#probably half of it would go to the deleted scenes file

[inakanotori]

[sugdenlovesdingle]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers! Spread the self-love 💞

Ok this is super hard because I feel like I always mention the same fics for this kind of thing so I'm going to try limit myself to the past year.

Date night (buck/tommy) Bobby and Athena spot Buck and Tommy out on a date together. A little outsider POV-ish that I wrote in an hour and my first time really writing bucktommy AND bathena. I just really want Buck's pseudo parents to "officially" give Tommy their stamp of approval. I know we've already had the scene of Bobby approving, but I want Athena too - though judging by Angela smiling in that zoom interview when Oliver was talking about Buck's relationship with Tommy, we might just get it.

Buck's bisexual speedrun (buck/tommy) taking it slow? we don't know her. Buck and Tommy both going from 0 to 60 in their relationship in .02 seconds. The bucktommy brainrot is real, people. This was based on a post (or ask i don't remember) I saw in the tag where someone said the way things were going with them, Buck would probably show up to work one day soon and be like "Oh yeah Tommy and I got married in Vegas, my name is Kinard now. How was your weekend?"

Love online (tarlos) Luisa takes matters into her own hands to fix Carlos' love life. I just really liked the idea of interfering sisters - and the last line that I basically wrote the rest of the fic around.

Undercover (tarlos) A season 4 what if...? Where Carlos' big secret is him going undercover instead of his marriage to Iris. Inspired by this gifset of Rafa in some other show (I think) playing a barman. (I wanted to link it but the link on my AO3 is dead - the OP might have deleted it or something) This is a little older but I got a comment on this a few days ago asking for more. I'd kind of abandoned it/forgotten about it but it made me dig up the file on my computer and found a half finished next chapter, so I'm going to try (not making any promises) to update it in the not too distant future.

View from the taco truck (tarlos) My season 5 countdown exchange fic - TK and Carlos' relationship through the eyes of their favourite food truck vendor. The idea has been knocking around my head for ages and I finally (eventually) decided to write it... but I'm honestly not sure about it. it "sounded" better in my head (as usual). But thank you to everyone that's read it and liked it and left kudos or a comment!!

Thanks for including me ❤ I'm a little late to the party so I think all of my fic writing mutuals have done this by now. If you haven't and want to - consider this your 'tag'!

[changingplumbob]

📩 Simblr question of the day: You can answer one or both parts of this question! 1️⃣ Part one: If you make Story posts, what do you do for scenes? Do you build them yourself, do you download lots from the gallery or do you download them from someone online? 2️⃣ Part two: If you make Gameplay/Legacy posts, what do you do for a house? Do you build it yourself, download a home from the gallery or do you download them from someone online? Additionally, do you build onto that home or demolish it and rebuild the house when needed? (E.G When another child enters the picture or someone moves in) ❎ If you do none of those for either half, what do you do? Do you use someone else's save file? (WIndbrook by Folking, Willow Creek + Magnolia Promenade by Theneighborhoodsave, Silent Pines by Silentpinessave... etc)

( freely share this SQOTD around, anon or not, and use the hashtag " SQOTD " ~ 💛 )

*looks around sheepishly* I don't actually know if my normal "story" posts would be classed as story or gameplay or legacy... For sure I don't have to set anything up for the behind the scenes I capture, but I'll do my best to answer below for my ChangingPlumbobStorytime!

Look, it's me being sheepish! Terrible joke but it's been a hard week so take up your comedy problems with my vet bill!

If you make Story posts, what do you do for scenes?

I'm thinking about more if I need a specific scene. For example when Keira and Liam got detained and had to be in jail cells... I built that in a box, just like @matchalovertrait did with her set, probably because we share a brain.

When Moonwood Mill needed a sheriff station I brainstormed and eventually decided I needed to build a rec centre with the sheriff station attached because that world has few lots and I couldn't waste a whole one on a place we will only see a handful of times (I very much hope). So I looked on the gallery for builds on the specific lot and then went in, deleted most of the decor and changed it to what I needed.

Oh another sheep gif? Does it have an accompanying joke? Nope, ewe don't need one.

If you make Gameplay/Legacy posts, what do you do for a house?

A mixed bag for sure. I do not consider myself a builder, but I would like to be better, so I'm trying to challenge myself now and then.

So the Pancakes, Woods, Foster, New Goth and Nishidake Households live in renovated lots. Either these were the in game lot or a lot I pulled from the gallery. I'll keep the main shell of these ones but may change the inner walls. I'll change wallpaper/flooring to suit the sims and add furniture based on the sims favourite colours and decor styles.

The Knightstone, Chopra, Romero, Villareal and York households live on lots I built. They were all built from necessity. I needed space for collections, or chickens, or other units, or a modern mansion or an Italian style build from my mind.

Another gif! Don't be a-lamb-ed!

Additionally, do you build onto that home or demolish it and rebuild the house when needed?

As you may have guessed from the above answers, I renovate. However some of the homes I built I have built with space for kids etc. I've found if I add on to the house as I go by extending things it rarely looks nice. So if I needed more rooms than I have I would consider adding a floor, doing a pull down rebuild or shifting to a new lot.

[flowerslut]

43 & 62 for the fanfic ask?

Is there a trope or idea that you’d really like to write but haven’t yet?

tropes? I mean, not really. although now that I realize how much I love a "we get married and THEN fall in love" story that could be one I try to write someday. idea? absolutely. I have tons. fanfic AND ofic. unfortunately, I don't let ideas fester in my brain for too long or I end up with far too many WIPs. the big ones on the agenda are, in order:

the cotn novella (outline 2/3rd done)

cotn 3 — 'friends with the fire' (about 1/3rd is outlined but the whole plan is in the ole' noggin')

finishing edge of it all is a pretty big priority for next year

one fell swoop will probably get the serial numbers filed off before I finish it. and may never end up on ao3 tbh. so uh, there's an update/some tea on that one 👀

the 3rd and final installment of the 'suddenly human' fic series that I accidentally started

In [insert fic], is there a deleted scene/idea you wish you could have included?  Why did it get cut?

you didn't leave a specific fic here but i'm choosing roots since it's the one that's freshest in the brain. but yes!! the 'maria slut-shames jasper' scene snippet! (putting it under a read more in case anyone out there is still planning on reading roots lmfao)

in the scene where alice and the cullens are watching maria lose her shit on jasper after she arrives there was supposed to be a part of the chapter where she turns to rant at someone else, and when jasper chimes in (she is not talking to him at the moment) she, without looking at him, is like "I'm not going to take advice from someone whose had their dick in half the household" and then she moves on. it was going to be a line just jammed in there (pun half-way intended) to call attention to their (maria/jasper's) past while also calling out how he and peter have absolutely fucked before. it was supposed to be a funny line in the middle of her ranting that no one would react to except for a confused emmett who would be making comments in the background like "wait a second" and "is no one else going to say anything about that" and "what the fuck. what the fuck." but I couldn't find a good place to put it and humor didn't seem appropriate yet (outside of maria's general delightful bitchiness). I tried to move it to a couple other chapters but again: it wasn't fitting in with the mood of the chapters/story, so unfortunately the peter/jasper stuff had to be cut 😔

send me fanfiction writing asks! ♡

[bizarrelittlemew]

IDA do you have any advice or pointers for gif-making? yours are always so high quality with such great colors! i just started trying to make gifs and i feel like I'm constantly struggling with the export settings trying to make it look decent without being a gigantic file 😭

hiii and thank you so much 💗💗💗

I'm not really sure what to say since I've mostly learned by trial and error, so I guess the biggest piece of advice would be practice!!

I'm sure there are loads of gif tutorials out there and I may make my own one day but here are some tips I can give related to quality (I use Photoshop so these are probably specific to that):

The higher quality video you have to begin with, the easier it will be to make the gifs look great. I go for 1080p or higher (if possible)

When you import video frames to layers, be aware of duplicate frames as they will make the gif look choppy, it's a framerate issue - I use a very simple video editing software to cut out the scenes I want to gif, but if you have a more advanced one, you should be able to adjust the framerate so PS won't create duplicate frames. idk I'm not an expert on this exact thing I just delete the duplicates manually

For tumblr posts, the full width is 540px, half is 268px, go for these to avoid tumblr compressing the gifs

I usually set the frame time delay between 0.06-0.09 seconds since always prefer them a bit slower, which allows for seeing more detail. I check the speed by going into File -> Export -> Save for Web (Legacy) and clicking the Preview, because just playing the gif in PS will usually have lag

After wrangling frames, cropping and resizing etc., I convert to video timeline and convert all the frames to one Smart Object before sharpening and coloring. I use Smart Sharpen and Gaussian Blur filters with different settings, making copies of the smart layer and playing around with the opacity settings (I have this process recorded/automated as an action, but often have to adjust afterwards based on the clip). There are many different ways to do this and probably some tutorials too.

As for coloring, I don't use any automated processes, but just play around with adjustment and color fill layers. A gif with my usual sharpening and relatively simple coloring may have layers looking like this:

I think this is where the practice mostly comes in, because you'll discover new things with every gif you make. it's also the most fun part for me :) again, there are a lot of tutorials out there, and some scenes require more adjustments than others (especially dark scenes). really, Selective Color and Curves may be the most important adjustment layers (to me at least lmao)

As for file size, these are my usual export settings:

reducing the number of colors will always reduce the file size, but I'd usually rather trim the length (or split it into two gifs) or the image size (cropping a bit more off the height). Going for 40-80 frames is usually reasonable, and you can do more for very static gifs or smaller image sizes!

I hope some of this is useful, good luck and happy giffing 💗💗💗

[galactic-pirates]

Even More Fic Writing Asks: (fic of your choice) 5, 25, 39. :)

Thank you!

Bit confused though... there is no number 39? I'm guessing because of sequential numbers you maybe meant either 29 or 30. I'm going to go with 30 :)

Anyway you followed me from the Rumbelle days so let me go back in time and pick a Rumbelle fic. Lemme see. Erm, how to choose? Oh! In my last ask I referenced Between Two Fires so might as well go for that otherwise it's rolling a dice time.

5) Did you outline the fic? I never delete anything so I went to check my files. I am a planner but not always for fanfic. Sometimes if it's short enough, then the plan is in my head.

For Between Two Fires I have a rather cool sounding summary. Seriously it's got half the best lines of the fic in it. There must have been some heavy inspiration that day like brain was on fire haha. It's not a scene by scene outline but it covers the main points, and the fic was quite short anyway.

25) Share your favorite line Ok it was maybe not such a good idea to select this fic because this question. Argh!! So, so many. I know I probably shouldn't say that because it's egotistical but man I do love so many lines in this fic. It just hits the spot. Like I could literally quote half the fic but as I have to choose, I'm going to go with the opening line:

“You’re supposed to be dead.” “I’m supposed to be a lot of things.”

30) Would you ever return to the story’s universe and write more? No but also yes. I will never return to it in it's fanfic Rumbelle form. But I have said a few times that I intend to take the premise and include it in an original novel series one day. Unfortunately 'one day' is kinda the operative word there because so many ideas, and writing takes so long! I rebooted my portal fantasy series starting Day Three of January. I've written and edited Book One (almost 100k) and I've planned and started drafting Book Two (got to around idk the 15% mark) but it's JULY - that's into the second half of the year. There are 6 books in this series so odds are not good that I can get to this idea before 2026 (which is so not a real year) and that's if everything goes according to plan (which it inevitably won't).

I do love it though. It will happen one day.

[nachosncheeze]

Sending lots of asks today, but I was curious:

I don't think you've written XF fic (which is my exclusive fic wheelhouse, usually), but if you WERE to write XF fic, what would you focus on? Friendship, RST, UST, casefile, MOTW, in-between scenes, or just a drabbles (LOVE me a good drabble.)

Hah! Well, I guess now is as good a time as any; you've outed me! Or, I'm outing myself, since you asked. I actually have written some X Files, but I've never posted any of it. I got back into writing fiction fairly recently, being wildly inspired during lockdown by a tv show called Blindspot (which my original blog @nachosncheeze is based around - I later made @nachosncheezies for other fandoms). I was encouraged by a writer I really respect, and recklessly gave it a go.

I started dabbling with XF a few months ago, when I found myself getting lost in the details on a couple of my Blindspot WIPs. XF has characters I can connect with, but I'm not too much in their heads, if that makes sense. Playing with the Spooky Squad is giving me some practice (especially with dialogue, which I've felt weak at - the ways they talk to each other [and the ways they don't] are SO interesting) and a bit of distance from my other WIPs. The original goal was just to be able to come back to those other ones fresh, but I'm finding I'm enjoying it now, too!

To answer the hypotheticals I suppose it's easiest to look at what I've written in the past. In general, I'm a sucker for angst, I do introspective sorts of character things a lot, and so far everything has been canon-compliant fill-in-the-blanks/extra scenes. At this point AUs, casefic, etc feel a bit too ambitious for me. I've done some ship work but no smut, so not much you could call UST/RST. I think the lion's share of it has been one-shots around siblings and different iterations of [found] family.

When it comes to XF, anything I have/can imagine doing probably fits a similar pattern. My first exercise was an extra Scully/Bill scene for the Reduxes. I wrote it before I knew there was a deleted scene for Memento Mori and I was delighted to find some overlap because it kinda felt like I must be on the right track. 😆 Mostly, I've been playing pretty extensively with season 8. It hits the angst button pretty hard, moved fast enough to leave lots of space for in-betweens, and the second half has some useful places to practice fluff while still indulging my usual angsty "traumatize those suckers!" shenanigans. My house is currently watching 8 too, and I've been challenging myself to try to do a 150-word drabble from Doggett's perspective for each episode. That man is just so earthy and reliable. 💕 Soooo yeah, I suppose if I were to write XF, it would be something like... *gestures broadly*... that. ;D

Huh. Now that I'm chatting about it I guess I actually have a lot. Maybe I'll actually post something sometime. 😂

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 7/25/2023

Well...I'm kind of in the same state I was last week, which is to say, I have not done much in the way of art or writing. Lots happened last week! The frogs arrived! My son and I built a Corsi-Rosenthal box! I celebrated hitting 1500 followers by posting a bunch of deleted scene from my old fanfics!

Anyway, I feel like I am having a small amount of time freeing up, so I am trying to get back into my "write something every day, even if it's just a little" thing. I started yesterday, and wrote 508 words, which is...my writing for the entire week.

Since I haven't talked about it in a few weeks and someone asked today, I am back to working on Ductwork, the next part of the Heart is a Muscle. My goal for the summer is to be +20k words on it from where I started. It was at 7700 words in May, and the main document is at 17,638, which does contain a small amount of trash, but let's ignore that for now, and say I am currently at a net of 9,938. I also started a secondary document for flashbacks, which is at 508. I'm not entirely sure at this point whether or not all the flashbacks will make it into the main fic, but I wanted to write them, and it's often helpful to write stuff that happened so that I know. Odds are, I will probably cram them all in, because I am very bad at throwing out writing, but we'll see. I am going to need to re-write the Renji Breaks an Arm story to better fit into the narrative. I've been putting it off, but I feel like maybe I'm up to it. It's about 3500 words, and it feels a little cheap to count that as new writing, but on the other hand, rewrites are Hell, so maybe I do deserve credit for it. I am sort of planning that the first half of the fanfic is going to switch off between Inuzuri flashbacks and current time. I'm not sure how well that's going to work, which is probably why I've been putting it off, but maybe it's time to give it a shot. How many interwoven hurt/comfort stories can I fit into one fanfic? I am attempting three. I wouldn't have to do this if Soul Society had therapy, but instead what it has is Byakuya, so here we are.

When I was digging through my deleted scenes, I found at least two short stories that were, like, 90% complete? I pulled them out and stuck them in new files in my WIP folder, and I might try to finish them if I get desperate to Post. It's tempting to do that now, but I really do want to make some progress on The Monster. Alsoooooo I wrote, like two paragraphs of an adult fanfic that I would like to work on, in theory, but I just have too much else going on.

I can't believe it's Tuesday already. I am tired. Anyway, I am trying hard to have a productive week, let's see how it goes.

[clearwillow]

Hi! 😊 For the ask game: 🍓🥤❄️🌸

Hi @briefphilosophernight!

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

Oh god it was probably back in high school, I think? Somewhere around 2002-2003 cause I hadn't graduated, but I was reading a lot of fic at the time and thought "I don't see why I can't try". The very first one I ever wrote (it was LotR) was based around part of a dream I had, and I turned it into a oneshot (something I fail to do anymore). There was always plans for a second oneshot to follow it but the inspiration didn't hang around.

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

There's this Gundam Wing fic that I keep thinking about doing a reread of. (I know it's not IY but I'm so behind on IY reading I'm scared half my tbr list is deleted...)

Deprogramming by Scarlet Eve (FFN)

[Complete] Tucked away in old files, Heero discovers something about himself that Dr. J tried to hide, but made Heero who he was during the wars. But once the secret is discovered, already volatile world relations become worse, putting strain on the ESUN and those involved. Heero must stop it before the peace and structure Relena worked to create comes crumbling down.

There's one particular scene with Heero by himself that sticks out the most to me. It's kinda dark if you really think about it, but it works so well for his character. And I've never been for or against Trowa but he had me raging at my kindle when I first read it. Like I get why he was making those choices, but dude.

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

You know...I don't know? I guess the first one that comes to mind would be the enemies to lovers plot in Break Me, because InuKag are barely going to be civil when they first meet. They've both got a lot to work through, and when things start to turn it's going to be very satisfying...until it isn't. As for who would write it best, I have no idea, cause there's always something about it someone else would change. Inuyasha would be human (and that's frowned upon apparently), he wouldn't be the shy boy like in canon but a cockly billionaire that wears women on his arm like watches. Kagome's not much better; she's really gonna be a bitch, but she's got good reason. Money has made her spoiled but she's dealing with a lot of hurt. This was a fic that was supposed to have been cowritten but now it basically sits in my wips folder until waves of the mood to add to it strike me. So I don't know of who would write it best that's not the person I'd have been writing it with.

🌸 ⇢ do you have any pets? if you do, post some pictures of them

I answered this one here with the pics of Gidgit and Louie 💜

[glassbirdfeather]

Baldur's Gate 3 half-baked missing ending content

I'm not going to post a direct link here because tumblr likes to kill posts with them.

Below is a screenshot of a Larian forum post, which itself was copied from a reddit post that was unfortunately deleted before I could screenshot it; probably because it linked to a google drive document containing decompiled game content, but I personally reviewed one of the files in that drive that they are referring to and can verify it contains what is claimed below.

There is a single spoiler for Karlach's cut ending in the following text.

<ID: A larian forum post by Madguise titled "To those disappointed in the endings... [Reddit post]"

I'll be copying and pasting since this is very much important; I think there is good reason to assume the situation will be fixed in the (near) future. If you look in the game files (an extract of the decompiled dialogue files can be found here) you can find; [I have removed the google drive link here, sorry]

END_GameFinale_CompanionFates Withers has gathered the companions together one final time as a reunion of sorts 6 months later. They each exposit their various activities. Minthara is not here because she is only present if she is partnered with the player (she is still a speaker here but can change). END_GameFinale_WithersGathersCompanions 6 months later after saving Baldur's Gate, Withers gathers the companions and player around a campfire to invite them to recollect what they've been doing. END_GodsAndMonsters_WithersChronicles Scene that plays after END_GodsAndMonsters_WithersMeeting in which Withers settles the accounts of what happened to all the characters after the events of the game ended.

These files have tons of variations in them and are overly long so I will not copy everything that's in them here, but in my opinion it can be assumed that these are the "17000 endings" Larian talked about just before release. Maybe the game was shipped with everything leading up to the ending finished so they could get it out the door and had time to add all of this stuff later, but nevertheless I feel people should know that these files exist and that there is already a major framework for an epilogue, ending slides etc.

If you want to take a look yourself, go to the link above. There is so much in there that it's hard to cover everything at once, but my personal favourites so far are [spoiler]Karlach having her ending slides take place in the City of the Dead if she dies at the end while playing as her and Withers repeating the question you asked him at the beginning back to you at the end.[/spoiler] It's such a shame this is not in the game already.

This makes me glad that there is a ending somewhere in the games files, but it also makes me upset that they decided to launch their game without an ending. Maybe they did'nt think the game would garner a lot of attention, but I hope they will patch everything in real sooner rather than later.

End ID>

[onepoly]

The 25th Year | Week 1 | The Beginning

Hi, I'm Bradley! I'm a solo developer working on an open world RPG called The 25th Year.

Every week from now until I release the game, I'll be posting an update blog where I share the progress I've made. This is the first time I've ever done anything like this, so I’m sorry if it sucks.

Most of this week was spent moving to Godot from Unity and figuring out how I'd make this game work in this new engine, so unfortunately there's not a lot of visual material for me to show off.

Instead I'm going to talk a bit about some technical stuff. Specifically, I’m going to talk about the three most important things an open world game needs:

World streaming

Terrain

HLOD

First off, streaming. For those unaware, world streaming is a technique used by all open world games (and a few linear ones) to determine what stuff should and shouldn't be loaded.

There are a few different ways to go about this, I've chosen to use the grid-based cell system. (similar to what Bethesda uses)

For this, we simply split the world into a big grid of cells and only load the ones closest to the player.

This system should be fairly easy to implement, however, I haven’t started working on it yet. Why? Well, there’s a problem. You see, I want mod support. And for that, I need to support stuff like adding, editing, and removing stuff from cells.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem too hard. To add new stuff, I could just load any additions the mods make after the ‘base’ cell. For editing… well, I’m not exactly sure how I’d do that, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult. Deleting, though? That’s where I’m a bit stumped.

So far, I’ve come up with three possible solutions:

1. Load the map normally, then delete stuff.

Problem: Loading and spawning an object just to delete it is dumb and inefficient.

2. Copy the base game’s map files, apply the edits, then load the copy.

Problem: This one also feels a bit inefficient, because it’d be using more disk space than necessary.

3. Ignore Godot’s built in scene system, and create my own.

Problem: That’d be a lot of work.

I’m probably going to go with option 2 because I think it’ll require the least amount of time to implement. Though, I won’t be too happy about wasting the extra disk space.

OK, that’s enough about streaming, let’s talk about terrain!

Unlike streaming, I actually have something kinda presentable, so here it is!

Waow.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Bradley, it’s all one color! Where’s the grass? The dirt? The sand?????” Well, I technically already have a system for coloring the terrain… but it looks like shit right now, so you’ll have to wait for next week’s blog to witness the incredible magic of colors.

As you might’ve noticed, I’m going with a heightmap system. Basically, it’s fast and easy to implement, but I can’t easily do things like caves and overhangs. I’m fine with this though, as the alternative would be to implement a voxel terrain system, which would take way longer, and would probably run way worse.

Alright, onto the last system, HLOD!

You’re probably wondering what those funny letters stand for. Guess.

WRONG! It stands for Hierarchical Level of Detail.

Basically, you take all of the models in an area, reduce their quality, and combine them all into one big model. If you’ve ever played an open world game and seen something like a town or ruin in the distance, it was probably an HLOD.

Technically, Godot already includes an HLOD system, but I can’t use it for this game. It seems like you can’t just load the HLOD on its own, so I need to come up with my own system. I’ve got an idea cooking in my head, but I want to try it first before I reveal it.

Alright, that’s the end of the first blog!

I actually wanted to include more detail in this post, but I’ve had to rewrite half of this fucking thing 6 times now thanks to Tumblr’s garbage undo system. This was actually meant to come out yesterday, but I felt was going to punch a hole through my fucking monitor, so I delayed it.

In the future, all new posts will come out Saturday, at whenever-I-feel-like-writing-it PM! Like I said at the start of this blog, this is my first time ever doing anything like this, so I hope you liked it, and I’m sorry if it sucked!

[mybrainproblems]

aaaand... adding even more to this post since some of it is a follow-up on the above, I want to keep it on the same post.

so after making the above post, @happilyfeatherafter reminded me that some of the times i remembered misha talking about returning to set were from a livestream and community texts, not from twitter.

in the livestream with michael sheen from 30 july 2020, he talks about taking cas' coat from set bc he wasn't sure if they'd be going back (gif set here) [disclaimer that i've only skipped around through that livestream and not watched it start to finish in its entirety.]

also, the 15x20 script was way sketchier than i remembered and @lets-steal-an-archive made a post about it back when it was being auctioned about why they wouldn't be bidding on it that goes into more detail. and yeah. with the additional context (and some x files script pics they sent for comparison), that script is super sketchy. i'm not about to waste the printer ink to sit down with a copy and do a read-along with an 11th watch of the finale, but it doesn't inspire confidence no matter how close it is to the final product.

also, the seller had the benefit of listing it post-finale airing but two months prior to the s15 DVD releasing with deleted scenes so... idk. this is super outside my wheelhouse so i won't spec further. the script is just really sketchily sourced and iirc the bidder got a refund since the seller then offered PDF scan versions for very cheap to others who asked... none of which inspires confidence.

further shenanigans from the past few days' life ruining research! not calling any of this a smoking gun, but based on the tumblr source time stamps; it looks like misha sent out the below pics as community texts post-finale but the pics themselves were taken during 15x18 filming - if anyone has the actual time stamps i'd love to know! even after half a day of searching, i couldn't find versions with a time stamp on them. in both cases, they seem to indicate that he knew this was his last day or last episode filming for the show. (he's also mentioned that they threw him a good bye party after 15x18 and idk why you'd do that if you intended for the actor to come back.)

(left pic source) (middle & right pic source)

whenever misha has talked about being in the finale, it's been in reference to an "original" pre-COVID version of the script where he would be jimmy novak and not cas. but given that 15x18 wrapped before shutdown, my guess is that it had already been settled that he wouldn't be in the finale. so yes this would have been a "pre-COVID" script, but probably not the prod draft script from march 2020.

(and having spoken with ppl who were already in the fandom when s15 started airing/looking at posts from fall 2020/pre-15x18... a good chunk of ppl didn't expect misha to be in the last two eps when it started airing again)

i would also like to note that when talking about "pre-COVID" scripts from s15... that could be anywhere from may/june 2019 to march 2020 when set shut down, which @swordofsun and I went back and forth on a bit discussing here wrt revisions of 15x20.

and i'm loathe to bring it up without a source, but i know there was something floating around about misha(?) saying in a m&g at the las vegas con in march 2020 that the finale script was still going through a lot of revisions. so at that point, a kinda short window before they returned to set to finish 15x19 and 15x20. iirc there was a tweet about it that has since been deleted but i tend to take m&g stuff with a grain of salt.

point being - the 15x20 script is way sketchier than i remembered and there's more actual evidence that misha wasn't intended to be in the finale from before set shut down (and the "misha filmed but was cut" conspiracy continues to be my personal bugbear)

hello, i'm finales georg...

i don't want to further clutter up the notes on this post while responding to the tags below but the persistence of the "finale is short/scenes are missing/extra ad break” conspiracies drives me absolutely bananas when i've watched the finale ten times and have posted about this A LOT trying to clear things up. (disclaimer that yes, i'm a goddamn destiel shipper but i care about Facts above all.)

ok but this is weird because i'd swear the episode was shorter (11 missing scenes!) but okay. maybe we all mandela effected ourselves into #beleving that. because it felt shorter. but i will die on the hill that it had another ad break. i understand this person has the thing #recorded with ads so i am thinking maybe different ad breaks in different idk time zones??? #because the finale did air an hour earlier in canada so maybe idk i am reaching here but maybe different states or whatever had different #ad breaks??? as for the last minute changes - wasn't the cover band asked for permission to use their version of carry on like a week before #the thing aired??? so even if the episode was 42 minutes and had no additional ad break - which i am side eying but lets say all was normal #i will always say they were changing thing until the absolute last minute (carry on my wayward son X 2 #the crew on the bridge which is not only giant 4th wall breaking but also wow they really got all those people in one place in times of #covid???) #anyway. tinfoil hat stays on sorry guys :/ (via @officialmisha)

short and snarky: there are plenty of real and sourced examples of network homophobia and scripted/directed destiel scenes being cut to point to. we don’t need to make this stuff up just bc the finale wasn’t what we wanted. so it’s not the mandela effect — it’s ppl repeating a conspiracy/rumor bc it supports their narrative and it’s easier and more fun to repeat something that supports a narrative they already believe (misha or something destiel was cut) vs the boring act of fact checking.

longer circumspect answer with links bc like many ppl i am in my debunking era and i rewatched "roblox_oof" last night.

like i said. i've watched the finale ten times. i’ve gone over the episode with a fine toothed comb and posted a detailed breakdown of timing marks on my blog. it’s actually extremely obvious where the ad breaks are once you know roughly where to look for them (they have a longer fade to black instead of a quick cut scene change). there’s no room for extra ad breaks and i think this conspiracy/rumor persists in part bc the episode feels so sparse in terms of cast and the fact that the episode’s momentum hits a barn post (and rebar) less than 20min into an hour-long programming block.

also i’m begging ppl to actually look at that timing mark post. it’s very straightforward and i spent a lot of time on it. i don’t care if ppl plagiarize it at this point if it means this conspiracy stops. i've got almost every second accounted for.

the "eleven missing scenes" that you're thinking of are probably from the finale script of questionable authenticity that @spnscripthunt acquired back in 2021 which can be found here. it's dated as the “final draft” from 11 sep 2020 and filming on 15x20 wrapped on 10 sep 2020. as noted at the bottom of this superwiki page "[the] script came from someone claiming to have been the person who did the closed captions for the show in Russia. There are some indications that it possibly may not be authentic, but this has not been confirmed."

if we go with the possibility that this was a transcript meant for subtitles, the "omitted" scenes were probably written but never filmed since it's the "final draft" and not a color revision (blue, green, yellow, etc). unfortunately, i’ve lost track of where i read it and a preliminary duckduckgo search isn’t bringing it up bc there's a program for script writing called final draft, but iirc the “final draft” version of a script is a transcript of what was filmed (e.g. there are parts of that 15x20 script that ended up being deleted scenes on the DVD). spnscripthunt also has an example of a confirmed final draft for 09x02 (funnily enough, also a dabb-penned ep). if anyone can confirm with a source that i have the purpose of the “final draft” version designation wrong, please let me know! i love being proven wrong with Facts.

i do want to acknowledge that the two “final drafts” do look different from each other and the 15x20 one doesn't look like a “real” final draft script since it lacks the revision/versioning dates that a script would normally have on the cover page. it could be that it was intended for subtitles; there's the chance it's been re-typed to anonymize it if there was anything indicating who the "owner" was, tho that seems a wee bit cloak and dagger to me. and again: it's considered of questionable authenticity. there are some things that don't quite line up but oh dear god i don't want to get even further out into the weeds than i already am.

i won't disagree that it's weird as hell that neoni only got asked about using their cover seven days prior to the episode airing (tiktok here). my personal theory is that they were hoping to get a more expensive song (maybe a zepp song, idk) and didn't manage to secure the rights in the end. again: this is pure conjecture on my part! but i could absolutely see someone working on the show hearing neoni’s cover and liking it and then maybe they were using it as a placeholder until it got down to the wire and they had to make a call/send the ep to networks. because yes, it is baffling they played a song and then a cover of it with only a 40 second break between. (i do actually really like the neoni cover! the placement is just weird and i think it could have worked if they had the kansas version at the beginning and closed with neoni's full cover.)

as to the 4th wall break COVID stuff: robert singer talked with variety magazine about filming the last two episodes and the logistics of filming during a pandemic. whether they should have been filming during a pandemic is a separate discussion but their use of office vs set pods, strict quarantining and daily testing meant that they had zero positive tests in the month they were filming (18 aug to 10 sep). so given all that, i personally don’t think it’s totally out of pocket to have everyone standing outdoors on a bridge for maybe an hour to get a drone shot of them together. (i won’t get into incubation periods and viral load, but if everyone tested negative that day and every day for a month prior, it was a fairly low risk scene to film outdoors and for all we know everyone was masked until the last possible second. there were plenty of outdoor masked protests in 2020 that weren't superspreader events.)

and before anyone brings up “but misha was in vancouver!” i know someone who looked into it and they said no dice, nothing matched up between the backgrounds in those pics and places in vancouver. his statements about “us” going back to set over the summer were pretty generic in hindsight and “we”/"us" could be him or the spn crew generally. unfortunately i’m not able to find those tweets but the use of “we” was likely so as not to give away he wouldn’t be returning to set. (bc we were absolutely casbaited!) and bc it comes up a lot: the "onion field pic" was from when they were filming 15x17 and was not taken while filming 15x19 and 15x20.

besides, it would be ridiculous to go through the financial and logistical headaches of bringing someone into the country to film during a pandemic, only to cut their scenes in the end! honestly, the script is pretty tight when the scenes are given so much breathing room! the only thing i could see being further cut down is The Monologue and even then, i don’t think there was any intent to cut it down given it was filmed in fairly long takes.

i’ve said it many times before, but i believe the finale was fucked long before they returned to set. walker got the green light in sep 2019 and it was being marketed heavily as a “follow on” show to spn given jared’s involvement. the demo they were courting for walker has little to no overlap with the demo for destiel fans — why would they want a finale that catered to a demo they weren't interested in courting? we just went through a historic double strike that exposed so much of the rot of business interests overriding creative vision. this isn't completely unfounded conjecture.

i will not apologize for the length of this bc i wanted to be thorough, but i do want to give context that i think the reason these conspiracies and rumors grind my gears so much is because anyone can fact check all of this. the truth is out there and absolutely none of it is that hard to find. the most time consuming/difficult part of this was finding someone who had a DVR’d copy of the finale from when it aired live and they actually found me themselves after i’d been low key asking around for a year!

and like. i get it. conspiracies are fun. but there are so many sourced instances of network homophobia and destiel being cut that it's like. why is this something folks are hanging onto? the cw is notorious for having upper level meddling with finales bc there's a follow-on show they want to shuffle fans along to and spn is no exception.

[estellamiraiauthor]

So, can someone help me figure out what I did wrong here? (Or not… I think it’ll make me feel better just to vent even if no one interacts but feel free to comment if you see something I could’ve done differently.)

So I’ve been reaching out to a couple of artists lately about commissions. Most have been great, and I’ve got one commission underway already and am considering a couple of others. But this one artist like… rejected me as a client and I don’t know why.

As a bit of background, this artist was one who had done Phantom-related stuff before, and the VERY first question I asked was whether they would be okay with drawing characters from MY retelling. Personally, I don’t see all the different retellings and reimaginings as “competition” because I think people who are interested in one version are MORE likely, not less likely, to seek out others… but I knew it COULD be an issue and asked, and they said it was fine. So at that point, when they had a super easy out, they were apparently interested in potentially taking my commission.

So I provided my character info files, which admittedly have more information than anyone needs for any one artwork, because they’re master files that I use for ALL commissions. They include some visual references including past commissions, some written physical descriptions, and stuff that may not be important like age and place of birth and personality, which is there for reference, and if an individual artist doesn’t care about it they don’t need to read it.

I also provided a file with a description of the specific scene I wanted. I gave a short description of what I wanted drawn, and maybe a 1.5 page excerpt from my actual book. Again, this is for reference… it seemed to me that having what happened immediately before and after the specific moment I wanted drawn might help with the emotional aspects like facial expressions and body language? But again, it was there for reference; i figured too much information was better than not enough, and it was a page and a half, not an entire chapter or anything. It also had a very rough sketch of the pose and props I had in mind… I’m not good at drawing, but I’ve provided similar sketches to artists before and been told they were more helpful than nothing?

I told the artist to tell me if they needed anything more, and the response felt a little cold, but I know you can’t always tell how a person really feels about something via text, with no intonation or facial expression. They basically said: 1. There is more than one scene here, which do you want? (It was only one SCENE, in a writing sense, but I guess they probably meant more than one pose), 2. Give me a pose reference, tell me what they LOOK like not just what they’re saying, 3. Tell me exactly what they’re wearing.

So I went back to the file and highlighted the specific part (about a paragraph) I wanted drawn and added a more specific note that the rest of the scene was provided for context and reference. I deleted an image I’d provided as an example of the kind of “vibe” I wanted but that was NOT the exact same physical pose. I told the artist that my sketch had been intended as a pose reference, but that I would try to find a photograph or existing art instead. I was trying very hard to find something but had not found it yet. As for clothing, I’m actually not super picky and would be 100% fine with the artist just making something up based on the previous art and references in my character files but since they asked me to choose, i was planning on finding some clothing references. I hadn’t gotten to it yet because i was stuck on the pose.

In other words, the file wasn’t ready yet. I hadn’t found all of the additional resources they had asked for, so I HADNT CONTACTED THE ARTIST ASKING THEM TO CHECK THE FILE AGAIN. It’s a Google Doc so they absolutely COULD go back and see the changes in real time, but I assumed they either wouldn’t check the file at all or would assume it was still in progress until I told them I’d updated it.

But then I got a DM this morning that said they would have to charge me FOUR TIMES their typical price for two characters because it was “full illustration” rather than a portrait. Now, I was expecting it to maybe be a LITTLE more because I’d asked for a couple of props. And it was a request for a specific scene, not just two characters looking straight at the “camera”. But four times the price on their commission sheet felt a little like they were trying to discourage me from actually commissioning them.

Now, I used to do freelance editing. I know all about the asshole surcharge…. But I don’t think anything I’d done up to that point was assholey? Maybe I included too much written information and not enough visual information but I was actively working on fixing that, and I wasn’t finished looking for everything they’d requested, which I explained. I asked if the higher price covered things like creating a pose based on the written description or if they still wanted me to keep looking for a visual reference, and how long it would take to complete if I agreed to the price…

And they responded with “I don’t know if it’s a language or cultural thing about communication” and I… JUST DONT KNOW? Like, I told them I was located in Japan so they’d know what I meant when I said “tonight” or “tomorrow,” but… English is my first language. I lived in the US until I was 19. Did they mean THEMSELVES? That THEY had a language issue? Did they mean that quoting me four times the listed price was supposed to mean “hell no” and that I should’ve understood that? Or did they just assume that because I live in Japan there would be a “language issue”??? I just don’t know.

Because again, former freelancer here, and there are other ways to reject a client you just don’t like. “I’m sorry, but this just doesn’t look like a good match for my skills.” “Actually, I just got offered another major job that’s going to keep me occupied for the next few months.” Etc?

So at that point I basically said “You really seem like you don’t want to do this so I’m going to pass at this point.” And they replied with “As a client I’m going to pass” (which kind of makes me think maybe it WAS a language issue on their part??? It was just such a weird way to say it, and like I HAD JUST SAID NO. I had already ended the potential working relationship, they didn’t need to pass too?)

It just… feels like they took one look at my characters and specific scene request and from that point just really didn’t want to do it, and it’s really hard not to take that personally. I actually kind of HOPE I committed some horrible faux pas that I’m just not seeing but I HAVE NO IDEA.

[spookyfbi]

what did cody said about klave?

Omg Anon okay so, twitter user umbrellaacademy invited Cody to do a twitter space with them which they did yesterday (8PM Friday EST) and Cody stayed for OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS answering fan questions and saying SO MANY things about Dave and Klave and I am still so overwhelmed. I have recorded it and I’ve sent the video to the host and they’ve said they’ll release it soon (although the file is massive so I suspect they’ll have a bit of trouble wrangling it like I did so it might take longer). In the meantime, some highlights under the cut:

- Dave’s favourite thing about Klaus is his openness. He’s charismatic because he’s unafraid to be himself. Cody also finds it endearing that Klaus marches to the beat of his own drum.

- He likes the idea that the briefcase brought Klaus to Dave because of fate/destiny. Dave is the missing piece of Klaus, he fills a void in Klaus. He’s as interested as we are to find out if the timeline loops back in season 3

- Dave is soft spoken. There are qualities of Dave that have grounded and soothed Klaus but also Klaus has pulled Dave out of his shell. Klaus’ openness was like an invitation to Dave to open up and be goofy and strange, and this was a vibe Cody got from Robert as well in the bar scene, but then the dynamic shifted later and he felt that Dave was the one who was opening up first.

- Dave would go with Klaus to be with his family. He would want Klaus to take the reigns and would trust Klaus re- what kind of life they could have together post Vietnam. Although there would be no hesitation from Dave about his love for Klaus, there might be hesitation about planning a life together because of the time period they were in. There’s a sense of peace and wanting to settle from Klaus. Cody just basically being solidly on the Klaus bringing Dave back to 2019 to meet his family train.

-  There is a sensitivity and self awareness to Dave, Cody thinks he accepted his sexuality but just was careful about advertising it because of the time period. He also says that his Dave in season 1 didn’t have the experience we saw in season 2 with his uncle and that might have made him more open (I am staring directly at my reverse George McFly theory).

- Dave’s love for Klaus is unconditional, he loves him for exactly who he is. Dave’s unconditional love is a foil for the conditional love Klaus gets from his family. Klaus doesn’t really know what love is and then he gets fired this laser beam of love from Dave.

- Cody that been in a play where his character was in a relationship with a guy but he thinks Rob hadn’t done that before. The director set the tone that the kiss scene was an intimate and tender scene. He feels like there was a reassurance from Dave to Klaus in that moment.

- Dave was holding 4 shot glasses in the scene where he’s holding them with both hands. 

- Cody describing Dave in 4 words - kind, sensitive, empathetic, soft. Dave would describe Klaus as free spirited, open, unfiltered, unexpected (he also put forward chaotic but didn’t stick with it and replaced it with unexpected).

- Dave’s first thought when he woke up and saw Klaus was “Is this a dream... We’re not sleeping much so this could be a dream, I wouldn’t put it past my brain” Also “The dream coming to reality but maybe not necessarily looking like what he thought.”

- He thinks Klaus probably took the dogtags off Dave after he died as a way to remember him rather than them exchanging them

- He wants Klaus and Dave’s storyline to end with love prevailing. He also floats the idea of Dave taking a dark turn and Klaus has to be the redemptive person to bring Dave back.

In preparation for playing Dave he watched the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary series on Netflix and also looked up online about the Vietnam war. He also listened to music he thought Dave would be into from 1965-1968: He mentions Motown and Stones (Cody said he himself likes Motown)

- Cody’s favourite thing about Dave is the quality of how he loves Klaus. He describes it as pure and unconditional and simple and he talks about he thinks people need to love each other fearlessly - not just romantically but in friendships as well, especially with what’s happening now (and this sort of clarifies to me why he was talking about love over fear so passionately in the clever klaus q&a and what he meant by that)

- Cody is a fantasy nerd

- He would love to see Dave giving Klaus some agency

- He thinks that Klaus has some guilt about Dave’s death

- He would like to play a Commission agent (Commission Dave rights!!)

- Robert is very open and unassuming and funny and it was easy to have an immediate rapport with him. Cody also talked with Tom Hopper (about their mutual friend Bradley James). He also briefly met Colm and Robin and he also remembered he met Aidan (who here had a theory about a deleted scene with Aidan in the attic?)

- He doesn’t know how time works in the afterlife or how Klaus’ power works but Dave would have waited 50 years for Klaus

- Calem joined the space and they said that they hadn't interacted before but they had a bit of a chat. Calem said that his filming in season 2 was 4 days but about 1 month apart. Calem’s internet kept cutting out and then he disappeared.

- If Dave was one of the 43 children his power could be the care bear love blast and he could fire hot beams of love out of the hole in his chest. He would give Dave a more passive power to round out the more active powers the other Hargreeves have, like a healer

- The scene in the tent was filmed at the studio. The scene on the bus was shot outside. The scene in the trench was partly shot outside but some of it was shot in the studio as well (I wonder if he’s confusing that trench scene with the hallucination at the Rave though?)

- He said the scenes were beautifully lit (I beg to differ, Cody!)

- Klaus helped unlock that part of him (I think he means Dave’s sexuality) and he also says that Klaus was a very specific target to Dave’s love. Klaus seems like one in a million. When you love someone there’s something specific about them that pulls that out of you.

- Calem returns! He was in his room where the internet crapped out on him but then he went downstairs. Cody asked what it was like for Calem to come in and play an established character. Calem said he purposely didn’t talk with Cody about the character before playing him because he’d done the audition without knowing anything about the character so he didn’t want to risk doing something too different from what he’d done in the audition, but he did watch season 1. He also said he was a bit anxious about what the audience would think of him playing the character, and Cody went into acting mentor mode and said that he doesn’t think the job is about appeasing the fans but about trying to be as true as possible. He also said that Calem did a good job and he shouldn’t be hard on himself but Calem then said that he quickly got over it and he wasn’t thinking about it on set, just afterwards. Calem mentioned that he creeped Cody’s IMDB and he said that his dad was a camera operator on Lizzie Borden Chronicles this Cody guest starred in an episode of.

- Dave loves music like Cody. He mentioned Four Tops as another band and then Motown again. He thinks the bar scene shows Dave’s love of music but he wasn’t thinking about that at the time.

- Dave would be overstimulated at first if he came to the future because we’re bombarded with a lot more stimulus than in the 60s. The internet and iPhones would blow his mind. He let’s a “we’ll see” slip, which he then quickly corrects to “we would see”

- The kiss in the bar was definitely the first kiss and he thinks it happened a couple months into the tour. He thinks the feelings were mutual quite early, but that it would have taken some time to act on them and to be able to gauge if each other were really giving off the signals that they like each other.

- He’s appreciative of the fan love and he tries to make a connection with everyone he can

- Dave is an optimistic force who thinks that love will prevail so he would have wanted to do something to make it work despite the obstacles they faced

- Cody doesn’t know how close to the vest Klaus kept the stuff about his powers and the time travel etc but he did see Klaus appear so he does know there’s something strange about him. Dave trusted Klaus and even if it wasn’t explicitly talked about there was enough trust to go “wherever you go I’ll follow, wherever that leads.” When Klaus conjures Dave, Dave is excited to see him but isn’t really surprised or put off by any of the circumstances that Klaus is in.

- He thinks that Dave is more the listener of the relationship, but he could certainly see Dave telling Klaus about Dune and Klaus indulging him.

- Rob is very genuine, very unassuming, very immediately open, very funny, definitely puts you at ease, incredibly thoughtful, very considerate, good dude (wow it’s the complimenting Rob speed run! 8 in a row!)

- The aspect of Dave that Cody connects to most is his non-judgemental quality

- Dave would connect with Vanya’s softness and Luther’s moral compass (he said Diego’s moral compass in the cleverklaus q&a so not sure if he just mixed them up). He thinks Dave might be a bit too sincere for Five and Ben would appreciate being able to unload Klaus on Dave.

- He thinks Dave is not a tattoo guy but Klaus is impulsive so getting a tattoo really aligns with his personality. He thinks that Dave’s actions speak louder than words written on him

- He connects to the fractured family theme of the show on a personal level

- Dave being jewish was something he only learned about through looking at the dogtags, it wasn’t in the script or anything

- Dave might have studied Philosophy if he’d gone to college instead of joining the military, he feels like there’s a dreamer quality to Dave

- Even though Dave was pressured into joining the military, he thinks that Dave believed he was going the right thing by enlisting

- Colm is a Canadian Hall of Fame actor and Reginald is such an intense character so Cody would love to do a scene with him. He would also love to do a scene with Elliot.

- Cody remembered waiting on set to film the scene in the club and he, Rob and Tom were in an 80s hotel with a heart shaped jacuzzi (??? oh was this the set with the Handler and Agnes maybe?)

[whomst-art-thou-whomst-whomst]

Texts from the Lost Tomb part 6.1

🎶 Back on the bullshit I never got off🎶

Is this another unnecessary story arc?? With three sections??

Yes.

Wushanju Crew Chat

Wang Meng: You know, I’m someone who appreciates consistency in my day. My life is pleasant, very few issues indeed if you ignore the big ones. And yet. Yet here we are. With unresolved messes at the end of a day.

Wang Pangzi: SOMETHIN YOU NEED TO SAY MARY POPPINS

Wang Meng: We need to talk about Huo Daofu and the glittery bead curtain.

Wang Pangzi: MY FAVE TEEN WIZARD SERIES

Wu Xie: did you turn on that suggested word thingy lol

What glittery bead curtain

Wang Meng: I closed the shop at 6:00pm this evening on the dot. I locked all of the doors in and out of the shop very carefully, especially in light of recent events. The hall leading to the back office was empty. I filed the day’s paperwork, updated and sent emails, and then spent an extra hour organizing receipts and dusting. When I came back out, there were glittery iridescent bead curtains over the front entrance to the shop.

What could this mean?

Wu Xie: uh that you need to spend less time at work?

Wang Pangzi: LOOKS LIKE WE GOT ONE FOR THE DETECTIVES. THE MYSTERY OF THE BEDAZZLED THRESHOLD COMMENCES

Wu Xie: I think we can be relatively secure in thinking a glittery bead curtain isn’t a hostile threat

Wang Pangzi: SAYS YOU

I REMEMBER YE OLDE EXPLORATION TIMES HOW FAST THINGS GOT FURIOUS

BEANBAG CHAIRS SET AFLAME AND LEFT ON DOORSTEPS AS A WARNING

GLITTERBOMBS FOR DAYS

PANIC AT THE DISCO

Wang Meng: Ugh, forget it. I should have just taken them down, regardless of who they belong to.

Zhang Qiling: They are not mine.

Wang Pangzi: A BOLD STATEMENT COMING FROM OUR PRIME SUSPECT

SOMEONE QUICK GO DRAW CHALK AROUND THE DOORWAY TO MARK THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

Wang Meng: Do we know anyone who *would* sneak in and put those up? For whatever reason, legal or not? Even as a joke?

Wang Pangzi: ARE YOU SERIOUSLY ASKING WHETHER WE KNOW ANYONE WHO IS CHAOTIC, AN OUTLAW, A PRANKSTER AND/OR SNEAKS INTO PLACES

BECAUSE THAT WOULD MEAN OUR SUSPECT LIST IS LITERALLY EVERYONE WE KNOW EXCEPT FOR YOU.

Wu Xie: okay let’s think about this; for starters, I didn’t break into my own shop

Wang Meng: You would be in danger of doing some work in the process, that’s true.

Wang Pangzi: LOL

Wu Xie: ANYWAY let’s keep going. For example, Xiao Ge would only break in somewhere for a good reason. Xiao Ge, did you do this?

Zhang Qiling: No.

Wu Xie: okay who’s next

Wang Pangzi: YOU REALLY MISSED YOUR CALLING IN INTERROGATION TIANZHEN

REALLY PUT THE SCREWS TO HIM

IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE;)

Zhang Qiling: How can we be certain *you* didn’t do it?

Wang Meng: Admittedly that was my guess, too.

Wang Pangzi: WOW I SEE HOW IT IS

BLAME PANGZI AS USUAL

ANYWAY HOW DOES HUO DAOFU FIT INTO THIS

Wu Xie: Oh yeah him! Oops I got distracted

Wang Pangzi: UR ENTIRE HISTORY IN A NUTSHELL

Wu Xie: Ugh fuck off

Wang Meng what abt Huo Daofu??

Zhang Qiling: ?

Wu Xie: oh sorry xiaoge I didn’t realize you wouldn’t have spent much time around him last year

He and I go way back

Zhang Qiling: Way back where?

Babysitters Club Chat

Wang Pangzi: I CANNOT BELIEVE HE IS BUYING YOUR INNOCENT ACT

IF YOU EVER TURN TO EVIL WE ARE FUCKED

Zhang Qiling: ?

Wang Pangzi: YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO HUO DAOFU IS

YOU WERE EXTREMELY POLITE AND BORDERLINE FRIENDLY TOWARDS HIM

Zhang Qiling: I wanted him to feel welcome. I wanted to be sure he understands he has a place here. A specific place.

Wang Pangzi: FOR A SILENT GUY YOU ARE A MASTER AT SUBTLE POWER PLAYS IM ALL TINGLY

LMAO THE IDEA OF WU XIE LEAVING YOU FOR HUO DAOFU IS HILARIOUS AND ALSO NOPE

Zhang Qiling: Rationally, I understand that.

Main Chat

Wang Meng: Huo Daofu is coming for the weekend—didn’t Wu Xie tell you? Wu Xie asked me to check in a week ahead so we could start getting ready for his arrival

Wu Xie: oh yeah I did do that

Wang Meng: Fortunately I know you and so I already went ahead and took care of everything.

Re: the trip

He made a deal with Wu Xie’s doctor that he would do periodic checkups on him here at Wushanju

Bc Wu Xie hates being in the hospital

And frankly the hospital hates him too

Wang Pangzi: FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT LOL

I FORGOT HUO DAOFU WAS DOING THAT

A VERY CHIVALROUS GESTURE

WOULDNT YOU SAY

XIOAGE

Zhang Qiling: Is it safe for him to be here with a criminal loose on the premises?

Wu Xie: Right, back to the curtain! Let’s focus on the curtain, hmm?

Wang Pangzi: I AM SO LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS WEEKEND.

ALSO WE CAN RULE OUT XIAO BAI FOR THE CURTAIN SHE JUST SENT A SELFIE FROM NORWAY COVERED IN GREEN SLIME WITH ZERO CONTEXT, UR PROTEGE INDEED

Wu Xie: okay but who else would do something so oddly charming yet illegal and—wait.

Snake Eyes Chat

Wu Xie: hey, Glasses hasn’t been in touch lately right?

Li Cu: uh nope

Unless u count the outdated memes

Why, is money or Xie Yuchen missing

Or is this curtain related, I saw Wang Meng’s tweet

Wu Xie: haha no nothing to worry about really

(I mean maybe? but who knows)

Wang Meng is probably just getting a little paranoid in his old age

Li Cu: better than getting reckless and stupid as hell in ur old age

Wu Xie: …hey:(

Unknown Number: Li Cu, we discussed this.

Wu Xie: ????????

Li Cu: *sigh* fine, reckless and stupid as heck

Unknown Number: …close enough.

Wu Xie: EXCUSE who is that

Madame, Sir, Non-Binary Tree Spirit, etc—whomst the fuck

Are you

Li Cu is underage FYI

So Im staying on this chat

Li Cu: okay first of all, it’s not like that

Second of all I’m literally not underage I s2g

u threw the embarrassing surprise bday party, okay so u should remember

And C, that’s my counselor and I invited her. She wanted to meet u and I knew u wouldn’t agree to a visit so I added her to our chat

we have been discussing u

Wu Xie: Oh wow!!!!!!!

What a surprise:)

hi so nice to meet you:)

Main Chat:

Wu Xie: RED FUCKING ALERT

FUCK THE CURTAIN FUCK THE VISIT

IVE BEEN TRICKED INTO FAMILY THERAPY BY A SMUG TEENAGER WHO TEXTS UNKNOWN NUMBERS

Wang Meng: I assume that means something to someone here?

Not my problem? Good.

Wang Pangzi: AHAHAHA GOD I LOVE LI CU

HES LIKE ADORABLE KARMA FOR ALL THE SHIT YOUVE PUT ME THROUGH

IM RAISING HIS ALLOWANCE

Wu Xie: wait i give him an allowance

has he been collecting on two allowances??

Zhang Qiling: Three. I knew about both of yours.

Snake Eyes Chat

Wu Xie: so uh may I ask your name?

Unknown Number: you can call me Ms. Lee.

Now, if you’re comfortable talking in this format, why don’t you tell me how things have been going?

Wu Xie: oh everything is normal and fine and safe as usual, why do you ask:)

Li Cu: I heard about ur necklace thing. nice of you to NOT mention it.

another dangerous adventure. again. prick.

Ur lucky your cool boyfriend cares about you so much or you’d have already died like ten years ago

Wu Xie: lol try twenty years ago

Li Cu: That isn’t funny.

Unknown Number: …What?

Wu Xie: shit ur right, okay that was a bit glib, my apologies.

…I use humor as a coping mechanism?

Unknown Number: and Li Cu, how do you feel about that?

Li Cu: he doesn’t even know what that phrase means

He doesn’t cope, like ever

In fact

It’s kind of why we met

Which is a funny story in retrospect tbh

Wu Xie: haha what are you talking about sweetie hahaha need I remind you of certain anecdotes that could idk send me to jail maybe lmao

Unknown Number: …You know, perhaps an in-person meeting might be more effective?

Wu Xie: haha such a nice idea but why

Main Chat

Wu Xie: If I go to jail, I’ll have to create alliances for protection, right, that’s how it works on tv

Who do we know who spends time in jail

Other than Hei Yangjing, he’s only ever there for like 12 hours and i suspect he just gets himself arrested bc he enjoys the breaking out process

Also how’s the curtain case coming along

Zhang Qiling: Has someone threatened you?

Wu Xie: well not yet but soon I’m sure

Wang Pangzi: WHERE WAS THIS PARANOIA WHEN WE GOT TAKEN TO THE TEA HOUSE HUH

Snake Eyes Minus Your Fucking Therapist Chat

Li Cu: okay how tf did u pull off spy and undercover shit

u are sus as hell

Wu Xie: damn son is it pick on Wu Xie night

I missed the flyers or I would’ve invited my uncles

Also re: the curtain it’s been mostly solved

Li Cu: I’m not your son, idiot.

Wu Xie: …oh. Sorry, sorry, you’re right, bad choice of words, haha

Forget i said anything

Delete this chat even

Li Cu: shit I meant

Legally, biologically, I meant—

shit

…I turn into an asshole as a coping mechanism?

Wu Xie: oh that’s all okay! I have to go do something else now let me know if you need anything okay kid thanks!

Li Cu: goddamn it calm down who’s the kid here

lemme organize my thoughts so I can articulate my emotions fuckin healthily or w/e

Ugh maybe for like one afternoon we could go to Ms. Lee together? She knows how to word stuff

Wu Xie: uh…okay.

Li Cu: Anyway you don’t need to worry abt jail

As if you would survive prison for one day you’d piss off half the place in like an hour or less

I gave Ms. Lee the heavily edited version of the desert highway to hell roadtrip and i discussed it more in terms of like “nightmarish but still wouldn’t take any of it back”

Well maybe the sand

that shit was everywhere

Wu Xie: oh kiddo. It’s fine, really…You don’t have to explain yourself to me.

Li Cu: no, no it’s just

I do technically have a dad

who is an asshole. Being a son doesn’t really mean shit to me bc it sucked.

So you need to stop backing down just cuz ur guilty abt stuff. I’m really really glad ur not my dad in a good way. Do u get what I mean there

Where’s the mafia widower I followed into hell, huh

Wu Xie: Ur a good kid, despite my influence. I’m really glad you have someone to talk to after everything I…after everything. Wow this talking through feelings thing is kind of weird but nice ur right

Jfc no wonder it took me and xiaoge so long to—you know what, we won’t get into that

Li Cu: ew tmi

Also re: this week’s recent necklace fuckery

I moved my stuff here, I live here now

So you can’t die anymore

Or else…Idk I don’t have a threat planned

anyways abt the curtain

Wu Xie: oh my god, kid…kid you have no idea

I am in tears.

Li Cu: see this is why I can’t be nice to you I can sense the hallmark channel from here

Ugh don’t be sad in ur room that’s dumb

Go hug Pangzi or something

Maybe delete this chat

Or the curtain thing

Focus on the curtain thing

Just stfu and go away

Wu Xie: <3 screenshotting this <3

Li Cu: I take back everything I said. This is why Xiao Ge sleeps on the roof. I hope the ghosts of the Wangs put up that curtain to strangle you somehow. Go die in a stupid way, it’ll suit you.

Wu Xie: lol don’t worry I’m not gonna embarrass you with it or anything

Main Chat

Wu Xie: omg guys look how cute my kid is *sending screenshot*

Wang Pangzi: I MEAN

HE IS WISHING YOU DEATH

BUT SURE

CUTE I GUESS

Wu Xie: no but read the whole thing:):):)

Zhang Qiling: It is indeed very hard to remain angry with you. And you are welcome to join me on the roof.

Wang Pangzi: UH NOPE

NOT WHENI HAD TO BLEACH THE COUNTER IN THE KITCHEN

DONT TRAUMATIZE THE EARLY BIRDS THEYRE ALREADY FREAKED OUT BY U YA HOODIE CRYPTID

Wu Xie: ok true but babe ur like a sexy cryptid

Wang Meng: so, are we just accepting that there is a glittery curtain of unknown origin, and Huo Daofu is going to have to see it while he’s waiting for you at Wushanju bc you’re going to family therapy?

Wu Xie: right

Wang Pangzi: SHOULDA TAKEN EARLY RETIREMENT HUH

Wang Meng: I’m going to go dust something.

Unnamed Chat:

Unknown number: so the curtain…

Unknown number 2: yep, not my best work but I kinda panicked last minute u know

Unknown number: what is in the water at Wushanju that makes everyone dumb and attractive

Unknown number 2: relax they’ll figure it out

[tinyboxxtink]

“Sharky” *Part 7*

I have a question y’all, do you think that I make my fics too short? I always tend to keep them at 10 chapters because I feel like my attention span goes, but I see other fics are sometimes substantially longer. I really have some good plot plans for this one, so we’ll see how long it goes. 

Also OMG the gif works so well with the scene please send help.

Tag List

@wanniiieeee

@chasingeverybreakingwave

@word-scribbless

@dumauier

@gibbs274

@aprildecker-blog

@objection-argumentative

Chapter List Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 8

“Rafael...Rafael come on don’t make me run in these shoes,” You called after him, scampering in your stilettos. Rafael finally stopped and turned to face you.

“What, Y/N? What could you possibly say to me?” He said exasperatedly. 

“Well this is familiar…” You half smiled. It was a call back to your first “date”.

“You really want to make jokes right now? He asked angrily.

“Sorry...I’m sorry,” You awkwardly looked at the ground. “For everything,”

“For everything,” He scoffed with a roll of his eyes. 

“Yes! For everything,” You tried to step towards him, but he stepped back. 

“For what, exactly? For stealing my stuff? For going through my apartment? For DRUGGING me?” 

“I did NOT--”

“Oh don’t even. I had such weird dreams that I haven’t had except for when I was taking hydrocodone for a back surgery,” He crossed his arms.

“Oh come on it wasn’t even half a pill there’s no way you could have--”

“SEE, I knew it! What the fuck is WRONG with you?!” He stared at you with disbelief.

“I...I don’t know…” You bit your lip.

“Right,” He shook his head with a sarcastic smile and turned to walk away, but you grabbed his hand.

“But look I’m sorry, okay and, and I didn’t give these to Buchanan yet so I’m going to delete them, right now and--” You started to show him the CONFIDENTIAL photos you took last night, but for the first time you were looking at them properly.

“I thought you were deleting them,” He said almost on top of you when he realized what you had taken photos of.

“What is this?” You zoomed in on the files, your face growing pale. “Rafael, what is this?” 

“Look we’re talking about what YOU did, Y/N--” He started to deflect but you weren’t hearing any more.

“My NAME is all over this, Rafael,” You could feel your panic attack coming back. The files were basically a full blown background check on you. Your family, your career, everything.

“It’s...not what you think,” Now it was his voice that went soft.

“It’s not what I--I can’t fucking believe this,” You laughed sarcastically, tears stinging your eyes. “You’re not upset I ‘played’ you, you’re upset you got outplayed!”

“What? What does that even mean?” He scoffed.

“YOU ASKED ME OUT,” You almost screamed. “You asked me out to get more dirt on me!”

“No,  I didn’t I--” He tried to deny it.

“Bullshit! Then what the fuck is this?!”  You shook the phone at him. “God I can’t believe I felt bad for-- GOD you’re such a--”

“Oh no no no, don’t even. I didn’t sleep with you and steal your property,” He acted like he was the victim once again.

“Yeah, because I didn’t give you the chance!” You were fuming.

“Look I didn’t even get that information, okay? Liv did. She did a whole background check on you when she thought I was interested in you...MONTHS ago. And I never even looked at it!” He tried explaining everything away. Nothing was ever his fault. 

“But you kept it. Just in case,” You narrowed your eyes.

“Well obviously I’m glad I did,” He bit back.

“God...Olivia,” You scoffed. “You know she’s the only reason we’re in this,” You rolled your eyes at that stupid woman. 

“Excuse me?”

“I wanted to go out with you for REAL, Rafael. Which clearly was never on your agenda,” You stomped your heel. 

“Oh come on that’s--” He shook his head.

“Yeah, and then not only did you embarrass the fuck out of me, then your little bitch called Buchanan and TOLD ON US,” You spat. The whole thing was enough to set you on fire, if she hadn’t butt in at all you would be in Rafael’s arms right now and not having it out in the middle of the street.

“...She what?” His voice went soft again; he didn’t even correct you on calling her a bitch.

“Yeah, turns out she thought I was trying to “coerce” you to my side, or that’s what she told Buchanan,” You spat. “And THEN, and ONLY then, did Buchanan come to me and threaten my god damn JOB and CAREER unless I got those receipts!”

“He...he threatened you…?” Rafael’s head was spinning. Had you really cared about him this whole time?

“YES, and-- and you know what is the WORST part of all of this?” You shook your head and laughed bitterly.

“What--? He looked afraid of the answer.

“I KEPT THE RECEIPTS,” You yelled, feeling yourself about to breakdown.

“What do you mean, you kept the receipts?” He asked with concern.

“I took this last night,” You pulled the USB you swiped from your blazer pocket. “And--And after I sat there, I let you-- I--- and then you called me ‘mi amor’, and I--” Your mind was running a mile a minute, you couldn’t finish a thought.

“I did what?” He stared at you in shock. 

“You don’t even remember that,” You scoffed angrily “Of course you don’t. You didn’t fucking mean it, I knew that,” 

“I….I…” Rafael’s eyes went back and forth as his mind was racing, trying to figure out exactly what he had said out loud last night and what he had dreamed of.

“And I felt SO BAD, so bad, and I thought that I--that we---” You were still reeling, you couldn’t believe this was happening. 

“Y/N…” Rafael’s face was apologetic now but you were done. 

“I made copies of the receipts and I put them on this USB and I was going to give it back to you, and then you could just tell Buchanan that you had made copies and saved them beforehand, and I didn’t get my hands on it. Because I didn’t give it to him, Rafael. I saved it and I was going to save YOU,” You were full on having a breakdown, tears were falling down your face. Rafael’s face fell completely and he reached for you.

“Y/N I am so--”

“NO!!!!” You jerked away from him. “You played me! I can’t believe all the bullshit you gave me, all the guilt I felt, the feelings I thought--”

“I didn’t play you Y/N I swear to you, I asked you out because I--” He grabbed your hands this time. “I really did like you, I DO like you,” 

“No, I’m not listening to any of your bullshit of what I ‘felt’ or some sappy bullshit, not for one more second,” You ripped away from him and started to storm off; But you were going to show him once and for all who was the heartless one. 

“And you know what, counselor? Congratulations, you outplayed the best of the best. Well done. Here’s your prize,” You threw the USB at him and stormed off, leaving him speechless.

---- 

You stomped back inside and went straight to the family bathroom nearby, locking it behind you just before you broke down crying. Your phone began buzzing wildly, “RAFAEL” flashed on your screen. IGNORE.

It rang again, and again and again. You finally picked it up and screamed “LEAVE ME ALONE,” and hung up. 

Why did you give him that USB? Now you were going to lose your job on top of everything else.

You finally composed yourself long enough to make it back to your desk, where Buchanan was waiting. 

“Ah, Y/L/N, So I just got a very...interesting call from Barba,” He gave you a look.

“I’m sure you did,” you thought to yourself. “Oh?” You asked out loud.

“Yes it turns out, that he had those receipts on a backup USB he had at his office,” He said in an accusatory tone.

“Oh. That’s unfortunate,” You did your best to keep cool.

“It is, and also very peculiar. Seeing as he was so upset when he came over here, acting like he didn’t have a chance,” He kept his suspicious tone.

“He probably just forgot he had it at the office, you know on the account of being drugged last night and all,” You rolled your eyes.

“I’m  sorry, what?” John’s eyes perked up.

“A quarter of a hydrocodone, he’s fine,” You waved it off. “Probably made him foggy though,”

“Uh huh...I’m sure,” He nodded. “And about those photos…”

“Oh, don’t count on it,” You shook your head as you handed him your phone.

“Oh, damn Y/L/N,” He chuckled. “Seems that ADA really took you for a ride, didn’t he? Maybe I overestimated you,” That hit so much harder right now, and he knew it. 

“Just...I’m sorry, okay?” You looked at the floor in shame.

“Well, you did your best there, my little shark,” He nodded to the plushie as he walked away. You picked it up and tossed it into the trash as you did your best not to burst into tears again.

------

Meanwhile across town, Barba was storming into Olivia Benson’s office at the NYPD.

“What is your problem, Olivia?” He barked.

“Excuse me?” Olivia was floored that Rafael would yell at her like this.

“Liv look, I know that we’re best friends, and we’ve known each other a long time but--- I’m not yours,” He sighed.

“I’m sorry?” She acted oblivious.

“You know what I’m talking about,”

“I really don’t--”

“Y/N, Olivia,” Barba cut her off.

“What about her?”

“The background check? The little phone call to Buchanan?” He asked angrily.

“Wha-- how are you going to be mad at me for being right about her?” She scoffed.

“YOU WEREN’T RIGHT,” He yelled while throwing his hands up in the air.

“Were you or were you not just in here ranting about how she just slept with you to get that evidence?” Olivia crossed her arms. 

“And she gave it back,” He held out the USB. 

“...Why would she do that?” Olivia was still lost.

“Because she cares about me, Olivia! But because of you, I’m pretty sure I’ll never get her trust back,” He yelled in frustration.

“No, no that can’t be right. She must have an angle,” Olivia persisted.

“Why, because the only one allowed to care about me is you?” Rafael asked coldly. 

“That is--” Olivia shook her head, not believing he had just gone there.

“Look, Liv I haven’t wanted to have this conversation because your friendship is so important to me,” He softened his voice. “But...that’s it. Our friendship,”

“Wow, Rafa. Wow I cannot believe you just come in here and start yelling at me, and start lecturing me on what our relationship is. Are you really that full of yourself?!” She was pissed now.

“Liv, we both know that’s why--”

“I was looking after you as a FRIEND, jackass,” She scoffed. “And anyway, why do you care so much all of a sudden? A week ago she was the devil to you! Now you’re in love with her?”

“I’m not---I don’t---” Rafael tried to find the words. “I could have, Liv. I really could have,”

“....I really am sorry, Rafael,” Olivia went and put her hand over his, and he let her. He looked up at her with soft eyes, finally letting a small smile form.

“I know you are,” He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. 

Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, maybe he should just quit fighting it. Maybe he could be happy with Olivia, he was never going to get you back now anyway.

Was he?

------

*A Month Later*

You were working late again, it seemed like lately all you did was work. You practically slept in your office these days. A few of your co-workers passed by laughing and chatting.

“Hey, Y/L/N, what are you doing? It’s a holiday!”

“Halloween hardly qualifies as a holiday Spencer,” You rolled your eyes. “It’s just an excuse for kids to load up on candy and adults to load up on booze,” 

“Exactly!” Kyra, the young intern, chimed in. Of course the guys were trying to get her to go ‘party’ with them. 

“Aw come on, we’re gonna go crash the NYPD’s Halloween Bash,” Your third co-worker Greg added.

“.....Really?” You asked with a sly smile, the wheels in your head were turning. 

“Oh yeah, their chief always gets the good booze,” Spencer laughed. “You’re gonna need a costume though,” 

“Oh I’ve got just the costume…” You smirked while logged off your laptop and grabbed your briefcase,

You’d show the whole NYPD just who was the fairest of them all….