#oh and in case everyones been saying the things in this post for ten years! sorry im vey new like three days old

[saintsenara]

idk if you have ever talk about this before but in case you havent, what do you think of the infamous "Albus Severus" Potter name? overall how do you feel about Harry's naming his kids?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i'll be honest, its infamy always strikes me as a classic case of the fandom not being able to separate what characters would do from what they would do.

because i completely appreciate that most people probably wouldn't name their children after a teacher who bullied them and a man who sent them to the death...

but harry would.

albus severus makes perfect sense as a name on the basis of who harry is, how he understands honour and lineage, how he comes to think of both snape and dumbledore over the course of deathly hallows, and how those thoughts would expand and deepen as time passes after the end of the pre-epilogue canon.

i also don't find the james and lily thing weird. i know plenty of people who are named after their dead relatives, including a couple of people who are named after murdered relatives, and it's not something anyone i know would look twice at. nor do the families of any of those people have trouble understanding them as their own person. i presume this would be considered stranger - and/or more inhibiting to a child's sense of identity - in other parts of the world, but i just understand it as something families do.

what does strike me as odd, though, is how much of this fandom forgets two things: that there are generally two people involved in naming a child; and that ginny is not a doormat.

it always seems to me that - whether people think the kids' names are suitable or not - harry is assumed to have been exclusively responsible for them, while ginny is assumed either to have been railroaded into doing what harry wanted, or to have nobly forfeited any say in the naming process because her only goal in life is to sacrifice everything to make harry happy.

[when it comes to the boys' names, at least. people do seem to go for the idea that ginny's responsible for the luna part of lily luna.]

but i think this is nonsense - and it clearly puts enough of a bee in my bonnet that i've had her say so in two pieces of my writing...

in everlasting ink:

James will be born with the cord wrapped around his neck, grey and still, and there will be hours - or maybe just seconds which feel like hours - in which she doesn't breathe, skin going cold and vision whiting, until he roars, rattly and indignant, as though being born was an unwelcome disturbance in his otherwise busy day.   That's why she'll want him to have Sirius' name. His first cry will sound like a motorbike.

and [when i finally get around to posting the next chapter] one year in every ten:

'What on earth possessed you to agree to that name?' 'I didn't agree to it. I picked it. I hope you don't think so little of Harry that you think he'd deny me a say in the names of my own children?' 'But Albus -' 'He was very kind to me. Dumbledore. After what happened... It was like I was sleepwalking. Nothing felt real. It was like I wasn't fully in my own body. And everyone was acting like everything was fine - yay, Ginny's back to normal! - and I just went along with it. I don't know why... There was this afternoon, just before the end of term, and I was trying to go down to the lake, but I'd got stuck - I guess that's the word - on the stairs. I literally couldn't move... And then Dumbledore came round the corner and he said "are you quite alright, Miss Weasley?" and I said "oh yes, I’m right as rain" and he just looked at me - you know the way he used to look at you, like he could read your mind - and it all came bursting out of me. How I didn't think I'd ever feel happy again. How I thought a little bit of me might have been left in the Chamber. How I worried my whole life had been broken by what you did to me and it would never be fixed. And he said - I'll never forget it - "there is nothing wrong with being broken, Miss Weasley, if you try to see the cracks as how the -" '"- light gets in". I should have known that was a pre-rehearsed bit of sentimentality...' 'I remember thinking about it when he died. He was lying there, broken, and I remember thinking "where's your light now?" But it turned out that he knew what he was doing.' 'That's one way of putting it...' 'And then we picked Severus for his middle name because we thought it would annoy Snape and that would be funny. And it did and it was.'

[hochsleep]

Chapter 1: Just survive somehow

• Era: Season 1

• Warning: profanity, typical TWD violence.

• Summary: You and your little sister Lottie have to escape from the walkers in the forest. You both almost become lunch for the living dead, but suddenly you are rescued by a stranger, and thanks to persuasion you manage to get to his camp in the quarry. But it seems that the relationship between you does not work out. You will have to find an approach to him, because otherwise you will not survive.

• Word count: 4k

• A/N: Well, I've written...something. I actually have no idea how I'm going to combine this fanfic and the Daryl Dixon x OC fanfic on ao3 (there's a link in the pinned post on my profile page if you're interested), but I'm going to try. Yeah, I literally wrote in an introductory post a couple weeks ago that I wouldn't be writing big works on Tumblr and where are we now? I haven't been very consistent in what I've said. Anyways, posting the first chapter now.

I know it might be a bit boring in the beginning now, I'm not a big fan of the first episodes or chapters in series and books myself, but you have to start somewhere. I'm still just getting into the subject of Y/N fanfics, so I'll be learning as I write the work. What I can say now.

Please correct me in the comments if you find mistakes! Of course, I double-check my work before publishing, but something could still slip through. Especially since you, as an English-speaking audience, will be more attentive to turns of speech, slang and so on. Let me remind you that English is not my native language and I use a translator (you can read more about it in the attached post in my profile). So feel free to make corrections, I am always open to help and constructive criticism!

Oh, and also, congrats to everyone on the release of TWD: Daryl Dixons season 2!

Enjoy reading!

Then.

"Come on, Lottie, hurry up!" - you shouted to your little ten-year-old sister, who ran after you between the trees in the forest.

“Y/N!” a little girl shouted, following you but lagging behind every now and then.

A few walkers was getting closer, and it was like Lottie could barely move her legs. She had to run faster. She should have saved herself. But could you blame a ten-year-old girl? She’d had to lose her family and friends in the last few days, and there were the living dead walking the earth. The world has changed at the snap of a finger. Lottie probably still hoped it was just a bad dream.

You too.

You had to watch your neighbor across the street, Mrs. Faulkner, pounce on your mother and start biting chunks of skin off her neck without much effort. That's hardly realistic. But that's life now. All those radio warnings about a virus spreading in Europe turned out to be true. That it was incurable. That the dead will rise up and walk the earth again. That their bite would kill you and make you come back to life after a while. It all seemed so distant and unrealistic that you, like most Americans, just changed the channel on the TV or radio when you heard the news of the virus again. After all, there's been a lot of crap and "incurable" diseases throughout human history. If a plague in the Middle Ages couldn't kill the entire world's population, why would some disease do it in 2010 when medicine is booming almost everywhere in the world? Bullshit.

Where are you now? Running with your little sister through the woods while at least four walking corpses are chasing you? This whole thing really does feel like a cheap horror movie. Or a scary dream. A scary dream in a cheap horror movie.

“Lottie! You can’t stop!” you screamed while your little sister looked back and slowed down at every opportunity.

You had a hard time running yourself. Not that you’ve been a fanatic about physical activity in all the years of your life. Yoga and Pilates were your max and only on feel-good days. But the adrenaline in your blood was doing its thing and it allowed you to run faster and longer. Which was not the case with your sister. The girl was tired and breathing hard. She kept looking back to see how close the walkers were to the two of you, even though you had forbidden her to look back.

“Y/N, they’re close! They’re going to catch up with us!” shouted Lottie panting.

You started frantically looking around for a place to take cover. Apparently Lottie wouldn’t be able to run for much longer. You were breathing hard, too, and your legs were sore from the exertion. You had to hide. But where the hell could you hide in the middle of the woods? In the long run, you could hide behind a large tree, but the walkers had already spotted you and were following you, so that option was no longer viable. Climb a tree? You could if you knew how to climb trees. But even so, how long can you and Lottie stay in a tree? You’d have to come down sooner or later, and walkers don’t feel tired or weak, so you couldn’t expect them to give up and fall asleep at some point. No, they’re going to wait until the food comes down from the tree. And again, you can’t climb trees. But Lottie can. What are the chances she’ll agree to climb a tree while you distract the walkers? What’s the chance you’ll survive? How’s she gonna get back down and survive in the woods alone? She’s barely ten years old, for goodness sake, and she didn’t get out into the wild until the last few days! You're all she's got. She's all you have. So it’s just the two of you hiding and surviving together.

“Come on, sweetie, just a little more!” you grabbed your sister’s hand and dragged her forward.

Now.

“Carl! That’s not fair!” shouted Lottie as the boy stuffed the last five hazelnuts into his mouth and grinned cockily.

“It’s all fair, whoever got there first takes it all,” Carl said with his mouth full.

“I’ve just turned my back and you’ve already eaten it all! We’re out of nuts!” frowned Lottie.

“Daryl will find more when he goes hunting,” Carl only shrugged innocently.

“Then you’ll have to ask him yourself,” Lottie snorted and got up from the plaid she and Carl were sitting on.

Lottie approached Carol and Sophia, who were ironing clothes. Sophia’s father was a cruel man as far as Lottie could tell. He had forbidden his daughter from playing with the other two children at camp simply because he had decided to. And now the creepy man sat on a folding chair with a bottle of beer in his hand and strictly made sure Sophia stayed close to her mother and helped her with her “women's responsibilities” as he called it. It sucked.

“Hi, Sophia,” Lottie smiled at the girl, “and Mrs. Pelletier,” she nodded to Carol.

“Hello, honey,” Carol smiled gently at the girl. Sophia looked at her father warily and not noticing the vehement objection on his face, she smiled and nodded to Lottie.

“Carl ate all the nuts, but I brought you what I managed to salvage,” Lottie pulled a few hazelnuts out of the pocket of her jean shorts and held them out to her friend.

“Thank you,” Sophia said quietly and quickly tucked the nuts into her pocket while her father turned away.

“When can you play with me and Carl? Maybe tonight?” asked Lottie hopefully.

“Maybe tomorrow?” answered Carol for Sophia when she saw her head lowered frustratedly. “I’ll talk to Daddy, honey,” said the woman to her daughter, stroking her back.

“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Lottie sighed and went on to find something else to do besides playing with Carl. She was still mad at him a little about the nuts.

You were on duty on the roof of Dale’s motorhome, a kindly older man who tried to change you every twenty minutes and told you to go get some rest. But the duty was actually a rest. You just sat on a folding chair on the roof of the car and watched the surroundings. Dale and Glenn were basically doing the same duties, only with a shotgun in hand. Just in case. You weren’t trusted with a shotgun. It didn’t make much sense since you couldn’t shoot. And you weren’t very good at close combat. So you just had to keep an eye on the area around the camp and warn them of possible danger. It’s no big deal. Except that the merciless Georgia sun was as hot as anywhere in Africa. It seemed that way to you, anyway. You were sweating in every part of your body, your hair sticking to the damp skin on your back, your clothes wet with sweat, and you were as tanned as if you’d gone to a tanning salon. The only thing that kept you warm was the powdered lemonade Dale had made, some old nature magazine from the glove compartment of Shane’s jeep, and the cowboy hat Andrea had lent you. Even though you've spent the last ten years of your life in Georgia, you've managed to hide from the heat until this day. Whether at home in your stepdad's garage under a fan while he blames his barely living car. Or at work in the supermarket by the house. There were old air conditioners that you thought were your age, but you didn't complain as long as they worked. Especially hot days you spent in a cozy old cafe from the 50's, where your mother worked as a waitress and let you lounge for hours in the coziest booth close to the fan. In general you had no need to sit under the sun in such hellish heat without a hint of shade. How could there be any shade on the roof of an old mobile home? You have to melt like a piece of butter on toast.

You heard someone climbing up the ladder to the roof. It definitely wasn't Dale, you'd have realized from his static grunts. It was Lottie. Her old pink cap appeared before you saw your sister.

“Hey,” you smiled at your little sister, “I thought you were hanging out with Carl and Sophia.”

“Carl’s a jerk today, and Sofia can’t play with us, her dad won’t let her,” the girl snorted and sat on your lap, because sitting on the sun-hot roof of the car wouldn’t be a good idea.

“Hey, I’d take a swear jar from you right now,” you tried to look at Lottie with a stern big sister look, but it never really worked. It looked ridiculous and hardly got any respect from the kid.

“Sorry,” the girl sighed, “but Carl is really behaving badly today. He ate the last of the nuts while I was distracted and didn’t even have a chance to protect them…”

“Are you really upset about the nuts?” you chuckled.

“No, more of an injustice…I was hoping we’d split the nuts fairly between the three of us, but Carl ruined it,” Lottie rested her head on your shoulder sitting on your lap.

It was so damn sweet. The way Lottie loves you. There’s often tension between sisters, but not in your family. Charlotte was born when you were 13 and that’s a really big difference, but you always wanted a brother or sister. And even though sometimes you had to miss seeing your friends to take care of Lottie when Mom and your stepfather, your little sister’s father, were working late, you still loved Charlotte with all your heart. Although it’s hard not to love her. She had a mild-mannered personality, rarely acted cranky, and sometimes acted like a little adult. At least you were a more rambunctious child at her age, according to your mother and other relatives. Only as you got older did you become a calm and peaceful person, and as a child you could afford to kick the asses of the boys who hurt you in junior high school. Charlotte, on the contrary, preferred to solve conflicts peacefully and disliked violence already at the age of ten. The age when children can be really violent, but your sister was not. Now, however, she seems to be really angry with Carl. But it’s probably because of all the stress you’ve both been under for the past three weeks. Everyone’s been on edge right now. That’s the way the world is now.

“I’ll find you some new nuts in the woods,” you said, stroking your sister’s soft hair.

“You’re afraid to go into the woods,” sighed Lottie.

“I’ll ask Glenn or Amy to come with me.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to ask Daryl? “Lottie looked at you in anticipation.

Oh, that’s right. Daryl. Well, that was a bit of a problem.

Then.

You tugged at Lottie’s arm, who was stumbling at almost every step. The walkers were coming faster and faster. Your courage and confidence were running away from you just as fast. But you did not let go of your sister’s hand and kept moving forward.

“Y/N!” the little girl’s shrill cry echoed throughout the forest.

You turned around and saw one of the walkers grab the hood of Lottie’s sweatshirt. A tall man with a rotten open wound near his collarbone, with gray cadaverous skin, white eyes, and rotten teeth and nails. Death itself came closer than ever to you and your sister. And you had no idea what to do.

“No! Let her go!” you screamed in panic at the walker as if he could understand you.

“Y/N!” large tears flowed down the little girl’s cheeks.

You closed your eyes, preparing for the worst. You knew it would happen sooner or later. From the moment your neighbor ate your mother. From the moment your stepfather John set himself up to feed the walkers two days ago so you and Lottie could escape. Since the world died. You knew you were going to die, too. And your ten-year-old sister, who didn’t have time to live. It has to happen, whether you’re ready or not. But you are ready. Death has taken over the world now, and who are you to fight it? You just hoped that you and Lottie wouldn’t have to suffer and…

With a dull thud, the arrow pierced the forehead of the walker that had grabbed Lottie and he finally fell to the ground dead. Lottie threw herself into your arms without thinking, wrapping her arms tightly around your waist and sobbing into your chest. You looked around in incomprehension until you saw a man with a crossbow. He put down the remaining three walkers with the remaining arrows. Clearly and without missing. Like he’d done it every day before the outbreak.

Man paused, looking at you and Lottie sobbing in your arms, and then without a word walked over to the corpses to pull his arrows from their skulls. Right now, however, you didn’t have the strength to say a few words. You didn’t have the strength to say a barely audible “thank you” for saving your life. The man looked at you, chewing his lower lip and without saying anything, lowered his head and walked away as if nothing had happened now. It would have been nice to stop him. But you were still standing still.

Now.

Daryl was sitting on a log outside his and Merle’s tent on the outskirts of the rest of the camp. He was cleaning squirrel blood off his arrows and hunting knife. Well, thanks to him, the camp wasn’t starving. Lottie and Sophia didn’t like eating something cute like squirrels, but there’s no choice. And while you weren’t thrilled about it either, better squirrels than the inedible berries you and Lottie had been poisoned with before you got to camp at the quarry. It was… unpleasant. You almost silently approached his “Dixon den,” as Shane called the tent of the brothers who preferred to stay away from the main group. But for an experienced hunter and tracker like Daryl, it wasn't hard to hear the branches crunching under your feet. Of course he noticed. Daryl turned toward you, where you froze for a moment between the bushes and snorted.

“What do you want, girl?” he asked, staring again at the dirty arrow in his hand..

“Hey,” you smiled shyly and moved a little closer, not noticing the vehement protest on his part. “Am I interrupting you?”

“If I tell you what you’re doing, will you leave?” Daryl didn’t look away from his work, still not looking at you.

“I don’t know…I guess?” you shrugged uncertainly. You didn’t want to annoy him, but you had promised something to your little sister. And yourself too.

“So what do you want? A chat? That’s not for me,” Daryl shook his head.

“I wanted to ask you for help to be honest,” you pursed your lips as you always did when you felt uncomfortable.

“Try it,?” Daryl finally lifted the piercing gaze of his gray-blue eyes to you and you felt even more uncomfortable.

“Take me with you on your next hunt,” you blurted out, deciding it wasn’t worth beating around the bush. Not with Daryl Dixon.

“No,” he answered immediately and went back to cleaning his weapon.

“Daryl, please,” you insisted. Not that you expected him to answer any differently. “I need to learn at least the basics of wilderness survival. You probably remember the state you found me and Lottie in in the woods…I can’t let that happen again.”

“Why? You’ve warmed up to a camp with people who can handle weapons. Just stay close to them,” Daryl snorted.

“I’m not stupid, Daryl, I realize this isn’t forever and sooner or later we’re all going to have to separate. When that happens, there’s no one to protect Lottie but me,” you sounded more determined than usual. Of course, it took a few days to pull myself together. “So I’m asking you to help me. Teach me how to track prey and how to tell poisonous plants from edible ones. Please.”

“Look, you’re sure of yourself, huh? Coming in here and making demands like I owe you,” Daryl was starting to get annoyed, it was obvious. He didn’t like the way you were being pushy, asking him for something like you had a right.

“I’m not making demands, I’m asking for help,” your confidence began to wane after his words. Daryl didn’t know you well. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have had the nerve to call you cocky. Or just at least a little bit of confidence.

“I’ve already helped you out on my own head…I won’t do it again, you’re not a goddamn charity case here,” Daryl chuckled.

“Okay, then what do you want in return?” you asked firmly.

The question wasn’t about your curiosity about wildlife, your life and your little sister’s life depended on you. Your only family. This is not a case where you can afford to back down and give up.

“As if you have anything to offer,” snorted Daryl dismissively.

"What would you want?" you asked, hugging yourself tighter around your shoulders in a protective gesture.

Daryl's right. What the hell could you offer him? In this current world, money has no value. Not that you had a lot of it, but it was the first thing you thought of out of habit. Then what? Daryl is an excellent hunter who has all the necessary survival skills and is good with a gun. That's why you asked him for help and not anyone else. Shane could teach you how to shoot, which would undoubtedly be very useful in the current circumstances, but it's not enough to survive in the woods without a group. Not without someone like Daryl, who is as well adapted to life in the wilderness as you could tell from a week of knowing him.

Back to the question, what could you offer him? What would Daryl Dixon want?

"I want you to talk less and get back on your own," Daryl squinted looking at you for a few seconds and then lowered his head again. The conversation wasn't going well.

"Why did you save me and my sister in the forest? Why did you bring me here? We might live a little longer being in a group, but when this is all over, we're both going to be eaten, so why did you have to build up to this moment?"

Daryl was silent. Like that day a week ago before he brought you to camp. Really, why did he do that? He felt sorry for Lottie. A dirty little girl, messed up to death. You didn't look like you really tried to save her during the walker attack and Daryl wondered why. How scared were you? Didn't believe in your own strength? Did you want to die? He didn't know. But he knew for sure he wasn't going to let a child be eaten alive by a rotting reanimated corpse. Not in this world. Would Daryl have helped you if you were alone in the woods? He wasn't sure. You seemed resigned to your situation and didn't try to escape, so why would he rescue you?

He already did anyway. And dragged you both to the camp. And then that same night he had a fight with Shane, who wasn't sure about the idea of leaving you here. And he got a good laugh from Merle, who thought he was being too kind to someone in the Dixon family. But you don't need to know that. You're lucky it was Daryl and not Merle who came across you in the woods. You'd be wandering around the woods now, rotting from the inside out, wanting nothing more than to eat anything alive. Just like your sister.

"Your sister needed a place and I helped you, that's the whole story," Daryl only nodded his shoulder.

"Why?" you persisted.

"Damn it, girl, what are you babbling about! I helped you, who cares why?" Daryl frowned and abruptly stood up from his seat in a flash of anger.

"I just..." you cringed at his loud tone and backed away slightly.

"Stop bugging me with this, okay? I saved you and your little girl, that's it! That's all you're gonna get from me, you understand? I don't want to teach you anything, I don't need you, save yourself!" Daryl waved his hand, yelling at you and you didn't even realize why you pissed him off so easily.

You looked at him frowning in incomprehension. Why the hell is he yelling at you for no good reason? And looking so angry, like you'd done something terrible to him. You didn't understand Daryl Dixon and his mood swings. That's why you tried to stay away from him, especially the first couple days. You were grateful to him for saving you, but he didn't seem like someone you'd easily connect with. And Daryl had just proven that to you again. You only came to him with the request because no one else could handle it but him. But apparently he's really not interested in this at all. You didn't want to and couldn't force him. You just hoped that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't as rude and aloof as he seemed at first glance. After all, he wouldn't have saved you if he was the way he showed himself to others. You'd just have to find a way to approach him and then maybe something would work. But now you weren't so sure.

"Well?! Don't look at me like that, get out of here!" he shouted one last time, turning away from you.

You snorted disappointedly, and after staring at his back for a few seconds, you turned around and hurried back to camp. You were mad at Daryl, that was for sure. Just like Lottie was mad at Carl, but you had a better reason than a handful of nuts. And you might have wanted to yell back at him, but not that it made sense. You'd learned to control your negative emotions a long time ago, and you weren't about to let years of self-discipline go down the drain because of Daryl Dixon. That's on him. Maybe you'll try again later when you've both cooled down, but definitely not in the next few days.

Daryl was difficult, but you have to find an approach to him. Not for your own sake. Certainly not for him. For Lottie. For the chance to prolong her life as long as you could.

Then.

“Hey!” you followed the stranger after a few moments of daze.

You almost lost sight of him, but he wasn’t trying to be quiet, and you could still hear the sound of his footsteps on the leaves on the ground. So as soon as your body began to obey you again, you followed him, holding Lottie’s hand tightly in yours. The man didn’t stop no matter how many times you called out to him. How rude. But in the present world, one didn’t think much of it. And you didn’t know him, but he wasn’t exactly friendly before the end of the world. And yet, you stopped the man from grabbing his wrist when you caught up with him. He turned around and looked at you with a frown, immediately pulling his hand from your barely perceptible grip with force. You seemed to have hit something wrong.

“Thank you,” was the first thing you said when he finally paid attention to you.

“Forget it,” wheezed the man with the familiar Southern accent you never got in the ten years you’d lived in Georgia.

“What’s your name?” you persisted.

“Go where you’re going,” the man snorted and turned away again to walk away.

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” you said before he could get a few steps away from you and Lottie, “I…I mean we have nowhere else to go.”

The man stopped for a moment without turning around, as if thinking about something.

“Do you live somewhere? Somewhere with people? You’re the first person I’ve seen in a week…I mean of living people,” you stared at his back without stopping to speak.

Hope flared in you. If there are still people alive, then you and Lottie have a chance.

But the man didn’t answer, only turned to glance at you. Your tangled hair, tied back in a low ponytail, your dirty knit sweatshirt over your once-white T-shirt, your mid-thigh jean shorts that were also dirty and torn on the side of your left leg, your broken knees with blood on them, your worn and dirty yellow sneakers. He looked at the little girl next to you. She had big eyes like yours. And while yours looked at him with weariness and a mute request you still hadn’t spoken aloud, hers were full of fear. Her long hair, braided into two pigtails, was also disheveled, and twigs and dry leaves were sticking out of it from the fact that she had been on the ground under the walker that had tried to eat her. Her denim overalls were stained with the rotting blood of the living dead, and the hood of the sweatshirt she wore over the rest of her clothes was now torn off. There was only one rubber boot on the girl’s feet, the other having come off in the process of escaping from the walkers. The man thought it must be very uncomfortable to run around in rubber boots. The girl held your hand and appeared behind your back, gingerly looking at her savior.

“Y/N, I’m scared…” said Lottie quietly, pressing her cheek against your hand.

Y/N. The man mistook you for this girl’s mom. A very young mom. But it seems that wasn’t the case. Although the two of you had enough outward similarities to think you were related to each other.

“Do you have a place to stay? Please…we’ve been walking through the woods for three days without food or water,” you asked quietly.

The man looked at you with a piercing stare and was still silent. But he didn’t stay silent for long.

“Please,” Lottie said even more quietly, looking out at him from behind you. And then he gave up.

How could he refuse to help a little hungry girl in one rubber boot.

“Follow me,” he said, looking into your eyes for a second, and then turned and walked on, expecting the two of you to follow him.

Of course you both did. Now the hope in your heart is much brighter.

[lastbluetardis]

What Makes a Family Info (and another preview)

I'm almost ready to start putting this fic back into the world! I meant to have it up this week but didn't account for the fact that Destiny 2 released its franchise story finale and I turned into a braindead gaming goblin all week and lost valuable writing/editing time 😂

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I had a multichapter Ten/Rose single parents AU story that I took down a few months ago to rewrite to better suit what I wanted from the story. Here's the summary of the story:

Single parents Rose Tyler and James McCrimmon come together to embark on a whirlwind, passionate romance that seems to be the happy ending neither of them thought they'd get. But when James's past comes back to haunt them and threatens to tear away everything they've built together, they must find a way to weather the storm that will either break them or draw them ever closer, all while answering the question of what it means to be a family.

Anyways, one of the major things I wanted to fix was the grief and healing the Tyler family needed to undergo. At times it felt like Rose and her sons were way too well-adjusted, and any scene where they were having a hard time felt like I'd forced it into the story because I'd suddenly remembered they'd lived through something traumatic not too long ago. So there will be more instances of the Tylers being not quite okay, and of people loving them through it, and hopefully that will make them all falling in love with James and Alex that much sweeter in the end.

The second major thing I'm fixing is something I wasn't actually planning to reveal until I uploaded chapter one and you'd see it for yourselves. But I decided I don't want to spring it on you out of the blue in case you were really looking forward to this particular character, so here goes: Jodie, the baby, isn't in the story anymore. I waffled on that detail for months, believe you me, because I loved her, and I loved watching everyone love her, especially James. But really, she felt like an arbitrary detail, and her presence made Rose's fast and hard romance with James feel a little unrealistic. Like. A single mom with a freaking newborn lusting over some dude... I kept cringing at the thought. Rose would have been far to exhausted and emotionally unavailable if she had three kids to care for and help overcome the grief of losing their dad. So yeah, poor Jodie didn't make the cut. (That's not to say she won't pop in at the end of the story... 😏)

Everything else that's changing about the story are minor details I wanted to flesh out a little more, or sharpening up the writing. I felt a little to flowery and/or long-winded at times, so I wanted to trim off some of the fat, so to speak, and focus more on the meat of the story. Plus the original story was my pandemic distraction: I wrote chapters without much thought and posted them willy-nilly. I want to be a little more intentional with my writing this time. Oh, and the kids' ages are a smidge different. I aged David and Alex up by two years, and Matthew by a year. I always felt I wrote the kids too old to suit the ages I'd given them, so it shouldn't feel too awfully different from the original.

Welp, without further ado, here's another little sneak peak for you under the cut 'cos this post is far too long:

The first day of school always brought about some nerves, what with Rose having gotten used to having her boys home every day for two months, but this time it was almost unbearable. Rose bit her nails down to the quick as she watched the clock relentlessly.

David had seemed fine when she dropped him off at Arcadia Academy that morning, but he always seemed “fine” nowadays. While he wasn’t as sullen and withdrawn as he’d been in the winter and spring months, he was far from the bright, bubbly child she’d known for the first nine years of his life.

Not even the art commissions she really ought to work on could distract her from the panic that David was miserable and wasn’t making any new friends and hated that he left all of his old friends behind at his old school.

She had called his teacher, Miss Clara Oswald, a few days before the term began to explain their situation. Clara had been genuinely sympathetic and supportive, and had given Rose the contact information of the school counselor, Mr. Danny Pink, who was supposedly one of the best in the region.

“You can set up appointments for David for the after school hour, if you’d like. I’d suggest you do that sooner rather than later to get yourself on the schedule. Or I can work with Danny to find a time when David could go during class time.”

“After school sounds preferable,” Rose admitted. “I don’t think returning to class after a therapy session would be… Well, therapy can be hard, is all.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.”

And so Rose had done exactly that: she’d gotten David an appointment with Mr. Pink for every other Wednesday beginning in the middle of September. Hopefully those sessions would help him more than the ones he’d had with his previous school counselor, who’d suggested David just distract himself with things he liked to do, and who’d scolded Rose for not doing more to bring David out of his shell.

Rose also hoped her youngest was faring well in his new nursery class. Matthew had been in tears, clinging to her legs and screaming for her not to go when she’d dropped him off. Bless them, the nursery staff waited patiently for him to calm down, and even let Rose stick around for a few extra minutes to show Matthew around his classroom. His teachers, too, knew that Matthew was getting over the death of his father; while he’d adapted much better than his brother, Matthew was much clingier and quicker to meltdown than he’d been in the past. The boys' pediatrician assured Rose this was normal behavior, and all she had to do was love him through this transitory period of his life.

[sysmedsaresexist]

hey, thank you for taking the time to put together that post about childhood emotional neglect. I have a hard time wrapping my head around CEN as something to be pathologized because from where I stand it seems so universal--not sure if I knew a single person growing up whose emotional needs were consistently met by their parents, including people whose families i would've cut off my pinky finger to join. is there any chance you'd be willing to give me some examples of what a parent-child dynamic *without* CEN looks like?

Oh god

Okay, I'm going to give this a fair try, long post ahead. Skip to end for the TL;dr and my suggestion

---

This is a true story.

When I was five, I started having anxiety and panic attacks. Severe ones. They mostly presented in my ability to breathe sort of... Hiccupping. I would suddenly become INCREDIBLY aware of my breathing, and it physically felt slower, harder. Trying to talk to my mom never resulted in anything happening or changing, and I had already learned to not talk to my dad.

Combined with clear anxious tendencies, Tourette's, and a budding, severe case of OCD, this culminated in the conclusion that at any moment, ever, I could stop breathing. I took to sitting in front of fans, so that air could be forced in my face, I developed tics of sounds in my throat to make sure I was still breathing. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't function, I was scared to leave the house.

My grandmother was babysitting one night and I had the worst attack yet. Six year old me crumbled into my grandmother's lap, telling her what I was experiencing and how scared I was, and like no one was listening to me. I needed to go to the hospital, I demanded.

Now.

---

From here on out, this is not a true story.

My grandmother held me tightly, appalled that my mother hadn't gotten me any kind of help yet. She whispered soothing reassurances into my hair as she rocked me, calling my mom home from bingo.

At the very least, a quick trip to the ER (free) could ease my fears that I stopped breathing every ten minutes, and for the next half hour, she showed me ways to keep my mind busy while we waited and the next two times an attack hit she held my hand and said just breathe through it. See? You're still breathing.

By the time my mom was home, I was calmer, I told them I was okay and could be brave, and I slept like the dead that night. I knew I could always trust my grandmother.

---

That would have been my ideal situation. If I ever have children, this is how I want to be able to treat them.

With respect, and as if what they say matters and is real. I want them to feel heard and appreciated.

Now, here's the catch.

No one is perfect.

Maintaining those levels of attention, on top of working and other children and whatever else might be going on in your life, can be extremely difficult. Generational neglect and abuse mean that most parents don't even realize what's messed up and what's not.

My ideal situation won't be everyone else's.

Eventually, I will hurt someone, unintentionally. I will be low on spoons, or don't know them well enough to react appropriately to something. Maybe they don't want or need "coddling", and my method will be harmful.

TL;dr

In a way, it's reasonable to expect that emotional neglect is simply a fact of life, and different people will handle the effects differently.

When emotional neglect occurs repeatedly over a long period of time, it begins to have an effect on attachment and child development. The things you're excited about are so consistently brushed off that you start to believe the insidious thoughts in your head as you try to rationalize why they don't seem to care.

Your parents tell you so many times that you're overreacting that you begin to believe it and start keeping things to yourself.

Instead of looking at examples, answer these questions about situations in your past:

1) Would I have done something differently if the roles were reversed?

2) Were my emotional needs met?

3) Did I feel heard? Understood? Believed?

4) Were they interested, and being an active listener?

5) Did I leave the conversation feeling safe, and as if continuing to talk to this person was safe? Did I leave knowing I could approach this person again?

6) Does this one person repeatedly make you feel negatively about yourself or your interests? Is it a trend with them in particular?

Emotional neglect comes in ten thousand flavours-- most unintentional, most one-offs. Many of these situations will be handled by YOU just fine. Some will have more of an effect than others.

But when you're young and it's repeated, you learn bad habits and start to have bad thoughts about yourself.

[steddiebang]

An Act of Grace

Author: @daysarestranger l Artist: @bienmoreau Posting on Friday, November 3

On the morning after Broughton Hall’s annual summer fête, the body of a local Baron’s son was found on the grounds of the estate, as lifeless and cold as the morning was warm. Having spent the summer together, member of the household staff Edward Munson was the first to be suspected. As for the Baron’s son, perhaps there was more to him than the Baron would have society believe.  Decades later, Max Mayfield comes across the murder of Steven Harrington while researching topics for the second season of her hit true crime podcast. Along with her some-time engineer and full-time ex-boyfriend, Lucas, Max uncovers a story of two people that, entwined in secrecy and truths left unspoken, reaches out across history.

Keep reading for a sneak preview!

Complete Transcript for the Undone Podcast, Season Two: An Act of Grace

This transcript is based on the Undone podcast produced by Glad-Well House and Mayclair Productions. Original audio files can be found on www.undone-podcast.com, Spotify, and other podcast distribution sites. 

Link Episode 1

Title The Past is a Foreign Country

Original Release Date October 2nd 2023

[Intro music begins; fades]

MAYFIELD, NARRATING: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ You know the quote, right? You might not know where it’s from, but you’ve heard of it. Heard people repeat it, with a shrug, lamenting the unfathomable manner in which us human beings used to behave, how we treated each other, what we used to believe. As if we, now—the enlightened—would never tolerate such things. 

You and I know differently, of course. 

[Door opening]

DUSTIN HENDERSON: Max, hi. Come in, come in.

MAYFIELD: Hey, Dustin, thanks. How you doing?

[Chairs scraping against the floor, a mug being set down on a table]  

MAYFIELD: Oh, you’ve got a copy?

DUSTIN HENDERSON: ‘Course I do. A bunch. Everyone I know is getting one for Christmas.

MAYFIELD: You’ll be popular.

DUSTIN HENDERSON: [Snorting] Yeah. 

[Pages turning] 

DUSTIN HENDERSON: Here it is. [Clears throat] ‘I liked him, though. We all did … There was always something gentle about him.’ That’s nice, right? It’s what you’d want people to say about you.

MAYFIELD: Yeah. I guess you ’re right. That you were liked.

[Papers shuffling]  

MAYFIELD, NARRATING: It’s the opening line to a novel. The quote, that is. A good one, actually. ‘The Go-Between’, written by L.P. Hartley in nineteen fifty-three. I’ve always liked the book, not for the opener, but for the way it portrays how the passage of time distorts things. How one event can happen early on in your life, and you can know with such certainty how it went down, only to look  back on it ten, twenty, thirty years later and see something entirely different. 

[Door hinges squeaking open]  

MAYFIELD: You’ve left it in the attic? 

DUSTIN HENDERSON: I thought you were coming tomorrow! 

MAYFIELD: Don’t try to make it sound like I’m not organized, you’re the one who doesn’t know what day of the week it is. 

[Boxes shifting, being dragged across the floor]

DUSTIN HENDERSON: It’s one of these, I made sure … You know, I was always having a go at Mum for being such a hoarder, but apparently she was onto something. 

MAYFIELD: It’s the hoarders of this world that keep me in a job. 

[Some grunting, more shifting]

MAYFIELD, NARRATING: The case I’ve been investigating for the past six months started in nineteen-twelve. Or, I suppose it started before that, but nineteen-twelve is when it really gets interesting.

The same year that Captain Scott and his expedition were beaten to the South Pole, all of them perishing on the return journey. The year that the Titanic struck an ice-berg in the middle of the Atlantic and sank, killing fifteen-hundred people. And the same year W.C. Handy published ‘Memphis Blues’, which went down in history as the first ever blues song. 

On June ninth, nineteen-twelve, after the small village of Deeping Saint David’s annual summer festival, the son of the local Baron dies in the grounds of the family’s estate.

Steven Harrington’s body is discovered not long afterwards, and he is pronounced dead by a local doctor. His parents, Lord and Lady Avondale, immediately suspect foul play. The police are brought in to investigate and an arrest is made. Even with a cast of potential ne'er-do-wells, there was only ever one suspect pursued.  

[Footsteps, something heavy being set on the ground] 

DUSTIN HENDERSON: Let me give it a wipe.

[Blowing breath]

MAYFIELD: You got it? Oh, yeah,  you’re right. I can’t believe the paintwork is still so good. It must be a hundred years’ old. 

DUSTIN HENDERSON: One hundred and eleven years, three months and sixteen days. The date was written on the back. 

MAYFIELD: [Whistle] It’s good, though. It looks just like the picture I saw. 

DUSTIN HENDERSON: I said it did! That’s an aristocratic jawline if ever I saw one. 

MAYFIELD: He was honorable. Like, officially.

DUSTIN HENDERSON: The Honorable Mister Steven Harrington. Does kind of have a ring to it I suppose. 

MAYFIELD: Yeah. Handsome bastard.

[Laughter]

MAYFIELD, NARRATING: Six months ago, I hadn’t heard of Steven Harrington, or Eddie Munson. I didn’t have any reason to, to be fair. It’s not a particularly well-known case, even locally. There are a handful of books that cover the key points in the local library, a few of the volunteers at the Harringtons’ ancestral home—now a bustling attraction for weekenders and families alike—know the reported account. Even fewer question it. Because why would they? Edward Munson was a thief who stole from the estate, killed Harrington when he was interrupted, and made off with the money. He was found by police the next morning, arrested, and made a full confession. 

A straight-forward case, all tied up in a neat bow. What is there to question?

[Two sets of footsteps walking on gravel]

MAYFIELD: Have you visited yet?

DUSTIN HENDERSON: Broughton? No, not yet. Mum’s talked about going, but they want to make it a group thing, so, organizing, you know. 

MAYFIELD: You sound dubious. 

DUSTIN HENDERSON: No. Not for me. I don’t know what she’ll make of it, though. What if it just bums her out?

MAYFIELD: It won’t. I don’t think it will, at least. I think it’ll be cathartic. Enlightening. 

DUSTIN HENDERSON: Well, you would say that. You’ve got a podcast to sell. 

MAYFIELD: Hey! 

[The thud of an object hitting its target]

DUSTIN HENDERSON: Ow!

[Outro music begins]

MAYFIELD, NARRATING: Except the money is never found. Except the precise cause of Steven Harrington’s death is shrouded in mystery. Except, for such a high-profile victim, the story is buried in the back pages of the local newspapers. 

It’s almost as if someone were trying to hide something. And nobody seems to have found that odd. 

Until now. 

[Music swells]

MAYFIELD, NARRATING: From Glad-Well House and Mayclair Productions, this is Undone, season two, An Act of Grace. I’m Max Mayfield. Let’s get into it. 

[Music swells; fades]

[carmensandiego-dreams-collection]

Alright everyone, this beast is finally out! This is a project that I’ve been working on for a long time, and a big reason why I’ve been so quiet on this blog. Season 4 really never sat right with me, and after stewing a bit I finally decided to bite the bullet and fully dissect why. A year and change later, I had a three hour essay on my hands, which I guess is something that happens to even the best of us sometimes.

This is a full critical breakdown of every major element of Carmen-- what I liked, what I didn’t like, what went wrong, and, most importantly, how it could do better.  I broke it up into about ten different chapters, each focusing on a different character (or plotpoint), so if you don’t have time to watch it in one sitting and/or don’t have superhuman focus, you can certainly watch it in chunks and not lose a whole lot. I don’t expect everyone to agree with every point or position I present, but the most important thing to me in this project was breaking down why I take the positions I do and to deeply examine the underlying ideas and logic of the show; so even if you think differently, you still might get something out of what I have to say. I’ve seen so many people discuss the worse elements of the show (evil Carmen, the mindwiper, the ending, season 3, the copganda, Gray. Oh My God Gray.) but I think what I’ve really wanted to see post-Season 4 was a dissection of the actual mindset and creative process behind the writing. I genuinely can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve watched people have in this fandom where I could see how both sides were reasonably correct about the same thing, they just (IMHO) failed to see the common factor at play. Who knows! Maybe this video will settle some longstanding debates. Anything is possible. I hope people enjoy what I have to say as much as I enjoyed writing it! (TW for discussion of police/state violence, racial police violence, simulated gun violence, death, etc in the section about ACME. Basically what’s already in the show anyway, but just in case, I’m definitely going to talk about that)

[llliiinnnaaa]

Reprisal | Chapter Four | Part Two

coriolanus snow x gaul oc

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reblogged and liked, or even just read the previous chapters I’ve posted. It really means a lot!!!

Summary: Ten years after the Tenth Hunger Games, Coriolanus Snow is under Dr. Volumnia Gaul’s wing as a Gamemaker alongside her niece. Unbeknownst to either of them, they’re both being prepared for a much greater task.

Warning: This story will contain explicit violence against adults and children alike (I mean, it’s Dr. Gaul AND Snow) as well as explicit language, and sexual situations.

***This fic is in no way, shape, or form, me endorsing or co-signing the horrific shit Snow does, nor am I trying to romanticize it. Also, apathy and will be the main driving force of any remnants of a relationship between my OC and Snow’s character. So if you’re interested in something very romantic and fluffy…it’s not gonna be this.

Enjoy!

     Ma Plinth damn near shouts as she examines the apartment, commenting sweetly on every little thing she possibly can, acting as though it’s the grandest home she’s stepped foot in. 

Seeing Dyess Crane drink up her kindness makes Coriolanus sick. 

Tigris helps Tawny finish up the table before announcing, “Okay, everyone, dinner is served!” 

Moments later, the sound of scraping silver across the dinner plates is all that’s heard along with the sound of Tiberius and Strabo’s laughter as Mrs. Plinth smiles warmly at Tawny. 

“Mrs. Crane, you truly do have a lovely home. It’s beautiful.” She says after swallowing a bite of roast. 

Dyess cautiously keeps an eye on the exchange, paranoid Tawny will lose her manners and lash out rudely to their guest based off the fact she simply doesn’t like that the Plinths are district. 

But he’s been nice to Coriolanus, so if he can tolerate Snow, she can tolerate the Plinths. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Plinth.” She maintains her best behavior, grinning at the woman adorned in a floral printed dress.

“Please tell her it would be even more beautiful with the sound of little feet pitter-pattering down the halls.” Minerva adds, sipping the wine she’s clearly had too much of already. 

The focus quickly becomes Tawny as everyone absentmindedly looks at her. 

“Mini.” Tiberius says, raising his brows. 

“I’m just saying.” She replies, motioning to Dyess. “Dyess agrees with me.” 

Tawny snaps her head to her left to look at her husband who grins at his wife. 

This is quickly becoming a conversation their guests feel should not be heard by them, Tigris coming to the rescue to say, “This weather has been horrific,” referring to the downcast of rain that’s been hounding the Capitol endlessly. “We passed by three different vehicle accidents on the way over.”

“I know it. My hair was ruined this morning before we even got inside for breakfast.” Minerva states, rolling her eyes.

“That reminds me, we need to get a new set of tires, Sweetie. The tread’s damn near gone.” Dyess says to Tawny, to which she mutters, “Language, Dear,” while he continues, “We’ve probably worn it out with our back and forths to work lately.” 

“Do you two both still work at the Citadel?” Strabo asks, cutting into a carrot. 

“Yes.” Tawny says to him. 

“Oh, they are very accomplished scientists, aren’t you, Dear?” Tiberius asks his daughter, the pride radiating off of him. 

“If you say so, Dad.” She humbly retorts, earning a small wink from him as Dyess finishes off his drink and pipes, “Mr. Snow, that reminds me…” 

Coriolanus stops his eating, looking across from himself to stare at Dyess while Tawny’s breathing stops as the two men look at one another. 

“...I heard from a little birdy ,” He deliberately puts emphasis on “birdy”, Snow’s lip nearly curling, but he keeps himself together, “That Ravenstill is going to be honoring those whose cases are chosen to be presented in the Hunger Games with medals of Resilience.” 

“What?” Tawny’s now looking at Coriolanus, along with Livia, the two of them just as confused. 

Snow takes a sip of his drink after swallowing his food. 

“Your birdy is full of it.” He refutes the rumor – though it’s not a rumor in the slightest.

But it is confidential information. 

“Hmm.” Dyess hums flatly, wearing a smug smirk.

“That would be a handsome incentive, though.” Tawny’s mother states, earning a, “Oh, yes,” from Mrs. Plinth before the woman adds, “Do you all work together in a group?” 

“No.” The four of them all quickly state, everyone’s eyes looking to them as Ma says, “Oh…” 

“Ma, Dyess, Tawny, and Livia create the different mutations of animals and plants in the arena you see. It’s my job to sort through those and incorporate them into the Games.” Snow adds sweetly to the woman who is practically his adoptive mother. “Each Gamemaker is paired with at least one scientist to collaborate with each year the last few months leading up to the Games to examine their work and pick out what they would be interested in incorporating.” 

“If they have something worth incorporating.” Livia adds, eyes flickering to Tawny before Snow’s nudging his wife’s leg with his own, silently telling her to knock it off. 

“Oh, I see.” Ma nods. 

“And to think I tried to get her into finance.” Minerva chuckles, running a fingertip along a strand of her light brown hair to push it back in place. 

“Tawny’s gotten the pick of the litter, right, Snow?” Dyess asks next, Coriolanus raising his brows. 

“If you say so.” He doesn’t entertain whatever it is Dyess is trying to get at, feeling that he doesn’t mean it genuinely in any way, shape, or form. 

“He’s too humble, really. Everyone knows he’s the best Gamemaker we’ve got aside from Dr. Gaul.” Dyess goes on. “And Tawny gets him all to herself.” 

The way it’s worded sends a tick up the spines of both Snow and Tawny. 

“Isn’t that right, Dear?” He nudges his wife with his elbow while she takes a long drink of wine. 

“I’m very fortunate, yes.” She mutters. 

“What do you do with the creatures or plants you don’t use?” Tigris is quick to once more change the subject. 

“Put them down, file them away as a success so we can go back to it if we need to have the notes and instructions there to do it.” Dyess interrupts when Livia goes to speak. 

“That seems like a waste.” Minerva adds in. 

“ It is .” Tawny states, almost bitterly, recalling Snow tearing into her for wasting their time, money, and resources. “Is it not, Mr. Snow?”

“Yes, Dr. Crane, it certainly is.” He doesn’t miss a beat before replying, and she immediately avoids talking about it further when she looks to Tigris and asks, “What about work for you, Tigris, do you have any ideas yet?”

“I’ve always gotten ideas, Tawny. It’s getting the idea to translate in physical form the way I’d like it to that’s the difficult part.” She responds, lighting up when asked about her work. 

Tawny can heavily vouch for that frustration, but she doesn’t say a word more about her own work. 

“Dad, Tigris was the young girl who helped with my wedding gown, remember?” Tawny asks her father, realization coming to his face. 

“That was you?!” He asks, a wide smile on his features. 

“Yes, sir.” Tigris replies. “That was what got me the job working with Fabricia.” 

“I still won’t wear the suit she did for me. I’m scared to mess it up, it’s so fine.” Strabo jumps in, Tigris grinning as she replies, “I’m glad you like it, Mr. Plinth.” 

“So, you do fashion?” Minerva questions, trying to get a tipsy grasp of the conversation. 

“Tigris is the best designer we have in the Capitol, Mrs. Gaul. I can’t ever get myself put together for an event without her.” Coriolanus explains, giving his cousin a soft smile. 

“How much money do you make doing that, Miss Snow, if you don’t mind me asking?” Minerva questions, Tawny’s face falling in horror at her mother’s question, Tiberius going to speak but Tawny beats him to it. 

“Mother, don’t start badgering our guests about what their checks look like.” She doesn’t even try to hide the hiss in her tone, irritated beyond measure at this point. 

“It is a reasonable question as fashion is not as stable of a job as what the other four of you do.” She motions to Tawny, Dyess, Livia, and Coriolanus. “I hear that most designers struggled to make ends meet up until the last couple years. A lot of them had to sell themselves — ”

Tawny’s clattering fork against her plate as she drops it and interrupts her mother’s words that are slowly starting to slur. 

Awkward silence falls over the whole table, the air so thick and uncomfortable that Snow contemplates grabbing Livia and Tigris and getting out as soon as he can. 

“…Let’s change the subject, Mini, alright?” Tiberius patiently suggests to her, seeing the way she’s glaring at their daughter who is glaring right back at her. 

Mrs. Plinth looks at Coriolanus with worry in her eyes. 

“My wife meant no offense, Miss Snow.” Tawny’s father says politely to Tigris. 

“No offense is taken, Mr. Gaul, I assure you.” Tigris says gently, trying to help ease the tension. 

“My daughter is just easy to get spun up.” Minerva says, next. “It could be remedied with children as they make one’s heart more patient and kinder but she refuses.” 

Coriolanus keeps his mouth shut despite his confusion. 

Did Dr. Crane have a child or not? 

She said it’s the only reason they got married, but there is no kid between them, apparently. 

“Why would I want to create more targets for rebels to hit?” Her composure  has left her, sighing out the words with her brown eyes closed, dark eye makeup illuminating in the soft glow of the dining room light. 

“Tawny —” Dyess mutters only for her to cut him short. 

“—I did have daughter. A damn good one. And she was blown to smithereens. Though people can’t seem to remember that because they can’t quite place their finger on which Games it was exactly that she died before. Nor do they recall I didn’t want her to go anywhere near that arena in the first place but you insisted.” Tawny now looks at Dyess, her voice shaking with the threat of tears. 

Livia digs her nails into Snow’s leg as if begging him for them to please go home, but he can’t move out of his chair, memories flooding his mind. 

The tenth Hunger Games, the arena blowing up with him and his classmates, and tributes, in it. 

The scarring on his back from the burns that he’d told Tawny came from a terrible accident with the fireplace. 

It slowly trickles in that, yes, he does recall hearing something about one of Dr. Gaul’s family members getting fatally injured in the explosion, outside the arena looking around when it happened. 

He flinches. 

Tawny’s daughter had to have only been about four years old. 

“Tawny,” Dyess starts, Snow’s eyes finally looking at them instead of the table as everyone else has appeared to stop breathing, “It was a very horrible situation, an accident…can you please stop hanging it over my hea—”

“—Your stupidity got our daughter murdered !” She outbursts, she herself having too much to drink, clearly. 

She doesn’t give him time to get up before she’s forcing her chair back, screeching against the floor, as she hoarses out, “Excuse me,” to her guests, leaving the dining room and going to the guest bathroom off the hallway by the front door — the furthest place from her husband at the moment. 

     Tawny takes in heaps of fresh air, the tip-toes of her heels standing on the solid back of the toilet, elbows resting on the high window sill that almost touches her collar bone as smokes blows past her lips and into the Capitol night life. 

The rain has somewhat subsided for now, leaving a heavy haze of fog and humidity. 

Her hair is probably ruined with frizz but she doesn’t care.

She looked like a raccoon when she got in here, the tears that fell as soon as she left the prying eyes of guests smeared her makeup. 

Her goal is to stay in here until everyone leaves, anyway, so it’s not like anyone will be seeing her like the way she now does. 

Mortified doesn’t even begin to describe how she feels for her outburst. 

Apology cards will definitely have to go out. 

She doesn’t think herself mad or mentally unwell, truth be told she’s been doing much better than what she was when it first happened — or even better than she was a few years ago…or months ago.

Refusing to acknowledge that working with Snow had helped her, she shakes her head and takes another drag of her cigarette. 

Smoking was reserved strictly for emergencies — she hadn’t smoked one in over a year. 

This was an emergency. 

A faint knock at the door pulls her attention, more than likely Dyess or her mother. 

She’d throw herself from the window before opening it for either of them. 

“Dr. Crane.” She hears Coriolanus lowly, not bothering replying, but she does move from the toilet to tip-toe to the door. 

 A moment passes and she thinks perhaps he’s decided to leave her be, until he says, “ Tawny ,” in a rather stern whisper. 

Shit, she thinks to herself, unlocking the door and opening it as quietly as she can. 

They look at one another through the small silver of the open door, and he looks at her as it to say, “Really?” Unamused with her. 

She opens it enough for him to fit in, closing and locking it behind him before moving right back where she was, standing on the toilet, smoking out of the window. 

“You’re ridiculous.” He whispers it, trying not to laugh at the sight of her acting like a teenager trying not to get caught by her parents. 

She turns to look at him, plucking the cigarette from her mouth, extending it to him. 

She’s sure everyone in the apartment needs one right now. 

Snow declines her offer. 

“I don’t smoke.” He says, the smell of it wafting to his nose as smoke curls in the air. 

It reminds him of his father. 

“Have you read over the case I gave you?” He questions, seeing the muscles under the skin of her back tense for a moment. 

“Yes, I did.” She whispers back, blowing more smoke, looking at him. “It’s not going to work. Everything I touch goes to pot.” She reminds him. 

Everything you touch your husband fucks up , he wants to correct her but he can’t.  

“You won’t be doing it by yourself. I’ll personally keep an eye on it, so will Dr. Gaul. We really want you to be a part of these Games this year.” 

She finishes her cigarette, Snow extending his hand to help her down, and she glares at him. 

“I’m not doing anything.” He defends himself, honestly. “I’m just trying to be a gentleman and help you down.”

She sighs and grabs his hand, getting down, and leaning against the counter beside him. 

“I’m sorry about all this, Snow.” Tawny apologizes for tonight, humiliated with herself. “It was unwelcoming and embarrassing.” 

“Things happen when people have a little too much to drink.” He shrugs, glancing at her when she scoffs. 

“Don’t we know it?” She mumbles, staring off for a moment before Coriolanus is saying, “I’m sorry to hear about your daughter.” 

“My mother and my husband keep pressing me to have another.” She admits. “‘Your biological clock is just ticking away’,” she mimics her mother and he smiles just a little bit at how accurate she sounds. “Dyess just wants to screw me without a condom. He doesn’t care if I have another baby or not.”

Snow just looks at her, letting out a soft, “Hmm,” the corners of his mouth twitching to smile but he won’t. 

He can’t say he blames her husband for scouring for any excuse to have her fully. 

His expression practically shows what he’s thinking, eyes roaming over her as the wine she’d drank tonight starts to send her thoughts into a bad place to be. 

The last thing either of them need is Dyess or Livia trying to come in here and find the two of them together. 

“They’re all on the roof.” He tells her, as if reading her mind. “Everyone decided they needed fresh air so they’re having their after dinner drinks up there since the rain eased up.” 

“Oh.” 

She has to get out of this close space with him, they both have to, his hands staying to himself by his sheer willpower not to grab her. 

“Let me show you something.” She offers, walking to the door. 

They leave the bathroom, and he follows her to the hallway on the other side of the apartment that holds the bedrooms. 

Down the hall, the very last door that’s shut, she opens it and flicks on the light. 

The walls are a soft pink, shining gold accents scattered throughout the room in the form of  knickknacks and picture frames. 

Toys scatter the floor that’s covered with a fluffy cream-colored rug, the bed looks as if someone had rolled out of it without making it, the cream bedding appearing a very slight shade of yellow. 

He follows Tawny completely inside, glancing at the pictures on the rich wooden chest of drawers by the door. 

All of which contain pictures of Tawny —one of which has a younger Tawny holding a newborn baby, then another she’s got a toddler that’s seated in her lap, in front of a cake with two candles on top of it. 

Another shows where the same child is older, holding a rainbow colored snake with Tawny assisting her, crouched down beside her in her lab coat, a big smile on both of their faces. 

No, not just smiles. 

The picture had captured their laughter. 

He has to pull his eyes from the photo, recognizing the snakes all too well. 

Snow looks at her, studying her expression as she looks at the photos. 

“She died a couple days after that photo.” Tawny states. “Dyess had wanted to take her to look around the arena. It’s treated like a tourist attraction more times than not, as you know. I begged him not to, I didn’t want her to be around all of that…I didn’t particularly enjoy the Games themselves. I thought them to be cruel, but still necessary…” She trails off, taking in a breath. “He was off that day and had told me he wouldn’t take her,  but I felt like he was going to, anyway, so I just ignored it as best as I could.” She continues. “Next thing I know I have a Peacekeeper telling me that my child, Tullia, has been identified as one of the casualties of a rebel bombing at the arena.”

He looks at the floor. 

“If he would’ve been there when I first found out…” She adds, referring to Dyess, “…I probably would’ve killed him, Snow. I was so angry with him.” 

“Rebels killed my father, out in Twelve.” He states to try to ease the rage slowly starting to bubble in her. 

She looks at him and nods, saying, “I know. My dad lost half his leg trying to save him.” 

He hadn’t realized Tiberius served with his father, though he supposes it doesn’t come as a surprise. 

Dr. Gaul was so heavily interwoven with Crassus Snow, of course Tiberius knew him, too. 

“I thought he walked that way due to his age.” He adds, earning a smile from her.

He liked seeing her smile. 

She was pretty to look at. 

“No, no, there’s a chunk of prosthetic under those pleats.” She informs him. “He’s too proud to admit to himself, still, though.” 

“He seems like a good man.” He admits, taking a liking to the old man.

He carried himself well. 

“He is.” Tawny is fast to confirm it. “A very good man. A very, very, good man. He’s wonderful. He truly is.” She adds before saying, “I hope my mother didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

His eyes bulge and he scoffs.

“She’s…” He trails off, recalling those sharp green eyes staring at him hungrily.

“She really likes men.” She outright says it, no other way to put it than that. 

“Yeah.” He agrees, able to tell it without her confirming it to him. 

“She sold herself when dad was off fighting to make ends meet.” She confesses, swallowing the lump in her throat. 

Coriolanus thinks of Tigris…

“I didn’t judge her when I realized what she was doing. I couldn’t. Everyone was starving and scared and she did what she felt she had to do to keep me alive while dad and my brothers were away.” She explains. “Dad didn’t know about it, but then the war ended shortly after he got injured, and he got home, and she didn’t stop seeing other men — although by that point they didn’t pay for her anymore. She just wanted to be anywhere else but home with anyone else but my father.” Tawny rolls her jaw. “She’d stay gone for days at a time and we would go look for her.” 

“Why didn’t he leave?” Snow questions, furrowing his brows. “They would have granted him a Dissolution of Marriage on grounds of infidelity.” 

“He didn’t want to leave.” She shakes her head. “He told me, ‘War changes people…and it rarely changes them in ways we like. That’s just the order of things’.” She says. “I think he felt guilty that my brothers were killed, and he couldn’t be home to support her in her mourning. So he couldn’t leave her for being desperate to get her mind off of things.” 

He can’t imagine loving someone so much that he’d tolerate them embarrassing him in that way. 

He doesn’t know if it makes Tiberius a good man, or a fool. 

“My mother used to sleep with inappropriate men when she was stressed.” She says it as a realization, looking at him and he picks up on what she’s saying. 

“They do say the older women get, the more they turn into their mothers.” He states humorously. 

“Promise me you’ll kill me before that happens, please.” She says it in a half-laugh, half-serious tone. 

“I promise.” He assures her casually, not saying anything else as she looks up at him and expects him to keep speaking. 

She needs him to say something and fill the silent void because the longer they stare at one another, the heavier her breaths get, the more her chest heaves and catches his eyes, the more he wants to rip her top off of her…

“I, um, I need to clean up.”  She tells him, “They’ll probably be coming back inside soon.” 

She moves to leave the room, and he follows her, waiting patiently for her to shut the door and step in front of him to the dining room to help collect plates and clean off the table. 

“Thank you,” she says as he takes the last of the wine glasses to the sink. 

She wipes the table off and replaces the cloth on it, before she turns to head back to the kitchen only to be stopped when she sees him leaning against the door frame, staring at her. 

Perhaps it’s the little bit of wine that he had himself, or the sight of her leaning over the table as she smoothed out its cloth, or the sob stories she had confided in him earlier that makes him somewhat pity her more than he already had, but when she backs up to the table while he slowly steps to her, he has to fight against the urge to unbuckle his belt, undo his pants and have her. 

Instead he settles for her tongue mixing with his, her legs wrapped around her waist, grinding against the bulge in his pants as soft breaths sigh out in his ear, his lips leaving her own to trail along her neck. 

He wants to taste her, fumbling with the top of her silkie pants but she pushes his hand away, stopping him. 

“We can’t they’re—” she can’t speak, mouth falling open at the feeling of him between her legs, the two of them moving against each other desperately. 

She wants him inside of her, tired of picturing him when Dyess touches her, exhausted with trying to touch herself the way he does and being completely unsuccessful. 

She wants his hand around her throat, or in her hair, his spit in her mouth, his bite marks along her skin, his cock taking what he wants from her. 

His hand goes between her thighs, feeling the fabric is slick with her, the feeling making her hips buck into him, her head falling back as she relents,“Okay.” 

He rips at her pants, the button that had been secured with a small string falling to the floor but neither of them care. 

She has to bite her wrist when two of his fingers push past her skimpy panties and go into her, his jaw going slack with the way she tightens around the digits, his pants painfully strained. 

He has to be quick with this, so he is. 

She damn near crawls away from him when he sucks her clit into his mouth, fingers continuously hitting against that spot inside of her that has her wrist falling from her mouth, hand threading in his hair. 

“Fuck,” she whispers in a squeak, “ Coriolanus .”

He grins at the sound, no more professional “Mr. Snow,” or casual, “Snow.” 

Not when they do this. 

She grinds against his face, heels kicked off her feet as her back arches, tears at the corner of her eyes. 

Her mother was right. 

She is so easy to get spun up. 

She fists the lace table cloth in her hands to avoid messing up his hair, the less evidence of this atrocity the better. 

Her stomach knots up, painted toes curling as Snow twirls his tongue around her, pistoning his fingers in and out harshly, making her nearly see stars. 

“I —” she goes to speak but can’t, unable to breathe when he groans into her, more of her slick coating his tongue, making his own eyes roll back. 

Her legs shake, tensing up, her abdomen tightening along with her cunt. 

She hits her peak, nearly trying to push him off of her, it’s too much at one time, and it’s messy when she cums. 

Perhaps it is the thrill of the risk of being caught, perhaps it’s the fact her husband is just above them, but he keeps his fingers moving in her, allowing her to ride out her high on them as he captures her lips with his own, her tongue licking her own spend off of his tongue. 

“It feels so good,” She whispers to him in a whimper, his fingers still curling inside of her. 

“Does it?” He asks huskily, heaving out a breath when she palms at his cock through his pants. 

“I want more,” she begs, wanting to shove him on the floor and sink down onto him. 

“Not here.” He doesn’t want to go that far.

He digs his fingers against her walls once more, her eyes fluttering shut, forehead falling to his shoulder as she allows him to pull another orgasm from her. 

She clings to his shoulders, shaking and trying to control her noise level when she cums again. 

“We’re going to keep doing this .” He tells her, grabbing her chin, forcing her to look at him as blue eyes stare  down into brown. “Because I want to. And I’m going to keep looking at you because I like looking at you.” He adds. 

It doesn’t affect work, it doesn’t affect their marriages. It’s just them using one another to feel good. 

“Okay.” She nods, his lips pressing to hers before his teeth sink into her bottom lip, her gloved hands holding either side of his face gently. 

He pulls away after a moment, letting out a heavy breath as he calms down, noticing movement in the corner of his eye. 

Tigris’s blue eyes widen to the size of saucers at the sight of them tangled together, and all she can muster is a very quick and stuttery,  “Th-They’re coming back inside.” 

[onwesterlywinds]

Livvy's #FFXIVWrite 2023 Wrap-Up Post

Hi all! First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who's engaged with the stuff I've written for what is now my FIFTH consecutive year of #FFXIVWrite!

For the past few years, this challenge has been the primary vehicle for the XIV writing things I've always said I'll get around to writing - I went back to check and ten of this year's prompts include interactions or scenarios I've had in my head for multiple years! So as always, thank you SO much to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for creating this beautiful event. It's truly become one of my favorite parts of being in this game's community.

I wish I could say I had things I learned about myself, my writing or my characters this time around - but to be honest, the biggest thing I've learned is not to tempt fate by saying "I have completed this challenge in past years in spite of various life crises," because oh my god, y'all. Oh my fucking god. (Everything is fine but I am so tired.)

(Actually, okay, there was one common trend: I wrote way more NSFW material this year than in past years. Which I'm honestly really glad about, because this is an area I've always felt has not been one of my strong suits as a writer!)

So without further ado, below are my prompts for this year in their entirety, organized by character in order of frequency! I've bolded the pieces I'm especially proud or fond of.

If I get a handful of likes on this post, I might post some of my drafts - I had way more this year than in past years, so it'd be fun to share them now and see if folks are interested in me continuing any of them!

Livvy Ahtynwyb

#6: Ring | #10: [EXTRA CREDIT] | #13: Check | #22: Fulsome

Ashelia Riot

#1: Envoy | #12: Dowdy | #16: Jerk | #21: Grave

Ashley Rosenheim

#7: Noisome | #15: Portentous | #27: Sole

Alma Malheur

#2: Bark | #11: Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Ingvald Bloodhound

#3: [EXTRA CREDIT] | #17: [EXTRA CREDIT]

Hrjt Brotin

#14: Clear | #28: Blunt

Marco

#18: Fish out of Water | #24: [EXTRA CREDIT]

Sappho

#8: Shed | #23: Suit

Astodan (a character I hope you all will learn more about soon!)

#9: Fair

Blackram

#19: Weal

Élodie Fiel

#5: Barbarous

Ludo Swiftwind

#26: Last

Lyhe Il

#30: Amity

Sigrid Keane

#20: Hamper

Stella Riot

#29: Contravention

Tircolas Flow

#4: Off the Hook

Tircolas Flow's Baba (whose name I'm 99% sure I know but don't want to reveal in case I decide to retcon it later)

#25: Call it a Day

[oveliagirlhaditright]

"Slayers" kind of ended on a cliffhanger. I wonder if they'll actually continue it or not.

And teasing Angelus? -gasps-

If everyone does come back for a sequel to this, I wonder if they could actually get David Boreanaz to voice in it (I really hope so, but I've got the impression in the past he doesn't want to come back. Though maybe he would for just an audio drama? Especially with so many of the others involved?) or if they'd find a sound-alike.

I have to say, I do have mixed feelings about "Slayers" as a whole. Like, I read a review before I started listening to it saying that it felt like it was written around who was able to come return for it, and I do think that's true. And there were parts of the story I at first thought were kind of weird and I wasn't that big on at first?

But then towards the end they started to pay-off and I was like, "Oh, okay. I think I get why they did this, and I might like it, after all."

I also feel like... quite a bit of the humor might have missed. And I also agree with said review that I think they were essentially making Clem Xander, because they couldn't have Xander and they needed comic relief like that.

But everyone seriously brought their A game to this, and it's so good to have them back. -sobs-

And there was a lot about the story that I did like--especially when some of the ideas really did start to pay-off, and it was like, "Okay, so they did put a lot of thought into this."--so I'd probably rank it somewhere with "In Every Generation," which I love.

And I'm definitely excited for more, if more is coming.

I'm also thrilled that we have this at all, to be honest.

I'll also admit that it's probably arguably better than the comics in some ways, yeah (but in others, the comics might be better), though you could actually say that this took place after the comics, if you wanted to. Because in Buffy season 12, Buffy was 30. And Spike says this story takes place ten years after Buffy season seven, in which case Buffy would have been thirty-two. So you could see this as two years after Buffy season 12, maybe. Buffy and Spike are also broken up here, like they are during/after Buffy season 12. And everyone knows stuff about the Slayers and whatnot in "Slayers," posting about them on Reddit and things like that (though that's probably just because stuff got posted online when Potentials were Called. And hell, the Scoobies and new Watchers--like Andrew, and maybe even new ones after that--probably put stuff online, so Slayers would know what to do if they were Called). So this is probably not based on how in the Buffy comics everyone eventually learned about the supernatural.

Actually, about that, I think the only thing that contradicts if you want to headcanon that this is after Buffy season 12, is I think Indria had some line about most normal people not knowing about the forces of darkness? And in the comic seasons, everyone found out about vampires and stuff. Maybe you could wave that away by saying, "Maybe people eventually thought it was just a stunt," but ehh.

Edit: Also, Indria is amazing and I love her. As is some of the character work they did with a lot of the characters, like Spike and Cordelia.

Edit 2: The SpikeDru stuff did things to my heart<3

Edit 3: I already forgot that the end also teased Willow. So if we get a sequel, I also wonder if they could get Alyson Hannigan back, too.

[reconstructwriter]

Had Another Breakdown and Watched Attack of the Clones

And wow, what a B-Movie title but I’m already committed to this terrible life decision so I might as well continue. Got through the Phantom Menace so how much worse can this be?

Warning! Another long post! Also tw for Attack of the Clones shit including genocide and slavery.

The Watto scene: Not only does it double down on Watto as a Jewish stereotype – seriously, WHY?!? – but a scene where a former slave meets their enslaver after ten years of growing up and mystic training with a laser sword? I expected a lot more. Watto should’ve voided his bowels because this has to be Worst Case Scenario for a slaver! At best he was a little ‘nervous friendly’. And Anakin is already well-established as ‘man-child who Loses His Shit at the drop of a hat’. Like dude, where’s your angst and teenage fits now cause boy does this situation fit the bill! But nope, NPC fulfills their NPC duty and off they go.

Fanon Anakin vs Canon Anakin: I was introduced to the former and slowly learned what he’s really like and oh wow is he such a terrible mess of a human being no wonder Mace Windu noped his training. His Fascist statement is extra YIKES for Padme since she’s one of those Senators who’d be forced to agree. The first temper tantrum alone sounded way out of line given the relatively professional setting, let alone the creepy boundary-breaking stare. The ‘I’ve been dreaming about you for ten years’, the ‘my feelings are suffering’ speech – also taking place with him in shadow for extra broody effect. And his first genocide (I can’t believe we’re already keeping track here!) And he KNOWS BETTER is the worst thing. He admits, out loud, that he knows better and still does the thing Padme why did you say yes to this mess?

Padme being mind controlled: a fairly common fan theory to answer the above question, but in-movie Padme straight up asks Anakin if he will use a mind-trick on her (in the context of a 20 questions game so not serious). Anakin’s response is ‘mind tricks only work on the weak minded’. On the one hand, implies Padme is too strong-willed for Anakin to influence through the Force – but on the other hand this also suggests to me that he would if he could!?!?

Though Anakin was the one to suggest keeping the relationship a secret, which did surprise me so no guilting Padme about ‘wanting a marriage like a free man’ like I thought. Padme is the one who says she won’t live a lie. Good to know for future reference.

Are droids sentient or not? Dex outright says droids can’t think but I honestly don’t know if this is in-universe how droids work or if Dex is having a Cleigg-on-Tusken-People moment.

Jedi are Arrogant? Lots of people have cited Madame Nu’s confidence in her archive’s integrity as evidence the Jedi are arrogant and horrible justification of Sith crimes follows. But Obi Wan thinks there’s something more going on and Yoda encourages everyone to help find his lost planet in one of the only nods to ‘funny trickster teacher Yoda’ we get in the movie. To me this seems a hint that the Jedi are unprepared for betrayal from within. Which Dooku’s, Anakin’s and the Clones’ mind-controlled betrayals all blindside the Jedi Order.

Jango: I’ve been torn about him since I learned about him. On the one hand, understandable vengeance motive (per legends anyway), on the other hand selling his own kids into slavery and probably knowing something about the chips and genocide order because I can’t otherwise imagine the legends version assisting the Jedi.

Jango does state in-movie ‘they’ll do their job well’ in a way that sounds just a bit ominous but I don’t know if he’s being accidentally vague or deliberately giving a subtle hint he knows about the Jedi betrayal plan. If this version is just in it for Boba and the money and doesn’t have the motive of his Legends counterpart, why would the Sith ever need to tell him? Dunno, but I was surprised to not hear him say anything derogatory about his clones. I mean he’s still selling his children into slavery in a way George Lucas doesn’t grok but he doesn’t actively deride them like I’ve read in fanfic. It’s a low bar but not as low as Anakin’s.

Made for the Jedi? So the Kaminoians confirm the clone army is specifically made for the Republic but commissioned by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas. Glad the movies cleared that up.

Scene Contrast: Kamino is Dark and Stormy with creepy sterile whiteness everywhere in complete contrast to Naboo’s sunny and lush green paradise. The clone army is grown and trained in creepy white lab while the robotic army built in a dark but organic underground hive. Obi Wan sneaks onto Geonosis through the light of day to investigate galactic concerns. Anakin on Tattooine stalks the Tusken people in the dark of night for personal stakes.

The (Other) Horribly Racist Cliché: Speaking of which, I get we’re supposed to assume Shmi was abducted but, um, Cleigg isn’t even a witness – like I initially thought – but is guessing abduction based on tracks in the desert sand and his incredibly racist bias. Are we supposed to doubt every word out of his mouth? If Shmi had been in a bed (even tied) I’d have assumed patient before prisoner.

Anakin’s Genocide: He goes off to save Shmi as ominous music plays and the suns go down, at which point he doesn’t just walk the fascist talk and do baby-Vader’s first genocide but also foreshadows his betrayal and genocide of the Jedi! Which really reinforces the Sith/Nazi and Jedi/Jewish parallel here – Hitler and the Nazis got their Holocaust ideas from White America’s treatment of our native and PoC counterparts. So too does Anakin the future Sith start his genocidal tendencies with the Native people of Tattooine.

But nobody in-universe seems to get that?!? Blorbo!Anakin authors recognize that thar was some FUCKED UP SHIT!!! (Usually by pretending it didn’t happen or re-writing the scene into something less Moral Event Horizon.) Padme’s response would fit better Anakin murdering the literally disarmed Dooku – morally wrong, against the Jedi Code but somewhat understandable but genocide? Cleigg is narratively supposed to be kind and sympathetic but he practically sent a demon after people who’s land and water he’s stealing! The person acting most realistically is the perpetrator and all Anakin admits (again) is he’s a Jedi and therefore should be better. But this still feels like he should have come back to Padme yellow-eyed and Dark Sided!

Once again, George Lucas’ racism screws up the story he’s trying to tell. Ugh. Okay, enough movie time for now. Sorry I’m a hopeless binger despite my friends and kitties’ best efforts.

[herearedragons]

Artifacts of Thedas prompts

...so I misread the list and wrote for the third prompt instead of the one I got. I already finished this, though, so might as well post it.

3. A freshly painted vhenadahl

She’s had this dream before.

It’s a bright, sunny day in the alienage; the smell of fresh paint fills the air, and before her the vhenadahl rises up to the sky, surrounded by scurrying figures with paintbrushes and jars of paint.

But this time it’s Wycome’s alienage, not Ostwick’s, and, much unlike her dreams, many of the painters’ faces are marked with vallaslin.

The reality Adria watches unfold before her is stranger than any dream; the clan which adopted her and a community of city elves she hasn’t gotten to know yet working together, repainting the vhenadahl in the wake of their victory over Duke Antoine.

Part of her wants to join them, to hold the brush and paint in her hands again, but there is also a hesitation she can’t quite explain. It’s been twenty-five years, now, since she fled from her own alienage; twenty-five years since she was taken in by the Dalish. Twenty-three years since she received her own vallaslin. Ten years since her son received his.

And there he is now, up in the vhenadahl’s branches with the other painters. Adria had some anxiety as to whether he’d get along with the city elves - some clan members certainly had trouble in that regard - but there was no reason to worry at all.

As she watches him, Neilar notices and stops painting for a moment to wave to her. She smiles and waves back; he gestures for her to come closer. Adria complies.

“Mae*, am I doing it right?” Neilar calls out to her as she approaches. There’s paint all over his face and hands, and he looks as happy as he was after his first day of scout training.

Adria takes a look at his part of the pattern. As much as she can see from down here, it blends in perfectly with the rest.

“You’re doing an excellent job,” she assures him. He laughs.

“Thank the Creators! I’m trying my best.”

“Incoming!” another voice calls out; from a higher branch in the tree, Adahlena swings down with a bucket of paint. Neilar takes it from her without even looking, then glances at the color and calls back to her:

“Wait, Lena, we’re done with blue!”

“It’s for the people on the ground, dummy!”

“Oh! - ” Neilar looks around, finds the rest of the painters busy, and swings down from the branch much like Adahlena, handing the bucket to Adria instead.

“Mae, can you give this to someone who’s painting?”

“Sure - “ she begins to say, but before she can finish, a bare-faced elf passes by and puts a paintbrush in her other hand.

“Make yourself useful,” the woman says to her. She’s a hahren, by the look of her, wizened by age and not used to taking no for an answer.

A half-forgotten memory resurfaces, of being much younger and being told off by an elder much like this one. It’s so vivid that it leaves Adria speechless for a moment; all she can do is nod, and then the woman is far away from her.

Adria looks up at the branches, where Neilar is already back to painting, then at the bare patch of bark directly in front of her. She realizes, suddenly, that her hands are shaking ever so slightly.

Well… The hahren has a point. It’s not right for her to be a bystander when everyone else is working.

Adria takes a deep breath, dips her brush into the paint and makes the first stroke.

* note: I'm using 'mae' as a shortened version of 'mamae', kind of the equivalent of 'mom'. I don't remember whether that's a widely accepted thing/canon or just something I picked up from another fic, so adding a footnote just in case.

[glasseelie]

Ancient God - Reincarnated as a Kid in Teyvat

Characters: Zhong Li; Childe; Diluc; Cyno; Kazuha.

Summary: You don't know why you, an ancient God that has lived tens of thousands of years and even slept for more thousands of years - suddenly died and got reincarnated as a regular child. Seriously, what is up with that? Now, all you can do is roam whichever nation you got dropped in and observe the changed world from another point of view.

Category: Platonic Reader Gender: Neutral

Notice: Everything in this post is 100% platonic - reader is in a kid form, so any insinuation of romance between them and characters is not acceptable.

Zhong Li ; sharing tea and memories

Even though nothing changed the fact that the leaves from your home brewed for much better tea, Liyue was a sure enough good competitor - specifically the Yanshang Teahouse.

The rich aroma of fine quality tea quickly enticed you to start working in here; that's how things were run in the current world - you must work at any case and that people have long since made up "currency" (you still struggle with this concept sometimes).

With you new and squishy little body, you couldn't do much else then bring cups to and from the tables, but it gave you an excuse to smell the tea some more and the Teahouse owners seemed a sweet couple, so it was acceptable.

But...

"Oh? Who's this adorable bunny?"

"Careful not to trip! Such small feet you have!"

"Aiya! So cute! Thank you little one! Jie-jie promises to bring you some delicious candy next time!"

Everyone was treating you like a child.

To be fair, you did look like one. With short limbs and squishy cheeks, slightly red with youthful eagerness. Physical activities seemed 10x hard too; all in all, you did not miss being this small - last time you were like this was when you were born tens of thousands of years ago.

The worst thing about it was that no one took your requests seriously.

You wanted to learn about Liyue's history - you've been sleeping practically the whole time it was created, so you were clueless about everything. But everyone you asked either told you folklore stories for kids or gave you a picture book that explained nothing (though Liyuen style of art was quite beautiful).

One day, on a busy evening, your eyes caught something different - an adeptus. Sure, you saw some adepti come down for a drink or two from time to time, but this one was extraordinary.

This adeptus had an aura of divinity achieved by experiences of thousands of years - a retired god perhaps? - your mind supplied. Calm, knowing amber eyes and neat, mature attire.

That was your ticket to knowledge.

So you swiped the order from another waiter and went to deliver the Misty Garden tea - strong aroma with caramel, certainly someone with a good tea taste.

You tried not to look funny with your tiny steps as you approached the table on the west ting overlooking almost all of Liyue. The magnificent vermillion color of the local styled ting and all the pavilion construction was beautiful against the golden layers of the nation.

The adeptus looked down at your much smaller human form and smiled politely "Hello, thank you for bringing me my tea" he says and takes the porcelain teapot and cup set off the tray.

You watch him for a little, observing for any signs of him wanting to be alone; he busies himself with inhaling the sweet aroma instead. Finally, you ask "Can I sit with you for a bit?"

The adeptus is surprised, but doesn't seem perplexed about the idea. "I don't see why not" he answers after a bit, he motions at the other seat across from him and encourages you to join him.

Both of you seem to be in a comfortable silence as he seems to be patiently waiting for you to break it. Though you're content in just listening to the bustle of the city, after so many years of silence, you can't let this opportunity slip between your fingertips.

"May I know your name?"

"Of course. I go by Zhong Li"

"I see, Zhong Li, I have a small request."

"Oh? And what would that be?"

"Since you are an adeptus, I was wondering if you were knowledgeable in Liyue's history."

If you knew about anything, it's that adepti appreciated straightforwardness - not having any time for meaningless pleasantries that humans deemed necessary for everyday life.

The said adeptus quickly analyzed what was going on, put his teacup back down and nodded with a pleased smile "I would say I'm quite proficient."

"I have just come to Liyue a little ago, I know not of its history and everyone treats me like someone who can only understand simple pictures." you said, somehow keeping your calm, despite being frustrated to no end "So I ask of you to please, share your memories"

And that is how an alliance started between two retired gods. One brought expensive tea to the funeral parlor down the street, the other talked about his vast memories of the very nation they drank their aromatic delicacy.

Gaining a person that can share the memory.

Childe ; giving advice from ancient times

As a god, before achieving glory, you had survived in most horrid conditions. Danger looming over you at any corner, withstanding the harshest of winds and the darkest of nights. You had gone numb to many uncomfortable factors like the cold and the dark long, long ago.

And yet, this small human body was not getting the hint.

You woke up from your eternal slumber couple of days ago, shaking uncontrollably in a collapsed hut, not being able to keep your teeth from chattering. Interestingly, humans bodies turn bluish when cold enough, but you couldn't bring yourself to be fascinated by the revelation as you were hours away from death.

Thankfully, after dragging your feet around the vast forest (not even trying to hunt in this condition), someone found you. This person turned out to be a young man, he looked like a fledgling barely out of the nest, yet he seemed to be commanding people all around and giving them orders.

He immediately picked you up from the cold ground, your numb feet finally off the snowy terrain. The young man wrapped you up in some kind of warm fur and assured you that everything would now be okay - it was admirable, how a person, who you considered a kid, logically, had so much protectiveness over a stranger child. Was this how all humans behaved?

"Don't worry okay? I'll get you warm and snug in no time!" he tried to rub your cold hands to warm them up as he rode his horse towards somewhere.

The clicking of the saddle additions and the hooves on the stony ground, where snow did not manage to cover enough to muffle the iron.

Your voice was hoarse and your throat felt painful when you spoke, but you were glad to find your voice again (though, this small and squeaky thing could never be your true voice); you needed to assure this kid that you knew you were somewhat safe now - being in a child form really has the benefits of people being kinder, you knew that way before all this.

"It's okay, I will be fine" your confidence seemed to have a positive effect as the young man calmed down a bit and continued to ride at a high speed while holding you securely in the thick makeshift blanket.

Wherever it was that he took you, it was echo-y. It reminded tiny bit of your own chambers that existed eons ago, sophisticated details and shiny gems littered all around - was this a young lord? Or a diplomat perhaps?

You found thinking hard as unconsciousness slowly took hold of your weak body. But, you jolted into full awareness when your legs were submerged in a tub of warm water - oh, that felt nice. So that was what humans did to aid frostbite... or was that something else?

"I know, I know! You hate this, but otherwise your legs will fall off!" the young man was trying to shush a child that has not even protested - you'd be a fool to not to take a helping hand.

You try to keep awake as you watch him towel your feet dry and tuck you into a bed with a thick blanket. You felt incredibly small in this form, not only physically. The fireplace at the corner casted a bright orange glow alongside some lamp crystals.

"What's your name?" you asked, barely contain yourself from adding 'kid' at the end (that probably wouldn't fit in with this situation).

The young man smiles broadly at you and sits on a small velvet chair beside the bed. "How about you call me Ajax?" he encourages and suddenly ruffles your hair.

You're caught off guard, this kind of gesture... you remember it distantly. What a warm feeling... was this what it felt like at first? Back when you lived in your mother nest with your older siblings? Before you all achieved glory and divinity?

"And what's your name?"

"'I... don't remember" lying was necessary not for any fear of this human boy, or of distrust - but to make Ajax's life a bit easier by just being a kid he saved, not a reincarnated deity.

Ajax doesn't let his expression dim as he nods in understanding "That's fine, solnyshko. Just stick with brother Ajax and I'll get you settled in Snezhnaya, okay?"

Snezhnaya... is that the nation you were in?

Either way, you appreciated the sincerity of Ajax, a kindhearted soul truly - at least to what he thinks of is an innocent child. Though you can't help but notice the different kind of look in his eyes - like darkness that lurks just beneath the surface.

"You are tired."

"Quite interesting you say that, zaichik, since you're the one who should be going to sleep right now" he jokes, squishing your doughy cheek, but you insist.

"To rest is to respect the boundaries of your nature. Nature will reward you when you listen to it." you say quietly, trying to finish before sleep finally pulls you under "Someone... told me that... long... ago..."

You don't know if your words were what made the difference between you being put in the care of a woman serving under the palace Ajax presided in; and instead being welcomed into this young man's family in the far away village, but it was a wonder how warm family feels, after all this time.

Now, Ajax will come to rest at his home frequently and you will repay this unspoken one-sided debt by silently watching over his little siblings grow.

Such true is an advice that stands through time.

Diluc ; to heal a tired heart

Mondstadt was quite the nation. A beautiful landscape, culture that would enchant anyone from anywhere. Mondstadt was largely known for brewing the finest quality wine - Dandelion wine.

Or so you've heard.

Too bad you weren't allowed to get a drop of it form the nation's best winery. The owner seemed to not even entertain the thought of giving alcohol to a 'child that seemed barely of age to walk around alone' - he said, word for word.

You weren't about to drop off all your dignity and beg a stranger for wine when you fully knew you were now inhabiting a small human's body, who was not meant to be drinking.

But something still stayed on your mind.

As you walk around the outskirt streets of the square, you catch the warm light that was coming from the Dawn Winery. The yellow of it spilling down the cobblestone ground like honey and stretching onto now empty streets.

The tavern is now empty. Lonley figure remains inside.

You step inside, making no effort to be quiet; your small, stubby legs don't make it any easier. The owner, who's hair and eyes endearingly match, looks up to see who came in; you almost laugh at how his expression drops into disappointment and amusing blankness.

You hold up your hand "Not here for a glass"

Though still looking at you with a skeptical eye, he resumes drying the wine glasses; he neatly places them all in a row on the shelf, just as he does every night before blowing out the center chandelier altogether.

"Children shouldn't be out at all at this hour. Where are your parents anyway?" technically, your parents have been turned into concepts of chaos and peace, but speaking about such mediums to a human may put this mortal being at unease; that's not what you want.

"Can I stay here for a bit? It's windy outside."

Maybe it was the nature of a soft human heart, or just unique kindheartedness to this human; either way, he allowed a stranger child - you - to stay while he wiped down the bar.

"What's your name?" you ask, taking embarrassingly long to climb a stool at the said bar.

"You come into a bar so frequently, pester me to give you alcohol and only now you ask of my name?" he says, annoyed and clearly irritated, but he relents "I'm Diluc."

"Your heart is tired, Diluc."

You were far too old to say that you couldn't stop the words tumbling out of your mouth, no, after eons of being alive, you mean every word you say.

So you didn't slap a hand over your mouth at overstepping privacy with Diluc, or pretend to be at shock at your own words. It must be quite a shock already, such words coming out of a child's mouth, gods, sometimes you wished for your godhood to be back so badly.

After looking at you with a puzzled face, Diluc raises an eyebrow "Look at you now, which grown up book did you read that phrase from?"

You knew deep down, he knew the truth of it too. His heart is tired and it's lonely; no matter how much humans try, they are still creatures of habit. Habit of enjoying company and warmth, which Diluc must have had at some point.

Always so tense, a permanent furrow in his brow.

"Don't brush my words off so easily-"

"Okay, I'll think about doing that after 10 years, after you will be a big and serious adult, how about that? Will you quiet down now?" he says as he pushed a cup of something in your direction and turns away to continue his business.

Your eyes sparkled at being able to drink wine again - until you took a swing and realized it was grape juice. Though it irked you that Diluc delighted in your surprise, it was quite a delicious bevarage.

After that, every evening, after working hours, you'd sit at the bar with a glass of grape juice; help clean up around the winery and sometimes even let your little self fall asleep at the spare sofa.

Diluc never asked about your parents again, instead offering for you to stay at the Ragvindr household. Well, mortal human life isn't as bad when you have someone who can listen to a child wax poetic with a glass of grape juice.

Even though you won't dig up any of the wounds open about his past, you want to make this human smile again. If your happiness makes him happy too, then it's good enough for you.

Time helps heal tired hearts.

Cyno ; depth of understanding

Deserts never change, you decided.

They have always been unbearably hot and full of the sands that sting your bare feet. Not to mention how delicate your skin turned out to be - not the worker kind. Thankfully, you found some abandoned camps that had a dried fruit or two still good, so you weren't starving, but you were very close to passing out from the heat.

It was frustrating. You - an eons old god that had endured all types of warfare - were now struggling to drag your feet across the scorching desert that seemed to have no end.

Silence, heat, it was sickening at a point.

After couple of days like this, you suddenly hear a noise out of the blue. Before you can even register the sound, you are faced with someone who's holding a polearm towards you threateningly.

With sun-kissed skin and clothing resembling of the roaming guards of the divine back at your time, you guess this person could be a watch-guard stationed at the desert.

You can only see one magnificently reddish eye, like the blazing sand that scorched your feet. Out of a delicately crafted amethyst headpiece, locks of long, white hair fall. A truly interesting looking individual.

"What are you here for?" he asks, curt.

"I don't know" you answer truthfully "I woke up here couple of days ago..."

He looks at you with suspicion, never once faltering his gaze down at you "Why is a child with no supervision left at the desert?" knowing that neither of them would have an answer for it, most likely, he followed up with "Where do your guardians live?"

Your guardians? you suppress a melancholic smile. You greatly miss your guardians, but in this new life, you're not sure if you have any - or if you need them.

Your stomach growls.

Scratch that, you definitely need a guardian in this new era.

"I don't know..." it was again, the truth. The stranger seemed to sense that you were being honest, since he lowered his weapon; he sighed with exhaustion.

"I will take you back to the Aaru village, but it's a long way back." he warned, as if you had a choice - or maybe it was a statement; either way, you weren't about to ignore this miracle.

You took a step closer, should you bow in greeting? Is that what people still did in this era? Should you just ask?

"What's your name?"

"My name is Cyno. How about you?" he answered and asked swiftly, seemingly also quite curious.

"I don't have one."

After pointedly looking at your feet, Cyno had no problem picking you up with his free arm to give your body some relief; it was a bit of a surprise, but you're sure you'd do the same with a small child in his place.

"That's fine, well, what do you call a child lost in the sand? Sandy, I guess."

The sudden joke caused moments of silence as you looked at his blank face in surprise, before you burst into laughter from the sheer absurdity of the joke; now that seemed to really excite the stranger as he started to make his way towards the promised civilization.

"it was funny, right?"

A child's piercing laugh was an enough answer.

Sure, your new body was a bit annoying to get used to - weak and uncoordinated. But it was worth it, living amongst these people, sharing their joys and their grieves. It's fascinating to see humans grow and to be aware of eons worth of knowledge and grow up with it, but such trials and tribulations could be mended.

As long as this kindhearted person comes by to tell you jokes that pain the rest of the village, you could deal with the rest.

The depth of mutual understandings about simple matters between the two of you. That's apparently what it means to be human.

Kazuha ; whispering of the universe

Inazuma as a nation was a bit of a mystery to you. When you woke up, you were surrounded by a sweet scent (that you later discovered were Inazuman cherry blossom trees). That, and it rained.

A lot.

The air of strange mystic aura and alluring spirits; it left you with confusion, left to wander around the beautiful flora with just the clothes on your back. Your feet hurt from worn out sandals and the weak body you were granted with had problems moving for even a day.

It frustrated you to no end, but if you have learned anything during the many thousands of years of your life, is that complaining about things you can not change is truly a waste of breath.

So, you walked on.

From time to time, you came across some lavender melons, but it wasn't enough to nourish the body of a growing child; so you knew if you didn't settle down somewhere, you were in for trouble. You were no longer a god with no binds to your strength, but a tired human child.

So, you set up a small camp, still having crystal clear memory of how to survive in wildlife - sure, Inazuma had its own quirks, but the base of it was still the same. Shelter, water, fire, food. in that order.

Your plans came crashing down when you got stuck in a small crack between two hills. You were holding onto the edge, yet you didn't have enough legroom to fling yourself up - curses! Had it been your old form, you'd been able to pull yourself up with just one hand.

Gods, were you about to die as soon as you woke up in your second life?

Suddenly, a gush of wind leaps you into the air; not having the time to even yelp, you land into stranger's waiting arms. "Hello little one, you look like you've been full of mischief" a calm voice said with no real retribution.

You looked up to see a young man with unique hair and delicate features; his gentle smile set you at ease. A vermillion streak in his light hair was an eye-catching feature, distantly reminding you of an autumn spent painting the fallen leaves with your peers.

"Where did you come from, little wanderer?" he asked, safely setting you down on the ground; he crouched down in front of you to eye level.

Finally, someone that could guide you to a nearby civilized settlement "I don't know" you decided to be truthful "I woke up nearby here..."

"My name is Kazuha, do you know where your parents might be?"

Oh boy did you want to answer with the truth, but in reality, this child's parents were probably nowhere near "I don't know that either..." gods, your whole life you hated that sentence and even subjected your diplomats to a day of lecturing whenever they used the phrase 'I don't know'.

"Alright, how about your name?"

"Don't think I have one" right now.

Kazuha nods with an unfazed smile, stands up and holds out his hand "Would you trust me to lead you back to somewhere safe? this isn't the best place for you to be" he had kind eyes that had wisdom of life embedded into its marble surface between sadness.

You guessed as such, if cracked ground and unstable weather was anything to go by; you took his hand and you two begin to make your way back to wherever Kazuha came from.

"If you don't mind me asking" you finally spoke after being silent for days, so you had to ignore the scratching of your throat "How did you end up here?"

"The wind told me."

"Oh, I see."

"You don't find it weird?"

You shook your head "Wind tells many stories."

So does the earth and the vast seas. Every leaf and every pebble tells a different, priceless story. To be in tune with one's self is to be listening to the universe around you - it rewards when one lends its stories an ear.

Kazuha found your answer pleasant, his smile stretching just a bit "It sure does."

Soon, you found yourself at a beach, or a makeshift dock of some sort - in front of a giant ship. Awed at how much bigger everything seemed from a child's eyes, you couldn't help yourself but quicken your step towards it.

As you stared at the ship, you noticed a tall lady approach you with a smile. "Hey there kiddo! Ya like the ship?" she asks with a booming voice you'd expect from a motivated general. She had an eyepatch and wore bright maroon clothing.

Was this the captain?

"It's magnificent" you answered truthfully.

"Oho! Such big words there! Smart kid! Where'd you come from?" she was standing in front of you now. She was pretty tall; in your previous form, you'd be twice as taller, but in this life, you had to painfully bend your neck.

"The small one is with me, captain Beidou" Kazuha caught up with you to stand behind. The easy smile on his face suggested the woman in front of you was an ally.

Captain Beidou seems to glow with excitement "So, coming aboard then?!" she seems ecstatic to have you on the ship. Maybe she's the type who's good with children? In that case, you're not sure if she'd like a child who has a soul of an ancient god.

Kazuha rested a hand on top of your head "I guess so, can't remember the parents or even a name. It's better if we keep this one a bit of company for now."

That's how you ended up on the Alcor, amongst the fleet that called itself 'The Crux'. Soon enough, you fell into a routine of helping around; sure, you were small and got tired easily, but you still remembered all about ships and navy - after all, you'd led soldiers across many seas before.

Looked like Beidou appreciated your helpful nature as well, looking over you with an approving expression from time to time.

Still, despite proving that you were more than capable of handling the routine aboard, Kazuha insisted on accompanying you most of the time.

Maybe because he was the one who found you, a small child, tired and bruised from horrible living conditions.

Maybe because you still tripped on your little feet from time to time, eliciting a playful laugh from everyone, including Kazuha himself, before he swiftly pulled you up back on your feet.

Maybe because Kazuha enjoyed being in company of someone who could understand his wax poetic - as you two sat at the very end of the Alcor and looked at the boundless waters of Teyvat.

He teaches you of the modern ways people try to listen to the world around them, and of haikus he loves to drop on you suddenly - maybe he thinks of you as his successor; it's a little funny, how in reality, you're the one supposed to be teaching this young soul.

But you're content to just sit beside him and listen to the whispers of the universe.

[end of part one.] [i will write one character a nation per part, any suggestions?] [thank you for reading.]

©glasselie. 01/12/2022.

[beepborpdoodledorp]

Hey all, I've returned from my Tumblr break. Was honestly planning on staying off for a couple more days, but the break wasn't exactly having the effect I was hoping it was (being that I'd be able to stop focusing on all my personal issues with the CRK fanbase but instead it just gave me more time to stew over them). And depending on when I'm posting this the new update with Stardust Cookie (my beloved) is either just about to come out or has already come out, so I'd figure it would be a good time to jump back into action. And in my couple days off, I've had some time to think some things over.

First off, I need to admit I made a really big mistake. I really want to start posting to Instagram, and even before putting the poll up I was already gravitating towards doing so. It's completely on me for posting a poll for something I could've just resolved by myself, and apologize for putting the poll up in the first place. I really appreciate everyone's input, but for the meantime I do want to go forward with setting up Instagram and see where it goes.

Secondly, I've been putting more thought into doing commissions - I even set up a PayPal account in case I actually get the idea lifted up off the ground. I might've said it before on this blog, I can't really remember if I did or not, but around June of last year I got laid off from my job and have been struggling to find a replacement ever since - ergo, my income has been completely halted. The idea of commissions has appealed to me for years now and something I hoped I could eventually get around to. But also, the idea of commissions kind of…terrifies me? I'm terrible in social situations with people I already know, let alone strangers on the Internet. I'd be scared of messing something up or saying something wrong or asking for too much or too little guidance on the piece and have the customer end up dissatisfied. I want so badly to set up commissions but I'm not sure if I'm in the right headspace to do it now. Maybe I'd be able to set them up by late spring, but I can't make any promises.

2023 is…kind of shaping up to be a shitty year for me. A bunch of my mental health issues bubbled back up around mid-January and haven't really mellowed out yet, and I really think it's starting to affect my feelings on the CRK fanbase, which is my main priority for fanmade content. I mean, I made like four entire rant posts within the span of three weeks about CRK shipping - for most of my time in the fanbase you wouldn't catch me touching that topic with a ten-foot pole. Maybe coming back to social media will actually be able to help me, or at least give me something to distract myself with - since leaving it for a bit hardly helped.

As for other things I didn't post about? Well, uh…I made some fanart that I'm hoping to post soon? Beat a couple Dark Mode stages I was stuck on only to get stuck on yet another one? I didn't even get in the Top 50% in Big Run? Yeah, guess my hazard level just wasn't high enough, though I'm sure losing half the shifts I joined didn't help either. Oh well, I don't have any room in my locker to display any not-obnoxiously-green Horrorboros statue anyway.

[angiebowiearchive]

Angie’s Confessions at Timothy Lock’s G-Spot Transcript [Part 1] (2006)

(originally transcribed by me in 2006 and posted on an old LJ community. These are the same transcriptions from that time and I can no longer verify how accurate it may be Wayback link to the episode summary, mp3 link does not work; if anyone still has these audio files/knows how to access them, let me know.)

Timothy: On the phone with me right now from sunny Tucson, Arizona is the fabulous Angie Bowie. Angie how are you today?

Angie:I’m fine Timothy how are you? Hi everyone who’s listening.

Timothy: Do you know what, I am melting. London is in the middle of a heat wave right now.

Angie: Well I am very, very sympathetic. We’re in the middle of Monsoon Madness two thousand and six it’s 105, 108.

Timothy: Oh my God

Angie: Tucson is usually ten degrees cooler than Phoenix, so for it to be this hot you can imagine in Phoenix they’re seeing 114, 118 temperatures. Now what is the temperature in London

Timothy: It’s um, Celsius it’s about 35 today, which I think is the high eighties

Angie: Yeah well for London with all that concrete that’s high

Timothy: D’ you know what, they, they had a wonderful picture in this newspaper the other day. You know the whole quote of you ‘oh you can fry an egg on the sidewalk?’

Angie: Uh-huh

Timothy: Well they actually fried an egg on the top of a black cab

Angie: Oh yeah I saw that picture!

Timothy: Isn’t that great?

Angie: Yes and that demonstrates that it is darned hot.

Timothy: Oh definitely

Angie: Yeah. I’m listening to your accent. Tell me where you’re from.

Timothy: I’m from Toronto originally.

Angie: Ahh! And where are you living now?

Timothy: I am living in London, and I’ve lived here for the past nine years.

Angie: I thought so when I was listening! You know my mother was Canadian, and my father grew up Canada, in British Columbia. I’m sure you wouldn’t know that, but I did and so I was listening to your voice. How nice! And so you’ve lived in London what, nine or ten years now?

Timothy: Nine years now yeah

Angie: Oh, and are you enjoying it? Of course, or you wouldn’t be here.

Timothy: Angie, I love it. It’s my favorite city on the planet. I’ve lived in New York, Calgary, Toronto, Orlando and London I love, I will never move.

Angie: Good! Good for you. Well I couldn’t agree with you more. Of course it’s a little-when I went there on those last two trips, you know it was so bizarre because of the CCTV.

Timothy: Oh I know

Angie: And I, you know one of the taxi drivers was so cute, I said to him, I said ‘and I guess you can’t go down there, he said ‘no,’ he said ‘the ticket would be in two weeks in my mail box’

Timothy: [laughs]

Angie: And we both started laughing, he said ‘yeah, you can’t even get in trouble if you want to now’

Timothy: Do you know what, here in London one of the big television shows is Big Brother. I don’t know if it’s big in the States at all?

Angie: I’m not sure, but I think when I was in England I saw it advertised and I didn’t get to what it, I was-that’s when I was on call for Patrick.

Timothy: Patrick Lily sends his love by the way

Angie: Oh good! And please give him a big, big hug for me

Timothy: I definitely will. And the thing about Big Brother is I say it’s being famous for being on CCTV.

Angie: Yeah.

Timothy: And I thought you know if that’s the case, you know, then I should be famous for urinating behind every dumpster in London when I’m drunk.

Angie: [laughs]

Timothy: Now when I was thinking about talking with Angie Bowie, I thought you know, you’re someone I can’t really label under one banner. And the obvious thing would be to, you know, focus on your opinions of your ex husband David Bowie, but that’s been done to death Angie. You’ve also detailed it in your best selling autobiography Backstage Passes: Life On The Wild Side with David Bowie. I’m not going to draw you into a discussion about David Bowie because that’s unfair and you’re my guest and I want you to feel welcome.

Angie: Oh you’re very sweet Timothy, I appreciate it, and it’s not because of anything bizarre. It’s not like, you know, a publicist say, saying ‘oh and she won’t talk about that’, it’s not that. I haven’t seen him for twenty five or thirty years. So talking about him, talking about him in the context of the seventies-

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: -as my artist, the artist I was promoting and the person I was managing, no problem. But you know, they, people have recently been asking me-they, they sprung an interview in the Evening Standard on me.

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: Very huge interview. And the gal was very sweet. Unfortunately when I first heard her name, I-I had to do a double take because I wanted to make sure that I addressed her correctly during the interview.

Timothy: What was her name?

Angie: Emine. And it’s a strange name, you know what I mean

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: So I was already, you know, and the next question she asked me was ‘ what do you think of David Bowie?’ And I said [stammers a bit] ‘He’s a jackass!’ What do you mean what do I think of David Bowie? You know, I haven’t seen him for twenty seven, thirty years, why would I have an opinion on him?

Timothy: Yeah, exactly.

Angie:So um, then of course that became the most quoted thing, you know, coming to the States newspapers. And that’s okay, I don’t mind a bit ‘cause it’s exactly how I feel but it’s boring! I don’t wanna promote him anymore, I’m not being paid for it. I just don’t have time for this now

Timothy:It’s like someone asking me ‘what did you feel like when you went to see Star Wars in the cinema?’ I’ll be like ‘I was seven years old, I have no idea’

Angie:Yeah really and why should I promote them now?

Timothy:Yeah exactly

Angie: They’re part of the culture, you know, ask someone who wrote it, go talk to, you know Lucas

Timothy: Yeah, ask someone who’s actually getting royalties from it

Angie: Yes, exactly. Well that’s the whole thing Timothy: And I know it’s hard to start a discussion with you at one point, but let’s start in America in the 1960’s when you were attending Connecticut College for Women.

Angie: Well I, yeah, uh. I took my A levels when I was fifteen.

Timothy: Mm-hm

Angie: And I wanted to take a year off and my father wouldn’t hear of it. So I couldn’t go to college in England, they wouldn’t let me go, they said ‘sure, come back when you’re eighteen’. But my father said ‘oh well in that case you can go to college in the United States’. So I’m, you know, filled out application forms and I was accepted at Connecticut College for Women. I hated it. It was the most horrible place. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t understand the girls, I didn’t understand the way they taught. They had these huge classes. I’d never been in a huge class in my life, the biggest I’d ever been in was thirty-two people. I’d never taken a class in an auditorium. And I had performed at the [unintelligible], Expo in 1964 and done the play [unintelligible], for five days, I had done a lot of sophisticated things. But what I had not done was be treated like a, um, a unit to be educated.

Timothy: Right

Angie: And uh, I was appalled. So I fell in love with this girl, and um, because I had done a deal with my father that I wouldn’t get pregnant or embarrass him or sleep with men. Leaving myself the out, I kept thinking to myself ‘well that way I can always sleep with girls, I won’t get pregnant, right?’

Timothy: Well there ya go.

Angie: Well ya gotta make due with what ya got, right? So that was fine, but then I got asked to leave. She got put in the infirmary, I went to visit her there, they tried to sedate me so I leapt out the window and escaped and went and packed my stuff and said ‘ya know what, before you ask me to leave, I’m leaving.’

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: And I went back to my parents from Cyprus, the [unintelligible], who were in New Haven, and from then I got my ticket back to Cyprus.

Timothy: Now Angie, did you consider yourself a lesbian at that time?

Angie: No

Timothy: What did you consider yourself?

Angie: A bisexual

Timothy: Now your autobiography, as one reviewer puts it, and I quote, details your ‘drug-fueled and openly bisexual lifestyle’ together David Bowie and many other well known rockers. Now if you look back at the experiences you’ve had and, you know, speaking of the drugs, the substances you’ve tried, do you think drugs should be legalized?

Angie: Well unfortunately we have to back up a little. Your question is premature.

Timothy: Right, okay.

Angie: I didn’t do any drugs until I was twenty six years old, so, so no. It wasn’t ‘drug fueled’. I didn’t drink and I didn’t smoke.

Timothy: Right.

Angie: And people don’t understand if you start your public life at nineteen.

Timothy: Yes

Angie: That’s eight years of being on the ball, so all this crap about ‘drug-fueled’, you know, that’s in the minds of a wannabe wisher they had been there.

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: Drugs were a, uh, became a part of David’s life three or four years before I had anything to do with it and when I had something to with it, it’s all written in Backstage Passes, I’m not gonna bore myself or you.

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: But…do I think they should be legalized? Yes, I think marijuana should be legalized, I mean as everybody in any civilized country knows. Um, alcohol, I don’t believe in uh, prohibition, but I think every health class in the world ought to explain the effects of alcohol and how stupid it is, and how easy it is to get date raped if you’re already high on alcohol.

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: I think children in, in middle school and high school, like they taught in England-do you know in America if you talk to a kid-probably Canada’s a little better, okay, so I’m not lumping Canada in there-when my daughter was at middle school, I had to sit down, she and three of her friends, they came to me and they said, ‘Mom what is it?’ My daughter had brought these kids in, and she said ‘Mom, I told everybody that if anyone would give us sex education, you would’. And I said absolutely. And I gave them a lecture, I explained to them about all kinds of venereal diseases, every type that there were. Because in England, when we were at college, that information was available.

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: You know, and everyone knew. You went and found out before you slept with somebody. And um, when I finished the lecture, I said ‘well don’t they teach you that? Don’t you have a health class or something?’ I didn’t know. But she was at a private, you know, middle school. Not a-a kind of a state run one, and I guess they just didn’t feel that it was appropriate, I guess they didn’t know whether the parents would, you know, approve of them teaching them that kind of health class, but I think it’s really tragic in the countries where it’s not taught. I’m not pointing fingers at anyone because I’m sure in Europe that is not the case so much but here in America, this is a parochial-ism about matters to do with sexuality that I find very frightening and worrisome.

Timothy: Which is?

Angie: That they’re not taught!

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: It’s not that they don’t know. I mean really they, get a lot, everyone here, the youngsters here, seem to get most of their information from the television, which is-that’s not a bad thing, I’m not knocking this, I’m just saying I don’t understand. I mean, wouldn’t it be better to give people the facts in a classroom environment and then let them fill it in with what you read in magazines and what you see on television and on the Internet?

Timothy: Yeah

Angie; I just-I worry about things like that. It’s like history. They don’t teach history here properly now. You talk to them about World War II, they actually, you know, my generation-my father was a World War II hero from the Philippines. He wasn’t there to fight in the-he was there as a mining engineer. When the war broke out, when Pearl Harbor started, he was caught in North Lazon. They took to the mountains, he and the men that worked for him, they joined the resistance movement. Because he was ROTC, that meant he had to be commissioned and became an officer. For three years, they fought from the mountains. World War II is a live thing to me.

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: It’s a part of my father’s life. Now, if we’re not gonna have, ya know, kids who have a relative who can explain it to them, then at least let’s teach it in school so, you know, everyone knows who was on which side, what the-the reasons they went to war were, I mean something. Children don’t know that anymore and that’s not good.

Timothy: Well Angie lets go to back to the topic of sexuality. As a mother yourself, what do you think the most important thing is that parents should teach their children about sexuality?

Angie: I think the most important thing is to remind everyone that children and humans don’t mature until they’re eighteen or nineteen. So sex before eighteen or nineteen-I didn’t have sex with anyone until I was eighteen. My eighteenth birthday, chronicled in Backstage Passes, I had sex with my boyfriend, it was very exciting. Now, the reason for that is, is because a mammal does not mature, get it’s fu-and even then there’s another four or five years after eighteen up to twenty five and twenty six when people fill out and mature. Height, strength in the shoulders, spine all that. Now, if a girl gets pregnant, she has a new weight to bear. So having sex, which-and, and we’re talking historically now where you get pregnant, not, you know, protected sex, this is a new concept from the 20th century, one we learned about birth control and family planning. But you see what I’m saying here.

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: The best idea would be to wait until your body was big enough to carry it. Now we’re not talking about nine year olds that run up and down the mountains and happen to get pregnant in, uh, strange out-of-the-way South American countries which are, you know, on the cover of the British newspapers all the time. Basically, I think the most important thing is that. Is if you can say ‘look, wait until you’re eighteen so that at least your body is skeletally, you know, in the right place for it’.

Timothy: Right.

Angie: Now the great thing about putting it in that kind of term is, is that it stops being a moral issue, it stops being a judgment issue. It kind of tidies it up along with health. You know, would you drink from a dirty cup in a dumpster?

Timothy: No, definitely not.

Angie: You see what I’m saying?

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: Why would you have sex with someone that you don’t really know where they’ve been?

Timothy: Mmm

Angie: And it’s like some experiment, and you just wanna like fuck around? Ick!

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: It’s a dirty cup in a dumpster! You don’t know where the hell it’s been.

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: So I think by the age of eighteen, you start to think like that. At fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, one tends to be less-but, but, it-less aware, but if you’re informed, you try for the purpose of being mature, you know, and grown up and being cool-to think about that stuff so that you don’t act like a jackass. And I’ve acted like a jackass many times in my life, so please don’t think I’m trying to make out I’m so clever, I don’t mean it like that. We learn through our mistakes. In answer to your question, I would say hold onto it just for a bit, you know what I mean.

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: The idea that people have sex so early kind of amazed me. It shocked me. I didn’t realize that people fourteen and fifteen and sixteen years old were having sex. I had no idea. I’m very naïve I suppose in a lot of ways.

Timothy: Now how did you approach the subject yourself, of discussing sexuality with your children? Angie: I, well I never did with my son because I didn’t see him after he was fourteen.

Timothy: Yes

Angie: It wasn’t an issue. With my daughter, she came to me, you know, and we were always very straight forward. I-I just, I have a European attitude about it, thank God, from growing up. God knows Cyprus was no help, but Switzerland and England were a help.

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie. And so um, from that experience, I guess, you know that how I spoke to her about it and then when she came back to me with her friends and asked me to inform them, I realized that I had gotten through to her.

Timothy: Now your daughter is-is Stashia, am I pronouncing that correctly?

Angie: Yeah, Stasha.

Timothy: Stasha, sorry, um-

Angie: No, no, that’s fine. And uh it’s her birthday, it was her birthday yesterday.

Timothy: Oh, well happy birthday yesterday Stasha. How old is she?

Angie: So, uh, oh twenty six.

Timothy: Oh wonderful.

Angie: She called me yesterday and she said ‘oh Mom, thank you for having me’. I thought ‘that’s a very nice thing to say’

Timothy: Oh, I’m sure you were beaming from ear to ear.

Angie: I was! I thought-there was a big grin for quite awhile.

Timothy: Now Angie, this is one thing I-I’ve always been curious about. Um, your son, who now goes by the name Joey, uh, his birth-

Angie: No he doesn’t, his name-he uses Duncan now.

Timothy: Oh he uses Duncan, sorry. But his birth name was Zowie, Zed [sic]-o-w-I-e-

Angie: His birth name-would you like to know this or-

Timothy: Oh yeah tell the story please.

Angie: His name is Duncan Zowie Hayward Jones.

Timothy: Ah.

Angie: That is his name.

Timothy: The myth is dispelled. Now do you find that a-a-that there are a lot of stories about you that are just so wrong?

Angie: Yes! Of course there are, that’s why I don’t pay any attention. I have no interest in any of it.

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: That’s why I live here.

Timothy: Oh.

Angie: I wouldn’t live in a big city. Why?

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: Aggravated by a bunch of scumbags who don’t know me?

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: I did a-when I did the tour for Backstage Passes, I talked to redneck DJs in Texas

Timothy: Uh-huh.

Angie: They called me a whore on the air.

Timothy: Are you serious?

Angie: No, I told them, I said ‘guess what? I don’t have to do this. Fuck you’

Timothy: Yeah, of course.

Angie: Got off. Yeah, I have no interest in the bullshit and the lies, that’s-I, I’ve never been interested, I’ve never been-my area of expertise and my creativity

Timothy: Yeah.

Angie: Is writing, music, and art. I have an A level in History of Art, French, History and English. Those-that’s what I’m interested in. Also anthropology.

Timothy: And Angie, reading your writing, you-I can tell you love words.

Angie: I do

Timothy: And the way they go together, alliteration, asides that are in parentheses, it’s-it’s a joy to read.

Angie: Thank you

Timothy: Yeah

Angie: You’re so kind. I-I love it, and um, I think a lot of my being angry and behaving badly, was having that creativity interrupted by unhappiness.

Timothy: Yes.

Angie: So I-I wanted-because I had brought that up, and I didn’t wanna leave it hanging, I-I want you to know that when I say how we learn from experience.

Timothy: Mmm hmm

Angie: And I-I think you understand as a writer, I don’t really have to explain this to you, maybe I’m explaining it to your listeners. As writers, we can’t really write unless we’ve experienced. It doesn’t mean we have to go to the very depths of depravity or the very heights of ecstasy, but we have to at least have seen it or tasted it to describe it, and that experiential context for being a writer is I think what allows us to live vivid lives

[part 2 here]

[startrekfangirl2233-fic-recs]

This was me seeing this chapter float across my notifications, Em! It's a travesty that I just started to read it now, though. But I'm ready for you to blow my mind. You usually do, but I feel like it needed to be said!

He'd already eaten breakfast, gone for a long run and taken a shower, and he was still one of the first ones here. Except for Judy.

I see our chicken is still an early bird. Or are you telling me that his callsign is because of something else, Em?

"Do you really think she would be a good fit? You'll be working on the yacht for weeks, and all she has is a graduate degree and a daddy with a bankroll." She handed him your résumé with a concerned look.

I promise Judy, he's not only thinking about her professional and personal qualifications, but also how good she'd look wearing a bikini for him on that yacht.

Bradley made himself another cup of coffee before he settled into his seat. His office had a fantastic view of the Pacific Ocean in the distance along with the Naval base at North Island where he'd spent several years working. Sometimes he missed it, other times he didn't. Flying was in his blood, but after five air-to-air kills, it seemed like he'd given up enough of his soul to the Navy. Now he was helping oversee the design of software components that would help keep aviators safer in the air. 

I love that you're exploring Bradley's career post Navy, working as a contractor for the Navy. He's an ace now, just like Mav, too?!

And that thought brought him back to the main reason you would be here in the next few minutes. What kind of information could he get out of you? Bradley noticed that the profit and loss sheets from several departments didn't seem to add up. That had been the case for two quarters in a row. When he mentioned it to one of the harried looking accountants one floor down, he told Bradley they wouldn't have time to run an unnecessary audit before next quarter started.

There is definitely something out of the ordinary happening at Avio. I can't wait to see how Brat's involvement with Bradley makes all of this go down.

Bradley smiled, and his gaze followed your hand as you touched that pretty charm again. "Oh... I want you plenty. Something tells me yachts and Mediterranean vacations are something you simply grew up with. I'm just trying to sell myself now."

The imagery here is making me sweat a little bit, Em. He's already down so bad for Brat. They're going to ignite in an inferno and the flames are going to singe everyone in sight.

You sputtered with laughter, too. "Did you just call me Ivy League?" "I sure did," he told you, still laughing. "It's about ten times nicer than what I was going to say." Your soft gasp as your eyes positively lit up made Bradley's heart beat a little faster. "Well, what were you going to say?" you asked before biting your lip.  Shit. You were trouble, and you knew it. "Never mind. My lips are sealed. Can't say that to Ted's daughter."

Trouble. Ivy League. Brat. You can call me whatever you want, Mr. Bradshaw. Please allow me to bring you coffee in my skimpy little bikini. Please. I will pay you for that honor and your big cock, daddy.

He cleared his throat as he opened his contacts and then put his phone on speaker. He was greeted with a familiar voice filled with laughter. "Rooster! When are you going to get that yacht warmed up for me?" Bradley just shook his head and said, "Hangman. You're not going to believe who my summer intern is."

Hangman! I love that Jake and Bradley are still friends after all of this time! I can't wait to see what his role is at Avio and how he fits into this mystery Bradley's trying to solve.

They actually were all Armani, and you'd have a field day when you realized it. Or perhaps skinny dipping would become a thing?

Please, please, please. Em don't make a girl beg. I've already been unleashed and I am feral for this version of this man.

Sir. That one word was echoing through his mind along with your bratty tone, and he had to take a deep breath.

That one word is echoing through my mind too, daddy. Don't fret. I'm down to cause some trouble in your life.

"If she gets to be too much, just leave her in one of the marinas with her passport."

Excuse me for glaring right at the back of your fucking bald head, Ted. I don't like you at all. You may be Ivy's dad in this, but I kind of need you to leave my page before I jump in there and knee you someplace very sensitive and tender in the male anatomy.

Bradley examined your pretty face, and you didn't look away. He remembered the dress you wore to Ted's holiday party, and you remembered his sweater. Right now he was wishing he'd joined you for that bottle of French wine that night, something he'd remedy on the yacht. A flood of bad decisions just waiting to happen filled his mind as he said, "Go say goodbye to your father. It's almost time to go." "Yes, Sir," you told him with your chin held high and a smirk gracing your lips. Bradley stood at the bottom of the stairs while you flung your arms around Ted and kissed him on the cheek. Then you came strolling his way once again, and he followed you closely up the stairs as you turned back and softly said, "I'm all yours."

Every time Ivy calls Bradley, Sir, I want to roll back and forth and giggle and kick my feet in the air. Don't ask me what could possibly go wrong, because the answer is a lot. I have this terribly sick feeling in my stomach which screams that Bradley is looking into something which he's probably not expecting to be as bad as it actually ends up being. I'm thinking destruction of Avio and everything. You have me waiting with baited breath, Em! I can't wait to see what the next chapter of Ivy and Rooster brings!

The Intern Part 2 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Five minutes into an interview with you, and Bradley knew he was in trouble. You were attractive, funny and smart, and now the summer was stretching out before him like an obstacle course he would have to navigate carefully. At least a visit from an old friend should be enough to help him work through his frustrations.

Warnings: Language, mentions of smut and masturbation (eventually 18+)

Length: 4200 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

The Intern masterlist. Check out my masterlist for more. Banner by @mak-32

When Bradley got to the Avio headquarters the following morning, he rode the elevator up to his office. He'd already eaten breakfast, gone for a long run and taken a shower, and he was still one of the first ones here. Except for Judy. He smiled when her desk came into view as he turned toward his office door. She was sweet, and it scared him a little bit how much she reminded him of his mom. She was a widow with one son in college, and Bradley would be lost without her. 

"Morning," she said, handing him his mail as he walked past without her even looking up at him. "You have a very busy day, and I already turned on your coffee maker."

He really needed to give her another raise. "Thanks, Judy. Hey, what time is that interview I have?" he asked, flipping through the stack of envelopes in his hand. 

Now she looked up from her computer and met his eyes. "Nine o'clock. And it's Ted's daughter."

"I know," he replied with a small smile. 

"Do you really think she would be a good fit? You'll be working on the yacht for weeks, and all she has is a graduate degree and a daddy with a bankroll." She handed him your résumé with a concerned look.

He shrugged as he skimmed the page again. "She has some related work experience. She volunteered to run the finances for a handful of Philadelphia based charities every year. Her references include the Philadelphia deputy mayor. But you're right, she's pretty green. I'll take this with me," he said as he held the résumé up and headed for his door. "Let me know when she arrives."

"Will do," Judy muttered. 

Bradley made himself another cup of coffee before he settled into his seat. His office had a fantastic view of the Pacific Ocean in the distance along with the Naval base at North Island where he'd spent several years working. Sometimes he missed it, other times he didn't. Flying was in his blood, but after five air-to-air kills, it seemed like he'd given up enough of his soul to the Navy. Now he was helping oversee the design of software components that would help keep aviators safer in the air. 

He turned his gaze from the view outside back to your resume. Your name at the top made him smile, and the more he read about you, the more he liked. None of the other people begging him for a job in his department had the same level of academic chops or philanthropic endeavors you did. And he couldn't imagine you begging for a single damn thing, ever. He tapped his keyboard, wondering what your LinkedIn profile looked like. 

Well. Your photo was gorgeous. It was professional looking without a doubt, but he knew better now that the way your smile tilted a little higher on one side meant you were about to deliver a line that would make him laugh. He wondered if you'd had the photographer smiling nonstop, too. 

Bradley paused with his fingers on his keyboard, but he couldn't help it. He typed your full name into the search bar and sorted it by images. There were more headshots of you from academic articles and a few newspapers, but when he scrolled he almost spit his coffee out. There was one of you wearing that same bikini you had on yesterday. When he clicked it for more, it took him to your private instagram page. 

He stared at that tiny thumbnail before he closed his eyes. Really, the way you looked wasn't why he asked you to come here today, and he'd spent a good portion of last evening trying to focus on anything other than how it felt to have your body pressed against his while he held you.

"Fuck," he grunted. He really needed to get laid. He made another mental note next to the one about Judy's raise. He would call one of his friends with benefits and get that taken care of, because if you agreed to join him for a couple months on the company yacht, he'd probably see that bikini again and again. And there was no way he could touch Ted's daughter. Not like that. Even if he wanted to.

And that thought brought him back to the main reason you would be here in the next few minutes. What kind of information could he get out of you? Bradley noticed that the profit and loss sheets from several departments didn't seem to add up. That had been the case for two quarters in a row. When he mentioned it to one of the harried looking accountants one floor down, he told Bradley they wouldn't have time to run an unnecessary audit before next quarter started. 

Someone in this company was doing something shady, and Bradley wanted to know who it was and why. He'd gone over those numbers for days, double checking his math. He knew he wasn't crazy, but he didn't know who he could safely take this information to, especially when the specs on the software they were creating was considered top secret. 

"Your interview is here," Judy's voice suddenly announced through his intercom.

Bradley quickly closed out of the photo of you in a bathing suit that was still on his screen and slammed his laptop shut. "Send her in."

A few seconds later, Judy was holding the door open for you, and you thanked her as you strolled in like you owned the company. Your hair was styled in some sort of clip, and you were wearing a perfectly tailored black suit. Bradley shook his head; it was rich that you called him out for his proclivity for Armani when yours was probably worth three times as much. His gaze drifted down your legs. Your black and white heels were the kinds of things he would love to have thrown over his shoulders in bed, and the bit of white silk peeking out above your jacket buttons reminded him of your skimpy pajamas. 

Inviting you here was a terrible idea. 

You smirked as you ran your right index finger along the charm from Tiffany's that hung from your necklace, and then you reached out to shake his hand over his desk. "Mr. Bradshaw. So lovely to see you again today." Your voice was playful, and Bradley gestured for you to take a seat while he tried his best to gather his thoughts. 

"I was a little afraid you'd show up in your bathing suit," he said, and you nodded as you crossed your legs and set your leather portfolio on your lap. 

"I can certainly understand the cause for that concern," you replied, not missing a beat. "However, I promise you'll see nothing but Armani suits from here on out if I end up coming to the office every day. Now what would you have me do for you all summer? Fetch your coffee? Give you the abridged version of the Wall Street Journal? Sit in on pointless meetings in the conference room across the hallway?"

"That's just it," he said, tilting his head to the side and taking in your neutral expression. He hardly knew what to do with the fact that you made him feel warm and slightly uncomfortable when you were being sassy. "We wouldn't be here at all. And actually, you could wear your bathing suit and swim half the time for all I cared."

Your eyes lit up immediately as you leaned closer to his desk. "This sounds like a trap, but please, carry on. Tell me more."

He chuckled as he moved a little closer to you as well. "I'm being tasked with taking a few weeks to a couple months on the company yacht in the Mediterranean. I have the technical knowledge as well as the access to arrange meetings with members of Avio's European sales team to close some deals. This is all top secret information, but since you've got the right connections, I'll go ahead and tell you that the US government has given us the greenlight to sell our software to a select list of countries."

You licked your lips, and Bradley could barely focus as you said, "So you'll be the one calling all the shots. And you need to have access to some of these countries to schedule meetings and dinners and cocktail parties. You'll be working from the yacht in much the same capacity you are currently working from your office, still expected to head the research department here. But you'll have the added workload of trying to answer questions and sell the software in Europe? Did I miss anything?"

Bradley's eyes went a little wide as he chuckled. "No. Not really."

You were smiling now. "This sounds like half work and half sorority party, and let me tell you, I am more than capable of making both of those things go as smoothly for you as possible."

"Yeah," he said, his voice a little raspy now. "But you'll have to put up with me. And some of these clients have been known to be a little difficult in... a variety of different ways." Bradley's mind drifted to last summer when he'd been on the yacht for a week as well as the summer before that. The wealthier a man becomes, the more he seems to think he could have whatever he wants, and Bradley had seen some wild shit. "But I'll do my best to keep you comfortable and safe. The workload will be intense, to say the least. But it'll all be happening on a one hundred and thirty foot superyacht." 

You eyed him carefully. "This sounds like it was custom made for me, so you either want me or you don't, Mr. Bradshaw." 

Bradley smiled, and his gaze followed your hand as you touched that pretty charm again. "Oh... I want you plenty. Something tells me yachts and Mediterranean vacations are something you simply grew up with. I'm just trying to sell myself now."

The way you laughed reminded him once again of that night in December when you asked him if he wanted to share a bottle of wine with you. "You're very persuasive, Mr. Bradshaw. I can practically smell the sunblock and taste the pasta from here." You bit your lip and considered him, and it felt to Bradley like you could see every flaw and indiscretion inside of him. "Where did you go to school anyway? Yale? Brown? No wait... you look like a Princeton boy to me."

He shook his head as he pointed to his college diploma on the wall. "I went to a state school." 

You gasped, and your eyes went wide as you muttered, "Jesus," while you read it. "Political science? At the University of Virginia? Oh... you should be lying to people. I mean, at least say you went to Dartmouth."

Bradley tried and failed to hold in his laughter, because you truly looked scandalized by this turn of events. "Aww, come on, Ivy League. It's not so bad."

You sputtered with laughter, too. "Did you just call me Ivy League?"

"I sure did," he told you, still laughing. "It's about ten times nicer than what I was going to say."

Your soft gasp as your eyes positively lit up made Bradley's heart beat a little faster. "Well, what were you going to say?" you asked before biting your lip. 

Shit. You were trouble, and you knew it. "Never mind. My lips are sealed. Can't say that to Ted's daughter."

You sighed and rolled your eyes. "You're no fun right now, but I'm sure as soon as I get you loosened up in some Armani swim trunks on the yacht, you'll be an absolute pleasure for me to deal with."

The way Bradley's cock was twitching should have been warning enough. He was about to get in over his head. But all he could say was, "Does that mean you want the internship?"

Your smile tilted up a little higher on the one side. "Oh, absolutely." Then you stood before him looking like the cat who got the cream, and Bradley had to hope for the best as he stood as well. He could mark this as the first time he'd ever become slightly aroused during an interview, a sign that he desperately needed to get laid. 

He shook your hand and said, "We leave in a few days. Judy will help you get your visas in order. Sound good?"

"Sounds perfect, Mr. Bradshaw." 

The way you here still holding his hand and calling him Mr. Bradshaw left his voice barely louder than a rasp. "Judy and I will be in touch."

You turned and shot him a smile over your shoulder as you headed for his office door, and Bradley dropped back down in his chair. He'd call Callie about getting together to hook up before he left for Europe, but he had another more important call to make first. He cleared his throat as he opened his contacts and then put his phone on speaker. He was greeted with a familiar voice filled with laughter.

"Rooster! When are you going to get that yacht warmed up for me?"

Bradley just shook his head and said, "Hangman. You're not going to believe who my summer intern is."

------------------------------

You were floating on a raft in the pool wearing your second favorite bathing suit when you were greeted by the sound of your father's voice. "I sincerely hope you know what you're doing by wasting your time right now."

"Daddy," you greeted with a smile. "My day was a complete and utter success."

He checked his watch as he said, "Please, elaborate."

You had the trump card, but you knew all too well what it would be like if you didn't. Instead of lecturing you like you could tell he wanted to, he smiled when you said, "I have a job."

"Where?" 

"Avio."

He nodded in appreciation as he said, "I am actually impressed right now. You managed to secure an internship at the company I've spent decades with, and you did so without me knowing anything about it. Which department?"

"Research and development," you replied smoothly.

His eyes went wider. "With Bradley Bradshaw?"

Your tummy swooped, and you sucked in a breath at the mere mention of his name. Spending weeks working with him and entertaining guests with him was going to be... well, something. "Yes. With Bradley Bradshaw."

"Sweetheart," your father said. "He had a career in the Navy."

"Yes. He was an aviator," you recalled from his Avio bio.

"That means he's not going to put up with any nonsense. You don't make him repeat himself, and you don't give him attitude. I'll know immediately if he's displeased with you, I'm sure."

Bradley didn't seem stuffy. He'd already encouraged you to pack your bathing suits. Hell, you were determined to get him to join you in some fun. "Well maybe not immediately as he and I will be on the Avio yacht in the Mediterranean."

Your father stared at you, speechless. Finally he said, "I really don't know how you managed to get exactly what you wanted, but I applaud you, Sweetheart. Well done. I know it sounds fun, but you'll be kept very busy. I hope you know what you're in for."

When he finally wandered back inside after you promised to join him for dinner, you soaked up the last few rays of the dying sunlight. Then you made a mental list of everything you needed to spend the next few days packing as you brushed up on your French and Italian.  "J'adore mon travail. Amo il mio lavoro. I love my job."

--------------------------

Bradley was still chuckling as he got off the phone with Ted a few days later. Your father tried to warn him that you could be a bit of a handful. Like Bradley wasn't fully aware of that fact. As if he hadn't known since December. He could practically hear your disdain for his alma mater and your delight in international travel from his condo.

He was stacking his suits up in his extra bedroom along with several pairs of shoes, and he shook his head as he looked down at his swim trunks in his hands. They actually were all Armani, and you'd have a field day when you realized it. Or perhaps skinny dipping would become a thing?

Fuck. He needed to stop thinking about you like that. Callie Bassett was on her way over, so that should help alleviate some of this tension. He'd been friends with Halo for over a decade, and she had slowly and naturally turned into a friend with benefits over time. She was still in the Navy, and she was discreet. It was easier than having a girlfriend. It was all he had time for. 

As he organized his suits, he remembered you told him he looked like a Princeton boy. He could just picture you with a parade of preppy assholes following you around, and he wondered if you ever slummed it with anyone like him before. It made him want to pack some of his casual clothes including his Virgina baseball cap and his worn out golf shorts. So he did. 

Then his doorbell buzzed, and he went to let Callie in. He needed this taken care of right now. She smelled good, and she looked cute. She always did. And she wore something a little skimpy just for him. The kiss on his cheek in greeting quickly turned to her lips brushing his as she said, "I haven't seen you in weeks."

"Been busy," he replied, taking her by the hand and heading for his bedroom. "And I'm leaving for Portugal on Saturday."

"How long?" she asked, pouting a little bit as Bradley reached for the hem of her dress and eased it up and over her head in one fluid motion. 

"Couple months," he whispered, taking in her soft, naked body with his gaze. 

"Months?" she whined as he wrapped his hands around her waist and smirked at her. 

"Don't even act like we are anything close to exclusive, Cal. Now... how do you want it?"

She licked her lips and looked up at him with those familiar dark eyes just as his phone rang in his pocket. He didn't hesitate or check the number; he never did. "Bradshaw."

"Hey, State School. I have a few questions for you."

Bradley froze with your voice in his ear and Callie's fingers on his zipper. He grunted softly as she eased it down and touched him. He just knew if he closed his eyes and listened to your voice, he'd probably finish in her hand within two minutes. 

"Ivy League," he rasped, taking a step back away from Halo who was now standing before him completely naked and rolling her eyes.

"Are you busy?" you asked, and Bradley looked Halo in the eyes without remorse as he answered you.

"No. I'm not busy. I can talk." He held up one finger and zipped himself up as he left his bedroom in favor of his office. "As long as you tell me how you got this number."

You laughed as he sank down into his desk chair. "You think it's exclusive or something? Judy gave it to me. And it's probably listed on the company website."

Brat. He narrowed his eyes, adding a note to his mental list to make sure it was not listed on the company website. "What can I help you with?"

"Well, I'm packing and hoping for a little input from you."

"On Thursday night at nine?" he asked. "And don't you have a butler to help you with that?"

"Like you have anything else going on?"

Bradley thought about Callie waiting in his bedroom, but instead of ushering this call along, he asked, "What did you pack so far?"

You sighed. "Sixteen bathing suits, piles of lingerie, and sunglasses. And I'm only kind of kidding."

Fighting the urge to ask for more details, he said, "Unfortunately I can't let you wear any of that in front of potential clients. So throw in some suits and dresses."

"Some suits and dresses? You'll need to be a little bit more specific, Sir." 

Sir.

That one word was echoing through his mind along with your bratty tone, and he had to take a deep breath. "Why don't you bring the suit you wore when I interviewed you? That looked good. And so did the dress you wore to your father's holiday party. The dark green one."

There was a pause before you said, "You remember what I wore to the party?"

"Yeah," he grunted, rubbing his hand over his face in frustration. "It looked nice. Pack some cocktail dresses, too."

"How many should I pack?"

"How many do you have?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

Bradley laughed. "I'm sure you know better than I do what you should wear."

You scoffed. "You're acting like you've never spent a summer on the Avio yacht before."

"I haven't," he replied easily. "Just a few days here and there. I'm sure I'll be learning things from you."

"Then you'll be learning from the best."

He bit back a groan as he said, "That's what I'm counting on. That's why I hired you."

"I won't let you down," you promised, and Bradley believed you. "I'll see you at the airport on Saturday morning. Don't forget your swim trunks."

You ended the call before he could say another word, and now he was convinced you had called him simply because you could. If he was frustrated before, it was nothing compared to the way he felt now. Spending weeks on end with Ted's daughter was supposed to help him get to the bottom of the messy business with Avio, not cause other issues to arise. 

He unzipped his pants, intent on touching himself,  before jolting to his feet. "Shit," he muttered as he left his office and went back to his bedroom. "Cal?" he called out. "Sorry. It was a work call." But he was completely alone. He laughed as his phone vibrated in his hand with a text from her.

Have a great time in Europe. Don't bother calling me when you get back.

Bradley was sure he'd hear about this from his old friend Natasha when Callie bitched about him at work. But it didn't really matter. After she had a few weeks to cool off, she'd come back when he needed her again. For now, he'd take matters into his own hands and hope that would be enough.

----------------------

Your father insisted upon seeing you off on Saturday morning which gave Bradley a few minutes alone with him. He was listening to Ted as he watched you struggle with your seven pieces of Dior luggage on the tarmac next to the chartered airplane. 

"Bradley, you don't know what you've gotten yourself into," your father told him with a laugh. "She's tenacious though. And whip smart. Make sure you challenge her, because she will certainly challenge you."

Now Bradley laughed as he shook Ted's hand. "I'll do my best."

"If she gets to be too much, just leave her in one of the marinas with her passport."

He would never do that to you. He doubted it would ever come to that. In fact, he was already impressed by the way you took care of things for yourself. Sure, you looked like you belonged in an ad for designer gym clothes with your leggings and soft hoodie zipped over your sports bra. But you were also taking your luggage from the back of the black Mercedes-Benz G-Class yourself.

"I can assure you that she and I will be just fine, Sir."

"What have I told you about calling me Ted?" Bradley received a friendly cuff on the shoulder before shaking his hand and turning toward you. 

He picked up the last two pieces of your luggage at the same time and carried them to the cargo hold while you trailed after him. "I don't need help," you told him as he stowed them away. Then you added, "You look weird out of your Armani."

"I look weird?" he asked with a laugh as he glanced down at his chinos and Oxford shirt.

"A good kind of weird. Like when you wore that Fair Isle sweater last year."

Bradley examined your pretty face, and you didn't look away. He remembered the dress you wore to Ted's holiday party, and you remembered his sweater. Right now he was wishing he'd joined you for that bottle of French wine that night, something he'd remedy on the yacht. A flood of bad decisions just waiting to happen filled his mind as he said, "Go say goodbye to your father. It's almost time to go."

"Yes, Sir," you told him with your chin held high and a smirk gracing your lips. Bradley stood at the bottom of the stairs while you flung your arms around Ted and kissed him on the cheek. Then you came strolling his way once again, and he followed you closely up the stairs as you turned back and softly said, "I'm all yours."

--------------------------

Ivy League spells trouble for Bradley, but at least he knows it. And he didn't get an ounce of relief before getting on that plane. What could possibly go wrong? Thanks @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 3

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[possumsinpeoplesuits]

This is gonna be a long post, but... I'm coping with some thoughts on being, well, an Alter. I just wanted to get it all out in case I don't get to front for a while, and also because I don't want to sleep yet. So, without further ado...

I heard someone call me by my own name for the first time today, and got so emotional afterwards I ended up crying. It was my therapist, who I officially introduced myself to for the first time. At the start of the day, he was only the third person to know outside of one friend and my roommate. By the end of today, around ten people know, and I haven't really encountered any doubt, which I guess is a good thing?

I honestly never expected to get this far. I've missed so many years where I've barely ever fronted, to the point it just got confusing whenever it happened. How do you explain to someone that you're suddenly dysphoric in the complete opposite way, or that you can't remember how to do your job? How do you explain to someone you'll probably need to ask their name on three separate occasions before you can consistently remember it, when you're not even sure why?

Theeen the long run up to our breakdown last year started. I tend to front more when there's a lot of stress, which doesn't exactly help things when you then have to figure out what the hell you're even doing, but only being around one or two days a month doesn't really make for a very firm identity, even if I used to be the host for most of the teenage years. Well, most people don't react well to not controlling their thoughts half the time. Less so when they start to remember that, well... Kay's the most recent one of us. Hell, I'm not the original, either, but my social skills aren't exactly the best, so I got written off as a hallucination.

Then Kay hurt herself, and we ended up in a psych ward for a while. There were other things happening, too, like the whole adrenal gland fucking up because that thing burned out from overuse, we think. (What, a system with lots of trauma? That unpossible!) Point being, we were fucked up, and the more fucked up we got, the more I started coming to the front. It was just hard to articulate it right, because surely it couldn't be a disassociative disorder, right?

Yeah, my psych'd talked about CPTSD, and every time I tell one of my childhood stories as a joke everyone gets reeeeal quiet and says things like "Oh my god, I'm so sorry that happened to you" and stuff like that, but there were only a few times I got beat. I only got shot with an air rifle twice, and it only broke the skin once, and two rounds of conversion therapy just left me with a phobia of religious figures and a need to know where the door was to any given room, but it wasn't like I was traumatized or anything, right?

Back to the ward, I remember not being entirely sure how long I'd been there the first day, but some of the other days, I kept trying not to sleep because I had this indescribable feeling that I wouldn't be the same when I woke back up. (there was a fucking reason for that, god I was in denial.) So things got vague for a bit, the adrenal issues were causing some hallucinations, which just fed into the belief that I wasn't, you know, a real person.

And then, about five days into this, me and Kay disagreed harder than we had before, which was the first time in a while there'd been such a stark line between us when it's usually something like a spectrum. See, Kay's usually a bit of a pushover. Nice to a fault, just quietly going along with an ineffective treatment plan because a five minute psychiatrist appointment each morning isn't really long enough to figure anything out, so, uh... I made a suggestion.

Just leave. Despite the self harm, this was a voluntary commitment, we could just leave. She couldn't bring herself to ask. Okay, don't say anything and just ram the door. She thinks it'd hurt because they were locked. So I say grab a keycard from someone, but she watched them restrain someone the day before, so I started losing it and just suggesting getting violent, because, well... last time I was this dominant was when dealing with a meth addicted stepdad who had a habit of hurting my mom, so maybe I had a shitload of anger to get out that I wasn't coping with very well.

Well, it turns out that, if two sets of thoughts are butting heads like that, it gets a little hard to tell which ones are yours anymore. So, all this starts bleeding into her inner monologue, she interprets it as some sort of demonic possession (I was not helping matters) aaaaand asked one of the nurses to be sedated with everything they had.

Yeeeah... we're pretty sure I started as a trauma response, which... yeah, no shit. Still it just... wasn't fun being me, or productive or anything, so I just kind of stayed quieter. Inpatient ended, and a lot of it's just a blur. I know the little fainting spell we had on intake became a recurring thing, and I'm pretty sure running out of cortisol regularly and substituting adrenaline is probably why I didn't just go fully dormant again.

The thing I've learned with OSDD (the low calorie diet alternative to DID) is that there's a bit of bleedthrough. Lines aren't quite as strict, so even though memories do get fucky sometimes, it's not always easy to tell when a switch happens until it's far enough in one direction to make recalling things hard. So I think I was still there somewhere; we bought a binder despite Kay being transfemme, finally donated like two and a half feet of hair, and basically just rationalized it as being more butch as we got more comfortable in being recognized as a woman.

I know there were a few times I just felt insanely dysphoric, or angry out of nowhere, which... yeah, after that inpatient visit, Kay basically walked back in to a hostile as fuck work environment, I learned my lesson about suggesting punches to the throat from earlier, and uh, oh yeah, my dad died by suicide. Y'know, the one who didn't have a giant record of traumatizing us.

I didn't realize this until December, nine months after it'd happened. I have to dig for memories I wasn't really around for, it doesn't come immediately, but I tend to pop up to absorb some insults from mom over the holidays, so I drove up, realized why I wasn't visiting dad this time and just... broke down. Stress vomited in the bathroom, too. Didn't keep a bite of food down the whole day.

Obviously, I wasn't feeling very well. I hadn't slept much, either, but rather than sleep in a recliner in my mom's house, I just turned around after exchanging presents, made the whole five hour trip back in one go, and when I got out of my car, I realized I'd been up for forty hours because I was seeing things out of the corner of my eye, but just... couldn't sleep still.

I was home alone, so I took the time to just... break down until I felt like I could sleep, then sat in my bathtub aaaaand... there were three of us. Like, I said the lines are a lot more defined when there's a lot of stress, right? Well, sleep deprivation seems to really be the only time all our internal monologues can coexist. Also I downed an edible, but it hadn't had time to really kick in yet.

So there was me, then Kay (who was stressing because her last conversation with dad was about the psych ward stay), then the original, core one of us that we've dubbed Alice, who I can only describe as the kid who doesn't know why mom's hitting her and won't remember in the morning. I think I kept asking Kay if this is how she wants to be, but we got a little distracted with the other one who, uh... was a fucking surprise?

But again... we were fucking delirious and slowly getting high enough to finally sleep for about 14 hours. It wasn't until she was describing it to the same therapist (with the preface "Obviously I don't have OSDD/DID") that he was like "Actually, that sounds exactly like what that is." and that was the theme of the session.

There was still a bit of denial, though. I mean, I was an absolute dickwad who only came out when things were going terribly wrong, so it felt like the best thing to do was to hunker down each time and hope a nap would hit the reset button.

I'd occasionally talk with my friendly neighborhood @lizardywizard who helped field possible names, since I was still using our deadname, and it seemed like another little spur in everything going smoothly.

Then this week, there was an electrolysis session that was a looot more painful than it should have been, and I was fronting again by the end of it. Then woke up, still fronting. Then another day. Then Friday wasn't for a bit... and then someone kept startling me by SCREAMING at the top of their lungs somewhere in the mall, and wouldn't you know it, fronting again.

So I've basically had a week where there hasn't actually been any specific emotional turmoil, but I've just... existed, and been conscious of the fact it's me. There's loads of dysphoria, though. I'm not sure how I'm sandwiched between two transfems and still a guy, but it probably explains why I've felt so much kinship with transmascs lately, since, well... twelve years of transitioning medically has got me at the point where I'm not able to pass as my assigned gender at birth, but I'm sure as hell not detransitioning, so I'm having to get some tips for making it a little more bearable to effectively wake up almost fully transitioned?

I obviously already had the binder, and I tend to wear loose clothes anyways, plus the undercut looks very femme down, but looks masc as hell when I tie it back. Even the FFS I've been recovering from is pretty okay. I wear a mask all the time anyways, and it just made me even more twinkish than before, which goes great with the goth look.

I'm still figuring a lot of things out, but suddenly having all this time to not be, well... a scary voice in someone's head has given me enough time to think things over. I never wanted to exist as someone's trauma response like a sacrificial doll anytime there's pain. I've been so confused on what to do, though, because that's really all I've been since, what, ten years old? But I'm not getting tossed through conversion therapy, I'm not in a religious school that hates queer people, the meth addicted fucker is long long gone, and I barely have contact with mom. Without those things putting me on edge, I'm... normal. I'm alright to be around, just a goth twink who likes music and, I'm finding, is INCREDIBLY GAY, like painfully gay and I kind of love it because it's just another way I stand out in my own head amongst the asexual bambi lesbians.

I don't know how long this'll last. I haven't fronted this frequently since, well... before Kay. So, sinceI don't seem to be going away anytime soon, I figured I'd introduce myself here:

I'm Noah. I'm looking forward to meeting some of y'all, and to the scalie buddy who helped me figure out the name... thanks for making me feel real, man. It really means a lot to have someone I can talk to when I'm still hiding almost everywhere else.