles when you clap your hands in front of your chest with a grin.

“I’d love to come.” You say with a squeal of excitement that has Jeff noting that he might have to tweak a few things in your emotion settings because he doesn’t think this level of excitement over things like parties is going to rub Harry the right way. “Is there a theme or anything?” You ask making Jeff laugh and shake his head no.

“No theme just some friends getting together that’s all.” He answers making you nod as you start to mentally put together an outfit for it. “Uhm so do-do you like living here?” His question has your eyes narrowing for the briefest moment before you’re looking around and smiling as you realize you’re sitting in your living room, safe inside your house and not in some random stranger’s home.

“Oh yeah I love living here.” You tell him as you lift your hand and point towards your bedroom door that’s right off the living room. Jeff struggles to understand just how you know so much about your environment when you’ve only been awake in it for maybe an hour but he doesn’t question it he just smiles and lets you go on about how much you love your house.

“My bedroom gets really nice natural lighting I love it.” Jeff just nods as you tuck a strand of your hair behind your ear and the small action makes him momentarily forget that underneath your pretty exterior is nothing more than a bunch of wires holding together a metal skeleton that’s controlled by a series of codes that he can semi control on an app on his phone.

“I’m glad you like it here.” You raise an eyebrow at him when he stands up and looks down at the watch on his wrist. “I have a lunch meeting with a friend and need to run a few errands first but I’ll send you the details about tomorrow okay?” You just nod as you stand up so you can walk him to the front door.

“Okay.”

“See you tomorrow.” Jeff feels his body go a bit stiff when you wrap your arms around him in a hug that you’re pulling away from before his brain can even try to register what was happening leaving him standing there awkwardly in your doorway.

“Have a good day Jeff.” You say with a smile and a wave as he blinks a few times before turning and walking down the short set of stairs to the sidewalk.

“You-you too.” Is all he manages to say before you close the door and head back into the living room leaving him standing on the sidewalk a little out of it. He lets out a puff of air from his lips as he runs a hand through his hair before sliding his sunglasses on and pulling his phone out of his pocket.

“Poor Harry he doesn’t stand a fucking chance against that.” Jeff mumbles to himself as he walks down the street towards his parked car.

“Since when did you start throwing parties on Wednesdays?” Harry asks as he looks at Jeff from across the table that’s tucked in the back of a cafe Harry has been frequenting lately. “Actually when did you start throwing parties at all? You hate people in your house.” Jeff rolls his eyes as he reaches for his glass of water while Harry sends him a questioning look as he rests his forearms on the table.

“I’m just in a party mood I guess?” He answers with a shrug making Harry narrow his eyes at him. “What? It’s just a party H you can come or you can stay home and be boring.”

“So there’s no special occasion or anything? You’re just-just throwing a party because you feel like it?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re up to something.” Jeff feels his hands get sweaty as Harry leans in across the table. “I can tell you’re keeping something from me so just-”

“I redid my backyard and want to show it off okay? Happy now? I sound like a seven year old little boy who’s inviting his friends over to see his new Lego set but that’s why I’m having the party.” Harry leans back in his chair as the little white lie comes out of Jeff’s mouth, because while he did actually redo his backyard, it was a year ago but Harry doesn’t know that.

“You want to show off your new backyard? Really?”

“Really.”

“Well okay then.” Harry lets out a chuckle as he reaches for his cup of tea. “I’ll be there. But I still think you’re up to something.” Harry shoots him a playful wink making Jeff just roll his eyes and brush his comment off as he takes a sip of his water.

“It’ll be fun trust me.”

“I mean it’s a party of course it’ll be fun.” Harry says with an almost smirk like smile that has Jeff wondering if maybe just maybe he knows what the real reason behind this party is but he shakes that idea out of his head because there’s no way Harry knows what his plan is because if he did he wouldn’t have agreed so easily.

You enjoy social settings, or at least you normally do but something about the way the people inside Jeff’s kitchen are staring at you as if you have a second head and four arms has you feeling like some sort of attraction meant to be looked and gawked at instead of just a party goer looking for another flute of champagne. It’s like they can see something about you that you can’t see yourself and it makes an uneasy feeling begin to stir in your stomach as you walk around the spacious kitchen and out the open sliding door towards the back yard. You smooth out the front of your dress as you take a few deep calming breaths while walking deeper into the dimly lit garden, when you come up to a fountain in the middle of a few poorly looked after rose bushes you take a seat on the stone bench in front of it.

“You know for a party all about his backyard it kinda looks like shit.” You jump as the hand that’s not clutching your champagne flute flies up to your chest as a deep voice comes from behind you. You hear the sound of gravel crunching beneath his shoes before you feel it, a soft hand on the top of your shoulder that has your head turning and looking up at the stranger that seemed to also seek refuge in the garden from the party happening inside. “Sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.” Even in the dim lighting you can see the deep emerald color of his eyes as they stare right into yours.

“It’s okay.” You say with a warm smile as a nagging feeling that you know the man that’s still staring at you starts to fester in the back of your mind.

“Uhm I’m,” You watch him blink once and then twice before he shakes his head and seems to be broken of whatever spell he was under causing a nervous sounding laugh to escape his lips. “I’m Harry.” He says as he extends the hand that was on your shoulder out for you to take, giving you a smile that makes you let your guard down just a little with how comforting it is.

“It’s nice to meet you Harry.” His smile only seems to grow into a full on grin as you introduce yourself and place your hand in his giving it a little shake. “Did you say this party is for his backyard?” You ask with a quirked brow as you look around at all the half dead bushes and fountain that doesn’t even have any water coming out of it.

“That’s what he told me at least.”

“Oh well then why are we the only ones out here?” Harry looks at you and then over his shoulder towards the house, and the people he can see through the floor to ceiling windows that take up most of the back of the house and it’s not until he shrugs his shoulders that he realizes he still has a hold of your hand.

“Because the people Jeff invited to this party aren’t exactly the stroll around the garden type of people.” He answers as his eyes land on your joined hands and it’s as if on queue you begin to run your thumb over his knuckles and when his eyes glance up to your face he can tell it’s something you’re not even aware that you’re doing because you’re not even looking at him you’re staring at the house with a far off look in your eyes.

“They remind me of how it feels when walking around a wall of old paintings.” Your voice is soft and flows at such an even pace it has Harry almost feeling like he’s in a trance of some sort. “That feeling of eyes on you and that sense of judgement that makes a shiver go down your spine because you know even if you meet their pointed looks they won’t ever tell you how they really feel about you but it’s not that you need them to tell you because it’s written all over their face.” Harry swallows thickly as you perfectly articulate the way he’s always felt during these stuffy industry parties and when you finally look back over at him you give him a comforting smile to go along with the gentle squeeze to his hand. “Forgive me the bubbles seem to have turned me into some sort of tortured poet.” You say with a laugh as you lift your half empty flute of champagne for him to see.

“No no it’s fine you’re-”

“There you two are.” Jeff’s voice has Harry dropping your hand as if he just got caught doing something horrible making your brows furrow as you watch his arm fall back to his side and the corners of your mouth tick downwards a bit as he tucks his hand into the pocket of his black slacks as if to hide the evidence of a crime.

“Yeah here we are.” You say as you put on a smile while standing up so you can face Jeff who is looking at Harry with a raised brow and a knowing look on his face and once again as you look over at Harry and allow yourself to take in his appearance, his cream and light blue short sleeve dress shirt letting you get an eye full of the ink scattered on his arms and his perfectly tousled hair that gives the allusion of it being how he looks when he rolls out of bed has you feeling that nagging sensation in the back of your mind as you try to pinpoint exactly where you know him from.

“The party is inside you know.” Jeff teases as Harry rolls his eyes and takes a step away from you and turns to face the house.

“That’s a bit odd though isn’t it? I mean considering this party is supposed to be about you showing off your backyard.” Harry states with a hint of annoyance in his tone that you immediately pick up on but Jeff either doesn’t notice or decides to ignore as he just laughs and gives Harry a shrug.

“What have you two been doing out here?” Jeff asks ignoring Harry’s statement entirely as he looks over at you with playful gleam in his eyes.

“Your roses are dead.” Harry bites his bottom lip to keep himself from laughing as you point towards the very dried up bush by your feet. “And your fountain is broken and your hydrangeas are beyond saving so whoever your gardener is I’d uhm well-I’d fire them.” You state bluntly before bringing your champagne up to your lips to take a sip while Jeff stands there with a half shocked and half amused expression on his face.

“Okay then.” Jeff says with a laugh as he looks around his garden that he knows could use some help. “Why don’t you take over then?” Harry looks at you as Jeff proposes his offer to you and when you roll your eyes he can tell it’s something you don’t do often as it only comes across as teasing and the tiniest bit adorable which is odd because he doesn’t know why he finds the simple action of you rolling your eyes at one of his closest friends adorable but he does.

“Me? Take over your garden?”

“It’s what you do for a living isn’t it? Landscape design and all that?” Jeff watches closely as your head tilts to the side ever so slightly and he knows now that’s your tell for when you’re mind is catching up to the world around you and letting you in on parts of yourself you haven’t learned yet like your job, the one Jeff hand picked for you out of a list of a thousand possible choices. He was sure to pick something that would make you seem nurturing and down to earth in Harry’s eyes without being too over the top and he also knows Harry’s soft spot for all things flowers.

“Well yes-yes it is but don’t you have someone already?” You question and Jeff just shrugs as he looks around his sad excuse of a garden.

“Yes but you said so yourself I should fire them.”

“Jeff are you seriously offering her a job in the middle of a party?”

“Yeah? Why not? My garden looks like-”

“Shit.” You blurt out remembering Harry’s earlier comment on how the backyard looked. This earns a laugh from both men making you smile as you take one last sip of your champagne and place the empty flute down on the bench in front of you.

“I’ll do it.” You state as you walk around the stone bench so you can reach your hand out for Jeff to take. “Now if you don’t mind I think I’m going to head home.” Harry feels a sense of sadness as he hears you say your goodbyes to Jeff as he gives your hand a shake sealing your deal of becoming his new landscape designer. “It was a lovely party thank you for inviting me.” You add with a smile making Jeff just nod and smile back as he lets go of your hand allowing you to begin heading off towards the back gate, wanting to avoid having to go inside the house at all costs.

“Let me walk you out.” Harry says as he rushes to catch up with you, not ready to be away from you just yet. “So how exactly do you know Jeff?” He asks once he’s next to you and your slow careful steps make him get the feeling that you also aren’t quite ready for your time together to come to an end.

“A friend of a friend sort of thing.” You explain with a shrug not really sure how else to explain your relationship with Jeff because you feel as if you’ve always known him. “What about you?” This has Harry chuckling as he gives you a questioning glance as if he doesn’t really believe the words that just came out of your mouth. “Sorry is that too personal? You don’t have to-”

“He’s my manager.”

“Manager of what?”

“Uh well you know that’s a great question.” You stop at the gate and turn to look at Harry who is already staring at you with a look that makes you think he doesn’t fully know if you’re real or not. “How have we never met before?” His voice is quieter as he takes a small step towards you making you feel your cheeks get warm when you feel his eyes roam over your face like he’s trying to memorize it so he can think back and picture it perfectly when you’re not around.

“I’m not sure.” You answer in a hushed tone that matches his and when you see his hand reach out to gently brush some hair out of your face you feel your heart do a weird double beat thing in your chest that has you taking a small step away from him and turning towards the gate. “Nice to meet you Harry.” Your words are jumbled together as you unlatch the gate and walk through it in a rush to get some distance between the two of you so you can try to get your breathing and heartbeat under control.

Harry stands there with his hand still in the air and he swears he can still feel the warmth of your skin on his fingertips. He lets out a sigh as it falls to his side as he watches you walk down the driveway and then turn down the sidewalk, the lilac coloring of your dress getting caught in the streetlights. Harry isn’t sure how long he stands there staring at the now empty street, but clearly it’s long enough for Jeff to walk up to him and place a hand on his shoulder.

“You okay H?” There’s a minor hint of concern in his voice as he gives Harry’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Oh uhm Yeah yeah I’m-I’m fine.” Jeff smiles to himself as he notes the very obvious flustered state his best friend is in and he knows this can only mean one thing, you’ve caught his attention.

“She’s-”

“Different.” Harry says as he turns to face Jeff. “In the best way.” He adds with a smile making Jeff raise an eyebrow at him. “Fuck I didn’t even get her number.” The look of pure defeat has Jeff slightly feeling bad for Harry but then he remembers the whole reason for this meeting in the first place, to make him want you until it drives him to a point of madness and then when you finally give in to him it will hopefully make him take those feelings and put them into songs.

“I’m sure you’ll get it eventually.”

“You think so?”

“Oh yeah. Trust me you’ll see her again.”

[bonefall]

Clan Culture Illustrations

So I've been mentioning this in passing, and I think now is a good time to start collecting info from people who are interested!

I'm seeking artists who want to draw stuff for my Clan Culture series.

I often write very large guides for things like tools, ecology, medicine and treatments, etc, which then get held up by the fact that they're big blocks of text without any fun pictures. I usually collaborate with friends and family, but I could put out more quicker if I had some artists on standby.

If you're an artist who would be interested in illustrating, here's the details;

Everything I make on this blog is tailored towards WC fans, but free for anyone to use and reference for their xenofiction worldbuilding projects. You do not have to be intimately familiar with the Warrior Cats books. This offer's open to anyone above 18.

Fans of Better Bones are preferred, because Clan Culture and BB often intersect. I might ask for help with some BB stuff at some point, too. (for example i have a guide on types of StarClan spirits that needs illustration)

To re-iterate, please only inquire if you're 18+

Price range is 20 - 50 USD and turnaround time can be up to 6 months if you just keep me updated. (I am sorry that I can't offer a higher price for these, but this is coming from my own pocket. In return, this is meant to be low pressure)

Half payment upfront, the rest after completion.

I will never "assign" you a surprise mystery topic (unless you ask for that I guess?), I'll either present you with a list of posts that need illustration (yes this means you get to read stuff early), OR float some ideas that play to your strengths and interests. (for example: if I'm approached by Spider-Enjoyer-9000 who's willing to draw a ridiculous number of spiders, I will draft, write, and research a Clanmew Expansion in the style of Deer and Co or Moths and Butterflies.)

Either way, there's usually a lot of creative freedom here unless I need a specific technical drawing, which I will discuss with you and provide references for. (As an example, if we were talking about a post on declawing, I might ask for you to illustrate the muscles within the paw.)

The nature of Clan Culture means you will probably be asked to draw plants, food, objects, and/or scenery

Still interested?

I'm hoping to make a personal "list" of people I can call on, so send me your commissions info or details in a DM, an ask, a reply to this post, or anything else you'd like. Tell me about stuff you like drawing, topics you're interested in, if you can draw backgrounds, etc

Also, please tell include in that message if you're comfortable with illustrating these particular sensitive topics. These are opt-in only;

Medical Gore (Woundcare, stitching, blood, vomit, urine, parasites and bug bites, etc.)

Reproductive Care (Abortion, birth, pyometria, inducing lactation, possible revamp of the HRT guide including simple surgeries, etc)

Hunting and Butchery (Humane killing of prey, skinning, disembowelment, cutting meat, making sausage and blood pudding, etc)

Funerals and Animal Death (Sad kitties, dead battle cats, scavengers and grave desecration, tombs and burial rituals, concealing decay, etc.)

The end art will always stay tasteful, but I might need to give you references in the form of real images or tutorials that might be upsetting if you're sensitive to these topics-- so it's important to me that I consider those four things "opt-in."

I have plenty of other posts that need illustration, it's just a huge plus if you're able to do these too.

(You should also mention any other specific triggers or phobias you have, so I don't unwittingly come at you with something else upsetting)

"I still have questions!"

Putting a big list of answers beneath the cut;

"Would everything have to be colored?"

Nope, as long as there's pictures to break up the text, you can do sketches, black and white, flat colors, only put color in the header, etc. We'll discuss expectations with the post in front of us, and then agree on price.

I have ONE requirement; it's gotta look good on Tumblr darkmode. Because I use Dark Reader.

"Do you have a Discord?"

I do, I just try to be exclusive with who I give it to! When we're discussing details, we'll probably move over there if you'd like. This is a reason why I only want to work with 18+ artists, I'm not always SFW on main.

"Can we do an entry together about (specific topic)?"

Probably yes, so feel free to ask! The worst that will happen is that I say no, or maybe later. For example, I've got a post on Sweetness Tolerance reserved for my partner (they like to draw sweets), so I would say no if you asked.

Just keep in mind that researching, outlining, and writing is unpaid labor I'm doing completely for free. I have posts mostly done that just need art, and topics I've done some research on. Please only ask for special collaborations from scratch if you're serious 🙏

"Does it have to be digital?"

You'd have to have a WILD idea for me to say yes to anything non-digital, but I am a queer of whimsy. If you can whimsify me with an idea, hell yeah.

"Will I be compensated if you need any changes?"

Yes. If I spring anything on you after the details we agree on, I will first ask you, then ask how much that change would cost, and then compensate you for it.

As fair warning though, I am trying to stay within a budget and writing the posts themselves is unpaid work I do (plus occasional helping hands during research stages, I consulted a friend who is an irl wetlands expert for ShadowClan's environment). I can't pay more than what we agree on.

"Can I link my info in the post?"

Yes. "Guest Artist" is going to be named in the opening paragraphs, along with any fundraiser, shop info, carrd, etc, you want there.

"Boosty?"

Yea I got Boosty. Paypal, too.

"I have some other question about pricing"

Feel free to ask, but my hard budget is 20$ - 50$ US. Please only inquire if you're willing to charge within that range.

"What if I'd do it free or I want to do this anonymously?"

I'll donate to a charity of your choice and link to it in the post. If you have no charity preference, I will link to RAINN, Anera, or The Trevor Project.

(Naturally this comes with an anti-ghoul caveat or two. If you try to get me to donate to something like Autism Speaks I will rotate every bone in your body by 45 degrees.)

"I like checklists, can you give me a checklist of info you want in a DM?"

Sure!

Your info; socials, carrd, shop, etc

General interests and strengths. Stuff you'd love to work on, or have insight to. If you like fishing or drawing bugs, I want to know that. If you particularly want to practice flowers, tell me. Be as detailed as you want so I can pair you with a relevant subject!

Your examples

General asking price (or charity)

Which, if any, of the four Opt-In Subjects you're opting in for.

Anything else I should know (triggers, phobias, things you dislike drawing, if schooling or disability means you need a particularly long turnaround time, etc)

[jovata]

Hi to anyone reading this!

I just watched the movie Flow, and I have some theories. (⚠️ SPOILER ALERT ⚠️)

First of all: It's not a movie you understand right away; it requires some reflection afterward. I think this film brings an interesting message.

The movie is slightly anthropomorphic; the animals still behave as they would in real life but with a bit more intelligence. I found this choice very interesting and creative (and I must admit, it made me grow even more attached to the animals because I found it extremely cute).

In the face of adversity—many of which are beyond our control—collaboration is extremely important, turning a terrible situation into something bearable.

We depend on each other to survive, and I believe that’s the film’s main message.

The kitten goes from antisocial to the most cooperative one in the group. Its evolution throughout the adventure is clear and beautiful to watch.

Now, about the mystical part of the movie: that bird scene—I’m not sure I fully understood it.

But after reading some theories (because I was a bit confused), I came to the conclusion that the bird might be some kind of guide for the cat. It helps the cat in various ways until the moment the cat gains control over the situation and makes its own decisions. It decides that the right thing to do is to save the dogs, and at first, the bird—at least from what it seems—gets angry at this decision. But later, as it ascends to the sky, it makes us understand that it has fulfilled its role on Earth. Its mission, apparently, was to protect the cat's life, but once the feline took charge of its own destiny and became capable of surviving on its own, the bird felt that its duty was complete.

Regarding the dogs that were saved, I believe it’s a metaphor for how, even in extreme situations where collaboration is the key to everyone’s prosperity, there will still be those who take advantage and act selfishly, ignoring the common good. Unfortunately, these are challenges we have to deal with in life—on top of the chaos that life already is.

In the end, the movie suggests that the flood will happen again. That whale, which seemed like it was going to die, will now have a chance to survive (and according to the post-credit scenes, it does).

As for the cat, it is now prepared and no longer alone. The final scene, where everyone looks at their reflections, is deeply symbolic and brings back the idea I mentioned at the beginning: their collaboration will be what saves them.

I really liked the movie, and I think I'll watch it again in the future to see if I come up with a different interpretation.

[tadpolesonalgae]

So, I saw @acoazlove do this, and I thought it would be fun way of recapping this year of fanfiction! Also maybe a fun thing to come back to at the beginning of 2026!

These are the questions in an easily copy-able format if anyone else wants to join in!

1. How many words did you publish on AO3 in 2024? 2. How many fics did you complete this year? 3. How many in progress or ongoing fics did you start this year? 4. What was your favourite thing you wrote? 5. What piece was your most experimental or different from your usual style? 6. Did any fics surprise you - either while writing or reception? 7. Do you have a fic you wrote and loved and went under the radar? (This is your sign to reblog/repost it!) 8. Who is an artist that inspired you? 9. Who is an author that inspired you? 10. Who is a new author you discovered? 11. Did you start any collaborations? How did you start it? 12. What accomplishments are you proudest of? 13. What did you learn about writing or creating this year? 14. What is your advice? 15. What are your creative goals for 2025?

1. How many words did you publish on AO3 in 2024?

Absolutely zero. I don't know how it works but I will eventually learn. Just not today.

2. How many fics did you complete this year?

Around 80 I think! But that's including all those cbmthy chapters and additional parts to series, none of which are technically completed :')

3. How many in progress or ongoing fics did you start this year?

If we're only counting the ones from this year, then I'm pretty sure it's only The Other Woman! (Maybe The Painter and The Prostitute, The Wrong Side of History, and The High Lord's Whore? Idk if those are going to be ongoing things or not though!) I think all my other ongoing fics were started either in '22 or '23! So not that bad!

4. What was your favourite thing you wrote?

This is such a difficult question </3 The Other Woman was a big piece for me in terms of the emotion that fuelled it, but I also loved cbmthy chapter 24, and Stalking Through The Underbrush! (But also Degraded for Nesta, and Shared Camomile for Elain)

5. What piece was your most experimental or different from your usual style?

I think maybe Blood-borne for Az, or To Old Gods for Tamlin? Blood-borne is a fic where I was really trying for atmosphere, and trying to build a scene to set up the story, and it was a similar case with To Old Gods with kind of writing fanfiction in a way I haven't tried before? I generally imagine Prythian to be a lovely place because of all the wonder magic can bring about, but Blood-borne was a little on the sinister side, and To Old Gods felt more Celtic/medieval than the kind of magic I generally think of being most prevalent throughout Prythian?

6. Did any fics surprise you - either while writing or reception?

I think the Dark!Feysand, Tag, You're It series startled me since it's getting some plot? When it began as almost entirely smut. Also chapter 16 of cbmthy - I thought it was the worst chapter I'd written when I posted it but then some people were so kind about it and it's now one of my favourite chapters of the whole series! And as usual The Other Woman - that fic was definitely a step out of my comfort zone so hearing some people want more of her (the reader, her life, and her revenge), and being able to relate to some aspects of her anger, and hatred, was very personal and soothing to me.

7. Do you have a fic you wrote and loved and went under the radar? (This is your sign to reblog/repost it!)

I find this a hard question to answer because I'm not sure how to gauge it? I'm always happy that anyone is reading my writing and enjoying it, so in that sense there isn't a single piece I've written that I felt 'went under the radar'. That being said, if there was a fic I'd be particularly giddy if someone took interest in, it would probably be Messy Breakups and Messier Bedsheets for Cassian's day of acotar-omegaverse-week! Since there's only one part out currently there's not much to go on, but I'm planning for it to be a very fun and messy series, with some light-hearted angst that's more appropriate for a TV drama or something! :)

8. Who is an artist that inspired you?

A music artist would probably be Sofia Isella? I've been listening to her since before 2024 so I'm not sure if she counts but she's definitely put some ideas in my head for fic writing! Also Enya. And electronic music.

9. Who is an author that inspired you?

For fanfiction and general writing style: @azrielhours , @whisperingmidnights , and @throneofsapphics

Rags has a way of writing like she's sticking her hand right into my chest and soothing my heart. The way she captures softness and intimacy always blows me away and if I'm ever in a bit of a foul mood, or feeling generally disappointed in the world, her writing will always cheer me up without fail. It's genuinely so impressive just how intense her stories make me feel (pleasantly), and how perfectly she articulates special feelings relating to tenderness (Take Care; Lessons on Relief), and love of one's home. (Captured; Domestic) August has an incredibly vivid way of writing. I adore how she writes Rhysand in Heart of Velaris, and also how she writes Feysand, both in her Sunday Morning series and in Something Wicked <3 She also has some relatively niche interests (like her Helion x reader x Azriel fics - Sunlight & Shadow) but she writes them SO PASSIONATELY. Seriously, something just being kind of niche doesn't stop August from enjoying it which is lovely to see, both in her enjoyment of Gwynlain, and the pieces she's written for Gwyn and Rhys <3 Irene has written so much it's astonishing (I was so excited and overwhelmed when I first saw how much I'd get to read from her). I have such lovely memories of reading through Have Your Little Girlfriend, and Old Faces, over the summer when having breakfast, and I'm fairly confident I've devoured ever single smutty piece of hers that I can get my hands on (Pretty Girl? Passed out. Against The Contract? Jaw-dropping). I also usually despise angst but Irene does it too well. I can't resist. And it's also so cathartic in getting to read her angsty pieces then expressing sorrow either in the comments, or through an ask. <3

10. Who is a new author you discovered?

@secret-third-thing

STT I only found earlier this year (2024) but her writing style is so impressive. I'm frequently left feeling deeply anguished after reading her writing - she has a way of expression/articulation that has you understanding the environment she's writing in. She uses words I either don't know or have never heard of (yay, vocabulary expansion!), and creates settings and sceneries that are so incredibly immersive straight from the get go in a way I haven't read before. I'm sometimes left feeling a little disgruntled because her work feels so much further developed than my own writing style, but I think she's studied a lot more, read more, and worked to become a better writer. I find I admire how serious and meticulous she is about continuing to improve.

11. Did you start any collaborations? How did you start it?

Umm, I didn't initiate it, but @readychilledwine has been astonishing with organising the @thehouseofvanserra collaboration. She's the one who offered up dates for when to have fics ready by, checking with the writers involved whether the times would suit us, and has also been so understanding with writers who were unsure of whether they'll be able to overcome a block by then. She organised the majority of the collab, put the blog together, came up with cool designs (tested different fonts, different backgrounds, offered ideas on how to make the collaboration as fun for the writers and as many readers as possible, and has taken on the role of managing the blog), and has made the whole process run so smoothly - so I wanted to say a thank you for all the work she's put in so far for the sake of the collaboration <3

12. What accomplishments are you proudest of?

They're not really my accomplishments since I didn’t do the reaching out (The Scary Part), but I feel like I’ve made some more friends within the fandom, which is very nice.

@sarawritestories has been so kind and welcoming. She’s always so sweet and such a great listener, and seems to genuinely care about people and want the best for them! Not to mention I love Come Here, Sweetheart! 🧡💛 @ninthcircleofprythian is someone I look up to in how steadfast she is. I really admire her humour, even if I’m initially startled for a few moments 🤨 I think she’s strong willed and an amazing writer 🧡💛 (Stuck In The Middle With You? So sweet; so quintessentially Ninth) @pit-and-the-pen I love your music taste and your Az fics, and how encouraging you are whenever new ideas for fics are mentioned 🧡💛. (Please go to sleep. was so heartwarming—it’s such a comfort!) @daycourtofficial you’re always there to hype people up and you have such a charming sense of humour, not to mention I love all the bug facts! (And getting to talk about knitting. I love getting to talk about knitting) (And Falling In Love On The Fourth Floor - I love that fic!) 🧡💛 @readychilledwine I love your fluffy pieces, I love your smutty pieces, and you're such a kind, caring person to be around and talk to - there's nothing not to love! (Size kink with Az frequently sends me to heaven - amazing) 🧡💛 @dawneternal not only can you draw beautifully, but you’re also a wonderfully compelling writer! I love your characterisation of LoA/Edana in The Benevolent, and you’re such a joy to talk to 🧡💛 @nocasdatsgay you’re so sweet and so supportive 🧡💛 (I also started reading Neapolitan Bonds after you mentioned it maybe a week or so ago and it has sunk its CLAWS into my brain.) (cannot wait to read more you don’t understand!!) (thank you for writing it) @lady-of-tearshed you're the sweetest ball of fire I've ever met. I can always count on you to have some witty retort queued and at the ready <3 Also the beginning lines in Temporary made me so emotional. Stop. I'm not usually an Azris girlie but my horizons are being begrudgingly expanded 🧡💛 @tsunami-of-tears I LOVE YOUR DIVIDERS (obviously). The Seasonal and Solar Court ones in particular are so handy for specific acotar themes, and the halloween dividers you did were so cute (the pink ones specifically made me squeal) 🧡💛

13. What did you learn about writing or creating this year?

Sometimes I just don’t feel like writing. I don’t yet know what causes it because honestly there could be so many reasons, and so many variables that I’m not - at this stage - interested in trying to figure out what they are.

14. What is your advice?

Just try and be happy with what you have. You can aim for more, you can be overwhelmed with how much you’ve achieved, but I think if you’re unhappy with where you are (in the context of sharing fanfiction specifically 😅) then it’s more difficult to enjoy the process. But I think that might be something you just have to learn through experience and not something that one can really have told to them.

15. What are your creative goals for 2025?

I want to tie up a few loose ends. I’ve accumulated quite a few short series for a few characters, and I would like to experience the satisfaction of finishing one off 🫠

[frodopotter7]

The memories of Edwin Payne

(Or an interactive fanfiction)

Note: I had the headcanon that Edwin‘s notebook contains all his personal writing including the writings from his life as an Edwardian boy. So I wrote those entries in his notebook. Now this book is obviously all of Edwin‘s personal thoughts and I thought it would be fun to do a collaboration. So if you are a writer yourself or creative in any other way, feel free to use this entries as a starting point for another fanfiction. For example Charles finding the notebook and reading it or Crystal reading it or anything else. The only rule that I set is that you clearly mark my text and tag me, because first of all it was a lot of effort to write it and secondly I want to see what cool things you came up with. And if you don’t want to creatively interact with this fanfiction, then you can obviously just enjoy it by reading it.

Summary: Edwin Payne‘s most treasured item is his notebook, because it contains so much private information that no one else knows about him. Not even Charles. Including the struggles of a posh, gay, autistic Edwardian boy and his times before hell, in hell and shortly after hell.

Triggers: bullying, implied suicide, dolls

Shipping: Payneland, but you could also include other shipping in your part

The song that I thought of while writing:

One of Edwin’s most treasured objects was definitely his notebook. He had it all the time and he used it for every case they had. It meant a lot to him, since it was with him when he died. It was with him in hell and it was with him in his detective career. The reason why he never gave it to anyone, not even Charles, was that it had been with him even as a child. Well, back then he had several notebooks, but as he died every personal writing of his got transferred into it. The notebook always had enough pages and was still not getting thicker and his pen was always full of ink. And still even though it contained so many different notes, Edwin navigated through it without any problems. It was his own writing after all. His family sigil was carved into the black front cover and the word ‘Payne’ was written underneath it.

If anyone would open it and tried to start from the beginning, he would be greeted with Edwin’s signature under the printed words. ‘Family member:’ After that the handwriting would be harder to read. Scribbly, crossed out spelling mistakes and spilled ink from a little boy, who was writing for the first time. If you manage to identify the words it would read:

1905

Greetings,

my name is Edwin Payne. I am the only child of the family Payne. My father says, that mother wanted more children, but just failed every other time. You probably have heard about my family’s name. The family with the best lawyers of England. When I’m grown up, I will be a lawyer too. Lawyers are like detectives says my father. I like that. I like detectives.

My nanny told me to interact more with others. Why would I need to talk if there is no one to talk to anyways? My parents are often absent and my nanny is just not understanding me. My father says that I am too slow for my age. My motion skills too clumsy. My spoken words only contain information from detective books and I cannot properly respond to people yet. I know a lot of novels by heart though. Others just don’t seem to like talking about crimes as much as I do. Father sometimes lets me have a look in his older cases. They are interesting.

We visited a doctor again today, because of my slow development. We visit him quite often. Actually since I can remember. I don’t feel sick. He says there is nothing wrong with me. Still I know that something is wrong. I overreacted at loud noises. A lot of things stress me out.

1906

I haven’t writing about Cordelia Primrose Surname-von-Hovercraft. She is annoying, loud and a restless soul. She runs around the house and breaks rules just to get the attention. She is a bit younger than me, but that doesn’t justify her actions. I don’t like her. Although sometimes she be helpful. Like the time she stole the biscuit jar and gave me one of the special biscuits. They had to expel one of her nannies for this. But Cordelia had plenty nannies anyways. No one stays long with her. I had my nanny since I was born. I don’t like changes. Cordelia sometimes scares me with ghost stories. She says she would see them and that my fortune says that I will die a painful and early death. I don’t believe in this unscientific nonsense.

I take piano lessons now. It’s is fun. My mother seems to enjoy it. It is somehow the only way to get her attention for me.

Additionally to my regular private lessons I go to school now. Simon obviously needs to be in my class as well. I don’t like him. He bores me and he is too clingy. And sometimes he says mean things to me.

I had an outburst in class. Everything was just so loud and I was frustrated. The teacher hit my finger with the ruler and send me in the naughty corner. I don’t see why I get punished, when the other boys are clearly the distraction. Overall I am a good student. So it will probably not affect my grades.

My favorite subject is Latin and literature. I love books and translating old languages. It is like solving a code or a riddle. I don’t like maths, since it is all just numbers and no words.

1907

I had another outburst in class after Simon tried to touch me. He kept tapping my arm and I don’t like that. The teacher called a nurse, but I was too overwhelmed to respond to any of her questions to my health. I wanted to go home and I told her that again and again, but she didn’t understand. They called a priest. He said something in Latin. I think, it must have been biblical words. I tried to focus on translating them, but there was so much panic around me that I barely focused on anything. But I managed to calm myself after what felt like hours due to exhaustion.

My parents had a talk with the priest. He says that I am possessed by a demon. So now he straps me to a table and mumbled something in Latin again and again once a month or whatever I have an outburst. The robes around my wrist hurt. I am afraid. It is scary to know that there is something inside of me.

1908

I hate being possessed. Although I start to doubt that I have been in the first place. I did some research in the library and the real demonology books aren’t describing my symptoms. Even Cordelia, who usually always tells spooky stories, agrees with me. She said, if I was possessed she would have been the first one to know. She is a mystery to me.

1909

Today I saw a nice looking man across the street. I told my nanny that he looks like a basket full of oranges. My father uses that term a lot when he talks about young women, so I thought it is just a term to use if you think someone looks nice. She gasped and hit me lightly with the newspaper. It didn’t hurt but I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. She told me that a man cannot say that to another man. I guess the saying is reserved for women then.

1910

I started to mask my uncomfortable feelings in public. It is difficult, but it helps. My parents and the priest both think that I am healed.

1911

I got called a Mary Ann for the first time. I asked my nanny and she started to mumble to herself how she must have failed. I told her that she did a really great job, since I would consider myself very well behaved and educated. She ignored me and told me to not tell my parents. How should I tell them if they are never there in the first place?

I did some research again, which mainly was asking Simon. I know, getting down on his level is a hard sacrifice. He told me that a Mary Ann is a boy who behaves like a girl and isn’t manly enough so they love other men. I thought about that for a long time. What is it about me that makes me a Mary Ann?

The writing in the book started to get better and appeared way more elegant. You could find little drawings here and there. Edwin was quite a good and realistic artist. Drawings of flowers, buildings, his nanny, his mother or Sherlock Holmes.

1912

Mother is constantly coughing loudly. It is irritating. Not even cocaine will help. They don’t let me in her room. They fear I would catch it too. Not that I was ever close to her before.

Mother is in a special hospital now. She took the train far away in a hospital in the mountains. No one ever returns from there. I know it. Everyone does. I will not see her again.

Mother died of tuberculosis. I miss her, I guess. I don’t know what I miss. It is a change. I hate changes.

1913

Father is sending me to a boarding school for boys. He says it’s for my education. I know, he just wants to get ride of me.

I hate the new school. Simon is here and people are still calling me a Mary Ann. Simon started to join them. I guess he sees it as a new opportunity to mock me.

I take fencing lessons now. It is nice, since it is not required any sort of touch with other boys. Nothing that I can be blamed for.

1914

I found a hideout in the school attic. It is a great place to read in peace.

The world has started a war. It worries me. They tell us that we are save in the school. But in the end all you can do is pray.

I came back home on Christmas. My nanny was gone. Father said they would be no need for her any longer, since I am in school now anyway. He looked like he knew something, but wasn’t going to tell me.

1915

The next page had some blood drops on its pages.

I want to go home. I want to be back in my room with my detective books. I want to be healed from this darkness inside of me. My nose is bleeding from another attack by the other boys. They started to get more violent now. Simon isn’t joining them, but he watches.

I came home on Christmas, but it wasn’t my home anymore. Just a house. My father didn’t speak a word. I asked him, if it was about the war and he looked up towards me. I could feel his cold gaze from across the table. He took out a letter and slammed it on the table. It was from my headteacher. I was confused. I am class best and the best behaved student in class? The only reason why I get to stand in the naughty corner is if I got caught reading in my comics or books. In my defense I am usually already finished with the exercises if I read in class. What could possibly be a problem with me? The letter was about the other boys calling me Mary Ann. And that they didn’t wanted a boy like that in their school. That I should stop whatever was wrong with me. My father told me in his absent voice, that he was not having a son like that either. He had exchanged letters with the headmaster for quite some time now and I didn’t seem to get better. I asked him that I had no idea. He interrupted me as always. Told me that the only way to make me a man would be to send me to war. I started to cry and he continued holding a speech about heroism and that his generation had understood this so much better than mine. I am too young for war, he knows that too. He told me that the only thing rescuing my life is my good grades. He sees potential in me as a lawyer. He has talked to the Surnames-von-Hovercrafts they agreed that I should marry their daughter as soon as possible. I mean I knew that I would be married to Cordelia one day, but not already when I turn 16. That’s only some months away.

As the train brought me back to the boarding school and as I saw my father standing in the doorway of the house with his usual expressionless face, I knew that this was the last time I would see him and that he wished to rather have no son than me. I just knew it.

1916

Simon stole my hat. I wouldn’t mention this minor form of his bullying, if it hadn’t been a special hat. My mother and I bought it, when her disease hadn’t been noticeable. It was too large back then, but it suits me now. Or rather suited. I don’t think I will see it again as Simon comes up with the best ways to either destroy or hide it. I cried about it. Childhood is over, but honestly I don’t think it ever started in the first place at least not for me.

The numbness is spreading inside my body. I think about the military and the forced marriage daily. I am too young for this. I cannot even properly cope in a classroom. How am I supposed to cope in the war? My hands are to soft. My brain is too precious. Please, spear me. They won’t. It is just a question of time.

I went to the lake today. It is spring and still fairly cold, but I went inside non the less. It was cold. Ice cold. I went under water and yelled out some poetic nonsense. I thought about staying under water. Turning into Ophelia. But I reminded myself, that this is something a coward would do. A Mary Ann. I would proof everyone’s suspicions as correct. Scared to live. Scared to die. I got out of the water. My gaze landed on my clothes and the letter. My father had written me that the marriage would be held in some days, since I am 16 now. I ripped the paper in half and tossed it into the ocean. Letting the water destroy the writing on the paper. Of course this would make nothing undone. I would still need to marry. I would still need to go into the military. I would still need to die. I am frightened. The other boys seem unbothered. They laugh and play like the world isn’t ending around us. Well, their world is probably not ending anyways. They will live. Their parents are rich after all. They have the privilege. I would have had this privilege as well, but they took it from me by putting this name on me. I took it from myself with my impure thoughts.

Cordelia sent me a telegram that just read that I would need to be careful as death was approaching me in the worst way. I hate her for that. As if I wouldn’t know that. As if I wouldn’t know that I needed to go into the army soon. Not a single word about our forced wedding. I thought we had always agreed to both be against it. But then again she isn’t even trying to love me. Not that I would try. Not anymore. I tried when I was younger, because I was told to. But Cordelia has just no idea how to react appropriately to a gentleman. Her behavior makes it hard to believe that she is from such a high rank.

I saw Simon with a weird book today. He told me it is from his brother and that it is about demons. I told him that this was total nonsense and that he should get a grip on reality. He didn’t spoke to me again after that. Weird for someone who is as annoying as him. I am going to put my notebook in the pocket of my sleeping clothes tonight just to make sure Simon cannot steal it. I have a bad feeling in my stomach. My heart is aching for absolutely no reasons. I am afraid as I try to sleep tonight and the worst thing is that it is irrational. I am going to die alone, this is all my head produces right now.

?

Now every page was covered with blood at the side of the pages and sometimes even on the writing itself. There were no drawings to be found anymore. Just drawings for the escape plan and hierarchy of hell.

I don’t know if my dates are correct. I don’t know how time works in here. I don’t even know how long I am able to write without this thing waking up. This thing with the many doll heads. This spider like creature that kills me every time I move or make a sound. I sometimes wonder what happened to the other boys.

I try to change my perspective. It is hard when you are in so much pain. My brain learned to be sharper now. I can think and act quicker. I need to see this as one of my old detective games or as the times that I had to run away from my bullies. Everything is achievable with logic. Although I would say after being in hell for such a long time that might be a delusional optimism.

1988

I think I made it out fairly well. I am still uncontrollably shaky when I hear any noises. I fear that this demon might comeback to get me. I am back in the old school attic where they strapped me down on the table and sacrificed me. I learned a lot from hell and from the books in the attic. Like the basic ghost rules or that my death and the death of my bullies were labeled an act of god. I compared hell to the war a lot. After all I would say that hell was definitely the worse death. Much longer torture than war would have been. In the war you die just one death after all. But maybe a Mary Ann like me would have ended up there anyway.

I finally was brave enough to get out of the attic. I figured out that the year is 1988 from a newspaper that one of the teachers was reading. 72 years of torture. I wonder how often I was torn apart in this time. But I shouldn’t think about that. That reminds me of the pain and of the times when I tried to count my own corpses. The school hasn’t changed a lot. The teachers are less violent, but still rather strict. They have more lower class people here now. I can see it by the ways they behave and by the clothes they wear. That is especially confusing for me. So rude, so explicit, so freely. It is not a boarding school anymore. Luckily that gives me the freedom to have my peace after dark.

I started to watch a specific boy. I am not a stalker. At least I wouldn’t use this therm for a ghost. He is just interesting for my scientific research about this time. The boy has a darker skin. Some children in this school have this skin and get picked on, but somehow he isn’t the one who gets pick on. He wears very interesting clothes. Especially the golden earring. Something I would just see a woman wear, but it fits him so much better than it could ever fit a woman. His clothing is mostly black, though I would say that the red shirt he once worn fits him best. His lips have always a smile on them and he cracks loud jokes. But I see the sadness in his eyes. I recognize my own sadness in his eyes. His name is Charles Rowland. I heard the teacher yell it at him. A little trouble maker in class. He seems to never be able to focus. Maybe he is also possessed like I was when I was a young boy. But after experiencing hell, I doubt that the priest back then had any idea what a demon was really like.

The following page is filled with a very realistic drawing of Charles, who is smiling so iconically and his eyes seem to be filled with emptiness and some smaller doodles of Charles playing Cricket or talking to others.

Charles Rowland. His name repeats itself in my brain. I am not obsessive. He is just the best way of distraction I can find in this school. Distraction from the fear of hell. The fear of death coming back for me. Analysis and observation keep me away from those horrible thoughts. I have less panicle outbursts since I started my observation of this boy. Although when I am alone at night in the school attic I often start to cry in silence and my breathing races again.

Charlie. That is what his friends call him. It doesn’t suit him. Charles is his name. Not Charlie. I don’t like his friends. They are rude. They remind me of the boys in my old life. I wonder why I like Charles then. Maybe because he points out obvious misbehavior of the group even if they mock him.

The most interesting time is when Charles thinks that he is alone. That is mostly in the dressing room, when he gets ready for Cricket. As a short notion he is a fabulous cricket player, but he always waits till the other boys have changed and are out of the room. He pretends to struggle with his shoes or shorts. Even if that sometimes means that it is getting really dark outside. His smiles fades completely then. I saw the scars on his body. I feel bad for even looking at him in that state. Seeing a boy my age without a shirt is clearly inappropriate and it triggers the Mary Ann inside of me, but sometimes my detective senses is taking over too much. Especially after I saw all the scars and bruises. You don’t need to be that clever to understand that his family probably his father beats him. Although beating may be a too mild verb for those scars. I appreciate the absence of my father when I see him. My father and teachers used to beat me as well. With a ruler or the flat hand though not as much as my classmates. And after being through hell, that all seems like nothing in comparison. But even in my time no father would have mistreated their sons like that. I speak from a higher class, maybe it had been different in the lower class, but they were happy if their sons made it through childhood without a disease or scars so they could work properly. Although maybe they did this with the child workers. Is Charles secretly a child worker? Is there still child labour? Why would someone bruise their son like that if their son could provide a great income for the family? Or how many things was Charles doing something seriously wrong?

1989

His friends talked about me last night. They had cricket practice until the sun had settled and on the way back home I heard them talking about a school ghost. The janitor must have heard my weeping last night. My hysteria yesterday was indeed a lot. Too much to handle for myself. I think I was shaking till dawn. This vivid fear must have crossed over into the living world. They told Charles, that this had scared the janitor and he quitted. Then they told him of Mary Ann who was sacrificed 1916 and killed all the boys that night. Charles questioned this logically, since it was an all boys school, so there probably was never a girl. I certainly appreciate his thinking, but this just triggered a lot in me. Being called a Mary Ann even after all this years. Being remembered only as a Mary Ann. Being blamed as the murderer. Those boys clearly had no idea of what the term Mary Ann actually meant, but it just triggered me so badly that I started to panic again. My panic must have bursted through the worlds again, because the boys suddenly turned white and ran home. Charles stayed a little longer. Looking in my direction. I know he couldn’t see me, but maybe he could sense my panic more than the other boys could. Again we are much a like if you observe closely. After this strange second of him just starting into nothing and me starting back, he ran away as well.

I need to leave this place. But I am too scared. Too scared of the outside world. Too scared of the changes.

I wanted to leave today, be brave enough. But I heard Charles ‘friends’ talking bad about him behind his back. How weird he behaved. They had no idea about his scars. Then again if I would be his friend, which is rather unlikely, I wouldn’t confront him. I know how horrible I panic if someone says the word Mary Ann, I imagine that it is a similar situation for him with his scars. I stayed. I don’t know why. Again irrational fears.

I wish I would have left. I saw Charles defending a boy who got bullied by his so called friends. I felt tears in my eyes, because this was the kind of protection I had wished for when I was alive. I definitely feel too many emotions at the moment or maybe it just feels like more emotions because I was mostly numb in hell. The younger boy could escape with only a few bruises, but his friends still were in this blood lust. In this moment of still wanting the fun even though there was nothing funny about the action in the first place. I have seen those faces before. The faces of murders who only realize their actions when it is too late. They stoned him in the cold water. The water of the lake in which I once thought about killing myself a long time ago. I wanted to help. I wanted to stop them, but I had no idea what I could do. I am too new in this ghostly body. I tried desperately, but I ended up only pausing them by holding them back for a short time. It gave Charles time to ran away to the school building. He hid in the attic. I wanted to help him. The least I could do was by giving him a light. He was in a state where a floating light probably was his least problem. It turned out that he could see me and that was the moment I knew it was too late for him anyway. It was a strange sensation to properly speak again. I had never spoken in hell and in my ghost form I had only weeped. Hearing my own voice was odd. I was shortly surprised that I still knew how to use my voice. Reading to him from one of my old comics in the attic calmed him and gave me the opportunity to adapt a bit to talking for a longer period of time. He stayed with me, which honestly stresses me out a lot. I am not made to be a friend. I have been isolated for too long to be a good friend. I have been in hell for so long that I am probably a horrible person myself. I haven’t talked in so long. I am just adapting to just have conversations, how should I teach him to be a ghost, if I haven’t figured it out myself? Even if that all would not be the case and even if we would not be from different times, still I never have been good with other people. I never had friends. The only person a bit close to me was Cordelia and she was always more a sister for me. And still he chooses a stranger his own afterlife. From my observations I would blame his intentional behavior. He sees something and does something without thinking long. Although this decision might be too big for only this explanation.

I really can’t understand why Charles is choosing me over his afterlife. I just read to him once and gave him a lantern. He barely knows me and now he follows me everywhere. I showed him some ghost tricks and somehow I can really impress him by everything I say or do. But he made me smile for the first time in my life. So I am impressed by him as well. Whenever I read in this book, I just tell him that I like to keep record of things. That I would plan were we can go next as we no longer can stay in the school and waking around without plan is never good for too long. It is partly a lie I really am making a plan. But I do this in my head rather than writing it down, but it is an excuse for not letting him see my private writing. I tell him that it is rather boring planning and he believes me. I feel bad for lying to him, but if he would know about my past he surely would leave me and I would be all alone again.

We mirror traveled together to London. Charles felt a bit sick after it. He seems to still need to adapt to his ghost body. I was a bit overwhelmed with his sudden mood shift. I have been too selfish all my life and in my death so much that I don’t know how to help. He didn’t notice or he just didn’t say anything. But we had to mirror travel, it was too dangerous in the school after Charles died. Besides Charles is a talented and athletic boy, he will get the grip of it. In addition death could have caught me in the attic. I didn’t tell him why I am on the run. Not yet. I fear that once I tell him that I was in hell, he will think I am evil. Maybe that is true. Maybe I am just doomed. I feel like it was my fault that he died. I watched him so long with this incorrect feelings of mine. Maybe this cursed him like in a Greek tragedy. For now I just want to make sure that Charles is not alone. I had been alone for too long to know how dreadful it can get and he is much more social than I am.

We visited his family in London. A real rural area. His mother was crying over the loss of her son. His father just seemed to see it as a natural thing to happen to those who aren’t careful enough. I made a mental note to haunt this man every year to Charles’ death day without telling Charles. The school, once again, swept the problem under the carpet and made it appear like an accident. How can someone possibly stone himself while being in the water and then run in an attic? No clever detective would see that as the solution. I said that out loud and it turned out that Charles and I both share a passion for detective stories. That was something to make him smile. But he started to cry again as he saw how desperate his mother and sister were. He hugged me, which was a lot. I never have been hugged before and at first it felt like this demon from hell was gripping around me again. I froze in place and pushed him away in a reflex. Charles stopped. I didn’t tell him about the hell part, but I told him that I am not used to hugs and touches in general. He took it in surprisingly well, but for his own sake I added that I might could get used to it. I hope that I am able to get used to it. Charles sees it as something that he can teach me.

It was just a matter of time till my hell trauma wouldn’t be able to keep hidden anymore. We were in an abandoned apartment, since we both are not staying out the whole night. We don’t have to sleep but it is just too awkward. He usually talks through the whole night and I like his voice even with his weird way of talking. He likes me reading to him. He even carries all my books for me. But as we explored the abandoned house, I discovered an old doll. I overreacted I know. But there was just so much panic inside of me all of the sudden. My fight or flight mood was activated again. I don’t know what Charles did. I don’t know how he managed to stop me from repeating the word ‘Please spare me. I don’t belong in hell.’ I vaguely remember his hands securely holding my head and his shining dark eyes and his calm voice, but I don’t remember his words. He was confused by my sudden changed behavior, but he tried to not show that whole calming me. Once he had calmed me, I obviously had to tell him the truth. I gave him the opportunity to leave me again, but he stayed and he understood, said that this is probably the worst thing someone could have been through. We didn’t speak the rest of the night, but we continued the next day as if nothing had happened.

It is harder to continue my writing as Charles could find out and I don’t want him to know about this. He is so lively. He is jumping and sprinting around, while telling me things and just appears from behind. I cannot risk that. We have a detective agency now. We don’t want that others have their deaths so badly twisted as ours. Another reason was that he had introduced me to a game called Clue, which is basically a detective game, and then we both came up with the idea of starting our own detective agency. He is the brawn and I am the brain. It fits perfectly. We even managed to get a abandoned flat in London. I probably have no time to continue this memoirs, but I will make sure to use my notebook as a case lock book from now own.

I will never tell him about the real meaning of the word Mary Ann. I will never tell him that I had been in the school for a whole year and not just shortly before his death. I will never tell him that I have watched and observed him. I appreciate him now too much. I don’t ever want to lose him.

After that only a whole lot of cases and notes and questions on them followed.

[d-criss-news]

Actor Darren Criss Discusses Bringing ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ To Broadway

[UHQ] Darren Criss attends the "Maybe Happy Ending" Broadway photo call at Tempo by Hilton New York Times Square on September 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

“An original, new musical on Broadway - can you believe that?”

That is the excitement that Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor Darren Criss brought to our new conversation this week about his Maybe Happy Endingproduction coming to Broadway, with previews starting October 16 and its opening night set for November 12.

Previously known for his memorable performances on hit television series like Glee and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, as well as his previous involvement in celebrated live theatre productions including American Buffalo, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Little Shop of Horrors, Criss, 37, is now preparing to play Oliver on-stage, a robot referred to as a Helperbot 3 that has been long retired and is considered obsolete, now spending his days in isolation in his one-room apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea. That all changes when Oliver forms an unlikely connection with a fellow Helperbot neighbor named Claire (played by Helen J Shen).

I sat down with Criss in New York City, New York, just down the street from his Maybe Happy Ending’s upcoming Belasco Theatre venue, wondering first how this production and his interest in this rather unique character of Oliver initially got on his radar.

Criss said, “Two men that I’m very grateful for in my life, Mr. Jeffrey Richards, whose the lead producer of the show, who I have had a long standing relationship, as far as doing theatre on Broadway is concerned. We came in contact more than a decade ago when we were doing a reading of American Buffalo, which I would do basically a decade later with him. He’s always sent me cool things and cool projects. Separately, Michael Arden has been a friend for a very long day. He has been in sort of more my friends circle than my professional circle - I went to college with his husband. I’ve seen almost every single thing he’s ever directed - I think I missed one thing. These are two guys that I have always admired and appreciated, as far as their output was in the theatre community. The Venn diagrams became one circle when Jeffrey sent me an email about this several years ago. Michael was a part of it and wherever Michael is, I run!”

Being a musical set in Asia and Criss being half-Filipino himself, with several other Asian artists working alongside him on this project, I was curious if Criss takes extra pride in being able to tell a story like Maybe Happy Ending live on on-stage and soon get to share it with our world.

“Of course, I do,” Criss said. “There’s obviously a huge amount of personal ‘woo-hoo’ to the idea that this is predominantly an Asian, Asian-American company - on-stage and off-stage - but I’m always weary to categorize this as an Asian show or an Asian story. This production happens to celebrate and represent Asian-ness to a really fun degree, but there’s so much universal-ness to it and accessibility to the story that I hope in perpetuity, this is something that can be done anywhere, with anyone, at any time. I don’t think I’m trying to say that to be inclusive of all things and people. It’s me being pragmatic - this is a story about a future world - about sentient robots that really doesn’t have any particular cultural background, other than the cultural background of technology, which is based in the human experience.”

Criss added with his Maybe Happy Ending collaborators in mind: “I think all of us enjoy sharing our sort of Asian heritage with each other, and obviously, that’s a large spectrum - that’s not one thing. So, there’s already an eclecticism between all of our Asian experiences that’s fun to bring to the table. Yes, it does take place in Seoul, it is from South Korea, but this show has already had great success in Korea, Japan and China - which while all Asian, make no mistake - are very different cultures. So, if that’s any indication of the ability for this show to resonate with all people, then I think we’re in good shape.”

He is not the only person on this production embracing this collective experience. Shen says of interactions so far with co-star Criss, “I think he’s been really generous with his energy and his time. As a person who, I can sometimes feel a little young in this space, I feel like I’m new to this. I’m making my Broadway debut - there’s a lot of imposter syndrome and words of doubt that can be flooding my brain. He is always the first person to say, ‘You belong here. You deserve to be here. You’ve worked very hard - and just breathe and take up space.’ That has been so invaluable to have somebody understand what this feeling can be, of how scary and overwhelming it can be, and be like, ‘This is an exciting moment! We’re present here - let’s soak it in!’ He’s been such a champion of that.”

Arden, who is the director of Maybe Happy Ending, said of Criss, “Darren is so incredible. He can do everything - it’s really somewhat annoying. He understands things from the inside out and the outside in - and so, to meet him and the rest of this company, honestly, in the process, it just means that we get to kind of like create this thing together. It’s not like my vision upon them - it’s something that we can all create together.”

Hue Park and Will Aronson, who have led the way with the music and lyrics in Maybe Happy Ending, have nothing but respect and admiration to say about Criss.

Park said, “I think he’s just perfect for the role - his sense of humor, his acting skills, his sensibility creating this character based on our text and music. It’s just so exciting to see.”

Aronson added of Criss: “He has a boyish innocence, which really is perfect for this show - and his creativity. The great thing about live theatre is that it’s already true in the rehearsal room - it’ll be true in the theatre, once it’s running - that the actors are creating it every time they perform it, meaning that the jokes are different every time, even if the text is the same. The chemistry is different, depending on what the actors are creating in their scene together. The cast is just incredible, so of course, they’re finding that and they’re creating that.”

Dez Duron, who plays Gil in Maybe Happy Ending, said of Criss’s character and his performance so far, “Oliver is a really big role - he’s on-stage pretty much the whole time. I’ve been loving watching him tackle this role, and explore it and discover it. I’ve been a part of this project for five years, so watching [Criss] kind of like get into the script and the changes he’s bringing to it and the new life he’s breathing into it has been really inspiring to watch.”

Marcus Choi, who plays James in the new musical, said of his co-star, “So, Darren Criss has always been on my radar - we’re all very familiar with his body of work. He’s been incredible for so long, but when I got a chance to go to Elsie Fest last weekend, I really got to see him shine. He is just such a force on-stage and just oozes charisma. I mean, I’ve always been a fan but I just have a deep appreciation for him now and just how hard he works.”

Even though this can be perceived as a sci-fi production, being that it centers around robots that are no longer seen of use in the world, I asked Criss if he sees the parallels towards humanity within our real world with this story about love and still finding connection.

Darren said, “Yes! The Helperbots in our show are somewhere between servants, pets and children - and old folks. If we did a show about old folks in a home, it might hit a little too close to home - it might be a little too on the nose. I think some of the most human themes that I’ve been taken with are stories about cartoon animals or toys - things that represent the human experience in a way that I actually am more likely to internalize and pick up on. So, I think that’s what one of the great devices of the show is - to sort of displace the human experience through that of a sentient robot. Yes, we all - surprise, surprise - we all have a shelf life. We are all at some point going to be, in the eyes of society, obsolete in some respect. We all have a battery life. This is less talking about the idea of mortality and concept of transience, and the idea that we can only spend our battery life on so much, thinking about What are you going to spend your battery life on? So yes, that is going to hit audiences, hopefully, in a profound way.”

As I concluded my conversation with Criss about his Maybe Happy Ending Broadway production, I wondered what Criss would want to say to Oliver, after embodying him so far in rehearsals, continuing to better understand the character and preparing to share his compassionate story with our world throughout the fall season and beyond.

Criss said, “The same thing that I think hopefully the show will posit, which is - It’ll be okay. It’ll always be okay.”

[mulanism]

ana. 20s. | hey! putting this out into the void and hoping i can find even one person to connect with. i am looking for fellow writers & long-term roleplays for jujutsu kaisen! if you are particularly interested in world building, oc interactions, plotting, and just generally having fun inserting original characters into the jjk universe, then let's chat and have some fun doing collaborative writing!

ps. i'm very shy, so please be kind when reaching out, i was scared to post this in the first place ahhh ૮ ྀི◞ ⸝⸝ ◟ ྀིა

ships and muses. to be upfront, i am not intending to do cc x cc. meaning, if you are looking for a satosugu/tojikuna/etc roleplay, then this is not the best fit for you!

i have full intentions of writing for an oc of mine who has very detailed background/lore behind her. my hope is to have her interact with either canon characters or an oc of your choice! if you want to double up to do oc x cc, that's completely fine as well! pairings do not have to be inherently romantic/sexual at all and i would never want to force that. if you want to explore (fr)enemies, friends, and other dynamics, i'll be happy to plan that out with you!

what i'm looking for. although i would never ask for anyone's writing to be perfect (because mine certainly isn't), i've been writing for 10+ years now, so i consider myself to be an extremely literate and thorough roleplay partner. i do prefer to write responses on the longer side, but of course quality trumps quantity at the end of the day. i really want to have fun above all else, so everything doesn't have to be super formal and planned out to the last detail; but i get so passionate about world building, headcanons, sharing oc ideas, etc! it's so fun and i want to gush about it and have someone to throw around creative ideas with!

potential storylines. i'm not completely against freestyle writing, but as i said, i take a lot of joy in plotting and planning things out. some things i feel particularly inspired by at the moment are; the heian era setting, mafia/yakuza au, fantasy based au's, and the assassin au since my oc does come from a clan of rejected assassins/curse collectors! of course, i'm completely fine with the canon setting and any others, as long as the idea is fun and we talk it through. ♡

dni with this post if you are a minor, uncomfortable with sensitive themes (i do not want to trigger anyone), or you're not actually committed to chatting long-term. if you're weird with toxic attitudes (you know, the typical -ists) then do not bother. of course, you nerdy people who are the good type of weird are always welcome, ily guys <3

if anything here interests you, please like this post and i'll take that as a sign to message you directly. feel free to reach out first too, i'm pretty active and respond as fast as i can. specific ships, preferences etc, can be discussed privately before we move on to discord to make sure we're on the same page!

[onlyplatonicirl]

I went to this conference with a smidge of hope. Maybe they would tell me something I didn't know, maybe the game had improved since the last time I saw it. Maybe they'd offer insight about the development process that would allow me to respect them and their work more. The panel was a bit less than an hour long, and I think I walked out of there hating Farm Merge Valley more than I did last year when i went on a screaming ranting paragraph long tirade about how i wanted to blow up their headquarters.

This shit is ASS. It is so ass that in the eight fucking years I have been studying professional creative writing I do not have the words available to describe how much I hate this game and their shitty ass conference that they didnt even bother to hide that it was sponsored and paid for by Discord. They essentially made me PAY THEM 300 DOLLARS TO LISTEN TO THEM ADVERTISE THEIR SHIT GAME VOLUNTARILY. Because no one would glaze this shit as hard as the own company. They had some woman come on and talk about discord like it was some fucking Utopia For Cool Guy Gamers TM and I think she's a higher up in the company, and she starts talking about the in-game activities. Which like, fine ok. Whatever. That's expected, it's nice to see game integration on the software I am genuinely interested in the stats with that. And then she turns it over to this guy. The head of "Cool Games" (WHY WOULD YOU NAME YOUR COMPANY THAT. YOU HAVE LESS SOUL IN YOU THAN A ROCK. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. LIVE. WAKE UP.) and the woman's like "This is our best selling game, farm merge valley!!!!!!!"

The head steps up. He starts talking about the game and saying things I already knew. But the one thing that drove me absolutely fucking crazy was that once he started getting into why the game was "Successful", his main angle was that "Farm Merge Valley is a social game, which is why its so popular! The future of gaming is collaborative and something you can play simultaneously!"

IM LEGITMATELY CLOSE TO COMMITTING RITUAL SUICIDE IN FRONT OF THIS GUY. THIS IS NOT A SOCIAL GAME. THIS IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO A SOCIAL GAME. NOTHING ABOUT THIS GAME IS SOCIAL AND THE FACT THAT HE'S SAYING THATS WHY ITS A SUCCESS MAKES ME WANT TO DIVEBOMB OUT THE FIVE STORY WINDOW I WAS STARING OUT OF. THIS GAME RUNS ON CYCLES OF ADDITICTION TO INFINITELY REPETATIVE TASKS THAT APPEAL TO AUTISTIC PEOPLE WHO WANT TO KILL TIME. IT IS DESIGNED PURPOSEFULLY TO BE A SOULLESS HUSK. "ohhh we have such a loving community" YOU HAVE A COMMUNITY OF SOULLESS HUSKS. HE LITERALLY PUT A SCREENSHOT OF THE OFFICIAL FMV DISCORD SERVER AND ALL THE PEOPLE IN VCS LIKE "Look how social they are all playing together!!" AND EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE PICTURE WAS MUTED AND DEAFENED. IDID HE EXPECT HIS TARGET AUDIENCE TO BE MENTALLY BRAINDEAD CHIMPANZEES BECAUSE ANYONE WHO'S PLAYED THAT GAME FOR FIVE SECONDS KNOWS THAT NOT A SINGLE PERSON ACTIVELY COLLABORATES ON THAT GAME. THE ONLY SOCIAL ASPECT COMES FROM VISITING PEOPLES FARMS FOR ONE GOD DAMN FEMTOSECOND TO COLLECT A REWARD EQUIVALENT IN VALUE TO GAS STATION SHIT PELLETS ON THE FLOOR. NOT TO MENTION HE ACTIVELY BRAGGED ABOUT THE STATISTIC THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF PLAYERS SPENT EGREGIOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY AND PLAYED FOR 7 HOURS A DAY. IM DEAD SERIOUS. BUT OF COURSE HE DIDNT GET INTO A SINGLE DETAIL ABOUT THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF IT AT ALL. MR MERGE VALLEY YOU HAVE A COMMUNITY OF SOULLESS ZOMBIES THAT BLEED THEIR WALLETS DRY THROUGH HYPNOSIS. YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS AND THE DAY OF ATONEMENT IS NIGH.

"we're unveiling a new update soon!!! We're gonna add an album for collection." ADD AN ARTIST THAT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THEY LEARNED HOW TO DRAW TEN MINUTES AGO FROM A "HOW TO DRAW MANGA" BOOK. ADD SOUL. ADD THE BREATH OF LIFE. YOU DO NOT RESPECT THIS PROFESSION AS AN ART AND IT SHOWS LIKE GLASS ARMOR OVER YOUR FRAIL HEART. I HAVE STARED THE DEVIL IN THE EYES AND HE HAS MADE FARM MERGE VALLEY. I HAVE PLEADED TO HEAVEN BUT IT FALLS UPON DEAF EARS. EVIL TAKES ROOT AS A CARROT.

another "Lorel hates farm merge valley" rant has hit the friend group. copypasta immediately.

[doodle-zine]

So. The zine is finished! And while I initially only planned this as a one-time thing, it was really fun, and I’d like to leave the option open for future issues. So, let's do another version of that poll I posted back at the start of all of this.

For anyone who’s new here: Doodle Zine is a collaborative zine where anyone was invited to submit whatever kind of scribbles or shapes or little creatures they doodle in the margins of notebooks, because art doesn't have to be formal or polished to be worth celebrating. When organizing it I hoped to capture something as close as possible to the DIY photocopier-and-scissors vibe of traditional zines, to facilitate that same kind of creativity and connection through the internet. There’s no selection process--I included every submission I received. If you’d like to see how the submission process worked for issue one, that post is here, and the completed issue one can be found here (free to download and print for yourself!)

All that said:

(If the time of year affects your ability to participate, let me know in the notes what would be a good time! I'm working around a school schedule, so around the new year and next spring/summer are times I'm more likely to be able to organize another issue.)

[gogandmagog]

Guys! Yesterday I had a book-shaped piece of mail, and inside of it was my copy of Children and Childhoods in L.M. Montgomery: Continuing Conversations being returned, from another very dear user here! I bring this up only because some-months-ago I promised to copy out a particular article from this book, for yet another user here, who was interested! Interested because it’s on the the subject of a Fan Favourite thing... fan fiction. And better still because some of our (basically famous) mutuals here are mentioned by name! If you’ve ever wondered if the Montgomery scholarship is reading your fan fiction... the answer is yes, they are! They totally are. More than that, they also have some thoughts to share… as well as recommendations of their faves too! This article even covers the F/F and M/M fan fiction presented by fans in LMM’s universe, and I’m personally super excited to be able to begin reading these works, as soon as I can find them all. I’ve done my best to link what I could immediately find, but some of the mentioned stories were unavailable... potentially due to changes in usernames? (That said... if anyone knows of the works indicated here, that I haven’t provided a link for, please do share!)   This article, by the way, was written recently... in 2020! It’s very current, and it covers a few stories that were still being actively updated during the pandemic. The focus of this article is less so on canon (or really just the Anne/Gilbert pairing), though, and seems to prefer demonstrating the versatility of mixing relationships (Anne and Emily, for one!) and the wider more general universe-building aspects (the entanglements of future generations/Anne’s grandchildren) that fans have been expounding on for nothing less than decades. 

Okay, here we go! xx

Continuing Stories: L.M. Montgomery and Fanfiction in the Digital Era by Balaka Basu

Fanfiction – the recreational (re)writing of texts – is a literary genre of rapidly growing significance. Abigail Derecho in her brief history of fanfiction identifies it as “a genre that has a long history of appealing to women and minorities, minorities, individuals on the cultural margins who used archontic writing as a means to express not only their narrative creativity, but their criticisms of social and political inequities as well.”

Insightfully defined by Francesca Coppa and Mary Ellen Curtin as “speculative fiction about character,” fanfiction can be even more precisely understood as fantasies about the diegetic positioning of characters in the context of various settings, communities, relationships both textual and paratextual, and eventually all manner of cultural mythologies.

Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson describe the production of fanfiction as “part collaboration and part response to not only the source text, but also the cultural context within and outside the fannish community in which it is produced.”

They point out that the shift in the method of dissemination of fanfiction from newsletters and zines to internet archives means that “ever-younger fans who previously would not have had access to the fannish culture except through their parents can now enter the fan space effortlessly; financial resources have become less of a concern because access to a computer is the only prerequisite; and national boundaries and time zones have ceased to limit fannish interaction.”

The nature of fanfiction allows participants to cross-generational and socio-economic boundaries in an ongoing exchange of responses to a source text with which they share a fascination, developing new texts that in turn elicit their own responses. While the creation of fanfiction is evidence of an affective, loving, communal relationship with the source text, this genre of writing is still dismissed in many quarters as overly emotional, purely erotic, and even perverse, a type of amateur and immature engagement with popular texts that produces writing necessarily divorced from literary significance. Produced in staggeringly vast quantities by subcultures with complex vocabularies and traditions that can intimidate the casual reader, fanfiction is perceived by many to be more of a cultural practice than a literary genre, variously denigrated for its pornographic potential and its lack of originality. However, close examination reveals that fan writers are able to create a critical dialogue with the originating author in acts of communal storytelling that incorporate allusions and reference points to which other dedicated fan readers and writers may respond.

In this chapter, after examining how L.M. Montgomery and her writer heroine Emily themselves engage in practices now associated with fanfiction, I survey four forms of fanfiction that remove Montgomery’s novels from her seemingly idyllic and timeless island settings, contextualizing her characters and plots within history and other genres: the sequel set during the Second World War, the modern AU (alternate universe), the gap-filler, and the slash fic, all of which allow the young readers who grow up with her novels to engage in dialogue with the stories they love, a type of literary conversation that Montgomery herself models within her texts. Emily’s reading, which is active rather than passive, resembles twenty-first-century fans’ ownership of the texts they love, provoking creative responses. For instance, after reading works by Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Matthew Arnold, Emily writes, “Teddy lent me 3 books of poetry. One of them was Tennyson and I have learned The Bugle Song off by heart so I will always have it. One was Mrs. Browning. She is lovely. I would like to meet her. I suppose I will when I die but that may be a long time away. The other was just one poem called Sohrab and Rustum. After I went to bed I cried over it. Aunt Elizabeth said ‘what are you sniffling about?’ I wasn’t sniffling – I was weeping sore … I couldn’t go to sleep until I had thought out a different end for it – a happy one.”

The reactions Emily catalogues are those of the fan; they are viscerally felt in the body and attempt to dissolve the boundary between author and reader, producer and consumer. She inscribes Tennyson within her heart in order to possess the poem she loves; she creates a relationship between Barrett Browning and herself; and, most significantly, she interjects her own desired happy ending into Arnold’s tragic narrative, a corrective desire that is at the core of many works of fanfiction. Emily’s diaries and her story reflect Montgomery’s own experiences from childhood to adulthood as reader, writer, and reader-turned-writer discussed in the introduction to this volume. Depicting Emily as a voracious reader and a life-writer like herself, Montgomery places the child Emily’s voice in conversation with that of the narrator through Emily’s letters to her dead father in Emily of New Moon and through her diary entries in Emily Climbs and Emily’s Quest, creating a form of joint authorship that is referenced explicitly in “Salad Days,” the second chapter of Emily Climbs: “book is not going to be wholly, or even mainly, made up of extracts from Emily’s diary; but, by way of linking up matters unimportant enough for a chapter in themselves, and yet necessary for a proper understanding of her personality and environment, I am going to include some more of them. Besides, when one has material ready to hand, why not use it?”

The narrator’s willingness to use the “material” that is “ready to hand” reflects Montgomery’s and Emily’s practices, and also validates other writers’ use of the material Montgomery places at their disposal. As with many fans, Emily’s reading frequently makes itself felt within her writing.

Like Montgomery, Emily learns her trade through mimicry, from her first poem in blank verse inspired by James Thomson’s Seasons to her unwitting imitation of Kipling that is pointed out by her teacher, Mr Carpenter, in his review of her work. Like Sara Stanley of The Story Girl, whose compelling and fascinating stories are rarely if ever original, Emily is a fan of the oral traditions of her community, incorporating and building upon them in her own writing, transforming and recreating, for instance, the story of “The Woman Who Spanked the King” in Emily Climbs.

The retelling and versioning that Emily practises signal her immense admiration for the source texts she adapts, just as the creation of fanfiction does for Montgomery’s readership and fans. The possibilities inherent in versioning and adaptation are illustrated in Emily’s Quest. When Montgomery depicts Emily undertaking the reworking of someone else’s narrative, she is adapting an episode from her own experience while working for The Echo in Halifax, which she records in her journal. Montgomery, like Emily, was asked to create an ending for a serialized story, “A Royal Betrothal,” after compositors had misplaced the original text.

Like Emily, she claims that her “knowledge of royal love affairs [was] limited,” and that she was unaccustomed “to write with flippant levity of kings and queens.” Nevertheless, Montgomery manages to create a conclusion that passes muster, since “as yet nobody has guessed where the ‘seam’ comes in.” She is, however, curious about the original author’s reaction to her unauthorized adaptation, and while she never discovers this in real life, she does imagine it in her fiction when she introduces Mark Greaves, who is horrified by Emily’s new ending for the story but enchanted by its author. Neither Montgomery nor Emily engages in this sort of writing from a place of fandom; they have no previous attachment to “A Royal Betrothal,” and both are writing professionally. Nevertheless, the ability to solve the puzzle of the story and the weaving of their work into an already extant text are the very project of fanfiction: ludic narrative composition that recalls the way children play make-believe with the narratives they love, reworking and extending them. It is telling that Montgomery uses the metaphor of the “seam” to describe this particular craft. Jane Dawkins, writing about her fanfiction, which is inspired by Jane Austen, describes her fan novel Letters from Pemberley as “an old-fashioned patchwork quilt, where in place of the scraps of fabric reminding one of the favorite frocks or shirts whence they came, there is a line or a phrase or a sentence from one of [the original] books or letters stitched alongside the lesser scraps of my own manufacture.”

Montgomery’s final book, framed by the two world wars, is just such a patchwork sequel, albeit providing only brief glimpses of the characters that readers met as children and who have now grown older. When a version of the book was published in 1974 as The Road to Yesterday, these glimpses, lacking the interstitial materials, became even briefer, mirroring the more forced insertion of beloved characters that the two earlier collections, Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea, display. Only two of Anne’s grandchildren – Gilbert Ford and Walter Blythe – are obliquely referred to, in the story “A Commonplace Woman,” where an unpleasant young doctor reflects on both of them as potential rivals for the affection of a beautiful girl he himself hopes to pursue.

However, the full novel, The Blythes Are Quoted, published in 2009 and comprised of short stories about the people in Glen St Mary and over the harbour, is interspersed with poetry by both a young Walter and an adult Anne. The poems are cut with tiny slices of dialogue that suggest the continuing lives of fans’ favourite characters and how they might have developed. In “‘Dragged at Anne’s Chariot Wheels’: L.M. Montgomery and the Sequels to Anne of Green Gables,” Carole Gerson notes the mixture of feelings from pleasure to frustration that Montgomery records in her journals as she prepares to write her first sequel.

While Montgomery wrote the first installments of her various series out of inspiration, she was certainly aware of what her market desired from subsequent installments. She often regretted the necessity of marrying off her characters, but was aware that her fans demanded this conventional outcome for the characters they had come to love; these traditionally romantic endings, when not offered by Montgomery herself at the instigation of her publishers, are regularly deployed by contemporary fanfiction authors building on the source texts.

Indeed, long before the original structure of The Blythes Are Quoted was revealed to readers in Benjamin Lefebvre’s afterword, fanfiction writers were spinning off lengthy narratives that included a third generation of young Blythes, Fords, and Merediths dealing with the onslaught of the Second World War. While earlier installments in the Anne series – such as Anne of Green Gables and Anne’s House of Dreams – depict the deaths of Matthew, Anne and Gilbert’s first daughter (Joyce), and Captain Jim, Walter’s death in Rilla of Ingleside is somehow more striking. Unlike Matthew and Captain Jim, he has not yet had time to grow old; unlike Joyce, readers have had opportunities to get to know him as a child in Rainbow Valley and as he grows into young adulthood in Rilla of Ingleside. His death is unnatural and, therefore, all the more horrifying. These two aspects of Rilla of Ingleside – the evocation of history by a nostalgic fictional world that is still tied to real time and the use of high drama, tragedy, and romance – provide fanfiction authors with a model they can use to appeal to the emotions of those readers who are immersed in the next generation of Montgomery characters.

The Second World War, then, provides an entry point into the series for fanfiction authors, who can deploy real history coupled with beloved characters to create a tale that feels absolutely authentic. One example of this is a short story, “The Pen and the Sword,” written in 2007 by MarnaNightingale. Here, mimicking the style of Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Wimsey Papers (a series of Spectator articles published between 1939 and 1940, which interestingly also continue the story of First World War–era characters during the Second World War), MarnaNightingale employs epistolary excerpts and newspaper articles to tell the story of a family going through the horrors of war for a second time. Grounding her fragmented story – like The Blythes Are Quoted, a mixture of genres – in the accounts of novelist Mollie Panter-Downes (1939) and war correspondents Ernie Pyle (1940) and Ross Munro of the Canadian Press (1941), whose articles are attributed to Kenneth Ford, she offers a story that, like Rilla of Ingleside, is anchored to the historical moment, while also nostalgically focusing on the character development that comes from Gilbert Ford’s death, Rilla’s and Faith’s reactions to the war, and the lives of their children. Here war also serves as an opportunity for new experiences, particularly for women and children: Rilla takes a factory job as a machinist, liking it better than working in Carter Flagg’s store; one of Anne’s grandchildren, Susan, plans to be a doctor; and Faith, who worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in the First World War, mentions how she can sympathize. As well, the daily tidbits that flavour the pages of Rilla of Ingleside are there: one article, attributed to Anne, includes the recipe for Susan Baker’s war bread, reminding readers of the problems of wartime rationing, even in the Americas. Real life events – like the Canadian forces trying (and failing) to make a beachhead at Dieppe – arouse the passions of the reader. Unlike Austen – who also famously wrote of three or four families in a country town, but kept the Napoleonic wars firmly in the shadows – Montgomery brings the passions and high drama of the world stage into the sleepy villages of Prince Edward Island, which inspire fanfiction spinoffs.

The long novel Cecilia of Red Apple Farm, by a fan author who posts under the pseudonym ruby gillis, also directly reworks passages and scenes from the whole range of Anne books, set in the late-nineteenth century, to The Blythes Are Quoted, set in the early years of the Second World War, to highlight the similarity between her new generation of characters and their ancestors. Cecilia is the daughter of Una Meredith and Shirley Blythe (characters often married off in fanfiction). Like MarnaNightingale, ruby gillis provides period flavouring in the styles of dresses and behaviour and in references to 1940s popular films and songs. Simultaneously, this setting offers new opportunities to her female character: Cecilia wants to be a doctor, and rather than staying in Canada, she joins up to be a nurse in England. She has a series of romances – one with Sid Gardiner (before he marries May Binnie), and one with her cousin Blythe Meredith, who is this generation’s poet – before finally ending up with Marshall Douglas (the son of Mary Vance). Just as Anne initially refuses Gilbert Blythe in favour of Roy Gardner’s resemblance to her ideal man in Anne of the Island, ruby gillis’s Cecilia is fooled by the allure of Sid and Blythe as Roy Gardner–like romantic heroes into believing that she does not truly love her fun, practical, “Gilbert-esque” friend. Published in 2004, Cecilia of Red Apple Farm further illustrates the opportunities presented by reusing and reworking a body of texts through its incorporation of Montgomery’s poem “I Wish You” as the work of Blythe Meredith. Montgomery includes this poem and attributes it to Anne in The Blythes Are Quoted, although ruby gillis could not have known this when writing. The repetition of names and circumstances might seem derivative, but for readers who have read and reread the original books so many times, the extension of the story world is prized, even if – perhaps even because of – its callbacks to the original text. Due to the tendency of fans to fixate on “the good bits” in a reread, these parts can be taken for the whole.

Austen fanfiction demonstrates this aptly. Indeed, Helen Fielding’s second Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason (1999), illustrates just such a reading of Pride and Prejudice: she shows Bridget, a fan, watching the scene from the 1995 mini-series in which Darcy, dripping in a wet see-through shirt, exits the lake, and then rewinding and rewatching the scene multiple times. How many times might a similar fan reread Walter’s letter from Courcelette? This repeated reviewing of selected portions can replace the amplitude of the original novel. With this delimited focus, narrative is no longer seen as a progression, but as a single moment of pleasure, sustained as long as possible. Reading the Second World War as a repetitive sequel to the First World War further highlights this possibility.

Even Montgomery seems to do so, as demonstrated in The Blythes Are Quoted, with its new generation of characters confusingly named after the old: Walter, Jem, Rilla, Di, Anne, and Gilbert. A variation on Marah Gubar’s kinship model, this kind of continuation highlights the blurred boundaries between child and adult characters who are literally related to one another and whose adventures mimic one another.

In a third example of fanfiction set during the Second World War, Weeping May Tarry, a long novel by ElouiseBates, Meggie, the heroine, is Shirley’s daughter (and also, surprisingly, Paul Irving’s granddaughter). In this story, which like Cecilia of Red Apple Farm is an installment of a longer series, Meggie is sent off to a conservatory of music to study singing, aptly combining the traditions of the nostalgic boarding-school novel with “Girl’s Own” wartime fiction. Following the tradition of Magic for Marigold, which explicitly suggests in its second chapter that the Murrays of Blair Water and the Lesleys of Cloud of Spruce exist in the same universe, @e-louise-bates (like many other fanfiction authors, including ruby gillis) suggests that all of Montgomery’s characters exist in a single universe: Meggie partners briefly with the grandson of Sara Stanley (The Story Girl and The Golden Road) and is close friends with Jane Stuart (Jane of Lantern Hill).

Going even further, @e-louise-bates introduces the grandchildren of the What Katy Did series as friends for Meggie and includes Betsy from Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Understood Betsy as Bruce Meredith’s wife, creating a world where all the characters of early-twentieth-century girls’ fiction seem to have truly lived, where their descendants must cope with victory gardens and dances with soldiers at the Exhibition Grounds, and where kisses are much more commonplace than they once were.

These particular continuers of Montgomery are also desirous of membership in the community of her fans, seeing their literary endeavours as productive of approval from a fellow readership. Likewise, the novels are notable for their sociality – they seem to offer the reader not only a fantasy friendship with the characters themselves but also the very real society of fellow readers of the works. Thus, these fan authors attempt to diversify their stories so that they represent contemporary beliefs regarding multiculturalism; ruby gillis, for instance, introduces into the family by way of marriage a French girl who has had to flee the Nazis due to being Jewish, a situation Montgomery and her contemporaries might have had some difficulty accepting, considering early-twentieth-century attitudes toward interreligious marriage and Montgomery’s othering of the German-Jewish peddler who sells Anne green hair dye.

The Second World War thus offers writers of Montgomery fanfiction the loom on which to weave new, more diverse stories, even as The Blythes Are Quoted, which also traces the characters’ reactions to this new war, demonstrates how these readers-turned-writers followed Montgomery’s own trajectory, not knowing that they were doing so. On the subject of fanfiction, young-adult author Patricia C. Wrede writes: “The thing that fascinates me about fanfiction, though, is the way that it models the decision tree that writers go through (whether consciously or unconsciously) to get to their final product. For those of us who do this part mostly unconsciously, it can be interesting and instructing to see the multitude of alternate paths that a story could have taken, all laid out more-or-less neatly in different authors’ fanfics [… taking a slightly different fork in the road] resulting in the plot veering in a completely new direction. Friends become enemies; enemies become friends; goals and objectives and results shift and change.” Within these pieces of fanfiction, then, fan writers are able to follow these decision trees with subsequent generations of characters as well.

Another avenue of access occurs when fan authors transpose historical narratives into the contemporary moment. Perhaps the best-known example of this modern alternate universe [AU] conversion is the television program Sherlock, which takes Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian detective into the twenty-first century. While new cultural contexts appear, the essence of character is meant to be retained. Just as Sherlock uses text messages and blogs to substitute for telegraphs and handwritten journals, fans of Montgomery reimagine the relationships between her characters as if they were taking place online.

For instance, “Work in Progress” (2012) by verity postulates a friendship between Montgomery’s most famous heroines, Anne and Emily. In this piece of fanfiction, Emily circumvents Aunt Elizabeth’s injunction against fiction during her time at Shrewsbury High by becoming a blogger who is restricted to the “truth.” The story’s online summary, a part of which reads “Anne rolls her eyes. ‘Is your aunt really going to know if you cheat on your nonfiction with some hot prose on the side?’” shows how the story preserves the character qualities that Montgomery laid out, complete with references to the Murray pride and Anne’s orphanhood. Mr Carpenter’s admonitions are spelled out at the beginning of the story:

“Emily Byrd Starr has a sticky note on her desktop. It reads:

ITALICS

CAPITALS

!!!!!

“just”

“really”

CTRL+F!

It is almost like having Mr Carpenter in the room with her.”

Verity creates humour through the juxtaposition of contemporary social media and allusions to Montgomery’s source text. Another story by verity detailing Rilla’s romance with Ken Ford and her friendship with Una Meredith, “Rilla of Toronto,” takes place mainly through instant messages. In this story, Rilla reflects on her life from eighteen to twenty-five, tracing a continuum from her child self to her new adulthood, underscored by verity’s translation of Montgomery’s work into contemporary millennial language.

A third type of fanfiction narrative, the gap-filler, focuses on and expands the implications of the source texts. Moira Walley-Beckett’s Netflix/CBC series Anne with an “E,” as Laura Robinson shows in chapter 12 of this volume, is somewhat fanfictional in and of itself: as Robinson points out, the show fills gaps by bringing to the fore the darker currents that have always been beneath the seemingly untroubled waters of Anne of Green Gables, including Anne’s potential post-traumatic stress disorder from the disturbing life she led before coming to Green Gables. This kind of versioning and adaptation tacitly permits fan authors to feel that their versions are just as valid as those produced by professionals. Gap-fillers frequently expand on romantic pairings and in fandom are often referred to by portmanteaux of characters’ names that perpetuate some inside joke or work as puns. “Shirbert” – a moniker for Anne and Gilbert – is the latter, and demonstrates how fans posting on sites like Archive of Our Own (Ao3), Fanfiction.net, and Wattpad (this last generally populated by younger fans) develop their own language to identify their stories within the community for which they write.

One such story, “You caught me staring, but I caught you staring back,” by Anuka, clearly inspired more by the television series than the novels, begins with an author’s note that reads, “I decided to write some fluff for these two, because I need more Shirbert moments, and season 2 is so far away. I added gifs to make it more vivid.” Here, the romance between Anne and Gilbert as depicted by Montgomery and Walley-Beckett is not sufficient for the reader-turned-writer. Anuka wants the gaps in the narrative to be more fully explored than they are on either page or screen and to be made more “vivid” by the inclusion of images that help make the story come alive.

Similarly, “Rilla Blythe’s Wedding: A Not Entirely Comprehensive Account” by Scylla also fills a gap: Rilla and Ken’s wedding day, a scene that Montgomery leaves to the reader’s imagination at the end of Rilla of Ingleside. Modelled upon other accounts of weddings within Montgomery’s fiction, the story also suggests that accounts of Walter’s death have been gravely exaggerated, as he makes a stunning appearance at his sister’s wedding. In order to align her work with Montgomery’s novel, Scylla ensures that Little Dog Monday’s awareness of Walter’s death remains, but makes it only a technicality, writing, “His heart had stopped for a full ten seconds – long enough for his Captain to feel for his empty pulse and for Dog Monday to be jolted with the fullness of his death. Little dogs, after all, can only have tender dogs’ hearts. Grief to Dog Monday was an all-consuming thing, and when Walter’s heart began to beat once more, he was deaf to its spark of joy.” After meeting with his eldest sister, Joyce, in heaven – which is, as he had always hoped, Rainbow Valley, Walter is returned to life so that he may write of peace as well as war (as he did when he was a boy), marry Una, and repair the broken hearts of readers who did not want to lose him.

While heterosexual pairings are the most prevalent in Montgomery fandom, there is room for queer imaginings as well.

This very popular genre of fanfiction, known as “slash,” is generally defined as stories that centre on samesex romances between characters, particularly between men. Montgomery slash fiction usually stars Walter Blythe.

One slash story, “but i don’t know who you are” by @freyafrida, imagines a bisexual Walter. Told in an enduringly popular sub-genre of fanfiction often referred to as Five Things Plus One (which involves a series of thematically linked but not necessarily chronological scenes), the story is summarized by @freyafrida as “Five people Walter thought he wanted, and one person he didn’t notice until it was too late.”

This last person is original to Montgomery’s text: Una, whose apparently unreturned attraction to Walter is woven through Rilla of Ingleside. The other five potential partners are all alluded to as Walter’s close friends, beginning in childhood with Alice Parker from Anne of Ingleside and Pat Brewster from The Blythes Are Quoted and then carrying on through adolescence and young adulthood with Faith Meredith, Ken Ford, and finally Paul Irving from Anne of Avonlea. While his feelings for Faith and Ken are clearly unrequited, Alice, Pat, and Paul all express their own desire for Walter. The inclusion of the famous poet and Walter’s “model” uncle, Paul Irving, in particular, particular, illustrates how traits of sensitivity and aesthetic appreciation that challenge traditional ideas about masculinity are frequently interpreted as queer by fan readers and writers.

In another slash fiction, cero_ate’s “The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Writ Moves On,” Walter discovers his homosexuality while fighting in Europe:

He wrote half truths and lies once more, when he wrote his Rilla that he could not form poems of the depths of the war. For who could write his sister of the phallic love he had found? He had found his reason in a tow-headed American boy. He meant so much more to Walter than mere friendship could explain. He wanted to write, as sweethearts write, of the tempest of joy in the darkest night. But how would they understand? How would they even try to understand he sought not the Dark Lady of Shakespeare but the youth, fair and Wilde? When he was presented with Una’s faithful heart, he spurned it. When his tow-headed darling presented his own, Walter took it, greedy for him. His grecian style love, the boy who’s [sic] eyes danced, even in the darkest of days. He would do anything to keep him safe. But he could not present him to his family, for their scorn or pity. War had broken him, but made him as well.

While male/male pairings are generally the most popular stories in fandoms, Montgomery’s novels, peopled as they are by communities of girls and women, require that readers who want to queer the text must explore what is called femslash (that is, slash fiction featuring two female characters).

Such relationships have been explored within the academic setting. For instance, Laura Robinson remarks in “Bosom Friends: Lesbian Desire and the Anne Books,” that the relationship between Anne and Diana uses “the language that readers associate with adult romantic love rather than girlhood affections,” even as it is expressed through the heterosexual paradigm of marriage.

One fanfiction author, ArcticLava21, makes it clear that such fan written stories are not speculation but instead address key issues of representation. The author’s note to ArcticLava21’s short Anne/Diana story, “Nature,” reads, “Hello everybody! Hope your [sic] having a wonderful day. Before anyone yells at me for ‘sexualizing platonic friendships’ please note that this is for all those queer kids who grew up pretending. Pretending that he ended up with him instead of her, or desperately wanted representation. Are we good? <3 Enjoy yourselves lovely people.” The intended audience of the story, “queer kids who grew up,” again establishes the transgenerational kinship between Montgomery’s child and adult fans.

All fan fiction, shared on the Internet, exist in dialogue not just with Montgomery’s fiction but with the author herself, and between the fans who read the novels as children and adolescents and the adults that these readers become.

Whether fan writers extend the narrative or fill gaps, transpose chronology or to queer the text, these pieces of fanfiction allow fans not only to insert themselves into the narrative, but also simultaneously to revivify the original novels, published a century ago. In performing interventions to the text, Montgomery’s young fans grow up to reply to the discussions that she began long ago in the pages of her journals and stories, ensuring that all three – author, reader, and text – are continually reborn into a conversation that will never end.

[magiturge]

i get what you mean with feeling like you're in an echochamber. the creative process can be very harrowing, especially when you feel like you're getting undeserved praise. i know for me finding solace in certain private art circles helped me, and realizing you create for you before anyone else. you seem like a very gentle person, and i don't think you should run yourself dry for an audience. please remember you can create for yourself and art is for you before anyone else. i hope that's not weird of me to say to you, and i can't tell if this is parasocial or bizzare of me to say. but your emotions are allowed to be ugly and hurt, and you're allowed to do something for you

it's more a feeling of.. i'm not working hard enough. i'm not working hard enough for people to be interested. if a hm, a yeah, a cool is all i can get for the work that really matters to me, i'm not working hard enough.

i know that for the person i am, a private circle of people to show the things i've made to is the ideal space for me, at least for my ocs. though that's difficult. i don't approach people, i actively shy away from groups because i mentally NEED a green light or big sign telling me its fine to go in, i need to be pushed in / pulled in or made it known that i am wanted somewhere, that something is fine or else i wont seek it out.

i don't find myself to be a gentle person, i feel that more comes from trying to not be as excited as i really am about things. i can't take myself seriously, even in my own interests in front of other people. being enthusiastic about what i like, became embarrassing.

i draw a lot for people because i don't have much else, i draw a lot for an audience because if at the very least if i can draw, i'll draw to make someone happy. it's why there were occasions i would open up to draw other people's ocs, because it's something i know that for me, it's what i would want. i think about it a lot, because i think about, people that are any bit like me that love to see their work through the eyes and brush of another person. if i can't have that, then at the least i could give that to someone else.

i think that's where me saying rory would hate me if he knew me. my joy comes from creation, from collaboration with others, and i am too afraid to throw my hat in the ring to indulge that. it's not that i don't create art for myself, i have been for years, it's just i cannot enjoy it alone.

they've been ugly and hurt for a long time, i think i'm just getting too self centered about things. getting hurt over nothing

[moshieee]

Hello it is I, random anon who does not know you and has never interacted with you before, what is your opinion of your mutuals?

Oh hi @bixell-pixell I'll include you even if we're not mutuals I think you're pretty chill all things considered

That's kinda it idk you that well

Anyways

You didn't specify so I'm going to list all my mutuals in the order of oldest to newest on my following page that I remember sorry of I missed anyone and for the @ s

*inhales*

@e-the-village-cryptid (I don't have a tag for e yet but it would probably just be E)

Not only the first person who I became friends with here but also the first one I ever started sharing my stories with, even if we don't talk too much I'm glad Every time we do and I see them on my dash, (they bring some of my favorite posts and when I do send posts sometimes I mix up and send them their own reblogs) I'm so glad we're still friends, thanks for letting me ramble about stuff for 6 hours hehe

@jaqofallgenders (no tag for jaq yet either)

my in person friend and the longest friendship I've ever had with someone, love you 🫶. I'll be more specific on Monday if our ADHD doesn't kick in and make us both forget

@strawberry-seal77 (seal-berry!!!)

Hi hi hi yellows my friend 👋 the person I consider to be the second ever friend I made on here, a lovely person as well and wait waaa and an amazing artist too 👀??? Love you silly goofball and the amazing posts and jokes you have we should chat more often I thinkith.

@rabid-mercenary16 (Rabid jumpscare)

Hey hey hey .... BWAMP! Hope you feel better soon

I probably have the most to say about Rabid but all try to make it a bit shorter. besides being the first artist to do art jokes and include me, with we also became mutuals and interacting around a time when my life started to get a lot better. Even if she's not the only factor in that I definitely associate her with stuff improving, and she did play a big factor in it (I already explained a lot on my Valentine's Day gift to her and the others). Also she's just an awesome person to spend time with and be goofy, amazing sense of humor and I just love being friends with such an awesome person and artist.

@dia-smthidk (Dia fren)

I'm assuming you don't want a bowl of soup

I also said a lot about them in my Valentine's Day gift, but we've become closer friends sense then even if we don't get to chat as much as I'd like to. I relate a lot and am surprised how we have so much in common. Amazing artist and person as well and I wish we could hang out more, idc if they think they're bringing down the mood when/if they bring stuff up about irl, and maybe I won't figure out their timezone but oh well, please take care of yourself gender sibling.

@bunnybunnsowo (BUN BUN BROTHER!!)

little brother 🫶🫶💝💞🫶✨👋❤️!!!

(I could have sworn we became mutuals before Dia?)

another person I shared a lot about with the Valentine's Day gift, I love you my little brother! Seriously one of the kindest people I've met and I'm so glad they have bug in his life. Bun deserves the world and they keep sending me opposum images!!! Gona die from cuteness and his kindness one of these days istg

@spookykittyzzz (greaah why don't I have a tag for you???)

A very kind person and artist I don't know too much sense we're not that close yet but love the few chats we have had so far. Hope we get to hang out more even if I'm awful at reaching out to others and saying hi.

@glitchyk (goop buddies)!!

Nooo the parallels

One of the first people who was interested to deep dive into my creations and ask about my stories and worlds They're probably competing with Rabid with how much I have to say about her/silly. Seriously it's incredible how much we have in common and now I get to share and collaborate our sonas stories together it's amazing. And as someone once said "you can yap for hours". I love how creative and clever they are, I just wish they would be kinder to herself. One day I'll make glichy see how awesome she is.

@unfunnyaceartist (Floridian disadvantage) I feel like I should change that

When I say I was shookith when ace asked to be friends I mean I was shookith first person so show up and ask that (the others kinda just happened). Amazing artist and don't believe her lies she is funny. I'm so heckn glad we're friends., love the goofy and silly idc if she's a bit of a simp they've helped me a lot start to understand slang and references I'm supposed to understand shhshsh (such is the curse of how I grew up) we need to make our mafia sonas interact at some point I can already imagine the chaos /silly

@neptunestoast (plushy slime)

Hugs hugs hugs*

Trying my best not to baby talk I swear. amazing person first person to show up and be like "hey I Wana do something for you and your friends". Love their humor and another gender sibling!!! Hugs for ever for as long as they're ok with it. I love their creativity as well and Noodle is so adorable. I just want to pick them up in a hug so much. Kibbity/silly

@ner5y (no tag woops ill figure something out)

What are you doing here??? How are we friends???

I was absolutely confused and startled when they followed me especially since it was during a spoons argument . Amazing artist like holy heck I wish I was allowed to curse on this blog. Their humor also took me by surprise when I got invited to the discord, and even if they doubt how well they're running it I think they're doing amazing. And I love our silly interactions like this one

@vexation-816 (chaotic ADHD buddy!!!)

Why did it take me so long to follow you istg

ADHD ADHD ADHD my buddy oh pal we both got that and it's driving us insane/silly. Love how creative he is and the ideas for his sona and character lore. Also one of the first people who shared a character they added to my nightlight au. This is getting twords the end and I'm tired of whiting so much and am on a timer oh no. But your amazing dude don't ever forget thag

@butlerbugbunny (anxiety bunny buddy)

This is why I didn't respond to the DM yet hshsh

New friend who I feel anxious talking to sometimes but a wonderful kind bunny who I'm also incredibly happy to be friends with. Love his art so much it's amazing (shoot shoot timer is going off) I'm glad he's their for bun and wish them the best I possibly can 🫶.

@lilithloves-you (lillith my be-loathed?) need to change that

Don't you dare bring up grilled cheese

Glitchys friendo who I'm also friends with now. We don't interact too much but I've sent her on missions to go hug glitchy (to help both of them feel better but shhh). I hope we become closer friends in the future.

[lutiaslayton]

Hey guys, I felt like giving you a bit of a heads up: now that the transcription of the Japan-exclusive Eternal Diva novel has been completed, I am now working on its translation. And I thought -- hey, why not share this translation here as I go?

The website's translation is meant to be as accurate as possible and is filled with annotations and comparisons with the Japanese version, but if all we're interested in is just reading the darn novel like it's actually meant to be (read: a story that is actually enjoyable to read), then this translation really isn't going to make that happen.

(Just look at this. This is awful. Translation accuracy: 9/10. Reading enjoyment: WhatTheHeckIsThis /10. Do not recommend.)

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So yeah, I'm actually working on two English translations 👀 First one is from the website and meant primarily to study Japanese and (sometimes) get the juicy lore, and the second one will be posted here! This second translation will actually be meant to be read like a novel / fanfiction, in the sense that I'll rephrase things and try to make it as enjoyable as can be. It may mean that a thing or two might be changed along the way, but I'll try to keep my creative juice under control and try to stay as close to the original as possible.

If anyone wants to criticise this translation and bring suggestions if you think that I took too many liberties, feel free to let me know so we can rephrase things! It'd be much cooler if this were a collaborative project rather than the work of just one person who might end up putting in her own biases, whether consciously so or not.

---

I can't tell when exactly I will start uploading since I'd like to have some buffer before starting, but when I do, I'll try to have some sort of schedule. Like one "chapter" or so every week, something like that. (The novel doesn't have "chapters," but it does have sections with titles. So I guess we might as well call those "chapters" for commodity.)

Anyway, that's pretty much all I wanted to say -- just a little teaser and some context for something I've been working on and will hopefully start posting soon-ish, and which I'd like to share with you guys as soon as I can! It'd be cool if this could be something I could post while my PhD is slowly ending and my workload is getting heavier and heavier -- just imagine if I had some buffer that I'd just put in my queue, and then boom, a chapter a week while I'm off dying while preparing my PhD defence and whatnot hahaha. No promises, but it would be really cool if I could pull it off.

[oliolioxenfreewrites]

Writer Questionnaire ❦

Taking a break from writing to catch up on my tags writing 2 books at once is not for the weak 😭 so thank you @drchenquill for the tag as always!

- how long have you had your writing tumblr/writerblr? a fast and loose estimate is fine!

At least since April or early May!

- what lead you to create it?

I wanted to connect with other writers and creatives to make new friends!

- what's your favorite thing about the writer community?

My favorite part is the absolute powerhouse of creativity and innovation. You all have this incredible knack for coming up with unique ideas that never fail to inspire me. Plus, they're hilarious! Their sense of humor adds a delightful twist to everything we do, making even the wildest ideas feel approachable and fun. Honestly, being around such talent and laughter is a constant source of my motivation and joy!

- what’s one thing you'd like in mutual to know about you?

No notification I receive on this app goes unnoticed. I'll be at work, smiling because someone found my writing and enjoyed it! It means so much to me and only makes me want to write even more!

- is there anything you'd like to see more of on your dash?

I would love more collaboration and interaction in my messages. I am open to discussing and exchanging ideas with another writer. I’m particularly interested in co-creating a planetary system and bouncing creative ideas back and forth.

- which wips or writing projects are you noodling about lately

I'm currently working on fleshing out a novel titled Journals from The Whitmore Estate, which is a modern/historical fiction story. The novel explores the slave and civil war era, and also delves into our near future. It centers around the actions of a power-hungry ancestor who sought to shift power dynamics, and the resulting centuries of generational backlash.

- how long have you been working on them?

Its been about a few months, I had to take a break to give myself new perspectives and coming to a decision on who the main character was!

- do you remember what inspired them/what got you started

I was looking at writing prompts and came across one that said something along the lines of “Your character inherits a manor from a distant relative. Upon moving in, they discover what lies within its walls, answering why your family has been plagued by bad luck for as long as anyone can remember.”

- how much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

Wayyy too much! Now rhat I've found the main character, I can't put it down!

- when someone ask the dreaded "what do you write about?" question what do you usually say?

“I write whatever comes to mind!” Or “You can read my writings to find out.” 😗

- name any characters you created. Side characters, protagonist, antagonist, characters who’ve never been written, the first original abomination you ever pulled from your ass; whomever you’d like!

Kirjani is my favorite oc to date! Her chosen family: Rick, Raelin, and Lena. The three sisters from the Isles of Aurorith! Imani, Jade and Jasmine, the first ocs I ever created, they deserve their story to be told. (I’m working on it!!) My scrapped character folder is at about 60 something, but the one I just couldn't figure out completely was their grandmother Queen Amara, those who've followed me for a while probably remember her! She was just a bit too sinister and I tried to work around certain motivations and rationality kept getting in the way 🤣 I might use her for another story of mine I've been thinking about

- who’s the most unhinged?

I think it would be between Amara or Kirjani for sure. One of them is justifiably so, the other… not so much LOL

- who comes the most naturally for you to write?

Jules a gay sophmore in high school who is grieving the sudden loss of his mother (I haven't introduced him yet!) He's the first character I've ever based on myself or someone like me rather.

- do you ever cringe at them?

Oh yeah, that’s when I'm writing his best romantic scenes. Love, especially teen romance is supposed to be cringy and awkward at times. That's what makes it so!

- how much control do you feel you have over your characters? do they ever “write themselves,” refuse to cooperate, or do things you didn’t expect? to what degree? are some less cooperative than others?

They literally form their own lives that I just go with, its their world I’m just living in and writing it! I'm considerably outnumbered lmao

- do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters? and do you have a preferred means of receiving said questions? for example, as asks, as replies, as reblogs, as tag notes, as comments on ao3, etc.

More than words can express, that's why I love sharing my characters and their personalities. I want to open discussions on humanity and how the human condition can create dynamically and perplexing people!

- what makes you want to follow another writeblr account? do you follow ‘em as you see ‘em, or take time scoping out the blog to make sure you align with its content? do you follow based on wips, or vibes?

I don't really have enough mutuals or followers, so I follow people based on their creativity and if they're on Writeblr. I don't have much discernment at the moment :)

- what makes you decide against following?

Just depends. I guess I haven't found a page I've ever said, “Oh no, can't follow that,” too.

- do you interact with non-mutuals often?

Not really, and if I follow you and you don't follow me back, I will give you 24 hours before I unfollow. We're all creatives here; no one is more creative than the next person, in my opinion.

This was so much fun to answer, I have so many more tags to do, but I’m not gonna stress ah finishing them all today 🥲 I have some short stories I wanna post as well from the weekend.

I tag @leahpardo-pa-potato, @slenders1ckn3ss, and @coffeewritesfiction. + open tag to any writer interested!

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

Just a reminder that if you suddenly show up in my activity with something like, oh….

“Hello there, Your creativity and skill as a photographer shines through and it’s clear that you have a unique and beautiful style that is all I want and it’s always a pleasure to see what you would come up with next. I would like to appreciate and support you by purchasing some of your photographs, let me know if you're interested”

I will believe that there is a 99% chance you are a scammer. In fact, I have been the victim of a scammer that used a LOT more skill than your generic phrasing.

In fact, I got this exact same “comment” on a post when they were using a different identity. I blocked them, yet here it comes again with a new name attached.

So, to anyone out there that posts things you make, particularly photos and art, BEWARE. If you get posts like this, or someone saying they want to do a collaboration, proceed with extreme caution.

Do not reply. Especially if the phrasing is, like this, utterly non-specific to your work.

Wait and see at the very least. There is a good chance you will see a cut and paste version of their comments show up on another post.

Investigate their blog, especially if they claim to be an artist that wants to work with you. Do a reverse image search, even if their posted art looks like the work of one person. The one that scammed me had stolen their art from a grandmother on Facebook!

Also know that they can use AI to fake art. My scammer used AI to create a convincing WIP of our “collaboration”.

No matter how desperate you are for money, how difficult and distracting your life is, how flattered you feel by someone liking your art, etc, stop and think over ANY offers for commission, collaborations, or purchases. Look for anything at all that doesn’t seem right, and then don’t ignore it.

And a key thing to know about banking…A cashed check does NOT mean the check was good! You can even call the bank and be told it’s all fine, only discover even weeks later that it was a fake and YOU are the one on the hook.

Look, I am NOT going to say every person that contacts you on Tumblr is trying to scam you. In fact I once had an honest to god commission for a sculpt! (and if you see this I hope you still like the dragon!) But the fact is I was also scammed over one of my swamp iris photos too. Both are possible.

The pride and satisfaction of someone paying you for something you make is unforgettably beautiful, BUT the depths of shame and humiliation at being scammed is an indelible scar you will never completely get over. Take extreme care, and if in the slightest doubt just DON’T! Plus, ya know, block is your friend….