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arcielee · 1 year ago

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Interview With a Writer

Thank you so much @inthedayswhenlandswerefew for always being willing to take time out of your day and allow me the chance to fangirl over another brilliantly written story. I don't think I can even properly express how grateful I am to relive this literary trauma you have blessed our eyeballs with. Just... thank you. 🦀

This is the 20th installment of Interview With a Writer! You are welcome to read over the other talented souls on Tumblr and ao3 who shared their brilliant writing! 🧡

Dividers are by @saradika-graphics 🧡

Name: inthedayswhenlandswerefew

Story: When The World Is Crashing Down

Paring: Aegon Targaryen x Reader

Warnings: Language, warfare, violence, serious injury, alcoholism/addiction, references to sexual content (18+), be mindful of chapter warnings!

Where did the idea for When The World Is Crashing Down come from?

For a long time (since last spring, at least), I’ve had kind of a vague inspiration for a story that would take place between Rook’s Rest and the end of the war, essentially chronicling all the destruction that the Greens endure and how Aegon would cope with it. I had a sense that there could be a deeply honorable, romantic story somewhere in the midst of all the large-scale horror.

Then—around the time I was finishing Comet Donati at the end of the summer—one day I had a vivid scene pop into my mind, and true to my usual writing modus operandi, it was at the end of the story: a woman who is just emotionally demolished, crossing a field as sparse snowflakes begin falling to meet her supposed rescuer, Cregan Stark. He thinks it’s this wonderful reunion, while she feels like it’s the end of the world. Once I saw that scene, I knew I’d have to write this series immediately. It just possessed me!

For the first month I was working on WTWICD, I listened almost exclusively to Fall Out Boy’s second album, From Under The Cork Tree. The songs are absolutely riddled with anxiety, self-loathing, violence, desolation, pride, lust, and defiance in the face of defeat. That album helped shape the general tone of the series and, of course, gave it its title as well.

You have notoriously stated before that the vivid scene for inspires an entire story. What are your next steps? What were the pivotal moments that had to happen in WTWICD?

So once that first scene occurs to me, I know I have a week or two of really powerful momentum in terms of figuring out the major arc of the story, so I take advantage of that and get right to work making a chapter list and brief character notes. I knew that the series was a bit like a circle in that it would start the same way it ended: ashes would be falling instead of snow, Aemond would be taking her captive instead of Cregan, and Angel would be mistaken for a Green instead of being wrongly assumed to be a Black. I also knew that I wanted WTWICD to (generally) follow the same canon events as Fire & Blood, so I matched each chapter to the actual events from the war, and then had another bullet point beneath with a description of what would be happening with Angel, Aegon, and the other characters that are the heart of this story.

In those first few weeks, I’ll hear a lot of random snippets of dialogue that I swiftly jot down in my Word Doc under the heading of whichever chapter I feel it will likely end up in. One of the very first quotes for this series was Aegon’s greeting to Angel in Chapter 1: “Hello angel, welcome to the end of the world.” These quotes help flesh out the story and transform requisite general events, like Angel meeting Aegon when he is near death after Rook’s Rest, into specific scenes. And then for any necessary detail that I don’t have an instinctive answer for, I start researching.

For example, here’s how I determined that Angel was a Celtigar. I did some Fire & Blood research to see which Westerosi families were allied with the Blacks vs. the Greens. I knew I needed a family that started out on the Blacks’ side and stayed there, and also wasn’t already decimated by the time Rook’s Rest happened, so that narrowed it down somewhat. I had felt that the vibes of the fic were oceanic, yet bleak—grey mist, rocky cliffs, rough waves—so I was leaning towards Angel being from the Crownlands. I stumbled upon the Celtigar family (having never heard of them before to my recollection) and was so excited! Firstly, I loved that Angel would be Valyrian, though not in an obvious way; the Celtigars, after being shunned by the Targaryens and Velaryons, intermarried with non-Valyrian houses until their features weren’t so distinct. Secondly, the crab metaphor was perfect. I had already known that the theme of perpetual resurrection—rebirth/reinvention that is repeated, though not necessarily leaving the person better off—would be present in this story, and crabs molting was symbolic of that. (Also, I’m from Maryland originally, so I appreciate crabs more than your average person, haha.)

Then for Angel’s faux family (Thorne), I knew I needed a Crownlands house that was loyal to the Greens throughout the war, which narrowed the options down considerably. I wanted a Crownlands house because I thought Angel, as a very academically smart person, would be savvy enough to know that another Crownlands family would share her accent/appearance/general knowledge more than someone from the Reach or the Riverlands, thus making her lies less likely to be detected. I also loved that Thorne (as in rose thorns) could be a subtle nod to a previous series of mine that was a Wars of the Roses AU: Now I’m Covered In You.

Tell me about your Aegon interpretation. Why is he the way he is in When The World Is Crashing Down?

Aegon is someone who has already gone through a number of transformations before Angel ever meets him. He is an innocent child, an unloved and mistreated adolescent, a man who succumbs to his worst vices, and then an aspiring hero who is trying his absolute hardest to live up to being king after his coronation. When he is wounded so horrible and painfully at Rook's Rest, Aegon is at the point where he's just ready for his suffering to be over. He got a brief taste of greatness and then was knocked back down to being useless and in agony all over again; he's accepted that his story is over.

Angel saves Aegon’s life literally, but she also gives him an opportunity to be honorable in a way that he hasn’t fully been able to before. She never knew him before his maiming, so she has no memories of his drunkenness, whoring, or any other sins. She is kind and gentle, and she sees Aegon as someone desirable and brave, particularly when she gives him (unintentionally) the opportunity to be her rescuer: from the brothel, from Cregan Stark, and from the world itself. Once they’ve met, Aegon is motivated by Angel—and the future they hope to have together—to be the greatest version of himself yet: someone who can both give and accept love in its purest form.

It is Aegon's love for Angel that compels him to fight to stay alive even under the most dire circumstances and when hope seems irrational. He's not doing it for himself; he's doing it for her.

What about Aemond? How is his relationship with Aegon?

Oh Aemond. The duality of man. Throughout this series, we see evidence that Aemond has all sorts of negative feelings towards Aegon. He feels that Aegon is physically weak, intellectually unimpressive, morally corrupted, and just generally unworthy of being king. However, at the same time, Aemond loves Aegon and is entirely loyal to him. Aemond borrows the crown when Aegon is unable to rule, but he never tries to take it. Aemond will flirt with and proposition Angel, but he never tries to get her to actually leave Aegon. And each time Aegon is wounded, we see that Aemond not only cares for him physically, but tries to uplift his spirits and carry out his wishes. We see Aemond hunting for a healer and then helping to clean Aegon’s wounds at Rook’s Rest. We also see him comforting Angel and stopping her from treating Aegon’s bleeding, shattered legs on Dragonstone (which is what Aegon begs for him to do in High Valyrian). Finally, we see Aemond’s repeated denial that Aegon might not survive the war. Daeron, Larys, and Autumn are all pragmatic enough to discuss it, but Aemond isn’t. His love for Aegon is too great.

Aemond’s interest in Angel is 50% ego-driven. He knows that she prefers Aegon to him, but if he can win her affection, he scores a figurative victory over his elder brother and gets to feel worthy/superior. This impulse (which isn’t necessarily something Aemond is consciously aware of) only intensifies once he learns that Angel is a Celtigar and therefore of Valyrian ancestry. But that means that his obsession with her is also 50% inspired by her intellect, skill, courage, and dedication to Aegon, all things that Aemond highly values. Angel never has any romantic feelings for Aemond, although he does increasingly become a source of strength, guidance, and comfort for her as Aegon’s health deteriorates. But he is definitely a little in love with her, even if that emotion is in large part merely a manifestation of his own inferiority complex.

What characters in your story that you enjoy writing?

Aemond “There are other Targaryens” Targaryen was definitely my favorite character to write in this series. He is a menace!! But a menace who is also loyal, clever, vulnerable, capable, flawed, and—it must be said—very, very nice to look at.

I really enjoyed writing Daeron too, who I envision as similar to who Aegon would have grown up to be had he not been beaten down by so much emotional and physical trauma. Daeron’s a ray of sunshine who is also an unrepentant war criminal, energetic and arrogant and a diehard warrior for his family. He jokes around with Aegon, but strategizes (or at least attempts to) with Aemond, recognizing the role that each brother plays in the family.

Finally, I loved Autumn! She was essential to Angel’s survival—street smart instead of book smart, experienced instead of sheltered and naïve—and while Autumn’s arc is tragic in some ways, she gets one of the happiest endings in the series.

Was Angel ever relieved of her guilt of what she did for Aegon?

Oh no, Angel felt horribly guilty for betraying Aegon, and I don't think she gets over that in her lifetime.

Aegon is definitely aware of Aemond’s interest in Angel, but isn’t especially concerned about it. He’s used to Aemond coveting the things he’s been given and feels that the Aemond-Angel dynamic is just the latest iteration of that lifelong pattern. Aegon relies upon Aemond both emotionally and physically—all the Greens do, as he and Vhagar are the muscle behind their war effort—and ultimately trusts him to do the right thing. Aegon doesn’t suspect that Angel would ever consent to being more than tentative allies with Aemond; it’s not even on his radar.

She acted impulsively in a moment of great emotional turmoil and misdirected desperation to help the Greens win the war and, in my mind, Aemond bears the responsibility of manipulating her into making that decision. (Even ghost Aemond alludes to regretting how he handled that situation in Chapter 12!) But Angel personally feels that she was disloyal to the love of her life, and wasted time that she should rightfully have spent with Aegon doing something that would have hurt him instead.

And she never gets to confess to Aegon, so she never gets the absolution of his forgiveness (which he undoubtedly would have given, under the circumstances).

What inspired Angel?

I love writing “readers” from all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives; we’re all unique people, and “readers” should be too!

Angel is the archetypal poor little rich girl. She has material comforts, but is ultimately ill-suited and dissatisfied with life as a noblewoman. She floats around aimlessly with nothing to look forward to (except her eventual marriage to a stranger, of course) until her brother Everett is nearly killed in a fire when she’s fifteen years old. Healing gives Angel a hobby, a purpose, and a sense of agency (indeed, the power to save or end lives) in a world where she has vanishingly little control over her own fate.

At the beginning of the series, Angel has a profound fear of sexual intimacy. I think this is something that would have been very real to women in a situation like hers, but isn’t often spoken or written about. She doesn’t have much knowledge of how sex works, and what she does know is pretty discouraging: women who are resigned, at best, or tortured at worst, with blood stains on sheets, death or disfigurement in childbirth, and being physically completely at the mercy of an older, larger man who you didn’t choose for yourself. It’s the stuff of nightmares! I once stumbled upon a Reddit threat of people sharing stories of their 90-year-old grandmas not knowing what an orgasm is, and it just completely broke my heart. I wanted to give voice to all the girls and women throughout history who have been robbed of agency over their own bodies and pleasure in sex.

Angel’s journey is a circle: she begins fearful, then becomes intrigued as her feelings for Aegon grow and she realizes she trusts him. (I think it’s significant that the two men Angel loves most, Aegon and Everett, are both disabled and therefore physically not as threatening to her.) She gets to experience informed, enthusiastic consent and pleasure, and then that joy is slowly taken from her as Aegon grows weaker.

And at the end of the story, Angel is back to where she started: forced to give herself to a man she didn’t choose—and he can have her whenever, however, and wherever he wants her—and without expectations of pleasure, only pain and resignation.

Do you feel Angel and Aegon complement one another?

Angel compliments Aegon because she is both clever and resilient enough to heal his body, but also provides him with opportunities to be a hero and prove his worth, not to her but to himself. She needs him to save her from danger, she looks to him for reassurance when she is fearful, and she relies upon him to be king when the war is over and therefore ensure their happy future together. She is, to Aegon, the perfect balance of strength and weakness.

What Angel gains from the relationship is someone who she actually admires and desires, but also someone who values her for who she really is. Aegon likes Angel regardless of who her family is and what her political affiliations might once have been; he does not care about heirs, bloodlines, prestige, obedience, or power. With Aegon, Angel knows that her own desires and feelings will always be first and foremost. That’s a rare thing to find in a Westerosi marriage.

Was there any contentment with her marriage to Cregan Stark?

I don’t feel that Angel ever found anything like happiness in the North. Several readers commented that they believed she was only existing with Cregan for the rest of her earthly days, not truly living, and I think that’s accurate. Cregan Stark never questions the narrative that he saved her from the immoral, violent, rapist Usurper, and in Winterfell Angel would have had to hear—from servants, from guards, from her husband, from her children once they were old enough to know the story—comments about how horrible Aegon was an how honorable Cregan was for ensuring his defeat and “rescuing” Angel. So her loss (and the fact that it’s this indescribably heavy secret she has to carry around with her) is a wound that is ripped open again and again and again. She can never develop a sense of fondness for Cregan, because she can never forget his hatred for and his role in killing the man she loved. She can never truly get joy from her children because they are just like Cregan: large, loud, rugged, dark-haired wolf pups who repeat the fictions they’ve always been told were truths. It’s a very hollow, soulless existence for Angel.

But of course the bright side is that because she remains alive and has some influence over Cregan’s political decisions: Angel is able to protect Jaehaera, Autumn, and other Greens after their faction’s defeat. She is also able to share the true legacy of the Greens with Jaehaera once Aegon’s daughter is older. Jaehaera otherwise wouldn’t really understand their true motivations, personalities, or gifts, nor the love they shared for each other; she was a child when most of the Greens died, and Autumn would not have felt comfortable sharing what little she knew at risk of endangering her ability to stay at court with Jaehaera. We can assume that Angel was eventually reunited with Aegon (and her other lost loved ones) in the afterlife, and so there is some happiness in the long run.

Angel definitely showed some magic in her Valyrian blood: we saw her dreams with Aemond, Helaena, and Daeron, but when Aegon told her, “If there’s anything interesting on the other side, I’ll find a way to let you know," was this what you were referring to at the end with, "…dreams that you never want to wake up from."

Yes! That is exactly what I was referencing, and I was thrilled that so many readers picked up on it. 🥰 It’s the closest we get to a “happily ever after” in this fic.

Celtigars are the black sheep of the Westerosi Valyrians. They’re glorified pirates as opposed to royalty or well-regarded merchants, and they aren’t nearly as magical at Targaryens or Velaryons. In the ASOIAF canon, there are no references to a Celtigar ever riding a dragon or joining the Targaryen bloodline. Angel was never going to be a dragonrider (she hates them!). But Angel does have some very subtle magical abilities that show up occasionally, and the dreams are one of them. After the events of WTWICD, for the rest of Angel’s life she is really only a shell of herself (not me making crab puns!), but dreams of Aegon give her comfort and remind her of the promise that she will see the people she loves again one day.

In Angel’s dreams, the ghosts appear in settings that they were attached to in life. Helaena was in the gardens with her insects, Aemond was in the rookery hard at work writing his letters, and Daeron (the closest thing this family has to a sunshine personality) was on a warm summer beach with Tessarion, exactly like he was the first day he ever met Angel. I feel that when Aegon appeared to Angel in her dreams, he was probably on Dragonstone, invoking memories of those idyllic first few months they got to spend alone together before Aemond started showing up (uninvited) and the battle with Baela and Moondancer.

In addition to the dreams, I think that Angel has some very slight clairvoyance. Even in the early chapters—and even as his burns are healing—she was always filled with this heavy dread regarding Aegon’s long-term health, and the threat of organ failure after repeated trauma is something that crosses her mind over and over again. She even mentions it to her brother Everett in Chapter 6. Part of her, I believe, always knew on some level that he wasn’t going to live to see a peaceful world.

Out of all your "Readers" so far, which one do you feel you relate to the most?

Out of all my readers, I think I personally relate the most to Appletini from North to the Future.

Our situations are different in a lot of ways (sadly, scruffy Juneau fisherman/rockstar Aegon is not real nor in love with me), but I think we share a) an innate fixation on responsibility and aversion to risk, and b) a sense that there is something more out there that we are always wrestling with. Do we take the leap, or do we stay where we are? Are we worthy of more? Are we doomed to relive the curses of prior generations? That sounds a little dark, probably, but I don’t mean for it to. Appletini gets a happy ending, after all!

Do you wish to share any possible new story that might be coming up?

At this point I have no comment whatsoever and nothing to announce. But I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas! 🎅🎄🎁😏

#iwaw #interview with a writer #bts #of their brilliant stories #writing community #writers of tumblr #when the world is crashing down

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deityoftherain · 8 months ago

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swimming below zero - Flower Husbands Empires S1 Fanfic

Rating: General Audiences

Relationship: M/M

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Status: Completed Oneshot

Word Count: 2,896

Summary: Jimmy loves swimming and wants to share the love with his husband so he gives Scott a swimming lesson <3

Full fanfic underneath the cut! Please reblog, leave kudos on the AO3 fic slash notes/likes here on Tumblr, comment either place, and etc if you enjoy the story :D

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Scott was eyeballing the murky waters just off of Codland’s docks as if it had personally offended them.

Due to Rivendell’s lack of swimmable water, Scott had never gone swimming before. Rivendell didn’t even sell swimwear, so Scott was wearing some from the Codlands. Jimmy wouldn’t admit it so openly (he would, depending on who was around), but he did find great pleasure in seeing Scott in clothing more typical of Codland… and in significantly fewer layers than normal.

Scott’s swimming shorts and shirt showed off some of his pale white skin that Jimmy usually only saw when they were alone, though Jimmy noticed that Scott’s skin was starting to flush pinker from the sun’s contact and the warm humidity frequently occurring in the swampy territory. The swim shirt was designed to help them not burn under it, but Jimmy had slathered them with sunscreen anyway and would keep an eye on the sun’s position in the sky so, if all went well, they wouldn’t burn.

“Of course it is!” Jimmy declared confidently, flashing his husband a wide grin and swishing his tail. Scott was willing to learn to swim and Jimmy was determined to teach him! “Seeing how often you visit, it’ll be good for you to at least know the basics. Besides, you’ll be fine with me here. I’m a really great swimmer.”

Swimming was one of Jimmy’s favorite things so, naturally, he was very enthused about it. His tail-swishing allowed him to get some of his happy energy out without people thinking he was too strange. Scott didn’t mind his excited hand flaps or jumps, claiming to actually like them and find them cute, but they were in public! Some people already saw him as unfit and they cursed the Cod Council for choosing him to be their Codfather. Fortunately, that wasn’t everyone, but the angry people tended to be the loudest.

Jimmy has always felt socially awkward and out of place, and, ever since he became the Codfather, he’s felt even more social pressure. Learning all the rules took time, but he’s got it down! Or, at least, he thinks he does. He could never be sure; it was all a mess.

This wasn’t to say he wasn’t social, because he was! Jimmy loved talking to people and engaging in everything the world had to offer. It was just difficult for him to understand why some people acted like he grew an extra tail out of his ear when he was simply existing as he was in a space.

Scott stared at Jimmy for several moments before allowing his muscles to relax. “Okay, Jimmy. I trust you.”

Jimmy felt his face light up as he took Scott’s hand and led them closer to the water. Scott’s grip on his hand was tight as it often was when Scott was anxious, but Jimmy would take care of him. “Do you want to jump off together or go in after me?”

Scott contemplated for a moment before choosing, “Together.”

“Okay, you took the water-breathing potion, right?” Jimmy asked to make sure instead of assuming. He figured it would help calm Scott’s anxieties and make them safer to have it for the first eight or so minutes of their swimming lesson. Jimmy had gills as a feature of his cod ancestors, so he didn’t have to worry about it.

“I did,” Scott confirmed, not taking his gaze off of the watery depths.

“Perfect. We’ll jump on ‘jump’, okay? Three, two, one, jump!” As Jimmy instructed, they both jumped off of the dock in sync, earning mild air time before plummeting into the water.

Scott’s hand was still holding Jimmy’s tightly, but it had grown more suffocating. The pressure was actually starting to hurt, but Jimmy didn’t dare tell Scott that. He didn’t want them to overthink this more than they already were. Besides, he’s felt more pain than this before. He just clicked his tongue in a pattern to take his mind off of it and it worked well.

“You can breathe, Scott.” Jimmy kept his tone as soft and gentle as possible without sounding like he was babying them. Scott’s face briefly conveyed distrust, but it soon gave way to acceptance as his mouth gaped open to take a deep breath. “The potion will still be in effect, but it’s good that you know how to hold it for when you swim without a potion. We’ll work on treading first so you can keep your head above water if you ever get stuck.”

From there, the swimming lessons went better than he had expected. Sure, Scott was nervous, but Jimmy gave him some slack. Rivendell wasn’t exactly known for swimming, after all!

Jimmy taught Scott several swimming techniques, some Jimmy knew from experience and some he had to research beforehand. He had done the research many times, but he made sure to refresh himself on the basics. Elves didn’t have tails or gills so, without a breathing potion, they couldn’t move as fast and had to stay near the surface. Those two things required an altercation in what an oceanfolk would learn.

The longer they went on, the more distracted and out of it Scott seemed. It wasn’t too noticeable, for Scott was well versed in hiding things such as that, but Jimmy was picking up on hints. Or, he thought he was. He wasn’t sure since nonverbal cues had always been difficult for him to interpret. Jimmy would need hundreds of fingers to count how many times he’s stared at Scott simply to observe them and their actions. The fact that Jimmy found Scott very handsome was simply an added bonus.

Still, Scott insisted that he was fine and that he wanted to do this for him when Jimmy offered him a break, so they continued on. Jimmy was easily convinced to continue because, selfishly, he didn’t want to leave the water yet. It felt wonderful against his skin and the temperature was just right. He loved his time above the waves or up in the mountains with Scott (mostly because Scott was there), but the water would always feel like home, it would always feel safe.

Scott’s movements grew more and more stiff, and he appeared increasingly more fatigued. He couldn’t conceal the true nature of his pain any longer so Jimmy insisted, “Let’s head back to shore.” “Okay,” Scott agreed with somewhat squinted eyes. He turned his sights onto the distance… in the completely wrong direction. Scott was facing east, which would eventually run into The Ocean Empire or Mezalea if they kept swimming. “Scott, Codland is that way,” Jimmy corrected, pointing west. Concern continued to bite at him, but Jimmy was more than confident in his own swimming abilities. He’s been doing it for as long as he could remember, afterall! He would keep Scott safe.

He rested a hand on Scott’s shoulder and they flinched away at the touch, reacting as if Jimmy had smacked them. Jimmy furrowed his eyebrows. Scott was usually quite open to touch by loved ones, but sometimes he responded in touch-adverse ways. Jimmy didn’t fully understand it and it was hard to accept it. How was he supposed to determine when it was okay to touch him and when it wasn’t?

Before Jimmy could say anything, Scott turned himself around and began to swim west toward the docks.

Now Jimmy wasn’t too proud to admit this, but Scott was so slow (most non-oceanfolk were) and Jimmy was getting antsy. Trusting Scott to be able to employ the skills he taught them, Jimmy started swimming in wide laps and loops around the general area Scott was in. It became a game of sorts in his brain, easily entertaining himself as he often did. Jimmy couldn’t tell anyone how long he spent doing that with any sort of accuracy, but it was likely too long.

A shiver ran down Jimmy’s spine as the water grew colder. The sudden temperature change snapped him out of his fixation on his imaginary game that only he understood. Jimmy had tried to teach Lizzie it before, but she couldn’t make sense of it. The unexpected cold felt like it was pricking his skin; he hadn’t realized he needed to mentally prepare himself for it.

Scott! Jimmy’s eyes widened in recognition a moment later, putting the pieces together on what probably happened. He had gotten too distracted! Jimmy balled his hand into a fist and hit his head with the bottom of his palm several times. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Pushing away the pity party, he swam back to where Scott should be. There were several chunks of ice floating around and a rather large slab of it on the surface. There wasn’t much of a pattern to it that Jimmy could figure out, but he didn’t focus on it long, so he might have missed it.

Jimmy found Scott in no time, and their eyes were redder and puffier than usual. He was curled in on himself, his body shaking like it did when his anxiety became too much for him to control. The breathing potion would have run out a long time ago by now, so Jimmy knew he didn’t have much time.

He rushed forward, quickly stealing Scott’s lips in a kiss. Scott’s body reacted in a jolt, but he didn’t push away as Jimmy used his gills and mouth to transfer breathable air to Scott’s lungs. Scott’s fingers gripped Jimmy’s shoulders, but their hold on him was weaker than their previous strength.

Once Jimmy couldn’t handle the unprepared for cold any longer, and he gave Scott enough air for them to not drown, he held Scott close and pulled them away from the ice-filled water. Scott seemed to have stopped creating as much ice out of his panic, so Jimmy was able to outswim the cold patch in the otherwise warm water.

As soon as the ice blocks were no longer trapping them underwater, Jimmy swam him and Scott to the surface so Scott could breathe properly. Scott gasped for air as soon as he could, his chest heaving with the effort. Jimmy kept them upright so Scott wouldn’t have to do anything but focus on breathing.

“Sorry,” Scott croaked after several minutes, squeezing their eyes shut and resting their forehead against Jimmy’s shoulder.

“What happened?” Jimmy asked, holding one arm around Scott’s waist while the other played with their wet blue hair.

Scott didn’t answer for several heartbeats before weakly mummering, “It was… I just… My body stopped moving on command, and my limbs are all tingly and numb, and my brain feels foggy. It's just… my body feels extremely weak, it hurts to think, and I panicked, creating uncontrolled ice clumps. I’m sorry.” “Shh, don’t apologize,” Jimmy ordered gently, but they’ve had that conversation many times before. He didn’t like when Scott would apologize for things that they had no control over, but Scott continued to do so anyway. It was like he couldn’t control it (perhaps a compulsion or trauma response?), but Jimmy chose not to linger on it. “Let’s just get you to land and I’ll carry you to my place, okay, love?”

Scott made a sort of noncommittal hum or grunt in response, letting his eyes flutter close as Jimmy kept one arm around Scott and used the other arm to help him cut through the water. Even with the added weight of Scott, Jimmy moved swiftly and speedily; they arrived at Codland’s docks in no time.

Jimmy did as he told Scott he would and carried him close to his chest. Swimming kept his muscles fairly active so, while he didn’t always look like it, he was rather strong. Scott was tall, as elves often were, but Jimmy could manage his weight without problem. After all, even without his expertise in swimming, he has had plenty of practice carrying people and things over the last several years.

Codlanders were used to water and mud, so no one batted an eye when they didn’t dry off before using the wooden paths to get from place to place. If they were outdoors, it was fair game. If going inside one’s house, it was customary to use the towel provided to dry oneself off if needed, but they didn’t have to worry about that. Jimmy had plenty of towels to use when they got to the building Jimmy called home.

“Do you think you can stand, petal?” Jimmy asked once they entered the home, his eyes moving around to observe what was around and see if anything would spark ideas to help Scott.

Scott considered his pain and options for a moment before nodding. “Just let me down near a wall or a sturdy piece of furniture.”

Jimmy did as he was instructed, keeping his hands on Scott until he was convinced Scott’s legs could hold his body up. When they could, Jimmy retrieved a few towels for himself and for Scott to dry off. Scott used the wall to help keep themself up, but otherwise managed well enough to get themself as dry as they could. Once dry, Jimmy helped Scott change back into his previous clothing before going to change himself.

“Are you feeling any better?” Jimmy flicked his tail, and twisted his right wrist back and forth anxiously as he stared at his husband.

Scott’s eyes were half-lidded, staring off at nothing, and his body was sitting limp. He breathed out, “It’s too bright in here.”

Jimmy could understand that feeling since he also felt overwhelmed by light sometimes. He quickly darkened the room in every way he could think of before asking, “Is this better?”

“Yes,” Scott confirmed with a barely noticeable twitch of his lips into (assumingly) a smile. “Thank you, Jimmy.” “Of course,” Jimmy returned the smile, but his was wider and more infused with fondness. He pressed a kiss against Scott’s forehead, careful to not put much pressure into it, before laying a blanket over their body. “Thank you for going swimming with me. It made me really happy, even if it didn’t end very well.” “It was worth it,” Scott opened his icy blue eyes to blink lovingly at Jimmy. They patted the spot next to them with a slight tilt of their head. “Will you sit with me?” “Of course.” Jimmy didn’t waste time moving to their side. He wrapped his arm around Scott, who promptly leaned in against his chest. Jimmy brushed Scott’s bangs out of his eyes before peppering kisses along his hairline and around his face.

Scott laughed weakly at the kisses, glancing up at Jimmy through his eyelashes. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Jimmy returned the sentiment honestly before returning to the kisses. After Jimmy stopped, and the place fell into a peaceful silence, Jimmy blurted out, “Do you hate swimming now?”

“No,” Scott answered nearly instantly. He peered up at Jimmy again, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Jimmy, I could never hate what you love with so much light shining through you. Besides, it was fun, until my body started to shut down on me.”

Jimmy felt warmth swell in his chest as he leaned into Scott’s touch, relieved that Scott was alright and happy that, until the end, the swimming lessons went well. Still, he was concerned. Jimmy hadn’t completely forgotten about the symptoms of some mystery illness Scott had been suffering for the majority of his life, but it was such a normal thing to feel for them (and something Scott always tried to hide when it flared up or got worse) that Jimmy would forget to check in sometimes. He felt bad about it, but it was hard to remember things when he got distracted by something he enjoyed doing. “What did the doctor say? Did they figure out what it was? Does anything help?”

Scott sighed heavily, letting his eyelids flutter close as he dropped his hand. “They don’t know and nothing really helps. It’s just what I have to live with.”

“We’ll find something to help,” Jimmy promised, even though he couldn’t exactly do that. He was going to try, though!

“You being here is more than enough.” Scott laced their fingers together before bringing the back of Jimmy’s hand up to his lips. “Will you ramble to me while I rest my eyes?”

Jimmy tried his best not to jump up with excitement at the open invitation. One thing he loved about Scott was his listening skills. Jimmy was used to rambling even though no one paid attention (he’s done it his whole childhood), but the thing about rambling to Scott was that he actually paid attention and remembered information Jimmy told him! It wasn’t perfect, but Scott would ask questions about things Jimmy liked too if he had any!

His grin was as wide as it could be, his sharp teeth on full display as he started blabbing about the recent changes he’s made as Codland’s emperor and how well they’ve been going so far.

It was moments like this that Jimmy knew he loved his life. There were hardships, sure, there always were, but cuddling with Scott during a peaceful afternoon as they talked about whatever they felt like was perfect. Jimmy wouldn’t trade Scott nor moments like this for the world.

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mayberrycryptid · 3 months ago

Note

Thank you for the photo references and your drawing (which was very good btw) of HQs.

I started on the fic I wanted to write. (Actually started two fics tbh.)

It's not a McDanno fic, but I hope others will enjoy it all the same.

My second fic is McDanno Sentinel/Guide trope.

So far both stories have two chapters written. I would like to finish at least one ; both preferably) before posting.

I just wanted to stop and say thanks for your help.

MOAR Hawaii Five 0 fic is always needed--especially sentinel AU!!! If you don't have a Tumblr acct, feel free to drop me the A03 links when you post your fic, so we can get more eyeballs on your fic!!

And I am so glad my posts helped. And hey, I discovered there is another door in Danny's office! So I learned something new!!

Two chapters each is also awesome!!!**fist bumps you and then hands your muse a big bowl of soup**

#answered #h50 office

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thecurioustale · 1 year ago

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My 6-Week Tumblr Return Trial Period Is Up

Happy Autumn! Today is the Autumnal Equinox. (That is, if you're in the Pacific Daylight Time zone or earlier; it's actually tomorrow, the 23rd. The moment of equinox is 11:49 pm PDT this year.)

I came back to Tumblr six weeks ago (actually a little shy of seven weeks but six is the highest whole number) and said that I was going to give it consistent effort till the Equinox to see how I felt about it. Well, that day is today!

I've decided to significantly reduce my Tumblr presence, but not go back to zero like before. I still plan to post at least once or twice a week, and more whenever the fancy catches me. I don't want to slow-roll you, so there's the bottom line.

For those interested, I thought I would talk about my experience since returning.

Why I Came Back

A few years ago on my birthday I set myself a challenge of posting in my journal every day for a year—which I more or less did, and then promptly stopped because it had been a laborious thing for me with limited rewards.

This year on my birthday I decided to try that challenge again, except this time "soft": no formal public announcement, and no penalty if I missed a day. Good thing, too, because I missed a day right away! 😅 But I definitely was doing more and better writing on my journal than I had been, and I liked that. Maybe there was a sweet spot between the strict artifice of one journal entry every day and the sad default of no entries for weeks.

Then, a few days into the challenge, I got the idea of diverting this energy away from my journal and into social media, to try and begin the long process of building an audience for my creative works. I recognize with some dread that when I eventually do finish my next novel, no one is going to read it—because no one is going to know it exists. But that's not set in stone; this is something platforms can help with! And you can't just build a platform overnight. You have to start well in advance. In this post-mainstream-publishing era where independent artists' only hope is to create their own following, I knew that I would have to at least try, if I wanted people to actually read my work.

Building a platform is something I had done years ago, around the time the Prelude to After The Hero was coming out, and I was hugely successful at that time in creating lots of content and lots of channels—i.e. the platform part. But I didn't actually get anywhere in building an audience. Then my life fell apart from multiple catastrophes in a short period, and for many years I had no ability to pursue "platform growth" at all.

But I have that ability again, at least temporarily, and maybe this time I could do better.

Marketing and being social are very hard for me. They don't come naturally to me and I am not good at them. But what I can do is write about my creative work, my life, my take on the world, and anything else that comes to mind. With any luck, that would attract some eyeballs. It's the same thing I was doing eight years ago in my platform-building work, but I could be smarter about it this time, and learn from my past mistakes, which involved a lot of wasted effort that no one ever saw. This time I could try going specifically where the people are: social media! Social media was a part of my original platform-building push eight years ago, but only on the periphery. This time I could put all my platform-building into it, and not all the different channels at once, but just in one single place. Concentrate all my effort on a single point!

So I chose Tumblr: the only social media platform that still seems to reward long-form, thoughtful content. (Not counting YouTube video content.) Facebook is definitely on the way out as a relevant social media network, Twitter was unusually toxic even before the idiot took over, and TikTok to put it politely is not my jam. But Tumblr...I still use Tumblr! I still read several people's pages, and have done so for many years.

I was never actually active on Tumblr as a creator myself. As far as posting my own content goes, my social media home has always been on Facebook (and, for a while, Google+). My "return" to Tumblr this summer wasn't really anything of the sort. Even though my account is many years old, this summer was my first time making a big effort here.

And here's what I learned.

What Worked and What Didn't

I went in with very low expectations. In other words, I didn't actually expect anyone to see my work. I expected to put in my six weeks, toil away in obscurity the whole time, and leave.

But a couple people did notice my return, and reblogged my early posts, and between them they had enough followers that their reblogs got me a small influx of followers. (Hi!) So there were eyeballs, at least. I wasn't talking to the wall. It was a good bet that anything I wrote would at least have a chance of being seen by multiple other people.

A good start!

I set about trying to learn about the Tumblr algorithm and people's usage patterns. I learned that there is a very strong signal to set apart the content that people enjoy seeing and the content they don't. On the scale of Zero to Fire, a lot of what I wrote was either hard Zero or pretty decently Fire.

In the Zero category: My short-form humor was dead on arrival. So was my Tolkienian vocabulary series. My fat liberation essay—by far the biggest effortpost I made during my six weeks here—attracted a single troll and no legitimate engagement whatsoever. At 7700 words I doubt many people even read it. Cool art reblogs were also pretty much a Zero. The people in my tiny audience don't want to see any of this stuff, at least not from me.

In the Fire category: People liked my hot takes on copyright law, left-handedness, rationalist-adjacent topics and framings, some personal anecdotes (but not others), and—most promisingly—some of my discussion about the mechanics of authoring and writing, including topics such as redemption arcs, body diversity representation, losing interest in one's own stories, and long sentences. To the extent I am going to attempt to build a larger Tumblr following over time, this "mechanics of authoring" area is probably where I will focus my primary aim.

Not everything was Zero or Fire. There were also some posts in the middle. My posts actually discussing my own work, The Curious Tale and Galaxy Federal, landed in this space. They mostly fell flat for my general audience, but did noticeably better than the hard Zero stuff due to the consistent engagement of a tiny handful of fans. (Thank you, especially you Fip!)

In terms of financial support, six weeks of content creation on Tumblr yielded no book sales and no new patrons on my Patreon fund, though I did get one pledge increase from an existing patron! This isn't a big surprise, since I didn't make any push to attract new patrons and have made no attempt to hide that my book is also available for free. Still, zero is a noticeable number.

What Tumblr Feels Like

I'll be honest with you: I don't really "do" social media. I never have. I don't like social media. I am a creature of individual websites, web journals / blogs, and message forums. Facebook is the social network I use most (if you don't count YouTube), and my Facebook is set up more like a walled garden than a social network node—i.e., it is almost completely restricted to the people on my deliberately-short friends' list. I use it to look at cool pictures of clouds and landscapes, learn about things going on in my city, and keep in touch with friends. I've never really been one to use social media the way it is intended these days.

Nevertheless: Of all the social networks, I've always had a comparatively positive view of Tumblr. Tumblr is where freaks and weirdos come to be freaky and weird, and I love it. (Sometimes in principle more than practice, but still.) There used to be a tumblr called "Fuck Yeah Fat Upper Arms," and that was what I would point to whenever I had to explain to someone why I love Tumblr.

I also know there are notorious amounts of drama and pettiness on Tumblr, but in my experience it isn't so hard to just sidestep it most of the time. Also, I don't follow all that many people, so I probably just don't see much of this stuff in the first place.

When I returned to Tumblr I am pleased to say that it was basically what I hoped for: lots of wonderful niche and countercultural stuff; really thoughtful discussions that get a lot more depth here than almost anyplace else I've seen; and amazing art and fanart. There were lots of takes I didn't like, of course. Lots of stuff that rubbed me wrong. And the drama is definitely alive and well. But that's just life, right? As amplified by social media in all its unnuanced might. On the whole, I have enjoyed my time spent browsing Tumblr these past six weeks.

One thing actually did bring down my spirits about this place, though, and it has nothing to do with drama or takes I don't like: Tumblr feels kind of addictive. Like a giant industrial vat full of churning slurry, and if you fall in there's no getting out. I have an addictive personality, not to booze or drugs (as far as I know) but to content sources, specifically "content-firehose" websites that always have new things to read. I was stuck on GameFAQs for years back in the day, long after it had become a net-negative for me. Right now my big content addiction is Reddit, and it's definitely a net negative in my life for all the time it wastes for so little in return. And there have been many other content addictions in the years between. It's very hard for me to leave a content-firehose website once I've gotten sucked into it. And I really, really don't want to get sucked into Tumblr.

Like, this place is genuinely cool, but it doesn't "do it" for me like it did the last time I paid close attention to it. Fuck Yeah Fat Upper Arms is gone, and with it the innocence of my youth. Social media just isn't my scene, and returning to Tumblr has definitely given me the impression that I've "outgrown" it altogether. (I wrote a few days ago about one of the reasons why I think this.) I don't particularly want to spend a lot of time here. I don't have that content addiction to Tumblr yet, and I can feel myself actively straining to avoid developing it every time I'm on here. That's why I've only been reading my dashboard a few times a week.

I'm not saying social media is something juvenile that everyone is supposed to outgrow; I'm just talking about my own preferences and issues. My ideal use case for Tumble is to check in with Tumblr periodically and see new Samus Aran fanart and hot takes on cool things I've never heard about or thought deeply enough about. But, in practice, reading my Tumblr dashboard feels like dipping my feet in that vat of slurry I mentioned: It's very time-consuming and a lot of the stuff I see I don't really "need" in my life.

This six-week experiment has actually helped me to realize that, going forward, I should be looking to use social media less in my life, not more. It isn't just all-consuming and energy-draining; it has become kind of evil over the years. Tumblr isn't nearly as bad as some of the worst offenders, but on the whole we're slowly being pushed to use these services in very particular ways, ways which degrade us, and it's nefarious. Not just the abuse of our personal information and privacy, but the way we spend our time and think about the world. Social media seems to be making society actively worse on the whole, and that's down to the profit motives of the people who make the rules about how these services operate. It's probably not a coincidence that Tumblr, as one of the least-problematic major social networks, is also not particularly profitable.

I have lamented for years that I wish we would go back to individual people's websites and enthusiast–owned-and-operated message forums. I really think that this viewpoint is not just my nostalgia glasses talking; I think the individual websites paradigm was a better way of experiencing the Internet and interacting with each other. But while I can't do much to change society's patterns in general, I can at least be deliberate about how I engage with social media myself. And I think I'm going to be doing less of that as time goes on.

My actual public face is my Live Journal, even though it has languished for years. Either it or some successor blog is likely to be an ongoing constant for the rest of my life. I hope people will gradually find me there.

The Long Game

You're not gonna build an audience in six weeks. I know that. Also, in my time here, I've only done one of the two things that one needs to do to build an audience on social media: I've created content. I think my content has been more or less decent. (You can tell me if you think otherwise.)

What I haven't done is heavily engage with other content creators. I haven't done many reblogs; I've done zero asks; and I don't follow other tumblrs in a businesslike mindset of network—I only follow the ones I think I might like to read.

If I were to continue, the next step in my trial period would be a 3-month experiment. I've had enough success here in the past six weeks to justify dedicating another three months of my life to daily Tumblr posts if I want.

In that time I would need to focus more on the "networking" side of social networking. On the content side, I would continue trying to figure out what people like to see and what they don't. But it's the networking stuff that would be next in line for my full attention.

I'm also aware that all of my data are biased by the small size of my audience and the nonrandom composition of it. There is a danger in optimizing for that, from a long-term scalability and optimization standpoint. My social networking efforts would have to be geared toward diversifying my audience as much as growing it, because the truth of the matter is that I don't know yet who "my" audience truly is. Most of the people here now are people who are here because they like other creators and respected those people's recommendations—not because they necessarily like my art. The poor showing of my posts discussing my art kind of speak to that point.

So the question is, do I have a 3-month trial period in me? Or even just another 6-week period?

And that's a really tough question. I need to be writing my books, and I need to be paying my rent, and when I'm here on Tumblr I'm not doing either of those things. The best-case scenario is that by being here I'm setting myself up to pay future rents and have more available time for future creative writing. But in the meantime there are rents coming due in the immediate future, and my mental bandwidth is sickly and limited.

Is Tumblr even the place to build my audience? It might not be! It might be YouTube. It probably is YouTube. But Tumblr isn't nothing, and writing short essays is a hell of a lot faster than producing videos. A few loyal Tumblr followers might be just the pop I would need to get a future YouTube effort off to a running start.

One of my flaws as an entrepreneur is that I hate thinking like one when it comes to this whole sales / engagement / audience-building / marketing stuff. I like thinking about people as people, not as economic partners whose tastes and needs I must carefully accommodate to in order to hopefully earn a living from this someday. And I don't like thinking about my own content here as "content." I hate that word. But I am under no illusions about why I am here. I am not here for fun. I've done my Live Journal "for fun" for twenty years (as of last month!) and I have no audience to show for it. Growing an audience is not about having fun. Bonus points if you can manage to have fun along the way, but what it's really about is giving people an experience that they enjoy and want more of.

Social media is a hungry beast, a dehumanizing force (in my view), and an algorithmic rat race. I would much rather create content on my own terms, rather than try to play the social media game. This is one of the many reasons why I am so bad at the whole marketing side of building a business. Successful entrepreneurs dive right into it and give the people what they want. Like that "emotional damage" mate on YouTube: He gave an interview talking about how he just tried different schticks, not even comedy per se, until he found something that worked on people.

In an ideal world, when my next book is finished I could just press a button and everyone in the world know about its existence, and everyone who is interested could buy it and read it. But in the real world, you have to peck and scrape your way to attention, and I'm just so bad at this that it discourages me from even making the attempt.

So, adding it all up, what I come up with is that it would be wasteful for me to just abruptly give up on Tumblr as suddenly as I returned to it. I've started a ball rolling here, and I can build on that beginning if I want. But I also don't think that people need to hear from me on a daily basis. I'm probably not doing myself any favors by posting effortful content every day, not just in terms of my own sustainability but in terms of the algorithms of Tumblr and the mental bandwidth of my readers.

So I've come to the conclusion that Tumblr is probably not where my audience is going to be built, if indeed I ever manage to build one. But there is some potential here, and, more importantly, this is where the vast majority of my current fans are.

Ergo, going forward I will be reducing my posting frequency to a target of once or twice per week, plus whatever extras I see fit to add. I will continue to test out different types of content to see what catches interest. And I will start playing that social networking game that I dread so much, and try to engage more with others and hawk myself far and wide without looking like I'm trying to hawk myself, because for all that we claim to live in an age of sincerity we absolutely don't, and we will see where things go.

I will revisit this at Halloween, and see how I feel about it.

In the meantime, I will try to take some of this bandwidth I am freeing up and allocate it to other audience-building work. More on that as I have it for you!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and for giving me some of your time. Please please please do give me some feedback if there's anything you want to know or want to see me discuss.

#Meta

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ellieellieoxenfree · 2 months ago

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furious thoughts on this pile of shit show while i suffer through the last three episodes:

why the fuck is everyone's response to any kind of Situation to record their friends? all of you are fucking psychopaths

cheum is such a horrible little cunt and why anyone gives her the time of day is beyond me. i thought mew was the character i wanted most to drop-kick into a volcano, but cheum might actually beat him in the holier-than-thou judgmental hypocritical insufferable why-does-anyone-put-up-with-your-complete-lack-of-redeeming-values rankings

ray putting conditions on sand to establish a relationship with his dad before he'll go to rehab was fucking gross, regardless of how he spun it. and then the little 'sike i just wanted to see if you'd do it' is a masterclass of selfish, manipulative behavior that's an entire naval fleet of red flags. the chemistry is undeniable but this relationship is a fucking dumpster fire. every time sand caves to one of ray's horrible bullshit demands, i lose any shreds of respect i had for him.

boeing and mew fighting over top reminds me of the story i once read about two brothers fighting over an unwrapped tootsie roll they found on the floor, only for one of them to overpower the other, pop it in his mouth, and find out it was a cat turd

papang is so good and i love him so much and buddy, you deserve better than being nick's half-hearted flirtation due to the fact that nick sucks a fat one

if one more person sucks mew's dick about what a Great Person he is i am going to rip my eyeballs out

oh my fucking god my fucking god i hate this show so much why is mew the uea of this show where everyone wants a chance at that void of personality and charisma that is the mew bussy. why are you all such gross manipulative sanctimonious whores who can't keep it in their pants and still act like you're morally justified. fuck's sake. the only person who's actually honest with themselves is boston and all you do is shit on him but at least he doesn't prance around on his high horse and sneer on the Commoners who keep tripping and having their dick fall into each other. at this point, his worst sin is his absolutely ratchet-ass taste in other people, both platonically and sexually, whereas the rest of you wouldn't know loyalty if it bit you on the ass and still sneer at boston being 'filthy.' physician, euthanize thyself.

ray throwing out his multiple bottles of liquor in a tiny trashcan without even bothering to empty them.............that's my new go-to imagery for performative tumblr activism

'oh boo hoo my dad hired you to help me go to rehab' eat shit, ray, fuck's sake. oh boo hoo i got lied to. news flash, fucko, you're a lying manipulative sack of crap so what's good for the goose is good for the gander. you've been taking advantage of sand this entire show, ignoring his boundaries, making a fucking nuisance of yourself by refusing to leave him alone, stalking his vacation, interfering in his hookups, calling him a whore, trying to force an unwanted family reconciliation, and on and on. the 'oh well you don't want me to get better because you still sell liquor' oh my god dude eat shit eat shit eat shit.

'my friends dumped me.' 'serves you right.' nick you are also a shit friend so shut the fuck up

ugh yet another unearned reconciliation EXTREMELY DISMISSIVE J/O MOTION. i am aggressively uninterested in boston/nick. this shit sucks to an unreal degree.

why will god not end my suffering and just wrap it up on topmew. either shit or get off the pot, both of you. there is not even remotely enough storyline to stretch this shit out to twelve episodes and this will-they-won't-they dithering has all the appeal of watching two thirteen-year-olds discussing which pair of earrings to buy at claire's for an hour

'we should just separate' YOU TWO AREN'T TOGETHER YOU DUMB BITCH

does this show want the world record for unearned reconciliations? yo and plug's 'oops i guess we're back together' had potentially even less screentime than the bullshit april/cheum reconciliation (i'll die mad about it, i have no idea why the two of them are together but that's the true only friends method of relationship writing), and now ray and sand are back on their pathetic codependent bullshit. truly a tragedy of epic proportions. these two belong in separate hemispheres until they both work out their mountains of individual issues.

if they're drinking beers in the bathtub when ray's supposed to be in rehab i'm just going to end my life

'i don't want you to drink too much' HE'S AN ADDICT YOU FESTERING FUCKHUSK DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW ADDICTION WORKS THERE IS NO 'OH THE ADDICT WILL JUST CUT DOWN ON THEIR DRINKING' HE NEEDS TO BE SOBER. S O B E R. AS IN, NOT DRINKING. holy shit this show is making me so angry bed friend is almost looking like a Fun Time.

boeing is back and mew is with him

in case i haven't said it in the past five minutes, i fucking loathe nick so much

hey what the fuck. what the fuck. 'let's get revenge on atom by tricking him into a quick fuck and then recording him secretly' what the FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE JESUS CHRIST WERE YOU ALL RAISED BY WOLVES

wolves are probably more civilized than this pack of assholes i apologize to the wild wolf population

good to see that ray has learned fuck-all and continues to drag sand along to clean up his messes when to me it feels like the entire point of court-mandated community service is that you do it yourself without running to your bangmaid to help you

every time top shows up i get one step closer to necking myself

'why don't you trust me' i am going to rip this man's throat out with my teeth

OH MY GOD YOU TWO SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT MY GOD IN HEAVEN YOU ARE SO FUCKING INSUFFERABLE

why is everyone so fucking concerned with getting top and mew back together. i hate mew's moms. 'well, if you really love him...' the dude is a known cheater and pump-and-dumper. what is this show's obsession with everyone's magic dicks that they just can't get over. they keep doing the same thing with boston. dick so good it makes a man crazy. maybe if y'all stopped fucking like you were the habsburg dynasty, you could be less tiresome. as near as i can tell, there's fewer than ten gays in the entirety of bangkok and you've banged all those cocks. please. jesus. you're not the british royal family. let go of the inbreeding.

incredible that it's been eleven episodes and i could not tell you a single concrete reason top gives the slightest shit about mew. if you held a gun to my head and told me to give just one reason, you'd have to kill me in one shot.

'you know i will not be able to forget about this easily' dude it's been your raison d'être since it happened, it's basically your entire personality along with being a smug sanctimonious cockbag

'i don't want to force you' okay not that this show has had basically every character bulldozing each other's boundaries or anything but w/e do you boo i guess

boeing is so fucking DULL i know they think they're spicing things up with his chaos agent nonsense but i am bored i am fatigued i am over it please just fuck off dude

OH MY GOD CAN WE PLEASE JUST HAVE ANOTHER NOTE THAT ISN'T CHEATING OR ATTEMPTED CHEATING. GO FIND A NEW DICK TO SWING ON. JESUS CHRIST. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. HOW IS THIS TWELVE EPISODES. HOW DID ANYONE ENJOY THIS RANCID STEAMING PILE OF GARBAGE. I AM ACTIVELY JUDGING ANYONE WHO ENJOYED THIS IN ITS ENTIRETY. GET HELP.

good to see ray is still drinking, so that rehab plotline was yet another big fat nothing

having to suffer through one last episode of this is making bed friend look even more appealing and bed friend had me actively contemplating suicide

oh jesus god 71 minutes why in the name of all that's holy

i hate ray

that's it. that's the comment. i am not even going to list out the reasons or context. fuck ray. dude sucks.

boeing, shut the fuck up

'do you still love him? you should kiss him' sand if you had the spine god gave cooked spaghetti you'd dump ray and then dump his body in the ocean but you won't because you're a fucking puss with no self-respect so

if this is some raggedy-ass attempt at a threesome i will end it i swear to god i will

god ray sucks so fucking much i was told sandray was the best relationship in this show and i'm not sorry but some of y'all need to take a mike's hard look at yourselves and get taste

like, truly, ray is such a rancid character. 'let me force you into making out with your ex so i can play personal pity party' go fuck yourself, dude. go shove a stick in the spokes of your bike wheel somewhere else because i don't feel like listening to you bitch and cry for another 65 minutes

'i don't like him being around you like this' OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD YOU STUPID FUCKING BITCH. STOP ENGINEERING YOUR OWN PROBLEMS AND THEN PLAYING THE VICTIM

of course this dumb bitch cheum is like 'i think moving in together is a great idea' i hope she gets hit by a car

ray continues digging to the center of the earth. i am tired.

'i can put your name back on our project' i hope cheum actually gets hit by a train

'what i want is a chance to be your friend again' boston could be the only character i give a shit about in this show but he pulls shit like this and i'm just like, why, dude? why are you constantly bending over backwards for people (including nick) who treat you like garbage?

i stand by nick being an asshole. i don't care. the show is like 'oh he stands by me he's supportive blah blah' no. what the show tells me i should think is not what it tells me in its writing. nick is just as much of a prick as everyone else and just because he has a weird codependence with boston's magic dick game does not make them a functional relationship or one i remotely root for. i am excited for boston to go to new york so he doesn't have to be in this pit of vipers and he can actually learn how to be a human being who is treated with more respect than what he gets now.

i keep harping on this same point, but it is insane to me that a show that is entirely built on people's messy relationships has given me not one iota of evidence to prove any of these people should be getting nasty with each other. it's not even 'oh they're bad for each other' (which they are), it's that the writing is doing nothing to establish the bonds and hoping a handful of talented actors (this is not everyone in the cast, fwiw) will be able to provide enough chemistry to cover for paper-thin narrative work.

and as soon as i unpause, i get a 'sweet' boston/nick scene, which might land if i gave the slightest shit about them as people. the cutesy scenes are actively insulting to my intelligence, like i've forgotten the entire show has been built on people betraying, cheating on, lying to, and being heinous to each other. this just feels like all of these dumbfucks have short-term memory loss and can't remember how wretched they were to each other five minutes ago.

nick: i could do animation in new york. i could work at pixar.

the amount of white-hot rage i feel at this 'oh the kids hate ray and they need sand' scene is incalculable. the gears of this raggedy writing are straining.

oh my god. are they seriously going to have a relationship heart-to-heart while ray is doing community service? fuck this show.

what is ray's fucking deal about boeing? this is honestly pathological and creepy. i think they're trying to make a point about ray's insecurity due to his deep-seated trauma but it's insecurity due to deep-seated trauma as interpreted by an alien who has never had exposure to human beings before.

creak creak creak go the gears of this idiotic manufactured boeing drama. this thing is so underwritten and badly paced and poorly planned i'm shocked it wasn't a lucasfilm production. this is dickensian levels of padding. was this dictated to a five-year-old who kept going 'and then what?' to avoid going to sleep?

can't type anymore, boston just ran into boeing at the club and my eyes rolled out of my head and ended up across the room

oh for FUCK'S SAKE this is so FUCKING STUPID

cheum seeing boston arrive and being like 'well now boston can prostrate himself for absolution in front of all of us' go fuck yourself you cow

like yeah boston's boeing makeout was the stupidest moment of this episode and that's saying something considering top and mew exist but that also is so clearly some more clumsily engineered writing to go Ooga Booga Boston Bad Slut Ooga Booga that i'm more annoyed with the writers than boston as a character

this is so fucking nasty. jesus christ. some real weather underground weatherfries shit, except, oops, the circle is one person and everyone else is virtuous and perfect and has never done anything wrong. i hope a meteorite hits the hostel.

i also hope someone drowns mew in the river like a kangaroo

sorry i said the stupidest scene of the episode was boeing and boston making out because of course they play truth or dare and of course sand is kissing top. whatever. who gives a shit. god is dead and life is meaningless.

'being with you gives me so much positive energy' bitch are you serious please say sike

GET FUCKED, MEW, GET FUCKED, I AM SO SICK OF YOUR BITCH ASS, I HOPE YOU DIE, I HAVE NEVER HATED A CHARACTER SO MUCH AS YOU, I HOPE TOP GIVES YOU SYPHILIS

the boston/nick breakup scene hit with the force of a light breeze so that was a big nothing

god why on earth do i have to fucking keep seeing top and mew. jesus fuck. no one likes them. their story has no narrative urgency. god damn.

i actually can't do it. i'm fast-forwarding through this scene because i'm so fucking sick of them.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA THE HOTEL IS ON FIRE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

normally i have a bad reaction to fires in media but also in this case i'm allowed to celebrate it as a treat

of course it wasn't even a bad one. both of them should have been burned alive, but i'm not getting anything i want in this show.

cannot believe they got seven minutes of screentime as opposed to boston and nick's, like, one. the narrative favoritism in this show is repulsive.

'and you must trust me' ray i wouldn't trust you to dress yourself without zipping your dick into the fly of your pants

'i want an easy but meaningful name' sand already has one but as usual you have to bulldoze over anything he has as an individual so you can smear your feces on every lampshade he owns

wow even in the post-credits scene and even when boston's a continent away these useless shithogs can't miss a chance to humiliate him

'don't worry if you're alone. we can be your friends.' i'm calling the cops to report a terrorist threat

in conclusion:

#i thought bed friend was one of the biggest abominations in bl but boy howdy this might be in fact THE worst show i've ever watched #regardless of genre or country #perhaps it's not the all-time worst but it's definitely top three at a minimum #everyone involved in this owes me reparations. watching this on 3x speed was still torture that violated the geneva convention #what absolutely irredeemable slop #i actively hate everyone in the cast a little more today #i am never trusting a single person's word on bl again because i was led to believe this had some kind of redeeming value at points #the redeeming value it might have had in the first few episodes was crushed underfoot and is nothing but a distant memory at best #i am physically angry about how awful this show was. how hateful and irresponsible and vicious and ugly.#boring and repetitive and shoddily assembled #what a truly revolting show. what a waste of my time.

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nukirk · 4 months ago

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I briefly mentioned in a previous post about the uncertainty of the future of my Tumblr profile(s).

That's because it's going to become WordPress. Sorta.

Basically, Automattic (the company that owes Tumblr now) is losing money in developing features for Tumblr and all the things that is currently on Tumblr isn't helping to break even. They already cut Tumblr staff, reducing it to a skeleton crew. Remember all the original Tumblr programming that the Tumblr staff tries to come up with? That's currently off the table.

Since I already use WordPress to run my websites outside of here, it's not a bad thing on an interface level. But the main idea on why I use(d) Tumblr is for the community aspect of it. They are still working on integrating Tumblr into the Fediverse, opening the Tumblr community to others, interacting with posts from other spots, making Tumblr an alternative to Elon Musk's site.

So good news... all the work you put into Tumblr won't disappear. Tumblr is what I like to call a "backbone" site, where it's a launch pad for a lot of memes and human creativity. The interface will change and you'll pretty much have an experience similar to WordPress.

The bad news? The "hell site" you love to hate and its uniqueness is slowly disappearing, all because the fan base here is just hard to please and monetized.

I should know. @thoughtremixer has close to 24K followers. But using it nowadays almost means nothing. I do notice the people that see me, but beyond that, anything that I post barely gets double digits.

I'm not saying "oh, we should support Tumblr and buy subscriptions". But I am saying that if you have a creator that you adore and they are elsewhere, make sure to follow them there. Some of us are trying to make ends meet by getting our content to be seen by where the eyeballs are at. It's why I haven't posted on Tumblr back when everything was functional.

So, if you have a creator on Tumblr that you love, follow them at least on some other network of their choice. Make the effort because Tumblr will not be enough now that resources will be spent on trying to get change Tumblr into something else.

#blog #tumblr

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toyotacorolla2008 · 1 year ago

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hi!!! i was wondering if you could do a tutorial for how you draw transformers? i can never simplify them like you can. do you have any tips?? also love your art sm <33

hi ヾ(•ω•`)o

I WILL TRY MY best to explain what i do… i don’t actually have a very structured system but this is vaguely how i got started and how i simplified the process

1. look up and compile a whole bunch of references

this will be useful for EVERYTHING– transfomos come with lots of shapes and gizmos and details and stuff so a variety of references from different angles and in different poses is really useful because you can see the shapes they’re made out of and also understand how everything connects with each other

trapezoid town! this is a mess but it’s a quick example of how by looking at everything you start to notice trends or details like what moves with what or how flexible some parts are

there are a whole bunch of resources very nice people have compiled on the web like here here here here and here (mainly MTMTE) and there is a discord server (this is a link to a tumblr post about it and not the invite link itself) for it too but you can always look through the source material and just start screenshotting and pasting shit into a folder.

you don’t have to do humongous in-depth breakdowns if you just want to be able to quickly doodle robots (god knows i don’t!!) but having the references on-hand makes it easier for the times when you’re like This pose is going to be challenging and I’m not sure how all of the cuboids will be positioned.

references also help break you out of thinking of it as just drawing blockier humans because the proportions and shapes vary a looooooot

2. draw draw draw

at first i drew a lot using refs heavily to get an idea of the shapes then i got lazy and just started drawing anime girls and smacking rectangles and kibble on top BUT as you draw more and more you start to pick up on the Salient Features as well as their General Silhouette.

drawing from memory means that what makes them look recognisable will become more emphasised in your mind so you’ll naturally pick up on how you can simplify them without losing what makes your guy Look Like Your Guy. so if you want to simplify the robots just be incredibly lazy like me B)

i'm kind of horrible because i don't even do like Basic Shapes i literally just eyeball it

for poses i rectangle it out while thinking really hard

anyway when i first tried to draw transformers but Something Didn’t Look Right it was either a) the level of detail across the entire drawing was inconsistent and threw it off balance or b) proportions weren’t right and these things only got better with me finangling and doodling and learning by iteration.

of course sometimes i don’t give a fuck because no cops in transformers doodle land but yeahhhh i’m the kind of guy who only gets through stuff by throwing a lot of rocks at it. i don’t have a Method to offer you unfortunately but what i did do was

3. experiment and exaggerate and experiment!!

The First Rule of Gun Safety is to Have Fun and Be Yourself! i took a lot of liberties and rarely stayed on-model when i doodled and waffled around (and i still do…) but it helped me figure out how much i was willing to draw lol and consequently how i would stylise them.

i would play with how big or small or exaggerated or expressive they'd be… even my most detailed drawings are nowhere near comic-detail but my least detailed ones were. turquoise triangle that’s vaguely brainstorm-shaped. having fun with it and just doing it to make stupid jokes makes the practice seem like not practice.

so yeah tl;dr i started by reffing what bots actually look like, would trace comic panels to get an idea of the shapes and details and then start drawing side-by-side → drew billions of perceptors from my diseased mind and played around with lines → ??? → upgraded from goofy-looking rectangles to goofy-looking rectangles

that’s it for advice! (i don’t feel qualified to say that much)

below are just examples of stupid doodles i’d make on my ipad in class or in the margins of assignments lol, you can tell the last one is from when i still didn't understand brainstorm's build very well because the wings are placed wrongly... But i grew.

hope this was somewhat helpful! there are other tutorials from other artists that i can direct you to but this is how toyotacorolla2008 got to shitposting on tumblr dot com

#anonymous #ask #thanks for liking my art and thank you for this ask!#If you wanted me to talk about something that i did not touch on imma sowwy.. you can send another ask and i will respond and go deeper #i typed up this post really fast so i hope its coherent #local blogger too Freaken busy with school to draw detail #going to class like Im ready for my hard days work of drawing cuboids stealthily #bonposting

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tunedtostatic · 1 year ago

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My home state of Vermont (I am not there right now) is undergoing historic flooding, with many areas worse off than when Hurricane Irene hit a decade ago. You can read more in this tumblr post, and the vermont public radio site here.

I'm going to do charity commissions this week when things have settled down enough that more fundraising pages and damage assessments are going up. The current influx of volunteers and donations is truly a great thing, but I know from experience that Vermont (like plenty of other places on this planet) is not great about distributing help evenly, to put it mildly. While there's not much I can do to help I at least want to be on the lookout for places having a hard time getting eyeballs on their fundraisers.

(I do not want this casual venting to dissuade anyone from donating through the main gateways! To the best of my knowledge they are ABSOLUTELY helping people, and at worst you'll donate to a nonprofit that is Flawed But Basically Fine.)

I'm thinking I'll offer collages (fanmix covers, fic covers, &c, if you follow me you've seen these but I'll have examples in the actual post) for proof of donation of $5 or more. I'm also thinking about doing short folktale-inspired story commissions, of the kind where people can pick a [noun] and a [noun] and a [plot point].

Technically I could paint but I'm a little rusty to want to commit to that. If you can think of anything you've seen me create that you might be interested in commissioning, let me know!

#sky's the limit for brainstorming if you're interested in an...idk...book or music review?#i don't think anyone would commission a fanmix...unless...?

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iturbide · 2 years ago

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you echoed my earlier thoughts on the 'raidons exactly! i wasn't sure i liked the idea of players being given a legendary so early and using it as a bike of all things. since gen iii so many legendaries have basically been deities or the physical manifestation of some abstract concept — and the more powerful and mythical they get, the more absurd it feels to do things like, to quote an old tumblr post, "[ putting ] a bow on it and make it dance around [ in contests ]". i was worried SV was going to take that to its logical extreme.

but no, the 'raidons aren’t some majestic, god-adjacent creature letting a kid use them as a mount bc they're special and have "a pure heart" or whatever, they’re a [ redacted ] that we befriended bc they are little sandwich goblins. like, they beg for table scraps with puppydog eyes. they curl up to sleep. probably lick their own eyeballs like a gecko. they’re a creature.

i just really like this dialing back of the cover legendaries to just being some incredibly rare beast. they're more approachable and it makes doing stuff with them more believable.

YEAH EXACTLY THIS I honestly was not expecting how well and naturally the 'raidons would be integrated into the gameplay mechanics. Their nature as Legendaries also really feels like it hearkens back to older gens, where in theory there were (or could be) more than one: Entei's dex entries through at least Gen 7 state that "it is said that one is born every time a new volcano appears." We haven't seen Legendaries like that in a while, so seeing that approach with the 'raidons was extremely refreshing.

And it's all done so well. They have so much personality. They're basically giant lizard-cats. They want to join your picnics specifically to eat your sandwiches. They make little croony noises and fidget around when you give them baths. There is so much personality in them from the way they move to the noises they make that I couldn't help falling in love with them. I don't think I've ever had a Legendary I used enough to consider it a friend until Koraidon. They absolutely nailed it with this approach and exceeded all my expectations.

#answered #asperrusual #pokemon scarvi #scarvi spoilers #of a sort #i'm still trying to keep spoilers to an absolute minimum #i want my friend to go in as blind as possible #it's a sign of affection i promise #but i love my cat-dragon-bike so much #koraidon my beloved

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data-expunged-0 · 2 years ago

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Guys, this is important. I need to borrow your eyeballs for a second.

On June 30th, there's gonna be an indefinite tumblr blackout to get the tumblr execs to do something about the bots, revert some shitty changes, etc. All stuff that would help tumblr.

I am perfectly fine with this, but there's just one problem.

My birthday's the day after the blackout starts, and I wanna celebrate it with you guys.

@staff, if you're reading this, pass it to the execs. I really wanna celebrate my birthday with the people I consider to be friends, those who I want to talk to, those who I want to spend my birthday with.

Just at least try to meet the blackout organizers in the middle, alright?

#not vore #not g/t #serious #please just consider it

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ollieofthebeholder · 2 months ago

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And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 12: And never give a thought to night

The shop reminded Tim of the Night Market, except that everything seemed to be exactly what it was. Granted, “exactly what it was” constituted a wide variety of oddities, curios, and esoteric objects, ranging from a signed poster of Harry Houdini to a Victorian testicle massager to a whole shelf full of eyeballs in glycerin, but it was at least honest in terms of labeling. And the two women who ran the shop were happy to tell them about anything they asked about, which was both a refreshing change and suggested a relative degree of normalcy.

Gertrude’s warnings about Elias made him a little leery of the eyeballs, though.

“Yes,” he said in response to the teasing smile he was getting from the first of the two proprietors. “I am very sure you can’t interest me in a haunted clown doll. It’s not a work-related expense. Artifact Storage is a completely different department than the Archives.”

“Oh, it’s not actually haunted,” the woman, who had said her name was Janet, assured him. “Or at least we don’t have any kind of provenance saying it is. It just looked so creepy we started calling it the Haunted Clown.”

Tim hummed as he eyed the doll. It looked way too similar to Joseph Grimaldi, save that it had black diamonds around its eyes instead of the red tears Grimaldi had been famed for, and he hated it very much. It could have been innocent…or it could have been the best lead they’d gotten on this whole damn trip, which was saying something, since it was the middle of March. He definitely wasn’t going to purchase it, though. “Where did you get it?”

“One of our regular sources offered it to us as a bonus when we bought that off of him.” Jojo, the other proprietor, pointed to a framed poster. “He said it gave him the heebie-jeebies and that if we didn’t take it, he was going to mail it to one of his relatives that he didn’t like. His partner said that would be a pretty long list.”

Tim looked—and felt a chill run down his spine as he recognized a full-size version of the same flyer he had found himself holding in front of the Royal Opera House less than two years ago. It was in color rather than black and white, and it didn’t have the Cyrillic writing all over it—he’d always thought that was more in the way of being notes than anything—but other than that, it was identical, down to the clown’s face peering up at him from just above the frame. His hand curled into a fist automatically. Punching it would probably not do anything other than cost him a lot of money, but God help him, he wanted to. Badly.

Gerry came up behind him and placed a hand on the flat of his back, gently supportive, but didn’t say anything, just let Tim take the lead. Tim leaned back into his partner’s hand and took a breath before turning back to Jojo. “Where did he get it, do you know? I’d, uh—this circus is kind of a specialty of mine.”

Janet and Jojo looked at one another, then seemed to come to some kind of decision. Janet was the one who spoke. “You would have to ask him. If he didn’t get it directly from the original owner, or from someone who would add to the value because they’d owned it, he doesn’t always include that in the details.”

“Do you think he’d talk to us?” Gerry’s voice was soft, but hopeful; even Tim couldn’t tell if that was put on or not. “Not like we’re cops or anything.”

Jojo tilted her head at him skeptically. Tim was about to cave and offer to call Gertrude to verify their story when she said, “Well, if you are, just go to Central and ask to speak to Detective Montoya first. But yes, I’m sure he’ll talk to you.” She reached behind the counter, pulled out a business card from a rack there, and handed it to Gerry.

Gerry studied the card, then tilted it towards Tim. The logo was simple, a black bird with a gleam in its eye, clutching a banner that read POTTER’S FIELD above an address and phone number. At the very bottom was small text that read Rook Stevens, proprietor.

“Rook Stevens?” Tim repeated, his mood lightening slightly. It couldn’t be that common of a name. “I think I know him.”

Gerry gave an indulgent sigh, and Tim could feel him roll his eyes. “Of course you do.” To Janet and Jojo, he added, “Tim knows everybody.”

“Then I’m definitely sure he’ll talk to you, Skippy.” Janet laughed. Tim, who knew that joke, laughed too. “Tell him we said hello. It’s been a while since we’ve seen him.”

“We will. Thank you so much, ma’am.” Tim shook both women’s hands, and the two of them left the shop.

Their rental car waited on the curb; Tim, who was more comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road than Gerry was, slid behind the wheel. “Want to navigate?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Gerry fished the paper map of Los Angeles out of the side pocket and unfolded it. They tried to leave as little of a digital footprint as they could, so usually avoided GPS whenever possible. “What’s the address?”

The late afternoon was warmer than Tim was used to for the beginning of March, but not so hot that they needed the air conditioner. In fact, it was a perfect day to ride around in a convertible with the top down, so after confirming that Gerry would be able to hold onto the map if he did, Tim folded back the roof and donned a pair of sunglasses before stepping on the gas and pulling away from the curb.

“So when was the last time you were in Los Angeles?” Gerry asked as they hit a stretch of road that would take them straight for a while before he had to navigate further.

“Never.” Tim shot Gerry a grin at his disbelieving scoff. “No, really. I’ve been to the San Joaquin Valley, but that’s about six hours north of here. And, well, we flew into San Francisco, so we went to Fisherman’s Wharf while we were there. It’s like the Navy Pier, it’s one of those things you just have to do.”

“What were you in San Joaquin for, then?”

“Nonno owned a quarter share in a vineyard that grew Emerald Riesling. He’d heard reports that the glassy-winged sharpshooter was spreading to California and he got anxious, and his English was rocky, so he asked if we’d come along and help translate.”

Gerry hummed. “Good trip?”

Tim bit his lip, wondering how to answer that. Finally, he said, “Well, to start with, fully two thirds of the crop was lost. Nonno got into an argument, through Mum of course, with his partner about whether to sell it or try and rebuild. And in the middle of it, Danny saw a traveling carnival that was set up a couple farms over—guy was letting the fields lie fallow that year—and took it into his head to run away and join the circus.”

“Oh.” Gerry reached over and squeezed Tim’s thigh lightly. “You got him back, though.”

“Uh…actually, he convinced me to go with him,” Tim admitted. He couldn’t help but smile when Gerry laughed. His memories of Danny were still a bit of a minefield, but okay, this one was funny. “I was twelve, old enough to know better, but Danny was nine, and I knew that short of tying him up in the hotel room he was going to join that carnival one way or another, so I told him we would go together. He got bored less than a day later, which I’d figured he would—things didn’t hold his interest as long back then—but I pulled the big brother card and told him he had to give it a week before he gave it up.”

Gerry laughed harder. “How much trouble were you in?”

“Dad threatened to sell us both as midway prizes if we tried it again, but that was the worst of it. Probably would have been more if Mama and Zi’ Vincenzo hadn’t done the same thing when they were our age.”

“She talked him down?”

“No, Nonno did. To hear him talk, we were only gone a week, and we actually came back on our own instead of them having to chase us halfway across the country. Rook almost came with us, but, well, his mum came back right when we were getting ready to go and he didn’t want to leave her.”

“This would be the Rook Stevens we’re going to see? Take the next left,” Gerry added, finger tracing the length of their road as a sign flashed past.

Tim hit the blinker. “Yeah, that’s him. His mum was…I’m actually not sure what she did in the carnival, but she wasn’t there then. She’d gone off to get some cigarettes and hadn’t come back for a while. It was fine, the other carnies were looking after Rook, but I think he was kind of desperate for attention from kids his own age. Latched onto us.”

“How old was he?”

“Six or seven. He wasn’t sure. Tried to say he was ten, but I called him on that bullshit pretty quick. Knew his birthday was the first of April, though.”

Gerry shook his head, looking worried. “Little kids like that are probably at the most risk from the Fourteen. The Lonely especially, but any of them can get at them. You think he’s okay?”

Tim sighed. “I think he’s survived this long. I’m not taking bets on whether he’s come up on any of the Fears.”

A few more turns, and Tim spotted their destination—a shop in the middle of a street with a sign matching the banner on the business card. He found a place to park, put the top up, and made sure there was no one coming before climbing out of the car. He slid his sunglasses to the top of his head and looped his arm through Gerry’s. “Let’s go find out what kind of a place this is.”

The answer was obvious before they’d even walked through the door. Floor to ceiling windows displayed flashy toys, movie posters, cheap props, and a full-size soft-bodied sculpture that looked vaguely familiar. Gerry raised his eyebrow at it. “What the hell is that?”

“Not sure, but I think it’s from some sci-fi show or other.”

“If it comes to life, I’m setting it on fire.”

“Agreed. Let’s try to talk to Rook first, though.” Tim pushed the door open.

The bell jingled overhead. A round-faced man with thick, wavy silver hair and clothing that looked like it had been purchased from the same shop as Tim’s winter hat was going over something on a clipboard with the youngish-looking person standing behind the counter, and both looked up when Tim and Gerry entered. The older man smiled brightly. “Welcome to Potter’s Field. Let us know if there’s anything we can help you with.”

Tim matched the man’s smile—he hoped. “Hi! I really hope you can. I’m actually looking for Rook Stevens?”

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised when the man’s smile slipped, just a little. “Do you have an appointment with him?”

“No, just an old friend in town for a few days.” Tim stuck a hand in his pocket and hoped he looked sufficiently nonthreatening.

“Jojo and Janet sent us,” Gerry said, helpfully waving the business card they’d been given. “We’re actually looking into something, but then Tim said he knew Rook. Maybe. Can’t be that common of a name, right?”

The two workers exchanged glances, and the older man continued to press. Tim got the impression he’d taken something of a fatherly interest in Rook Stevens. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

“Visited the San Joaquin area once, a while back.” Tim recalled something that might help. “Uh, if it helps, tell him it’s the Fuzzy Duckling guy.”

The man raised an eyebrow, but disappeared through a door that looked like the TARDIS. Gerry turned to Tim, looking like he was struggling not to laugh. “The Fuzzy Duckling guy?”

Tim had a feeling he was blushing. “It was Danny’s favorite book as a baby. I read it to him so many times that I had it memorized. Rook got his foot caught in the recoil from one of the midway games and I was trying to keep him still while they untangled him so he didn’t hurt himself. Must’ve recited that story six times, end to end, before he was free.”

A few moments later, the door opened, and the older man came through. Behind him was a long-limbed, lanky figure in an outfit not dissimilar to Gerry’s. Rook Stevens had been a cherubic urchin—or at least cherubic-looking—and had grown into an undeniably pretty man, with a roguish grin that reminded Tim painfully of Danny’s. His eyes were the same as he remembered, one green and the other hazel.

“Jesus, you got tall,” Tim blurted without thinking.

“Tall? Me?” Rook looked down at himself, then back up at Tim with a raised eyebrow. “How long’s it been since you saw me?”

Tim counted back. “About twenty years.”

“I was like seven years old. Did you think I was going to shrink?”

Gerry snorted. Tim grinned. “Same old Rook. I don’t know how well you remember me—”

“Well enough to remember the Fuzzy Duckling thing, but I don’t remember your name,” Rook interrupted. “Wait—Stoker. I remember that because I knew Dracula even back then and thought it was cool. Danny, right?”

“Tim. Danny was my younger brother.” Tim swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you, too.” Rook smiled like he meant it. “Manny also said you were looking into something? That JoJa sent you?”

Tim nodded. “They had a poster and a ‘haunted’ clown doll?”

“Oh, yeah, fuck that thing. Creeped me right out. Dante swore it wanted to eat his face.” Rook grimaced. “That’s the only one I had, though, so if you’re looking to buy it—”

“No,” Tim and Gerry said in unison. The kid behind the counter dropped his pen.

Gerry squeezed Tim’s hand lightly and explained to Rook, “We mostly just need to know where you got it. And if you know where it’s from. It might be trying to kill us.”

Under any other circumstances, that would have been an extremely inadvisable thing to say. Tim had to admit, though, that it was probably the right thing here. Rook gave a tuneless whistle. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Not even recently. Okay, I think I have that upstairs. Tell you what, why don’t you two come up? I’ll get the papers out and call for takeout, and we can catch up while we’re at it. That okay with you, Manny?”

“I keep telling you I have this, mijo.” The older man, presumably Manny, gave Rook a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Go on. Nice to meet you boys.”

“Nice to meet you, too, sir.” Tim shook Manny’s hand before following Rook through the blue build-out.

The other side of the door led to a short hallway leading to the outside alongside a flight of stairs. As Rook started up them, he tossed casually over his shoulder, “By the way, you didn’t introduce your guy here.”

“Oh, sorry. Rook Stevens, Gerard Delano.” In the months they’d been traveling, Gerry had more and more taken to using his father’s surname when he introduced himself. He’d confessed to Tim, staring into a mirror in a hotel bathroom in North Augusta, South Carolina, that the reason he’d chosen not to start dyeing his hair again—yet, anyway—was that it was the same color he remembered his dad’s being, and he was more and more starting to feel like Eric Delano’s son instead of Mary Keay’s. Tim was ready to support him no matter what he chose. He was just glad to see him happy and healthy. “We met at work. Kind of. Gerry doesn’t get paid for it.”

“What can I say, I’m a nosy bastard,” Gerry deadpanned. Rook laughed.

The apartment above the shop proved to be an open, airy loft, with enormous double doors. As Rook tugged them open, he explained, “This used to be a dance studio. No fucking clue why these doors are so thick, but it pays off sometimes. And it’s an easy commute to the shop, so what the hell. Come on in, get comfortable. I’ll put in an order. You like Thai?”

Half an hour later they were seated around a black lacquered kitchen table, papers spread out across them. Rook looked a bit sheepish as he discarded another stack. “I swear it’s all here. It’s just that I sold the whole lot, so I didn’t think I’d need it until tax time rolled around, and then it doesn’t have to be in any special order. I just give it all to my accountant, he gives me a number, and I pay it.”

“It’s fine,” Tim said for at least the third time. “It’s like a scavenger hunt, you know? Trust me, we do this sort of thing all the time. It’s fine.”

“What, sift through five years of receipts and shipping orders looking for random circus memorabilia?”

“Sometimes it’s antique medical equipment,” Gerry said, turning over one of the pages. “Seriously, though. Archival assistant. Tim spends half his life telling papers to make sense.”

Rook snorted. “What do you do the other half of the time?”

“Gallivant around the world charming people out of information they don’t know they have.” Tim took a swig of coffee.

The door to the loft swung open almost, but not quite, silently. “I know you’re a bottomless pit, cuervo, but did you mean to order this much food?”

Tim looked up to see a handsome man who would probably not look dissimilar to Manny when he got older, shrugging out of a brown jacket and clutching an outsize takeaway bag. He checked briefly at the sight of Tim and Gerry, but Rook was already greeting him with a bright smile. “Hey, babe. Good shift?”

“As good as they get.” The man resumed taking off his jacket and hung it on a hook, then bent to pick up the jacket Rook had casually tossed aside and hung it up as well. “You didn’t mention company when you asked me to pick up the Thai on my way home.”

“Yeah, forgot, sorry.” Rook shrugged, but Tim guessed he was completely unapologetic. “Tim’s an old friend of mine.”

“Old friend, huh?” The man’s attitude was casual, his smile never wavered. Still, under any other circumstances, Tim would have thought he was being measured up as a rival, a past lover come back to snatch Rook up again. But the holster and badge weren’t hard to miss, even as the man locked them up, and Rook bore all the hallmarks of a reformed thief, which meant that instead he was being judged by a cop as a former associate.

“Hutchinson’s Carnival,” he said, getting to his feet politely as the man came closer. “My brother and I ran away to join it and hung around with Rook for the week we were there. I’m Tim Stoker.”

The man relaxed infinitesimally—just enough for Tim to know that, yes, that was what he’d worried about. “Dante Montoya. It’s good to meet you.”

Gerry stood politely and introduced himself as well, and Dante shook hands with both of them. “What’s all this?” he asked, looking down at the papers spread across the kitchen table.

“You remember that box of circus stuff I got last fall?” Rook tilted his head back for a kiss. Dante hummed in evident affirmation. “These guys are looking for where I got it. It might be trying to kill them.”

Dante lifted an eyebrow at them. “The circus memorabilia, or the doll specifically?”

“No, the circus itself.” Tim thought about giving them everything, then decided that would be too much and dialed it back a little. “I work for the Magnus Institute in London. We investigate the paranormal and the supernatural and that kind of thing. My boss has me working a really big project involving the Circus of the Other—there are all kinds of spooky rumors about it—and honestly, that poster you sold to JoJa is the best lead we’ve had yet. I’m hoping that if we can trace where you got it from, we can get more information. Probably belonged to an expert, maybe even a former worker.”

Dante slid into the seat next to Rook and began helping them sift through the papers. “Let me help you get through this so we can eat.”

It was probably another twenty minutes before Dante triumphantly held up a receipt for six circus posters, a lion tamer’s whip, three riding girl costumes, a ringmaster’s top hat, two elephants (wooden), one tiger (cloth), and one Pierrot (cloth and porcelain, antique). Rook frowned at that last notation. “I don’t remember a parrot.”

“Pierrot. That’s your creepy clown doll,” Tim told him. “It’s an old tradition from the Commedia dell’Arte. The Pierrot was the straight man to the Harlequin, kind of stern and trying to temper Harlequin’s more lighthearted antics.”

“So like Abbott and Costello, then?” Rook handed Tim the papers that had been clipped to the receipt.

“No, they’re more the modern take on them. The Pierrot was sort of the precurser to the whiteface clown—Joseph Grimaldi developed that in the 1800s and introduced the Clown, who was a little harsher and meaner than Pierrot, as a foil to Harlequin. And since Pierrot and Harlequin were more stage characters and had spoken dialogue, when you went over to the circus and were pantomiming for a crowd rather than doing verbal jokes, you got the whiteface and the auguste, or the red clown. Bud Abbott would’ve been the whiteface and Lou Costello would’ve been the auguste.”

Rook raised an eyebrow. “How do you know all that? I was a carnie and I didn’t know all that.”

“I’ve…done a lot of research into clowns.” Tim glanced at Gerry, wondering how much to say. Finally, he admitted, “I know this is going to sound stupid, but a clown killed my brother.”

Something flickered through Dante’s eyes, just for a moment. Rook winced. “Dude, I’m sorry. Did they catch the one who did it?”

“He’s dead,” Tim said, which was true. Probably. Mostly. He really didn’t feel like getting into all that. Instead, he picked up the sheaf of paper with the detailed descriptions of the objects that had been in the lot.

Three of the posters had been from Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, and were—surprisingly—valued less than the others; Tim guessed because they were more common; the other three were from the Russian Circus, a turn of the century Italian circus he didn’t recognize the name of, and of course the Circus of the Other. The whip and the cloth tiger had also come from the Circus of the Other, which made him a bit nervous, especially since Rook had mentioned he’d already sold everything in the lot. The remaining items were all Italian, and the Pierrot dated back to the eighteenth century.

“Seems like this guy was more interested in Italian circuses than Russian ones,” Gerry said, picking up one of the pages Tim had set aside.

Tim turned to the last page and shook his head. “The Italian ones were just easier for him to get to. Look.” He pointed at the address printed next to the seller’s name. “That’s in Sicily.”

“Shit, yeah, I forgot.” Rook snapped his fingers. “He was just visiting for a couple of weeks—with his friend, he said—and I remember the other guy didn’t speak much English, so he did all the talking. He asked if I ever bought circus stuff, and when I said yeah, he offered me the whole lot blind. Got a good deal on it, honestly. He shipped it to me about a month later.”

“A dead end, I suppose,” Dante said softly. “Going to be hard to talk to him, even if you can get to Italy.”

“I speak Italian.” Tim spoke absently as he reached into his pocket for his notebook and pen. Carefully, he copied out the name, address, and telephone number, then clipped the papers back together and handed them to Rook. “Thanks. That’s a big help, actually. From his notes, he definitely knows something about the circus we’re looking into, so it’s still the best lead we’ve had yet.”

Dante looked surprised. “You’re actually going to Italy?”

“It’s not that much more expensive than flying back to London would be,” Gerry pointed out. “And honestly, once we’re there, it’ll be cheaper getting back to London. Besides, it’s work-related.”

Rook changed the subject as they cleared off the table, and they spent a couple of hours catching up on the past twenty years over Thai and beers. Eventually they parted with a promise to meet for coffee and breakfast at a nearby diner the next morning before Dante went on shift, and Tim and Gerry headed for their car and the hotel they were staying in. Fortunately it wasn’t too far away, relatively speaking, but it still took almost a half hour in the traffic that permeated Los Angeles even well after dark.

Gerry waited until they were pulling up to their parking spot before he said, “So, I take it we’re off to Italy after breakfast.”

Tim turned off the car. “Maybe. I want to call Gertrude first.”

“Call her? She’ll think we’ve stumbled into the Unknowing itself and you’re asking for her help in stopping me from becoming part of it.”

“I know, but…” Tim struggled with how to explain it. “She trusts us. Everything up to this point has been me telling her where we’re going next and just…going. But Italy…fuck, even if the Venetian Carnival is over, that’s still going to be a tricky one. And you were telling me about that woman you met who’d been Marked by the Lonely in Genua a few years back. Besides, technically this has all been based in the United States. If we’re going to be traveling around Europe for any length of time, I’d rather clear it with her first.”

“Good point,” Gerry admitted. “That might put us off another day, though.”

Tim shook his head as he opened the door of the car. “This shouldn’t take long.”

“Wait, you’re calling her now? Tim!” Gerry cursed under his breath as he struggled out of his seatbelt and got out of the car, but he didn’t continue the argument until they had reached their room. “It’s the middle of the night. I know she keeps odd hours, but if you wake her up at midnight she will think it’s an emergency, and she’ll skin you alive.”

“It’s six in the morning, London time,” Tim pointed out. “She gets up by five. And we’re going to need to check out in the morning before breakfast if we’re leaving tomorrow. I just…don’t want to wait on this one. It feels important. It honestly feels like the best lead we’ve had so far.”

“Good point,” Gerry admitted. “Okay, go ahead.”

Tim sat down at the tiny table, pulled out his cell phone, and added the additional steps to call an international number. He waited while the call connected, twisting his ring idly around his finger. He wasn’t surprised when Gertrude answered on the second ring, sounding as alert and aware as ever. “Tim. What is it?”

“Think we’ve got a lead, boss,” Tim said seriously. “Best one we’ve had yet. We found a guy who knew a guy who bought a lot of circus stuff from a guy in Italy. We were going to go out there and have a look around, but…I wanted to clear it with you first.”

Gertrude was silent for a long moment. “Tell me what you have.”

Tim did. He trusted that Gertrude wouldn’t ask him for that information if she thought there was a risk of being overheard, or it getting out dangerously, so he laid everything out for her—the poster, the memorabilia, the address in Sicily—even though he didn’t feel the slight prickle of static he was accustomed to on the rare occasions when she attempted to compel someone. He could hear the faint clicking of keyboard keys in the background, but otherwise, she was quiet as he explained.

“How familiar are you with the area of the address?” she asked when he was finished.

“Pretty familiar. The family vineyard is only about twenty or thirty miles away, and I spent a good few summers there. And I know circuses used to come through there at least occasionally, since my mum and her brother ran away with one once.” Tim drummed his fingers lightly on the tabletop. “It’s not anywhere near Venice, so even if there were lingering issues from the Carnival, we should be well away from them.”

“If you do need to go to Venice, take precautions. And do keep an eye out for any other of the Fourteen you notice stirring. Remember that a higher concentration of encounters in a short period of time is likely to be indicative of a gathering power, which is why you’ve also seen more Dark statements.”

“You think they’re going to go first?”

“It’s possible. No more than that. If I hear anything, I will reach out to you, as previously promised. For now…I’m keeping an eye on a few things. I need you to stay on the trail of the Dance.”

“That reminds me—should we be looking into ballet companies, too? I figure that when you say ‘dance’ you’re not talking about ballroom.”

There was another pause from Gertrude. Tim flexed his hand slowly to alleviate the swelling he’d begun feeling sometimes after periods of inactivity—it must be something he’d had trouble with for years, but the only reason he noticed it was the way his ring sometimes felt randomly too tight—as he waited for her to answer. At last, she spoke in a careful sort of voice. “I’m not sure how much information you think I have about something literally called the ‘Unknowing’, Tim.”

“I thought that was about making the world unknown, but I take your point,” Tim allowed. “Anyway, if you’re fine with us going to Italy—which I assume you are, even though you haven’t said so outright—depending on how much time we have before our flight out tomorrow, maybe we’ll stop by the ballet company in town and see if there’s been anything odd going on around there.”

“Your flight leaves at five-thirty P.M. Pacific standard time tomorrow, and I’ve booked you into a bed and breakfast in Messina for the day after,” Gertrude replied. “The details should be in your email shortly. If I am the one asking for reimbursement on this one, it will seem less like you’re using Institute funds to visit your grandfather.”

Tim grinned. The old bat thought of everything. “Thanks. I’ll send you a follow-up written report here in a few minutes as usual.”

“Please do. And Tim—do take care of yourselves.” Gertrude’s voice, unaccustomedly, softened slightly. “I should hate for anything to happen to you.”

“We will,” Tim said seriously. He recognized what a big deal it was that she even brought that up. “You, too, okay? We don’t want anything to happen to you either.”

“You have my word. I’m old enough that I’ve developed the habit of living, and I’m too set in my ways to give it up now,” Gertrude said with dry humor. “I’ll be looking for your report. Let me know when you’ve arrived in Messina.”

She hung up without further pleasantries.

Tim set down his phone and reached for his laptop, smiling over at Gerry. “We’re good to go. She’s already made all the arrangements for us. We leave tomorrow night.”

Gerry nodded. “What was that about dancing?”

“The Unknowing. Another name for it is the Dance. She didn’t tell you that?”

“Never came up, I guess. So yeah, I guess we’re stopping by the Los Angeles Ballet tomorrow?”

“And the opera, I think, if we can get both in. I just want to see.” Tim pulled up his email to see the tickets waiting for them. “Meanwhile, let me get this report to her, and then we can get some sleep. I think we’re going to need it.”

#ollie writes fanfic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #And If Thou Wilt Forget #tim stoker #gerard keay #gertrude robinson #circus mention #clown mention #creepy dolls #loss of a sibling #implied possible misuse of Beholding powers

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