#like i have to talk . write .about myself. for two pages

[rudeflower]

writing young children developmentally accurately

Writing young children convincingly, especially if you aren't around them often, can be tricky because from birth to age five children change so much, and they also typically progress in a certain way. This is why parents refer to young children's age in months ("She's 18 months!") for the first several years. 12 month olds and 23 month olds are wildly different, even though they're both 1.

Because of this, it's great to be aware of whether the 18 month old in your fic/story would typically be walking, and if that 4 month old baby can typically hold their head up. If you're way off it can ring as odd for the reader, even if they aren't experts themselves.

A key word here is typical. Children typically develop skills around certain times and in a certain order, but it can vary. No child develops exactly on target, some variation is normal. And it isn't necessarily because of disability or giftedness. It is possible for a one year old to be talking, and it's possible for an five year old not to be. It is still worth being read up on typical development because if your one year old is talking fluently, it makes sense in universe for other characters to remark on it quite a bit!

You do not have to run out and get a job at a daycare or take a college level child development classes to write young children confidently. Here are some resources I recommend as someone who works in the child development field, that I reference myself even though I've taken a ton of classes/worked with young children for over a decade:

CDC's Developmental Milestones

This is a good resource on when milestones (smiling, walking, dressing onesself) TYPICALLY emerge. They are not exhaustive and also not cumulative (18 month milestones link just includes what typically emerges at 18, not everything that already happened) so read each stage up to the age you're writing to be most informed

There are also photos and videos on many of the milestones, which is also great to visually confirm what this age looks and moves like

Child Mind Institute Complete Guide to Developmental Milestones

This is similar to the CDC resource BUT it's all on one page so you can see how the skills build cumulatively. It has less media and linking out, so this is a great one to refer to while writing after you're a little more confident in what your child character can do

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Communication Milestones

This is similar to the first 2 in that it shows the typical skills by age but goes into much further detail about communication. Because of the nature of a written story much of how your child character will come across will be in how they communicate and young children typically communicate in specific ways based on where they are in their development. This resource breaks it all down!

Lurie's Play Development Milestones

Even the way children play is very dependent of what stage of development they are in. A six month old won't pretend their toy truck is a rocket ship, for example. This resource breaks down what play typically looks like by age.

Development of Healthy Eating

I'm not familiar with this source, but this page is a great simple breakdown on healthy eating with young children from breast feeding to solid foods that are choking hazards.

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These are all great resources for anyone writing a young child character, regardless of your IRL level of contact with young children. I regularly am with young children, my entire profession is about healthy child development and I still refer to resources every time I write a young child.

Don't feel like you have to follow each of these guides perfectly--it's actually more realistic for a child character to be slightly off track or even way off track in one or two ways than for them to be matching perfectly (You'll even notice these guides don't match perfectly across the board.) But generally writing for a developmentally informed point of view (Even just a few minutes of checking out a milestone table while writing) can make your child characters feel REAL and authentic.

[vidavalor]

hi! had a question about book vs. show opening and i think i need a more experienced word nerd than i to handle this.

in the book, specifically on the copyright page, there's a line that says: "Caveat: Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home."

however, the television at the beginning of the show (as said in the script book, i'm not sure if this is the exact wording) says: "Warning: Causing Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home."

I was wondering what your thoughts on why "caveat" was changed to "warning" were, or if there was any reason why it was changed at all?

Well, hi there, @the-ineffable-parker! 💕 This question is everything. I don't know if I'd call myself a more experienced word nerd but I'm happy to share some thoughts and, of course, your virtual snacks of choice. 🤗

On the caveat and what I think it has to do with the nightingales and the neato fan under the cut.

To see what the reasons might be for these particular word changes between the novel and the tv series, I think that we have to first talk about why both the Caveat on the copyright page in the novel and the War-into-Warning that opens 1.01 exist in the first place.

Why does the story-- in both book and tv series form-- open like this?

I think that the short answer to your question is that it's related to wordplay in different mediums.

What I mean by this is that when you write a very wordplay-happy novel like Good Omens, you can do some wordplay in the book that you cannot do as easily in the same way with a more audio/visual medium, like television. On the other hand, though? There are visual puns that you can do on television that you would not be able to pull off in the exact same way in a book.

Both the novel and the tv series are using the same core language but they're just presenting some of it differently in the tv show because there is a lot of fun to be had with having audio/visual possibilities to use to tell the story, too.

To give you an example, let's look at what the book did vs. what the show did with the errors pun.

One of the jokes in the book is that there is a passage in which the word errors is spelled as error's. Obviously, the humor here comes from the fact that there is an error in the spelling of the word error. This pun works great in the novel because it's designed to be one that can be read but what if you wanted to include something like this in the tv series, where the majority of the words that are heard are spoken aloud?

The answer is what they did in the 1793 scene, which is have Aziraphale say this to Jean-Claude:

"C'est une grande mistake... erreur."

The humor here is that Aziraphale blanks on the word for error in French and winds up saying the English "mistake" instead. He's made an error on the word error-- a very similar pun to the one in the novel-- but there's also the extra layer here too of the fact that the word he remembers a second later as being the French word for error is correct-- it's erreur. It's almost exactly the same word. It's basically the English word error spoken with a French accent. 😂 He's got the entire, more complicated, rest of the sentence correct but for the word for error, which is easily the easiest word of them all. It's both humorous and also highlighting that Aziraphale's just in his head with French sometimes and that's what causes the occasional stumble.

This erreur pun would work in written form in a book but it plays even better on screen and Good Omens is taking advantage of the visual component of the television series to do all sorts of fun visual puns and otherwise utilize the visual medium to help with understanding of all different sorts of levels of language use in the story.

Think about visual puns like Aziraphale telling Mrs. Sandwich she's a figurative "pillar of the community" while the two of them are standing beside the bookshop's literal structural pillars... or the kids! visual pun from The Flood, when Crowley says "you can't kill kids!" and we see that the group of living beings that he's looking at when he says this contains both tiny humans and baby goats-- both of which are called kids.

I think that there is a visual reason why the word warning was used in the opening of the series and not caveat-- even though a caveat is a warning. It's related to what the caveat in the novel actually is and how they can best convey that exact same thing to a television audience.

So, the real question is: what is the caveat, exactly?

Why does it exist? What's this thing on the copyright page of the novel, which is virtually unheard of? Why do we need this note at the start of the book and what is it saying?

To look at this, we're actually going to do it in true Good Omens style-- out of chronological order 😂-- and actually begin with the warning that opens the tv series because, while it's the same thing as the caveat in the novel, I actually kind of like the war-into-warning even better.

The very first thing we ever see in all of the Good Omens television series is a word.

Specifically, it's the word war-- and it is very large and very red and very capital letters shouted in our face.

This is so the very first thing that we see that, as you can see from the screenshot below, I don't even have time to exit to full screen once hitting play before this is what I'm looking at-- and it doesn't even stay like this long enough for me to be able to take a clean screenshot of it before it begins to move and give me more to work with when it comes to understanding it.

At the same time as the word war is shown visually to us and we're reading this word, the word is chanted once by an unseen chorus of people. This is very important and you'll see why in a moment.

From just this alone, we can learn a couple of things.

One is that the word war might as well essentially also be the title of this show, which will make sense to us when we learn that the show is about different kinds of Armageddon. The plot is about the threat of Biblical and global kinds of Armageddon but it's really about a person's own Armageddon-- their own mental health struggles.

But, before we even get into analyzing the word war, there's first the even more important matters of the way that word was delivered to us-- and why a word was delivered to us at all.

Almost immediately, the screen begins to move and we see that we weren't actually looking at just the word war... we were really looking at the word warning... and then, very quickly, we are shown two things rapidly at once...

The first is that that more words start to scroll beneath the warning and the second is that what we're looking at-- the source of all of these words-- is a television that is revealed to be floating in outer space.

So... we're watching a streaming television show that begins with a message delivered to us on a visual metaphor for streaming television-- a tv floating in space. This is pretty meta stuff, right?

This is showing that the warning on the television screen-- the words we are shown there-- are all a message that is related to our ability to understand the show we've selected to watch. Good Omens is opening with a warning to its own audience about the very wordy content within the program and the coded nature of it.

This is also really funny when you consider that tv content ratings-- which are consider warnings-- also appear at the very beginning of hours of tv. You can see Amazon giving me content warnings over the War/Warning in the screenshots above, as we've all gotten when streaming the show. I found this quite funny considering that this show would be TV-MA on Amazon without the cant and the novel would never have been published by a traditional publisher in the late '80s without it.

So, the network is warning for content but the show itself is giving content warnings of a different kind-- ones related to letting the audience know that they have decided to stream a show in which a word game is afoot... but what kind of word game?

The war-into-warning is a visual metaphor for that thing around which Terry Pratchett's Discworld was formed: etymology. It's about the history of words and their meanings-- or, why it is we say what it is we say and how we came to say it.

It begins with showing a core word-- war-- and then expands to show word evolution through its related word of warning. This is the reason why it's war/warning and not caveat, even though a caveat is a kind of warning, as we'll look at below.

It's because the word war living inside the word warning allows them to create a visual to show us word history right off the bat at the start of the series to convey that to an audience who isn't reading the story so much as hearing and seeing the story unfold before them.

Immediately, we are shown that this is a show that is obsessed with words because big, red, capital letter words are the very first things that they showed us. We know that looking at the connections between words and their histories and earlier meanings is something worth considering when we are listening to these characters speak.

But, maybe most importantly?

With war/warning, we are also given the very first Clue as to how to speak Crowley and Aziraphale's cant-- hidden there before, if the show is our first encounter with this story, we've even met them or heard them interact.

It also happens to be the biggest and most important Clue. It's basically the Clue that, if you do nothing else but this, you're going to be able to figure out a fairly decent amount of what it is that they're saying. That Clue?

Is simply to look at the words within words-- which is also, subtly, a backdoor entrance into etymology as a whole because it's encouraging you to take apart the words.

I know that must be shocking since you messaged me with this request and my every other post is literally doing exactly this 😂 but, for the record! as I've said before, I didn't just make that up out of nowhere. I'm following the directions of the cant that I've found keys throughout the story and one of the biggest ones is this opening of the tv show where they're like...

So, you're about to watch a very wordy something in which it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that the main characters are speaking a hidden language and, if you want to understand that language, the biggest tip that we can give you to get started is to pay attention to the words that are hidden inside the words they are choosing to speak.

Remember when I said the fact that the word war was chanted was important? This is connected to that.

War is chanted... but warning is not. Why?

Because this is an example of one of the main ways that the cant works. Warning is the word that's really there on the surface level. It represents the word we'd hear them speak if only listening on the surface level. The cant, though, is hidden in the origins of the words they're speaking and in the words buried within those words.

Part of the game of this for Crowley and Aziraphale is to try to carry on an entire conversation that is happening on one, surface level but is really another conversation entirely in the cant. It's their flirty little birdsong. To do that, they're often intentionally choosing words based on the words that are hidden within them or based on the historical or alternative meanings of those words. In other words?

They're using etymology to code their speech.

This is why approximately 80% of the posts on my blog 😂 are taking apart the words in this story and coming at them from their histories and from the words that are within them. I didn't just randomly decide these were the wordplay rules out of nowhere-- I'm literally following the different directions that I keep finding in the keys hidden throughout the story.

So, war is chanted to highlight the importance of looking for hidden words and at looking at the etymology of words. The fact that it's chanted is awfully interesting because...

...the word chant comes from the Latin verb cantere, which meant to sing. Chanting is a spoken word version of music, right? You know what other cousin word to chant also comes from cantere?

Cant, baby. 😉

The word for the kind of hidden language that Crowley and Aziraphale have formed is etymologically related to the very first sound we ever hear in the series. The chanting of the word war is really the story chanting cant! at the audience.

So, the word that means a hidden language is a variant of the word that means to chant, or to speak-sing... and both words are from the same Latin verb for singing.

So, now, we just connected canting to music-- something that seems significant considering that the characters are birds and Nightingales, as we'll look at below, is the word that Crowley and Aziraphale use to reference their romantic cant.

Because canting is a big way of expressing love for one another, it is also somewhat synonymous for them with love and romance, which is how Crowley said "no nightingales" in The Final 15 and meant I was canting and you didn't hear what I was saying but *Aziraphale* heard that and took it instead as more like this isn't loving me-- you don't love me and started to cry.

Music is language. Singing is talking is canting.

This is also why, if you go to a church service, the person whose job it is to lead everybody in singing is called a cantor... which is actually the same word you could use to refer to someone who is speaking in a cant.

This is part of the humor when Crowley and Aziraphale are canting up a storm in St. James' Park in the first episode and Crowley jokes that there won't be anyone Up there for Aziraphale to cant/to sing with in Heaven (and to "sing with") because Up there, there's only...

So, if we take these clues from war/warning and we apply them to one of the biggest words in Good Omens when it comes to Crowley and Aziraphale and their language, we can figure out why the obsession throughout the story with the nightingales, right?

What are literal nightingales? They're a nocturnal songbird, right? They're birds that are up and singing and mating during the evening, when most other birds are asleep, which is in keeping with Crowley and Aziraphale's secret relationship and how they often meet up to spend time together during the night. They're nocturnal birds themselves. [This is also one of the main reasons why the Job minisode-- with the courtyard scene that sees them begin to form the cant-- is entitled "A Conversation with Owls", which are wise old nocturnal birds.]

Nightingales are called that because the night part is obviously related to the night and the gale part is from the Old English galan/galon, which meant to sing. Considering what we went into about singing and canting above, it makes for a good word related to the hidden language. So, what about the wars within warning here? What words are in nightingales?

Ale, which is a type of alcohol, which is sex in the cant, and the homophone for night-- knight, which they both once literally were. While knights were men, the word gal is also in there because they're all the flavors. Finally, a gale is a big storm, particularly one at sea, and the two of them have a long history of literal nights in storms together-- The Flood, Job, etc.-- but a storm for these two with their fish/the sea metaphor for sex seems also likely euphemistic/metaphoric for a passionate night.

The poetic name for the nightingale is the philomel, from the Greek philomela, and it has a rather perfect etymology for this conversation. Philos is Greek for a lover and for loving something. The -mel/-mela part of the word, though, has two, different etymological tracks. The Greek word melos means a tune or a song, which would make philomel mean "lover of song". However, the Greek mela is actually the word for the apple, which would also make philomel mean "lover of apples."

The evolution of -mel/-mela in words from Greek has a lot of overlap between the meanings of apples and songs to a point that it could, in all likelihood, easily mean both. The inclusion of apples also references what they consider the start of their relationship in Eden.

Nightingales are philomels-- lovers of music, of cant, of apples and of "apples." As many have pointed out, the French word for the nightingale is rossignol... but the birds are not the only thing that rossignol means.

A rossignol is also a skeleton key, or a master key. It's a key that unlocks all the other doors-- which is, functionally, what nightingales is in the series.

If you understand what a nightingale is, you've cracked the code enough to understand that there's a cant and you're figuring out how to speak it, which is also then how you can understand more about what you're watching through understanding more of what Crowley and Aziraphale are saying.

Rossignol became the French word for a skeleton key because of the Rossignol family, who created The Great Cypher that coded French state secrets for generations. It's a reference to a cant that was developed to keep France safe and Aziraphale plays on that when flirting with Crowley in S2.

"I went to Monsieur Rossignol's night classes in 1760."

"I went to" (past tense of to go to, euphemistic for to come) "Monsieur Rossignol's" (Monsieur is French for "my lord"-- this is "My Lord Nightingale's") "night classes" (night time; knights but lass in class = classy lass b/c Aziraphale's Lord Nightingale is Lord Gender Fuckery). French is also old slang for oral sex. Aziraphale learned how to speak it the hard way. 😂

Aziraphale's French flirtation to Crowley in this scene is also a riff on a phrase related to vocabulary, which, as we know, is what a cant is. He references la plume de ma tantes, which are those sentences you are taught when learning to speak a new language that are things you are probably never, ever, ever going to say in real life but which are worded in this way to teach you more vocabulary faster than you would otherwise learn it.

Frances McDormand's The Voice of God is largely reading passages from the Good Omens' novel in S1 and many of the things she is saying are la plume de ma tantes, as part of her job as a character is to help teach us Nightingales. Some examples: "He probably wins prizes for his tropical fish" and "The Russian cultural attache's black bread is particularly sought after by the more discerning duck."

Nightingales is then a word that references their cant but the cant is really two things. It exists to mask their speech in public so that they can really be saying sweet things to one another when sounding like they're bickering enemies on the surface but they also just love it. They love words and their history is also the history of words on Earth, as they're the ones who have been here since the beginning through these evolutions. They're walking, talking etymological dictionaries and wording each other is a literal love language. They use it in private, too, because they enjoy it.

A cant, fundamentally, is a private vocabulary. It's a type of dialect made up of giving existing words secret, private meaning known only to those who speak the cant.

If you have a partner or a long-time friend or family members where you have a series of in-jokes and references and words that mean something different to your small group than they would to outsiders, you actually speak a form of cant. This is called a familect and most of us speak at least one or two. Nightingales is a structured, secret code and it's a fun game that they love to play together but it's also just the private vocabulary of a couple.

This is where we're going to come back to caveat.

So, we can see why war into warning was a good way to signal the cant on television and start to explain it but what about how it was originally done in the novel? What's the pun there?

The book and the tv series have almost the exact same caveat/warning, as you pointed out. Other than changing the word caveat to the word warning in the tv series, the only other thing that's different is the very beginning of the second line.

The book is this:

CAVEAT

Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous! Do not attempt it in your own home.

The tv series is this:

WAR... WARNING

Kids! Causing Armageddon can be dangerous! Do not attempt it in your own home.

As you can see, the only other difference is the 'bringing about' from the novel being changed to 'causing' in the tv series. It'll seem weird that I'm going to say that this is not that big a deal but it's not and the reason why is because they didn't actually delete it entirely. They just moved it into a different la plume de ma tante within the same episode-- one that helps to reinforce that Armageddon has different layers of meaning. The "bringing about" is here in this bit:

This leaves us with the change from caveat and the significance of that word. Like the quick war/warning in the opening of 1.01, we can now expect that the caveat is there to talk about cant, right? And, in fact, it very much is.

First off, the caveat is located on the copyright page of the novel, which is where all the info about the book is located. This is where we can mention that the words that are in the caveat and the war/warning are phrased in such a way so as to immediately invoke an informercial.

When you read them, you most likely think of the phrase: "Kids! Don't try this at home!", right? The phrase is synonymous with infomercials of the '80s and '90s, in particular, where how something worked was detailed in the commercial as part of the enticement to buy it.

While the television floating in outer space in 1.01 is a visual metaphor for streaming television, there was already this television reference in the caveat in the book back when it was first published because the language of that medium was being used in this little message on the copyright page previewing how the product that the reader had bought or was thinking of buying worked.

Caveat is Latin for a warning and translates to "let the person beware." You've probably heard of people saying "buyer beware" as a disclaimer for a product, yes? That evolved from the famous Latin phrase that meant that same thing, which was caveat emptor.

Caveat emptor was a phrase meaning that the buyer was responsible for doing their due diligence on a product before deciding to purchase and use it. So, the book opens with the word CAVEAT shouted at the reader and what follows is actually the warning that people would need to be fulfilling the idea of caveat emptor... and only the word caveat appears on the page. The space next to it is, um, empty. There's the first pun of the book and the first hint at there being hidden words... but this isn't even the best part of the choice of the word caveat to open the novel.

Arguably the most famous book related to cant in history is a book called A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors. It's a book that lives at the intersection of religion and cant-- which feels extremely relevant to Good Omens, no?

The book is a purported expose of and glossary of one of the most well-known cants in history, which is Thieves' Cant. The things you need to know about Thieves' Cant is that an absolute fuckton of words we use still today with regards to criminality originated in Thieves' Cant... and that Thieves' Cant is generally considered to have been almost entirely (if not entirely) made up by Thomas Harman, who is the author of the above mentioned book.

The first word in Good Omens-- which features a made up cant designed to help queer code the novel so it could be published and sold-- is a reference to history's most famous made up cant that was also invented to sell books.

Here's another reference to a commercial cant before I tell you more relevant things about Thieves' Cant... Gabriel and the neato fan.

Gabriel is using the first novel of Discworld as a literal fan and there's also the fact that the Discworld books do make neato fans-- as in, fans of the books. The other meaning, though, is that, in the Victorian era, there was this thing called Fan Language that was a secret language completely made up by a fan maker whose sales were dipping to sell more fans. It took off in public, though, and people started actually using it and a fan, as a result, is one word that can be used to refer to a cant.

Good Omens' cant shares foundations with how language is used in Pratchett's Discworld so when Gabriel takes a copy of the first Discworld novel-- The Color of Magic-- and is like "books are keen!" (kee, homophone: key) and starts fanning it in Saraqael's face and saying that Discworld can make a "neato fan"...

Gabriel doesn't know it, of course, but, on a meta level, he's telling everyone that the cant is the brainchild of Terry Pratchett and comes from all of the evident love of etymology woven throughout his Discworld novels. It's saying that Discworld is one of the keys that are helpful to understanding the cant and how language is used in Good Omens.

[Some not at all subtle shade being thrown at You Know Who with this, as well. 😉]

This is also why the literal fans come out during The Meeting Ball when Aziraphale has taught the neighborhood a fan by miracling them all into having the ability to speak 19th-century styled Nightingales.

And, no, for the record, Ms. Cheng is not doing something with her fan that was an approved move in The Secret Fan Language of the Victorian era. 😂

The neato fan and fan language is referencing another cant that was made to use hidden language to sell a product to further the suggestion that Good Omens is doing the same. Another example of this, too, is in the references to The Maltese Falcon, which also used etymology-based queer coding to tell its story.

Crowley had a Maltese Falcon prop overlooking his communication devices (lolololol) in his flat in S1, where it was also positioned to create a shadow when the sun came through, having the effect of revealing a hidden pair of birds.

Back to caveat and the ties between Thieves' Cant and religiosity...

So, we all know from school who Martin Luther was-- he of the whole Protestant Reformation and eventual Lutheranism, etc.. There's a truly weird piece of his history, though, that relates to cant and also doesn't just go along with themes in Good Omens but has a disturbingly relevant connection to things going on in the world right now.

In the 1520s, Martin Luther comes out and starts telling anyone who will listen that even well-educated, Godly people like him can fall victim to thieves and be swindled. He claims that he's been robbed by a group of "vagabonds" who spoke "a secret dialect" to communicate between each other in a way that Luther couldn't understand. Martin Luther didn't just tell his friends about this-- he used his platform of that era to not shut up about it for quite some time.

Martin Luther went so far as to write the forward for the German edition of a book called Liber Vagatorum, which became known in English as The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars. It was a book that claimed to be the first glossary of what would eventually become known as Thieves' Cant (or Peddler's French). Liber Vagatorum was kind of an early days book on this subject, which involved the "culture wars" of this era.

Basically, during this time period, a few things were happening at once that made people like Martin Luther and other religious leaders very nervous. One was that, while books were still expensive, the population as a whole was rapidly becoming more literate. Religious fundamentalists do not like literacy because literate people are generally more liberal and much harder to control.

The other thing going on is massive wealth disparity causing there to be a large number of vagabonds-- people who are homeless and/or hungry, and whose only "crimes" are begging for money, loitering/sleeping in public spaces, and maybe some petty theft for food and medicine. They're not actually dangerous criminals but people who need help in a society with no social safety nets. Probably because of this wealth disparity, a thing called rogue literature becomes incredibly popular.

Rogue literature are stories about criminals. Some of them are about sympathetic, heroic, Robin Hood-type characters. Some of them are just about legit bad guys but maybe exploring areas of moral greyness or just having a villain for a protagonist. This is incredibly liberal storytelling for the very religious time period and popular fiction is exploding as a result. This world of more secular, more liberal imagination is threatening to those trying to keep their power through religion.

In order to thwart this, leaders like Martin Luther and others began to equate these "rogues"-- real and fictional-- with the demonic... and the vagabonds with the rogues. Stop me if this is sounding a little familiar, particularly if you're currently living in the United States.

Making this worse is that punishment for crime back then was fucking brutal. You could be hanged if you were caught stealing more than once. People were tortured-- the stocks, whipping people, all that stuff was commonplace. And there was basically no real separation of church and state so if the religious leaders said that things like hunger and homelessness made vagabonds as criminal as rogues and if those criminals were all demonic, then you can see the desperation happening here for social control, right?

Back then, as always, there some signal words that some thieves would use to know if they were speaking with someone who was friendly or to communicate without outsider knowledge but there wasn't this established, elaborate secret language that Martin Luther and others claimed there was. So, why did they claim that there was this thing?

They were looking to make rogues seem demonic and dangerous and empowering their flock to know how to fight the evil darkness living among them. Some believed that to be true but others were just drawn in because, ya know... secret codes and underworlds are kinda fun, actually? The church leaders told everyone that these rogues were all demonic and they spoken in a secret code and people got really into figuring it out. Most claimed they were doing it for pious, morally upstanding reasons... but everybody likes a good bit of hidden mystery.

The religious zealots of that time were trying to use this secret language thing to make rogues seem scarier and draw people closer to the church again and that probably worked for some but, overall, it pretty much backfired because people like a bit of fun mystery. It wound up making the rogue world all that sexier... whether everyone pouring over notes to decode it wanted to admit that or not. 😉

Think about references to other things like this in Good Omens... like how R.P. Tyler makes sure to watch all those "scandalous" programs on the BBC before he writes in to complain about them... because God forbid, he just admit that he likes a bit of spice in his television shows. Think about the jokes around The Velvet Underground which, before it was the tongue-in-cheek name of a brilliant rock band, was a bestselling book from the early 1960s that was a pearl-clutching "expose" of all the whole "secret world of deviant sex" that was existing all around everyone.

This is, fundamentally, all the same nonsense that was going on with the religious people going at those demonic rogues and vagabonds in the Thieves' Cant era and trying to shame people by saying enjoying popular literature was unholy. It's all about using religion as a form of social control.

There's always people who want to make a buck at the expense of others and don't really care about the morality of that, though, and this guy Thomas Harman saw an opportunity in 1566 to make some cash by publishing the book on Thieves' Cant (which he went full bigot on and also referred to as Peddler's French in his book.) Harman claimed expert status by saying that he had been taught the cant by an actual rogue but even plenty of people back then-- let alone pretty much every historian since-- thought that this sounded less than true.

Still! People like a secret code, man, and life was really boring back then. The book was a huge hit. Even writers of rogue literature who were pretty sure it was bullshit decided to put some of these words into their stories-- namely because many of their readers thought Harman's book was true and that this is how thieves'/rogues spoke so they were demanding "authenticity."

What happened is word evolution at its finest. As these books continued to exist into future generations, the cant Harman is thought to have personally invented to sell his book became the etymological origins of words related to criminality that are still really common in English. Amusingly, many of them have even been adopted by criminals themselves.

This is just a handful of words and phrases that originated from Thieves' Cant:

The mafia term "made man"; a fence being the term for a person who will sell stolen goods; the phrase die hard, which meant to face the gallows without fear; to flog meaning to whip; to grease (someone's palms) meaning to bribe them; to take a hike; to hoodwink someone; hush money; jail bird; to lift meaning to steal; to be left in the lurch...

This is only a sampling and it shows the impact of all of this well into today. The point is that Thieves' Cant is not just one of the most influential cants that has ever existed but it is also the most famous example of one that was not organically created. This guy sat down and wrote it in order to be able to sell a book.

The point in this reference here is that Thomas Harman was helping religious zealots in making up this cant to sell this book... while Good Omens is a satire of people exactly like Harman, Martin Luther, and these other religious zealots. The cant made up for Good Omens was done to queer code it so it could be published in a society that could barely tolerate the surface-level blasphemy of the book, let alone the queer romance at the center of the story.

Thieves' Cant was partially a tool of oppression while Good Omens' Nightingales Cant is a hidden language that exists to allow freer speech.

If you take the words-within-words rule and apply it to caveat, you quickly see the words cav, cave, and eat, right?

The eat makes sense to us pretty instantly because of all the food in the story and the role of Famine. Cav is a word related to horses (think: cavalier). So, now, we have food and horses, both of which aren't just euphemistic in Crowley and Aziraphale's cant but are part of the overall figurative language in the story and in things like The Four Horsepeople of The Apocalypse, whose job it is to start the war of Armageddon. Finally, and most importantly, there's the word cave.

Cave as a verb means to fall in. It's saying right up front that the story is about falling in all meanings of the word and that likely includes Aziraphale's fall here in the tv series. Consider the presence of the cave in the opening titles...

Caveat, as a word, shows what causes a person's own Armageddon, which is fundamentally what the story is about. It's famine. It's hunger. It's a lack of not just literal food but every kind of food-- it's lacking sustenance and satisfaction. It's when we push that away that The Four Horsepeople start to metaphorically show up at our door. That's when we're likely to fall-- to cave in, to collapse. That war within ourselves is for what the book is a warning.

I think that caveat has maybe actually found its way into the Good Omens tv series, if not quite at the start of the series. It's this visual warning in S2:

Kids! Causing Armageddon can be dangerous! Do not attempt it in your own home! There's some more things in here but just a quick look at some of these starter things here...

Kids!-- A note to pay attention to the multiple meanings of words, such as how kids is a word that applies to tiny humans and baby goats and, facetiously, people of basically any age; and also a note to be aware of wordplay using the animal kingdom.

Dangerous-- In the tv series, the word that basically single-handedly proves hidden language by how Aziraphale's use of it in the 1967 scene makes absolutely no sense without seeing that he and Crowley are speaking in a cant. ["I can't have you risking your life-- not even for something dangerous."] Take this apart and you find quite a few romantic things.

Do not attempt it in your own home-- One thing here is that this can be two, separate-but-related sentences: Do not attempt. It in your own home. But, if you look at words-within-words and homophony, this can also be a warning that seems true of many situations but also awfully relevant to the end of Season Two...

Do not/knot at tempt. It in your own home.

[courtillyy]

projects actually can be fun how about that ?

[swiftsaltsweet]

Me: Good news! I wrote like....12ish pages yesterday! :D Brain: Was it all attributed to a single chapter. Me: *walks away* Brain: WAS IT A SINGLE CHAPTER OR DID YOU JUST JUMP AROUND?! Me:

[andthebubbles]

i have four WIPs and at 11.13pm they have all stopped looking appealing:

- the madhouse fic (kathony, 1808, (pretty huge?) canon divergence)

- benedict the artist (a&b, modern AU)

- kathony parliament bill (if shonda can get rid of racism, then i too can make homosexuality legal)

- anthony + francesca + piano (just because i wanted to see anthony playing (or trying to play lol) the piano (and then i discovered that twinkle didn’t exist in the form that we know it yet, and für elise was written in 1810, and this fic is set in 1809... 😂)) (<- i was working on this one today!)

anyway i’m just writing this because for the past few days i was starting new fics whenever i didn’t feel like working on my existing fics, and now... we have a horde. but so far it’s a good horde.

i think i might wanna try have another go at the madhouse fic soon. i think/hope that once i get past this first meeting between kate and anthony, it might go smoother... maaaybe. at least for a little while. i have an urge to like, write some poor little meow meow anthony, so...

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

for whom good omens is being written

Hey maggots and the rest of the fandom, it's the Good Omens Mascot here. Today I read a post about this tweet:

The accompanying video genuinely made me cry. And I've been thinking about this for a long while, as far back as February, when I saw a lot of conflicting opinions on what people wanted from the third season. It really is true that no matter what you do, some people will be dissatisfied. But what matters is that Neil is writing this for Terry.

And I was reminded of some paragraphs from the Good Omens TV Companion, which I'd read in Amazon's sample excerpt of the book. I know this is a long post, but I really truly do think you all need to read these, I've done my best to select only the most important parts. Here you go:

'His Alzheimer's started progressing harder and faster than either of us had expected,' says Neil, referring to a period in which Terry recognized that despite everything he could no longer write. 'We had been friends for over thirty years, and during that time he had never asked me for anything. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from him with a special request. It read: “Listen, I know how busy you are. I know you don't have time to do this, but I want you to write the script for Good Omens. You are the only human being on this planet who has the passion, love and understanding for the old girl that I do. You have to do this for me so that I can see it." And I thought, “OK, if you put it like that then I'll do it."

'I had adapted my own work in the past, writing scripts for Death: The High Cost of Living and Sandman, but not a lot else was seen. I'd also written two episodes of Doctor Who, and so I felt like I knew what I was doing. Usually, having written something once I'd rather start something new, but having a very sick co-author saying I had to do this?' Neil spreads his hands as if the answer is clear to see. 'I had to step up to the plate.' A pause, then: 'All this took place in autumn 2014, around the time that the BBC radio adaptation of Good Omens was happening,' he continues, referring to the production scripted and co-directed by Dirk Maggs and starring Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap. ‘Terry had talked me into writing the TV adaptation, and I thought OK, I have a few years. Only I didn't have a few years,' he says. 'Terry was unconscious by December and dead by March.'

He pauses again. 'His passing took all of us by surprise,' Neil remembers. 'About a week later, I started writing, and it was very sad. The moments Terry felt closest to me were the moments I would get stuck during the writing process. In the old days, when we wrote the novel, I would send him what I'd done or phone him up. And he would say, "Aahh, the problem, Grasshopper, is in the way you phrase the question," and I would reply, "Just tell me what to do!" which somehow always started a conversation. 'In writing the script, there were times I'd really want to talk to Terry, and also places where I'd figure something out and do something really clever, and I would want to share it with him. So, instead, I would text Terry's former personal assistant, Rob Wilkins, now his representative on Earth. It was the nearest thing I had.'

(...) As Neil himself recognizes, this is an adaptation built upon the confidence that comes from three decades of writing for page and screen. But for all the wisdom of experience, he found that above all one factor guided him throughout the process. 'Terry isn't here, which leaves me as the guardian of the soul of the story,' he explains. 'It's funny because sometimes I found myself defending Terry's bits harder or more passionately than I would defend my own bits. Take Agnes Nutter,' he says, referring to what has become a key scene in the adaptation in which the seventeenth-century author of the book of prophecies foretelling the coming of the Antichrist is burned at the stake. ‘It was a huge, complicated and incredibly expensive shoot, with bonfires built and primed to explode as well as huge crowds in costume. It had to feel just like an English village in the 1640s, and of course everyone asked if there was a cheap way of doing it. 'One suggestion was that we could tell the story using old-fashioned woodcuts and have the narrator take us through what happened, but I just thought, “No”. Because I had brought aspects of the story like Crowley and the baby swap along to the mix, and Terry created Agnes Nutter. So, if I had cut out Agnes then I wouldn't be doing right by the person who gave me this job. Terry would've rolled over in his grave.'

And, finally, this paragraph:

"Once again, Neil cites the absence of his co-writer as his drive to ensure that Good Omens translated to the screen and remained true to the original vision. 'Terry's last request to me was to make this something he would be proud of. And so that has been my job.'"

I think that's so heartwrenchingly beautiful, and so I wanted you all to read this, too, just in case you (like me) don't have the Good Omens TV Companion. It adds another layer of depth and emotion to this already complex and amazing story that we all know and love.

Share this post, if you can, please, so that more people can read these excerpts :")

Tagging @neil-gaiman, @fuckyeahgoodomens and @orpiknight, even if you've definitely read these before :)

[katethevampire]

Okay guys I have a paper that I need to give my English teacher tomorrow where we had to like, draw metaphorical interpretations of a play that we read and add quotes from the text and stuff but I did not finish it at all. I do not have access to the book to write quotes can anybody come up with a good excuse that will maybe make her the least mad at me

[munch-mumbles]

kj post five hundred thousand lamenting the loss of my passion for drawing because its starting to feel like its never coming back

[plumso]

pure heart (theo x reader)

pairing: theodore nott x reader warning: obsessiveness, possessiveness summary: y/n found theo’s journal. now, she doesn’t know how to act around him. masterlist song recommendation: sweet by cigarettes after sex I do not consent to the reposting of my work! reblogging, however, is fine <3

The days have been bleak for Y/N — nothing exciting, nothing new. 

Obsessively self-conscious, she has limited herself. She rarely attends social events and avoids any interaction with men. She fidgets in her clothes, she avoids cameras, she overthinks everything she says - it has become too exhausting. She had given up. Now, she finds everything tedious and dull.

Until she found his journal.

Sept. 4 XXXX She looks so beautiful today. I wonder if that’s her perfume, or maybe that’s her natural scent. I wonder if her skin is usually warm or cold. I want to touch her. Y/N Nott.

Sept. 7 XXXX She laughed with some guy. I hate her. She’s too oblivious around men. But she’s too cute. I could never hate her. Y/N Nott.

Sept. 8 XXXX She looks so peaceful when she reads. Haha! She accidentally fell asleep for a bit. I love her so much. Y/N Nott.

Sept. 11 XXXX That guy came up to her again. Fuck him. She looks annoyed. Oh, she ignored him. Good girl. Y/N Nott.

Y/N gasped and shut the journal. Goosebumps were all over her arms, her breath was shaky. Her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest, and there was this tingling feeling in the pit of her stomach. It’s as if lightning shot through her, awakening every nerve in her body. After months of feeling down and exhausted, she felt truly alive.

But Y/N tried to shake off her conflicting feelings. Despite it seeming like the sweet ramblings of a boy with a crush, some were greatly disturbing. Who could have written this?

She had found the black leather journal left on a windowsill in a hall rarely passed. She looked around, thinking the owner was nearby, but no one was in sight.

Y/N then flipped through the journal. Pages and pages were all about her with each ending off with “Y/N Nott.”

‘Nott?’ Y/N’s eyebrows furrowed, wondering why it sounded so familiar. ‘Theodore Nott?’ 

Y/N shook her head. She refused to believe that this journal was from Theo, one of the most notorious Slytherin boys of her year. He’s always so quiet and emotionless. The only interaction she had with him was from a few years ago, but it was so insignificant that it could barely be considered a real interaction.

‘There’s no way that he could have written this,’ she thought. 'But I can’t leave this here. If anybody else sees this, they would think I wrote this about myself.’

After much deliberation, Y/N stuffed the journal in her school bag and headed for her dorm where she spent the rest of the night reading each entry.

***

The next day, Y/N woke up in a daze. With three hours of sleep, Y/N got through only half of the journal. There were many, many entries with the earliest dating back to two years ago, each entry became increasingly obsessive.

Throughout the day, Y/N felt foggy and her face was a bit flushed. She would only snap out of her daze when she became aware of Theo’s presence.

Theo was in all of her classes and he sat only a few seats away from her. Y/N never thought of it much before, but now, she found it strange considering she only has one or two classes with her friends.

During class, she would keep her head down and slightly tilt her head so she could take a peek at Theo. He looked the same as always - emotionless and cold. Could someone like him write such strange and emotional entries?

Y/N considered talking to Theo to see if the journal was his. Maybe test him by asking if he lost something recently. But she was unsure if she wanted to confirm it. She didn’t know if she could face the owner’s strong, overwhelming feelings. And she was somewhat scared of what could happen next.

A few days had passed, and Y/N was becoming worried that the owner YYwill soon approach her. But she couldn’t let go of the journal yet. She was a madman obsessed. In many of the entries, the owner of the journal would describe what Y/N wore. What she ate for breakfast. Who she talked to. Some entries seemed like sweet love poems while some showed stalker tendencies.

Y/N was conflicted. She knows how deranged and disillusioned the owner was. She was scared, yes, but she also felt excited. As she continued to read, all his strange ramblings were starting to sound sweet. She didn’t know if she should be creeped out or flattered. 

But Y/N knew that her time with the journal needed to end. She knew the owner was looking for their journal. She would sometimes feel goosebumps on her back as if someone was staring at her. When this happened, she would hurriedly leave the room. She thought of placing it back where she found it, but she needed to finish reading the journal first.

So, one night, Y/N went to the back of the library and made sure no one was around. She sat on the oak chair and took the journal from her bag. She then flipped to the first page. The ink was a bit smudged and the paper was a bit worn, but it had the same neat handwriting that she became familiar with.

Dec. 3 XXXX Went to Hogsmeade today, but I left the boys.  I didn’t feel like socializing today. Headed to Hog’s Head to read for a bit. I assumed no one would be there, but I was wrong. That quiet girl Y/N was there. She was reading, too. Whatever, I’m sitting far anyways.

Dec. 4 XXXX How come I’ve never talked to her before? She is so beautiful. So sweet. What book was she reading? I’ll have to find it in the library when she’s done with it. Does she know who I am? I should talk to her. No, I don’t want her to be creeped out. I’ll find a better way to talk to her. I think I’m falling for her. Y/N L/N Nott.

Y/N was incredibly confused. What happened that could have caused such a big change? She doesn’t even remember going to Hog’s Head, much less what she did that day.

Y/N furrowed her brows as she thought hard about her trips to Hogsmeade in the last two years. ‘I have been to the Hog’s Head before… but I don’t remember anything spe-

“So, you had it.”

A dark, low voice spoke behind her. Y/N jumped in her seat, goosebumps all over her skin. Just by their voice, Y/N felt shivers run through her back and that tingling sensation in her stomach.

But Y/N couldn’t move. She was frozen, too anxious to turn around and confront him. But she knew who it was. His voice was one she knows all too well.

Suddenly, Y/N felt his warm body lightly pressed on her back. He was now standing behind her. He then slightly bent over her as he flipped through the pages of his journal.

“Here,” he said as he stopped to a certain page. “Read this.”

Confused, Y/N slowly looked up, only to be met with a smiling Theo.

“Come on. Read it for me. Please.”

Y/N reluctantly nodded. “February 14 XXXX. Some boys left candy on her table. Bunch of idiots. I threw it all away. I wanted her to only have mine. It’s mint chocolate, her favorite. I know everything that she likes. I-I’m the only one who can treat her right…” Y/N trailed off, unsure if she should say the next part.

“Continue.”

“S-she’s mine. I love her so much. She’ll see that one day. Y/N Nott.” Y/N’s breath was shaky and her mind was becoming a bit foggy. She knew this situation wasn’t normal. He’s too calm. Too scary. But for some reason, she was filled with anticipation. 

“You were the one who gave me the mint chocolate?” Y/N asked, looking back up at Theo.

He nodded.

“And… you wrote this journal?”

He smiled. 

“I was searching everywhere for the journal. My name isn’t on it, so I wasn’t worried about getting caught. But… I didn’t want any more attention on you,” Theo said as took the seat next to her. “But then you started acting strange. You would get nervous around me. It was so cute.” He chuckled and the tingling sensation in Y/N’s stomach grew more prominent.

“I’m glad you found it,” Theo said as he gently took Y/N’s hand. “Now you know how much I love you. How much I think about you.”

Y/N’s mind was going haywire. She didn’t know what to think or what to say. Goosebumps were still all over her skin, but she could only focus on his sweet words and warm hands. 

“Y/N…” he trailed as he leaned closer to her. He placed her palm on his chest, purposely trying to make her feel his heartbeat. It was racing fast. “I couldn’t ask you on Valentines, but… will you be mine?”

When Y/N read through his journal, she knew he was dangerous. His feelings were too strong, too overwhelming. He was obsessive and possessive. She was anxious about what would happen if she reciprocated.

But as she looked at Theo’s handsome face with her palm on his broad chest, she felt seen and alive. His love, his sincerity - it’s hard to believe it’s all real. And it’s too intoxicating to deny.

“Y-yes. I want to be yours."

*** bonus: hog’s head interaction ***

December 3, XXXX

“Welcome!” The shopkeeper of Hog’s Head yelled as he filled up a cup of juice from behind the counter.

Theo scrapped the snow off his shoes before entering, unwrapping the scarf around his neck. “Black coffee, please,” Theo said before walking to the table farthest from the other customer.

Theo then rummages through his bag, taking out a book and his new leather journal. He received it from a teacher who recommended writing entries of gratitude or special moments. After putting it off for months, he finally set a goal for himself to write the first entry today.

As Theo wrote his first entry, the shopkeeper placed the black coffee on the table. He then went back to refill the other customer’s cup. Theo took a sip and observed the small figure of the other customer. She looked familiar. 

The other customer looked up from her book to thank the shopkeeper. She set her book down and slightly stretched her back before taking a sip of her juice. She looks around the building before spotting Theo. She jumped a little, startled to see someone else there. She was too caught up in her book to notice her surroundings. She quickly composed herself before giving him a warm smile. She then turned back around and continued with her book.

In that short moment, Theo was hooked. When she smiled, something within him suddenly clicked. As if he was now complete. Something within him changed, his desires growing and morphing. 

‘Y/N… what was her last name again? Ah, L/N. Y/N L/N. No… Y/N Nott.’

***

a/n: i do not condone stalking or extreme possessiveness. this is entirely unrealistic and fiction. however, it is nice to imagine that a handsome man is so in love with you that he's obsessed lol. i also named this "pure heart" for irony because he views his feelings as pure, but is it really?? also, for those into smut, you can definitely imagine this leading to an s x m dynamic, so it makes the title even more funny lol. anywho, hope you enjoyed it!

here is part two for more <3

[fangbanger3000]

we need to talk about The Silence and The Song

[PLEASE READ] edit to add: i realise that this post has been reblogged far and wide and that there is not a lot i can do about it now, but this is me trying anyway.

posting examples from the fic about my issues with its repetitive structure was careless of me, and i apologise to those of you who read it and became insecure about your own writing style. as someone who has worked with ai in academic settings, it's incredibly difficult for me to explain to you how the tone and structure of ai-generated fiction works and how, after reading enough of it, you can simply just tell. i do also realise that this is an incredibly weak argument, which is why i didn't include it when i originally wrote this post.

all that to say: there is an enormous difference between "beginner's writing" and ai writing. being repetitive as a new writer (or a seasoned one who just likes using repetition) is so normal. as is flowery/purple language. i've read hundreds of books and fics and the difference between these traits in ai-text and actual works is starkly clear. please don't feel anxious over the examples i've used in this post.

again, i apologise for any distress i have caused.

as per my last post, i have received a lot of encouragement to go public with this, and the more disappointed people i have in my dms, the angrier i get. so i will.

the silence and the song is an ancient arlathan au DA fic on ao3 by luxannaslut, and it is partly, if not entirely, written by an ai. i have no wish to be involved in any kind of fandom drama or witch hunting or bullying, but as a writer myself there are few things that piss me off more than watching people steal the work of others because they can't be fucked to write. it's disrespectful to your fellow writers, it's disrespectful to your readers, and it's disrespectful to the authors of the works the ai is stealing from.

ai is a plague that has no business being in creative spaces and you must do better.

the writing pattern

there was something very odd and monotone about the sentence structure of tsats that i couldn't quite place, so i fed chatgpt a prompt along the lines of "two people in a fantasy novel hate each other, but they secretly desire one another, and they kiss", and the screenshots above are the results. the third one is an excerpt from chapter 40 of tsats. the writing pattern is identical and it doesn't seem like the "writer" has even bothered to pretend they wrote it. if you're going to use ai, at least be sneaky about it. you know, paraphrase a little.

nonsense descriptions

"her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1).

fingers don't make sound, so what does quiet precision mean? as opposed to what? her joints cracking with every movement? how is a grip firm but tender? what does that mean? since when do embers pool?

the entire fic is littered with these adjectives that contradict each other or just straight up do not make sense, because all an ai does is generate descriptive language with no understanding of what the words it's spitting out actually mean. i could spend hours picking out examples from the seven billion pages worth of text, but i quite frankly have better things to do and would simply challenge you to try getting through a chapter or two without noticing the pattern.

repetition at structure-level

all the scenes in this fic are described in pretty much the same way. they open with purple prose vomit of the surroundings; solas is standing somewhere looking "unreadable as ever"; ellana's fiery golden molten fire copper ember ginger red hair is flowing this and that way; there's some dialogue with whoever is present and it leaves ellana feeling different variations of "something she couldn't name". this is, once again, a blatantly obvious sign of ai. below is the result of me feeding chatgpt the line "write me a scene from a fantasy novel where a woman with red hair is sitting on the ground in a magical garden at night", and side by side with that is the opening scene of the fic. make your own judgement.

repetition at word-level

this one speaks for itself. we fucking get it. her dress is orange, her hair is red, mythal's presence is heavy in the room, solas looks unreadable, compassion is sitting on her head like a crown, solas' ears are betraying him and ellana's move with every thought she thinks. we get it. the issue here is that an ai remembers the info you feed it, but not necessarily the info it shits out. if it's being told to write scene after scene of an elven woman with a gown that looks like fire doing xyz, it's going to do so with no regard for how many times the reader has already been informed of these details.

lastly: the breakneck speed

359,6k words in four weeks by a person who allegedly is employed and married and hasn't pre-written anything? no. any writer will tell you that this simply isn't possible. it absolutely infuriates me to see how much praise this "writer" gets for posting up to three full chapters in a day without anyone calling bullshit. i am pulling out my hair, you guys.

why i'm not going to live and let live this one

perhaps i would be less angry if the fic was some silly bullshit court intrigue Y/A stuff, but this is a text that handles very heavy and triggering topics such as SA, coercion, domestic abuse, and other things of the same vein. to sit back and put your feet up while having a robot write these extremely sensitive and very real human experiences with words it has stolen from texts written by actual persons is fucking heinous. the "writer" should be deeply ashamed of themselves and i'm sick and tired of watching people eat up their bs.

and on that note: the amount of people in my dm's telling me that they feel stupid and naive for not clocking this has infuriated me more than anything else. you're not foolish for this. being fed ai-generated bullshit is not what is supposed to happen on any creative platform and much less a fandom-centred one, so of course no one approaches a fic through that lens. fandom and fic writing is supposed to be about passion and the only person in this situation who needs to do better and change their behaviour is luxannaslut. polluting our creative spaces, wasting the time of your readers, and minimising the effort of actual writers who are working hard to provide content for us all to share and enjoy is vile and so, so lazy. i beg of you: do better.

[taeyongdoyoung]

hide and seek

summary: your best friend chan finds you've been fantasizing about him and decides to turn those ideas into reality... pairing: chan x reader genre: smut, best friends to ??? warnings: *cracks knuckles* cnc/primal play, wolf/bunny roleplay, mention of safewords, traffic lights system (yellow used), hide and seek, mentions of pee, chasing scenario, blowjob mouthfucking, hair-grabbing, degradation, leg cramping, knees hurting, kinda realistic, unprotected sex, missionary but he holds reader down, pet names, daddy kink (like once), breeding kink, creampie, aftercare, discussion of future scenario 👀 author's note: this will be the first part in a series, i haven't decided yet how many parts, maybe three? stay tuned if you're interested 🤍 part two & part three word count: 2.5k

Chan simply asks you if he can use your laptop while you’re having a shower since his battery died and he really needs to check something work-related real quick. After doing so, he can’t help but notice the recently opened pages. He doesn’t mean to pry, really. But it’s right there. And a quick look into his best friend’s mind couldn’t hurt…could it?

He is immediately captivated by this story you’ve apparently written and keep hidden in the drafts of your blog. It’s so…sexy and unlike anything you’ve ever talked to him about.

“Dumb little bunny, thinking you can get away from me,” the big bad wolf growls in the bunny’s ear.

The bunny whimpers helplessly, trying to escape the wolf’s strong grasp but to no avail.

The wolf takes the bunny from behind mercilessly, biting her neck and using her to please his needs...

What comes at the end of the story is what shocks him the most.

“Chris, please…”

Huh? Which Chris? Chris Evans? Or maybe Hemsworth? As far as he remembers, you have always been more of a Sebastian Stan and Tom Hiddleston kinda girl but…people change, he supposes.

Until it hit him. His name is also Chris! And people do compare him to a wolf…But no, it couldn’t be…There is no way his best friend is writing stories fantasizing about him.

Unless…

He can’t imagine going on with his life without knowing the answer. So, Chan waits impatiently until you are done with your shower.

“Everything good with your work thing?” you ask him calmly once you return to your room.

“Yeah, all is good. But I found something way more interesting on your laptop,” Chan blurts out meaningfully.

The expression on your face is enough of an answer. You look completely mortified, like a true bunny that is waiting to be devoured.

“I forgot to clear my history, didn’t I?” you murmur even though you already know what Chan has seen.

“That story wasn’t about Chris Evans, was it?” Chan wants to know though he suspects what the truth is.

You immediately drop to your knees in front of him, which takes him by surprise. Gripping his hand tightly, you look so cute and pitiful. He wants to ruin you. Wait, when did those feelings show up?

“I know it was wrong, Channie, believe me. But I just couldn’t help myself, okay? Nothing else helps me get off but this fantasy. I promise I won’t do it again, please don’t end our friendship! You mean the world to me, I’m so so sorry!”

“End our friendship?” he is completely stunned by your train of thought. “Why would I? I mean, you never meant for me to see it, so I think it’s okay to have certain…fantasies. But now that I did see it, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“We don’t have to talk about it, if it makes you uncomfortable,” you suggest.

“You’re right, we don’t have to talk about it. But how about I make those scenarios come to life?”

“Huh? You want to what now?” you can’t believe what you’re hearing.

“It can’t be satisfying, dealing with all these frustrations by yourself.”

“It really isn’t…” you confess.

“Then, let me take care of you. That’s what friends are for, right?” Chan chuckles.

“Let me get this straight, you wanna re-enact my freaky fantasies while still staying friends?”

“Um, sure, why not?”

You would be a fool to agree. This could mess up everything. But you would be an even bigger fool to reject his tempting offer.

“I’m in.”

“Great! Then, should we discuss boundaries and safewords and stuff?”

“No boundaries, no safewords, you can do whatever you like to me, I don’t care.”

“This isn’t right. What if I want to use a safeword?”

Oh. That thought never crossed your mind but perhaps it should have.

“How about this…if I want a scene to end, I’ll say red. I know you said you don’t need one, but just in case, feel free to use it. If we want to just pause for a bit, then yellow. Green is good to go. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, Chan. I mean, uhhh…do you want me call you something specific?”

“Whatever you like, babygirl,” he reassures you and pats your cheek. “Do you want to give this a try rightaway? Unless you’ve got other plans…”

“No way, let’s do this!” you practically jump at the opportunity.

“Alright. I’ll give you one minute to hide anywhere in this house. After that, I can do whatever I like to you.”

His words make you so thrilled that your heart threatens to escape from your chest because it’s beating louder than ever.

“If you find me,” you tease.

“Oh, I will,” Chan swears. “Now, run.”

You sprint out of your room and down the stairs, as he starts the countdown.

“Sixty…fifty-nine…”

Where should you hide? The living room doesn’t have any good hiding spots and neither does the kitchen. Under the table is too obvious. Your room would have been a good option but Chan is currently there, so it’s out of the question. The bathroom is right next to it, so once again, not a great idea. Then, it hits you. The basement! You don’t remember ever showing it to Chan so it will take him more time to think of it. You go through the door and run down another set of stairs leading to the basement. You see the perfect spot. A vintage wooden chest that just happens to be empty and is big enough to fit you if you squeeze in.

Okay, maybe not comfortable but you can survive in there for a couple of minutes. Once you’ve tucked yourself inside and closed the lid, you are suddenly hoping that Chan finds you quickly. Whatever he does to you can’t be worse than this tiny space. You didn’t know you had claustrophobia but in this very moment, you do. You can’t hear him from down here so you imagine he is looking through the other rooms first. After what feels like eternity, you finally hear steps. You are grateful that you recently peed before getting in the shower because the current situation would have undoubtedly made you wet your pants. As the steps approach, you begin to worry. What if it isn’t Chan? What if you’d forgotten to lock the door and now a complete stranger comes in to take advantage of you? No, these thoughts are irrational and make you want to use the bathroom. Ugh.

“I’ll give you ten seconds to come out and I’ll go easy on you.”

Chan’s voice both comforts you and freaks you out even more. You’re not coming out, alright. This spot was great! He can do whatever he wants to you.

“Three…two…one,” Chan finishes counting and opens the chest’s lid.

You look up at him, eyes blinking to adjust to the light. He pulls you out of it roughly.

“Last chance. Run.”

But then, you realize you were squeezed into that tiny space for so long that your leg had cramped up. You can’t possibly run right now.

“Um, sorry but yellow,” you feel like an idiot. You had said you don’t need a safeword and yet…

“What’s wrong?” Chan’s threatening gaze immediately softens and he rubs your elbow gently.

“I didn’t think I’d get a leg cramp in this freaking box,” you admit, ashamed of yourself as you shake your legs in an attempt to relax muscles.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Chan coos at you and helps you massage your leg. “Wanna call it a day?”

“Hell nah. Just, no more running, please.”

“Sure, that’s fine by me.”

“Sorry for ruining the mood.”

Chan shakes his head.

“You could never.”

“Okay, I think I’m good now,” you assure him.

“Scene?”

“Scene.”

“Did you really think you can escape me? Dumb little bunny…” Chan tsks at you and you feel your knees giving out. You need him so bad it’s not even funny anymore.

“Please, don’t hurt me, Mr. Wolf,” you plead with him even though every cell in your being would be glad to be on the receiving end of his anger.

“Oh, but where’s the fun in that? You should’ve locked your door to keep me out.”

If you tell him that you want him inside would it be too out of character for a scared bunny?

“I’ll do anything,” you promise crying. “I won’t tell a soul.”

“You’ll do anything regardless,” Chan smirks devilishly and grabs your hair harshly, pushing you to your knees. With his free hand, he unbuttons and unzips his jeans, wasting no time in pulling his cock out of his confines and stuffing your mouth full.

Fuck, your knees already hurt, probably because of that stupid chest but you choose to ignore the discomfort for now because this feeling of being dominated like that is too good to let go of.

“That’s it, take it like the useless cumslut you are,” Chan speaks degradingly but you’ve never been wetter before.

You wish you could say you are doing your best to give him a blowjob but the truth is you are not doing much, his hips thrusting forward aggressively, his hands gripping your hair. Your mouth is nothing but a cumdump for him. Your eyes are watering, vision is blurred. Your throat hurts too but it is nothing compared to the burning feeling in your knee. It is in that moment you realize that you didn’t discuss a signal for a situation where you can’t speak. You rack your brain for an alternative and remember that some subs opt for pinching their dom’s skin in an attempt to communicate discomfort. You really don’t want this to end but…

As you are overthinking this, you realize Chan’s already released his seed inside of your mouth and you are left with no choice but to swallow it up like the greedy cumwhore you are. Only for him, though.

His cock softens in his mouth but he doesn’t immediately pull out and only then, do you remember what you’ve been about to do.

You pinch his thigh lightly, looking up with moist, pleading eyes.

“What is it, darling?” Chan needs to know, taking a step back.

“Help me stand, please,” your voice is hoarse.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks as he grips your hands and leads you to sit for a while on the stupid chest responsible for your current pain. Okay, maybe, you brought this upon yourself but whatever.

“No, you were perfect, it’s just that my knees hurt. Fucking dumb wooden thing,” you grunt in frustration, punching it with your tiny fist.

Chan chuckles and strokes your hair comfortingly in complete contrast to how he was pulling it mere seconds ago. Then, he pulls you into his arms for a sweet hug.

“Sorry…I’m killing the mood again, aren’t I?” you pout.

“Not at all. Remember you’re in charge of whatever happens between us. You wanna pause, we pause. You wanna stop, we stop. I would hate myself if this doesn’t feel as good for you as it does for me.

“You feel good?”

“Are you kidding? Do you think I’d offer just anyone to fulfil their fantasies hidden in their drafts?” Chan laughs fondly.

“I’m glad you think so,” you smile at him gratefully. “I’m better now so if you’re still on board, we can continue.”

“I’m on board but let me come up with a new plan. I was thinking of fucking you doggy style but now that’s out of the question with your knee situation.”

Hearing him speak out loud what he was planning to do to you sends shivers down your spine. Damn it, maybe you should have just hidden under the table.

“How do you feel about missionary?” Chan inquires.

“Wouldn’t it be too intimate for the kind of scenario we’re doing?” you are doubtful.

“Not if I hold you down,” Chan murmurs smugly.

“Oh. Well, then…like I said, you can do whatever you like.”

“Action?”

“Action,” you confirm.

Chan wastes no time in pulling you up from your sitting position and pushing you down on the cold floor. He’s holding your wrists with one hand and undressing you with the other. Scratch that. He’s tearing your dress apart. It was never one of your faves.

“W-what are you d-doing?” you mewl at him.

“Shut the fuck up,” Chan commands.

He doesn’t bother with stretching you out because he sees you’re already soaking wet for him. Instead, he forces his thick cock inside of your tiny pussy.

Only this time, your screams are real and you’re not at all pretending.

“T-too b-big, it h-hurts,” you cry out.

“You can take it, bunny,” Chan says confidently.

You know that you can put an end to this with one simple word but damn, does it feel incredible to be stuffed full by your best friend’s large manhood.

“Shh,” he whispers in your ear. “This’ll feel so much better if you relax f’me.”

You’re trying, really. But it’s too much you feel like he’ll split you in half. Okay, maybe not a bad way to go but still.

“D-daddy, it h-hurts so m-much,” you slur mindlessly.

Wait, what did you just say?

“Daddy, huh? Easy, babybun, your wolf dad’s gonna take good care of you, I promise,” Chan’s words send you into overdrive and you come around his cock, your thighs are shaking and you’re arching your back. You can’t think anymore, you just need to be with him stuck in this moment forever. Soon enough, he releases his cum inside of your pussy.

You want to beg him to stay there for a while but you are too weak to speak.

Instead, Chan uses his fingers to push back the cum inside of your tiny pussy.

“Gotta make it stick. Will my bunny have my wolf puppies, huh?”

Oh? So, he’s that kind of guy. Well, you can’t say you mind...Besides, you’ve talked about this before and you’re on the pill so whatever he says is just for the sake of the scenario. Right?

“Was this okay?” Chan intends to find out and judging by his soft tone that is just begging to be praised you can tell that the scene is over.

“You did amazing, Chris,” you sigh wistfully and kiss his cheek.

“Better than your fantasies?”

“You have no idea.”

“So…when can we do something like this again?”

“Gee, let me have some water, at least,” you joke but your best friend (?) takes it literally and scoops you up in his arms, heading towards the stairs.

“Wait, where are we going?”

“To get you water, of course. And have a bath. And then to bed.”

Fuck. Maybe staying friends will be more complicated than you initially thought.

Once you’ve both been hydrated, washed up and dried out, you are cuddled in your bed, sharing snacks.

“Do you want to try something more extreme next week?” Chan asks casually. As if what you just did wasn’t already pretty intense.

“Um, sure? What exactly did you have in mind?”

“Kind of an outside setting. It will take some planning to make sure there aren’t other people but…it just came to mind while we were in the basement.”

“Tell me more about it,” you blink curioisly and put your hand on top of his.”

“So…how do you feel about being chased in a forest?”

To be continued…

[my-castles-crumbling]

vow - Jegulus microfic - @into-the-jeggyverse - word count: 255

“So,” Sirius said casually, sitting next to Regulus on the couch in the flat Regulus and James shared, “have you confessed to James yet?”

“I’ve no idea what you mean,” Regulus nearly-growled, staring at the blank pages of the little notebook he held in his hand.

“No idea? So you’re still pretending that you wrote your vows ages ago, then?” Sirius smirked, crossing his arms.

Regulus kicked out, hitting his brother in the knee. “Mind your business, asshole.”

But it was true. In their relationship, he’d always been the one to struggle with expressing his thoughts and feelings. The one to show his love through small gestures and affectionate eyerolls. It wasn’t the idea of marrying James that scared him…he was more sure about that than any other decision he’d ever made…but the thought of confessing his undying devotion in front of a crowd of over a hundred people was getting more and more terrifying as the day grew closer.

“Reggie, listen,” Sirius said softly, taking the book from his hand, “I get it. I nearly pissed myself when I had to say my vows-”

“Oh, that’s bullshit, you love attention,” Regulus interrupted, rolling his eyes.

“When people are laughing!” Sirius shrugged. “Not when it’s…serious,” he smirked. “But trust me. When the time comes…it’ll feel like you’re the only two people in the room. Just….write like you’re going to talk with him, and nobody else, okay?”

Regulus met his eyes, and slowly nodded. “Okay,” he mumbled.

And, taking the book back, he began to write.

[montagoves]

redamancy | jason todd

genre: comfort x3

warning: jason todd

summary: jason is reminded of how much he loves you–and how much you love him

a/n: after a handful of failed tinder dates, i just needed to write something to remind myself that if no one got me jason todd got me

Redamancy: a love returned in full

The word itself stems from the New Latin redamantia, and from the Classical Latin redamō meaning, “I requite love”. How we translate redamancy is this: a love returned in full; an act of loving the one who loves you; the act of loving in return.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but the clicking sounds from your last-minute essay writing and the soft sounds of The Cranberries had lulled him into the first real nap he’s taken in the last few months. The book he had barely gotten a chapter through laid over his face, blocking the overhead lights you both hated but you swore made you more motivated to do homework. In reality, you just hated them so much that it drove you to work quicker so you could turn them off as soon as you were done. 

You had a lot of small things like that – things that made Jason’s heart swoon in a way he didn’t think it was capable of. Like when you tell him that pile of laundry would eventually get done, you just had to get hit with the cleaning zoomies which occur “approximately every 3-4 weeks.” And when you do get hit with the cleaning zoomies, you put on your headphones, blare Deftones, and deep clean your entire apartment. You could spend hours cleaning the bathroom, neglecting all your other responsibilities. 

Like eating your meals, which in that case Jason always came to your rescue. He’d pat your pretty head and once you took off your headphones and looked up at him with those eyes, he’d tell you he made your favorite meal. You’d reluctantly go to eat with him, and after enjoying the meal with your lover you’d feel lazy. You’d blame him for ruining your motivation, and Jason would just kiss your sweet lips and tell you he could find a way to motivate you again. 

Jason also likes the way he feels when you look at him. You two would be over at Roy’s place, Lian in Jason’s lap as Roy talked about some sports team that pissed him off recently. And Jason would be bouncing Lian in his lap or mindlessly curling her hair with his fingers. Roy’s voice would fade into the background and your focus would only be on Jason – on that smile that creeps on his face whenever Roy curses and Lian repeats it, on the way his eyes seem to gleam whenever he glances over at you, on the way you picture him holding your child, which you two have talked about but you’re both far too young to consider now. 

And Gods, when he catches on to you staring, his hands get clammy the way they did when he first met you. His cheeks turn as red as his vigilante helmet and he noticeably clenches his jaw to keep from nervously laughing. He’s never been looked at with that much love before. He’s had you by his side for years yet he still hasn’t gotten used to the feeling. 

What is he supposed to do when he wakes up to the feeling of you perching yourself on top of him during his nap? He remains still, for the most part, feigning sleep as you try to get comfortable. You must have finished your essay because from under his book’s pages, he can see a candle flickering, the smell of whiskey and vanilla filling the small apartment. He’s quick to close his eyes when you gently move the book away. He hears you take his bookmark, one you had handcrafted yourself, and save his page before setting the book aside. He feels as you lay down fully, your head resting on his chest and your arms attempting to wrap around his waist. Your head moves as Jason’s heart flutters, and your lips brush his jawline in a way he’d only let you do. 

“Baby,” you whisper to him, your hand moving to brush the bangs away from his face. He pretends to be woken up, his eyelashes fluttering open to see you. 

“Hi,” he manages to whisper, making a smile form on your lips. You lean in and nuzzle your face against his neck, and a shaky breath leaves his lips. 

“How’d you sleep?” you mumble against his skin. He slowly moves his hands, slipping them under your hoodie so he can hold your hips. You feel so warm. 

“Fine,” he mumbles back, watching as you lift your head. You look like Heaven, and Jason’s heart is pounding so hard against his chest he fears it may explode. 

What a beautiful way to die, he thinks. 

“Finished your essay?” he asks, his hand reaching out to cup your cheek. His thumb slowly brushes your chin, then traces your bottom lip. You blush, leaning against his palm. 

“Mostly,” you admit sheepishly. “You looked so comfy and I was starting to get a headache, so I wanted to cuddle with you. I’ll finish it tomorrow morning.”

He bites back the smile you never fail to produce, and his thumb pulls back your bottom lip. 

“That can be arranged,” he says, tucking your outgrown bangs behind your ear. His fingers trace along your earlobe, fiddling with the earrings you wore. A peaceful silence falls over the two of you, and Jason’s extremely aware of the look in your eyes. His cheeks twinge that red shade, and he clenches his jaw. 

“I love you,” you finally whisper. He gulps, his eyes flicking to yours. At that moment, he swears no one could make his body react in the way you managed to do. 

“I love you too,” he whispers back after a few moments. The words are new to him, almost sounding foreign on his tongue. But he makes an internal promise to practice this language for you. 

He practices it as you lean down and press your lips to his. He cups the back of your head to bring you closer, in an attempt to become one. You let out a soft sigh that makes his body shiver, and you pull away with yet another gorgeous smile on your lips. 

You lay on him again, your head resting in the crook between his shoulder and neck. Jason’s fingers thread through your hair as soft snores leave your lips. 

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but your body on his makes his eyes shut and his arms move to rest around your shoulders. His muscles relax and his heart returns to its natural pace. He feels you shift for a moment, your lips brushing his neck to give him one final kiss. To remind him you’re here, and that you’re not going anywhere. 

Another thing Jason loves about you – you love him back just the same.

[arieslost]

talk | op81

summary: oscar loves to talk your ear off.

word count: 1,276

masterlist — join my tag list here!

© arieslost 2024. DO NOT REPOST WITHOUT PERMISSION.

everyone who had told you that oscar piastri wasn’t much of a talker was a bold-faced liar.

that, or maybe they just never got to see that side of him.

before you started dating oscar, you totally believed it. the first few interactions the two of you had were awkward and brief, usually ending in you thinking that he actually hated you and only engaged in small talk to be nice.

the oscar you know now is nothing like the oscar you first met, and even though you’ve been with him for the better part of two years, his ability to talk for hours is still as shocking to you as it was in the beginning.

it started out innocently enough. the first time you hadn’t been able to attend a race, oscar called you the moment he was back in his hotel room. you’d only been dating for five months at that point, and you vividly remember your shock when you accepted the facetime call and he started talking at a mile a minute. you’d barely gotten out a “hello” before he started recapping his entire day in precise detail. he didn’t even stop to take a drink of water in his enthusiasm.

that turned into the two of you developing a routine. every time you couldn’t make it to a race, oscar would call you at the end of the day and tell you everything he’d been dying to tell you.

“you could text me some of this stuff, you know,” you told him once, and he had wrinkled his nose cutely.

“why would i text it to you when i can just tell you about it on the phone?” he’d responded, like your suggestion was completely outlandish.

it’s endearing, really, the way he’s always so excited every time you pick up the phone. like he is right now.

“hi, honey!” he says brightly the moment the call connects and you can see each other’s faces.

“hey, oz,” you smile, your mood immediately lifting at the sound of his voice. “how was your day?”

“oh, i have so much to tell you,” he leans forward, his hair obscuring the camera for a moment before he leans back with a piece of paper in his hand.

“what is that?” you ask, watching as he unfolds it.

“this, my love, is my list.” he says, turning it around so you can see the way the page is full of his writing, not only on the lines but in the margins, too. “if i can read my own handwriting.”

“busy day?” you pull the hood of your sweatshirt further over your head so it covers more of your screen.

“you have no idea. i don’t even know where to start.” he sighs, eyes scanning the paper before he looks back up at the camera. “but i want to hear about your day first.”

“ah, it was okay. boring. i got so used to traveling around with you that i don’t know what to do now that i’m home all by myself.” it’s a lie, of course.

you wouldn’t miss oscar’s birthday for the world, and that was why you’d been so believable when you told him that you were so sorry, but you couldn’t make it to japan for the next race. even thinking about not being with him for his birthday was enough to upset you, so he bought it easily. conspiring with mark and lando, you’d gotten your hands on a plane ticket and formed a plan to get to the hotel with oscar being none the wiser.

which is how you’re here, at the end of the hallway on his hotel floor, waiting for the perfect time to interject.

“oh, i have to tell you about how free practice went, the second session, not the first,” he’s saying, squinting a little at the paper. “i wrote it over something else and i can’t see what it says. whatever. anyway, it’s raining here, and, like, half the cars didn’t end up going out for the second session. i was just trying to do my best for the session but i ended up setting the fastest lap! i didn’t even know until i got out of the car. did you watch? i don’t know if you did, i forgot to ask you, but i think it was a 1:34 or something like that. i could’ve been faster, obviously, but it was raining. its still raining right now actually which kind of sucks. i wouldn’t mind if you were here, but it’s just miserable and cold.” he pauses to take a breath. “wait, where are you?”

well that you weren’t expecting. “at home… where else would i be?” you reply, hoping that your confusion looks genuine.

“your background looks… i dunno.” he presses his lips together. “doesn’t look the same.”

“well, i’m at home,” you repeat, trying to come up with something on the fly. “pretending that i’m talking to you face to face instead of through the phone, like always.”

“ah, yeah. i do that all the time,” he admits, giving up on his scrutinization of what little he can see behind your hood.

“i miss you,” he says then, and its absolute hell knowing you can’t knock on his door just yet.

“i miss you too, oz.” you whisper. “keep telling me about your day?”

“sure, honey.” he gives you a soft smile, once again consulting his piece of paper. “so after the second session, i went and got dinner— oh wait, i forgot to tell you what happened earlier! i left the hotel room—”

you were hoping to let him tire himself out a bit from talking so much before approaching the door, but with every little detail of his day he shares you wish more and more that he was saying it directly to you and not through the phone, so you give up on being patient and knock three times.

“hold on, baby. someone’s at the door.” he says on the other end of the call, getting up from where he’s sitting on the bed and leaving his phone behind, so you end the call to free both of your hands.

the look on his face when he opens the door is priceless. “you’re joking.”

“i figured you should tell me the rest in person,” you say. “besides, i’d be damned if i missed your birthday.”

“you’re joking,” he repeats, pulling you and your suitcase into the room and wrapping you into a tight hug. “you’re actually here.”

“of course i’m here.” you laugh, kissing his shoulder through the loose material of his worn out t-shirt. “i don’t want to be anywhere else but here.”

“i’m so happy,” is all your enthusiastic, talkative boyfriend says before kissing you, smiling against your lips the whole time.

“you hung up on me?” its the first thing he says once the two of you are cuddled up in bed, and your jaw drops.

“seriously? i’m right here, and you’re gonna come for me for hanging up on you?”

“i would never hang up on you, but whatever,” he rolls his eyes, but cuddles you closer all the same. “okay, you have to know what lando told me last night about this one thing he did over winter break. it doesn’t sound bad at first, but i promise you it gets so much worse.”

you sigh in content, happier than anything to be in oscar’s arms and listening to him talk your ear off for the foreseeable future. you would never lie about it— you don’t want to be anywhere else but here, with him.

note: happy oscar dayyy!! wishing my fellow aries the best birthday ever and i hope you all enjoyed this 🫶🏼 i low key hate it but hopefully that’s just me lolz

my inbox is always open for comments, criticism, and conversation! feel free to pop in!

reblogs are greatly appreciated <33

tags: @venusacrossthestars @67-angelofthelordme-67 @emails-i-can-send @nelly187 @cixrosie @fangirl-dot-com @sainzluvrr @imheretoread @mellowarcadefun @yourbane @monsieurbacteria6 @c-losur3 @papayatori @ssprayberrythings @namgification @maih23 @evlkking @witchycarmen @ilovethispookie @maxverstappenfan79 @sya-skies @sweatrevenge5436-blog @kimis-gloves @mia-rrrs @decafmickey @customsbyjcg-blog @bigheartsthings @tania2748 @scuderiadevils @iloveyou3000morgan @ctrlyomomma @hiireadstuff @daemyratwst @arian-directioner @evelyn-ny @avg-golden-retriever @likedbygaslyy @lightsoutletsgo

[gin-juice-tonic]

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

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

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

It’s about the rats.

You know, the rats.

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

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

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

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

Of the book, that is. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what exactly am I trying to say here? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[clovers-housetree]

Activities for Regressors Without Caregivers! (or just fun regression activties!)

(Although you're always welcome here if you'd like any form of comfort anyway! ^w^)

This one's kind of a long one, after the few tips I list, I've mentioned an app I use called Finch, which will be talked about below the cut.

Since that's the case, I'll put my little ending message here instead:

Knowing how to take care of yourself can take a lot of work and practice, but I believe it's worth the effort, because then you'll be a happier and healthier you! Especially if you can find ways to make it fun!

I'm more than happy to be here for you and offer my support in any way I can, anyhow! I'm proud of you for doing what you can, I know it can be very hard.

I myself don't have a caregiver for when I regress, so most of the time I end up taking care of myself! Here are some fun activities and things I do when I regress to keep myself calm and happy! ^w^

Paci mentions/pics not long after the first section for those of you who'd rather not see 'em.

♥ Arts and crafts! I absolutely LOVE coloring and making bracelets with beads, something not too complicated for little hands, but also something fun!

With coloring, you can buy coloring books, or draw something of your own to color in- even printing out a page you find online, coloring digitally, or tracing over something to color in could work! I prefer coloring more than drawing personally because I don't draw all the time, but I bet I could learn a little thing or two from the artists around here!

For bracelets (and other jewelry), strings can be hard to knot with little hands (at least they aren't those small, slippery clasps!!), but the beads shouldn't be too hard to handle if you're careful! Even just planning out patterns is fun!

Here are some My Little Pony bracelets I made, and the decorations I did for my pacis!

♥ Making playlists! Dancing is fun, and a good way to get the zoomies out, but you can just make playlists for any occasion! I have playlists that help me pet-regress, songs with sounds I like, adventure playlists... (Well- a lot of these are still in progress, but- you get the point!)

I also love those playlist videos on YouTube! Animal Crossing, Super Mario Galaxy, Minecraft and music box music are typically my go-to to help me settle or just make for comfy background music! Here's one of my favorites, shadowatnoon has lovely Nintendo music mixes!

♥ Playing with your plushies! You can take them on adventures, or make your own!

Like Toby, climbing The Great Pillow Mountain!

(This is Toby by the way, he's one of my best friends and a VERY good hugger!)

You can play games with them, too! Toby's REALLY good at hide and seek... Maybe you can find him for me? :0

♥ Finding shows to watch! I really like Paw Patrol and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the moment. Plus, you can look at agere content and fics from shows you like! People make really cool stimboards and moodboards, for example, and I like reading through all the fun stories people write!

Here's a silly picture of Rocky I found! :3

Finch

Finch is a self-care app where you take care of your very own little bird friend by taking care of yourself!

You can set daily goals, or for each day (or more specific ones as well I think.). By completing these goals, you give your bird energy to go on adventures! They usually come back with a funny little story or silly questions, because they're learning, too!

Through completing these goals (or daily, at least), you can get Rainbow Stones, which you can use to buy clothes for your bird, make them different colors, or give them furniture for their house!

They're also LGBTQ+ and disability-friendly!! :3

This is my little bird, Honeydew! You're welcome to friend me as well if you'd like, my code is: Z3E2T7VRK6

It's helped me learn a lot about taking care of myself and keeping track of my goals, and I get little rewards for it! I've used the app for several months now, and it's helped me out a lot!

"Fluttershy protects this blog! SFW interaction only, please and thank you! ^w^"

"Wouldn't show a kid? Doesn't belong here!"