#it's also quite possible i've posted this very thing before last year or the year before. i can't actually remember

[st-eve-barnes]

I always make this end of the year post on here looking back on the good and bad things that happened that year but I don't really know where to begin this time. Ever since we buried my aunt in February and had a car accident on the same day this year has felt very off and it hasn't changed since.

Even yesterday we celebrated Christmas with the family and it ended in drama, which just does not happen in our family, ever. (it involved my sister's bf, our family is fine). But it just feels in line with the rest of this weird year.

There's been several deaths around us this year and I've never had as many sick days before, nothing big (I'm lucky here) but many smaller things piling up.

I've been quiet on here lately in fandom as well because I feel like I lost my fangirl vibe a bit. I stopped writing months ago and just been feeling very meh about it all (of course the disappointing season 2 and now lack of content doesn't help). It is what it is, I can't force it.

But let me end with the positive because there have been a lot of good things and many beautiful moments as well. One of the major things for me this year is that I managed to kick my depression. I was in a very dark place last year and the beginning of this one, crying so often for no reason and feeling very out of touch with everything. I'm glad to say I've been feeling much better in that department. The goal for next year is to now kick my anxiety because that one has been on a high this year (how could it not with the state of the world right now??)

But back to the positive, while I've been quiet on here I've been more present in real life, focussing on other hobbies and spending more time outside. When I stopped writing I also picked up reading books again and I'm really enjoying it and indulging in it. My husband has been through it all with me last year and it only confirms what I already knew, that he is the best guy in the entire world. We've grown closer this year (if that was even possible), he is my rock and the absolute best thing in my life.

I'm not quite sure what next year will bring, my anxiety makes it hard to feel entirely positive, but we have a lot of things to look forward to and I hope fandom can pull me back in and I might even write something again one day. But I'm not forcing the muses to come back, things are good as they are now and you might get more aesthetic than fandom posts on this blog for a while longer ;)

I want to tag some people that have kept me company during this year. I hope your holidays are everything you want them to be and the next year will bring you good things❤️ (this goes for all my mutuals not just the ones I tag because I will forget so many people)

@neonhairspray @whitedarkmoonflower @koediepatoedies @sihtricfedaraaahvicius @boundlessfantasy @arcielee @bouncehousedemons @lipstipsky @felteppsters @kaelatargaryen @ms-oswald @lovebittenbyevans @aemonds-fire @dr-aegon @vhagar-balerion-meraxes @lord-aldhelm @persephonerinyes @poppy-in-the-woods @anjelicawrites @gemini-mama @mrsarnasdelicious @livmondcole @sylasthegrim @thenameswinter99

[steamberrystudio]

2024 wrap-up and 2025 plans

It's been a really weird year for me and the last few months have been particularly challenging - so much so that I can't really remember much of the start of the year. There's been a lot that has happened and yet it feels like almost nothing has happened.

With a personal move in the works at the moment, and lots of lists and packing and cleaning, the last couple of weeks have felt like a blur of limbo as well.

But rather than just complaining let's jump into the wrap up and plans for 2025.

2024 Progress Wrap up

When looking back over a year of visual novel development, it can be really easy to forget progress and victories because it all smears together into an indistinct timeline.

You know stuff happened but you lose sight of the details of that stuff.

Even while writing this last night, I forgot that A Faerie's Tale was something completed and released this year. I remembered it just now while doing a final proofread of this post.

Development is such a long and repetitive process that you forget all the individual steps it took to get where you are. When I look back over 2024, I admit I feel like I somehow didn't do that much...that time slipped away while I did very little actual work.  

And of course, that isn't true. (Or is it?? Self-doubt assures me that I didn't do anything noteworthy this year.)

When Stars Collide

At the start of 2024, When Stars Collide sat at 485,000 words. I was finishing up editing Asher's route but had portions of the other routes to draft. The UI was still the old design, most of the backgrounds were incomplete and none of the additional features like the flowcharts and affinity meters were set up.  

I wanted to release an updated demo and the more new people told me they were playing the demo, the more I died inside because it was not at all reflective of the project any more. But I was missing critical backgrounds that I actually got only a few weeks before Episode 1 went to beta.

The point is that back at the start of 2024 the game was still very unfinished but I had big plans. My goal was originally to start releasing episodes in June of 2024 but editing and coding just took so much longer than expected that it just wasn't possible.

From a writing perspective, I learned that drafting and editing a game in this overlapping route style was hard. It was just genuinely so much more difficult than the separate route structure I'm used to. It really requires different processes and styles of planning than what I've done in the past. The burden of meticulously matching a timeline of events across 6 routes simultaneously is really tricky with the way I write and form the choices in my games.  

You kind of have to either never refer back to anything that happens within a choice scenario or you have to remember and track a lot of variables and conversations and events. Additionally, writing one plot line from multiple relationship perspectives is actually quite tricky. Things have to align in very specific ways but you also kind of want to make sure that each play through is interesting. You don't want the conversations within the LI-specific content to be identical but they have to be similar enough you can manage the difference with a few key variables.  

I honestly found it a really exhausting way to write. There's so much less complexity and so much more freedom when you are writing separate routes. And for that reason, the writing took a lot longer than I am used to.

One day I want to write up all my thoughts on route structure in visual novels but I haven't had time yet.

Ultimately I drafted about 172,000 words this year. The total word count of the game before I coded it was around 657,000 words - plus an additional 8-10k or so of bonus content. Of course, that shrinks when I code it but that was the total uncoded word count. So that is quite a jump from the 485,000 words I started with this year.  

I always say that working on VNs really skews your view of what "a lot" of words is. To me, as weird as it is to say, 180k doesn't feel like that much writing, which is silly because it's like writing two YA novels.   

But between the end of the Kickstarter for Gilded Shadows and the end of that year, I think I wrote about 250,000 words. That's 70,000 more words but in less time. I think it just shows how much more difficult writing WSC has been due to the structure of the routes.  

I remember having a conversation with someone once where she told me that writing a game like Gilded Shadows is *definitely* harder and more work than writing a game like When Stars Collide. GS has multiple plots and a lot more words. In WSC, the routes share a plot, they share scenes and content, there's only one plot line and there are far fewer words.  

I think it really underestimates the simplicity buff and the freedom buff that you get from having a single separate route in its own space time where you don't have to care as heavily about continuity across routes or a shared timeline of events or all of this other stuff that was such a burden to me when writing overlapping routes.  

I maintain that I'm really glad I wrote When Stars Collide the way I did. I learned so much about game structure and choices and all this mechanical stuff about how visual novels work that I'd never really had to think about for. It was really, really enlightening.  

But I will never do this game structure again. Lemme just say that.  

Drafting aside, I had to also edit all that writing which was its own special layer of hell.  

And then the art. The art has been enjoyable. I really love this game's aesthetic and the character designs. And the characters. I really enjoy them all so much. They are the most adorable crew of nerdy gremlins out there.  

But the art has had is own challenges. I've done about 20 CGs for the game so far and a lot of them are easy enough but the colour slider MC is definitely a bit of a challenge for the CGs. With GS where I recoloured by hand, there were times that I had to slightly tweak Morgan's default colours to look good in CGs. For instance, one of her skin tones looked quite odd next to Magnus, who is very pink. And I had to just slightly tweak that skin tone in his CGs so they looked okay together side by side. It was easy to test that sort of thing before the CG even got into the game.

But I colour Wil in greyscale and I don't see them in colour until I test. And each colour available on the slider is represented by a number. And there are essentially 100 of them. So testing all of those isn't really viable. I do test multiple skin tones from my saves. But in some ways it's more cumbersome to make sure all of that looks good.  

Wil also has 8 hairstyles…in two colours (which are recoloured manually because a couple of the hairstyles just don't really looks as good recoloured automatically (it's my art, not the dynamic colour slider tool).  

It's a lot of work. Hair 5 usually puts my hand out of commission for the rest of the day (so I save it for last. Ha ha). I don't regret it and again, it's something I wanted to to do as an experiment. I knew that 5 hairstyles was probably manageable and 8 was definitely pushing and I was right so no hard lessons really learned there.  It's sometimes valuable experience to push yourself right to that line and really see where the division between "feasible" and "too much" really is. Because then it's no longer hypothetical. You know where the line is.  

A lot of how WSC is set up was me testing if the line was where I thought it was.

Beyond the art, I also got all the other new features set up and experimented with a few things I hadn't been planning on. Many of those features had the core elements set up and coded by wonderful programmer friends and colleagues (Feniks and Windchimes and Jeneara) but I still had to implement all those things in the code to make them function as part of the game.  

Which, for things like the flowcharts - is time consuming. Flowcharts are like that.  

The flowcharts in WSC use a different method than the ones in GS. It's a brand new tool and I'm still learning how to use it but there are also some kinks that rear their heads (not those kind, you guys! The annoying kind that break the game!)  

I think the feature most people are most excited about would be the save screen. It's quite popular. Ha ha.  

With all of that stuff done, I was able to finally….*finally* release the official version of Episode 1 to Patreon and on Itch.  

And I released Episode 2 (minus two CGs that have been delayed by an abrupt move to a new place and me just not having time to draw right now) to Patrons in early access. (and the Itch version should go out mid-January. I hope).

So the point is…that is actually a fair amount of work that has taken place this year. And a lot of challenges that have been met and overcome.

A Faerie's Tale

Another thing I did this year was finish and release A Faerie's Tale as part of Amare Fest and with a team of friends to help out.

AFT is a concept I've had since about 2020 (prior to WSC actually). It was based on a dream I had as was always meant to be a cute little side project. But it kind of fell by the wayside in favour of my larger projects.

Being able to get it released was definitely fun. Jen and I definitely want to go back to it and release Lachan's route though - it was something we didn't have time for previously and it would be nice to get it truly complete.

Thornewood

And while I haven't specifically mentioned it anywhere outside of my server and Patreon...

The truth is...

I've secretly been planning my next project. But not really all that secretly since I have mentioned it a few times.

I've been torn, for a while, on two projects I'd like to tackle. One is called The Crown Wheel and the other is called (tentatively) Thornewood. I still go back and forth over which one I really want to do next. 

Crown Wheel is the one I *really* want to get out there. It's another story that's close to my heart with some ancient characters of mine that I really love and would love to throw out there for other people to enjoy. But…

Thornewood is a bit more solid a project when it comes to planning and plot. Crown Wheel is a little more nebulous in terms of where the story would go. I'm getting side tracked…I'll get into this more in my 2025 plans.

I have not been working on any other project regularly or in any truly significant way. I've really been working on outlines and character profiles more than anything and I typically do it late at night when I can't sleep but can't draw any more because I'm resting for the day and while I just don't want to be working on WSC because I worked on it all day.

I think I have about 13000 words of outline. I did a rough summary of each route and have been trying to expand those and detail them out a little bit more. So technically that is work I've done this year too.

2024 still somehow feels like a weird year for development. I can't articulate why but it definitely was an odd year for sure.

So What are my 2025 Plans?

That's really the big question at this point. What is in store for Steamberry Studio?

First and foremost, the plan is to get When Stars Collide fully released. This isn't as straightforward as it seems though. With the writing complete, I'm focused on the coding and art, but...

Coding expressions is currently a bit tedious because there have been a ton of group scenes in this game so far. This is because it is somewhat of a 'closed set' so when you are not 1x1 with a love interest…you tend to be with a group. This will diminish in upcoming chapters as the plot kicks off more and you also get longer scenes with the love interests. But unfortunately it does come back in the last few chapters.  

But for now I'm looking forward to heading into parts of the game that are more 1x1 or at least smaller groups at a time.  

Additionally the CG situation has been somewhat up in the air for me. I was originally planning to do CGs in every chapter but I wasn't sure if that would a) be sustainable for me and b) make sense.  

I suspected that there would be chapters coming up where there just weren't necessarily any good CG moments. So the "CGs in every chapter" thing was always going to be a bit squishy.   

I know, for instance, that chapter 6 probably won't have any because there aren't any good moments for it to be honest?  

Anyway. I am thinking that I may take a less formulaic approach to CGs and focus on making sure there are CGs in every episode if not every chapter. Maybe chapters 5, 8, 10...and then...Idk. One or two of the ending chapters. 

Even if it's just four of the remaining chapters, that's still 24 more illustrations for the game. Which I feel like is a very reasonable amount considering there are already about 20. 

Another thing I'm really going back and forth on is the nature of episodes moving forward.

Do I want to continue with 2 chapters per episode or do I want to drop to 1 chapter per episode? I battle myself on this all the time. It's such a hard call for me.

One challenge with moving into single chapter episodes is that I just feel the episodes would be less satisfying with only one chapter. Realistically the chapters aren't that small - even the short ones are more than 30,000 words each. That's...half a YA novel.

But, again, *realistically* when we reduce that to a play time, it's not that much.

People consume unvoiced visual novels at a rate of about 250 words per minute. That means 15,000 words per hour.

So 30k is just two hours of content. When you start dividing this up between "main plot" and "LI route content", you start whittling away at how much content *per character* there is. If there are 20,000 words of "LI content" - yeah, that's more than half the chapter. But that gets divided by 6 characters. And that means 13 minutes of playable content *including all the choices* for each character which isn't a lot. And most people are not going to play through every choice option.

Which means people could be getting through the unique content for their favourite character in less than 10 minutes.

By combining chapters, that means we get episodes that are 70,000 words or 90,000 words. It boosts the amount of content per character by a significant amount and that is really what I'm looking at when I consider episode layout. 

I try to think about what is going to make for the most satisfying episode for players. The drawback of 2 chapters per episode is that it's…a lot. It's a lot of expressions. It's a lot of flowchart work.  

It just takes more time.

Regardless of whether it's just 1 chapter at a time or whether it's 2 chapters at a time, I really want to move forward with steady releases and get the game fully released to players in 2025. That is obviously my primary focus going forward.   

The story is finished. It's burning a hole in my laptop. (Not really). But I want to get it released.

Having the story already written but delivering it in smaller bites to players is doing a lot to save my drawing hand from inevitable doom but it's so hard for me mentally. I know the things coming up in future episodes and I'm so keen to release it and see reactions and talk to people about it. And it's just so difficult to not be able to do that as fast as I want.

I'm trying to be patient and I hope all of you are willing to be patient with me.

In other work…

I will likely continue to plan out my next game on the side, though I don't intend to start working on it or writing it until WSC completes. It's too hard to manage two projects like that - at least for me - most of the time.

When it comes to Thornewood (the most likely contender for 'next project'), it is a 'dark fantasy' in that the setting is gritty and grimy fantasy with an underlying darkness in the world. It's not really a dark romance though.

I always view dark fantasy as including settings where the darkness comes from outside the main character interactions. The setting is dark and the stories have danger and darkness....

But dark romance is when the relationships themselves are also dark. And I feel like I don't really write dark romance. I don't write perfect relationships either but I wouldn't describe them as 'dark' by any stretch.

Either way I'm looking forward to working on something more overtly fantasy again.

I've been dabbling in science fiction for a long time now (since 2019 - that's when I started Gilded Shadows!!) and I've been wanting to move back into fantasy settings for a while now.  

Even just working on the profiles and outlines and world building for fantasy projects, it feels like the Fae and the magic are calling me back home. So I'm really eager to wrap up WSC and bury myself in a more fantasy themed setting again.

But I have a long journey to get to that point.

There's a lot to do in 2025 and I still have a lot of stories to tell.

I hope you will all be here with me for the journey.

[kuwdora]

mmmmm, I tend to forget that tumblr could be a place where I actually, you know, write blog posts and whatnot. like i used to back on dreamwidth. about fannish and nonfannish things. or even hiccup out more of my short-form whimsy like I used to on twitter. I mean I'm still generally blogging about nonfannish things at my dreamwidth and talking occasionally about my vid projects there since that's where I've always chattered about those wips. I don't bother really talking about my witcher wips over there. but tumblr has taken up this space in my head as space where I glom onto all the pretty posts like beloved scrapbooking material and stuff my queue for a whole year. and just rolling around in the ask games and wip posts from everyone else. not writing more posts of my own. me writing posts here...a thing I want to do and yet I don't. I have a giant list of half-written recs posts and other fannish and nonfannish things waiting for me to finish. but my brain keeps stalling out because of a lot of reasons (stress life stuff fucking with my focus). but this has been on my mind.

this has been your musing kuwdora. or: musingdora.

[thedevotionaltour]

in terms of art alone im sorry. im a jrjr defender to my last breath you be fucking nice to him. i dont wanna hear shit❗️❗️❗️

[ceesimz]

Best of Both Worlds

Yes, the title is a Hannah Montana song, it fits perfectly. Also, for the sake of fiction, Leah did in fact play at Wembley, thank you!

Possibly the most long-awaited day of Leah's life; her national team return. It was one thing to play for The Arsenal again, but to represent her country whilst wearing the captain's armband at Wembley was an experience that simply couldn't be matched. And that's why it meant everything and more to her that you were in the stands with her family and her name on your back.

It wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing match ever, a 1-1 draw against Sweden, but Leah was back in her rightful place under her rightful role, and that was a win in itself. With each step on the pitch, your heart swelled with pride, knowing the mountain she'd climbed with her injury and how hard it had been mentally with each bump in the road, especially when she had to drop out of the last camp.

But here you were, seated in the same area of the stands her family had been when she had won the Euros, watching on in awe at how seamlessly she slipped back into the team. You had missed that fateful day back in 2022, having only met Leah five months after it at a New Year's Eve party, but with the affection Leah described that day with, you may as well have lived it for yourself. Now, having experienced your first game at Wembley since you hadn't gone to that game last year, you were beaming as you watched your girl command her national team around again.

Sure, you'd been to many a game of her's before, but there was something different about this one. There were obvious reasons of course, her injury and whatnot, but seeing her lead her team out to a stadium filled with the most people you'd ever seen her play in front of, a feeling settled in your chest that was unlike anything before. And when she was back in your arms at the end of the game, you would show her exactly how much you treasured her.

So, as she made her way around the stadium post-game, taking the time to applaud all the fans that had come along to watch and signing things for some, there was a smile of admiration on your face that her cousin beside you noticed. You blushed heavily at the teasing nudge she gave you with a smirk on her face.

"I suggest you wipe that cheesy, love-sick smile off your face before she comes over and bullies you for it." The woman next to you said, the pair of you laughing as you rolled your eyes, both all too familiar with her antics.

But the absence of said smile only lasted for about a minute, because then Leah was making her way over to the area of stands where you and her family was, and she had a down-turned smile on her face, the one she always did whilst trying to suppress her actual one. You were sat on the second row behind Leah's immediate family, so you stood back and waited for her to greet them all, also doing so as to not attract much fan attention. Leah made that hard though, because when her Mum pulled her into a bear hug, she indulged herself fully in it for about five seconds before her eyes flitted up to you and the corners of her mouth finally quirked up.

She jokingly pushed her Mum to the side so that she could reach out for you, and leaned up to hug you tightly. However, you pulled away after a few moments, and she made her disapproval very clear.

"What you doing that for?" She quizzed grumpily, looking utterly unimpressed up at you as some of her family members chuckled at her.

"The fans, Leah. We're at Wembley, think of all the videos." You whispered close to her ear, not quite intelligible for the others to hear.

"Who gives a toss, babe, I've hugged all my family here and you're no different." She responded, and she pulled you back in before you could complain. You wouldn't have complained anyway, because really who were you to deny your girlfriend's hug, your favourite in the world.

"Don't throw a strop later if there's about a million different angles of this." You teased, pinching her side where one of your hands rested around her.

"Doesn't matter, it's still you I get to go home with." She murmured before quickly pecking the spot under your ear and pulling back with one last squeeze. When she leaned back, she saw the light blush to your cheeks and smirked. "A year later and I've still got it."

You shoved her away lightly so that she could chat with the rest of her family before going off to do her post-match routine. Seeing her with her family, who she was so tight-knit with, was always a joy to see and you'd never get tired of seeing it. And as she jogged away back to the tunnel, her Mum turned to you and embraced you too.

"Thanks for coming, darling, it means a lot to her and to us too." She told you, rubbing a hand up and down your back. Praise and gratitude from her never got old either.

"Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the world." You said back to her, to which she smiled and kissed your cheek.

You and the rest of the group made your way around to the family area inside the stadium to wait for her, making light conversation with them all to pass the time whilst Leah carried out media duties. It was fun and easy spending time with her family, because as a result of your girlfriend's relationship with them, you had grown almost as close with them too. Ever present at family dinners, birthdays, and events like christenings and weddings etc, now it was second nature for you to follow Leah to them. Within only a few months of being with Leah, every invite had your name on it too.

In the middle of your conversation with her cousins, talking excitedly about plans for the summer vacation later that year, you were interrupted as Leah finally appeared in her tracksuit with short wet blonde hair, a soft smile on her face. She spent a bit of time talking some more with her family, before bidding them farewell and wandering over to you.

"Home time?" You wondered, reaching a hand out to brush some of her hair back behind her shoulder.

You had, rather bravely, drove to the stadium today after Leah somehow secured you a reserved parking space, with the plan of driving yourself and Leah home your flat for the night before she travelled back up north to St. George's Park with the team tomorrow.

"God, yes." She sighed, and you smiled up at her.

"Let's go then." You took the hand she offered after pulling up her hood and let her lead the way out of the stadium.

Arriving at your car, with a few curious stares from fans to see if the hooded figure beside you was who they thought it was, you helped her lift her things into the boot of your car before the pair of you clambered in.

For the time it took to drive home, you caught up with her as it had been a few days since you had seen each other whilst she had been at camp. You, ever the safe driver, weren't one to hold your girlfriend's hands whilst on the road, always with two hands on the wheel at all times. Leah teased you of course, her and her English humour never falling to banter you everytime she could, but nevertheless when she was feeling a little clingy her hand would rest on your thigh as you drove, or it would massage and stroke the back of your neck as her arm leaned on your seat's headrest.

Today was a case of her resting a hand mindlessly on your thigh, something you would smile at constantly and glance down at the sight every chance you could get. She didn't notice though, busy talking and too tired to realise. Adjusting back to playing 90 minutes was something she was still in the middle of, not that she couldn't handle them because she obviously can, it's just the tiredness afterwards was something she hadn't experienced in a while of playing professionally.

That meant you weren't exactly surprised when she flopped down immediately on your sofa when you got home, not even bothering to drop her bags off in your room.

"Want some food, love?" You offered, pushing her bags to the side of the hallway so that they weren't a tripping hazard before leaning against the doorway of your lounge.

"You don't have to cook, we can just order a Nando's or something." Leah yawned, rubbing her eyes.

"Well, I thought ahead." You smiled at her, giggling at the tired and confused expression she silently responds with. "I meal-planned for you. I can heat up a plate of that Carribbean chicken and rice and veg if you want."

She gazed at you for a few moments before her head dropped back against the pillows with a groan.

"If I had a ring right now, I'd ask to marry you."

With a laugh, you took that as a yes and headed to the kitchen to do exactly as you said. As you were gone, the blonde put Netflix on the TV and chose the sitcom you had been watching together before pausing the episode to wait for you. She sat up with a groan and slumped back heavily, going onto her phone to reply to some friends and family.

Not so long later, you walked back in with Leah's food, handing it to her before sitting down beside her. Plate and fork in hand, she twisted her body to lean her back against your shoulder and happily tucked into her meal as you pressed play on the TV.

"Thanks for this, babe, I'm really grateful." She muttered as she ate, to which you smiled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"It's no problem, Le. I made a plate for myself too but I had a hot dog at half-time so I'm not hungry." You revealed, giggling as Leah chuckled.

"I know it's just a plate of food but... I don't know, means a lot to me that you thought about this." With a light blush, you shrugged nonchalantly and kissed the side of her head.

"I would say I know you'd do the same for me, but everybody knows you can't cook." You jested, grinning when she grumbled under her breath.

"I was only being nice, but alright." She huffed, but you only held her tighter against you.

"I'm kidding. I just love you, s'all. Wanna take care of you, especially after the last year and especially because I know you're a bit of a bottomless pit after a game." You say, and she hums in agreement. "If I'd have known my chicken was so good, it inspired thoughts of marriage, I'd have made it more often."

"I could never say no to that."

You both fell silent at that, more than content to enjoy each other's company with the show on in the background. Spending time with you after a game, just relaxing together, was fastly becoming Leah's favourite tradition. Going to dinners with friends or partying were great, but not much could beat this. Great food with even better company, in the arms of her girlfriend, Leah was finally at peace with the silence she had to greet after a game that was anything but.

That was something not many people would guess was a struggle in women's football. Going from playing in tiny stadiums to bigger venues but hardly any fans, to then playing in sold-out game after sold-out game for both club and country, that was her dream. What she wasn't expecting was the mental challenge that came with it. Spending well over 90 minutes in a booming stadium with fans that never ceased their chants was astounding to her, but the silence that met her when she would go home to a quiet and empty apartment was difficult.

She had worked on dealing with it better since the Euros where it had really picked up, but there was one thing that made it so much easier every time without fail. And that was you.

"You know I do plan to marry you, right?" Leah piped up out of nowhere sometime later, her plate long discarded to the coffee table as your positions on the couch remained the same. At her out-of-the-blue question that took your breath away a little, you cleared your throat and nodded though she couldn't see you.

"Yeah."

"Because I do want to marry you one day. I've known that from early on, I actually know the exact moment I thought that."

"Do tell, my love." You smiled, never one to pass up on a chance to hear just how and when Leah had fallen for you.

"The second time we saw each other after the New Year's party, when you started teasing me for not kissing you again after that night."

Much to Alex's dismay, the night of that party yourself and Leah had spent pretty much all of it talking about everything and nothing, compelled by a desire to get to know each other. That was until the blonde's intake of Dutch courage lived up to its name as she kissed you a little more than what could be described as friendly once the clock struck midnight. And when the night ended, no matter how much you didn't want to leave, you both shared a taxi to your respective apartments and exchanged details. It wasn't long before you saw her again though, in fact you saw her twice in the two weeks that followed, but the defender had been a little too embarrassed at her eager act a few weeks prior to kiss you again. But when you teased her one too many times about it, on the third 'date', she huffed before firmly yet delicately gripping your face and finally kissing you again.

"I spoke to Wally after our second date and she called me crazy for knowing I'd marry you when I didn't even have the balls to kiss you again." You laughed loudly at that, a notion Leah soon joined in with as she knew her past-self had acted in a ridiculous and shy way. "But that's the truth, babe. I knew I had to have you, and what better way to show that than snogging the life out of you on a random bench in London."

"Ew, Leah! Why describe it like that? I thought it was such a sweet moment, but you've just described it like we were two horny teenagers." She grimaced at the point you made, regretting it already.

"My bad. It was sweet. If not a bit... desperate." She snickered, grinning when you swatted her shoulder. "So, would you marry me then?"

"Wow. If this conversation couldn't get any less romantic, I think you've just put the nail in the coffin." Leah scoffed and sat up, fixing you with a disapproving look.

"That wasn't my actual proposal, you knob. I just wanna know if you'd say yes when I did eventually ask. Properly, that is." The defender asked with a shy smile, and you couldn't help but giggle at her face, doing so more when she frowned in confusion.

"Yes, I would accept your proposal. As long as it's with a nice ring and a better speech." You answered to put her out of her misery. She lets out a relieved sigh but smiling again.

"Noted."

With that, she stood up, now your turn to be confused. Squealing as she lifted you up bridal style, you laughed when she lay you down on your back length-ways across the sofa. Then, she kneeled against the cushions under your knees and carefully laid on top of you, her head resting against your stomach. Her hands came up to slide under your back and she sighed contently.

"Comfy?" You asked with a smile, your own hands settling on the back of her head.

"So comfy." She hummed, eyes closed as she faced away from the TV.

"If you're gonna fall asleep, Le, we may as well go to bed."

"No." She grunted. "I won't fall asleep. I just want to lay here for a bit."

"Alright." You conceded, your attention fully lost from the TV and instead on the girl draped over you.

You admired the slight view of her face available to you, your hands combing delicately through her almost dried hair as the only sounds shared between you were the calm and quiet breaths you both let out. A few minutes passed by and you thought she had gone to sleep, but she proved you wrong.

"This is my dream, you know."

"What is?" You asked her, moving one of your hands to rest on the side of your face and stroking her skin there with your thumb.

"Going home from a game to someone I love. Who I can fully switch off with." The small explanation had you beaming, beyond happy to hear how special you were to her.

"Well, I'm glad I can help, my love." You replied, a sheepishly proud smile on your face.

"I used to find it hard, y'know... our football blew up in popularity during the Euros, and I struggled with it more than I expected." You hummed curiously, not wanting to disrupt her train of thought but letting her know you wanted her to continue. "Going from being surrounded by up to ninety thousand people, singing and chanting and cheering non-stop, to just... nothing when I got home. Just a cold, empty, silent apartment. The contrast of it troubled me a lot. I worked through it with a psychologist and coped with it better, but it was never perfect."

She paused, adjusting her position so that her hands came to rest under her chin as she looked up at you, that same down-turned smile from earlier returning. Your hands fell to clasp behind her neck, waiting for her to elaborate.

"Then you came around, and now that anxiety doesn't even phase me anymore."

Now, if that wasn't the most heart-warming thing your girlfriend had said so far, you weren't sure what was.

"That makes me so happy, Leah." You whispered, cupping her cheeks with your hands and smiling softly at her.

"One of my favourite things about our relationship is how easy it is for me to switch from Leah Williamson the footballer, to just Leah when I'm around you. Makes coming home after a game much easier."

Shaking your head, you took her hands and urged her to move further up your body so that her head rested against your chest. Wrapping your arms around her, you squeezed her tightly, desperate to convey your love to her in a way words couldn't explain.

"I'll happily welcome 'Just Leah' home all the time."

"Now you're ruining the moment."

[ineffable-suffering]

Why Aziraphale is an unreliable narrator

Part 1: The Story of Job

I'm absolutely not the first one to talk about this on here and I probably shan't be the last either. Alas, here's my take on why all of the minisodes in Season 2 should be enjoyed with great care – and taken with a grain of angelic salt.

I'm gonna split this into 3 parts, aka the three minisodes we are shown, since I tend to get a bit waffley in my posts and want to still be able to include all the little details. Once I've written them, I'll link Part 2 & Part 3 here as well!

Alright, let's get into it under the cut of doom.

Episode 2 opens with the Story of Job. Right off the bat, I noticed that it sort of looks like an old film playing. At first I didn't read that much into it, but once we see the cut-away to Aziraphale at the bookshop, currently reading that part of the Bible (presumably), I immediately thought: "Oh! It's because it's his memory. He's remembering how it went down and therefore it plays like a figurative film in his head."

This, I then came to realize, is a very crucial difference to all the flashbacks of S1, which were exclusively told and narrated by God. May her intensions be as ineffable as they are: She did tell us all of these stories from an objective outsider's point of view. Now, however, it's Aziraphale who's re-telling those stories to us from memory.

And if there's one thing that's for certain, it's that a memory is something entirely different to an objective narration of a story. Just think about how you yourself remember things. Especially things that happened years, maybe even decades (or, in an angel's case, millenia) ago. What is it, that you really remember? Can you know for sure, that a conversation was held with those exact words? Are you 100% certain that the clothes someone wore weren't different? Had it really been snowing or would that make very little sense given what you're remembering happened in May? And did it even happen in May? Or does that just happen to be your favourite month, the current weather, your preferred style of clothing and what it was that you would imagine someone would have said to you?

What I'm trying to say is: The further away it is that something happened, the more your brain has to fill in the gaps. This is why, for example, your parents will remember the family summer holiday entirely different when you ask them about it 20 years later.

"No, it was Sarah who puked on the car ride home!" "Nonsense, Sarah never puked as a child. Bobby had that gone-off pizza, he's the one that was sick the whole ride long!"

We've all been there. Bobby made it out alive. Don't buy gas station pizza.

Alright, back to the plot: Naturally, Aziraphale is not actually human, so it is a pure assumption on my part that the way his memory works is similar to ours. However, the whole topic of "memory" is actually quite a recurring one on Good Omens.

Crowley seems to have lost his in the Fall, yet somehow managed to get most of it back. Not all of it, though, he clearly has some major gaps ("You used to jump on me back, little monkey in the waistcoat!"). Beelzebub helps Gabriel store all his memories in their little fly container before they get wiped entirely too, by the Metatron and/or Saraqael. Crowley and Aziraphale (and possibly Jimbriel) perform a miracle together that makes everyone in Heaven and Hell forget who Garbiel is or what he looks like. And we know that the Book of Life apparently has the ability to completely erase someone from existence – ergo also erasing them from everyone's memory and making it is as though the person had never been in them at all.

So, clearly, angels and demons being able to remember, forget, reconstruct and, if you're the Metadork, wipe memories, is very much canon. Apart from that very last one, it does make them quite human-like in a way. We too can forget or (wrongfully and incompletely) reconstruct memories, due to things like trauma, illness or simply a lot of time having passed.

So, just like Crowley remembers going into battle but doesn't remember Furfur being there, or just like Jimbriel has entierly forgotten who he is but still remembers the tune and lyrics to Buddy Holly's song Everyday, and just like archangel Michael was miraculously made to forget Gabriel and yet says "Don't I know you?" when seeing him again – just like that, Aziraphale's memories of the story of Job, the story of wee Morag and the story of the magic show in 1941, might not actually be the whole truth.

So, time to look at where the furniture isn't.

Now, it could very well be that the costume designers of S2 thought: "Fuck it, let's go crazy" – but given that this show has a track record of meticulously making sure to stick to accurate and cohesive character design, doesn't it strike you as odd that Crowley would go from this look at the Flood in Mesopotamia, 3004 BC:

... to the (very iconic, don't get me wrong) Bildad the Shuhuite drip in 2500 BC:

... back to this at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in 33 AD:

I mean ... I mean– come on, that seems like a bit of a far stretch, even for someone as enthusiastically experimental with fashion as Crowley.

And it's not just that: Where did the sunglasses come from, all of a sudden? And why do they look like some sort of obscure, ancient optometrist's device? It's a known historical fact that the Romans were the ones to have invented sunglasses, somewhere around 50-ish AD. Which actually matches perfectly with when Crowley and Aziraphale meet again in Rome 8 years after the crucifixion (51 AD).

So, where do the weird spectacles come from, over 2000 years too early? Maybe from Aziraphale's brain filling in some gaps? Hasn't Crowley always worn those ridiculous sunglasses? Was it Rome? Or Golgotha? Wessex? Oh, blimey, what does it matter!

And it's not just Crowley: Aziraphale's own clothes, as well as the other angels', seem to be very different from the rather plain linen we see him wear before and after the story of Job.

They're laced with golden embroidery along the neckline and sleeves. The remind almost of the clothes angels are depicted wearing in biblical and historical drawings. Ornate and decadent. Not at all like we see Aziraphale in the other flashbacks of S1.

Even Bildad the Shuhite's hair within the minisode keeps changing, going from all pouffy and voluminous to rather deflated and straight-looking:

The costume department either had to fix up two seperate wigs or manually straighten out the volume of the one again to give it a more sleek look. I'm not a professional in this field, but if there's anything I've learned from watching hours of behind-the-scenes material of movies and shows, it's that very little about costume, character, prop and set design is purely coincidental.

You know what it could be, though? An accurate representation of how memories aren't linear, historically correct and objective representations of a certain event, but rather an ever-changing, jumbled mess of impressions, emotions and exaggerations.

More specifically: Aziraphale's impression, emotions and exaggerations.

Like "remembering" Crowley with sunglasses because he's been wearing them for so long.

Like "remembering" himself wearing more luxurious, angelic clothes because that's how he thinks of the difference between Heaven and Hell.

Like "remembering" the permit as a ridiculously long scroll that folded out over an entire valley.

Like "remembering" Job's children to be weirdly sassy in an almost Aziraphale-esque way (Enon: "Don't be silly!") for the fact that Job would have probably taught them to be more humble and obedient in the presence of a literal angel.

Like "remembering" eating an entire fucking Ox after having just one bite of it while Crowley watched him lustfully, sipping on his wine.

Like "remembering" Crowley calling him 'angel', despite them having barely known each other back then.

There's a reason why the flashbacks in S2 seem so much more alive, quirky and, at many points, confusing and all over the place. Because they're not objective stories being told by a third party. They're Aziraphale's. So much of his own thoughts and feelings at the time get projected onto them because that's simply how memory works!

It's subjective. It's unrealiable.

It's not that I'm calling Aziraphale a liar. He's no more a liar than your parents are, mixing up Sarah and Bobby. Or you, remembering snow instead of sunshine. Memories aren't lies. They can simply be faulty, focus on things that you thought were more important and leaving out or changing things that weren't, to you.

The real challenge in all of this, is trying to filter through Aziraphale's stories to see what it actually is they're telling us. Where it is that the furniture isn't. And I think in this case, that's 6 main things (eff you, God, I know you like sevens, but I don't care):

God and Satan (still) talk to each other We see that Aziraphale is quite surprised when Muriel mentions that the whole Job thing is God's bet with Satan. But clearly, despite having made him and the rest fall, God still converses with Her number one traitor about whether or not the humans simply love Her because she gives them nice things or because they truly believe in Her.

God and Satan (and Heaven and Hell) can and do collaborate with each other when they feel like it So much for choosing sides, huh? Truthfully, this is not the first time this is shown to us, but still. It's another piece of evidence on the growing pile.

Aziraphale understands the World and humans way better than any of the other angels "Well, you see ... Citis is 58 ..."

Aziraphale, despite having troubles voicing it, absolutely disagrees and even condemns God's plan of destroying Job's children (and goats and camels and––)

Aziraphale is willing to lie and thwart the will of God Also not the first time we're being shown this but again, piiiile of evidence.

Angels don't automatically Fall simply by doing the above To me, this is one of the most important take aways. It's already hinted in S1 as well that 'Falling' seems to have been a one time even back when the first war broke out in Heaven. And I actually believe that ever since then, no other angels have Fallen again. Aziraphale is the best example for this. He has gone against God's plan numerous times and even lied to her very face (voice?) about it. And yet, nothing ever happened to him. Why exactly that is the case remains a topic for another meta (that I might or might not be working on already, teehee).

Alright, that concludes this first look at the Job minisode! If there's anything I missed, feel free to share it with me. I'll try and add Part 2 (the story of wee Morag) and Part 3 (the magic show of 1941) soon.

Update: Part 2 and Part 3 have officially been written, you can find it them right here:

Part 2: The Story of wee Morag

Part 3: The Story of the Magic Show in 1941

Hugs and kisses, (God)!

[moviecritc]

Hi, so I've recently watched the Thanksgiving movie with Patrick Dempsey and it was sooo good. So I wanted to ask if you could please write something about Charles dating actress!reader who stars in a horror movie but even tho he is not a big fan of horror movies he agrees to watch it for her because he wants to be the best boyfriend so could you please write it with a mix of smau with nell verlaque as face claims 🫶🏻

supportive boyfriend ⋆ charles leclerc

pairing: charles leclerc x actress!reader

word count: 601

warnings: mixed smau and writing

a/n: i, too, am not a huge fan of horror movies (i hate them actually), also this was quite short but i hope you like it <3

masterlist | wattpad | letterboxd

yourusername just posted!

liked by addisonrae, charlesleclerc and 34,120 others

yourusername some pics from the set 😚😚

view all comments

user1 the bond they all have >>>>

addisonrae ❤️👻

user2 i love her so so much

user3 omg i watched the movie and it was amazing!!

user4 y/n the new scream queen frr

user5 wait tf is charles leclerc doing in her likes

user6 girl they're dating u didn't know? she went to promote one her movies to the miami gp last year, they met, become really good friends and they started dating. it was like a rom com truly user5 that's so cute

user7 anyone expecting charles reaction for this new movie? we all know how fearful he is

user8 yess he's probably biting his nails trying to come up with ideas to not see it

And he was.

He was more than proud of his girlfriend and loved seeing her on screen. He always watched her latest movies on the plane when she wasn’t around. But this was the first horror movie she’d made, and the idea of watching it terrified him. He had always struggled with that genre; his two brothers loved horror movies and insisted on watching them when they were kids, which led to Charles having countless sleepless nights.

He had tried to convince Max or Arthur to watch it before him and tell him if it was too scary, but neither of them had time. He searched for summaries on YouTube, but it was still too early for people to have summarized it.

The only thing left was to mentally prepare himself. Be very aware that it was all fiction and that nothing would come after him once the movie ended.

He arrived at his girlfriend’s apartment, greeting her with a kiss and a box of her favorite sweets along with a rose.

“Aw, thanks, Charlie,” she hugged him and gave him a longer kiss. “Come on, I’ve got everything ready to watch it.”

Y/N was truly excited, and it showed on her face. She was very proud of this project and eager to show it to her biggest supporter at last. Charles knew this and had done everything possible to stay calm. But then he saw the setup: Y/N had turned down all the lights, leaving only a few candles lit, and the movie was already on the TV. The poster showed her covered in blood with a terrified expression.

“Are you ready?” Y/N said, sitting on the couch. Charles followed suit, and she snuggled up against his chest.

“Of course,” he said immediately. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Y/N looked at him with a little smile and kissed his cheek before pressing play. The first fifteen minutes were fine; they were introducing the plot and the characters. But then the tone of the movie started to darken, and Charles shifted nervously in his seat. Y/N noticed and intertwined her hand with Charles’, placing it on her chest.

Y/N realized how Charles flinched several times during the next few minutes, so she sat up and paused the movie.

“What’s wrong?” Charles asked instantly, completely confused though secretly relieved to have a moment to rest.

“Charles, you know I won’t be mad if you’re scared to watch the movie, right?” Y/N spoke with a sweet smile.

Charles pressed his lips together and looked down, just enough for Y/N to widen her smile and kiss him, cupping his cheeks with her hands. “I’m not scared,” he said in the middle of the kiss. Y/N raised her eyebrows, said nothing, and exited the movie. “But don’t turn it off, I want to watch it, I swear!”

“Char…”

“No, let’s watch it, mon amour,” Charles insisted, taking control of the remote.

yourusername just posted a story!

[caption: guess who haven't slept a shit bc her bf is scared of his own hair]

replies

charlesleclerc IT WAS DARK AND I FELT SOMETHING IN MY FACE I WAS SCARED

[legy]

hi! i'm caelum. you might know me from @goldentruths-pod or from posting online. im in a financial quicksand pit and i really, really, really need help.

i'm disabled and receive approx ~$950 a month from social security. this has gone from "rough but survivable" when i first started receiving SSI to "i am literally not making ends meet" in 2024. right now my current status is that i am covering my basic needs but any kind of extra purchases are impossible. and the extra purchases i need to make keep piling up because i just can't afford them. some things i need include, in vague level of priority:

dolphin, my cat, is years overdue for a vet visit. this is going to be $300 minimum, possibly more because she has an adversarial relationship with the vet. she needs dental work done which they had quoted me as being $1500 but ive been putting it off for so long that i would not be surprised if that's more expensive too

i have learned today that my gold crown needs to be replaced. really unhappy about this one. it was a miserable experience the first time (everything that went wrong did go wrong, i'll spare you the details) but what is relevant here is that my insurance does not cover this and it was $900 last time. insurance also does not cover extracting the tooth either so that's cool. i have some time before this one is due (my next consult is in july)

my phone is approaching "unusably broken". i've had it for close to 4 years now. the call speaker no longer works (i can only use the phone on speaker mode) and it struggles to run apps or a web browser which makes things like GPS pretty dire. this would be like ~$100-$150 probably, i havent done serious phone shopping yet

my driver's license is expired and i need to get a new one. this was $110 last time. note i havent driven a car in years due to the disability but it's really valuable to have a universally recognized form of photo ID and ive already been hassled over it being expired

god this one is so embarrassing to get into but i had to flee my previous apartment last year due to it escalating into a DV situation. the other tenants did not pay the heating bill, which was in my name (and my dumb ass didnt close the account because it was the middle of february and i didnt want to freeze them to death) so i have a $250 utility bill in collections. i might be able to dispute or debt forgiveness this one but tbh ive been so fucking drained given everything else going on and also my phone barely works so i havent pursued it. especially since i can't afford to pay it if i cant challenge it

i would really like to have a passport again. my previous one was destroyed by my landlord in 2018 but even if it wasnt it'd also be expired now. not sure how much this one costs. likely $200?

my food stamps were slashed in half (covid emergency ending lol) and do not cover my food costs for the month so im paying like $150 a month on food that i didnt have to previously. i can maybe fix this one but im slowly losing my mind from malnutrition from trying to not go into debt and also eat. so i havent had it in me to go 1v1 welfare bureaucracy and possibly make everything even worse

my shoes are probably two months out from fully decomposing. they were $100 three years ago and id like to get something comparable given they lasted me this long

the rest of my clothes are also very literally becoming threadbare, falling apart, or are too big and keep slipping off. i legitimately feel embarrassed to go in public these days because i dress so shitty all the time

insurance doesnt cover my HRT anymore so that's $30 a month i didnt used to have to pay

im sorry this turned into such a ramble. i'm in such a bad way right now, i have been for quite a while and the dental work news is really just the final straw. i can't really have a fundraising goal because due to the SSI asset limit i can never own more than $2000. & i'm aware both that this is the poor people sending each other the same 20 dollars website and that there are people urgently trying to raise money to escape an active genocide. but i held off from making this post as long as possible & idk what else i can do

anyway if theres anything you can contribute to help me i would appreciate it more than anything. at the very least i need to do something about my tooth.

http://paypal.me/hivehum

[skyeslittlecorner]

Rough timeline of Hell

Tldr: devils are such grandpas.

Has anyone managed to write down the timeline in hell yet? Because for now I'm slowly catching up on what I wasn't there and I have to write everything down so I don't get lost. I've done some math before, trying to figure out how many years have passed since Solomon disappeared. I will quickly refresh this information a bit - Most things haven't changed, but I should mention that we now know that time in Hell and on Earth passes at different times and rates. So today a minute may pass, and tomorrow a year may pass.

For the sake of keeping some data, we'll stick with the average I calculated earlier, because I haven't found a better point of reference yet. So - one year in hell is 6.6 years on earth.

Quick proportions: 365*365/6.6 =~56 days

That would mean MC has been in hell for about two months.

Possible? I guess so. I don't remember MC's exact time in hell being given anywhere, but I haven't read 6Ch yet. Devils believe that for them practically no time has passed, but they are long-lived, there's no point in believing them. This is of course the time of the main storyline.

Now it's time for something worse. Two months is a piece of cake - now we'll be playing with years. Let's start with the order in which the kingdoms were formed.

Tartaros - Definitely the first, judging by little Mammon's event.

Hades - I'm betting on the latter, because when Satan formed Gehenna, Levi was already on the throne. We know this from both Sitri and Amy events.

Gehenna - After these two, I think the third one is Gehenna. When Satan found Sitri (which was during his takeover of Gehenna), the other kings also showed up and had their eyes on him. Mammon and Levi. Beel didn't show up then.

Avisos - Continuing, Beel may not have appeared because he didn't care, or because he wasn't king. I have no information on that. So I'd put him somewhere between Hades or not far after Gehenna.

Abaddon - no information. From Asmodeus himself and his behavior I would think he could have taken power quite early, but who the hell knows.

Niflheim - I haven't gotten to that event yet, but from what I've seen of people's mentions, no one really knows what to do with them. Rather leaning towards one of the younger countries. It makes sense that Belphi simply didn't feel like it lol

Paradise Lost - The last of the countries, what we know from Luci's event.

Why did I present this? So that we could have some first idea - because now comes the math. Again. Yay.

Sitri, Amy, and Levi allow us to roughly (very roughly) count how much time has passed since the founding of Gehenna to the arrival of the MC. Thanks to the fact that events overlap with the main plot. Long live backstories.

311 years passed from the moment Solomon disappeared until the appearance of MC.

Solomon lived in hell from 100 to 150 years.

Sitri spent almost 100 years in Hades studying.

Sitri and Amy met every five years at Gehenna meetings so regularly that they made a fandom. It's quite modern, post-Solomon times. We can assume about 50-100 years. That's not a problem for now, because…

…They have known each other for hundreds of years, which ranges from 200 to 999 years.

All these events create a timeline something something like this:

We need to assume something to be able to operate on numbers.

For minimum: 100+200+311-50 = 561

For maximum: 100+999+311-100 = 1310

So the average is: (561+1310)/2=935,5

This would mean that somewhere between 561 and 1310 years passed from the founding of Gehenna to the appearance of the MC. With probability leaning closer to 935 years, since we have nothing better than an average.

I think these assumptions are enough for now. Especially since we have no idea what the truth is. As you can see, there are a lot of maybes and ifs. But still, I think it's interesting to at least try to grasp how older our sexy boys are.

Of course if you have something to add, add it! I could be wrong on so many levels that I don't even know if it's worth posting this, but I had too much fun writing it (and maybe I'll learn something more from you!)

.

.

.

.

.

Aren't you tired yet? So, I have another funfact. It falls into the category of conspiracy theories are my passion. (They are as you see.)

From the moment Solomon appeared in hell to the moment MC appeared, approximately 461 years passed. If MC lived a similarly long life, that's a total of 611 years. In terms of Earth years, the entire cycle, from when Solomon appeared to when Solomon's descendant disappeared, would take about 4,000 Earth years. (611*6.6)

What's interesting about this, you ask?

Let me quote something: "The chronology [of the Bible] is highly schematic, marking out a world cycle of 4,000 years."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_Bible

That would be an interesting symbolism. Our ancestor started a cycle that began to change hell, and MC, his descendant, would end that cycle, giving hope for a new, better era.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading updates: august 2024

the good news is that I did a lot of reading this month, the bad news is that honestly? I think that my birthday month has had the biggest percentage of literary letdowns, duds, and outright bullshit than any other month of this year so far.

but at least there's plenty to talk about, so let's get going!

Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power (Devon Price, 2024) - uh oh gamers, we're starting on a doozy! I've enjoyed both of Price's previous books very much, but with Unlearning Shame I couldn't help but feel like I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I wasn't getting what I had signed on for. the issue, I think, could be corrected by an adjustment to the title, which seems to be promising a very broad tackling of the concept of shame and is therefore making some pretty big promises. in reality, the book is much more narrowly focused than that, interested primarily in the shame that arises in the activism-minded when they feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awful things in the world and their perceived inability to do anything about it. fairly early on Price introduces an apparently relatable anecdote about himself and a friend having mutual breakdowns in a grocery store because they were both so paralyzed by the conundrum of trying to buy the most ethical groceries possible, and I realized this book was maybe not really for me or my particular experiences with shame. I think this book will be really helpful for a lot of people for sure, would love to pass it on to a lot of my freshmen, but overall it did not live up to the expectations I brought to the party.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles, 1959) - so I wanted to reread this because someone on here sent me an ask about, I don't know, my favorite required high school reading or whatever, and I said it was A Separate Peace but then I realized it's been over a decade since I read the book and I had to go see if it still actually held up. and god, does it EVER. this is such a brutal and heartbreaking novel, beginning in the last carefree summer that best friends and roommates Gene and Finny will experience before their final year at their boys' private school and their seemingly inevitable draft into WW2. although Gene is seethingly jealous of Finny's seemingly effortless charisma, popularity, confidence, and athletic prowess, the two boys are also inseparable - until a tragic injury changes the course of Finny's life forever. this book is a mess of unspoken pain, from the looming end of innocence on a global scale to the intimate ache of loving your best friend so, so much and having no healthy way to express it because you're a repressed little rich boy in the 1940s.

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (Rita Chang-Eppig, 2023) - Chang-Eppig's debut novel follows the career of Chinese pirate Shek Yeung, also known as Zheng Yi Sao, immediately following the death of her husband, fearsome pirate Sheng Yi. you've probably seen a post or two about her floating around on this very hellsite, calling her a pirate queen and accompanied by this image:

Chang-Eppig isn't interested in portraying Shek Yeung as any kind of heroine or feminist icon; over and over again it's acknowledged that she's simply a woman who has survived massive hardships and will do whatever she needs to do to survive. manipulation? spying? extortion? torture? murder? you name it, she's done it, and she does not feel remorse. while the novel wasn't a knockout for me either in terms of plot or prose, it's nice to see an entry into the trend of "retelling" stories from history and mythology centered on women that isn't determined to justify every step a maligned woman ever made. Shek Yeung is what she is, and her story makes for a gritty, bloody adventure.

Victim (Andrew Boryga, 2024) - this book is pure sleazeball fun; if you've ever wondered what I consider a romp, this is it. Victim follows our manipulative king Javi Perez as he builds a writing career for himself by turning in one essay after another about racial discrimination that he never really experienced, inventing stories of hardship caused by racism and poverty from his college application essay to his school newspaper to the story that finally brings the whole lie crashing down when he stretches the truth too far. the novel is written like Javi's apology in the wake of getting #canceled, and while I do sometimes feel that this premise makes some of the writing seem a bit implausible (why would you admit that!!!) it's a fun setup for a scandal that would have been a bloodbath on the twitter of old. come get your mess!!!

Bad Girls (Camila Sosa Villada, trans. Kit Maude, 2022) - this is my first time reading Sosa Villada's work but OH BOY, do I need to seek out more. this is a skinty little novel following a dramatized account of the travesti (or transgender) women who live and sell sex in Córdoba, Argentina. the women build an unsteady but beautiful and magic-infused family under the protection of the ancient Auntie Encarna. the protagonist (who is named Camila Sosa Villada, no relation I'm sure) watches as her unconventional family grows, changes, and frays over time, struggling to find ways to stay afloat in a world that see them as disposable. Sosa Villada's turns of phrase are brilliant and searing, and she weaves fantastical elements so nimbly into her narrative that it's utterly believable to see women becoming animals and courting headless men in the streets of a modern city. strongly recommend for fans of Kai Cheng Thom's Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (Aileen Morteon-Robinson, 2000) - this book serves as a scathing literature review indicting Australia's white women anthropologists and feminist scholars for the ways in which they've dehumanized and discredited Aboriginal women, stripping them of the right to be authorities of their own experiences and barring them from a white-centered feminist movement. Moreton-Robinson's account is excellent, contrasting the wok of white women academics with the accounts of Aboriginal women to reveal exactly how massive the disparities in understanding are. as a USAmerican previously aware of Australia's colonial history but unfamiliar with the specifics, it was jarring to discover exactly how similar the mechanism of colonial violence are between my country and Australia, with countless genocidal parallels to be drawn. one particular highlight of the book comes via my purchase of a 20th anniversary edition, which includes a new post-script by Moreton-Robinson in which she dissects and responds to various criticisms of the book at its time of release, taking several critics to task for the belittling tone they used to describe her work and the tools white feminists use to absolve themselves of blame in the face of critique from women of color. fascinating and thorough articulation of Moreton-Robinson's point, and deservedly blistering. I love when academics call each other out by name.

The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Sabrina Strings, 2024) - so the thing about this book is that there are really good PARTS. Strings is still an excellent historical writer, and I found a lot to appreciate in, for instance, the segments on the history of Black American pimp culture and the analysis of Playboy and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. the more personal segments, where Strings contorts herself to fit her own failed relationships into the narrative she's building, are decidedly less consistent in their quality, with some feeling like they would have been better off staying between Strings and her therapist. there's a long and convoluted digression about Sex and the City, and a strange anecdote towards the end in which String recounts a phone call with a friend's college-aged son who, String believes, was masturbating during the call. a yucky experience, to be certain, but I'm not sure it justifies Strings filing a police report against the youth and his mother, who she accuses of having groomed her on the son's behalf. she also casually drops in the same chapter that she considers herself pansexual because she's attracted to trans men in addition to cis men? idk man!!! this book was so uneven that I found myself genuinely questioning whether Strings' first book, Fearing the Black Body, is actually as excellent as I remember it being. I'm pretty sure it is, but god it sucks to get shaken so hard that you have to wonder!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner, 2002) - another book that I had to read for class, years ago! I read Diary of a Teenage Girl in one of my gender and women's studies classes in my undergrad, for a class with a title along the lines of Girlhood Stories in Fiction and Film. Gloeckner's novel (though heavily informed by her own life, she insists that it's a work of fiction) sees its young protagonist, Minnie, navigating a great deal of sex, alcohol, drugs in 1970s San Francisco. I started thinking about the book because I was listening to a trio of episodes of You're Wrong About in which Carmen Maria Machado guests to talk about the pervasive sham that is Go Ask Alice (great series, check it out) and I started thinking about Diary, which is so much less preachy and didactic and is, you know, actually drawn from a real teenage girl's diary, unlike Go Ask Alice, and lacking Alice's preachy didacticism. as a diary based on a real diary this book is largely lacking in any particular plot (the most consistent through line is Minnie's ongoing and tumultuous sexual relationship with her mother's 35 year old boyfriend), but if that's not a turn off then you'll find yourself rooting for Minnie to find her way all the way to the uncertain but ultimately optimistic conclusion.

One and Done (Frederick Smith, 2024) - okay, so. this is a romance novel that I picked up because I saw a review talking about how it's an incredibly realistic depiction of working at a university. now that's obviously an insane thing to look for in a romance novel, but I like romances, ESPECIALLY gay romances, and I work at a university, so I figured sure, I'll bite. spoiler alert: it's not great. I posted some examples of the prose here, and even if the two protagonists talked like actual human beings it wouldn't make up for the stale-ass plot or devastating lack of chemistry they have going for them. more like One and Glad to Be Done With This Book That Isn't Very Good, am I right, ladies?

Seduced (Virginia Henley, 1994) - guys, I'm gonna be so fucking real with you. this is the most batshit novel I've ever read, period, let alone the most batshit romance novel. this book was the winner of a poll I ran on patreon last month in which my wicked patreonites got to nominate romance novels of their choosing for my next reading project and voted amongst themselves to crown a winner, and against all odds and my own light attempts to sway the voters, Seduced won it all. this book has everything: a historical setting, a bold young lady disguising herself as her own brother, wildly unchecked orientalism, a murderous cousin, high society scandal, and some of the most torturous sex scenes I've ever encountered in my life. truly this write-up cannot do justice to what I have experienced; I've already promised by patreonites that I'll have to do a little youtube live in order to fully express the extent of my dissatisfaction.

and that was the month of August, babey!!!

[ghoulfuckersincorporated]

Joshua Graham (Fallout: New Vegas, Honest Hearts DLC) NSFW Headcanons 2

(A follow up to this post from the other day because I've been continually plagued with thoughts about this man for the last few days...)

Terrible at dirty talk. He isn't incapable of saying things that you'll find erotic, things that'll turn you on, but intentional and explicit sexual talk is not a strength of his. Doesn't curse, nor does he really use crude nicknames for various body parts or sexual acts. The most you'll get out of him a lot of the time is a series of commands. The words "cock" and "cunt" do exist in his vocabulary, but they only slip out once in a rare while, usually when he's already turned on beyond rational thought, and you can always tell he's a little embarrassed to have said either of them once he's calmed down again.

Handsy when you're alone, and rather aggressively so. He wants you to constantly have his touch on your body fresh in your mind, so the moment you two leave camp or everyone retires for the evening he's teasing you physically every chance he gets. Pretty good at making a lot of his touches seem accidental, but oftentimes he fully abandons that pretense and lets it be fully known that he's intentionally trying to rile you up, which only riles you up more. His favorite move is to saddle up behind you and slowly slide a hand into your pants, playing with you until you literally can't stand properly before helping you back to your feet and going about his business.

Not the most adequate at romance due to his discomfort with the vulnerability it requires. Holding your hand and quoting Song of Songs is about as romantic as he gets face-to-face. Better with gestures that don't require him to perform them while you watch, but he's just not very traditionally romantic overall. He had a family that showed him a lot of love and care when he was young, but there were many years where the main forces in his life were violence and lies. That history doesn't exactly lend itself to poetic thinking, but he does try if you tell him that it's what you want. Will occasionally give you a bundle of flowers he picked, or a small tchotchke he found that he thinks you'd enjoy. Will also make frequent bids to get you to spend time with him. He isn't without ways to show he cares about you, but many of them won't be ways you're used to. He can be a tad more lovey-dovey during and after sex sometimes, but it requires him to be both relaxed and in a very good mood, conditions which are rarely both met at the same time.

Likes to think he's above thinking with his dick due to his impeccable self-control, but you quickly prove to him that he's not as infallible as he believes himself to be. This man would do a lot, and I mean a lot of things to see you on your knees with his cock in your mouth, and you're more than eager to use that knowledge against him. If he's upset with you, he'll do his best to avoid a situation where you can do so, because he's quite embarrassed at how easily he folds the second you tug on his fly. Scolds you for being such a debauched whore the first time you swallow his load, though soon he's all but making you swallow every time.

I spoke a few days ago about how I firmly believe Joshua is in the middle of becoming a ghoul, which is why his injuries from years prior "won't heal". The truth is that the burns have long healed; the sloughing and blistering in his flesh now is because he's in the middle of a long, painful transformation process. Finally exposing him to a little bit of radiation and demonstrating its ability to ease his pain will make him incredibly grateful; having grown up in the post-war world, he's always been taught to avoid extra radiation as much as possible, to avoid contact with questionable foods and stay out of the rain, and it would never occur to him to treat these things as therapeutic (largely because he's hesitant to accept what he's becoming).

Finally having a way to properly manage his pain will raise his spirits noticeably, at least relatively compared to how much he panics about what his new status says about his soul. But it'll also blow the lid straight off the Pandora's box that is his often-neglected sexual drive. Be ready to go from only being able to touch him once in a while when the wind blows right to him actively pursuing and propositioning you multiple times a week. He'd be thrilled to have the energy to fuck you the way he's always fantasized about.

[scatterbrainedart]

I know I've literally talked about this before already but I need to do it again more in depth because I'm deeply ill. Anyhow.

Crowley was there at the creation of the universe. He was there as nebulae sprung into existence and time came to be. He slipped the switch of existence itself. And upon hearing how it all would shut down in just a few thousand years he was really upset. Because the universe was precious to him, and he wanted to see it flourish to its full potential.

Even then, Crowley wanted to fight for its right to exist. To be. He cared about the world to point of falling. He spent 6000 years on Earth, learning about and cherishing all it had to offer. The world is morally gray by default, and it's the only place in Crowley's existence that is. Therefore, it suits him, I think. Much more than either heaven or hell ever have or will, at least.

But, in the end of season 1, all of that was about to be lost. And what got him to act in order to salvage it? Aziraphale threatening to never talk to him ever again.

Let me say this again. The world was ending. The thing he cared enough about to had fallen for was all about to be destroyed forever. But the worst thing to Crowley in that moment, the highest stake and the worst possible loss, was the loss of Aziraphale's companionship. Not even "we will all die or stop existing and therefore won't be able to see each other anymore" but "I will just refuse to talk to you for the rest of time". That was the threat. And it worked. It raised the stakes. Stakes that were already about as high as they come, and quite awfully personal.

Crowley care more about Aziraphale than he cares about anything else. And Aziraphale knows that, otherwise he wouldn't have trusted that the threat would work. But he did. And it did.

Crowley is also desperately lonely. Just inherently so, in his very existence. There is no one else like him, in the way he's so gray in a world so black and white. I literally have a whole other post planned for that rant though, so I'll spare you it for now. But yeah, I'd imagine he has felt like the loneliest being in existence for the fast majority of it. His loneliness comes across a LOT, but it's most apparent in those moments of desperation. Where he is risking losing that one connection he managed to make. Like a last ditch effort kiss, harsh and unpleasant. It hurts to have it taken away, on such a deep level. Just like there is no one like Crowley, there is no one like Aziraphale. At least not to Crowley, not by a mile.

Crowley's desperation to keep Aziraphale in his life is not only because of his love for him, but also because of how if it's not Aziraphale, it's no one. And just like that scene where Aziraphale eats food for the first time and reacts as if he's just realized he's been starving his entire life, Crowley now knows what it's like to have someone by your side. To be a team, a pair. And he clings to that like the famished cling to their first and last warm meal.

[riddles-n-games]

That Night In Prague Rant

Let me start off by saying Hannah and Toby's story was amazing and heartbreaking, Libby and Nash were also sweet and supportive of one another, Xander is awesome at giving emotional depth to others even in the strange circumstance of tackling, and Secret Santa was quite literally a blast. But there's one story I haven't mentioned yet, have I? You know which one since it's the literal title to this rant/critique.

To get the basic pleasantries out of the way, I loved the promise ring scene, the way Jameson admires Avery lighting up and wanting to see the world through her eyes, the fact he wrote her postcards, and Avery's protectiveness of him. That's it. Great. Now we can get to the real stuff. My dear Jennifer Lynn Barnes, when you announced this book back in February during the month of romance, I recall that this book promised to deliver on ROMANTIC stories and showing us how a Hawthorne man loves. Why the heck did you keep trying to insert every possible wink wink nudge nudge moment possible in Avery's POV then?

When she stated Avery was gonna have a POV again, I was excited but I wasn't sure if I should leap for joy. See, given how Averyjameson were portrayed in the last book, I was somewhat disappointed since I really wanted to see Avery through Jameson's eyes in a more romantic light. It was an eyeroll, unfortunately, and what a missed chance for a wedding dress ref in the race outfit scene since he gave her a promise ring.

However, people were saying, ah, it's Jameson, he's a teenage boy. And ok, I did bite my tongue after that because alright, that's just him (though I am still bitter about his lack of development in TBH), but that wasn't the case with Avery. She's my girl, I can always rely on her, right? Three books of build up with a pretty solid character voice made her who she became in TFG. Cool, I was ready to go back. And as I said so many times before, she gave Jameson depth which helped us see what so many did not and I loved how she didn't let him get away with certain things. She was sensible.

WTF was this then? This is not Avery Kylie Grambs. This is A Very Random Imposter (you come up with the anagram). Imagine my fricken surprise when out of nowhere Jameson As A Girl.

The crimes of the story: "after a lengthy and not quite G-rated negotiation" (WT actual F), "like his body wasn't tense in all the right ways", "smile of his made me want to do things", “I would let him demonstrate all the many, many reasons he had to be that smug", "His search had been... thorough" (????).

This sounds so cringey and unlike Avery. It felt like JLB was trying to force Max and Jameson and Rohan into her POV. Clearly after only two years of not being in her original character's POV and changing through 5 main characters (which was a horrible idea in the first place), she's managed to mish-mash her only properly developed character into sounding like another person.

The innuendos here are the worst I've seen. Avery has never been crass or sexually charged so why start that now? We already have characters that take on that route and now you're trying to ruin Avery with that? PUH-lease. Jameson was enough in TBH and now you're trying to ruin my girl? NO. Absolutely NOT. If JLB wanted to implement this in the og trilogy, then it should have been done earlier but no, Avery was never that girl and she shouldn't be now.

This isn't and cannot be listed as character growth in the slightest because if she sounded the same after a year in TFG post THL and also sounded like her normal self in Secret Santa which is in the same book as TNIP, there should be no reason why she sounds like this here. It ruins the continuation in her character POV which is something that at this point should be solid as stone. Not to mention, not everything works for everyone and that's ok. While I hate it, it makes more sense in Jameson's POV than hers. In Avery's POV, I cringe at it because it sounds so unnatural for her and feels like I'm looking at someone trying to fit into a crowd they just don't mesh with.

Three books solidified that. Why else did we fall in love with TIG in the first place? Partly because of who Avery was and who she became over the course of the trilogy. She stood out amongst the crowd. Did she have a similar way of thinking about puzzles like Jameson? Yes. Did she have a different approach to romance? Yes. Did she help Jamie become a more sensible guy? Yes! Was their flirty banter fun and interesting? Always. That's part of what made me love them so much in the first place but it shifted so suddenly that now they're sounding like Savannah and Rohan.

In October, when we had the preview of more chapters, I immediately noted this sounds like a very different Avery, either older or an alternate universe version of her. If she wants to do this with Rohannah, go ahead; they're a new budding romance so that has room for whatever she didn't use in other ones but leave Averyjameson as we've known them to be for three novels that solidified who they are. I know other romances should be given a chance, I never said that shouldn't be the case but if I'm being given the chance to see my favorite ship being in the spotlight, then do it right one last time. You have three books as your guideline.

Anyways, I'm dissatisfied so I will be doing a rewrite of TNIP since this is a shorter thing to take care of than a whole novel. Have a great day and thanks for reading. Fics will be out at some point, God, so much real life work to do.

[thefirstknife]

sorry if this is an obvious question. but I've seen lots of people theorising that "The Conductor" is maya. Why are people saying this? I don't really know much of her lore or the stuff surrounding her (veil etc.) so any sort of explanation or lore on maya would be nice.

No problem! Honestly the whole thing with Maya started last year when they did a lot of extra little bits and pieces about her throughout Lightfall. Maya Sundaresh was one of the Ishtar Collective scientists from the Golden Age and heavily involved with various science, a lot of it connected to the Vex.

Probably the most relevant is the Vex simulations of Ishtar scientists; the Vex simulated 227 copies of Maya, her wife Chioma Esi and two others (Dr. Shim and Duane-McNiadh). The group decided to let the copies free into the Vex network to explore and see what happens. We didn't really know anything about this until Season of Undying (Shadowkeep) when the lore book Aspect released which details a lot about what the copies were doing there and then their plans to escape, with the help of Praedyth. We never found out if they made it out.

In Season of the Wish, last season before TFS, there was the exotic mission Starcrossed which ended with a secret room inside a Vex Citadel that appeared out of nowhere in the Black Garden. Inside that room, we found the symbol of the Ishtar Collective. The running theory is that this shows that the copies have finally escaped or there's some other connection to the whole story of the Ishtar team and the Vex shenanigans they've been through. My post about some extra details in regards to the whole Vex stuff during Wish. We initially also speculated about a possibility that there would be Venus stuff in Echoes, as well as possibly Nessus (or even Mercury or Io); turns out it was Nessus!

Anyway, this stuff with Ishtar and the Vex is a pretty direct link to the fact that Maya could have some influence and connections with the Vex. But why Maya specifically? This is where we go to Lightfall stuff and primarily the Veil Logs. In the Veil Logs, Chioma revealed that Maya was affected by the Veil quite a lot and more or less went mad experimenting with it. In her experiments, she constructed the whole thing to work like an "orchestra" with a "conductor." That word is the biggest clue honestly!

It was further also noted by Osiris when he analysed it all that this all seems similar to what the Witness' species did; some sort of a ritual with a "chorus" and a "conductor." This is also interesting because a lot of what's going on this season is showing us the Vex with references to music and specifically a "chorus:" they're called "choral" Vex. My post about these music references (there's been more since writing this). In one of the Veil Logs towards the end, Chioma explained that she one day found Maya dead in the "conductor's chair." Maya has been connecting to the Veil as a conductor for a very long time and did a lot of experiments with it, primarily attempting to "fabricate consciousness." She succeeded in this by creating Lakshmi-2: she used a dead Exo to essentially fuse minds into it and create something new.

One more of the Veil Logs also mentions that someone called "MSund12" was trying to access them in present time. This is Maya's 12th copy from the network. I went into this in the linked post; MSund12 accessed the OXA through the Vex systems at some point. This is interesting because this was brought up again in TFS in one of the Lost Ghosts quest which also name drops Maya Sundaresh directly and confirms that there are interferences from her going on here.

This set of exotics from the season pass with lore tabs also seems to be giving out hints that it's Maya. It requires some assumptions to be made but Maya fits pretty much all of it really nicely. There are also a lot of little curious details in the activity Enigma Protocol. After each section cleared when you get to the chest, there's three Vex confluxes which can be scanned. They reveal "queries," as if someone is using the Vex network to go through information and data on stuff. It's mostly related to very small personal stuff, Golden Age information, the Collapse and current stuff about the City or Lightbearers: as if someone is trying to connect to their personal things and learn about what the world is like now. For example, one of the queries is "port wine" - this was once mentioned by Chioma in one of the Veil Logs; she opened a bottle of port for her date with Maya.

With all of this combined, there's very little room for the Conductor to be anyone other than Maya, who is now able to control the Vex with those collars. We just don't know which Maya. Is it one of her copies? Is it multiple copies combined into something else? Is there anything of the real Maya in there? It would be interesting if it's just copies because then her teasing Saint as being a copy would be a neat reflection of her own insecurities. Either way, we'll have to wait a bit to find out about the details, but there's no doubt that all of this is setup for the reveal that it's Maya.

[vincentbriggs]

Good sir, I am hoping to pick your brain. I’m making an 18-century (“pirate”) shirt as a gift to my friend. He wants tie closures on the neck and cuffs instead of buttons. Might you have any insight or resources for this? I’ve seen the ties in at least one of the extant shirts I’ve viewed online. I’m still pretty new to the sewing gig and I’d like to minimize inventing metaphorical wheel as much as possible. Thanks in advance!

It's very unusual, but do know of one example! (Not that extant one though)

But first - Link to my most thorough shirt construction blog post. (It's a few years old and I've improved a few little things in my technique since then, and I mean to finish writing a new and better one before the year is over.)

Ok, ties on shirts! I'm assuming this is the extant one you're talking about? Tbh I'd discount this one entirely if you're looking for information on 18th century men's shirts because I don't think it is one.

Besides the attached ties, the sleeves are extremely weird. They're cut off and have no wristbands!! This would make it quite impossible to wear under a coat, the wristbands are an absolutely essential part of an 18th century shirt. I also don't see any reason to believe this is actually 18th century when it could just as easily be 19th century, and considering how short the slit is I think that more likely.

(Lots of auction sellers like to say "late 18th century" about things that are like... yeahh maaaaybe that's plausibly from a very fashion forward guy in the late 1790's but it's much more likely early 19th century. And with court dress they sometimes just straight up date it several decades too early. Look at lots of examples and always question everything, because museums don't always date things correctly either.)

I think I remember seeing someone mention once that it was a 19th century workman's garment of some sort, but I can't remember where, and all we've got to go on are a few pictures and a brief caption from a seller who doesn't know what they're talking about. It does look like it could have been worn over another layer though, and the fabric is very coarse. It could also have been altered at a later date for theatrical costume, which is something the Victorians did to A LOT of 18th century garments.

So just ignore that shirt!

The vast majority of 18th century mens shirts close with 2 or 3 buttons on the collar, but there is a style that uses ribbons. It appears to have been fairly common in the late 17th and early 18th century, and then slowly dwindles as the century goes on. I have a section for it on my shirts pinterest board with 64 examples. Ooh, wait, 65, just found a new one.

The collar is made with little to no overlap and one buttonhole on each end, and a ribbon is threaded through them.

Portrait of Carl Gustaf Tessin, 1728.

Sir Charles Howard, 1738.

I actually made one of these last year!

The collar doesn't sit as well with the ribbon as it does with 2 buttons, but once you put a stock over it it's fine.

Nearly every single depiction of an 18th century shirt I've ever seen (and I've spent a LOT of time looking) uses sleeve links on the wristbands. (Which I have a tutorial for! They're really easy to make!) I do sleeve links on most of my everyday shirts because I like them better than sewn on buttons. When the wristband is this narrow, sewn on buttons don't sit very nicely.

But! If your friend wants ties on the wrist in a historical way, I do know of one single example, and it's this guy!

Giovanni Maria delle Piane, Portrait of a nobleman. No date given, but if I had to guess I'd say 1680's or 90's. Very late 17th century looking fellow.

We can't see his collar closure, but I think it's very possible that he has a matching red ribbon holding that closed.

Personally I wouldn't want to try these, because they look like an absolute nightmare to tie by yourself one handed. But the good news is that you could make just regular wristband that take sleeve links and they'd work for this too, since both just have a buttonhole at each end! I aim for a finished wristband length that's 10-14mm longer than my wrist measurement, with the buttonhole being about 4 or 5mm in from the edge, which gives me enough ease to wear them comfortably with sleeve links, so if you do that then he'll be able to wear them both ways.

[traintrainingmontage]

What I like most about Neilloey as a ship is the idea that they very much feel like (best) friends to lovers, and that despite their seperation, what they meant to each other and how they helped shape each other can't and won't be erased. They've left such deep, indelible marks on each other's lives, their relationship built on quiet nights with Neil on a standard-gauge siding next to Skarloey's shed and the two of them talking and whispering to each other in the starlit hours, taking comfort in each other's presence, dreaming of what tomorrow would bring, and over time, dreaming of each other. It's not passion or mutual interest that drives their eventual shift in relationship from that of friends to partners, but trust—trust built over the course of decades.

I really do think that, second only to Rheneas, Neil was one of the most important and impactful engines in Skarloey's life, and the two complement each other incredibly well. I've spoken about it in previous posts, but Neil's calm, analytical, laid-back attitude is a wonderful foil to Skarloey's initially bouncy, exuberant nature. Given that the two knew each other for at least 50 years (Skarloey arrived on Sodor in 1865 and Neil survived the founding of the NWR in 1915 before disappearing by WWI's end), it's quite possible and even likely that the two rubbed off on each other personality-wise, with Neil becoming a bit more energetic and Skarloey becoming a bit more calm and thoughtful, as we see him in later years. I imagine that their bond becomes incredibly tight, with the two of them being each other's confidants for everything they can't share with their respective siblings.

When the war seperates them, I think that Skarloey is heartbroken, but the work doesn't stop. He has to mourn in the wee hours, when he thinks Rheneas is sleeping, and hope and pray that they might be reunited one day. Neil would want him to keep going, he knows that. So he will, and he keeps his cherished thoughts of Neil safe and deep in the pit of his flame, and focuses on what he needs to do.

100 years pass. It's 2017. And... Neil is found. He's still technically owned by the Crovan's Gate Mining Company, which has since rebranded, but that still makes him one of Sir Handel Brown's engines, and Sir Handel Brown IV is all too happy to reunite Skarloey and Neil. And there's the worry of awkwardness, for it's been so long, but then... they just pick up right where they left off.

It's so easy, it seems almost effortless, and in some ways, it is; time has passed, but the trust has remained. And although neither of them are the same engines—the scars of years of trauma are etched deeply into Skarloey's frames and psyche both, and the guilt of abandoning his partner and almost being tempted to let himself answer the call of the void and let himself succumb and rest will forever haunt Neil—that also adds another depth, a new dimension, to their relationship.

Skarloey and Neil are not young, new engines. They know how to work together to overcome. And so they do. They talk to each other. They communicate. They unload. They support. And in the end, yes, they both have changed. But who they are—the exuberant red engine whose love runs as deep as his namesake lake, and the calm green box tank who always has good insights to share—haven't changed a bit. They're still the best friends who can talk until morning, still the partners who can entrust each other with their deepest secrets, who want each other to be the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing at night.

Imo, what makes Neilloey so great is that theirs is a relationship that could overcome such a long absence, and their bond is as rock-solid as it is because it had so much time to grow organically, between two complementary personalities. Sure, they had their fair share of friction, but nothing that couldn't be solved fairly easily, especially once Skarloey settled down a bit personality-wise. There's something comforting about the ship, and part of it is meaning so much to someone that you're not forgotten even if you disappear. Another part is recognizing that even as time has worn you both down, you're still the same engines that fell in love with each other over a century ago. Your time together gave you the strength to make it through your time apart. And you get to that point through trust, through care, and through being vulnerable—and having that vulnerability reciprocated—all of which is very typical of (best) friends to lovers, between two wise, kind engines who very much deserve only nice things after what they've been through.

Needless to say, Neilloey is my TTTE OTP for a reason. ❤️ 💚