#now you have to do a version of that labour for yourself

[not-poignant]

random genuine question. how do you write a book? I've written multiple fanfics successfully and want to be a full time author nothing too crazy but just enough to make a good living. But I'm finding myself stuck when it comes to executing my original ideas. I plan them out well but when it comes to the acts/chapters and actually writing I can't seem to pull the trigger. I understand it takes time and I may just be overthinking but still I'm worried I won't be able to execute.

Hi anon,

You are probably better off asking someone who writes books for a living, because I definitely don't, and when I did publish two novels, they have never done as well as my serials (and writing a serial is very different - for me at least - to writing a book). Like, they did moderately well, but I consider myself a professional serial writer and not a novelist, and those two things are 100% not the same thing. (Which is also maybe where you're struggling.

Writing fanfics successfully can often have zero bearing on whether you can (or want to) write a novel. Writing one is not writing the other! The processes are totally different, unless you were just writing novels and splitting them up into serial chapters and then, well, you wouldn't be here asking this question sdalkfjad)

There are some great novel-writing books out there, and many can be requested through libraries, and many of their authors have blogs or similar where they teach many of their techniques online. There are so many different ways of structuring a novel (and it can change depending on your genre, and I don't know what your genre is either!) I can't recommend any personally, because I don't read them, because I don't really write novels.

When it comes to actually sitting down and actually writing anything of length though, it's sometimes down to asking yourself a few things:

What feelings are happening in you that hold you back? Are you afraid it won't be good? (In which case there's no way but through, anon, you have to write some bad writing in order to get to the good writing, it's a mandatory part of the practice - a garden needs shit/manure in order to grow, lol).

Are you bored because you planned it all out? (In which case you may need to look into writing novels without plotting them first).

Are you more excited for future chapters instead of present chapters? (Write out of order! And make the present chapters shorter).

Are you more interested in fanfiction's regular feedback from readers? (In which case consider creating a reader group for your original writing, or finding a really good beta who can give you that feedback). (I can't get dopamine from writing novels, so I don't write them, I just find the process boring in a way that's pretty intolerable to me).

Is the novel too huge of a road into meeting your characters and setting/s in prose? (Consider writing small oneshots for your characters and world first. Consider writing side characters in the world in a 2-3k fic. Treat it like responding to a fanfiction challenge. It can often make access to the world a little easier).

Is something about the story actually broken? Do you need to go back to the drawing board re: the strengths of the characters?

Learn how to fall in love with your characters the way you've fallen in love with fanfic characters. If they're not strong enough to earn that 'love'/'obsession' - make them stronger. (Although, frankly, sometimes you can only learn that love by writing them. Think of it this way: When you start writing fanfiction, you've already invested hours of time into learning the characters and their depth. You need to invest at least the same amount into your own characters and their stories before you might stumble across that same love).

Outside of that you can apply any number of techniques to novel writing, but ultimately, a lot of it is sitting down and just writing (sometimes pretty terribly) and learning how to overcome writer's block and understanding why it's happening for you.

For me, I learned that the cons of writing novels just didn't outweigh the pros. The lack of dopamine feedback re: readers doesn't play well with my unmedicated ADHD brain, which means writing to no feedback at all tends to leave me extremely unmotivated. And fitting the novel formula re: story lengths ultimately just didn't work with me either, most of my long stories naturally hit or exceed the 250k mark, which is fine for serials, but not fine for most novels outside of epic fantasy or hard science fiction.

So I would also recommend sitting down and asking yourself what did fanfiction give you that made you able to write it? And what do you need novel writing to give you, to make you able to write it? Likewise, ask yourself - do you want to write original novels? Or original serials? There's a good market for both now, and novels =/= serials. Like, they are naturally written in different ways!

Do you think you would struggle to write an original serial the same way that you're struggling with novels? All of these things are important to ask yourself.

But ultimately, just... I hate to say it, but sometimes you have to force yourself through the struggle, and write stuff while groaning because you know it's bad, to get to the other side. It's like learning any new skill - and fanfiction writing does not naturally lend itself to writing novels with everyone! You are learning a brand new skill!! Just because I know how to draw with pencils doesn't mean I know how to paint with watercolours, and I may be even more intimidated to learn watercolours because I know now how long it took to get the hang of fanfiction. Sometimes you just have to actually sit yourself down and be like 'okay I have to get real good at being real bad at something for a little while, even if I hate it.'

Chances are it won't be as bad as you think anyway, and then even if it is, well that's a normal part of writing a novel. That's why the first draft is the first draft, and not the final product. :)

[p0orbaby]

She’ll Know Me Crazy, Soothe Me Daily

summary: you go into labour (leah’s version)

warnings: mentions of pregnancy and labour, who’d have guessed

a/n: i got a request for this and dropped everything at work to write it so if i get fired it’s your fault !

word count: 1.8k

-

It’s three a.m., and you’re lying in bed in that half-dream, half-wake state, thinking about nothing and everything at once—plans, names, logistics, the strange feeling in your back, how Leah’s snoring sounds almost like a broken radiator. You’d drifted off earlier with the usual suspects on your mind—last-minute nursery tweaks, what it’d be like to actually meet this new person, how you’re supposed to keep them alive once they’re here.

Then suddenly you’re very awake. And aware. The kind of aware that has you blinking up at the ceiling, trying to gauge if you’re imagining this, if maybe it’s all just part of the anxious last-few-weeks-of-pregnancy weirdness. But no, no. It’s real. The sensation you’d ignored all night is now gripping you in a way that’s impossible to ignore.

Your waters have broken.

You’re in labour.

In the midst of grappling with this sudden, primal realisation that your body is not only capable of this but actively doing it, your first instinct is to look to Leah. After all, this is the same Leah who can keep her head in the midst of a stadium of screaming fans, who’s always told you, right up until yesterday, that she’s “got this, babe.” The same Leah who’s been planning this night in her head like a military operation—bags packed, snacks labelled, an entire eight-page birth plan on the kitchen counter with sections highlighted in three colours. She’s got this.

You roll over and give her a shake. “Leah,” you hiss, breath short and tight, like you’re hoping the urgency will slip through the layers of her sleep.

She doesn’t stir. Instead, she mumbles something incoherent and continues snoring, entirely oblivious to the fact that you are, in real time, about to bring a whole new human into the world.

“Leah,” you say, louder now, and with a sharper jab to her shoulder. “Leah, wake up. My waters just broke”

This gets her. She bolts upright, eyes bleary and unfocused, looking around with all the awareness of someone woken up by a fire alarm. She has one sock on and her hair is falling out of her bun in every direction, sticking to her forehead in curls that make her look, for lack of a better description, entirely unhinged. What?” she blurts, looking at you like you’ve just told her the moon’s fallen out of orbit.

“I said, my waters just broke. I’m in labour”

She stares at you blankly, and then at the clock. “Now? Like…now, now?”

“Yes, now, Leah. That’s how it works”

“Oh… oh my god. Okay. Right.” She throws herself out of bed, hands flailing a bit in what could generously be called an attempt to find her balance, looking every bit like she’s just woken up in the middle of a burning building. She blinks, rubs her face, and then stares around the room with all the sharp focus of someone who’s lost all concept of time, place, and purpose.

She begins moving around the room, grabbing objects seemingly at random—a pair of your slippers, a half-empty water bottle, the book she’s been reading that she still hasn’t finished because every time she gets to a chapter break she’s distracted by some tangent or half-thought that spirals out of control. You watch as she picks up her phone, only to immediately drop it in a panic.

You try not to laugh. You fail, slightly, but she’s too distracted to notice.

“Hospital bag,” you remind her. “By the door”

“Right, yes. The hospital bag.” She says it with the blankness of someone who’s just been reminded of the existence of the universe itself. She nods emphatically, almost comically, and rushes out of the room, one sock on, one sock off, muttering, “Hospital bag. Yes. By the door. Got it”

For a few blissful seconds, she’s out of the room, and you can breathe, collecting yourself in the strange solitude. You can’t help but feel a strange, surreal amusement in the whole thing—after months of birthing classes, of Leah listening intently to the instructor, nodding along like she was studying for the final exam, of stacks of books and bookmarked articles and quiet reassurances that she’d be ready…she’s now charging through the house like a headless chicken, her panic almost louder than the quiet early-morning calm.

She’s back in less than a minute, looking absolutely horrified. “It’s… it’s not there”

“What do you mean, it’s not there?”

“I mean it’s not—by the door. I don’t see it. Did we…did we put it somewhere else?” She’s visibly panicking now, eyes wide and darting around as if the bag might materialise if she looks in enough absurdly irrelevant places, like the windowsill or behind the potted plant.

“It’s by the door,” you repeat, managing to keep your tone steady and encouraging, despite the fact that you’re, oh right, currently in labour.

“Right,” she says again, nodding in a way that looks almost mechanical. “Right, yes. By the door. Of course”

She’s off, scrambling out of the room with one sock half-off, muttering the word “bag” to herself like it’s some kind of holy incantation. The momentary peace of her absence gives you a moment to focus on your breathing, inhaling deeply and exhaling in slow, measured counts, trying to recall the absurd number of hours you spent watching labour tutorials and wondering if any of that information will come back to you now, in the thick of it.

Moments later, she returns, this time clutching the bag triumphantly in one hand. Her face is a strange mix of pride and exasperation, like she’s just conquered Everest but is deeply unimpressed with the mountain.

“Got it,” she announces, as if the sheer act of retrieving it from the entryway deserves some sort of medal. She sets the bag down on the bed with an air of absolute finality, as though the weight of the world has been lifted from her shoulders.

You smile at her, keeping your voice calm. “Alright, love. Let’s get dressed and head out”

“Dressed,” she echoes, her face going blank again as if the concept of clothes is suddenly beyond her comprehension.

“Yes, Leah. Clothes. You might want to put some on”

For a long moment, she stares at the wardrobe as though it’s some kind of cryptic puzzle. Then, with an almost bewildered shake of her head, she pulls it open and begins pulling out clothes at random—a pair of jeans, a jumper she only wears when it’s freezing, and, inexplicably, a thick wool scarf.

“Leah, it’s June”

She freezes mid-scarf-wrap, blinks, and slowly unwinds it. “Right, yeah. June. Good. Warm.” She tosses the scarf aside, looking faintly sheepish.

“Hang on… should I call someone? I feel like we should call someone. Do we… call 999? Or is that just for emergencies?”

“Leah,” you manage between breaths, “this is an emergency. It’s literally… labour. It’s happening right now”

“Right! Emergency.” She nods rapidly, like a bobblehead on overdrive, and jabs at her phone screen with so much intensity that it nearly flies out of her hand. She stops mid-dial, eyes wide with panic. “Wait. No, no…maybe we just drive there? Or do they… do they send someone?”

You look at her, trying not to let your exasperation show through the mounting pain. “Leah, we’re just going to drive. We’ve been through this.”

“Right. Yes. Driving. Of course. I knew that.” She shakes her head like she’s trying to physically dislodge the panic, muttering, “I’m just—okay. Drive. Right. Okay.” She finally lets go of her phone and starts making her way toward the door, muttering things like, “Got it. We’ve got this,” in a way that sounds more like she’s trying to reassure herself than you.

But then she stops. Turns. Looks back at you, blinking in realisation. “Are you…are you alright?”

“I’m in labour,” you say with a thin smile, “so no. Not really. But let’s keep going”

“Right, yeah. That makes sense.” She nods like you’ve just imparted some deep wisdom, like the words in labour contain ancient knowledge previously unknown to her.

By now, another contraction has hit, and you’re clutching the edge of the bed, breathing through it with every bit of focus you can muster. Leah watches, horrified, looking like she might faint just from witnessing the sheer audacity of labour itself.

“Should I… is there something I can… I don’t know, can I do something?” She’s hovering now, looking at you helplessly like she’s waiting for you to hand her a to-do list.

You grit your teeth, squeezing out a reply. “Just… breathe. With me. Okay? In… and out”

She takes a shaky breath, her hand rising and falling in time with yours as if synchronising her breathing might somehow keep you both tethered to reality. For a moment, it’s almost peaceful, the two of you breathing in unison, a strange little pocket of calm amid the chaos.

And then, just as quickly, the panic is back.

“Wait. Snacks. We’re going to need snacks”

“Snacks?” you manage, halfway between a groan and a laugh.

“Yes. For energy. They said snacks are crucial.” She’s already halfway to the kitchen before you can protest, practically flinging open cupboards and rummaging through drawers with the frantic energy of someone who’s just realised they’re on an episode of MasterChef and has thirty seconds left on the clock. She emerges with an armful of items that make absolutely no sense together—a banana, a bag of crisps, two protein bars, and, inexplicably, a tin of chickpeas.

You stare at the tin in her hands. “Leah, we’re not bringing chickpeas”

“They’re protein,” she says, with a ridiculous level of conviction.

You watch, trying desperately not to laugh as she rummages through drawers, muttering about water bottles and phone chargers and—god help you both—“emergency blankets.” She’s wearing one shoe, and her sock has somehow ended up on her hand, and she’s pacing so frenetically that she nearly trips over her own feet at least twice.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, you manage to corral her towards the door, where she stops suddenly, wide-eyed and visibly distressed.

“Wait!” she exclaims, her hand shooting out to grip your arm in sheer, abject horror. “The… the speaker for the birthing playlist!”

You stare at her blankly for a moment before realising that, yes, she’s referring to the hours-long playlist she’d meticulously curated in the months leading up to this moment—a mix of calming piano tracks, soothing instrumentals, and, inexplicably, a handful of 80s power ballads that she swore would “keep the energy up.”

“We… we don’t have time for the speaker, Leah”

She looks at you like you’ve just suggested abandoning a child. “But you… we planned it. I spent hours on Spotify—”

“We don’t need the speaker,” you tell her, trying to keep your voice gentle but firm. You’re at the door, shoes on, bag in hand, and if she doesn’t start moving soon, you’re fairly certain you’ll be having this baby right here in the hallway.

She stares at you, visibly torn, before finally nodding, reluctantly. “Right. No speaker. We can…we’ll improvise”

“Yeah,” you say, smiling. “We’ll improvise”

And finally—finally—she takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and steps out the door, hand in yours, still muttering under her breath about the playlist, about snacks, about breathing techniques and birthing balls and god knows what else.

[ivesambrose]

NOVEMBER 2024 MINI MESSAGES ❤️

1. 2. 3.

And we're in November and I feel everyone's a little overwhelmed, but I intend that you receive the guidance you need.

To book a personal reading with me DM or email me at ivesambrose@gmail.com

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Picture 1

You feel like you're struggling to make it up hill and maybe you're point blank exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally. The theme of this month for you to lighten the burden you've been carrying in hopes that someone will lighten it. That someone is you. This month also calls for physical rest. I will admit there might be moments you'll feel like you have a bunch of stuff to sort out that do leave you feeling tired but trust that yourself to prioritise you. Take care of your back health some of you. You may also feel a bit emotionally distant or just plain bored or even be deep in contemplation as though you're missing something. However, I see a burst of new ideas, insights or information or clarity that lets you leave that apathetic energy you had been previously feeling, behind. It's as though out of the blue, the path clears. This month brings a positive transition which means you have to leave something behind. But what you do leave behind, won't be a loss. November ends on a more emotionally fulfulling month than it started on. Now whatever fulfills you emotionally, is innately personal to you. Trust that you'll have it and even if you can't right now, know that things will fall in place anyway.

Picture 2

Don't often say this, but it's truly your month if you're the 'I'll channel every emotion in me into getting everything done and becoming the best.' and even if you're someone who believes that slow and steady will win the race, it's still your month. You'll be working diligently into improving an aspect or multiple aspects of your life or just working hard towards your goals. By this I mean that you'll show up, you'll be consistent and you will improve. You've always been good at this now you'll be better and eventually great. Expect the rewards of your labour, especially financially. Be as ambitions as you wish to be instead of diluting yourself. If you can mentally the paint the picture then you can have it. Just make sure to not overwork and overwhelm yourself. You will be attracting influential individuals but also people who have an addictive or controlling personality, stay wary of those and keep your boundaries intact. Bit by bit, all your efforts, the dominant thoughts you have, what you say to yourself and others, what you share, what you consume etc all of it will add up. This month ends with you feeling like "A brand new person" and yes, I am referencing the Tame Impala song.

Picture 3

Oh you're fired up this month to the point even you're amused by it. Either it's a sudden burst of energy you'll feel or an opportunity that will be presented to you. You'll also be feeling excited, eager, curious and creative. Lot of planning, lot of risk taking, like you've decided to put your foot down on regards to something and you will be rather defensive of it because I'm seeing maybe some people might want to project their own ideas or limitations onto you or downplay your enthusiasm and determination. Don't let that get to you. In fact, do not overwhelm yourself this month since there is a risk of feeling burnt out. Try not to be too hot headed either and also avoid shopping as therapy (not too much, you can treat yourself though!) I do see there will be someone warm, kind and empathetic towards you. Extremely loving and understanding. Have the same energy towards yourself and those who care for you. Keep your heart a little open too. This month will end on you over coming a rather low point of your life is what I'm sensing. There's a feeling of isolation and defeat that you'll be overcoming and stepping into a version of you that's passionate and wants to experience life to their fullest.

[pandoraspurgatory]

Ghosts of Hanahaki

Tomura Shigaraki x Fem!Reader. Implied established relationship. HANAHAKI disease AU

Graphic themes ahead, Minors DNI. TW below

TW: Su1c1de in graphic detail, death, vomit, blood, major angst/whump. No happy endings here! You’ve been warned

Tomura wheezed, he couldn’t yet decipher what was sweeter, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth or the hint of magnolias on his tongue.

His lungs burned, what left of his shallow body paced around the leagues home, his footsteps accompanied by the sound of retching and laboured coughs. He grimaced in pain as the petals fluttered out of his mouth with each hack, chrysanthemums weren’t so beautiful when covered in mucus and blood

The league had little to no fight left, not for Tomura, he was long gone. The house was a filthy mess, what was once a home filled with laughter and enticing schemes, was now a cesspit of despair and utter loneliness.

The bath was still stained with blood even months later, what left of you settled in the grout of the bathroom tiles. Scrubbing the remnants of you felt like a final farewell nobody was yet ready to confront.

Mouldy bumpers and half smoked cigarettes lay littered in the dining room, a memoir of Dabis attempt to ignore the situation. Toga had left weeks ago, hopefully to someplace better, you always wanted her to do bigger things anyway.

Hanahaki disease wasn’t near as much of a threat as it used to be, not with the quirks and technology possessed by people in this day and age. It was painful of course, but easily treatable with specialised medication and a hint of shame walking out of the doctors office.

Not Tomura though, the moment this started and a small pink petal escaped his lips, he made his decision to rot in the shame of his fatal mistake. Atoning for his ignorance in a slow form of suicide.

Tomura knew of the cures, with how rotten, heinous and sex obsessed society was, most of the population was bound to develop Hanahaki at least once in their lives. In some cultures it was almost a right of passage, a fucked up version of loosing one’s virginity.

2 months ago the unthinkable, though painstakingly unsurprising finally emerged through the cracks of your well played facade.

Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, surrounded by your comrades as you fought to save society and liberate the slums of the streets… You died convulsing and choking on rancid tasting vomit in a battered porcelain bathtub, wrists slit and eyes dull.

It was hours before you were stumbled upon, taking effort to end yourself while the league were out of the house, it seemed like the most polite thing to do.

It’s what you attempted to convince yourself, in truth you didn’t want your mind to be swayed, or to risk any chance of survival. Truely believing it was better this way, and maybe it was in the long run, it’s not like finding out is an option after the actions you imposed on yourself.

_________________

Tomura walked through the half broken in entryway, Spinner tailing close behind him. After slumping down on the couch, Spinner poured two glasses of whiskey into the fanciest cups they had, handing one to Tomura as he loaded up his league of legends disc.

Solo mode did have its perks of course, though Tomura found it much more stimulating fighting against his best friend. It was often crudely competitive of course, though a quick dose of dopamine before whatever mission was forced on them next.

Through laughter and slowly sipping at their drinks, as well as yelling at painfully long loading screens, the distant sound of dripping slithered its way into Tomuras ears.

He was easily overstimulated in the best of situations, however with the clearly unpaid wifi bill disrupting the game paired with the cheap whiskey dancing on his tongue, he felt himself slowly slip into frustration.

“Fucking Toga, left the tap on again, just another water bill on my ass”

Spinner smirked, taking a quick swig before responding “Relax it Shig, your Master will pay for it, you know that… your girl home?”

He ran his hands through his greasy hair, groaning in frustration, muttering something under his breath about how Toga should know better “yeah, probably having a nap, she’s sleepy”.

Minutes went by quickly as the game finally loaded after Spinner blew the grocery money on the wifi bill. The quickening dripping sound only drilling into Tomuras ears more each second. With a unsatisfied groan Tomura forced his way off the couch, kicking over a Mountain Dew can as he trudged his way into the bathroom. Spinners rapid clicks of the controller didn’t drown out the sound that came from the other end of the house moments later.

The shrill cry pierced his ears. He didnt need to think twice about who it came from. Spinner had heard Tomura in all his moods, whether it was a raspy laugh at a shitty joke, or a grating shout at the wifi failing. Spinner consistently recognised the voice of his closest companion.

He hadn’t heard Tomura like this before, Spinners legs moved faster than his thoughts as he sprinted towards the bathroom, he didn’t know what to expect. For all he knew it could be the second time Tomura encountered a spider in the toilet, though something was amiss.

The scene was gruesome, scalding bile threatened to force its way out of his throat as he looked at the situation before him. The League of course was no stranger to murder and death, but to those who deserved it, those who single handedly carved their own macabre demises.

You laid in the bathroom, in an old t shirt of Tomuras. Your eyes wide open and face covered in vomit and half digested pills. Spinner had never bothered to notice how strong blood smelt prior to this moment, it was sharp and metallic, enough to make him want to collapse. Your wrists dripped onto the tiled floor, mimicking a tap not screwed tight enough.

Blood pooled on the ground below, slit wrists coagulated with dark sticky clots that melted to the floor. How long had you sat here? 2 hours? 3?

The silence was broken by Tomura, his voice shaky on the brink of a mental break, he hissed through clenched teeth.

“She’s sick Spinner, get a glass of water and I’ll put her into bed”

He was taken aback, he knew Tomura wasn’t the most mentally stable man out there, though this had snapped something in him.

“Hurry up Spinner!” He begged, taking long dragged breaths as he rocked back and forth, holding your face in his hands. “She needs to go rest!”

Spinners heart raced. The empty look in your eyes, the purple marks indicating blood pooling under your skin, the way your joints cracked as Tomura attempted to move you.

People would have to be blind to miss the fact that rigor mortis had embraced you before Tomura did.

Dabi and Compress arrived soon after, it took hours of pleading, convincing and restraint to pry your cold and stiff body from Tomuras desperate grasp.

__________

Dabi knew

Spinner knew

Compress knew

Twice knew

They all knew that Tomura didn’t have long left, it was no use fighting the inevitable. The only good parts of him rotted into the tiles, just like you.

What was the point of curing his disease when he wasn’t rejected, but cruelty abandoned by the one who claimed to love him to most?

Only a matter of days later flowers sprouted from Tomuras body. The final stage pastel petals brought much needed comfort to him, much like the hands of his family he dawned on his body when you first met.

The reminders of the lives he took worn on his body as he took his last breath in the bathtub, a last ditch effort to be closer to you.

As much as the league tried to convince him it wasn’t his fault, it was his antidepressants clasped in your hand when he let go of your body.

[absurdumsid]

I need info on saejun an you obviously know him better than me, so can i have you favorite hcs, theories (how he joined the mtt), or interactions on him w/ the mtt :)

OF COURSE U CAN !! so sorry, it took me a bit to compile all of this from my older notes aaaa have a compensation doodle bc i took SOO long GHGHHHGH

anyway saejun nation pspspspss

saejun !! THE beloved if u will

he regularly speaks korean but learned english after meeting nightmare and killer

i love to think he's very very strong, he can beat the mtt in a fistfight kind of strong (not like he would, but he'd win)

he can cook decently but he'd choose his brother's cooking any day (even if pilsu is still um learning)

he also really likes spicy dishes !! he bonds over that with dust !

he'd forgive ppl who steal from the farm but he wouldn't forgive harming the crops

he HATES pesticides (i think this is canon actually) but also really hates strong smells in general

sleepy 24/7 he lays in the grass to photosynthesize (he just passes out, pilsu wakes him almost every time)

probably knows a lot of offhand herbology/biology trivia (he can explain the aerobic and anaerobic cycle by heart)

his general attitude toward the mtt/bad sanses is not to pry unless they're the ones who open up to him (even now he only rlly learns about their situations through nightmare who doesn't talk that much about it anyway)

he accepts mtt with open arms and its that accepting (almost forgiving) nature that makes them so super attached to him !!

for me, it's the concept of meeting a version of yourself that lives the most peaceful life and being happy for him, but ALSO not being shunned by that alternate version for being violent and hurting the people that you both love

as for how saejun met mtt, my general interpretation of it is that nightmare struck a deal with saejun for food supplies in exchange for manual labour (so mtt and nightmare help a lot with the harvests! the only ones who really know about it is pilsu, saejun, anseung, and suggu)

killer // 고통씨 (Mr. Misery/Grief)

saejun meets killer first and was the only one helping around the farm

i don't think saejun would be the type to pry into their pasts so he doesn't question killer about himself or anything

killer is the one who opens up to him one stormy night after a stage 3 episode where he holed himself up in the shed and saejun found him cold, shaking, and curled up embracing himself

he calms killer down and tells nightmare abt it and that's how he finds out about killer's past (he doesn't bring it up, but he's always there to help killer after his panic attacks)

he likes to do the chores with killer most of the time just in case he has a run in with chorongi or suggu (the kids are very silly and tend to mess with him and he doesn't know how killer is with children)

they photosynthesize together and sometimes nightmare just comes to get killer in the evening and finds them in the grass

horror // 취급주의 (Handle with Care) or 주주씨 (Mr. Vermillion)

he meets horror second (after he gets kidnapped by nightmare) and saejun isn't really scared of him because he figured that he probably has some hidden issues like killer

saejun thought horror was really fragile at first (because he was very thin and had a skull injury) so he actually had him do mostly little chores like going to the market or gathering eggs from the chickens

after a few months killer doesn't come in (was sent to a mission somewhere else) and saejun needs someone to handle the heavy hay bales (<- he could've done it himself but hes lazy) and horror just kinda Does It and surprises saejun

he starts to depend on horror more and actually admits that he was underestimating him out of concern for his wellbeing and horror says its ok because he was also underestimating saejun (until he saw him carry killer AND a bunch of crops home that one time)

they start to cook together and do the heavier chores (while making silly jokes abt killer) together

horror starts to learn korean by talking with dorihye, saejun, and pilsu as well as asking nightmare for some reading material ! (after finding out that dust also speaks korean, he starts practicing conversation with him !)

dust // 유골씨 (Mr. Ashes)

saejun's meeting with dust was noooot planned at all, nightmare just kinda forced mtt into a portal to farmtale during one of errors visits

horror mostly stayed with dust at first who was just dead silent and stayed in one spot (saejun asked if he wanted any drinks and it took ten excruciating seconds before horror had to answer water for him)

its not until pilsu comes into the house and greets killer and horror and makes a remark about a new brother that he starts to actually talk

dust doesn't exactly warm up to pilsu and more like forces himself to because pilsu starts to ask him what his favourite pasttimes are, his favourite food, if he wants any snacks, etc (killer and horror went through the same thing)

dust eventually gets carried off to the kitchen to cook with pilsu and that's how pilsu finds out dust speaks fluent korean even though they have different dialects

saejun goes into the kitchen and has a little talk with dust (where he learns they both speak korean !! and that that's why dust wasn't speaking that much !) and they bond over pilsu's silliness (dust talks about how his papyrus also loved to cook etc etc, saejun notices that its in past tense but doesn't dig any deeper)

dust eventually starts to visit farmtale with horror frequently to exchange makguksu and ramyeon recipes with pilsu !!

dust is also relatively close with dorihye, anseung, and suggu who tend to remark that "the other saejuns dont really talk much" to which horror always chuckles

that's all (for now) !! TYSM FOR ASKING ABT MY BLORBOS BGHGHRGRHG

[footballerimaginess]

Christmas Baby

Christmas Prompt 18. Christmas baby Aurelien Tchouameni author's note: this mentions pregnancy throughout Word Count: 577 "I just am so bored of this now" you huffed loudly as you stretched out your puffy feeling legs. You were nearing the end of the pregnancy, only being due in a few days time you were very much anticipating a Christmas baby as your due date was slowly getting there.

"It's okay angel, you are nearly here. We will hopefully have a baby here soon" he smiled as he gently rubbed your lower back. "I hope so, he is so stubborn and does not want to come out. He is basically a mini version of you" you teased. "Aww that is my boy, do you want anything?" he put his hand on your bump. "A glass of water please and maybe a back rub. I feel so restless now" you sighed loudly as you shuffled in your seat. "Coming up" Aurelien grinned as he got the glass of water ready for you as well as some fruit just in case you were hungry. "Thank you" you smiled as he handed you the glass of water. Aurelien sat down on the sofa beside you as felt an intense pain in your stomach. "Shit" you groaned, gently rubbing your stomach. "Are you okay?" Aurelien's eyes widened as he watched you wince in pain. "I'm not sure what that was, but it was very strong. I think we need to ring the midwife, what if that was a contraction?" you asked, starting to panic now. "Oh shit, let me ring her and say you think they've started" Aurelien jumped up as you were frozen into the chair and couldn't move as you waited for Aurelien to come back from the phone call. "Okay so they said go in now, just so they can check if you are dilated or something. You need your bag right? where is it?" Aurelien says while looking pretty flustered. "At the stairs where it has been for weeks now, Aure I think you need to calm down babe. We can't have you panicking as well as me" you laughed as he put his arm out for you to grab onto it as you waddled to the car. "My god, this baby is sooo coming" you squealed as you clutched onto the side of the car. "It's okay amor, we are getting you there as fast as I can. I think this baby can't bare the thought of being late" you let out a little laugh trying to distract yourself from the pain. Once you had arrived at the hospital, the contractions were coming in thick and fast now. "You got this baby" Aurelien grabbed your hand as you held his hand tightly as the midwife was observing you. The hours had passed, you were still in labour and was starting to feel truly exhausted. "Y/N we have one more push and I think baby is almost here" the midwives told you as you pushed one more time and heard the baby let out a cry. "Oh my god" you whispered as Aurelien pressed a kiss to your head as they placed the baby on your chest. "Welcome into the world little one" you whispered as you gently rubbed your baby's head. "I can't believe he is here, I am so happy. He is so cute, now we need to think of a name" you smiled as he nodded. "Yes we do, we need to list off lot of names to decide" he smiled.

[patchwork-crow-writes]

Possessed by Grief - an essay on MyHouse.pk3

Here's that essay on MyHouse.wad I've kept threatening to drop like a big anvil, which I definitely did not forget about for like a month :P Seems like an opportune moment to publish it, what with all the recent influx of interest in the game - and so I present some more of my thoughts on this masterpiece. Enjoy :)

MyHouse.pk3 is a game about grief.

It is a game about nostalgia and regret, obsession and devotion, confusion and despair. A game that asks if it's ever possible to escape grief's clutches, or if each apparent success only makes the net close tighter around us. A game that compels us to seek answers, and provides only further questions.

This is also a game about love, and how grief scrunches it up impossibly small and stretches it out impossibly thin, as we are forced to reckon with what this person really means to us, what impact they've had on us, and how we can possibly continue to exist in this world without them.

It is by all accounts a common thing for prospective modders to recreate their own houses, or those of their relatives, as part labour of love, part test run for future projects, part rite of passage. I imagine that playing through one is akin to a virtual property tour, with added demon killing and grunting. And perhaps this was all MyHouse.pk3 was ever meant to be - just another map of just another house, albeit uploaded as a tribute to its original owner who passed on.

What we get instead… is nothing short of an electronic manifestation of grief itself. The house changes as we play, as demons thought vanquished return stronger than ever. New hallways jut out at impossible angles while old doorways vanish into thin air. We wander through wildly different versions of the house's floorplan - a brutalist office block that changes in size, a perpetually-flooded bathhouse suspended in an eeriely tranquil skybox, an abandoned daycare falling into disrepair, an empty airport devoid of life, adjoined to a bathroom with a bloody secret. Mirrors become portals to alternate versions of the same house, where everything is the same except reversed. You jump out of a plane and seemingly wake up back at the house, but time has passed and everyone has moved on and the one thing you thought a concrete certainty ("Safe as houses", so the saying goes) is literally sold off behind your back and you turn around and there's nothing there anymore, it's just gone.

No-one asked you. You did not consent to any of this, and yet it has happened all the same.

And life ticks on and you try to move on but you can't. Even the Underhalls, Doom II's second level, provides only temporary respite, as you are immediately spat back out right where you began, and the whole process starts over.

THIS is what grief does to someone. It freezes you in time, folds your mind into endlessly recursive origami shapes that loop on themselves again and again, removes an old keystone from the bridge of your psyche before stepping back to watch the structure slowly crumble to ruins. You flail helplessly as you are caught between trying to invoke what you've lost in meaningful objects and places, and tossing everything aside and trying to escape into some new, different reality. The past contains bittersweet memories of happier times you can never return to, while the future promises nothing but a bleak pseudo-existence utterly devoid of meaning. You cannot go back. You cannot move forward.

And all the while, you torment yourself with the same questions, over and over and over: Why did this happen? What do I do now they're gone? Could I have changed something? Could things have been different, if I had just been kinder/braver/better/gentler/more attentive?

Grief haunts MyHouse. It is the unseen hand that shapes the world and all the artefacts scattered throughout it. It is the force that compels Steve to continue adding to it, convinces him that only he can do what is needed, and he becomes as dependent upon the map to frame his loss as it is dependent on him to shape it. There are no ghosts or demons, no supernatural forces at play here - just one person trapped in his despair and loneliness, pouring everything he has into the one last thing that connects him to his dead friend. And in the finished map, we see exactly what Tom was to Steve, just how precious and irreplacable of a friend they were to him, just how fathomless his depth of feeling for them. So deep that Tom may very well be "the only person I [Steve] ever loved."

Grief and love are intertwined, they cannot be teased apart. The deeper and more profound the love for someone, the greater the agony experienced when they are taken from you. For Steve to have constructed such an elaborate, multifaceted, labyrinthian space, and to have done so deliberately as a trubute, it becomes increasingly obvious that he was motivated by a love and a grief so abyssal and all-consuming that there was no-one and nothing he valued more in life - to the point where it must have seemed that he, too, had died alongside his friend.

This house and all of its impossible multitudes is a digital mausoleum, built not so much for a person as for a relationship, dedicated to stupid in-jokes and childhood traumas and painful secrets, plagued by a burning love that cannot be spoken yet has to be expressed lest it destroys the one who harbours it. It stands as proof that Tom existed, that the bond they shared was real. And through all the confusion, the hopelessness and the heartbreak, a way forward begins to emerge.

Grief never truly goes away, is never truly "beaten" as a video game final battle may be. But it does become easier to navigate, its twists and turns becoming more familiar with each pass, with each story shared between others who are struggling alongside us. Contentment can be reattained. Life does, indeed, go on. Love is not negated by death, but endures forever in how we choose to honour those who are no longer with us.

Thanks for reading.

[angel-egg-egl]

i would love to see the cost breakdown for producing a handmade item!

well if you insist (infodump voice)

so it does depend a lot on the item itself-- at least in my case. Tiered skirts use up more fabric than a standard gathered skirt. in my case, the body fabrics i buy usually have a width of around 100cm (give or take 5cm-10cm), and so i can do easier math. if i wanted to do a basic 50cm long skirt, that would take about 120cm of fabric or so. something like the dear rose skirt with a double tier and tucks (note: tucks can use up a lot of fabric!) is more like 350cm. a lot of print fabrics i buy are sold by the metre, but most of the solids (and laces) i use are actually sold by the yard (~90cm), so that's also something to keep in mind.

another thing to keep in mind is wholesale vs consumer pricing-- for small brands like mine, you can't always get wholesale pricing or justify purchasing the minimum lot size of a fabric, so fabric can end up more expensive than if you were a brand producing larger product runs. for example, the burberry fabric i use is around $17/y, but is $4/m if i purchased wholesale (50m or so), but then I would have to count on being able to sell that many items and store the extra fabric while i made them. the my dear rose fabric is about $10/m (not counting fees, shipping, and customs) consumer level, but wholesale it's $5-$7USD (under current conversion rates) depending on the lot size i buy (6m minimum, up to 18m). some fabrics are more expensive (gobelin, velveteen, silk, and corduroy, as well as discontinued fabrics i purchase secondhand) can run $20-$35/m, while the lawn fabric i buy is extra wide (150cm) and runs as low as $5/y for 5y(for reference, i can get 6-7 liners out of each 5y pack).

so you'd be looking at around $25 in fabric for something simple (ie, a Burberry Basics skirt, which i'm using as my baseline for a cheap to produce item), but as much as $105 for a tiered velveteen or discontinued print skirt. for something like my (as yet unreleased) rose petal tiered skirt (the red velveteen one with cotton lace in my first post, which i'm using as an example of my most expensive to produce item), which uses more like 6m of fabric, it can get up to $180 for the body fabric alone (i did make a version out of inexpensive linen for ~$60 though)

this is just the body material though. (liners come out to, say, about $5 each?)

trims are where things get really complicated and at times really pricy! a lot of laces I get come out to something like $1-$4/y (and come of packs of 10y to 50m) but that can get pricy quick when you're using a lot of it-- i need at least 200cm of lace for an ungathered lace hem on a standard skirt, but sometimes as much as 400-800 if I wanted to add lace to the hem of a tiered skirt (my record is 16m of lace on one item). i won't get into braids and ribbon trims right now because they're not used as often and the prices are way more wildly variable.

so you're probably looking at anywhere from $15 of lace (200cm x 3 rows = 600cm or just under 7 yards) for something like the burberry basics skirts, or as much as $30 in lace for something like the aforementioned rose skirt.

elastic is negligible, thank god-- i get 20m rolls for around $10 which adds up to less than a dollar per skirt. i also won't include thread, since I can't really calculate how far a spool goes.

so to recap, that adds up to around

$45 in raw materials for a burberry basics

but more like $215 in raw materials for the rose tiered skirt (velveteen version).

so depending on your fabric and lace choices, you end up either saving a pretty good amount of money, or getting to where you understand why Burando is so expensive (lol)

but this is all before labour! (note: cost of labour is kind of only relevant if you're selling your work-- if it's for yourself, there's no need to bother with this step)

if i go for quick and dirty techniques (result looks fine, but won't be machine washable and will need touch ups on the future) i can get a basic skirt pumped out in 2 hours if I'm in the zone, but 4-8 hours is often more realistic if i'm doing french seams and rolled hems, a ton of gathering (ie, tiers), or adding a ton of trims, tucks, or other special details. some items like OPs may take me several "workdays" to get through.

the min wage in my area is $16, but most jobs start at $20. since i consider myself an amateur, i use that as my starting rate, and go up if I'm doing anything especially fancy. so that's as little as $40 in labour, or as much as $160. $80 is about average. (I do sometimes lowball my own labour costs, though, because I would prefer to keep items relatively affordable and this is all extra disposable income for me rather than smth i do to survive.)

which brings us to $125 or so for a burberry basics (materials + labour-- though I'm currently selling them for $100 because in the future I should be able to buy the fabric at wholesale amounts, which will reduce the cost of production by quite a bit-- but for the average person $125 is more realistic) or as much as $375 for my most complex design. ofc, for a person hand making something at home, the cost of labour isn't actually money you pay, you're just paying your own time-- i just added cost of labour for posterity here. factories and production lines can probably cause this number to vary, because professionally trained seamstresses or groups doing different levels of assembly may be able to work faster than I, one person doing every step myself, can, and likely don't follow californian minimum wage laws.

that's not to say handmade is INHERENTLY expensive-- the cheapest option I covered here is still cheaper than a branded item, and there are cheaper ways to go about things (for example, if you found a fabric you liked on sale, that $45 material cost could go down a bit-- or like I mentioned, the material cost for the rose skirt going down from 180 to 60 by simply swapping the fabric type. likewise, if wholesale fabric is an option, prices can be reduced even further).

These are all for main pieces, too. accessories can be made on the cheap (i can usually get 2-3 rectangle headdresses out of 1/4 yard of fabric, ie like $5 a pop. wrist cuffs are even cheaper to produce).

all this to say:

but also if you just want to make something for yourself and not like, producing items for commercial sale, it's definitely more affordable than big name brand, and i honestly recommend trying it at least once, bc then you get to decide things like fabric quality, construction type, and sizing all for yourself AND you get the massive dopamine hit of making something yourself.

as an aside to close on: yes i do have plans to post some of my original patterns for public use. and yes i am willing to share sources for some of my materials if they're available on a consumer level.

i hope everyone got something out of this because it was kind of fun to write about!

[dahliarose2]

May you add me to your general taglist, I love your fics!! also, can you do number 8 for the daryl dixon x reader story prompts, I absolutely love the one bed trope 😭

SOMEDAY

summary: after a run-in with a horde of walkers, you and daryl are forced to take shelter in an abandoned cabin. only problem is; there's only one bed

A/N: ah thank you so much for your kind words lovey! <3 hope i did your request justice. i was going to do an angsty version of the one bed trope but i have a few angsty requests coming up, so i kept this one fluffy!! hope you enjoy <3 please request scenarios from my scenario list and let me know if you want to be added to my general taglist

You and Daryl panted as you ran through the forest, weaving in and out of the trees, dodging branches and tree roots that jutted out of the ground. You heard the faint sound of walkers growling as you sprinted. Your hand held onto the dagger fiercely as you attempted to watch where you were going while simultaneously looking out for oncoming walkers. You both had been separated from the group in the middle of a run when an unexpected horde of walkers forced you all to scatter in different directions,. You hoped the others were okay and managed to get away unscathed. Your worries were halted as the face of a walker obscured your vision and your thoughts as you froze, bringing your hand up to its shoulder in a flurry to push it away from you. You stumbled as you brought your sharp blade up from your side to dart it towards the eye socket of the walker. Before the point of your knife hit the skin, your eyes widened as an arrow lodged it’s way through its skull. You turned to look at Daryl as he lowered his crossbow. “I had it,” you muttered, slightly annoyed at the fact that he didn’t let you handle it yourself,

“Yeah, well now I had it,” he retorted plainly through his laboured pants from the running. You rolled your eyes i’m disbelief as he walked towards you, hand ghosting your side now as he looked around madly, before speaking. “Up there,” he blurted out hurriedly, upon the sound of the rumbling of the walkers becoming increasingly louder as the seconds passed. “There’s a cabin up there. Let’s go,” he said softly, motioning his head towards the hut that you could now see a few dozen paces away sitting perched upon top of the small, sloping hill. You whipped your head around, seeing no walkers close behind you as you let out a sigh of relief, before following Daryl who walked close to you, aiming his crossbow at the wooden house that seemed sturdy. Daryl kept shifting his gaze between the cabin and turning to spare you a glance every few moments to ensure you were safe. Once you reached the front door, Daryl gave you a knowing look, communicating just with his eyes that he would go in first to make sure it was safe,

You nodded at him as you shifted your knife into a firmer grip and an attacking stance. He stuck his three fingers up, signalling a ‘1,2,3’ motion. Once his final finger went down, Daryl kicked the front door in with his dark, black boot as dust floated around the room from the force. You stepped behind him as he scoped the room, moving swiftly on his feet as you watched. Once Daryl had established that there were no immediate threats, he moved to shut the door behind both of you and locking it swiftly. For extra protection from the horde of walkers nearby that could happen upon their safe haven for the night, Daryl grunted as he pushed a large chest of drawers to barricade the door. You eyed the surprisingly intact, dark furniture that accumulated plenty of dust in its time as Daryl checked the small kitchenette and the bedroom for people, or walkers. As Daryl scoured the place, you strolled towards the worn couch, extending your hand to trace a finger delicately over the fabric. Strangely, much of the previous owner's belongings and furnishings still lay upon the mantelpiece and the small, wooden coffee table in the middle of the quaint living room that consisted of a couch and an armchair, the room adorned with miscellaneous ornaments,

You smiled as you gazed upon the room, taking in the lobsided painting that was hung on the wall. Suddenly, Daryl emerged from the room, his crossbow lowered at his side now as you looked towards him now. "'S all clear," he muttered as you smiled at him gratefully. Whether you liked it or not, Daryl would always take on the leader and protector role when things would go wrong, especially when you were present, which you hadn't really noticed or cared to mind why. "I'm starving. I wonder if they've got anything in there," you beamed as you made your way to the kitchen. You were halted in your steps by the sound of walkers growling coming closer to the cabin. Your heart beat a little faster as you eyed the walkers stumbling towards the house, though there were only a few. "Guess we're holing up in here for the night," Daryl reasoned as you turned to look at him, both of you exchanging a slight smile, not minding much about the predicament. You only hoped the rest of the group had managed to find their own refuge for the night. Seeing as some of them had followed you and Daryl to the cabin, you figured that it had taken the attention off of your friends,

You breathed a loud sigh from all the running as you took off your jacket, throwing it lazily on the couch as you strolled to the kitchen in search of something to eat. Daryl watched you as he placed his crossbow on the ground to rest against the wall. You wasted no time, as you kneeled down, flinging things to the side as you waded through the few packets and jars. You grimaced at the fact that most of the products were gone off and rotten by now. Daryl watched you curiously as you rummaged and ransacked the cupboards as though you were a raccoon. He leaned his burly arms against the doorframe as he heard you squeal. "Finally," you yelled, with a smile, as you held up a can of soup triumphantly, the only thing that wasn't completely mouldy. Daryl rolled his eyes playfully at your easily excitable nature. “This’ll do,” you asserted as you searched the cabinet for a pot of some sorts, finding one with a broken handle but would do the job. You made your way into the living room to the fireplace as Daryl followed behind you, admiring your focus on the task,

You got to work heating the soup while Daryl readied the bedroom and ensured all the rooms in the cabin were closed off and that there were no gaps or holes in which a walker could possibly slip through. “Food’s ready,” you called out to Daryl as he heard you, coming into the living room to pull his vest off and throwing it upon the armchair. “You’d think a cabin with a pot would have a bowl. But nope,” you complained, pulling the put off the open flame to set it down on the coffee table as. Daryl flopped down on the couch, pulling is shoes off as he listened to you ramble, watching you strut into the kitchen, continuing your rant about the lack of crockery in the abandoned hut. “So I guess we’re going Lady and the Tramp on this one,” you smiled as you emerged with 2 spoons, as you flopped down next to him. “The hell is that?” Daryl grumbled at your lost reference. You scoffed in disbelief as you watched his clueless face contort in confusion,

“You never watched Lady and the Tramp? It was a movie about two dogs and there’s this one scene where they share a plate of spaghetti,” you explained as you leaned forward reaching in to the pot with your spoon and taking a spoonful into your mouth, trying to ignore the slightly bad taste it left in your mouth. “But we ain’t eatin’ spaghetti?” he grumbled, still unsure how applicable the reference was. You shook your head slightly with a laugh. “Well maybe it wasn’t the best reference,” you giggled as he let a small smile grace his usually stoic features as you both tucked in, both of you looking quite the sight sharing a pot of soup. You both guzzled the meal, the grumbling, ravenous feeling in your stomachs disappearing. Once you both finished, you fell back against the sofa in unison; full. You craned your neck to look out the window observing the darkness that had befallen. As if on cue, you let out a strained yawn. "We should probably get some rest. We can look for the others tomorrow," Daryl grumbled, noticing your tired state. You turned back around to look at him with a small, tired smile as you gave him a weak nod,

Daryl stood up from the couch, reaching out a hand to you which you took as he gently pulled you up from where you sat. "You know I really did have it back there. With the walker," you assured tiredly, as another yawn escaped you. "Yeah I know," Daryl said, slightly playful and slightly sincere, as he reached out a hand to ruffle your hair lightly as you shook your head away from his hand with a laugh. What he said was true, he knew you could handle yourself, he just didn't want you to feel like you always had to. He wanted you to know he was able to protect you, that you weren't always fending for yourself all the time. You extended your arms above your head as you stretched your body in exhaustion. "You can take the bed, I'll sleep out here on the couch. I got it ready for you earlier when I was lookin' round," Daryl murmured softly as he began to sweep the dust off the couch. You looked at him confusedly as you walked into the bedroom adjacent to the living room, observing the single bed in the corner of the room,

"Oh uh okay. Thanks," you mumbled appreciatively, watching as he flopped down on the couch, looking rather uncomfortable but it didn't seem to bother him as he placed an arm under his head in an attempt to alleviate the feeling of sleeping on the flat couch, with the lack of pillows. You stared at him for a moment, before he looked up at you from his lying position. "You good?" he asked quietly, noticing that you were still standing there surprisingly, after how exhausted you were. You shook your head, shaking yourself out of your daze. "Yeah I'm fine," you rambled hurriedly, as you turned on your heel to walk into the bedroom, pulling off your shoes quickly. You looked at the bed, your heart warming at the sight of the duvet cover flat and tucked in and the pillow freshly fluffed up; Daryl's doing. You didn't want him to sleep out on the couch, knowing he'd most certainly have a strain in his back in the morning, having realized the broken springs and worn in seats of the couch when you had sat down on it to eat earlier,

You carefully pulled back the duvet cover, before climbing in, settling into the mattress as you closed your eyes, trying to force yourself asleep. You tossed around to the other side, bed creaking as you did, struggling to find a comfortable position to sleep in. You sighed loudly, trying to fall asleep desperately but to no avail. After ten minutes of trying to sleep and deliberating furiously, you stood from the bed, walking slowly to the doorframe, looking at Daryl's form in the same position as you had left him in, though there was hardly much room on the cramped couch to move much. You twiddled your fingers nervously, not wanting to wake him, but you knew you were never going to fall asleep otherwise. Even in the prison, you and Daryl had shared a cell, him on the bottom bunk and you on the top, and it comforted you endlessly. You bit your lip anxiously, as you contemplated what to do. Eventually, you took a deep breath,

"Daryl?" you whispered expectantly, waiting for a response, but he didn't hear you. With soft, quiet steps, you walked closer to the couch to stand next to him now. "Daryl," you said softly, a little louder than your previous call. Daryl's eyes opened slowly, but shot open when he saw you standing above him, tensing before seeing the familiar face. "Jesus girl. Y' scared me," he mumbled tiredly, and your heart sunk at the thought of waking him from a deep slumber, having presumed he had only just fallen asleep given the fact that it had only been ten minutes. At the sight of your nervous state, he sat up on the couch. "What's wrong?" he asked gently, as you fiddled with the sleeve of your flannel. "I uh I was wondering if you could stay in the room with me? I can't sleep," you asked defeatedly, a touch of pleading in your voice. Daryl didn't hesitate for a moment, nodding in understanding as he stood from the couch, following you into the bedroom as you walked behind him slightly embarrassed,

Daryl began to look in the wardrobe and you watched him, perplexed. "What are you looking for?" you asked softly as he turned at the sound of your voice, before turning back to search. "Lookin' for something I can put on the floor," he replied quietly as he rummaged. At the realization at what he was doing, all of your nerves subsided. "Daryl, you are not sleeping on the floor," you stated seriously as he shrugged his shoulders. "I don' mind," he stated coolly, as his back remained facing you. "Well I mind," you refuted clearly, refusing to let him sleep on the floor. When he didn't halt his search, you spoke louder. "Daryl Dixon. If you sleep on the floor, I will slip out and leave this cabin by myself in the middle of the night without telling you," you argued seriously as he turned slowly to look at you with a raised eyebrow, not believing you for a second, knowing you'd never be able to leave him alone with the way your conscience worked. He smirked amusedly, as he didn't fight back, only looking at the small single bed, wondering how you were both going to fit in,

"Fine," he whispered as he climbed into the bed, lying flat on his back as you stood in slight disbelief at his lack of bickering back, before climbing in next to him, tensing your body so that you wouldn't fall off the side of the bed. You both lay there silently, not daring to even breathe too loud. After a few moments of silence and uncomfortable positions for the both of you, you spoke finally. "Do you wanna-" "Yeah," he blurted out, both of you knowing you couldn't sleep like this for fear either of you would tumble to the floor in the night. You both began to move around, both lying on your sides now. "Is it okay if i uh," Daryl murmured, slightly timid, as he ghosted his arm over you. "Yeah sure," you answered quickly, as he heard your confirmation, wrapping his arm around your waist softly, both of you facing the same way now, in a much more safe position. You felt the tenseness of his arm against your hip, and rested your arm atop his, using your fingers to rub circles on his hand, as you felt no recoil from him, knowing he was comfortable with you doing it,

You leaned your back against his chest slightly, enjoying the warmth that emanated from him, and the faint rumbling of his breath vibrating against your back. Daryl lay still for a moment, before deciding to reciprocate your movement, leaning down to rest his chin on the top of your head softly, and pulling you closer to him by his grip on your waist which made you blush ever so slightly. Your breathing had both calmed down as you both closed your eyes. "Thank you Daryl," you whispered gratefully, as he let out a small scoff. "You don' ever gotta thank me. Not for anythin'," he replied tenderly, meaning every word as you smiled, though he couldn't see it. "Whoever lived here must've enjoyed their space. Living alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods," you said nonchalantly, "sounds like something you'd like." You smiled when you said it, knowing how much Daryl enjoyed his solitude. "Not anymore," he murmured into the silence, the sound of crickets outside and faint howling of wind bringing you comfort. "Not since.. nevermind," Daryl trailed off, so quiet, you mightn't have heard it; but you did,

Your eyebrows furrowed as you turned in his arms to lay on your side, facing him now, watching as his eyes attempted to avert your gaze, making you slightly nervous and what the matter was. "Not since what?" you questioned delicately, gazing at him curiously. Daryl didn't say anything for a moment, before meeting your gaze, sighing slightly, knowing you were never going to let up by the eager glint in your orbs staring up at him. "Not since I met you," he answered honestly, avoiding your eyes once again as your eyes widened slightly at the confession, before you smiled widely, your heart warming. "Really?" you asked, giving him time to retract his statement if he needed to; but he didn't. His nerves were eased at the sound of joy in your tone of voice, calming Daryl, unsure of how you were going t take his admission. "Yeah really," he said gruffly with a small smile, as you both looked into one another's eyes now, communicating all you needed to know in that one glance. Daryl mulled over his thought for a moment, before finally acting on them,

Daryl leaned down to brush his lips against yours softly as your heart beat faster at the gesture, being stunned momentarily, before reciprocating the kiss, placing your hand on his cheek tenderly, deepening the kiss as his arm around your waist pulled you closer, his hand traveling up the small of your back, once again drawing you impossibly nearer to his frame. After a few moments, you both pulled away slowly, as you let out a small laugh at what had just happened. "I wish we could just stay here," Daryl mumbled, as you leaned your forehead against his, hugging him. "Someday we'll live in our little cabin in the woods just like this," you beamed as you hummed in approval. "With a bigger bed," he mumbled tiredly, through closed eyes as you closed yours too, laughing lightly. "Someday," you whispered as you both fell asleep comfortably in one another's embrace

SORRY FOR MY INACTIVITY LATELY!!! HOPE THIS MAKES UP FOR IT <3 ILL BE WRITING MORE OVER THE NEXT WHILE AND GETTING THROUGH MY REQUESTS SO SIT TIGHT

TAGLIST: @carlgrimeskisser @fallinqshade

[thegreymoon]

The Story of Minglan

Bitch, you just tried to strangle your daughter. What maternal instinct?

And the only reason you took your son when you abandoned her was because you thought you could get more money for him.

***

OH MY GOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD 🤬🤬

THIS REPULSIVE PETTY PIECE OF SHIT WASTE OF AIR!!

Seriously, I despise him more than Manniang!

My guy, quit while you're ahead! You lost the girl because you were spineless. Get over it and stop embarrassing yourself! 🤬🤬

***

LMAO, what else is he supposed to do?

Let's say it's been four or five years since Manniang ran off. This child was two at most at the time. He would be six or seven now. What are you talking about? That is still a whole baby!

I love (and by love, I mean hate) how disposable children are in this society unless they are sons anchoring their mother's position in their respective households.

***

Oh, shut the fuck up, you bitter, pathetic loser.

***

Drag him, Tingye!

I am so sick and tired of his bullshit.

***

NOOOO, BUT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, HE IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!

OF COURSE, MINGLAN WAS SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL RETIREMENT FOR HIM TO GET HIS SHIT TOGETHER AND SUFFER ALL KINDS OF INDIGNITIES IN THE MEANTIME!

HOW DARE SHE NOT BUILD A SHRINE TO HIS ESTEEMED PERSON AND PUT HER ENTIRE LIFE ON HOLD SO THAT HE CAN FEEL IMPORTANT?

With all that said, this actor is beyond fantastic, I can see why people are obsessed with him. I hope to watch him in a more sympathetic role next time.

***

LMAO, look at the pot calling the kettle black 🤣🤣

I cannot with this loser of a man.

***

If he had not been born rich, he would have been the founding father of the incel movement, blaming every man with even a semblance of a spine on his inability to fuck.

***

Oh, sure, it was for the government 🙄🙄

Your jealousy is palpable. You can't even convince yourself.

***

LMAO, what the fuck.

This is a dead child you're talking about! Your child! And you are mad you cannot get money and status because of him?

***

She's right, though, she did make the biggest fool out of him.

***

Good for you for slapping her, Minglan!

I've been waiting for someone to do it for ages now.

In fact, so many people in this drama deserve slapping. It's about time you got started on that.

***

Aww, he found his dead baby 😢

***

Wait, that's all?

THAT'S ALL??

WE DO NOT EVEN GET A BEHEADING 😭😭

Not only does her sorry ass not get punished in any way, he will continue to provide for her for the rest of her life. Sure, she will not be living in a manor in luxury as his wife, but she will have a roof over he head and food to eat, plus he will have to employ people in the middle of nowhere to make sure she doesn't go causing trouble again.

She should be in prison instead. Or in some hard labour colony, which I'm sure there are plenty of in Song Dynasty China. OR BEHEADED!!

And what about his maternal Bai relatives? Do they at least get arrested/exiled/beheaded? They have been REPEATEDLY trying to kill him for YEARS!

I am very disappointed with this resolution.

***

Well, I am glad this is over.

Honestly, as far as I am concerned, this whole Manniang subplot has been a huge blight on this otherwise excellent show and a black stain on Gu Tingye as a character. Big thanks to @ruizhi for filling me in on the details from the novel so that I can understand the writing decisions here better. Obviously, I realise that I am in the minority for disliking these decisions (and Gu Tingye as a character) because from what I have seen, he is a firm favourite among the people who watched this drama and everyone is on board with this sanitised version of his character arc.

I have to be honest, if they had kept his harem from the novel, I probably would not have touched this with a ten-foot pole, because I freely admit that I watch c-dramas for the pretty people and idealised romance. I also know that this would have made Gu Tingye more realistic and thus harder to project on, which is ironic because my complaints here are the lack of realism and easy ways out since they decided to include his other women in the drama too. Harem stories depress and infuriate me and I do not watch them unless there are very compelling reasons for me to pick them up, so out of a couple of hundred dramas on my to-watch list, this one would probably not have made it to the top if it had been closer to the source material.

Even as it is, all this is precisely why I put off watching Minglan for the longest time. I knew it had polygamy at its core and this made me disinclined to start it, even though it was warmly recommended by many people in whose good taste I trust. I eventually only started watching because a c-drama friend of mine told me that there is no harem here and that Minglan and Tingye were monogamous and ride-or-die for each other, so Manniang showing up early on was an extremely nasty surprise.

With that said, now that I am here already and very invested in this story, I've long since come to terms with the fact that romance is not the main focus of this show and adjusted my expectations. I am really enjoying it for what it is, which is a family drama focused on women's struggle and suffering in this hell system that they must learn to navigate or die destitute, which is why I am especially irked by this cheap trickery they are employing to make Gu Tingye's and Minglan's relationship more "clean" than it actually is. You cannot have it both ways. Either these characters are realistic people of their time or they are not. Either you are sticking to the book version of them in the adaptation or you are not. But these cake-eating writers (as in wanting their cake and eating it too) definitely tried to get away with both and ended up with huge inconsistencies in their story that irritated me enough to sit down and write this entire screed.

Like I said in my comments on my previous Minglan post, this is the exact thing that made TTEOTM unwatchable for me and landed it on the list of the worst dramas I ever subjected myself to, despite my unceasing obsession with Luo Yunxi. Obviously, I am feeling this on a lesser level with Gu Tingye, because overall, the writing of Minglan committed fewer crimes than TTEOM and remains solid on all other fronts, so I am still invested in the story overall, him as a character and him and Minglan as a couple, but the writers here are just as much cake eaters as the writers on TTEOTM. They looked at this bad boy who worked for a story in another medium precisely because he was morally compromised in some way, wanted that for themselves, but then could not or would not follow through, either because they feared they would alienate a big portion of their audience, or because the Chinese censorship board wouldn't let them get away with it. Then they did this ridiculous thing where they tried going, "Yeah, he's bad, but he's not really! He was set up! It was a misunderstanding!" And ended up blowing a giant hole in their whole story.

If they didn't want to explore Gu Tingye as a man of his time making the same selfish decisions as other men of that time, then they should not have had him acting like one. They should have had a logical and consistent reason why he didn't keep mistresses and concubines (such as, idk, seeing his mother suffer or something) and not introduce Manniang in the first place. What was the point of her in the plotline if we were not going to see him and Minglan make the hard decisions, either to treat his illegitimate offspring as lower-class citizens so that her biological kids could be afforded all the privileges of their rank (which would obviously not sit right with the modern audience), or go with the modern moral code that the show wants them to have and deny Minglan's bio kids by treating all the children equally (which could have been done legally if Minglan was to adopt them, but of course, she was never going to do that)? If you never intended to go there, then why bring in Manniang and her kids in the first place?

In my opinion, if they wanted Gu Tingye untarnished in this way and his love with Minglan unburdened with the baggage of other women and stepkids, they should never have kept Manniang in the adaptation. Once they brought her in, there was no stuffing that genie back into the bottle. The shadow of book!Tingye has been around since the adult actors took over and it is not even the non-monogamy that is an issue for me now, but the character inconsistency and the extremely cheap sleight of hand that they pulled in an attempt to smooth it over.

Here is the thing. Every time I start on a story, be it a book, movie, drama, or whatever, there is a certain premise that it promises to fulfil, which comes with the expectations and limitations of the genre. I adjust my standards accordingly, so if I sit down to watch a fluffy romcom with a young, naive intern falling in love with the son of CEO, then I will judge it on how funny it is and whether the main couple is hot enough and has enough chemistry to keep me invested till the end. I am not going to be particularly worried about the power imbalance and the IRL implications of such a setup, my main concern will be if the main couple look like they are having good enough sex and if I can shoehorn my own escapist fantasy into that dynamic. However, if I start a show that deals with misogyny, patriarchy and sexual harassment of women in the workplace, then you cannot dump the privileged son of the CEO into a relationship with the main heroine and expect me to root for it, unless he is right there beside her, taking his father to court for abuse of power and dismantling the system from within. This is, IMO, what this drama failed to do with Gu Tingye. You cannot promise me a Xiao Qi and deliver a Sheng Hong with the serial numbers filed off.

Based on what I've heard and read about the original novel, book!Tingye is not that much better than Sheng Hong. He had multiple women and illegitimate children that he was playing favourites with based on their birth and rank. He sabotaged his older son and indirectly caused his death so that Minglan's children would not have competition. His daughter by Manniang was just as traumatised as Minglan. He had concubines, who were also technically wives with no way out of a hell marriage, whom he then discarded when it was convenient for him. The only reason this marriage was a victory for Minglan is that she was now the favoured wife with the highest rank, thus her circumstances in life dramatically improved. I understand why they didn't want to portray this to a wider audience, and that doing so would have seriously dented Feng Shaofeng's reputation as a heartthrob in the c-ent industry, but then they shouldn't have opened that can of worms to begin with.

I feel like they should have cut the Manniang storyline completely if they weren't going to do it properly, or, idk, had her go off the deep end much earlier and kill her kids off before he got with Minglan. That could have been used as a catalyst for his change, having him go, "That's it! No more mistresses and concubines for me!" Then we could have seen the rest of it play out as it did (minus Manniang) with a REASON, with his family pressuring him to take in a wife and concubines, him saying no, then falling in love with Minglan and moving on from there naturally and giving us a clean, idealised romance that is not typical for their time.

However, once they brought in Manniang but did not bring in all the nasty stuff implied with him having a kept woman and illegitimate children, they shot themselves in the foot because now Gu Tingye's character was in conflict with the story's internal logic. We have seen how this world functions, we have seen how concubines and the children of concubines are treated. Naturally, once they introduced Manniang and her kids (but especially her son), we were expecting to see exactly what happened in the novel, because this is the premise of the story and the laws by which the world it is set in is governed. The fact that this didn't happen did not make me sigh in relief and think of Gu Tingye as a good guy, it made me question why the story never went there. The cowardly shortcuts out of this predicament and the cheap trickery the writers used to avoid it made me feel like the story was "lying" to me, which is maybe a ridiculous word to use because this whole thing is fiction and therefore a lie. But I could no longer suspend my disbelief, immerse myself in the narrative and root for these characters. Suddenly, they felt fake.

Also, I feel downright insulted by these writing choices.

"Yeah, Gu Tingye had another woman but that's OK because she was actually evil so she doesn't count and he was right to abandon her and have his true romance with Minglan! 😀"

"Yeah, he had a son that he would have had to have been grossly unfair to or not have Minglan's kids get the full extent of their privilege of rank, but that's OK, because the kid just conveniently died! 😀"

"Yeah, his daughter should be traumatised in a hundred different ways from having such a biological mother and dealing with the inferiority complex from growing up right next to Minglan's legitimate children and knowing that in the eyes of society and her own father, she is lesser than them, but don't worry, that's OK, because we are making her suuuuuuuper well adjusted! 😀"

"Yeah, if Chang'er had lived, the audience would have been forced to confront the fact that Gu Tingye was very much a man of his time and that Minglan was also no benevolent saint and that they would have treated children that are not biologically hers as second-class citizens, just like Sheng Hong and Wang Ruofu did in the Sheng household! But that's OK, we'll just kill his illegitimate firstborn son so that you don't have to think about that! 😀"

As a character, Gu Tingye feels so disingenuous because of these shortcuts the writers took to scapegoat Manniang and absolve him of the consequences of being just like the other men in this drama. Would he have been an idealised c-drama hero that girls could pin their fantasies on if they had kept his novel characterisation? Absolutely not. They made him more attractive and palatable to a wider, modern, likely younger-leaning audience at the cost of the story's internal logic, plot coherency and character consistency, and that, for me, is a much bigger writing crime than him having a harem and treating his illegitimate children as lesser-than.

Again, this is an adaptation and nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to include Manniang. If they had wanted Gu Tingye untarnished and idealised, they should have handled her differently. They cannot have it both ways.

With that said, I realise that I am in the minority here because most viewers were obviously very happy to let this slide (just like they were with TTEOTM). Again, most viewers will not agree with me on Gu Tingye because he is obviously a favourite ML for many, but for me personally, the overall drama loses lots of points on him, especially because of Manniang.

In any case, there are still more than twenty episodes left here for me, so onwards and forward to better plot points and character arcs! 😅

[acti-veg]

i genuinely feel like it’s impossible to be an ethical person without sacrificing pretty much everything which gives me any joy

i went vegan, but now i just keep seeing how i fall short in so many other ways. it seems like everything i previously enjoyed has to be boycotted. everything is problematic in some way.

I don't feel like 'ethical' is a thing anyone actually just achieves and becomes 'an ethical person' one day by being nice enough and boycotting enough companies; it's something we have to strive for. I agree with Aristotle that virtue is a skill, it's not something you just are, it's something you have to constantly practice and that won't always be easy. That is made all the more difficult by capitalism.

Whatever you want to buy that will give you joy that you know is harmful, consider whether there is a more ethical version. Can you buy it second hand? Is there a more ethical company selling the same thing? Can you replace it with something else? You can't deny yourself every pleasure, but if something that brings you joy is inherently harmful you can choose to examine whether or not you actually need it to feel happy, and if you really do, how you can mitigate at least some of that harm. It's about choosing your battles.

I can't not eat any vegetables or grains without a severe health impact for example, and I can't afford to buy everything locally and I can't grow it all myself, so I buy it from the supermarket, knowing that much of it will have been farmed in environmentally destructive ways using unfair labour practices. People who aren't even trying will bring that up as a reason why veganism isn't ethical, but it's a lot better than consuming that unethical produce alongside animal products, which require even more of that exact produce.

I can't be completely cruelty free but I can relatively easily boycott animal products, and I can pay for the extra 15% on coffee, chocolate and bananas to buy Fair Trade. There is just about no smartphone or computer that does what I need it to do that is also ethical, but I can buy them refurbished instead of new. I can boycott particularly harmful companies, while knowing that what I replace their products with won't be ethically perfect either - just better. None of these are hugely commendable acts or difficult sacrifices, but it all helps.

Being vegan does not make you a good person, it's just one stance on one particular issue, which is the exploitation of animals. I oppose exploiting animals and refusing to purchase products which engage in that exploitation is accessible to me, and so I do it. It's that simple. Plenty of my other purchases aren't ethical and neither will yours be, because a lifestyle free from any and all harm is not possible under capitalism.

So long as you're doing your best that's really all anyone can expect. We're going to pass through this world just once, so we should enjoy it while trying to leave our small corner of it a little better off than it was before we got there. Being kind to one another and living a good life may not always be easy, but its also not some great burden that robs you of any joy. It is the entire point of living.

[ivesambrose]

ℜ𝔞𝔥𝔲 𝔦𝔫 𝔓𝔦𝔰𝔠𝔢𝔰 & 𝔎𝔢𝔱𝔲 𝔦𝔫 𝔳𝔦𝔯𝔤𝔬 𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔰𝔦𝔱 𝔪𝔢𝔰𝔰𝔞𝔤𝔢𝔰

October 30, 2023 — May 18, 2025

Pick the image you can submerge yourself into or can see yourself getting lost in or being a part of, that has your message.

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Picture 1

You'll look back at your childhood, early teen years or even the eras before you that you haven't lived and take inspiration from there when it comes to your creative expressions. Might revisit old films, old forms of media, music etc too.

You'll feel detached to modern life quite a bit. I believe for a long time you've been quite cynical since even the field of creativity moves too fast being heavily reliant on content generation so you had kept your hobbies aside till now or were worried about learning anything new and allowing yourself to develop in your craft.

However, you'll have this unabashed sense of confidence which comes from simply catering to that version of you that wants to find joy and awe in the arts and whatever makes you feel less doom and gloom.

You might adopt a pet or find yourself feeling closer to animals. Also, do not worry too much about your finances. They will pick up.

Some of you might rent out a place or move into a new house.

Some of you will have prospective romantic suitors or an existing relationship will bloom slowly but with assurance.

A word of advice is to invest your money properly and not mindlessly spend it at the same time the harder you hold onto it the quicker you'll find your funds decreasing. Find a middle ground.

Detachment from what you have pushed yourself to hustle for tirelessly for so long and allowing yourself to dream, explore, rest and take it slow is going to eventually bring you what you truly want without you having to lose your sanity in the process.

Picture 2

Life seemed to have been filled with toil and labour that may have been showing it's adverse effects on your health. That and the need to achieve perfectionism has been constant but the results have been futile.

Either you have been working towards something you're passionate about and will see the results finally come through or you'll finally find a reason to be passionate about or something that is worth the dedication and labour you put for the long haul and you'll appraise it's results by the middle or towards the end of this transit.

You may be realizing certain connections (likely romantic) however established will not be making it. But that's okay, you'll be eager to take steps towards a new direction even if the past seems to come snapping at your feet. (Literally, take care of your legs and feet.)

You'll also eventually be pushed to become your own boss and validation. Learn and break the cycles of your own deliberate ways of self sabotage. What does that bring? That success you have previously slaved away for.

When illusions and distractions fall away, true transformation occurs. A clear mind is a gift of it's own, a power you can confidently weild. You can finally move forward without the constant anxiety of looking back.

Picture 3

You've been impatient for your own metamorphosis, your rewards, your blessings as well as your rebirth. The previous month's felt like someone grabbed you by the head and pushed you down in an effort to make you sink at some point, you prayed that it's done with, just so the suffocation would end. That's exactly what has happened but you don't realize it yet, but will in the coming months, the old you is gone.

Some of you may be feeling drawn to dark Goddesses (learning about them or working with them however this applies to you)

You'll be pushed in the spotlight now, unknowingly, suddenly and inevitability. The metamorphosis is complete see? You haven't noticed but the people will. And although there are so many fulfilling offers both in career and love, why must you run from it? Maybe cuz you've chased all of this or wanted all of this for so long, now that it's here, you feel a sense of detachment. And although aloofness is soothing and maybe even attractive, live a little. In fact, you should unapologetically live out loud.

You have this pent up energy of wanting to beautify, nurture and bewitch everything and everyone around you and that you will, it will start with yourself first. A lot of you will venture into an artistic field that will require travel, travel in turn will also help you in connecting with your soul tribe. Listen to your heart a little more because you certainly love being in your head.

You've also been worried about your family, you'll see them happy and fulfilled.

There's so much to create, to achieve, to learn, to teach, to explore to give and to receive. So don't hold back.

Picture 4

Sometimes realizing that what you thought brought you joy because it looked exciting and good in the pictures was sucking you dry after all, can also feel like a heartbreak or an afternoon cry under the shower. You've been sick likely and devoid of true merriment. Perhaps some of you aren't as happy with the company you keep. Good thing is, that's about to change, even though at first it may not feel like it.

There's conflict internally and externally, it might bleed into your proffesional/academic life. Is everything really supposed to be competition? How much of your authenticity have you compromised so far?

I do see you managing your finances/material life/academics/work/business etc efficiently. Finally resting, recharging and looking after your well being too.

At some point you'll encounter someone unlikely who will feel like a guiding star to you and might end up being a friend, a muse, a mentor or lover and if you're lucky, all of them in one person.

You have courage but you also have Intuition and foresight, trust it, use it. So that the joy you feel and what you celebrate next, fills your soul not just your glass.

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Mosaic - "N.B.E.-ONE"

Earliest evidence posted on September 11th, 2007

Story - Matthew Simon Hessey Script, Colours, Letters - wadapan Art - Jeffrey Witty Edits - Mary Canada

deviantART

wada sez: Jeffrey Witty had shared his art process for this one on deviantART, but for whatever reason, the strip was never colored or lettered. I got in touch with Jeffrey to see if he could provide me the original script—and as it happened, he still had it! The story was clearly inspired by Simon Furman’s work on the Transformers: Movie Prequel comic series from IDW, but I felt like Hessey’s script itself did little more than recap the events we already know from that comic and from the film itself. As a huge fan of the first live-action movie with strong opinions on Megatron’s character, seeing as I’d be spending so much time coloring and lettering the strip, I decided I wanted to write my own version of the strip. I know that’s very cheeky of me, but after two years of working on this archive, I felt like I could have a little bit of archival misconduct as a treat. Of course, I’ve also lettered up Matthew’s original script, so you can read that version below as well and compare for yourself—which do you prefer? And after that, stay tuned for a full process breakdown and a much more in-depth commentary on the choices I made!

PANEL 1: (MEGATRON IS FALLING THROUGH THE ICE, SIMILAR PICTURE TO THE ONE OF HIM FALLING THROUGH THE ICE IN THE MOVIE PREQUEL COMIC) TEXT BOX (GREY): I am Megatron, leader of The Decepticons. I arrived on this pitiful planet in search of the Allspark millennia ago, but was denied at the last possible moment. Megatron: No! Not when I was so close! PANEL 2: (MEGATRON IS IN THE WATER, REACHING FOR THE HOLE IN THE ICE DESPERATELY) TEXT BOX (GREY): Upon my landing, the ground collapsed beneath my feet and I plunged into the icy cold liquid below, causing most of my primary systems to shut down. Leaving me only able to watch and wait as I was entombed. PANEL 3: (CLOSE UP OF THE GLASSES LYING IN THE ICE WITH THE ALLSPARK SYMBOLS ON IT) TEXT BOX (GREY): That is, until I was discovered by a biological entity. Using one of my last remaining vestiges of power, I burnt the location of the Allspark onto the creature’s visual enhancement pieces. PANEL 4: (HOOVER DAM IN THE BACKGROUND WITH A TRUCK AND A TRAILER LARGE ENOUGH TO CONTAIN MEGATRON DRIVING UP TO IT) TEXT BOX (GREY): I was moved between laboratories as these ‘humans’ experimented on me to allow their own pitiful understanding of technology to advance. But, eventually I came to be stored in a place known as ‘The Hoover Dam’. PANEL 5: (PICTURE OF THE ALLSPARK IN HOOVER DAM) TEXT BOX (GREY): It was here that for the first time in millennia I felt the call of the Allspark, it was so close that I could almost smell it, touch it even. Yet I was powerless to do anything about it. PANEL 6: (CLOSE UP ON MEGATRON’S FACE, WITH BRIGHT RED GLOWING EYES) TEXT BOX (GREY): But now, I feel my power slowly, but steadily, returning to me. Soon I will be free. Soon I will have the Allspark. And soon I shall have my revenge.

wada sez:

Whew, it’s so refreshing to step outside the confines of my usual single-paragraph commentary! This was a labour of love for me, inspired by Terry van Feleday’s singular opus of cinematic analysis, “I actually kind of appreciate the Transformers movies.” The essay on the first movie, towards its end, veers into straightup fanfiction, providing a very interesting interpretation of Megatron’s inner thoughts during his cryogenic sleep. I’ve mirrored the segment in question at the very end of this post; hopefully you can see how it formed the basis for my script.

The central conceit of van Feleday’s reading is that the cry of “I am Megatron!”, spoken in plain English, is actually addressed to the humans, a declaration of self-actualization following decades of callous dissection. In my script, I incorporate Hessey’s title into the strip diegetically, as one of many radio transmissions overheard by Megatron during his imprisonment. I wanted to gather all the epithets I could think of from the movie and its ancillary material, to build up a picture of how the humans view this impossible creature. I actually started out with way more, and pared it back because I felt it was cluttering the artwork too much!

It felt important to me to lean into the horror of Megatron’s paralysis, and to express that horror in a uniquely mechanical way. I also wanted to stay true to what I viewed as the core emotion of Hessey’s script—namely, the feeling of being so close to accomplishing a goal, yet being utterly powerless to do so.

The film implies that the AllSpark’s coordinates being seared onto Archibald Witwicky’s glasses is something that happens unconsciously, but Terry van Feleday instead interprets it as a deliberate attempt at communication on Megatron’s part.

I liked the idea of portraying this relationship between Megatron and the scientists, where they are unknowingly creating this horrific impression of human nature. With that interpretation in mind, Megatron’s characterisation after awakening in the film reads less menacingly, and honestly much more favourable towards the human characters such as Sam. I think that’s the real power of transformative works, to recontextualise an existing story and allow you to view it through a new lens.

In the final panel, I had to cheat a little with the script; obviously, the intention is that Megatron is frozen, which is why we have this extreme closeup; the omission of his mouth literally depicts him as a mute. I wanted to recontextualize the panel as being the exact moment where he’s breaking free, speaking for the first time on this planet. I hope you found it effective.

As for the colours... the first thing I wanted to point out was that Jeffrey appears to have inadvertently horizontally squished his art while inking it! Still, this was the highest-resolution version of the art, so I just rolled with it. So if you noticed that the cube in particular is very malproportioned, well, now you know why!

 I deliberately used very different tones between the left and the right columns, to help guide the reader’s eye down the page first; the lettering also straddles the panels to help in this respect. I do like Jeffrey’s composition, using the full height of the page to create this feeling of falling. The second panel in particular is very simple and effective, definitely the best in the piece.

In the first panel, I initially gave Megatron much cooler hues, but I revised it once I realised it was supposed to be referencing a specific sequence from the prequel comic, where Megatron’s armor is given a white-hot glow from re-entry; it’s this which melts the ice beneath his feet.

Anyway, here’s the extract from Terry van Feleday’s essay...

Imagine you just had the worst day of your life.

Well, it wasn’t really a day. Hours and days have no meaning for you. You have lived far too long to follow such microscopic temporal distinctions. You built an empire, and lived to see it dying. What can a day matter? A year?

How about a thousand?

Your planet was dying. Your species was dying. What can a king do, when his children are dying because there is nothing to eat? You knew the answer: The Allspark. You hung onto that fairy tale even as your followers declared it absurd, taking off immediately, all alone, as soon as there was a sign of it. No delays; Without the Allspark, everything you ever knew and loved would slowly wither away and die. And all you needed to do was move to a completely insignificant planet it found itself drawn to and pick it up. You would be more than a leader, you would be a hero, a savior. There would be no more need for war, no more fear of death and hunger, and no more dying younglings.

And then everything went wrong.

The moment still constantly plays before your eyes. You break into the planet’s atmosphere, and it nearly destroys your sensors. That vivid feeling of total disorientation, the hard, sudden impact, and the cold darkness that closed around you as the cavern froze around your unmoving body. You weren’t ready to die. You thought back to your planet, your people – you still had to save them. Had to. What would they do without you? The people saw their leader off, promising them to bring back utopia. Knowing you wouldn’t return would shatter their morale completely.

The years start piling on. You try to move, try to melt the ice, try to do anything, but the world only seems to become colder around you. Ten years. Fifty years. Five hundred years. Unable to move, with only your own thoughts and worries to give you company. Your mind can’t take it, and your sanity falls apart. Everything you thought and wished for slowly shatters into pieces, leaving only hate and chaos behind. Eight hundred years. Thousand years. After a while, you simply stop counting.

Then you hear a crash from the ceiling.

Through your delusional fever dreams, you aren’t sure if it is real or not, or what is truly happening. A tiny creature descends upon you, clearly primitive, shouting in rough, poorly-coordinated language, but perhaps not too dissimilar to you. You failed to bring the cube to your people – but maybe, maybe there is some slight chance that he can. So you tell him where he can find it, the only way you can right now. You rest a bit more easy. Perhaps it is time to rest after all.

But, more small creatures start filling your cavern. They begin chopping away at the ice that binds you, clumsily, but surely. They want to free you. For the first time in millennia, you feel just that little bit more warm - finally you will be able to return, to not be a useless statue, but the great hero you were destined to be. Your silent cheer fills your own head as the humans, as they call themselves, with great difficulty, raise you out of the cavern and put you onto a transport.

They seem bewildered with you. Curious. A little too curious, perhaps. As grateful as you are, you have a mission to attend to, and they will only get in the way. You are defrosted enough to stand up.

Panicked shouting erupts among the small ones. It seems they hadn’t expected you to still be alive. You notice too late the all-too-familiar cold creeping up your body, and suddenly you cannot move again. They froze you!

Burning rage fills your heart. What do they think they’re doing!? They lock you underground again, and, to your horror, begin to force parts of your body open, dissecting you alive.

You start picking up on their language, and slowly begin to understand what they’re saying. They’re just using you to expand their technology. These primitive insects have attached themselves to you like filthy parasites, using your suffering to create for themselves more meaningless conveniences. You should be their god. You wanted to save your own kind, but instead, you are treated like a chunk of garbage. And as a final injustice, the insult to the injury, they did not even treat you to a proper name.

Needless to say, as soon as you are free, someone will pay.

[bouquetface]

11/29/2006, kuala lumpur, malaysia, 8:55 pm.

current location: gopeng, perak, malaysia

bio: i grew up in a rough time and had to basically live by teaching myself things. i have mommy issues and mixed feelings towards my older brother. people have said i'm charming, silly, happy-go-lucky, but also self-centered, in my own world, inconsistent, unreliable in outings. i was very depressed and had umm mental issues i can't even identify properly, but after entering pre-university i felt that i improved a lot better.

i'm not sure what i'd like to ask, but i want to know something regarding my academic performance. i've consistently disappointed myself and sabotaged my own grades due to my impulsive decisions and it cost me heavily. now that i'm getting my degree i want to make sure it doesn't happen again, but idk what the stars will say. so i'd like to ask — based on my chart, how do i learn to find a healthier version of myself in order to achieve my dreams?

Hello, sorry for the late response I had some unexpected life stuff happen.

You have a strong scorpio 6th house. You could be attracted to careers involving investigating/research and analysis. Careers in service to helping others are likely too. EX: Law, Medical, Psych fields. Your pisces moon suggests you will be creative in your career. You could even do well in marking or consulting. You are likely to be good at any field because pisces moon in 10th for gemini asc is a very good placement.

Saturn and ketu are in your 3rd. Your 11th H ruler which deals with older siblings is in 6th H too. This can indicate a difficult relationship with siblings especially older.

Your spouse is likely to be well educated. An older person too. They can be tall physcially. They can have a dry sense of humour. They can be very knowledgable - you could adapt their beliefs such as political, religious, etc.

You may encounter romantic connections with controlling and critical people. You must be careful to not confuse those types with your spouse.

You have a Saturn/Rahu dasha period coming up in October. This period will last until 2027. Like all periods of life there are a mix of good and bad. Your natal Rahu is in 9th house, this shows focus on higher education and spiritual/religious beliefs. This period will require hard working and consistency to get through but you will get through it. At times you will feel your faith is being tested, you can struggle with feeling lonely. This is a good time to make sure you keep a strong support system in your life. Be kinder to yourself during this period but don't let yourself become lazy or inconsistent.

Rahu in 9th does bring interrupted studies but from what you described it seems you have already experienced it. If you keep a strong focus, you should achieve your goals.

By March 2030 (age 23), you will leave your Saturn mahadasha period. This is good news as many find that the Saturn period is very difficult. Since the age of 4-20, you have been in a Saturn mahadasha. This can bring delays in career, romance, and life in general. It can test your faith and be a karmic period. Luckily, you have gotten it over with by the time you are 23. After 23, you can slowly begin to reap the benefits of your hard labour.

2027 September to 2032 (ages 20-23), you are likely to begin to have an easier time. You can meet new friends & someone to be with for the long tern. I don't want to get hopes up or scare you so please understand I'm not a pro and you have free will to do as you please with your life.

Aug 2033 - Jun 2036 (ages 26-29) are also very likely to be good especially in regard to romance as this is a Mercury/Venus period. Many get married during their venus period, however once again I don't want to get your hopes up. This is not always the situation for everyone. However, generally it will be blissful.

[ariel-seagull-wings]

ANPU AND BATA

@themousefromfantasyland @the-blue-fairie @the-gentile-folklorist @adarkrainbow @tamisdava2 @princesssarisa @softlytowardthesun @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @professorlehnsherr-almashy

(The tale of Anpu and Bata, found in an Ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscript, is more than three thousand years old, and is regarded as the oldest story that has come down to us in writing. It may well have been an ancient tradition even then. One of the most interesting things about it is that elements found in tales all over the world ever since are contained in it. The first part has a parallel in the Biblical story of Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar. The core of the story – the life-token indicating death and the ‘separable soul’ – occurs in over eight hundred versions in Europe alone, and the reciters are unlikely to know that they are part of a line of transmission from the Nineteenth Dynasty of Pharaonic Egypt. The story is sometimes found, conflated with all or much of the Perseus and Andromeda myth, associated with the exploits of a dragon-slayer, which is encountered in almost every country in the world. The crumbling papyrus roll, in the British Museum, contains a message from the original scribe, a threat to those who might abuse it, which is similar to those found on Eastern manuscripts even today: ‘Excellently finished in peace for the Ka of the scribe of the Treasury Kagabu, of the Treasury of Pharaoh. And for the Scribe Hora, and the Scribe Meramapt. Written by the Scribe Anena, the owner of this roll. He who speaks against this scroll, may Tahui smite him!’ It was the custom of Eastern kings, when pleased with a story related to them, to order it to be written down and placed in the treasury.)

Once there lived in Egypt two brothers, and they loved each other greatly. The elder had a beautiful young wife, and a fine pair of oxen for the fields. His name was Anpu, and his younger brother’s name was Bata. This young man did everything for his brother, followed him and the oxen to the fields, waited upon him like a servant, harvested the corn, tended the animals. He worked for him day and night; for his brother, in his eyes, had no equal in all the land of Egypt. Now when the time for ploughing the land arrived, the elder brother said to Bata:

‘Come with the seeds tomorrow early to the fields, for we must begin sowing, because the Nile flood has retreated from the earth and the day is propitious.’ Anpu having gone on ahead, it was left for Bata to bring the seed, so he went to the door of the house, and said to his sister-in-law, Anpu’s beautiful young wife:

‘Let me have the corn from the bin, for my brother and I need it today.’

The woman replied:

‘Come in and get it yourself, for I am busy doing my hair and I cannot drop my pins and ribbons and get the corn.’

So he went in, and helped himself to as much corn as he could carry, for he wanted to start the day of planting well, as the day was propitious. Seeing him carrying such a load, the wife of his brother said:

‘You are strong and good-looking, indeed. I had not noticed that you were so presentable before. Come, stay with me a little while here before you go to the fields, for you will both be away all day, and I shall be lonely. Give me something to remember when I am alone.’ Bata recoiled at the woman’s words, and his face darkened with rage. He said:

‘You are like a mother to me, for are you not my respected brother’s wife? I will forget what you have just spoken. Do you forget it, also.’ And he went away to the fields, trying to erase her suggestion from his mind, for she was his brother’s wife, and though beautiful, now appeared evil in his eyes. All day they laboured in the fields, and at evening Anpu and Bata returned home. They expected to find food ready as usual, when they came to the house. But there was no fire, no light, no smell of cooking. Bata went to the stable to attend to the animals, and Anpu went in to see what was the matter with his wife. She was lying huddled under the quilt, crying as if she were in pain. ‘What is the matter with you?’ he asked. ‘Has anyone been here in my absence to upset you like this?’ ‘The only one here in your absence was your wretched brother!’

She cried.

‘Ask him what is the matter with me!’ ‘But what are you saying? Has he laid hands upon you?’ Shouted the enraged husband. ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I was here doing my hair when he came in for the seeds, and he said to me “Be with me a while before I go to the fields and my brother will never know” and he violated me. Oh, I cannot look at you for shame, my husband!’ So Anpu sharpened his knife, and stood outside the stable ready to kill his brother as soon as he came to join him for the evening meal. All unaware of this, the younger brother went about his tasks in the stable, when suddenly his favourite cow spoke to him:

‘Beware, Bata, your brother has sharpened his knife and is waiting to kill you behind the door. Run, do not go back to the house, or you will die.’ The young man looked out of the stable and saw his brother standing strangely still, with his knife in his hand. Fearing that he could never explain the true state of affairs to his brother, he made a hole in the mud wall of the barn and fled as fast as his feet would carry him. But the elder brother heard him running, and chased after him. The light of murder was in his eyes. So, in great fear, Bata called out:

‘Oh Great Ra Harakhiti, Mighty Lord, You are He who divides the Evil from the Good! Save me!’

And Ra answered his prayer. A mighty river sprang up between the two brothers, a river that Anpu could not cross, even if he had had a boat, for it was full of crocodiles. The elder brother was furious that he could not reach Bata to kill him, and cursed him from the other bank. But Bata called out in a loud voice to him:

‘O my brother, do not think ill of me. I cannot prove to you that I did nothing wrong, but my cow warned me, and I fled from you in fear. Why did you come to kill me before you asked me if I had done what you believed I did?’

And his brother said:

‘Tell me yourself, then, what truly happened?’

Bata answered:

‘I went to the bin to get the seed myself, for your wife told me she was doing her hair and did not wish to leave her toilette to attend to me. Then, after I had helped myself, she said I looked strong and handsome, and tempted me to stay with her for a short while, saying that you would not know. You see how the truth has been changed.’ ‘Will you swear the oath by Ra Harakhiti that what you have said is true?’

Cried the elder brother.

‘By Ra Harakhiti I swear that it is true.’

Said the younger brother, and he took his knife, and cut a piece of his flesh, and threw it into the water, and the crocodiles ate it. Then theelder brother was satisfied, and he wept for Bata and cursed his wife. He knew that he could not reach his brother, because of the crocodiles, and he stood there, putting away his knife. ‘Now we know that you have done a bad thing, trying to kill me, will you now do a good thing for me?’

Said Bata. Anpu said he would, so his brother told him,

‘I am going away to the valley of the acacia. So you go to your house, and look to your cattle. Now this is what you can do for me; my soul shall be drawn out, and put into the flower of the acacia. When the acacia is cut down, as it will be, put the flower in a glass of cold water, for my soul shall be in it. When someone gives you a glass of beer in your hand, and it is agitating in the glass, then do not stay, but go and find the flower, even if you search for seven years, and put it in the water. Farewell.’ Then the youth stopped speaking these strange things, and went to the valley of the acacia. His brother turned away and went back to his house, and he was angered against his wife, so he killed her in the heat of his wrath. Then he threw his knife away, and looked after his cattle and his fields himself, sorrowing for his brother. A long time after this had happened, the younger brother was living in the valley of the acacia. He had drawn out his soul, and it lived in the topmost flower of the acacia tree. He had built himself a small house in which he lived, and it was full of good things. One day, walking in the valley, he met the Nine Gods, who were going forth to look upon the whole land of Egypt. The Nine Gods were talking with each other when Bata came upon them, and they said to him, ‘O Bata, Bull of the Nine Gods, why are you walking alone? Your brother has slain his wife, and all is level between you. His transgression is forgiven.’ Then, as Bata knelt before them, Ra Harakhiti said to Khnumu:

‘So that he will not be forever alone, make a woman for Bata, a mate for his loneliness.’

And Khnumu made a wife for him. She was more beautiful than any woman had ever been before. The seven Hathors came to see her when she was created, and they said of one accord:

‘She will die a sharp death, though the essence of every god is in her!’ All the day Bata hunted and in the evening he came back and placed all his spoils at his wife’s feet, for he loved her very much. He said to her one day:

‘Now, I must warn you, never go too near the sea, for if it should seize you, and want to carry you away, I cannot save you, for my soul is in the flower at the top of the acacia, and I have no power, other than in that flower.’ When she heard his secret she smiled, and thought about it much. Next day she went to walk beside the sea, and the sea saw her, and began to cast its waves up towards her. She took to her heels and, being frightened by the passion of the sea, ran away from it. She entered her house, and the sea called to the acacia: ‘I want to have that woman, I wish that I could take her!’ Then the acacia brought a curl from her hair which the woman had cut off while sitting under the tree, and dropped it into the water. The sea carried it to the place where the fullers washed the clothes of the Pharaoh. One of the washermen who was standing on the sand picked up the curl of hair, and it smelt so sweet that it almost took his senses away. He put it into the clothing which was being taken to the Pharaoh, and when Pharaoh smelt it he was enraptured. Where did this rare and wonderful scent come from?’

Cried Pharaoh.

‘Bring the wise men, so that they too may smell it and tell me.’ The wise men came, with their signs and portents, and told the Pharaoh:

‘The scent comes from the curl from the hair of a daughter of Ra Harakhiti; the essence of every god is in her. Send messengers to the borders of the sea, and in the valley of the acacia she will be found.’ So the Pharaoh sent many men to the valley of the acacia, and they tried to take the wife of Bata, but he killed them all. None of these men returned to the Pharaoh, and so he sent more, this time men on horseback and strong soldiers, to bring her to him. Bata had to let her go, but they did not kill him. He remained behind, under the acacia, feeling very distressed. Somehow, from his mind he tried to send a message to his brother, reminding him of what he had said to Anpu across the river of the crocodiles, the last time that he had seen him. The beautiful woman pleased the Pharaoh very much, and he gave her everything in his power. ‘Pharaoh,’ said she, after he had presented her with gold and jewels and rarest rings, ‘send men to cut down the acacia, for my husband’s soul is in the topmost flower, and I would that he were dead.’

So the men went and chopped the tree in the valley so that the topmost flower, in which was the soul of Bata, fell to the ground, and he, too, fell dead. At that very moment, someone handed Anpu, the elder brother, a glass of beer, and the liquid became agitated as he was about to drink it. He remembered what his brother had told him, all that long time ago. He got his stick and his sandals, his clothes for travelling, and set off. He travelled all day and all night, and arrived at the valley of the acacia. Then he saw that the tree had been cut down, and saw the body of his brother lying dead. He wept bitterly, and looked everywhere for the flower which contained the soul of his brother. But he could not find it. He lay down to sleep under the tree, and said to himself:

‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow I will seek it; for I will spend all the days of my life, if necessary, to find the flower.’ Next day he did not find it, but he discovered, in a crack in the earth, a seed. He put the seed in a glass of water, and it sprouted. It was soon the flower containing his brother’s soul. Within a few minutes the body of Bata shuddered under the cloth which covered it, and soon he was standing well and strong before Anpu. They embraced each other joyfully, and sat talking together for many hours. Then Bata said to his brother:

‘I am to become a great bull, by favour of the gods, and you are to get on my back. By the time the sun has risen thrice I shall be in the place where my wife makes a fool of the Pharaoh. And, when I am before the Pharaoh, you shall be taken to him, and he will give you gold and silver, and good things in return. I will be thought of by all as a great marvel, and you will return to our old village home a rich man.’

Before Anpu’s eyes he turned into a huge bull. So, the elder brother got onto his back, and within three days they were before the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh had never before seen such a fine creature, in all dominions of the Upper and the Lower Nile, so he gave many presents to the elder brother, and took Bata in his bull form to the royal stables to be looked after in great style. The gigantic bull was so tame that it was often garlanded with flowers by the royal ladies. One day when his wife, now a Princess by command of the Pharaoh, came near to him,the bull said in his human voice:

‘I am alive, and now the gods have in their wisdom caused me to be in this marvellous bull’s body.’ She was greatly affrighted, and wondered how she could get rid of her husband yet again. So she went to the Pharaoh and said:

‘My lord, I will never be happy unless I have for my illness the liver of that creature, which I am sure is fit for nothing else but to be eaten!’ So at once the Pharaoh gave orders for the animal to be slaughtered, and said:

‘Let the liver be given to the Princess, so that she will soon be well again.’ A tremendous feast was planned, and the bull was to be sacrificed to the gods. As he was being slaughtered, the bull shook two drops of blood from his shoulder wound onto the walls of the royal palace. The blood dripped from each side of the gigantic door, and where the blood soaked into the ground two Persea trees grew. They grew and grew, each day taller, and each of them was perfect in every way. A courtier went to tell the Pharaoh:

‘Lo, there are two giant trees growing, one on each side of the great door of the palace, these are propitious signs, oh Pharaoh!’

And there was much rejoicing because of these trees, and many people made offerings to them, because of their miraculous growth from the bull’s blood. The ladies of the court went out, and placed garlands of flowers around the trees, and prayed to them. When his wife came, Bata said to her from the trees, in his own voice, which she knew so well:

‘Deceitful woman, I am Bata, who you have thrice betrayed. First you went to the Pharaoh, then you had my soul-tree cut down, then you had the ox slain. Now I am in the strength of these trees. I shall never die!’ So the Princess went to the Pharaoh and said:

‘As you love me, will you do me a small favour? I do not like the sight of those two grotesque Persea trees, one on each side of the great door of the palace. Do you please give orders that they be cut down, for they grow even uglier every day, and one day they will bring the palace down, I am sure!’ The Pharaoh, besotted with his love for her, consented, and the next day woodcutters were chopping with might and main at the beautiful Persea trees. The Princess was standing not far away, looking at this activity, rejoicing in her heart, when a tiny chip of wood flew into her mouth. She was so startled that she swallowed it. The trees were at that moment completely cut down, and fell outside the Palace gates. When nine months had passed, a son was born to the Princess, and there was rejoicing all through the land, for the Pharaoh thought that the child was his son. As the months went by, the Pharaoh loved the baby even more, and raised him to be the royal son of Kush, heir of all the lands of the Upper and Lower Nile. Not many days after that, the Pharaoh died. Then the Prince, the heir of the lands, said: ‘Let all my nobles come before me, that I may tell them all that has happened to me.’ They came, and he told them everything. His elder brother was brought from the village, to be made a minister at his court. Then they brought his wife, and they judged her and she received her punishment. He was thirty years King of Egypt, and so endeared himself to the people that his brother took his place when he died.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

books i would like to read that i haven't found:

books that feel like the best 200k+ bucky barnes recovery fics. which is to say, books about recovering from trauma by people who understand it from the inside out. books about coming to terms with having done awful things. books about people who became a villain against their own will but now are clawing their way back to being just some guy. not a redemption arc that winds up as heroism, but finding equilibrium again and realising you don't always have to be the worst version of yourself. ideally these should be bleak and hilarious in equal measure.

books that feel like pride (2014). solidarity and friendship and queerness and labour rights, with different kinds of relationships given equal weight in terms of character arcs. friendships that hit romance beats and romance where you actually believe in their friendship. critique of the system that manages to be hopeful without ignoring the mess and the reality and the fact that progress can be slow and not all battles can be won.

more urban fantasy where the magic and supernatural stuff is widely known and integrated into society, like holly black's "coldest girl in coldtown" or "curseworkers" but ideally adult. featuring nerds. vampire museum consultants and shit like that. idk this one's a bit vaguer. ideally i would like this to not have witches because there is SO MUCH urban fantasy out there featuring witches and i just do not care about them. i want creatures. i want beasts. i want bizarrely specific inconveniences for werewolves with day jobs. i realise that Tom Holt has written a lot of these and maybe i should just go back to reading more Tom Holt but i would also like this to be queer and earnest in a way that his books don't tend to be

this is not an all-encompassing list but this is what i'm wanting right now. if you have suggestions that fit these categories, let me know.

please note, i do not want "it's not anything you've asked for, but..." flavoured suggestions. does it ACTUALLY resemble these descriptions (at least partially)? or are you just suggesting it because you want to suggest something, regardless of how useful the suggestion is? bc i see the latter a lot on book rec requests and it's not helpful tbh