#rewiring shit in there as we speak

[leafdragon16]

Sketchbook Friday #23

Alternate Title: OH GOD HE’S GOT ME SOMEONE HELP M

Alright so it’s been over a year since I posted one of these (HOW) but I have been trying to draw regularly again so here we go

Vehicon practice for an upcoming AU sketch :)

Read through almost the entirety of IDW and I cannot stress enough how fast I’d die for Nickel if she asked me to

And speaking of IDW

GET HIM OUT OF MY BRAIN OH MY GODD

IT’S OVERLORD HOUR 24/7 MAKE HIM STOP

[milf-harrington]

wanting to brain myself vs. knowing im being dumb

[cursedwerewolf]

so anyways i watched 19 episodes of 9-1-1 in the last 4 days, feeling very normal

[mosspapi]

Straight up not having a good time rn

[hon3y-y]

your choso has rewired my brain...literally cant stop thinking about popular reader who has a new bf every week x virgin nerd choso who despite his inexperience has every intention to leave you dumb on the end of his cock. He even lets you slap his books down and talk shit about him with your little girlfriends in public, but behind closed doors you're the one crying and begging him hdjsjs definition of 'send her back to her bf w my handprint on her ass' aaaaa and if its a love story, it turns out chosos had the fattest crush on her bc he knows shes actually a sweetie at heart but loves her toxic side too and gives her the best dick until she stops playing around like THE REVERSAL 😭 he would be so sweet in his own way and so loyal and a fucking dog to her lowkey but covers it up with mean words and pussy slaps 🥺

Nerd!choso has a special place in my pants heart😵‍💫

Cw; nastyy smut, filming, infidelity(👀), choso is a little pervy but that’s why we love him🫶, talks of bodily fluids, reader is a lil mean

Enjoy<3

After the first time you fucked, he was extremely a little mad about you dating someone the next day (especially since it was his first time and you knew that) but quickly forgot about it once he had his head between your legs later that night, your mouth babbling nonsense when he sucked a little too hard.

He would purposefully leave hickies on your chest and thighs, smiling cheekily as he watched your shakey legs try to dress yourself. “Don’t look at me that way," you mumbled, your usual attitude gone and replaced with shyness under his intense gaze. Yeah, he didn’t have to worry.

Choso let's you get away with everything. the laughing, the pushing, and the taunts about how “small” he probably is from your friends (to which he nearly smirks when you stiffen slightly). He goes along with all of it and even watches you tongue-fuck your stupid boyfriend, who’s likely one hard hit to the head away from permanent brain damage. But he can’t stay mad; you look so cute trying to be tough. Eyebrows furrowed and a little hiss in your tone, knowing that the moment everyone disappears, you’re nothing but a sobbing mess, begging for him to touch you.

You’re in his room later, bent into a mating press, gasping for air as his cock clumsily batters your g-spot. “Yes—fuck, cho! "Your skin feels so hot, and your mind is so numb. Choso is nearly just as loud, already cumming two times, but watching you made it impossible to pull out. A sticky mess of both your fluids caused gooey strings to form whenever he moved away, the erotic sight making him pull out and reach for his phone. “W-what are you—"

You tried to sit up when the light of a camera flashed in your eyes, making you gasp before he tilted it down, focusing on your pussy. “Look at how wet she is.” He reaches out to touch, making your hips jerk in sensitivity. He plays with your wetness, making your cheeks hot, showing off the substance to the camera before placing his finger on your hole to tap at the new cream that seeped out.

You went to pull your legs closed. "E-enough, Choso." You sent him a glare, making him laugh before leaning down to kiss your cunt. He pointed the camera up to catch your shocked face, and you glanced at it again. “Why are you filming this? I never said—"

You squeal as he nips your clit, immediately shutting up but sending him a harsh glare. He kisses your thigh at your compliance. “Do you really not want me to?” He stared up at you, putting little pecks on your bud, making your breath hitch. You shook your head, ‘no’, “fuck, I don’t care, just make me cum,” you whine, pushing his head down. You jolt up, your eyes widening, when you feel the stinging slap on your pussy.

You’re about to speak when he does it again and again, each hit harder than the previous one, a yelp of surprise escaping you as he forces the light in your eyes again, making you squint. “You’re such a slut, it’s almost pathetic." His harsh words make you pout, mumbling about how mean he is. “I’m mean? Tell the camera why you came here.” You bite your lip, looking away, causing him to grab your chin and force you to look. “I’m not asking.”

It feels humiliating: “He couldn’t make me cum.” Your voice is quiet, but you could practically feel the cocky smile on Choso's face. “Who’s he?” You want to die, shaking your head. He rolled his eyes, tapping on your cheek to signal you to talk. With a sigh, you repeat yourself, “My boyfriend couldn’t make me cum.” Choso mockingly coos behind the camera, his thumb going to rub your swollen bud. “And how many times have you cum since getting here?”

He pans the camera back and forth between your needy pussy and pretty face, your sweaty skin glistening under the intense lighting making his cock impossibly harder. You look so delicate, just helplessly taking the pleasure he gives you because your body needs him so bad. Tears gather in your waterline whenever he applies more pressure, eyes zeroing in on the slick that starts to drip down your ass.

You can’t answer, your jaw hanging open when he quickened his pace. Your chest is heaving as you chanted out ‘please!’ hips thrusting up to meet him until you quickly cum with a shutter, choso slowing but not stopping as you relax again. You look up to the camera with a tired smile, holding up your hands to signal four, your eyes could barely remain open, head flopping back into the pillow. your eyes are getting heavy, nearly having you succumb to sleep when you feel his tip align with your cunt. “Flip over, slut.”

He forces you to film yourself as he pounds into you from behind, crying when he leans down to tug at your sore nipples. He forces your back to arch more, pathetically taking his cock into your swollen pussy. If you drop the camera, he’ll wait until you pick it up again. Or, he’ll snatch it from your hand to catch you desperately rutting against him, begging him to let you cum and “fuck you right." He does just that, leaving you with a fried brain and a puddle of your own drool, tears, and juices from how intensely he made you squirt.

Honestly, he’s so horny and has so much stamina he’ll just keep going until he’s shooting blanks, making sure to point the camera at the cum that leaks out of your puffy cunt, spreading your lips so it can closely get your gaping hole. Of course, after he’s had his fun, he’ll gently take care of you. You’re practically sleeping already, barely being able to speak as he nods along to your near incoherent praise, “S'good t’me. Luv you so much."He smiles, a giddy feeling in his tummy, as he holds a water bottle to your lips, which you gulp down quickly, not realizing how dehydrated you really were. He tucks you in, cuddling as you grip onto him tightly.

It’s not long after that you stop seeing the guy you were with, or any for that matter (at least, according to your friends' knowledge). When they ask what happened, you just shrug, making up some excuse, trying not to stutter as the vibrations in your panties speed up. Choso watches closely, smiling happily as you try to discreetly roll your hips<3

A/n: I need him so bad it’s getting to me. Also, send request bc writers block is a btch. Mwah💋

[cosycafune]

LEMME BREED YOU, PRINCESS!

0.6k words. your boyfriend is a shit one, but that really doesn’t matter when you’re bouncing on Toji’s cock — ruining your sanity. sure, sneaking around is risky, but toji’s divine cock is enough for you to almost ruin your future.

acts: unprotected sex, creampies, infidelity, degradation, doubt, breeding kink, size difference, slight age gap and slight sadistic tendencies.

SEATED, guilt and enthralment adorn you. Nothing prepared you for this sacred moment, tinted with the art of intimacy, infidelity and lust. Tendrils of confusion smother you, but you can’t bring yourself to release Toji right now. 

Grinding against an older Toji, you momentarily forget about your shortcomings – shedding every thought of your estranged boyfriend.

Unrestrained, you continue to rut your hips against Toji’s erection – stomaching the closest feeling to love you’ve ever carried. Liberation almost tints you, but it’s tainted, distorted – settling you in a morally grey area.

Naturally, you felt like you had to succumb to your boyfriend’s shortcomings – enduring the colourful, negative emotions he painted on you. Engaging with Toji, taking every inch of his cock, being talked through it, coddled and eerily cared for, rewired you. Leaving, you know you should do that, but your boyfriend suffocated you – strangling you with his status and power imbalance.

Yet, Toji carries status, emotional stability, money and a huge dick. A huge dick you could never resist, sneaking away to meet with him – coming back home with hickeys, bite marks and symbols of satisfaction. To you, it was thrilling – a diligent way of getting back at your cheating boyfriend. Everything within you wanted to leave him, but he would suppress you – mentioning his cherishable reputation with your family.

All you wanted was for Toji to mould into your charming prince, sculpting an atmosphere that would permanently provide peace. However, you’re pitifully bound here – stealing away pleasurable moments that pale in the long run. Even as you grind against his cock, nude, filled with Toji’s cum, you can’t help but ask for more. As a princess, is this truly what your life has come to? Sleeping with your father’s favourite millionaire?

“You’re thinking, darlin’,” Breaking your internal silence, Toji gruffly speaks – relishing your soppy, cum-filled folds kissing his cock head.

“I mean, we only have half an hour,” Chuckling, you respond to Toji – frantically kissing his lips. Looking down at him, you smoothly deflect – unbounded. 

“Stop deflecting,” Lightening up, Toji murmurs through his grunt –  harshly sinking you onto his cock.

“It’s… just, why won’t you beat him up or do some dramatic gesture to convince my family?” Avoiding Toji’s intimidating gaze, you speak, “You know that he… treats me like shit.” Blabbering, you look away — only for Toji to grip your chin.

“Because it’s not him that has your pretty self sinking his cock,” Grinning, Toji breathily grunts — captured by your warm cunt squeezing him.

“Hmm, don’t tell your boyfriend,” Taunting you, Toji frantically bucks his hips into you — pushing you into moaning extremely loudly.

“Shit! I won’t! Ahh!” Pounded into, revoking your willpower to think, you shakily grip onto Toji — bellowing.

“He’s never fucked you this good, has he?” Observing you, Toji gently moans — his question almost hazy.

“Ngh! Never!” Barely clutching onto your self-esteem, you prettily feed into Toji’s inquiries — demolishing his fat, enormous cock.

“Shit! If I…put a baby in you, he’ll leave,” Threatening your future, Toji thrusts deeper within you — grinning at you cock-stricken.

“Hmm! Baby!” Mewling, you tremble vigorously — practically agreeing for Toji to expand you with as many babies he wants.

“A pretty… princess like you, pregnant?” Enthralled, Toji snaps his toned hips harder — barely able to voice his thoughts through pleasure.

“I’d do…anything for you to be swollen with my baby,” So close to cumming, Toji hums with satisfaction — burying himself so, so deeply within you.

“T-Toji,” Moaning his name, you accidentally cum before him �� embarrassed at how quickly he could dismantle you.

“I’ll fill you up and give you a baby,” Determined to impregnate you, Toji snaps his hips intensely — his pulsating cock finally twitching before filling a foolish you up.

“Mhmm, I’ll have… your baby,” Whining, you desperately proclaim — almost collapsing as Toji kisses your lips.

“Hmm, but don’t tell your boyfriend,” Teasing you, Toji gifts you a gentle kiss — before smacking your ass.

Don’t tell your boyfriend.

--

do not copy, modify or claim any of my works as your own. all rights reserved; cosycafune. 2024. small banners credit: cafekitsune <3

[libraryofgage]

Good Vibrations Five

One | Two | Three | Four

I meant to have this posted so much earlier but then my brother went to the ER and got hospitalized and that became my whole fucking weekend lmao

He's fine now but it was a very stressful and exhausting couple of days

Anyway, this series was line jumped on Ko-Fi! To learn more about line-jumping, please go here

If you ever have a free moment, btw, I suggest looking into assistive devices because they're so cool and interesting to read about!

Okay, I'm done now lol

As always, if you see any typos, no you didn't ;)

------

Steve spends most of Sunday on edge, his leg bouncing whenever he manages to sit down as he waits for Eddie. He's already stress-cleaned the kitchen and the living room, shoved everything into his closet in his room, and made sure anything that could make noise (the TV, the stereo, the radio) were turned down to a volume that wouldn't blast Eddie's eardrums to shit.

When the doorbell rings, a strobe light in the corner of the room flashes, demanding his attention. The system is something simple but needlessly expensive, one his parents got installed when his hearing was half-gone. A strobe light sits in one corner of each main room, just above the closet in his bedroom, and on the outside of the house facing the pool. Ideally, he should be able to see it no matter where he is.

He stops at the door and takes a deep breath, wiping his palms on his jeans even though they aren't sweaty. Steve pulls open the door before he can doubt himself.

On the other side, Eddie looks conflicted as he stares at the doorbell. His hand is half-raised like he's ready to ring again. Steve watches him jolt at the door opening. "How'd you hear that?" he asks, glancing between the doorbell and Steve with a confused expression.

It's that more than reading his lips that tells Steve what his question was. "Strobes," he says, gesturing for Eddie to come inside. "Here, watch that light when I press the button."

He waits for Eddie to stand just inside the doorway and stare at the light Steve pointed to. Once he's in place, Steve leans out and presses the doorbell, the strobe flashing in the corner of his vision. He rings twice just to make sure Eddie gets the picture before closing and locking the door.

"That's fucking metal," Eddie says when Steve looks at him, grinning brightly. "I didn't know you could do that."

Steve shrugs, waving his hand for Eddie to follow as he heads to the living room. "It was cheap to get but expensive to install. My parents had to rewire the whole house when we got it," he explains.

He sits on one end of the couch and watches Eddie hesitate before sitting on the other. Now that Steve is paying attention, he can see the plastic bag in his hand. "What's that?" he asks.

"Oh!" Eddie sets the bag between them, pulls out cling-wrapped plate of cookies, and sets that on top of the bag. "My Uncle Wayne got some cookies from a neighbor and insisted I bring them," he says. The words are rushed, though, and Steve guesses he's flustered based on the red in Eddie's cheeks.

Steve blinks, frowning slightly. "Say that again. Slow down," he says, focusing on Eddie's mouth to catch the shapes of words.

"Sorry," Eddie says, licking his lips before repeating himself, visibly forcing himself to speak slower.

Steve almost misses Eddie's words again, his brain replaying Eddie licking his lips and helpfully wondering what it would feel like to lick them himself. He manages to catch Eddie's general meaning, though, and smiles gratefully. "Cool, thanks for bringing them," he says, considering the plate for a moment before adding, "I could teach you the sign for cookie."

"Well, I am here to learn, big boy," Eddie says, grinning.

Steve wipes his hands on his jeans again, shifting to face Eddie directly as he ignores the nickname. He doesn't have the time to overthink about it. "I'll go slow, and then you try," he says, waiting for Eddie to nod.

Once he does, Steve holds his left hand flat, makes a loose claws shape with his right, and touches his fingertips to his left palm. He then lifts his right hand slightly, rotates it like he's using a cookie cutter on dough, and brings his fingertips down to his left palm again. "Just, uh, pretend your cutting cookies out of cookie dough," he explains.

He watches closely as Eddie attempts to replicate the motion. He rotates his hand a little too much, making Steve wince in sympathy for his wrist. "No, you don't need to go that far," he says, reaching over to grab Eddie's hand. He rotates it a few degrees, enough to get the point across without causing any strain on Eddie's wrist. "Like that. Try again."

Eddie gets it right on his next try, and Steve smiles brightly at him. "Yeah, you've got it," he says, leaning back against the arm of the sofa behind him. "Cool, uh, let's try asking what kind of cookies you like."

When Eddie nods, Steve thinks before making the sign for cookie again. He then points at Eddie and places his hand flat on his chest, his fingers spread. Steve pulls his hand forward, touching his thumb and middle finger together, and then makes a peace sign, keeping his hand horizontal. He does the same with his left hand and touches the fingers of that hand to the bottom of his right wrist. Finally, he circles his left hand behind his right, over the top, and comes back to the bottom of his wrist.

When he's done, Eddie looks sufficiently lost, staring at Steve like he's an enigma and something wholly impressive for knowing how to sign so smoothly. It makes something warm and floaty linger in Steve's chest even when he tries to remind himself he's not that good at signing.

"Can you, you know, do that again? Slower, maybe?" Eddie asks.

Steve nods, flashing a reassuring smile before repeating the motions and walking Eddie through them.

---------

When Eddie pulls up to his trailer, he's still in a daze from spending three hours with Steve. The time had flown by after they settled into a routine of Steve signing something and patiently correcting Eddie as he fumbled through the motions.

A gentle tap on the window has him jerking in his seat, heart thumping wildly as he looks over to see Wayne standing outside. Eddie hurries to shut off the van and slide out, awkwardly smiling. "Hey. How was work?" he asks.

"Fine," Wayne says, brushing past the question easily to ask Eddie, "You doing okay, son? You sat there for a good minute."

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Totally fine. Nothing wrong at all," Eddie says, grimacing at his own awkwardness that clearly advertises something is wrong.

"Uh-huh. How about we talk inside."

Eddie's shoulders slump with defeat and he nods. "Yeah. All right."

He follows Wayne into the trailer, flopping into one of the chairs at the dining table and reaching for the box of cereal he'd left there that morning. Wayne gets himself a beer before sitting across the table. "So, you went and saw a friend today. One you wouldn't tell me the name of. And stole Ms. Burten's cookies for."

Eddie winces, shoves a handful of Honeycombs into his mouth, and chews them slowly to give himself time to think. He could be honest. He knows Wayne is kind of like him in terms of liking guys; the only difference is Wayne likes women, too. He knows Wayne would be supportive and understanding and probably have good advice. He knows Wayne won't judge him for anything.

He just...almost wants to keep Steve for himself a little longer. Eddie likes having a private crush, something that stays close to his heart and makes him feel fuzzy whenever he sees the object of his crush.

But a private crush doesn't go anywhere, and this is the first time Eddie feels like there's somewhere for this crush to go. Robin all but confirmed that Steve wouldn't reject him for being gay or out him to the whole town. If anything, he'd reject Eddie for being, well, Eddie, but the way Steve stares at him is reassuring.

"Steve Harrington," he says, the name slipping out after he swallows the Honeycombs. "I, uh, was at Steve's place. Learning sign language. Because he's deaf."

A few seconds pass in which Wayne just stares at him. Then, he sighs. "Ah, hell, kid. You don't really have a crush on the Harrington boy, do you?" he asks.

"He's like us!" Eddie says, quickly dismissing that concern before Wayne goes down his warning spiel about crushing on guys who aren't gay.

"You sure about that?" Wayne asks, eyes narrowed like he doesn't trust Eddie to be a reliable source of information.

Eddie nods, shoving another handful of Honeycombs in his mouth. "Totally sure. Robin Buckley confirmed it," he says around the cereal.

"Sounds a little too good to be true," Wayne says, sighing as he takes a swig from his bottle and sets it on the table. "What's the catch."

"It's not a catch. Just, uh, something to get used to, I think? I mean, he's deaf, so...yeah," Eddie says, grimacing at how awkward that sounds. Is there some smoother way to share that news? Is there a guide somewhere? Maybe Steve can give him some pointers the next time they hang out.

Wayne slowly nods and takes another sip of his beer, expression thoughtful as he considers his next words. "I know a few guys at the factory that're losing their hearing," he finally says, tapping his finger on the neck of his bottle. "Seems tough."

"That's it?"

"Well, whaddya want from me, kid? Sage advice? I ain't enough beers in for that."

"I...don't know what I wanted," Eddie admits, huffing as he closes the cereal box and pushes it back to the middle of the table.

"Whelp," Wayne says, free hand smacking down on his thigh before he pushes himself out of his chair. "I'm gonna watch the game, then. You're free to join me or go pine in your room if you prefer."

"I don't pine," Eddie says, his voice nearly cracking on the last word.

"Sure, you don't. Whatever you say, kid. Just make sure I've got a beer in my hand before you start waxing poetic about his eyes later."

Eddie makes an offended noise that he definitely won't be calling a squawk. He can't even argue, though, because Eddie's brain is already thinking about his hazel eyes and the two little moles by his lips and....yeah, Wayne has a point.

-------

Tag List (the tag list is completely filled up! There definitely wasn't enough room for everyone who requested a tag orz

Please follow the tag "good vibrations Steddie" or put on notifications for my blog to see when new parts are posted :D)

@hallucinatedjosten, @queenie-ofthe-void, @r0binscript, @jewellthebooknerd, @paintgonewrong,

@vacantwatchers, @newagemyth, @gutterflower77, @just-a-tiny-void, @littlebluejane

@whenindoubtb72, @different-tale-student, @sharingisntkaren, @current-steddie-brainrot, @willim-billiam-byerson,

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@boxsam, @thepansexualsnake, @37-screamingfrogs, @yourmom-isgay, @brainsteddielyrotted,

@plasticcrotches, @hannahhook7744

[odetojupiter]

what if i told you that thea’s raven number - 14 - is an unlucky number because, translated, it sounds similar to ‘must die’/‘will certainly die’ in cantonese, and ‘is dead’/‘will be dead’ in mandarin.

‘her number was 14 for reasons’ - nora sakavic, aftg extra content

what if i suggested that tetsuji gave her that number specifically because he considered a black woman dominating his own sport a threat not only to himself but to his perfect court. not only is tetsuji’s misogyny pretty clear, but we all know the other ravens were killing themselves trying to be given the next perfect court number, but that was never gonna happen because even though the perfect court was actually full of the best players, it was never actually about championing the best players, it was about ownership. so what if i said that tetsuji hated that thea was as good as she was without having any ties to himself, outside of signing on to the college team he coaches. he felt undermined because he couldn’t fully credit himself for her skill, and so he gave her the 14 - on the surface, it’s an achievement to get so close to single digits for the ravens BUT it comes with a hidden threat. you will die if you go too far.

and then what if i suggested that nora also chose 14 because of the way the fandom reacted to thea. i have no idea whether she’d already picked out the number before the series was published but i don’t think it’s mentioned in the original series ?? so i mean…

yes, i’ve seen the list of issues people have with thea but what’s crazy to me is that we know literally nothing about her bar the few tidbits nora mentioned in the extra content, and the few scenes we have in the series. and i know there was probably a full backstory written for her that we never got to see bc of all the hate nora got purely for introducing her, and the subsequent reactions to literally everything we’re told about thea just makes me think that nobody actually learned anything about how people’s trauma can drastically influence how they perceive the world and how they react to things including the abuse of other people - cough. andrew and aaron cough. - her reactions to things are bound to be built off her experiences and she was literally in a cult which would completely rewire her world view so like (even what we’re told in the EC, we don’t meet her until her fifth year of edgar allan so she’s five years deep into this shit guys, and you know tetsuji was physically and mentally abusive to all the ravens u have to know that by now)—-

but anyway this post isn’t supposed to be a defence or a critique of her i just find the number 14 aligns with the way people speak about her as though she’s done something bad enough to deserve death threats, so i just hope you realise when u perpetuate that shit it’s like ur tattooing that 14 right on her face.

oh to add to that, in japanese culture the number fourteen represents imperfection, but specifically beauty found in things that are imperfect. if i say that’s a way of saying no thea isn’t perfect but that doesn’t mean she deserves to die ? what then?

bc no she’s not a perfect person and ill be the first to admit i hated that scene in tsc with jean, but are you really telling me that’s the worst thing an aftg character has ever done?? why is she being branded as the worst when she was literally in the series for like 3 pages?

and do u know what, the fact that she, post graduation, still wears her 14 is 1) a sign of pride that she really is one of the best and 2) a reminder that she is not dead yet, despite the efforts of tetsuji and the literal fandom

[thedrarrylibrarian]

Have you ever had a day that just went completely to shit? That was the entire month of November for me. I had planned to have this Happy Hour ready then, but between work and home life and hosting for the holiday and everything else...a ball had to drop. I was so disappointed, because I love doing Happy Hour and I love speaking with the creators who help with the guest fic recs.

@ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm could not have been more gracious and understanding about postponing his rec. I always thought his artworkand fics were lovely, but being on the receiving end of the his kindness makes the works even lovelier to me. I love that even in moments of violence, he portrays characters as vulnerable and soft, the gentleness of moments of solitude, and the joyfulness of the mundane. If you haven't checked out Joy's art before, I cannot recommend it enough.

So after waiting for several months, I am finally so excited to share his incredible fic rec. Our first Happy Hour guest rec of the year is by the lovely and gracious @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm.

Outside of things that become fanon, we all travel the worlds of transformative works building up our own personal sense of canon. A lot of that process is wish fulfillment and self indulgence on little pleasures and minor vanities, which is what carves out this perfectly molded comfort that we all shelter ourselves in, what comes together to broadcast our unique wavelengths of bliss. But there is also another part of the process, one that I find myself unconsciously engaging in at times, which is an attempt to rewrite, rewire, recolor the places in which the source material has dulled, or to find cracks and fissures for interpretations that will allow me to engage with the source more meaningfully in the long run while honoring the directions in which I’ve grown and changed. There’s been a lot of work in the Harry Potter fandom that took on the form of a kind of hermeneutics, or that used the setting and characters as a kind of convenient vehicle to make a point about The Real World, in a way that sometimes makes it feel like we, the naive and spirited readers of the source material are somehow distant from the world and must be gently pulled back into it in the language of our distraction. Harry Potter and Welcome to the World of Grey was the first AU retelling of a larger segment of the HP canon where I felt like I was encountering something completely new, something that had the distant shape of these previous approaches at first glance but that, right from the first page, has that almost physical pull of the complete and precious new. 

Harry Potter and Welcome to the World of Grey by @sobsicles (456,640 words, rated E)

When Harry fails to keep his anger at bay and Voldemort possesses his mind, the events that follow lead him down a long road to realizing the world isn't as black and white as it seems.

Chaos, hilarity, and tragedy ensue with a Dark Lord being honest all the time, a rival becoming something else, and a world demanding to be saved. Featuring frightened Death Eaters, deep conversations with a monster, Pureblood traditions being ridiculous, and the fight to do the right thing with no true options.

Harry's life just gets more and more bizarre with each passing moment.

Or, the one where Harry's life gets split in half, and he has to figure out how to bring it back together.

The summary is immediately gripping, and I’ll leave the reader to discover the shapes of the AU on their own, but the basic premise of the story is that Harry, at the end of 5th year, does something he would never do in the book, and that as a consequence of (?), or despite (?) or alongside (?) this, him and Voldemort begin to, on a relational and intellectual level, engage in a way that would otherwise be impossible. This story works on so many levels, all of them incredibly crafted and so masterfully sustained over the behemoth length of the first installment. The Harry in this story is funny and young and troubled in the most delicious ways all the while wading in and out of the crushing solitude of predetermination (and also maybe just humanity). I generally read exclusively fics in which they’re adults, or at least on the brink of adulthood in 8th year, but the author has crafted such incredibly convincing teenage characters in both Harry and Draco here that by the end not only do they both end up under your skin but they also become these people that sit alongside you, whose adolescence you’ve literally gone through as both a sympathetic spectator and as a mirror of them, drawn into the irresistible sweet delights of their love, the painful bonding of people captive in their lives, the hope of the future born out of surviving something together. 

There is also a tendency in fics to paint the adults of the HP world as traitors, because that’s what the majority of them are, and this is something I also usually engage with. In this fic, while we maintain that the state of the world and the fates that befell all our favourite characters are largely the result of a kind of treason of goodness and responsibility, we also get to have these incredible deep insights into why each adult character is the way they are, through relations made possible only by this unlikely scenario that the author proposes. We also get to have the warm joy of seeing a child empathize with (and pity, and comfort, and teach) people who they owe nothing to, and this is an absolute treasure that shines brighter as we move through the story.

Finally, as this is Happy Hour, apart from all the things I’ve briefly mentioned up there that make this fic a delightful and comforting experience that I constantly go back to, I wanted to talk about a strange way that made this story become my source of comfort. This story made me like Voldemort. Not the terrifying and irredeemable one from the books or the movies. There’s this feeling that I have about fics and fandom, and I think it’s shared by a lot of people who’ve been around for a while, and it’s that these characters and settings and storylines are almost… nebulous things that always existed in us and around us and that we had maybe some slight hope for, but that were first snatched out of non-being and formed by the source material authors. This is also just how art and creativity is, in general - an antenna that beams signals and sometimes someone gets the whole message first. And you grow up and sometimes things are shaped by the source material to make you think oh I’ll feel this way forever and then of course you change your mind, but this was more like an intense, emotional journey in which I realized there was all this personal negativity that I’d always shove into this concept and this being - and that when I encountered the newly formed shape that this author’s Voldemort takes on, my resentments and my fixed darknesses, once unmovable and heavy at the bottom of this big thing in my life, were suddenly things I could walk up to. That the previously unapproachable veil of evil - which is simple, and undebatable - had lifted, and suddenly I could decide to do something else with them, to pick them up and carry them or throw them away, or live alongside them as awkward housemates until suddenly the shame and fear they represented wasn’t something I had to run from. So for happy hour, I picked a story that made me, and continues to make me, engage with not only happiness but a kind of lasting adult joy that comes from letting something come in and help you redraw the city lines of your own story. It’s very precious to me. I read the entirety of this fic in two days next to the crisp Adriatic sea, but I’ve reread it in many settings since then, and it’s always made me both hungry and full in the way that good home cooking does. I hope it does the same for you too.

[puckpocketed]

get ready for avs essays, babeyyyyyyy!!! 

so i’m actually completely fine with it if you don’t find nate compelling but since you bring him up, i will start with him. 

the thing about fortnite gamergirl nathan mackinnon is that he is like. very talented and reasonably conventionally attractive and also soooooooo cringefail. he’s the league mvp and a stanley cup champion and he has a gorgeous fiancée and he’s rich and he’s smashing through joe sakic’s franchise records left and right.... and he’s succchhhhhh a loser (affectionate). he’s uncomfortable all the time. he doesn’t know how to act. he’s pretty private but also he’ll just Say Things that are way too personal with the exact same tone he’d use to. i dunno. tell you what brand of sneakers he wears. he’ll also reveal things about the most private man in sports, squidney crocsby, that are way too personal—and sid apparently is fine with this because he continues to be boybestfriends and next door neighbors with the guy.

everyone thinks he is soooooo serious alllll the time (in spite of the fact that he is goofy and silly when he’s out with the boys) but it’s just a combination of a) his face just looks like that b) he’s just intense in general. he’s equally unchill about how much he fucking loves the boys and how much he loves his tiny dog. and c) mostly we see him when he is at his fucking job? and when he’s at work it’s All Business. don’t make him do dumb social media shit or ask him stupid questions about whether or not he thinks preseason is too long, he’s! busy! come back when it’s puppy day. 

he’s so focused on being working harder and being better and improving everything about his game and yet!!! he cannot win a faceoff 💖 he trains with squidney all summer! every year!! you would think he could learn something from the guy. but no, he doesn’t even seem to try to win faceoffs sometimes. he’s also. not ? defensively responsible? i do not exactly expect him to play like kopitar, here. i don’t even think he should waste all his energy backchecking; like, that’s not the thing we need him for. but idk from a guy who is sooooo fucking smart about hockey, a little more situational awareness would be nice. just a thought! like, if he wanted to be better at things, maybe he could get better at the things he’s terrible at? (but whatever, this gives me more of an excuse to push my ondřej pavel -> big boys’ club agenda). like. nate is an elite 1C���except that he doesn’t forecheck and doesn’t defend and one of his wingers (jonathan drouin) is actually the playmaker and the other winger (mikko rantanen) has to take all his faceoffs for him 🥰 

his one and only love language is trying to convince the boys to come play with him (jo, jack eichel, mitch marner, jo again). he doesn’t like late games, because he doesn’t nap. and he doesn’t nap because he can’t sleep during the day. and he can’t sleep during the day because he drinks too much water, so he has to piss too much. babygirl, why would you volunteer this information 💕 he tells people to call him “the dogg” and then they do. he says awkward sentences that rewire my brain. he should be cool, but he isn’t!!!!! he extremely fucking isn’t.

this is my natemac thesis, you can take it or leave it (said with love!!!!! there are other players i am significantly more invested in getting people on board with). i think many other people can speak more eloquently than i can about everything impressive he does on the ice. but he’s one of my special little guys bc of everything else

i have no idea what to do with all this <3 I'm here because he just bonked my ducks into oblivion - im hoping this cures his dogboy depression (it was becoming so wretched that it had started leaking into my curated feeds) - and it made me think of this ask which i've been marinating. hello!!

fortnite legend natemack is the exact age to have grown up in the heyday of COD xbox lobbies, do u ever think about that . i think about that now. do u think natedogg is his gamertag. rpf people are you writing gamergirl natemack AUs yet? has that happened yet? (sorry i don't. i don't have any clue what tropes are popular. im just throwing stuff at the wall <3)

nate is an elite 1C—except that he doesn’t forecheck and doesn’t defend and one of his wingers (jonathan drouin) is actually the playmaker and the other winger (mikko rantanen) has to take all his faceoffs for him 🥰

^craziest description of a 1C i've ever heard AND the most compelling he has ever been.

also thank u for not makin some kind of eating disorder joke amongst all this. it IS that serious (to ME) and people do this so much and i think they're not as funny as they think they are <3 (<- WHO SAID THAT!!!)

MYE two cents looking thru a writer/narrative lens: just, like, skimming whatever the hell comes up about him, he strikes me as someone who is very sincere. i get that everyone calls it "intensity" but i think sincerity has its own power. idk. i think he's very brave for wanting what he wants so transparently and wholly. <3 fortnite legend nathan mackinnon you are in my crosshairs......

[organizationhimself]

just kinda having some thinky thoughts about how dark road totally rewired eraqus's character and what a phenomenal job they did.

like here's your problem you have. you need to take this cloistered old man who raised his students in the jedi way, somehow put up with Old Man Villainy being That Way presumably on the regular, lost every last iota of his shit and turned on the Apocalypse Child he adopted as well as his surrogate son who was infested with The Evil (which the series has long established as not necessarily being good or bad without context) to say nothing of the headtrip he gave his direct heir, and you need to reduce him to a version of himself as a child that is. like. fun. someone who has a genuine friendship with xehanort and is regarded by xehanort as someone who is a "sly fox," i.e. not the sort of buffoon who tests for mastery of the keyblade by child-proofing some orbs of light.

where do you even begin?

YOU TRAUMATIZE THE UNGODLY HELL OUT OF HI--okay i'm getting ahead of myself, let's start with principles.

because eraqus is principled. he believes really firmly in the light in a way that's nearly sora-adjacent in its intensity, but the thing is that sora has this flexibility that eraqus was simply not raised to appreciate. yes, nomura, we understand you like the bright sunshine one and the wry brooding one, you did it with sora and riku, god knows what you did to axel's spine to fit him into the sunshine kid's mold next to isa as brooding anti-crybaby, and now we're doing the same thing to eraqus. ok. i love it when you're optimistic, let's do it.

so first we need confidence. easy; he's a smug little rich kid. worked for riku didn't it? (source: kh1 manga, and the fact that you cannot convince me anyone can maintain a kid with that build on a budget) but we also need to see how dark road changed him as a person. let's contrast his uptight stick-up-his-ass future with a present day class clown who doesn't take things seriously; a headstrong fighter who jokes that he'll just run away. and hey speaking of emotional damage, let's start easing into the inevitable terrible, horrific, unspeakable traumas we're going to visit on this defenseless creature with a little one as a treat:

HIT HIM RIGHT IN THE GRANDPA.

and there you go! we now have a source for eraqus's rejection of the darkness that is not simply a function of his career as a jedi keyblade master, but has an actual personal experience he can point back to in order to say "hey, darkness is the pits!! here is why." it sets the stage early for him to be already butting heads with xehanort, who takes a much more flexible look at the worlds and the way they work and is more willing to view things from the perspective that he is not an authority on the moral peculiarities of whatever world he is currently inhabiting.

xehanort is also a child of destiny [citation needed]. an isolated visitant who was born for finer things but never slept a day in his life without waking up with sand in his mouth until he reached out and took his fate in his bare hands and let it drag him all the way to scala.

where he met the blueblooded child of a keybearing legacy thousands of years in the making, just like his.

and suddenly what you have are unwitting equals. we're ready to set them both up at the chess board; eraqus's legacy is plain, he moves first and he makes no apologies for it because it's his birthright. but xehanort's half of the board is still buried in shadow, implied but never stated, never surrendered to eraqus's probing questions or revealed by his moves, but already aimed at a clash with destiny, fated, inevitable.

shall we say, already written.

and this is brilliant!! now we have a source for our "sly fox," a reason for xehanort to be extremely familiar with the way eraqus thinks (and not to star wars on main but the obi-wan kenobi series did something really similar to this narratively by using anakin and obi-wan's familiarity with each others' fighting styles to predict the actions they would take in a situation, and i will actually never be over it in my life, absolutely stealing it for a xehaqus fic sometime, just shamelessly mugging ewan mcgregor in the street for that solid gold good shit). not only that, but we also have an explanation for xehanort's motivations as described by kh3. he is not looking at the fight from the perspective of one of the pawns; he is looking at the fight as a player, deciding which pawn gets taken. selecting which rook to sacrifice in exchange for the queen.

and eraqus is opposite him, doing the exact same thing (sort of, kh3 was a little cerebral with that), but there's an important difference here that we'll come back to later on.

so, okay. we have a vague outline in the shape of a sunshine kid now. he has confidence tied to his role in society, his legacy gives him perspective, his trauma ensures that he will one day calcify against the darkness with such emphasis that he will unwittingly pad the therapy bills of an entire generation. so far so good.

but uh, yeah, his kids? he fights them? like okay, axel has his differences with his kids too but he's not trying to kill them (mostly). eraqus really definitely for real is, and ven is defenseless. so that'ssss...hard to square with the sunshine kid we're building, nomura, how do we explain that? we really can't handwave it as amnesia this time, we're not working with ansem the wise here.

(BALDR. BALDR IS HOW--

ok but wait wait wait, before we even get to baldr, there's something we can do:

make eraqus impulsive.

and i mean impulsive. make eraqus spoil for a fight with so much unmitigated howler monkey energy that he will fight his friends just to vent. (this isn't even a unique thing, riku and xion and even sora do it all the time, and we're not here to talk about ven's crimes against miners but it's clear that violence is a spoken language in kh.) eraqus is fluent, so we're making it so that all of eraqus's intensity and passion can be focused on a single point if xehanort pushes exactly the right switches in his head.

and then, y'know, yeah. make baldr slaughter all of his classmates, several of them right in front of him, because of unchecked darkness and baldr's own inability to see past his own grief and resentment for long enough to understand that all he's really doing is inflicting his own suffering on other people in a murderstorm of nihilism and bitterness. unrelenting trauma conga line, check.

and now we have almost all the elements. eraqus's principles can't allow him to accept darkness, both because his grandfather was lost to it and because it left him (by all accounts a bourgeois slacker at the bottom of his class, someone vidar doesn't even consider as a candidate for one of the lights despite what baldr has to say about eraqus as a light source) one of the only survivors of an event that completely resculpted his life and community. time to pack him off to the jedi temple land of departure to be least okayest teacher of the year, right?

well...no. we need eraqus to wait.

because he doesn't take on students. and doesn't, and doesn't, for decades. first he fights xehanort, and as we have established he is spoiling for that fight (white moves first!). and then when xehanort finally visits him to drop off that half-dead kid he found (ven was like that already shhh), he's kind of like politely like "oh, you have apprentices. they seem...bright," like he's congratulating eraqus on finally reaching a life stage that eraqus should have hit approximately 50 years ago, and eraqus is like "yeah yeah whatever shut up anyway YOU'VE got one too now right." (yen sid talks about the role of "seeker" like it's a different thing from "keyblade master" so that's where i'm extrapolating this distinction from, but regardless i don't think anyone ever seriously expected xehanort to take on students.)

my point here is that eraqus waited until the last possible opportunity to take on students. to carry on the legacy that was so important to him as a child, and to re-experience the closest thing to the camaraderie he had as a keybearer-in-training that he could ever have back. that is how impactful baldr's actions were for eraqus.

i'm veering completely into speculation now but i think eraqus was terrified. how could he not be? his class wasn't even taking the mark of mastery and still got decimated by it. how could he risk going through that again, but from odin's perspective this time? what guarantee would he ever have to avoid the same tragedy his master had failed to prevent?

so, NOW we know why eraqus's mark of mastery was a handful of light pinatas and a duel. (i like to think xehanort felt a certain level of professional embarrassment for him and wanted to make it just a little more like a real challenge.)

(this is a sidebar and i'm going to talk about my other blorbo for a second but terra has a beautiful dream of being a sly manipulator. that's why he doesn't worry about investing himself in villain schemes, because he assumes he'll see the snare coming before he gets his head caught in it, but it's never coming from directly in front of him like he expects. so this is a dream that will never come true, but he has it, and i think given what we knew about eraqus as early as blank points, its only possible source is a master who was strict and exacting, but--very occasionally--also a sly fox who secretly delighted in his students' nascent abilities to surprise and outwit him.)

back to the trauma, we also have, obviously, the explanation for eraqus's attitude towards terra, and later ven. terra is a tragedy in slow motion that eraqus has seen happen before. baldr was unable to control his darkness; it overwhelmed him, and eraqus does not have the context that xehanort does, that baldr was in some ways a product of his own darkness-shunning society. even if eraqus does have that context, i can't really see him agreeing with it--and even if he at one point agreed with it, he would have gotten that context from the same guy who last showed up at his house talking about kicking off the apocalypse for the vine.

so like. eraqus has never seen any damn thing in his whole life that doesn't confirm his bias against the darkness. does that make him innocent of parenting Incorrectly? no, he is a Bad Dad. does it explain his hopelessly unsuccessful parenting strategies? yes, it does.

what it reinforces is also that eraqus didn't want to have to fight terra and ven. the original bbs is honestly not very good about establishing this: he cries one Sad Tear. yawn. still child abuse, asshole! the stakes in bbs are also not very well established, because there's approximately six people in it and some of them are just the same guy over again, so we don't really have a sense that terra being taken over by the darkness is like...gonna mean something to eraqus that is sincerely worth the personal cost of killing him. since we're clearly no longer worried about ven, there aren't other students to protect (besides aqua, but she's a really hard sell on the "needs to be protected from terra with so much urgency he must not live another moment" front). there is no immediacy to ven's status as Apocalypse Child; if anything vanitas seems like the obviously more important threat, and maybe eraqus should be less concerned about weeding out students and more focused on vetting friends like Old Man So Clearly The Villain My Guy. bbs eraqus is just genuinely hard to like as a character.

but now we have dark road context.

and white moves first.

eraqus is not seeing terra or ven in that moment, he's seeing baldr. he's seeing the summoning of kingdom hearts that almost was, and he is gripped by meticulously prearranged, bone-deep, irrational, traumatized, unbridled impulse. the emotion must vent. the thing he was powerless to stop has returned to haunt him and he must resist it. he knows what will happen if terra strikes him down here and heads back out into the worlds in search of other hearts, other lights. he knows.

but terra resists, using the full spectrum of his strength without remorse, and it is only when eraqus's keyblade is ready to fall from his hand that he realizes the truth:

My own heart is darkness.

and when this happened in the original birth by sleep all i could think was yeah star wars dad!! nailed it your heart IS darkness you fuckin dillweed, about time!! what took you so long!!

but after dark road, this context is completely changed. eraqus is not just realizing that he fucked up.

he is realizing that he fucked up the exact same way baldr fucked up.

that he let his own grief and suffering cloud his judgment and guide his blade to strike out at his loved ones. that instead of finding a way to live with what's already happened to ven, what was long ago fated for terra, he turned his resentment outward and gave that darkness leave to consume them both whole.

but unlike baldr, eraqus regrets it.

it is that moment that xehanort cuts him down anyway, not because eraqus can't be saved the way baldr couldn't but because xehanort is cleaving away the last of his own attachments to the world so he can follow through with the rest of his plans, and i am SO NORMAL ABOUT THI

but okay anyway. eraqus has exactly one move left.

he can't see the board. unlike xehanort, he has no extra pieces of himself he can just bandy about; the warriors of light must assemble without any of his direct input, chasing the echoes of eraqus's students and pushing and pulling in reaction to xehanort's steady advance through the center. he has only one chance. he can't afford to waste it.

the kings are meeting in the middle of the board. the stalemate will come any moment, when they're both out of moves and out of time, leaving the fate of the worlds undecided.

and it is at this moment that eraqus pulls the same penultimate move that xehanort himself used on baldr, confronting him with the first victim his darkness ever struck down. eraqus almost doesn't have to say anything, at all, because xehanort has to know what it means. has to know what it says.

xehanort resists. the world is too far gone. too many horrible things can happen in it; it must be reset. not purged and filled with darkness, like baldr wanted, but returned to a state that can never mutate into the conditions that made baldr exist in the first place. that doomed all their classmates to die. it's too late.

For us, perhaps...but not for them.

and now we go back to the distinction.

the thing that makes xehanort's chess game different from eraqus's is that, for xehanort, it's only chess. the pieces he's moving have ceased to exist in his mind as individuals. they are pawns on a line of white and black squares, and they may weave away from his will here or there but they cannot be swayed from their march.

eraqus never forgets.

and it's actually eraqus's capacity for forgiveness that i haven't even touched on yet. this isn't a word i ever expected to associate with him, but eraqus spends dark road forgiving. five minutes after any altercation he's already forgotten about it. name-calling. arguments. rejection. opposition. full-on fighting.

murders.

when xehanort kills baldr, eraqus is still calling out for him to stop. when xehanort later strikes out at him with darkness (the thing eraqus is scared of the most!!), permanently disfiguring him, eraqus has already forgiven him before seeing him the next time in person.

he does not forget that baldr is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want him to be killed for it. that terra is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want to see it consume him. that ven is a person in spite of the darkness that was cleaved from him, and eraqus doesn't want to see it return.

(if you think about it the real tragedy is that we were robbed of him looking aqua in the eye and telling her that she isn't tainted forever, that it did not take her, and even if it had, that will always, always matter less than her finding her way back. i refuse to believe terra was not already made aware of these facts.)

but he also does not forget that xehanort is not a faceless player in the skies, impossible to convince of the significance of a pawn; he remembers that xehanort, too, is still a person.

this point is important because eraqus's last move is not a checkmate (I KNOW HE SAYS CHECKMATE but it is not checkmate), but it is calculated to produce something else: a concession. he doesn't need the board to support his win or xehanort's loss; he needs the player on the other side to put down the pieces and follow his beacon out of the dark.

and that is how nomura shows us our sunshine kid at last, fully formed, as he takes xehanort's burdens from him and spirits them both well beyond the reach of the board.

anyway yeah microwaving him in my brain along with axel (and also roxas and terra because if i don't collect all my blorbos AND their hot mess dads i'll never fill out my pokedex).

[thenationaltreasuregazette]

Meet the Editor

Hi, I’m Rachel, the editor of the National Treasure Gazette!

As part of Treas-tober lmao I thought it would be fun to introduce myself. Since we’ve got a newspaper motif going I thought I’d, like, interview myself. Which is super normal I’m sure.

Why are you like this?

Great question! In 2004, at the tender age of 10, I had my brain chemistry rewired by a cinematic one-two punch of two of the greatest films of all time: Scooby Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed and National Treasure.

I had always liked stories, but SD2 was the first time it occurred to me that somebody actually wrote them. And maybe…I could write them. The hyperfixation hit HARD. That night I invented a fascinating new drug called fanfiction. It would be years before I learned that that was a thing and you could put it online for other people to read, but that didn’t stop me from writing it, and I took it so seriously.

As far as I was concerned I was writing what would become the real sequels to SD2 and NT. I spent fifth grade working on the Scooby Doo one (a god-awful self-insert fic with no plot to speak of) and sixth grade working on my own version of the as-yet-unrealized National Treasure 2. (Also a self insert.)

But these projects got me interested in writing. I started learning about story structure and screenplays, and for National Treasure I started reading more about history.

Specifically, for an open choice book report I read an entire adult-level book about American conspiracy theories and then presented to my class about the Skull and Bones society and other weird shit like that. I’m sure my teacher was thrilled.

What inspired you to start this blog?

My love for my two favorite nostalgic comfort movies stayed with me and I would periodically rant about them to my friends and loved once, who were very kind to humor me.

I’ve had plenty of other interests and hyperfixations throughout the years too, and one of them was CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. When I fell back down that rabbit hole in 2021, I happened upon the exquisite collection of asks and articles by @addictedtostorytelling. (Seriously, if you were ever even a little bit interested in the og CSI and haven’t discovered this, check it out.)

And I thought, well reading this is fantastic but it seems like even more fun to be the one writing the articles. What piece of media could I be, like, a subject matter expert in? Not one with a million think pieces already, just a casual place that I could have fun exploring at my own pace? National Treasure!

And then I put off making it for a year or two because I was sure I couldn’t keep up with it and it would become yet another dead project in my graveyard of notebooks, forever haunting me with the specter of what I could have accomplished.

But at some point I said, “fuck it” and here we are!

What are you proudest of, re: the blog?

That it exists! When I started I set a goal of posting 10 articles before I let myself give up on yet another thing. I definitely still don’t get to it much more often than I do, but now it’s not a ghost!

Also that there are other people who like it? I started this fully expecting to be rambling into the void, but I’m so thrilled that there are other people out there who are still thinking about National Treasure. We are few but mighty.

Do you have any takeaways from the project?

Yes! The fun of this isn’t in being a National Treasure expert, if such a thing exists. It’s about sitting with a movie and asking new questions. Every time I explore an article topic or get asked a question I learn something different about the movie, that I doubt it would have occurred to me to think about otherwise. And you my dear readers always challenge me to explore more.

I love paying that kind of attention again. I think the reason Monsters Unleashed and National Treasure will always be so special to me is because I did spend all that time sitting with them, exploring every nook and cranny and possibility I could find. I’ve missed that.

Do you have any plans for another blog like this?

Well I do have the url @the-coolsville-inquirer saved right now, but there are whole swaths of Doo lore I am unversed on, so no, no current plans.

What do you do when you’re not thinking about National Treasure?

I walk my dog, take pottery classes, work on my YA novel, watch movies for the movie club I’m in, try to learn Turkish, cook, and chip away at a million unfinished writing projects. (And you know, work and stuff).

What can readers expect in the future?

I have a few fun ideas left for Treas-tober and one very exciting art-related surprise the 20th anniversary. At least, I’m excited.

And I hope a few people participate in the fanworks week!

Oh babygirl it's almost thanksgiving.

At least one Riley article, really!

You would think I'd be starting to run out of things to say but actually the more I seem to find to talk about.

Thanks for enjoying the ride with me so far!

[cinamun]

I think the people who think Bishop may care in a sick, demented way and people that think he’s doing this for his benefit…. are both right.

Lemme explain, y’all and don’t jump me! But I do think he does care. A lot of abusers (speaking from personal experience, my ex made me a victim of DV) care about their victims. The problem is That’s often why they seek out controlling and hurting the ones they love. They may love them, but they either don’t have the tools to love someone and treat em right, or they just don’t want to.

When Mercy held that knife to Bishop’s neck, I don’t think he was jus saying shit to say shit. He’s right, he was behind bars for 30 years and being controlled by others. Ion know much about his childhood or pre prison, but even just those thirty years should be enough to truly fucking rewire this guys brain. Control and Bishop go hand in hand, and there could be a deep, innate fear in him that if he doesn’t control - he gets controlled. Especially present in high emotional situations, such as finding a woman and possibly caring/having emotions towards her. Now I can’t say I like Bishop, I kinda wish Mercy cut his ass up when she had the chance - I just don’t know if I think he’s nothing but a stone cold psychopath, partly because of your tendency to very detailed, very nuanced takes on the human psyche, and partly because Most abusers are not jus….joe goldbergs or ted bundys.

I really am curious about Bishop’s childhood in more detail, and why he became this way - I think we need to be open to the fact that prison really did a number on this guy, y’all. That nonny that focused on the fact Bishop is the only one checking on this woman, making sure she eat, that’s true! Some of those behaviors could absolutely be this guy just tryna cover his tracks, but some of them are also….Ion know. I know someone said he may be covering his tracks because Jace know he’s at least abusive mentally, but I gotta point out this man successfully faked his own death and LITERALLY has a lair, y’all. This man would know better. I wonder if he ain’t leaving Mercy to die because he, himself, does not want her dead.

I think this is way more nuanced than just Bishop doing one or the other. I think the two sides have merged together to create the actions we see now, and I can’t wait to see where it goes further. I think he cares for Mercy, and that may be what’s actually triggering him to need to control her this badly. Either he’s scared of being controlled by her somehow, controlled by his emotions or… maybe he’s just fucking scared of losing the woman and it’s easier to control her than face the emotional worth he’s placed in her. It’s perfectly possible he cares for her in a sick, demented way (or at least shows it that way) AND calculates the risk and benefits of certain actions in terms of covering his own back. And PSA: even if prison reworked this man’s damn brain or whatever the case may be, it doesn’t make his actions any more forgivable - it does open the door to rehabilitation one day….possibly. Chile… anyways.

OOOHH WEEEE!!! Class has been in SESSION on this Holy Easter and Trans Visibility Day chile!!

[ponyosmom35]

I'm sorry

bittersweet chapter fourteen

steve harrington x fem oc

synopsis: Steve is desperate to change things between him and Indie and he swallows his pride and apologizes.

warnings: angst, steve feels guilty, oc is harsh but forgives him

link to master list:

https://www.tumblr.com/ponyosmom35/733401347573088256/simon-ghost-riley?source=share

Steve walked up to Indie’s house, his hair messy and his face tired. He knocked on the door and waited for a response.

She opened the door without looking first and made eye contact with him, gasping in shock. The shock quickly turned into anger. Her eyes observed the grotesque wounds on his face from the fight with Johnathon, not finding it within herself to have an ounce of sympathy. Steve Harrington disappointed her, she never would have expected him to be such an awful person. Breaking Johnathons camera, his lack of care for Barb’s disappearance, and his wretched comments to Jonathan before they fought. Indie had spent her entire life looking up to Steve, she fell in love with him as soon as she laid eyes on him. The person she created in her heart and mind was not the man who stood before her today.

Despite her heroic attempt to save him from the demogorgon the night before she still stared at him with an icy glare. 

Steve sighed, running a hand through his already messy hair. He didn’t exactly know what to say; he wasn’t even sure why he was here in the first place. But he had to say something.

“Can we talk?”

“Whats there to say?” she asked.

He let out a short breath through his nose, hesitating before speaking. He looked at her, noticing her expression of anger, but also the bags under her eyes. That was enough to make him feel a little guilty.

“Look, I know I’m probably the last person you wanna talk to, but…” He rubbed the back of his neck anxiously, pausing for a moment before continuing. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

He looked at her to gauge her reaction. He knew it probably wasn’t enough to change anything, but he genuinely was sorry.

“You’re sorry?” she asked, crossing her arms.

He looked down at the ground for a moment before meeting her eyes again. He was never the best at expressing himself. It was obvious that after the shock of the harrowing fight with the demogorgan she’d remembered all the shitty things he’d done. 

“Yeah… I am,” he mumbled, a guilty look on his face.

“Great, thanks for stopping by, Harrington. See you at school, or I won’t because you don’t notice freaks like me” she scoffed, going to shut the door in his face.

He stopped the door from closing and looked at her with a determined expression. “Wait… I have more to say to you,” he said quickly, desperate to get it out before she ended the conversation.

“She looked at him expectantly.

He could tell she was still upset, but at least she was giving him a chance to talk. He took a deep breath, trying to collect his thoughts before speaking again.

“I know we haven’t actually talked much, but… every interaction we’ve had has been awful and I’ve said so many things that I didn’t mean”

He paused, not knowing what he should say. He ran a hand through his hair again, sighing quietly before continuing.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you were right, I feel awful for everything that happened to your sister. It was my goddamn party, and Barb was there because of me. She got dragged into all that bullshit because of me.”

He looked at her, silently asking to tell her something important. His expression was guilty, but also a bit frustrated; he didn’t know what to say next.

Her frown softened as she stared up at him. “It wasn’t your fault, Steve. You couldn’t have known what was gonna happen. I never should have blamed you - that wasn’t fair. I am sorry about how I projected my shit on you”

He sighed again, shaking his head slightly. “Please don’t apoligize, you were 100% right. It was brutal but I needed to hear it. Indie that conversation changed me, you fucking flipped my world upside down and rewired my brain”

“What?” she asks staring at him in confusion.

“You made me realize that I’d become this version of myself that I didn’t recognize and I had to look in the mirror and ask myself who I am”

“Steve-” 

“But I still should’ve… done something. Made sure she got home safely, or that she wasn’t left alone or something… I don’t know. I wish I could change things, I swear to god I would go back and make sure she was safe, fuck I’m gonna regret that forever. I need you to know that this isn’t lost on me, I see what I’ve done and I’m so fucking sorry” 

He looked away, guilt still weighing on his mind.

“This isn’t on you,” she said. “Please don’t hold that in your heart, I was grieving and I was so fucking angry with the world, you caught me at the worst possible time and I unleashed all of that pain onto you and that was so unfair. I don’t blame you, please don’t blame yourself”

He kept looking away, not saying anything in response.

“I appreciate you coming by,” she added “it says a lot that you’re standing here right now”

He looked at her for a moment, his expression hard to read. He was a lot calmer now that he’d talked to her more, and the guilt was now replaced with a sort of curiosity, though he tried to ignore it.

“Yeah… um, no problem. I just wanted to apologize… I’m also sorry about your friend Jonathan, uh all of it - it was stupid I was a dick.”

“You were,” she nodded. “He didn’t deserve that.”

He looked away again, still feeling guilty. He knew Jonathan didn’t deserve it, but at the time, he was just being an immature prick like usual. He sighed as he spoke but tried to keep his expression neutral.

“No, he didn’t”

She nodded and looked at him, still shocked that he was even talking to her. He looked at her, his expression softening just a bit. He couldn’t help but notice how small she was. He’d seen her in the halls at school before, but he always just kinda glanced past her. She was adorable, that was for sure.

“Finally I want to express my deepest apologies for calling you a freak and for implying that you were sleeping with Johnathon. I was projecting my anger on you”

“I forgive you” she nods “sounds like we’re pretty even”

He had so many questions to ask her, and he had no idea why he suddenly felt so intrigued by her. All he could do was stand there and silently stare. He’d gone his entire life without ever speaking to this girl, she was a year behind him. Sure, he’d seen her, he knew of her. In Hawkins, you know everyone. But it wasn’t until she saved him last night that he really saw her. As he stood on her porch he wondered how it could have taken him so long. 

“Listen, Indie, I know that in the past my friends have been dicks, and I promise you right now that I’ll make sure it never happens again.”

“Why would you do that for me?” she asked in confusion.

He looked at her as she asked that, pausing for a moment before responding.

“I don’t know. I just… I don’t know. You just seem like you’ve been through enough bullshit lately, and you don’t deserve any of it, I guess. I just…” He couldn’t really explain why he suddenly felt this desire to protect her, but it was there, whether he liked it or not.

He looked at the small girl in front of him, still struggling to find the right words to say.

“I know you may feel like you’re alone right now, but I want you to know that I’m here for you, if you ever wanna talk.”

“You mean that?” she asked.

He nodded, looking her directly in the eyes as he responded. “I mean it. I’m here for you, whatever you need. Anytime.”

“Thank you, Steve” she said, offering him a small smile.

A small smile crept onto his face as she thanked him. He wasn’t used to feeling these sorts of things for anyone, much less someone he just met. It was weird, but he also kinda liked it, though he would never admit that out loud. He couldn’t help but admire how cute and pretty she looked when she smiled, but he quickly tried to focus on something else.

“Of course. You’re not alone anymore, red.” he says

“See you at school legohead?” she asks watching as he smiles at the nickname

“Yes ma’am” 

[aihoshiino]

In Viewpoint B (thank you for that TL of it, by the way!), Ai says to Kyun that she was a liar even before becoming an idol. Ai also describes herself as a liar in her inner monologue in the flashback to when she was scouted in Chapter 8/Episode 1. Do you have any ideas about what lies/"lies" she could be referring to, or how her self-hatred generates this specific self-perception?

You're very welcome – glad you enjoyed! Viewpoint B is my favourite of the sidestories so I'm really happy I was able to make it more available to everyone else, too.

Talking about 'lies' in OnK is kind of messy sometimes, honestly! I think this is where a lot of the weirder/more off base interpretations of Ai in the fandom come from because people get tripped up by how the story uses the word and assume that it begins and ends with the very literal dictionary definition of like, "an intentionally false directly expressed statement". And while this isn't not part of what OnK means when it talks about lies, there's a lot more going on than that.

'Lies' in OnK are essentially an umbrella term being used to cover a whole shitload of thematic ground via abstraction. When Oshi no Ko talks about lies, it's talking about falsehoods, inauthenticity, the sanitized and manufactured versions of ourselves we wear for social approval, the idea of persona, celebrity culture, idol culture, parasocial relationships, abuse, purity culture, misogyny, art, fiction, mental illness, love, hate and all manner of other things.

"Holy shit, Claire" you may presumably say "That's a whole lot of things for just one word to cover???"

And I would say... yep it is! But that's why just one word is used — because the story has so much ground it wants to cover, some of it needs to be abstracted just to not exhaust the audience. To quote Dan Olson's weirdly relevant video on the NC's The Wall review:

"Abstraction is, counter-intuitively, really efficient. It allows a movie to be about a lot of things simultaneously by letting symbols bleed into each other. [...] Symbols shift and merge and break apart, juxtaposed and contrasted in order to create an impression of their interconnected relationship in a way that is difficult to do with mere words."

Accordingly, it's a little hard to express this idea without just vaguely waving my hands and going "oooo the vibes" but I think it is something you end up just kind of vibing with when you have spent enough time chewing on the characters and why they do and say the things they do.

In Ai's case, when she talks about 'lies', she is generally referring to the performance of a sanitized and idealized self by omitting the parts of herself that do not line up with her public image. I've previously noodled on this topic in an older post that I still stand by and this basic idea still forms the foundation of most of my Ai analysis: "Really, the biggest “lie” Ai is telling is the one people have demanded she tell: the illusion of an eternally pure and cheerful idol. But being an idol has become so forcibly entangled in Ai’s personhood at the expense of allowing her to just be a human that of course she thinks of herself as a liar for being unable to live up to that image."

To Ai, any failure to disclose her true, ugly self is a lie. Her performance of a self that other people find lovable is the thing she thinks of as lying. It's also worth noting that in both Viewpoint B and her flashback, she's describing her younger self in hindsight and attributing the label of 'liar' to her rather than this being something Ai called herself before meeting Saitou, who went on to completely rewire her brain by teaching her that this performance for social approval was lying and that it was okay and even necessary for her to do it.

I also think Ai's history of abuse at her mom's hands also contributed to this a great deal. I, uh, don't want to go too deep into this in my silly Oshi no Ko meta tag but speaking from experience: growing up with a parent like Ayumi, you get really good at lying. You get really good at saying "I'm sorry", "I forgive you" and whatever the fuck else they want to hear from you just to calm them down and make them happy. You get really, really good at performing the most perfectly sanitized version of yourself possible just to keep the peace. Knowing just how long and how violently Ai was being abused by Ayumi, it's really hard for me to not project that survival tactic onto her.

[robinainthood]

chatfic gojo lives and goatjo420 pls 🙏

You're an angel for requesting multiple, ily <33

Chatfic excerpt can be found here!

GOJO LIVES BITCH

Concept: It was meant to be a before and after, "came back wrong" kind of deal, inspired in part by this fanart. I only got as far as the prelude, though, when he's stuck in the prison realm (with literally two lines of dialogue post-resurrection, which I suppose I'll include below just for funsies lmao).

Excerpt:

Time is slipping. Counting has grown fruitless when every second is the same one ticking in endless circles, hoping as useless as the world that goes on without him (for days, months, years? For eternity?). Satoru contemplates it for a split second or two, maybe a minute, maybe longer, before resigning himself to this new reality where time is nothing more than a vague memory. He has to remind himself again and again that it still exists, outside this empty expanse for everyone else. Has to hope that he’s left enough of himself behind in his students to compensate for his absence. That this isn’t forever in a moment. It’s useless, this hoping, but all he has left in this wretched place.

And the two (2) lines of dialogue in question:

“How did you…” Satoru brushes the rough skin there. “You did most of the work.” Shoko puffs her cigarette. “Made it easy for me, honestly.”

I don't know if I'll revisit this one, to be honest, only because so many have done it already (and better than me). There are other concepts I'm more eager to explore! Which leads me to...

goatjo420 is online!

Concept: Okay, hear me out lmao. This one's a JJK/Black Mirror crossover, specifically the Striking Vipers episode. If you're unfamiliar, two best friends start playing a VR game together and discover it's extremely realistic and... well, fuckery ensues. Literally and figuratively lmao.

There's a lot of exploring sexuality with your best friend and coming to terms with your almost comical compatibility that's just SO stsg, I had to do it. I will finish this one day, I swear T-T

Also, a fun fact no one asked for: I replaced Striking Vipers with Tekken because I have this dumb headcanon that it's their favorite game (particularly Satoru's). That is all!

Excerpt:

goatjo420 is online! Suguru thumbs the joysticks on his controller with a groan. Bites the inside of his cheek to quiet the screaming urge to send him a request and hopes, against all that is reasonable and grounded in reality, that he’ll decide on a solo game this time. Ding! goatjo420 invited you to play Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection! Suguru lets out a dramatic sigh. The bastard just knows it’s his favorite game, and moreover that he never has time to play it anymore. Not with the kids keeping him busy every hour of the day. It’s late and he’s tired and still seeing red but, fuck, what could one game hurt, anyway? “Screw it.” Suguru taps the receiver on his temple to accept, leaning back into the couch. “What are you doing up this late?” No pretenses. Satoru scoffs. There’s music playing in the background, clipping in and out as he speaks. “Could ask you the same thing. And, what, no hello? Shit, do I mean that little to you?” “Shut up. One round and then I’m going to bed.” Suguru boots up Tekken, and adds: “I’m still pissed at you, you know.” “No! Really? Wouldn’t have guessed.” “You know what, fuck you, Sato—” “Hey, hey, don’t go logging off on me now. Look, I’ll make it up to you the next time we meet, alright?” Satoru’s mic cracks with the sound of his shifting, no doubt cozying up against his favorite pillow that costs as much as Suguru’s electricity bill. “Just kick my ass in the meantime, yeah?” And Suguru swears he can hear the smirk in his voice when he coyly adds: “If you can.”

These two have changed me fundamentally, have rewired my brain, have raised the bar for romance to such untouchable heights that I fear I may never recover. :)