#if you want to know more feel free to message me | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

horeisenchi · 1 day ago

Text

“365 Party Girl..”

shiu kong x divorced!reader

(Kinda long, sorry!)

contains: age gap, oral sex(receiving), penetrative sex, light bdsm, breeding, drinking, drugs

NSFW MINORS DNI!🔞🔞🔞

profiles without age will be blocked

The long, gruelling process of your divorce was hitting you hard. Harder than you’d expected it to. The first couple of weeks, you were glued to your apartment. Thankfully, you work from home, so it did not affect your income. However, you completely stopped going out. Now, after you’d gotten married, you didn’t go out much to begin with. With marriage, it’s always feeling a sort of obligation to stay home. And almost every time you had actually planned to go out, your controlling husband would call you ‘childish’ and say you have better things to do. Those ‘better things’ being getting him off, and then going to sleep without another word. Before you got married, you were a full-blown party girl. It was a challenge for any man to be able to properly tie you down, for you feared that he wouldn’t approve of your loud and fast lifestyle. You didn’t want to quit, but you thought you’d found the right man. Until, the sex became bland and only about his own pleasure. You hadn’t orgasmed from anything other than the stimulation of your hand, or whatever toy you were hiding in your bedside table underneath all your underwear in the past two years. The past two years after you married that asshole in your second year of college. Two years of marriage wasted on a man who ended up leaving randomly one morning, without so much as a goodbye.

BZZZZZZZZZ!

You rolled over to your bedside table from the opposite side of the queen bed, that you at least now had to yourself.

You open your phone to a text from your good friend, Utahime, begging you to come out.

“(Y/NNNNNNNN)! Come oooon! I haven’t seen you in forever. You have that stupid cocksucker out of your life come partyyyyyyy!!!!”

Your eyes widen at the message. You hadn’t gone out in forever. Especially not with Utahime. Even though she was the maid of honour at your wedding, your now ex-husband didn’t want you going out with her. For decent reason you suppose, considering you two did tend to get into trouble. There was one time when a frat guy left his card at the local bar in the college town over, some private university guy, and you rung up his card for definitely more drinks than he could afford. This got you banned from being anywhere near that university campus for ten years. Your youth spent with Utahime, was coked out shenanigans and doing whatever you felt like doing. Because you were free.

You knew what you would be getting into accepting her offer, so your first inclination is to decline. You don’t do that anymore, you haven’t touched drugs let alone alcohol in almost a year. Not exactly out of choice, more so because of lack of exposure, but it was almost foreign territory for you now.

But, the more you thought about it, the more intriguing it sounded. That side of you had been forcefully suppressed by that man ever since you’d gotten with him. How do you know that you don’t really want to go, or if you’ve just been conditioned into not wanting to go and having that be your automatic response? I guess tonight would be that test.

“Okay, okay. Send me the address.”

With that text sent, you knew you were locked in for the night. No backing out.

“Tokyo Taste, huh? Alright…” you mumble as you recognize the address sent to you. The last time you’d gone to Tokyo Taste, you got hit on HARD.

The guy in question, was an underclassman named Suguru Geto. Utahime brought him with her, along with her other high school friends. It’s not that he wasn’t attractive, dear lord that man was so gorgeous and statuesque. You had no idea why he was even talking to you, honestly. It’s just that you could tell that he was bored. He wasn’t actually interested in you, he just saw you as an easy target. He so much as grabbed your waist, bought you a drink, bent down to whisper in your ear how good you looked, and how he could imagine himself ripping that short black dress off you later. But while he was doing that, he was checking out almost every other woman in the room. If you followed his gaze every time he’d back away from you, and suddenly act uninterested, it was him locking eyes with another woman. Sure, he didn’t owe you anything. You guys weren’t together, and had only met that night. But, you had more self respect than to just allow yourself to be someone’s entertainment. You wanted someone to be all in, interested. Knowing they have options but just giving you their attention. That was when you developed actual standards.

You sluggishly got up out of bed, the time being a whopping 9:30 PM, and sauntered over to your closet. Stepping inside, you let your eyes wander as you try to find suitable clothes for going out. As you rummage through your things, you remember how you threw a lot of that stuff out, remembering the judging gaze of your ex husband as you got dressed and he demanded you change and cover up.

Finally, you land on a short, off the shoulder long sleeve black dress that clung to your body. It wasn’t the most revealing, but it was really sexy nonetheless. Along with it, you put on some dainty jewelry and some black stilettos. With a last look in the mirror after fixing your hair and throwing on just a tinge of makeup, you threw your purse over your shoulder and headed out.

As you drove to the club, your gut churned a bit. Nervous, from what may come from tonight.

No, (Y/N)… don’t do anything you don’t want to..

You tell yourself before hopping out of your car, and start heading into the club. You pay the stupid $15 door fee (and wonder how the hell you managed to scrape up the money for it so often back then), and head inside.

Your eyes scan the room, searching for Utahime in the crowd of sweaty, practically half naked bodies that surrounded you. As soon as you spot her, she’s sitting on a high top table, seated in the chair with a man standing between her legs as she stares up at him, wantonly. You ultimately decide to leave her alone for a minute, inclining you to go to the bar where you flag down the bartender and order an extra dirty martini. You take your seat at the bar and sip it, as you wait for Utahime to be done with whatever man she’s currently frisking. As you’re sitting at the bar, you feel a pair of eyes on you. A man, wearing a suit (probably having come here right after work), having a cigarette at the side of the bar that was by the large open window. You quickly look away, not gathering much of his facial features.

“No.. no, (Y/N). It’s too soon.”

You tell yourself. You suddenly feel way too intensely about the man staring at you, neither deciding if it was bad or good, before you stand up and bee-line for Utahime’s table not even caring if she’s getting fingered by some random guy under the table.

Utahime spots you as you sit down with your drink. “(Y/N)! You maaaaaaaade it!” She drunkenly slurs. You can’t help but chuckle at her current state, not feeling surprised at all. “Well, you look like you’re having a good time.” She shoos the random man away, earning a confused grimace from him as he walks away.

“Aw, did I ruin your chances of getting some?” You ask with a tinge of faux-pity. “No, more like denying my dealer some action for giving me some free stuff.”

You don’t show it, but mentally you’re shaking your head at the knowledge now that she still did that stuff. But, then again you can’t judge. You were right there with her. “You wannaaaaa..?” She shakes the little clear bag full of white powder just outside of her purse before slipping it in there, giving me a look of knowing she’s trouble. You knew if you said no, she would drop it and never ask again. But, a part of you was burning. Itching for some sort of release, some type of taste of who you used to be that you let go of so long ago. You knew it was mostly for the better… but fuck it.

“Bathroom. Now.” You respond, firmly.

After heading to the handicap stall with Utahime, and doing one… two… okay, maybe three lines, you feel yourself start to loosen up. Your body on overdrive, like you just had four shots of espresso, and your mind shut off. Completely driven by your id. The two of you come out of the bathroom like two firecrackers, ready to shoot off. The next hour or so is like a blur. All you knew is that you and Utahime were loud as hell at that table, ordering drink after drink after drink, occasionally stopping to dance to whatever song you liked came on. One in particular made its way on your playlist afterward, 365 by Charli XCX. You guess it had just recently come out, considering you’d never heard it in a club before.

“Til the windows crack I’ll be (bumpin that)

No I never go home don’t sleep don’t eat just do it on repeat keep (bumpin that)

When I’m in the club yeah I’m (bumpin that)

365 party girl (bumpin that)”

Drink in hand, jaw swinging, pupils blown out, it was a high you had been chasing. It was exactly what you needed, to bring yourself back to reminding yourself who you are. You needed to be allowed to be wild, to be allowed to have freedom, you couldn’t be controlled.

You make your way back to the table with Utahime, your drunkenness showing, but you’re high from the substance dying down, allowing yourself to level out a moment. You were about to suggest to Utahime for another line, when she interrupts you.

“There’s a guy at the bar who’s been staring at you this entire time.”

It was the same guy from earlier. You look over, this time letting your eyes graze over his features. He was lean, certainly built, but lean. His hair was clean, he had a sort of ‘rich douche’ countenance to him. And he was staring at you, intently. Not making it a secret, either. Your mind reeled back to what you had thought about Geto last time you were here..

“I want a man to know he has other options, but still just want me. Only be interested in me.”

As your mind flashes back to that, you realize that this guy was giving you exactly what you wanted. Hell, it didn’t look like he was talking to other girls here, and he’s practically had his gaze on you from the moment you got here.

“He’s hot, you should frisk him!” Utahime exclaims enthusiastically.

“Uta! I just got divorced-“

She interrupts you “So what?! You’re divorced from that douche who didn’t give a single fuck about you?!”

Well, shit. She had a point.

With that encouragement, you get up and walk over to the mystery man who was certainly not tearing his gaze away from you as you approached him, stopping just a foot in front of him.

“You got a starin problem?” You ask, loudly over the blaring music of the club.

“Didn’t know checking out a hot woman was a problem.” He replies, cocky as he takes a drag of his cigarette. Lord, that was hot.. and he was a lot taller up close..

“You been starin’ all night.” I call him out, seeing how he’d react.

He chuckles, knowing you’re right. “Damn right I have. I know what I like.” After saying that, his eyes shamelessly trail down your body, particularly taking longer gazes at your breasts which didn’t leave much to the imagination in that dress.

“Yeah? And what is it that you like.” You decide to play coy, tease him a bit. Make him work for it.

He moves his head, trying to get a good look at you from all angles. Looking a bit behind you at your rear, at your sides, taking in your general body shape. Then his eyes raise, his gaze lingering on your face, taking in your slightly messy state. He licks his lips before replying. “Well, you’re ungodly sexy, that goes without saying. You got a body men fantasize about. And you seem loose, and fun. You got the whole indie sleaze, messy sort of thing. You were just dancing, but it looks like you just got fucked senseless.”

He pauses a moment before continuing. “And, you got a nice face to go along with it.”

You feel a pool of heat growing in the pit of your stomach. All of his words accumulated together had you feeling just slightly cocky. You could tell he wanted you. He wanted you bad.

“How many girls you talked to tonight?” You ask, suddenly after moments of silence.

He was taken aback by your question, but meeting your gaze with a smirk “Just been waiting for you to come to me, baby.”

That was it. It was like a switch flipping in the back of your mind. Okay, it was game time. Even if it was bad, even if you never speak to him again, he’d make a damn good rebound fuck.

Another hour or so goes by, chatting with this man. You found out his name is Shiu Kong, he’s a Korean citizen, and he won’t exactly describe what his job entails. You just assume he works for the government or something. The big find, was that he was older. Much older. About 20 years older. When he revealed to you he was 42, your jaw hung, and not just from the dust.

He looked damn good for his age. Not that 40s are old, but just he didn’t look it at all. You would’ve guessed late 20s-early 30s. But 40s?

You’d always fantasized about having an older man. Someone to take care of you, pay for your nails, spoil you rotten, and come fuck you braindead after he gets off work. Someone affectionate, who doesn’t play games, because why would he? He’s been around the block enough. He’s probably tired of games.

And in turn, when you tell him you’re only 22, he almost contemplates stopping the conversation right there. He didn’t want to seem like some creep who’s preying on this woman half his age. However, when you brush off his age at your initial reaction, and explain to him you were just surprised, he shoos those thoughts away. He begins to fantasize about having a woman who is wild, spontaneous, damn near uncontrollable. Someone he’ll have to put in their place every now and then. This wasn’t a fantasy he had often, but dear lord you were bringing that out of him tenfold.

You decided you’d take him home. Whats the worst that could happen?

You both take separate cars back to your apartment, because the last thing you want is it to be bad or awkward afterward, and then have to drive him to his car. After getting there, you lead him up to your apartment.

Anticipation was running through you like a wildfire. The remnants of coke and alcohol still evident, but not nearly as strong as before. Just enough to give you a confidence boost and help you act a bit more bold than usual. You very quickly, eagerly reach up to unlock the front door, and usher the both of you inside. This doesn’t go unnoticed by him. He watches as you frantically unlock the door with amusement, smirking to himself about how excited you were. How excited you were to have him as your rebound.

As soon as the door shuts, he goes to speak

“So, what do you-“

You cut him off by jumping his bones. You’d manhandled him, grabbing him by the nape of his neck and forcing his head around to meet you in a rough, wanting kiss. Pressing your body against his. He doesn’t resist, if anything, he complies in record time. He pushes you against the wall, trapping you in with his body as his hands trail down your sides with a firm grasp. His hands rest on your waist, forcefully pulling you into his hips. The kiss was hot, and rough as he damn near shoves his tongue down your throat wanting to taste all of you. Damn, you looked so good. And you tasted just as sweet.

The kiss grew sloppier, the more you incorporated your tongues. Saliva had painted the areas around both of your mouths, the skin glistening in the dim light of your apartment. You hadn’t felt this wanted in a long, long time. His hands continued to roam your body, this time latching onto whatever he can. Whether it be your ass, which he couldn’t stop staring at while you walked in front of him to your apartment. Your chest, that he could not for the life of him break his gaze away from when you spoke to him. Your shoulders, that looked so slender and biteable. Or your face, which was just so exquisite to him.

You kicked off your heels, dropping down to a smaller height. With them on, you were almost his height. With them off, you were just to his shoulder. He stopped for a moment to look at you, his hands raking through your hair gentle as he did so. Taking in just exactly how small you were compared to him. He looked like a man starved, and this just turned you on even more.

“My room is this way.” You tell him, softly, as you begin walking that way. Motioning for him to follow you.

With diligence, he follows you to your bedroom. He looks around for a moment as you go ahead and sit on the bed. It was similar to your living room, in terms of it being kept very neat and tidy and just slightly… empty? You’d told him you were divorced, but from the apartment, it looked almost half done. Like you haven’t filled the space quite yet.

He looks at you on the bed. He bites his lip and lets his gaze rake up and down your body, taking in how good you look sitting there all ready for him. He walks toward you, loosening his tie as he kneels down in front of you. You wonder for a moment what he was planning on doing, but the way he’d looked up at you as he kneeled down told you all you needed to know. He loosened his tie, and unbuttons the first two buttons of his white dress shirt before he traces his hands up your legs, slowly moving to part your inner thighs. You comply, spreading them for him. His fingers trail to your heat, gently spreading around your folds, getting a good look at your lack of panties as well as the slick that was forming there. All for him. “This all for me, baby?” He asks, with a cocky grin. You reply with a nod, biting your lip as you throw your head back. The sensation was too good, and one you went too long without.

His thumb then starts circling your sensitive clit, earning a low groan from you, and your hips squirming ever so slightly, causing him to take his hands and hold your hips in place so that he could get to work. “Let me take care of you, doll.” He says in a gruff, throaty voice before his mouth delves between your legs, giving your cunt a good swipe from bottom to top, before latching his lips onto your anticipating clit. Your jaw hangs slack. The warmth and the sensation from his tongue lapping and his lips sucking on your sensitive clit was almost too much. But, you wanted it. You wanted that release so badly. You wrap a leg over his shoulder and down his back, locking him into his position between your legs where he knelt on the floor before you. Your hand running through his hair, and using your other to support you on the bed. Your eyes went between looking down at him, rolling your eyes back and biting your lip as you watch him go to work on your pussy, and to the ceiling, just when the feeling was getting just too good when you needed to let out a loud, guttural moan that was too intense to contain.

“F-fuuuck.. Shiu- god, your mouth.. f-feels too good..”

He looks up for a moment, detaching his mouth, which let you get a good look at the slick that now painted his entire chin. “Yeah, doll? You like how I eat your pussy?” He says before immediately going back to work, eyes shut and practically pussydrunk as he buries himself into your cunt, going between tongue fucking you and making out with your clit, every so often shaking his face around down there to really savour the taste.

“Y-yeah… y- eat my pussy- s-so good- fuck.. god I’m gonna cum!” You moan out, a bit louder than the rest you’d been letting spill out as your grip on his hair tightens, the leg that ran over his shoulder and down his back stiffening as your head rolls back. You pant, and whine as you reach your mind-blowing orgasm. Coming completely undone in front of him. He can’t help but flick his eyes up, watching what he’s doing to you. His tongue movements go a bit slower, helping you ride out your orgasm before he detaches his lips, tilting his head up to look up at you as he licks his lips clean. A cocky grin forming on his lips, knowing just how damn good he made you feel.

“That feel good, baby?” He asks, his hands grazing up and down your thighs. When you nod, that gives him everything he needed to stand up in front of you, and start undressing himself. “Yeah, well. I’m gonna make you feel even better here in a moment. You gonna be a good girl and take it?”

You look up at him, all doe eyed and curious as he removes his tie, then his dress shirt, and his pants as he throws it all on the floor. “Y-yes-“ you reply to his initial question.

“Yes, what?” He asks. You couldn’t tell what exactly he wanted. Sir? Daddy? Master? “What do you want me to call you?”

He walks over to you, removing his boxers finally. Letting his length spring up and slap his gut. It was big, but not big enough to where you felt like you were going to be in agony tomorrow unable to walk. So, that was promising. He kicks them off, and forcefully grabs you by the jaw to look up at him.

“Sit up straight, baby.” He demands. You didn’t expect that to be what he says, but you comply, fixing your posture as you look up at him.

“Tonight, I want you to call me daddy. Tonight, you’re gonna let daddy use you however he wants. You’re going to obey daddy. You’re going to be daddy’s girl, tonight. That sound good to you?” He asks in a daunting tone, almost like he’s telling the rules to a child. You nod, complying with his demands.

“Get daddy’s cock wet.” He demands, pushing his dick forward into your face. You take his cock in your hand, giving it a pump or two before putting it in your mouth. Letting him bottom out to the back of your throat, you get his cock nice and ready for you. He softly puts his hand in your hair, smirking to himself as he watched you obey him so diligently.

“Yeah, doll.. you know how to do it- yeah.. just like that.. doing so good for me. Such a good girl.” He then pulls your head back, and motions for you to get up further on the bed. You lay yourself down in the center as he positions himself over you.

“Lift your dress up.”

You obey his order, lifting your dress over your head, revealing that you not only weren’t wearing panties, but weren’t wearing a bra either. He tuts as he looks down at your body, letting his hands grab and paw at your bare chest. His thumbs toying with your hard nipples, earning a soft whine from you. “Such a dirty girl. Wearing nothing under that thing you call a dress. You were just begging to get fucked.” He coos as he pinches down on your nipple harder, a small yelp coming from your throat.

You hadn’t realized before, but he still had his tie in hand. You finally noticed once he forcefully grabbed your wrists, and tied them above your head. The tie was nice and tight. Definitely going to leave a mark tomorrow. His hands go back to feeling up your chest, letting the fleshy mounds fill up his hands before..

SMACK!

You let out a quiet moan at the feeling of him slapping your tits. He does it one.. two.. three more times before mumbling to himself. “Dirty, dirty little slut..” your chest felt a bit raw, red from how hard he slapped them around. He sat there and admired his work. A red hand print forming on the side of your breast, causing his cock to twitch with pride.

He then moves down between your legs, positioning his hard, pink tip at your entrance. Swiping it up and down your cunt, slapping it on your clit. “What does baby want? Do you want daddy to fuck you? Do you want daddy to fuck you like the little whore you are? A little whore that goes out naked under her dress?”

You bite your lip so hard it almost draws blood. Your brows knit together, you give him an eager nod.

He looks dissatisfied with your answer, giving your pussy a small slap with his cock. “Words, doll.”

“Y-yes daddy.. please- please fuck me..” you beg and plead, your voice strained and sounding desperate.

Without another word, he slips inside you, completely bottoming out. He lets out a loud groan, his jaw falling open as he pushes himself inside your warm walls. You let out a long, whiny moan, having not expected to feel all of him that fast. It was slightly painful, but it felt damn good.

He starts relentlessly pounding into you, his hand finding solace and support from gripping your wrists above your head, keeping himself upright as he rutted his hips in and out of you.

It was all so much at once. He hadn’t even given you time to properly adjust to his size before he was jackhammering inside of you. Your moans come out, long, and damn they were loud. You were certainly fuelling his ego with just how much you were clearly enjoying it.

“You like it- hnnngh- you like it, doll? You like- you like how daddy fucks you? Ah- tell daddy how much you like it..”

You could hardly think straight. All that ran through your mind were the intense amounts of pleasure that flood through your body, and the sounds that came from it. Your pussy giving pornographic squelches with each thrust of his cock, the lewd slaps of your skin together, the heavy breathing from both parties along with the series of moans. You could hardly formulate a sentence.

“D-daddy- ugh.. daddy f-fffucks me s-so good- AH~!”

The whites of his eyes take over as he hears you say that. He straightens himself up, throwing your legs over his shoulders with much haste before he continues pounding into your pussy. His eyes locked and mesmerized by your facial expressions, the way your tits bounced with every thrust, just how damn good and tight you felt around him.

You’re now screaming his name after he props your legs up, allowing him deeper entry, causing him to hit that sensitive spot that your ex husband couldn’t ever seem to find before.

“S-Shiu- FUCK! HNNNGH-“

He can feel himself reaching his climax, but lord he never wanted this to be over. He wanted to keep fucking you into oblivion. He wanted to keep watching you in the whirls of ecstasy at his cock. It was all over for him when he felt your pussy tighten around him, indicating that you were reaching yours as well.

“D-daddy- I’m gonna cum- I- I’m-“

He shushes you, speaking to you calmly and soothing as opposed to how he was absolutely destroying your insides. “I’m right there too, doll.. ah-“ he winces at he approaches his climax. “I’m gonna cum inside you.. I’m gonna fill you with my seed.. get- get you pregnant.. ah!”

Your back arches, your tied hands coming down onto your stomach as your elbows buckle as you crumble under him for the second time. Drool coming down your chin as you pant and mewl at your orgasm crashing down even harder than the last.

And with that, he was shooting hot silky ropes of cum into your cunt. Fucking it deep inside you as he watches the white substance bunch up around the base of his cock, and leaking down to his balls.

His pace slows down, riding out both of your orgasms. After pulling himself out, he reaches up to untie your wrists, letting you adjust to having it off.

You lie there with your eyes shut, completely breathless after what just happened. It wasn’t until you hear the jingling of his belt before your eyes opened up to see him getting dressed.

“Wh-what are you doing?” You ask, trying to not sound desperate.

“I’m not too interested in just being a rebound, doll. But, if you decide I’m just too good to have as just a rebound..” he digs around in his pocket for a moment, before handing you a business card with his phone number on it. ‘Shiu Kong - Formal Handler’

You wondered what formal handler meant. But, before you could ask, he was bidding you goodbye and making his grand exit. You lay there, dumbfounded at how quickly that turned around. Did you just get ‘you-ed’ by this guy..?

It took days of consideration and replaying the events of that night in your mind over and over, before you called him.

Thanks for reading!!! This is my first fic I’m posting on here so pleaaase be nice, but also if you have any constructive criticism I’m SO open to it. Thanks!

#jjk #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk smut #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu shiu #shiu x reader #jjk shiu #shiu smut #shiu x y/n #shiu kong smut #smut #anime #anime fic #anime smut #fanfic

61 notes · View notes

darlinluxx · 23 hours ago

Note

love your writing, so scrumptious and poetic🥰 i love a fellow saebyeok fangirl😩🩷

what do you think about a short fic about the reader slowly becoming friends with saebyeok who works at the local convenience store. like this bubbly kinda awkward girl just doesn’t get the hint the saebyeok doesn’t wanna talk and ends up wearing her down over time til they become friends and start to develop feelings😌

i’d love to see it, keep up the amazing work!

love koogiie 🍓

𝐑𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐑 | 𝐊𝐀𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐀𝐄 𝐁𝐘𝐄𝐎𝐊 ౨ৎ

pairing : saebyeok x fem!reader

fluff

warnings : mentions of smoking, mentions of small injuries

a/n : thank u so much !! your comments are the sweetest <3

if you have any requests, feel free to message me <3

𝐓he bell above the door jingles, a familiar sound that barely registers anymore. it’s late, past midnight, and the fluorescent lights of the convienne store hum a lonely tune. you’re restocking the ramen shelves, humming along to the song playing from the tiny speaker behind the counter, when you see her.

she’s tall and thin, with a haunted look in her eyes that seem to absorb the harsh glow. she moves with a strange grace, like a stray cat who knows every alleyway in the city. it’s Saebyeok, and she’s a regular, though “regular” feels too casual for someone who exudes such a guarded energy. she always comes in late, grabs a pack of cigarettes, and maybe a drink, usually without a word.

your heart does a little flip, a nervous flutter you’ve come to recognize. she’s intriguing, in a way that makes your palms sweat a little. you push a stray strand of hair behind your ear, and, despite all your better judgment, you decide to be friendly.

“late night, huh?” you chirp, your voice a little too high-pitched. you flash her a wide, hopefully not creepy smile.

she doesn’t smile back. or even look at you, really. she grabs a pack of cigarettes, pays, and walks towards the door.

“have a good night!” you call after her, your voice tinged with a bit of embarrassment.

you tell yourself she didn’t hear you, but the truth is, she heard. she’s just not interested.

the next night, she’s back. same time, same kind of cigarettes. you tell yourself you’ll play it cool, be nonchalant, but the moment you see her you’re back to your usual, bubbly self.

“hey! how’s it going?” you ask, leaning on the counter as you try to look cool. you are desperately failing. “anything interesting happen today?”

she doesn’t answer. she doesn’t even make eye contact. she just grabs her things, pays, and leaves.

okay, you think. maybe she’s just not a talker. but you’re stubborn. and maybe, just a little, you’re drawn to her quiet mystery.

you make a point of learning her usual order. you start stocking her favorite brand of cigarettes by the register so they’re easier for her to grab. you’ve even started leaving out a small bag of her favorite chips, just in case she wants them. you leave it on the counter, a silent offering.

she ignores it at first. then, one night, as she’s leaving, you see her glance at the bag. for the briefest moment, you think you see a flicker of something in her eyes that isn’t cold indifference.

it’s a small victory, but it fuels you. you keep talking to her, babbling about your day, your annoying coworkers, the latest tv show you’re obsessed with. she doesn’t respond for the most part, but sometimes, just sometimes, you notice a subtle shift in her posture, a tiny twitch of her lips. she’s listening. you know it.

one rainy night, you’re both the only ones in the store as you mop the floors. Saebyeok comes in, her usually stoic face looking even more pale in the dim lighting. she’s soaking wet, her hair plastered to her forehead. you see a small scrape on her hand that you know she’s probably too proud to care for.

“oh my god, you’re drenched!” you blurt out. you quickly grab a clean towel from behind the counter. “here, you gotta dry off.” you offer it to her.

she hesitates, then slowly takes the towel. you watch her awkwardly pat her hair, her movements surprisingly delicate. for a moment, the walls you always see her putting up seem to waver.

“you should probably clean that,” you say, pointing to the graze on her hand. you reach for the first aid kit.

she raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t refuse as you dab antiseptic on the scratch, bandaging it gently. you feel your face flush as you work.

“thank you.” she murmurs, her voice barely audible, but it’s the first time you’d ever heard it.

it’s quiet, but that small thank you is enough. you beam at her. this is a progress, a breakthrough.

over time, the silence that once surrounded Saebyeok starts to feel less like a wall and more like a quiet understanding. she doesn’t talk much, but she’ll occasionally meet your gaze, a slight curve to her lips as you tell another story. you catch her watching you as you dance along to the music while restocking shelves. she starts grabbing a soda along with her cigarettes, and she sometimes even accepts the bag of chips you leave out. you start to feel a warmth settle in your chest whenever she comes in.

one night, she stays a little longer. you’re closing up, counting the till, and she leans against the counter, watching you.

“why?” she asks, her voice low.

“why what?” you ask, confused.

“why are you so…” she trails off, searching for the right word. “nice?”

your heart clenches at the question. “i don’t know,” you admit with a nervous laugh, “you just seem like you need a friend.”

a small, almost imperceptible smile appears on her face.

“maybe.” she whispers, her eyes meeting yours.

that night, you realize something has shifted. it’s not just a friendship that you’re forging with this quiet, guarded woman. there’s something else, a pull, a connection that leaves you breathless and a little scared. your heart skips a beat, the same little nervous flip, but this time, it’s joined by a slow, burning warmth. it’s something you can’t deny, something you desperately hope she feels too. and she does, but she won’t tell you that. you catch her gaze, and the look in her dark eyes sends a shiver down your spine. you’re not just friends anymore. and maybe, that’s exactly what you’ve both been hoping for.

#i actually love this #kang sae byeok #kang saebyeok #sae byeok #saebyeok #kang sae byeok x reader #kang saebyeok x reader #sae byeok x reader #saebyeok x reader #squid game x reader #squid game

83 notes · View notes

should-know-better · 1 day ago

Text

A conversation through Instagram?

This post 'And if you're thinking of ME, I'm probably thinking of YOU, made by @thetruthisfictional made me think - WHY did Alex decide to point at the Mirrorball / Miles representation on that day?

So delved a bit further. A huge thank you to @nicoscheer for keeping such accurate records of Miles' stories and posts. It made this so much easier. (Also, this is all just my wild theory and I have no proper proof as usual.)

Friday 22/09/2023 Who knows what started this all off, but on this day, Miles posts two stories:

The lyrics for "Seen The Light" include: "Well what you do is up to you, / I'll take my hat and push on through," (full lyrics in link)

"Infa Riot" lyrics include: "time to take control again and be the only one." "It's not too late to free your mind" "cos I don't think any-one cares." (full lyrics in link) This could be interpreted as either Miles saying that he's going to be who he wants to be, OR if it's a message to Alex, it's suggesting that he stands up for himself.

So what happens?

Saturday 23/09/2023 Arctic Monkeys are at the Pacific Colosseum in Vancouver and debut, "HELLO YOU.” I know that AM could have been pre-planned that they were doing this track tonight but to me, the timing?? Idk it just feels so coincidental.

It's as though Alex is answering with that final hopeful verse, about in the future he'll go back to being that person he was aged 17 (the meaning behind, "Hello You," discussed here.)

To try to keep this short(ish) I'll quickly say that Miles posts more stories where he's having a a nice Saturday night in with Maxie, then out for Sunday lunch with his Mum. The music accompanying these are all from The Beatles, (which ties in with his Mum being there) but he could have chosen any songs, and these all tie in with the ‘conversation’. They can all be seen as having a double meaning (1) as an accompanying to the story and (b) a message to Alex. Check out the lyrics from each track:

Roll Over Beethoven - (esp verse 6 and "the jukebox blows a fuse" - there's a post referring to Alex as a jukebox here!)

This Boy

Do You Want To Know A Secret?

Monday 25/09/2023 Amongst the breezy 'up and at em' post that Miles makes, and, the feeling lazy Jim Royle stories, there's two more tracks.

The lyrics from "Good at Breaking Hearts," lyrics could have been written about the Milex LA split, they are so apt. However, the main theme behind, "Chunky," is to keep the party going and carry on as long as you can.

Again, if these are just random songs that Miles likes, then it's very spooky, because the next thing that happens is...

Tuesday 26/09/2023

https://www.tumblr.com/standingnexttome2012/772210477873938432

During Body Paint, Alex points at the Mirrorball and sings, "if you're thinking of me, I'm probably thinking of you."

I'm not sure if this is the only time he does this, but in many of the clips I've watched, he doesn't. So, once again, why on this date? Another coincidence? Am I just fitting song lyrics to a narrative? When you look closely, there seems to be something going on.

#also adding that in Dublin Alex mentions Miles before Bodypaint #my main point is the timing of hello you and mirrorball pointing #instagram conversation theories #my crazy theories #sorry another long post #miles kane #alex turner #tlsp #milex #mk insta

24 notes · View notes

jaggedamethyst · 21 hours ago

Text

circuit breaker 🔬🌌 (part four)

tutor!jayce talis x reader, ekko x reader college au

content: jayce ghosts you when you need him most...so you have no choice but to lean on your best friend, ekko

pining, mental health mentions, neurodivergence, lmk if i missed any!

notes: ekko pic...omg... (you may think this series is going slow but i hate a slow burn ass fic that has them fucking chapter three don't pmo...also this evolved way past just jayce and i need to do ekko justice...bc some of yall don't, clocked it)

word count: 2.9k

series masterlist

⭑·ﾟﾟ·*:༅。.。༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿　　✿✼:*ﾟ:༅。.。༅:*·ﾟﾟ·⭑

“Do you know that girl Jayce is always with?”

You arrived to class, ready to learn—but not about physics truthfully. You expected to cut corners, create friendly conversation about nothing, humor Viktor. When you got there, though, you had to ask him immediately.

“Mel Medara?” Viktor looked to you with intrigue. “I know of her…but not much about her.” He leaned to his left, toward you, “Why?”

“She’s just always…around? And we spoke to each other once but I was in a hurry…didn’t get much chance for a formal introduction.”

“Are you certain that your intrigue is rooted purely in your inquisitive nature…or is there another reason you want to share?”

“No-“

The sound of the door towards the front of the class opening interrupted you—it was perfect timing, actually. You would rather not have to unpack why Mel’s presence bothered you so much; truthfully it was an inexplicable feeling. Someone walked in, and you sat up straighter.

“Hi, everyone! My name is Caitlyn, some of you may know me if you’ve ever been to the student resource center.” She smiled at you, exchanging a look of recognition. “I wanted to formally introduce myself… I will be joining as a TA. If you need anything and can’t get ahold of the professor, you can ask me your course related questions.” She moved to plug a laptop into the projector, “Here is my email for future reference.” She allowed some time for people to copy and take photos of her email down. “Unfortunately, today’s class will be canceled for an emergency…but I was instructed to relay to you that the quiz will still be held next week. It’ll be on vectors and calculating their angles. Be sure to refresh yourselves over the weekend and reach out to me should you have any questions.” People started to shuffle around her, getting up to leave class. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, guys. Feel free to use the space to get some other work done, or leave early.”

“What the fuck, this was such a waste of my time.” You glanced back towards the board, making sure you got the email address right. “I have been so tired I could be sleeping right now.”

“I’m sorry, I know you have a lot to deal with right now.” Viktor moved to the end of the aisle, grabbing his cane while slinging his bag over one shoulder. “At least you’ve been in tutoring. The quiz this week should be easier, right?”

“That’s the thing,” you reached for your phone, “We’ve only just got to vectors so far. That was hard enough.” You hovered your finger over Jayce’s contact, never actually having messaged him. Before you could talk yourself out of it, you started texting him.

hi jayce

im sorry to bother you but i have my quiz next week and its gonna be on more stuff than we got to in our sessions

do you have any time to meet with me this weekend? if not thats ok, i can ask my friend

You paused, walking behind Viktor without looking up from the phone screen.

i just need you

No, you shook your head, continuing the text.

i just need your help

lmk

You grimaced at the text bubbles, hating how you split all of that up. You imagined his annoyed face, seeing all of these desperate messages. You wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t answer. You wouldn’t answer you.

Viktor turned to you, “Are you alright?”

“Yes, just frustrated and irritated and angry…thats all.”

“That’s not a great combination.”

You shook your head. Without trying, Viktor could always cheer you up. “Unrelated, but did Jayce ask you about what snacks I eat?”

“He did,” he looked over at you, “It was odd. He said something about ‘reinforcements’ for your guys’ tutoring session.”

“Oh...okay.”

Viktor would call himself a lot of things, including perceptive. He didn’t say much, but he noticed the way your eyes lingered on one another when you first met. He was aware of the way you spoke about each other, especially when it was just Viktor around. He simply arched a brow at you, observing your concerned look at the phone screen.

“Maybe you should take the weekend to rest and recuperate.”

“I would…but the quiz-“

“Just for today. Wait for Jayce to get back to you. Then you can focus solely on next week.” He nodded reassuringly.

He returned the nod, liking the sound of the plan.

If only Jayce had bothered to answer.

——————

“Hi.”

“Come on in.” Ekko stepped back, letting you into his dorm.

“I know it’s so last minute, but I know nothing about angles …figured you could help.”

“I absolutely can help and would love to.”

You sat your stuff down, getting comfortable as you’d done dozens of times before. You turned a corner, washing your hands at the sink before heading to grab a throw blanket from Ekko's bed.

He knew your habits, calling from the living room area. “I have the heated blanket out here, too, if you wanna use that one. Know you get cold.”

You exited his room, wearing the slippers you left under his bed. “Once again, you are the best…because I am, in fact, freezing my ass off right now.”

“Want something to drink?”

“Always.”

The two of you were so in sync—it had to be that way after Powder. It became worse when Vi blamed you, suspecting one of you said something to her to make her disappear. Even though you know you did nothing wrong, there was still a self-hate there. That you couldn’t be there for a friend who needed you—so much so that she left entirely. You couldn’t do that to Ekko, he felt the same.

“So,” you pulled out the folder Jayce had given you, a slight frown on your face at the thought of him completely ignoring you. “I have this paper, its like a cheat sheet for vectors…but besides what Jayce told me I don’t know what to do. The TA said we also have to calculate the angles��that makes no sense.”

Ekko grabbed his notebook, flipping to a blank sheet of paper. He sketched a makeshift drawing—surprisingly good for how quick he’d done it. You were always in awe of his artistic talent.

“Okay, so here…is a light pole.” He moved his finger to the other side of the paper, motioning toward a little drawing of you, smiling on the sidewalk. “This is you.”

“Wait I’m so adorable here!”

Ekko chuckled, side eyeing you a bit, “Yeah…”

You snatched the pencil—quickly drawing in a stick figure of him. “This is you!”

“Is it really? Couldn’t tell.”

“Hey-“ You swatted his arm, “You’re identical in my opinion.”

“If having lines for a body is identical…then sure. But anyways…not the point of my sketch.” He grabbed the pencil back, “Thank you very much.” He flipped the pencil, using the eraser side to show you the details. “Okay…light pole…you.” He smirked, knowing you wanted to interject. Ekko raised his hand before you could, “This is the distance between you and the pole.” He made up and wrote a random number in feet under the bottom, the same for the pole. “This is the height of the pole. This is all you need to find every angle and distance measurement.”

The look on your face was one of pure confusion. “How does that make any sense whatsoever, Ekko?” You moved to close the book. “Actually, lets just watch a movie instead. I’m prepared to fail at this point.”

Ekko grabbed the book from you, reopening it. “Well, I’m not, so let’s get to work.”

He continued, explaining as best he could. It was no use, though, it just wasn’t making sense to you. You nodded, trying to get him to move on to something else.

“Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.” You reached to hug Ekko, “You’re the best.” Pulling back, you plastered on a smile, hiding the discomfort. You didn’t feel ready whatsoever. Suddenly, Ekko grabbed your hands, pulling your attention to him.

“You’re gonna do great.” He lingered on you for a while, “Promise.”

The doubt you felt made you want to hole up and skip class altogether. Eventually, it developed into a disdain for Jayce. When you thought about it, he was the reason you were going to fail…again.

——————

You decided against skipping class on Monday, but you were definitely opting out of that damn tutoring session. If Jayce can’t answer a simple few texts, how were you to know you even had a standing appointment anymore. It made you feel less than worthy of a proper notice. Above all, it just felt plain unprofessional…he’s an employee after all.

Walking into class and into this quiz felt like a walk to your execution. Midterms were quickly approaching, which meant you only had so many quizzes you could fail before the majority of your final grade was tainted by bad ones.

Viktor greeted you as normal, moving over to give you a seat. “Are you prepared?”

“As best as I can be.”

The beauty of college was that you did assessments in class and got the results as soon as you submitted. Knowing you would get your score back in the next few minutes had your stomach churning. An image of Jayce, carefree and nonchalant, popped into your head. Nothing was making sense. Reluctantly, you started choosing random answers—disregarding the calculator altogether. Before you knew it, your grade, a 56%, reflected back to you.

“Fuck,” you whispered to yourself. You closed your laptop, getting up to leave class early. “I’ll see you later, Viktor.”

Before he could reply, you were gone. Pushing through the door. You grabbed your phone from your pocket, texting Ekko.

im done early, wanna meet rn?

He replied a few seconds later.

omw

You picked up the pace, not out of urgency, but in pure frustration. Everything you’d been working towards wasn’t paying off. The time you spent not being with Ekko—with Jayce—was a waste.

When you arrived to the dining hall, Ekko wasn’t there yet. You took the time to grab both you and him something to eat for lunch. Within minutes, Ekko showed up, that warm smile on his face as usual. He leaned into you, giving you a side hug while simultaneously grabbing the food from you.

“How was the quiz?” You didnt reply, simply giving him a side eye. “Damn…I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault…but thanks for helping.”

He’d seamlessly changed the subject—allowing the two of you to talk without the reminder of your failure that day. You didn’t acknowledge how fast the time had passed and truthfully, didn’t care. You hadn’t planned to show up to tutoring…much less give Jayce any notice.

To your right, you suddenly heard a voice, interrupting you and Ekko.

“Hey.” You looked over, seeing Jayce standing there. “I figured you’d be here.” He looks between you and Ekko, hands now on his hips. “You missed our session.”

You raised a brow and crossed your arms over your chest. “Wow, really? Didn’t know we were still having those.”

“Of course we are, you have those quizzes-“

“Had.” You interrupted, “There was one today. You’d know if you checked your phone.”

He looked down, embarrassed at his phone sitting in his front pant pocket.

“I’m sorry- I know this is important for you but something came up.”

“What? What came up?” Ekko spoke up.

Jayce turned to look at him, finally acknowledging his presence again. “Something personal,” he looked away, focusing back on you. “Can we talk alone?”

Ekko spoke again, “Say what you need to say.”

“I would, but I’m not talking to you.”

A screech of Ekko’s chair resounded in the dining hall. You reached a hand out, gesturing toward them. “Ekko, please.”

Ekko looked over to you and inhaled a deep breath. He was looking at Jayce again, but kept talking to you. “I’ll see you later, okay? Call if you need anything.”

“Wait- Ekko-”

Jayce gulped, sitting down across from you. You watched Ekko leave as Jayce took his seat, hands resting on the table.

“What the hell is your problem? You ghost me then show up here with an attitude? I should be pissed…I am pissed! I failed because of you!”

He nodded, knowing the weight of his being inaccessible. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that.”

“There was a personal thing, a family emergency-“

“And yet, your phone is still in working condition.”

You didn’t want to be insensitive, but it takes seconds to reply. A simple message would’ve sufficed.

“My mom’s sick.” You froze—remembering that it’s just him and his mom. “She was in the hospital all weekend…it still hasn’t gotten better.” He paused, looking at you now, “I thought I owed you to at least show up today.”

“Well…now I feel like shit.”

“Don’t. Not your fault I didn’t tell you what was happening.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Hope she gets better?”

You reached over, placing a comforting hand on his, “I can do that.”

He let you linger there, before pulling back. “How about this week, since I messed up so bad with scheduling…we meet as much as you’d like just so you can be ready. Shit, it can be every day if you want.” He nodded, “We’re gonna make sure you pass this class if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Are you sure? I can be pretty high maintenance…”

He leaned back in his chair, a nonchalant yet playful look on his face, “Not worried about it.”

“Okay.” You shrugged, “If you say so.”

The pair of you exchanged smiles, not at all prepared for how tumultuous this week would be.

taglist

@juskonutoh @sseleniaa @aerina127 @sleepysoldier @angelicmisty @1800latenitecreep @venus-in-roses

#jaggedamethyst #jayce talis #arcane jayce #jayce talis x reader #jayce talis x you #arcane x reader #arcane #jayce x reader #jayce league of legends #jayce talis x y/n #jayce talis arcane #jayce x you #ekko arcane #ekko x reader #ekko league of legends #ekko

50 notes · View notes

abyss-seer · 3 days ago

Text

Pick A Card Read

Hey there! So as I said I will be reposting old reads. Another relationship read... But this time to heal from a previous one. I used AI to edit this reading's original transcript. So hope you won't mind it I was having a hard time with my English, still do... But I have grown a bit confident about it since then. Hope these old reads provide some insights to you guys

Channeled Song :

A revisit to the past:

What are you subconsciously holding on to from your previous connection that needs to be realized at this time?

How to choose and find your pile

Meditate on the question given and choose whichever image you feel the most drawn to then read for the pile you like the most. You can feel drawn to anything, including the signs and symbols in the images.🌸🧘🏻‍♀️😌

Warning ⚠️: I got some energy not wanting me to post this read. So here you go.

🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿

May all the evil intentions, thoughts actions, prayers sent towards me or my way be returned back to its sender. I banish any negative energy sent towards me.

🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿🧿

____________________

Pile 1

____________________

Pile 2

____________________

Pile 3

________________________

Pile 4

________________________

Trigger Warning ⚠️

This reading has focused on your subconscious patterns from past connections, aiming to be a healing experience rather than a reminder of past hurts. If you're not ready to confront these aspects, but you appreciate the concept of this reading, feel free to save it for later.

Remember, this is a general reading, so take only the messages that resonate with you and leave the rest. A tarot reading offers insight or answers to your subconscious questions. It's important not to force yourself into any interpretation that doesn't feel right; readings are meant to be more about entertainment and reflection than precision.

Be mindful of not taking things personally. This is a collective reading, and while some aspects might resonate with you, others may resonate with someone else. My readings tend to be comprehensive and detailed, which some may find lengthy or time-consuming. Please take your time with this reading. These messages are intended to awaken and provide insights, so I hope you find value in them. Enjoy the journey through these reads..

Pile 1

"My fabulous pile 1, it's time to shine a light on those sneaky subconscious patterns! Feeling like you're carrying the weight alone? Or that your close ones are more dissonance than harmony? Stop right there. You, with your radiant energy, shouldn't dim your sparkle to make others comfy. The reversed 10 of Pentacles and upright World card are clear: you deserve harmony, not discord. Some in your inner circle might envy your success, throwing shade instead of support. Enough is enough! Don't let their negativity cloud your brilliance. Whether family or friends, if they can't cheer for you, it's time to reassess.. These could particularly be family members or some close-knit friends whom you might often jeer at you behind your back

You're a beacon of hope, often boosting others up. But remember, your worth doesn't diminish by lifting others. If your gut senses bad vibes, listen up – it's your internal alarm! There could be wolves disguised as sheep among your pack. Trust your instincts; they know who's genuine.

Sometimes, stepping back from these connections is necessary to regain clarity. Test the waters before diving in again. After all, your journey to greatness shouldn't include carrying others' negativity on your back. You're destined for a horizon full of light and new beginnings!"

Ever heard the word 'trenches' whispered through the grapevine? It might sound innocent, but it carries weight. Perhaps it's a clue that someone with a French connection – maybe even a Parisian – is stirring things up. You could also be a Parisian as well. Watch out, though; this person seems all ears but is really a gossipmonger! You might've learned this the hard way through a past connection. Despite your once-friendly encouragements, they're still at it. Now, some of you might find yourselves unconsciously adopting their snarky attitude, maybe as payback for old wounds. Picture someone, perhaps you, discovering this so-called confidant mocking you behind your back – devastating, right? If that's your story, I'm truly sorry. Sending heaps of love and healing your way. Remember, it's not just about feeling disrespected; betrayal stings deep. Your hurt is valid, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Don't brush off those feelings or blame yourself for holding onto them. Acknowledge, feel, and release. You deserve that peace."

Hey there, Pile 1! Buckle up because it sounds like you've been riding a rollercoaster of drama and emotional turbulence lately. You know those folks who've been tossing around the "petty" label like confetti at a party? Yeah, those ones. Well, guess what? You're not feeling petty—you're just in serious need of a breather from all the betrayal and hurt feelings they've been serving up.

Now, normally I'd be like, "Sayonara, drama llama!" But hey, being a tarot aficionado, I know better than to dish out generic advice. If you're stuck dealing with these characters at work or in your daily grind, it's time to lay down some ground rules. Set those boundaries like a pro and watch them try to push past 'em. And hey, YouTube is your new best friend for mastering the art of professionalism with a side of self-care. Trust me, you can do both and still keep your sanity intact.

Now, about those culinary quirks—whether you're all about those egg yolks or have a taste that others don't quite get, own it. Let them giggle in their cultural ignorance while you savor every bite. Some of you could be from east asian lineage.

Onto the tarot vibes: Ace of Swords, 2 of Swords reversed, and 9 of Wands are in the spotlight. Feeling like you're stuck in a mental maze, overthinking every move? Been there, felt that. But wait, there's hope! Even with the Hermit and 5 of Pentacles reversed lurking in the shadows, there's a roadmap out of this rut. Tap into those resources you've been neglecting and watch your luck turn.

You're not trapped in a predetermined game—you're the player. So, take a deep breath, reassess your game plan, and strut ahead with confidence. Life's too short for petty squabbles and feeling stuck. You've got the cards in your favor—time to play 'em like a pro!

Cheers to breaking free and living your best, drama-free life, Pile 1. You've totally got this!

Hey there, Pile 1! Ready to dive into the cosmic advice pool? Strap in, because we're about to decode some serious life battles and emotional rollercoasters.

So, here's the deal: not every battlefield is yours to conquer. Sometimes, it's about learning from the defeats and guiding others through their own journey. Winning doesn't define your worth, and losing doesn't make you any less of a superhero in this crazy game of life.

Feeling stuck in a rut, huh? Like your mind's trapped in a maze with no exit sign? It happens to the best of us. But guess what? This feeling of emptiness and misery—it's actually a nudge from the universe to start fresh. Time to unlock those emotions you've been hiding away. Yup, it's okay to scream, cry, paint, write—whatever floats your emotional boat. Your feelings are meant to be seen and heard, not locked away in some mental vault. "I intuitively got someone screaming noooo" You might not like this change pile 1 but your body, your vessel needs to pour those emotions whether through artistry or words.

Now, I get it—you might not be thrilled about this change. But trust me, nurturing those emotions is like feeding your soul cosmic vitamins. It builds your intuition, boosts your confidence, and sets you free to speak your truth. And hey, once you start setting boundaries and saying "no" to misery, you'll feel like a boss adult navigating life's twists and turns.

Remember, Pile 1, this journey isn't about instant wins. It's about growth, resilience, and embracing your unique path. Whether you're from Andhra or Timbuktu, this message rings true: you've got what it takes to persevere and thrive. West African counties, Timbuktu in Mali, Andhra Pradesh in India,, Northwest Africa, and Southeast India could be significant. Maybe your previous connection was with someone who came from the opposite side of the world. Both of you could have had very different cultures. This could be a current connection as well. But I am getting a past connection for most of you.

Thanks for hanging out and letting me drop some cosmic wisdom. Have an awesome day ahead, and until next time—stay epic, stay true to you! 🌟🌈

Pile 2

Hey hey, Pile 2! Get ready to unravel the cosmic mysteries of your tarot cards with a twist of magic and a dash of insight. Let's dive into the mystical realm and see what the cards have in store for you.

First up, meet the Page of Wands—a whimsical soul with a mind as colorful as a rainbow. This kiddo's all about imagination on steroids, soaking up inspiration from every nook and cranny of existence. They're like that friend who starts a dozen projects before breakfast, fueled by a burning desire to master their creative energy. Grounding plans? Nah, they'd rather leap into the next big idea and see where it takes them!

Now, entering the arena is the Knight of Swords—cue the dramatic entrance music! This knight is pure strategy on turbo mode, zeroing in on goals like a heat-seeking missile. Impatient? Oh yeah, this speed demon wants results yesterday. Watch out for the occasional crash—speed limits exist for a reason! But hey, when this knight sets their sights on something, there's no stopping them (well, ideally with a sprinkle of rationality).

Next up, the Judgement card sounds the cosmic wake-up call. It's like the universe shouting from the mountaintops, signaling a time of awakening and liberation. Those who've played by the cosmic rules are leveling up, while others might find themselves stuck in a soul-sized traffic jam. The 10 of Wands chimes in with a lesson: freedom comes when you stop playing pack mule for everyone else's problems. It's about taking charge and learning to say "NO" to what weighs you down.

And hey, amidst all this cosmic drama, who knew Purble Place tile flipping could be secret therapy for some of you? Sometimes, the universe speaks through nostalgic computer games!

Overall, Pile 2, it looks like you're tuning into how your past connections have shaped your approach to life. Maybe you started with a spark of passion or a creative itch, and now you're turning it into something strategic and structured. Whether it's diving deep into academia, crafting compelling stories, or mastering new languages, you're on a quest for growth and mastery.

So keep riding those waves of inspiration, Pile 2. Embrace your inner childlike wonder and knightly ambition.

It seems like you once navigated life with fiery enthusiasm, but now you tread a more strategically planned path. The people around you, or a significant person, have subtly helped you ascend to this new mindset. You were once overwhelmed by taking on too much at once, leading to a harsh awakening or realization that transformed your approach from impulsive pursuits to careful planning. The song "Heartbreak Anniversary" might resonate with you—perhaps this shift was triggered by heartbreak. I’m sorry you had to endure that. The number 6 could be significant; maybe someone was born in June or July, or has strong Leo placements. Fire signs (Leo, Aries, Sagittarius) and Aquarius are also notable—these could be prominent in your natal chart. The next cards, Chariot and Death in reverse, suggest someone with significant 6th house placements.

Even with opposition, you’ve resolutely pursued your goals, driven by a passion that brought you immense joy. There was a particularly happy moment in your life that you still cling to, despite a major change. In this new beginning, you chose not to engage emotionally, protecting your heart space. It seems you felt attacked, leading to an inner death and a fear of vulnerability. I envisioned a scene from the movie "3," starring Indian actor Dhanush, where his character becomes numb to his emotions, unable to move away from an apple all night due to profound despair. I'm deeply sorry if you've experienced similar emotions, feeling paralyzed by suppressed feelings. I recommend exploring tapping videos and somatic exercises for healing.

When we feel deeply, our emotions often take up residence in our bodies. Listen, pile 2, I understand—grief and remorse can be so heavy that even moving feels impossible. If you’re grieving a loss, take the time to heal. It took me years of crying, shouting, and screaming to let it all out. It's not easy, but please find your support system. These feelings are too much to handle alone. If this resonates, please take your time to heal. For some, this loss might be a loved one or even a cherished pet. I'm truly sorry you had to go through that. Take all the time you need to recover. May you find peace and healing.

The last two cards are the Page of Swords and the Two of Pentacles reversed. Many of you might have learned valuable lessons from past connections about balancing curiosity and passion. Your previous relationships taught you the importance of not getting overly excited once you reach your destination but maintaining a diplomatic, pragmatic approach. This balance is crucial, pile 2. Sometimes, you might not see the results you expect and could develop a habit of withdrawing from society as a coping mechanism. Some of you may have faced bullying and tend to mask your emotions, perhaps turning to addictions like alcohol to soothe yourself. Remember, it's essential to maintain a healthy balance and seek support when needed.

Dear pile 2, it seems you might be grieving the heavy loss of a partner. Perhaps you're beginning to realize what they gave you that makes their absence so unbearable. They may have profoundly influenced your approach to life, goals, and dreams, making it incredibly hard to let go. I'm truly sorry you're experiencing this. I hope my words help you see things more clearly.

The song "Kaha Hum, Kaha Tum" from an Indian serial comes to mind—you might find it resonates. There might have been a power dynamic imbalance with your person that left one of you feeling insignificant. I’m sending so much healing energy to both of you. May you both emerge from this phase stronger and better. All my love and healing to you. Have a great day ahead, pile 2. Take all the time you need to heal. 🙏💙🫶

Pile 3

A lot of ungrounded energy is swirling around, mixed with a hint of skepticism. The cards—9 of Pentacles, 4 of Pentacles reversed, Page of Cups reversed, and Page of Swords at the back of the deck—paint an interesting picture.

Whether or not a wish is coming true, someone is determined to do whatever it takes to succeed. There’s a strong protective energy here, a bit of hoarding, as if you're guarding your achievements and accomplishments closely. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it shows you're keeping unnecessary burdens and interactions at bay. In your past connections, you might have subconsciously developed a habit of keeping things to yourself, staying in your head, and not sharing your resources to prevent others from taking advantage of you.

Perhaps you've been demeaned in the past, leading you to become secretive and hoard everything you've earned to avoid others getting it. This has likely made you skeptical of those around you. It seems this skepticism has seeped into your life, preventing you from aligning with others for higher purposes, goals, and enlightenment. You might have grown distrustful of the universe itself and the gifts it brings. Struggling with self-forgiveness, you may beat yourself up over many things, finding it hard to accept appreciation or good things in your life, feeling undeserving.

"Cheri Cheri Lady, going through emotions, love is where you find it, listen to your heart." This song could be significant to you. You might have trouble listening to your heart, relying too much on logic to understand your subconscious patterns and emotions without truly delving into why those emotions are there. It seems like a half-baked effort, as you intellectualize your emotions and seek rational solutions without understanding the root of your skepticism towards others. Take time to explore your feelings deeply and understand where this skepticism originated.

The next pull reveals the King of Swords in reverse, the Fool in reverse, and the Hanged Man at the back of the deck. This unprocessed rebellion from your previous connections seems to be holding you back. Instead of moving forward, you’ve chosen to logically rebel against your emotions, possibly by beating yourself up for feeling a certain way. Before diving into the next chapter of your life, it's crucial to take a break and shift your perspective on how you're handling these emotions. You need to balance your emotional spheres, develop emotional self-control (not suppression), and learn to manage that inner turmoil.

The Hindi song "Lutt putt Gaya" comes to mind, which might have messages for you. Someone here could be a fan of SRK.

Interestingly, the last pull includes the Six of Cups and the King of Cups. Pile 3, have you been my client before? The synchronicity in this pile is striking, and your reading has exceeded expectations with a 6-card spread, my usual go-to.

You might be attending a reunion, reminiscent of the song "Deewangi Deewangi" from Om Shanti Om. The Six of Cups urges you to enjoy this reunion without any animosity. Don’t question your emotions; humble yourself and make amends with past connections, especially an ex if possible. If you can't reconcile, at least control your temper regarding previous relationships.

Now is the time to stop intellectualizing your feelings and allow yourself to truly feel them. For some of you, the Philippines might hold significance. Embrace this journey with an open heart and a balanced mind.

For some of you, be cautious of someone who might be plotting against you. If your ex is the type to scheme, keep your emotions in check. You could be a Taurus, Leo, Sagittarius, Aquarius, or Scorpio. Avoid lashing out emotionally, as you might regret it later. With Mars in Taurus and the South Node in Libra (in Western astrology at the time of this reading), don't let others force or emotionally blackmail you. Maintain a diplomatic stance and keep your emotions balanced.

You might be subconsciously rebelling against your achievements, holding onto past wounds and grudges that prevent you from embracing new beginnings. Dear pile 3, you're being called to adopt the Emperor role in your life and take control of your emotions. Some of you might have a habit of side-eyeing people; try to manage your impulses and ego hurts. Learn from your lessons, feel your emotions, and channel them properly. Avoid provoking situations that could lead to regretful outbursts. Expressing anger is okay, but don’t let yourself be easily provoked.

Thank you, pile 3. I hope you enjoyed your reading. Byeee 🩵🩵. Be mindful of envious people 🧿🩵. If you're dealing with emotional challenges, may you be protected and blessed. Don’t feel bad about your success, dear pile 3. Remember, you are unique and will overcome your hardships. I hope this reading brought you clarity, encouragement, and help. Have a great day, pile 3. Feel free to explore other piles if they boost your day or provide helpful insights. 🩵🩵🧿🧿🩵🩵

Pile 4

Pile 4, you’re basking in a confident energy, manifesting your dreams, desires, and goals into reality with the Magician and the Star, supported by the King of Pentacles. You think it, your subconscious knows it, and you make it happen. Your biggest lesson from past connections is this incredible ability to turn thoughts into reality.

The next pull—King of Wands reversed, Hanged Man reversed, and 8 of Wands with 10 of Wands at the back—indicates a parent-child dynamic or similar connection. Someone was pushed to chase blessings, despite carrying heavy burdens, in a tough-love scenario. They were forced into a lightning-speed race to reach a destination, their head overwhelmed. This is a strong family connection for some of you. Pisces, Aries, and the February-April season could be significant. For others, it might be a love connection or a platonic friendship where you were advised to take the hard route to success. You might be realizing this about your family, like a fish circling its intuition to create a happy place. Some of you have large families and stay in touch with many relatives.

The final pull—Empress and King of Cups reversed—reveals you recognizing your power as a creator, letting your creative side flourish. However, you might be choosing your head over your heart, avoiding emotions due to a lack of rest or an inability to calm yourself. This could lead to nightmares or sleeplessness because you feel unaccomplished. Fishes, often symbolic of emotionless and follower-type behavior, represent your struggle to confront your emotions.

Pile 4, your journey is about balancing your immense manifesting power with emotional self-awareness. Embrace your creative side and confront your emotions to achieve true fulfillment.

Pile 4, what you might be realizing about the things you were subconsciously holding onto is a creator's angst, stemming from sacrificing yourself for others' dreams, wishes, and desires. It seems you’ve finally started listening to your calling and are swiftly moving toward your goals and dreams. Just make sure not to burn yourself out with immense passion, craze, excitement, or recklessness, especially if you have sleeping problems. Check your sleep schedule and avoid overdoing things.

You are entering an era of manifesting everything you’ve thought of into your present reality, bringing justice to yourself and balancing the scales of needs and wants in your life. All the best for your new journey, Pile 4. Some of you might have come here from Pile 2. May God bless you on your journey ahead. ✌️ Pave a good future for yourself. Byee 🩵🩵🩵

25 notes · View notes

oneforthemunny · 6 hours ago

Text

oneforthemunny proudly presents: two for the show (aka my two year anniversary writing challenge!!)

as a thank you to each and every one of you who have supported me (since funsonmunson and beyond) i have curated a prompt list that invites and encourages each and every one of you to write for my eddies! there is nothing i love more than getting to see your take on my fics, stories, and lore, and getting to read them! it’s such a treat for me and so rewarding, and so i hope you all participate!

feel free to do as many and as much as you want! multiple entires, prompts, hell, even make up your own! the more the merrier here! each will be reblogged and added to a masterlist for everyone to read and support!

rules: i kindly ask that you tag me @oneforthemunny and the writing with the #munnystwofortheshow just so i can find it and read, reblog for everyone else to enjoy, and add to the masterlist!

thank you all so much again! i love love LOVE each and every one of you, and have enjoyed every moment (yes, every moment) here on this blog with all of you <3

below are the prompts!! i can’t wait to see what you all come up with!!

note: i decided to do general prompts, since that’s what you all voted on. this applies for each and every eddie (a list of my eddie aus: older!eddie, bouncer!eddie, janitor!eddie, cop!eddie, cowboy!eddie, mafia!eddie, modern!eddie, dom!eddie, boxer!eddie, hockey!eddie, rockstar!eddie, and exhusband!eddie).

prompts:

prompt 1: so since it’s my tumblr anniversary, gimme an anniversary fic!! dating anniversary, marriage anniversary, engagement, adoption, pregnancy, “first time we fucked” anniversary- anything! make it fluffy, make it sweet, make it smutty, make it sad if you want? it’s all up to you!

prompt 2: i’m forever a domestic girly, you guys know that, so write me a little domestic fic <3 include the kids, the pets, moving in together, doing mundane shit together- make it a day in the life with eddie. the chill days at home, what do they look like? what do you do? fluff, smut, angst, a little bit of it all. whatever you want to do, just show me what you picture!

prompt 3: i get so so so many angsty requests, so i have to request one myself- break my heart. tear it to fuckin’ shreds, put it back together (or don’t). end goal is to have us all hurting. some example prompts- mafia!eddie getting hurt or vice versa, ex husband!eddie and a fight that led to the divorce, rockstar!eddie and rehab, for a few examples. use any of the lore you’d like, just make it hurt :’)

prompt 4: idk why, maybe it’s a guilty pleasure, but i love a vacation/road trip kinda story. love to know where they’re going, what they’re doing, why. honeymoon, summer vacation, a funeral maybe? whatever you want it to be! just tell me where they’re going, why, and of course all the other juicy details. road head, maybe? reader gets car sick way too easily (me)? or at the destination, what are they doing? going?

prompt 5: you guys knew you weren’t escaping a smut fic. c’mon, it’s me, evie lol. i want the sluttiest, horniest, nastiest smut i’ve ever read before in my life. jaw on the ground, reaching in my bedside drawer type smut. feel free to use the lore, use a prompt that was sent in and elaborate on it, rewrite your own favorite horny moment, or make one up! you guys know i’m a sucker for a spanking fic, but really, anything slutty and smutty will do ;)

prompt 6: this is also an evie indulgent request, i love holidays- as you all know. so i would love to see what you think each of the eddie’s or their reader’s favorite holiday is, and how they celebrate it. why they love it, what they do- the works. can be birthdays (for all the leos lol) or any holiday, really. make it fluffy, smutty, angsty if you want!

for anyone needing some examples or some ideas, always feel free to message me and i can help! :)

22 notes · View notes

lsunstreakerl · 19 hours ago

Note

the latest chapter of SH! 💛 charles going feral over the not-even-real-possibility of lewis adding max to his collection of blond WDC champions and also just thinking about charles pretty much pissing all over HIS red bull golden boy, that really hits the spot! thank you!

but also in another ask you said that max may consider the whole eye injury water under the bridge but charles not, and that made me think of the grudge you can hold onto someone over them hurting the people you love and how hard it’s to let go. In this case clearly lewis isn’t at fault but i’m wondering of how hard it has been for charles to deal with those negative thoughts in a high pressure environment. i know you mostly feel comfortable writing from max’s pov but any chance we can get a bit into charles’ mind?

Hi anon! I meant to respond to this much earlier but it got stuck in my brain and actually manifested as a little snippet, so here's a tiny peek behind the curtain! hopefully it's a little bit more insight? feel free to ask more questions if you have them :)

Charles is trying not to grit his teeth, though if the glare Silvia is sending his way is any indication, he's failing.

They're getting ready for the fan stage, and Charles keeps checking his phone, making sure he isn't missing any messages from Max.

They're in Monaco for the race, and normally it is one of Charles' favorite races, and Max was supposed to be here in the garage today, but he'd had a flare-up this morning, dry heaving and dizzy. Charles hadn't wanted to leave him, but Max had gotten decently close to biting his head off, shoving him to the doorway.

"If you want to be worried I cannot stop you, but at least be driving while you are doing it."

Now, though-

Charles isn't sure how he's meant to do this fanstage. He's been civil with Lewis, hasn't let his roiling resentment sneak into their interactions, professional or personal, but it's only a matter of time.

It's harder on days like today, where Charles has left his boyfriend sick at home, suffering from something that many very well never leave him, when Max could be- should be here, racing with them, racing with Charles.

Everyone has idolized Lewis at some point in their lives, and Charles is no different, had admittedly been excited to find out he was joining the team, but the end of last season, and this one-

It's left a sour taste on his tongue. He doesn't hold Lewis on a pedestal anymore, how can he, when he has slipped into Charles' home, driving the color that belongs to Charles, belongs to Ferrari, refuses to address his legacy with Max the same way he refuses to talk about any other rivals.

Charles can't stand it. He couldn't care less about Nico and Seb- well, maybe a little bit about Seb- but to do the same to Max. Charles' Max, the Max that fought his way onto the grid, fought his way through the hate, fought himself into a competitive car, and a team that loved him, the Max that deserves to be on the grid today-

To see Lewis instead, who has been driving since before Max and Charles were on the grid, and still is, it makes his fingers curl.

Maybe he's just having a bad day. He knows he needs to pull the nice boy face back on, but he's having trouble finding it, when the car is competitive this year, when he and Lewis are both bringing home points.

It doesn't matter, at the end of the day, what Lewis is capable of, because he is driving for Ferrari, but he is not Ferrari, doesn't have rosso corsa beating fast through his veins, doesn't have the prancing horse as a thundering heartbeat.

He's a Mercedes boy, a wolf at heart, and that will ruin him, here. Ferrari does not take wolves. Ferrari takes sacrifices, bleating lambs, brought to the alter young and innocent, and only the most devoted get to live, get to have the honor of bringing the team to glory, the privilege of representing the legacy. Only the most treasured become the shining eye of the tifosi, and to get it all at once, to be a model driver, a living breathing manifestation of the Scuderia- it only comes around once every few generations of drivers.

Seb couldn't do it, and neither could Fernando. Lewis will not be capable either.

Charles has it.

It may not have been intentional, but Max has left Charles a mantle, a legacy, one final way to etch their names together forever, intertwined in a way no media or sports magazine could ever brush past, like so much of their lives and careers, tangled together to the very end.

Charles Leclerc will not let Lewis Hamilton get his eighth title.

A hand claps down on his shoulder, gives him a friendly squeeze.

"Hey man, you ready?"

Charles checks his posture, unclenches his jaw, and smiles at Lewis, but there's nothing friendly about it. It's the most Charles will let himself have, tiny little slips in the mask, unsettling for Lewis and unnoticeable for anyone else around them.

"Of course."

#search history verse #ficlet

20 notes · View notes

burrowdarling · 10 hours ago

Text

Your Surprise Tattoo

Summary: You make the decision to get a tattoo and surprise Joe with it.

Pairings: boyfriend!Joe Burrow x girlfriend!reader

Requested: Yes | No

Warnings: Some steamy talk post-tattoo

Note: Heyo! A totally random idea I had that I figured could be fun to write. I haven't done a headcanon in a bit and thought this idea would be a good fit. Enjoy!

Word Count: 935

Check out my Masterlist here!

Taglist: @burrowbarbie @definitelynotdomanique @one-sweet-gubler @plushkhiii @enchantedinfinity @iosivb9 @hellsingalucard18 @hotburreaux Feel free to comment or message me if you'd like to be added to the list!

You’d had this idea in mind for a while, something you always floated back and forth between since you were in your teens

You’ve always taken a liking to tattoos but were unsure of exactly what you wanted to get and the right placement

Your parents always said that you had to wait until you were old enough and out of their house to do so if you ever wanted one

Over time, once you moved out, you ended up getting a few small ones scattered about your body

None too large or conspicuous

Joe had always found the idea of tattoos cool, knowing that a majority of his teammates had them

When you first got together, he made a game out of finding the few you did have

When you told him you wanted to get another one, he didn’t mind too much

If anything it sent him down a rabbit hole of the possibilities of you with different tattoos, the placements, filling his mind with images of you

The thought did loom in his mind of what you wanted to get and where it would be, the anticipation and curiosity getting to him

You assured him it would be something hidden a majority of the time, calming a bit of his nerves to not send him into total shock when you did get it

He also secretly liked the idea of it being something that only he could see

That sent his mind reeling at the thought of you with tattoos

What would you get?

Would you want more than one?

Where were you gonna put it?

When?

You also never told him when you were getting it, keeping to the idea of a surprise

You planned it during a time he was out of town, giving the piece some time to heal up and not be covered so he could see everything

It was a totally ballsy move, but you figured go big or go home, and would truly test your pain tolerance

Yeah, it could be totally stupid to get something in such a sensitive area, but you really did like the way they looked

You connected with your local artist chosen and set a date, excited for what was to come

You went for a bit of a cliche back tattoo, some flowers with a butterfly that you felt would look really pretty

You knew it was basic, but it’s what made you happy so who cares

It came out exactly as you hoped it would, you were totally in love with it and had a feeling Joe would be too

It was a few days later when he arrived home, none the wiser to your newest addition to your skin

He’d come back from the facility sweaty and in need of a shower

You figured this was as good of a time as any to finally show him

“You care if I hop in there with you?” you asked, not that this was ever anything new for you

“If I ever tell you no to an opportunity to see you naked, then you have full permission to fight me,” Joe said with a laugh

You ended up in your shared bathroom, you gathering the towels and Joe going to start the water

Here goes nothing you thought to yourself

You set the towels down on the counter and with Joe behind you, you slipped your shirt over your head

You heard a deep groan behind you quickly followed by hands wrapping around your waist

“When’d you get that done, hmm?” Joe asked, his voice heavy with curiosity and lust

“Wellll you did say that you wanted me to surprise you with it so I figured you being gone was the best time. Now I was able to show it to you when it was closer to fully healed”

Joe just groaned out another response

His mind was racing and blank all at the same time, nonverbals were his safest response

“What do you think, do you like it?” you asked, attempting to turn towards him but he held your hips firmly in place

“That’s not even a question, sweetheart”

And MY GOD did he like it

There weren’t words he could find at that moment to describe exactly how he felt about the new ink that went down your spine

His mind was too far gone elsewhere to come up with a coherent enough response to truly tell you how much he loved it

His fingers traced the edge of your tattoo trailing down your back, giving you chills down your spine at his tender touch

“Did it hurt?” he asked, feeling like he knew the obvious answer to the question

“Of course like a bitch, but I have it now and I love it” you spoke honestly, feeling your voice waiver the more he touched your skin

The room began to heat up from the steam of the hot water running behind you, forgotten about from the sight in front of him

“The shower can wait, I’m taking you right here right now”

He started to bend you over the counter, your chest pressing into the cold material while his warm hands traced delicate lines over the art on your back

You could feel his hard on through the flimsy fabric of his gym shorts making your breathing hitch

“Joe we could also do it in the shower, two birds one stone type of thing,” you said with a light laugh

“Who said there can’t be a round two?”

Joe had gotten a new appreciation for tattoos that day

#joe burrow #cincinnati bengals #joe burrow bengals #joe burrow x reader #nfl imagine #nfl #joe burrow imagine #joe burrow smut #joeyb #joe burrow fanfiction #girlfriend reader #Joe burrow tattoo #joe burrow headcanon

174 notes · View notes

tyrantisterror · 2 days ago

Text

You're welcome! Thank you for being such a willing participant in the interactive side of this story!

And yeah I'll gladly answer some more questions.

So, as I said above, I realized in the process of writing the story that, from a narrative and thematic perspective, this story could not give Sailor a clear and definitive answer to what they are. Even in the ending where they chose to go back to the normal world, we get an answer that convinces Sailor, but still clearly has some holes to the audience. I think there are ways we could have skewed certain conversations to learn more about the hypothetical answers in-story, but it would have come at the cost of key moments of character development for Sailor and Calibani. And I also think it's possible we could have skewed the story in such a direction where giving a definitive answer to the question wouldn't have necessarily hurt the theme of the story, by dint of turning the story into a different theme entirely - a South-heavy story might have focused on Sailor confronting their own inherent selfishness and short-sightedness rather than questions of their identity, for example, while a West-heavy story might have been a more dense and wacky adventure full of foolhardiness where learning who/what Sailor is could happen quickly and definitively without fanfare in order to be pushed aside for more shenanigans. 58 choices - there's a lot of potential what-ifs here.

There would be no way to contact Earth in the story as told, no, just as there wouldn't be a map till the very end. But, like, Sailor is canonically living longer than just the nine or so days the story covers, the Sea of Monsters is big, and Sailor knows a mad scientist. It's possible Sailor finds a way to get a message back to earth at some point - but I guess we'll have to save that for a hypothetical At Sea Without a Map 2: Now With Map!

I generally tried to vote either for the answer I thought would get the most votes, or the one that would get the least, in hopes of not actually affecting the result too much (unfortunately tumblr doesn't let you see the results before the poll ends unless you vote, and for the sake of keeping to a more-or-less daily schedule, I kinda needed to keep an eye on it to know what I'd need to draw during my downtime moments). I think the TT-only version of At Sea Without a Map would have been pretty similar to what we got. We might have spent a bit less time with Calibani and bit more time getting into monster hijinks and drawing exposition about the setting from characters like Dr. Neptune, but otherwise it would have been pretty similar. I had more fun with the player-choices that contradicted my own instincts, though - it was fun being given free reign to just shoot the shit with love interest while ignoring the plot. Very indulgent I do wonder if Sailor might have turned out differently, though - I was very conscious of trying not to flavor things too heavily when Sailor was in my control in the narrative, i.e. when they had to make choices without a compass to set them in a direction. I didn't really start giving Sailor personality in-text until I got a feel for what we were turning them into together, and even then I always felt nervous about it - I never wanted it to feel like I was forcing you all to play a character that wasn't authentic to what you were choosing. This wouldn't be a problem if Sailor was just written by me and me alone, so they might have become something different by dint of me not having to worry about alienating voters with their actions.

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

youtube

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

63 notes · View notes