#shoutout to something i have no clue what im saying

[neoninglitchen]

all my moots doing eye reveals so your boy did one as well (sorry for my low quality chat it just like that)

[tradetobest]

do u still think abt the golf au bc i would pay billions for you to infodump about it…

YEs i love thinking about this au so much thank you so much for asking me about it anon ilysm....

(under the cut bcs it feels a bit long to me)

this was my first act as a hockey fan it has such a special place in my heart.... i thought about it while i was in class and sorted everyone into categories Definitively. thank you for making me do this. of course some of the things i have these guys do you Shouldnt Do on a golf course, and like this is Super unrealistic but i love having my fun ok…. just Good Vibes… (also, im generalizing “clubhouse” as both people who work as servers at the course’s restaurant and the people who help golfers with carts/clubs/etc and all that. i did Not work there At All so it just makes it easier for me to loop them…. imagine they just like rotate around or something….)

OK… so…. starting with the two who started it all, mitch and auston.

i dont ever think i ever totally explained what mitch and auston's roles were besides surface level stuff so!! mitch is a member of the turf team at the golf course, which are basically the group of people who go around and cut the grass and do the landscaping and all of that. like ice crew, but just for the golf course.

auston is like. i don't know. some sort of moderately rich guy. maybe he's Auston Matthews or maybe he's just rich, i have no clue. all that matters is he golfs. maybe he's a professional golfer. of course, i imagine everything in this au as happening at my course, but tbh it works at any course...

(now, of course, one of mitch's friends works at the clubhouse, and tells mitch every time auston is sitting there looking for him... willy nylander youre a real one)

just imagine mitch driving around a work truck with a rake, a bucket of sand, and a leaf blower in the back and auston (dressed prim, and proper, white pants white shoes white hat purple shirt all nice) literally falling all over himself to talk to him. loitering all over just Hoping that Maybe mitch will drive by and he can rope him into conversation. meanwhile when mitch sees willy he’s like “yeah auston’s so cute but like idk if he’d ever go for me” and willy is like “yeah you have no fucking idea”

i used to have to do this task which was just. watering all of the flowers near the clubhouse and i can imagine mitch doing that and like surroptitiously glancing over his shoulder to check if auston is around or watching or something… just some good old fluffy pining yk…

i have a like Whole Ass procreate file w everyone sorted into lil groups so here’s some little tidbits …

i think i mightve talked abt this in another post but sid (crosby) and claude (giroux) both work for turf and are both Incredibly Competitive about it in the most insane way ever… im talking “you take half the course i take half the course and we see who finishes faster” (starting at 6am ish) mowing competitions and theyre both done at 8 on the dot…. insane people shit…. they did it with bunkers ONCE and claude tripped and fell into a bunker and broke his wrists so they do not do that anymore o7….

in honour of my boss feeling like my dad i put patty marleau and matt martin in turf…. they do rough mowing in honour of the two guys at my course who Only did rough mowing…. big ass machine

the thing to know about guys who are higher up on the turf echelon is that not only do they all know each other but they also went to school for it… turf school…. all this to say top grad of turf school Sidney Crosby got some little ducklings and thats how Connor McDavid (top turf school grad) got to this course…. we love that for him

shoutout to other guys who also have fun little romance stories but who arent mitch and auston, including but not limited to:

connor mcdavid, who keeps getting his work paused by these three golfers, which always makes him grit his teeth and smile softly at them, because Holy Shit Let Me Get Back To My Job Please. matthew tkachuk (son of Great Golfer Keith Tkachuk) seems to take joy in interrupting connor while he’s in the middle of something, jack eichel always catches him bent over and sweaty trying to shove the wheels back onto a greens mower for one of the kids, and leon draisaitl stands on the side to wait until connor’s at least done a pass to ask him something. matthew jack and leon can be seen at the clubhouse after they finish a round, head in hands, because connor is oblivious to their flirting. maybe they should try learning the names of different types of grass.

jamie drysdale (uni student staying with his grandparents over the summer) always comes to the clubhouse for breakfast with them, which absolutely delights bored server trevor zegras… too bad the summer has to end some time! lol! anyway

tyler bertuzzi (turf) seems to always have dirt under his fingernails, some mulch and woodchips stuck to his shorts, scuffs on his knees, and a dirty ass sweater on. dylan larkin (clubhouse) finds him INCREDIBLY endearing.

brady tkachuk (son of Great Golfer Keith Tkachuk) when he’s not driving his brother around so he can try and find connor (“seriously, matthew, he looks busy” “no, it’ll be fine, look—”) is smiling sweetly at the fumbling german waiter who always engages leon in rapidfire german conversation. tim, his nametag says, and brady would love to have more than a few word conversation with him. maybe he should interrupt leon’s brooding time with matthew and jack and ask him to teach him some german.

if you want to communicate with the turf team’s mechanic and don’t want to be asked “where sid? tell him—” you should bring sid with you to see him. however, if you do bring sid, you will have to watch him and said mechanic do Weird Flirting for a good 30 mins before your question is answered. this is outside of the Weird Flirting they do anyway, all the time. if a day goes by without sid twirling his hair kicking his feet over some shit geno said to him earlier in the day has the day really gone by?

followup turf/clubhouse Flirting (I CANT BELIEVE I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION THEM IYKYK) tyler seguin, Pretty Boy Galore, and his loud, bubbly, and all consuming obsession with quiet doe-eyed turf worker jamie benn. now thats what i call oblivious. “yeah i flirt with jamie all the time but he just thinks its a joke haha he couldnt want me i know that like have you seen him?” “yeah tyler flirts with me but he’s just joking he doesn’t mean that he could never like me like that have you seen him?” and all that good good shit… tyler sees jamie take off his shirt once because it got soaked and loses his mind.

jack hughes (brother of turf guys luke and quinn) absolutely has the biggest crush on his coworker, fellow clubhouse worker nico hischier. once nico got wet in the rain and soaked through his white work shirt and jack almost lost his fucking mind. absolutely twirling his hair kicking his feet.

both pairs of bruins that i like (bergeron/marchand and swayman/ullmark) are fun little golf tandems. me when i get a hole in one and hug and twirl around a kiss my golf partner. what if we kissed in the front seat of a golf cart. and all that.

finally… honourable mention to john tavares (golfer, has his own labelled golf cart at a course in toronto… love that for you king….) kris letang (turf) and marc-andré fleury (clubhouse) who get to listen to sid moan and groan about geno, and self jarvis (turf) who is completely out of place among the other teams included in this au but i love him so hes here lmfaoo

anyway. yeah. i have LOTS of ideas about this au if you couldnt tell and anon i am SO happy you asked abt it… sorry it took me a few days i have to write like most days for school this semester and its leaving me Very Little time to do anything but reblog posts and draw matty and woller. MATTY AND WOLLER. oh my god i cant believe i almost forgot them uhhh…..

matthew knies and joseph woll are….. both turf workers maybe… yeah. call that lets talk while filling divots on the course or raking bunkers. what if we kissed in the rain while shovelling dirt and seed mix into small holes over and over again. Them

OK IM DONE FR NOW. thank you so much sorry there are no visuals i have written this mostly in class now but if you want to know more or if you want me to elaborate on a specific dynamic (or add some people, because god knows these are just the guys i know/like) or want visuals for anything i can 100% provide, might just take a bit again haha… ilysm anon you made my week

[bunnygibson]

Ok bunnygibson since u are the gibson authority: what draws u to the character of gibson? What r his most compelling traits in ur eyes? What do u think he’d have gotten up to if he survived? Do u think he genuinely loved hickey (and what kind of love was it)? Do u think he and jopson were friends?

YAYYY opportunity to talk about my girl :D this is gonna be Long so im putting it under a readmore

okay so first off i love a character who is DOOMED especially when it's Love that dooms them. there is nothing more compelling a character can do than follow their heart to ruination against their better judgment. like, on one hand he's this very practical guy, trying to stay out of trouble and even being a conniving bastard sometimes!! but really he's a Romantic and listens to his heart rather than his head when it comes to the person he loves... he so clearly Knows Better like he Knows that getting with hickey is a terrible idea but he's in love !!! and despite all the red flags he stays with him, he follows him straight to his own death... he's such a fantastically written character like, his arc is so deeply satisfying to me it could not possibly be better.

if he survived!!! in a situation where they got back to england, i think he would tell hickey he never wanted to see him again, but if hickey showed up at his doorstep he would let him in every time. shoutout to this super super good fanart where hickey billy and tozer survive and kill the tuunbaq and hang out in the arctic.... in only my self-indulgent imagination i like to picture him and hickey and tozer in the most annoying toxic throuple of all time <3 it starts out as hickey and his two boyfriends but then his two boyfriends make out #gibsontozer <3 i think if they survived and made it to hawaii, and hickey asked billy to run away with him instead of returning to england... man, i really don't know. it depends on what his life in england was like, whether he'd be willing to abandon it, and we really don't even have any clues. i'm sure he would be extremely tempted... staying in paradise with hickey instead of going home to cold rainy england and what, marrying a woman? going back to sea and being a steward? but i don't know if he could bring himself to do it... outside of a survival situation i just don't know if he would allow himself to do something so self-indulgent.

YES i believe with my whole heart that he was genuinely in love with hickey (and hickey was in love with him too). maybe he didn't even admit it to himself, but he loved him, even after learning he's a murderer he loved him so so bad... he probably hated the fact that he was in love because it's Inconvenient as hell LOL after every time he slept with him he was like "okay that was the LAST time" but then he would go back to his little bunk and write his name surrounded by little hearts in his diary. bro is down sooo bad down atrocious

i think he and jopson were probably more co-workers than friends, but they had a mutual respect for each other because they both enjoy being snarky and bitchy from time to time... like jopson would say something passive aggressive or underhanded and billy would give it right back and they would look at each other like Alright, I See You. but i don't think they really hung out outside of steward duties... i always headcanon billy as being best friends with armitage even though i don't think they ever interact in canon lol

THANK YOU ANON for letting me rant (and also for giving me the title of Gibson Authority hehe) i Love shit like this 🫶 i could write a ten page essay on billy.... i could write a Book i could give a speech. i have so many thoughts and opinions

[deafeninggardenerpanda]

sorry late for the controversial ship ask thingy ! either mahokabi or the ship between king dedede and dark matter swordsman! idk the ship name of this one. i've seen it a few times and it's always this yandere-esque thing where dedede doesn't look like he really enjoys it? i was wondering if you'd seen it? thank you! i hope these controversial ship thingies aren't taking a toll on you or something. take care!

oooo these two in particular make me think you spend a lot of time in the jp fandom space. theyre pretty rare otherwise. also dw im so chill but i super appreciate the concern :D

under the cut:

magokirby gets an instant L from me for having way too much ship art thats indistinguishable from anything else. you see mags and kirby standing remotely close to each other and you go "oh thats cool ar- ah. マホカビ ...." otherwise its like. i know a lot of ppl hate this one cause it has the same vibes as me//taki//rby, which in a way i kinda agree because as kirby is the most popular character to be shipped in the jp spaces, it falls under my somewhat broad red flag territory of "uh oh two extremely popular characters together", but honestly i think this one is way better than mtkb. at least its way more plausible for magolor and kirby to be in the same age group. that said i still get really weird vibes from the content out there... i dont bother looking into it enough to Really pin down what the issue is but sometimes it feels like people like to romanticize a manipulative magolor too much

matterdede i think is what its called, though im not sure if thats just an umbrella term for any sort of dark matter/dedede and dark matter swordsman has his own term. Yeahhh agree with you anon. like i said id be a hypocrite to bash any sort of enemies to lovers but this one in particular really just makes me think Why. im so Why about it im struggling to properly convey any thoughts on it even. not a bad Why. just a neutral Why. but like. Why

my friend ships matterdede on the downlow actually, shoutout to him and i trust his takes in particular so i refer to him: ships only good if you flip the power dynamic. dms having power over dedede in their relationship leads to weird yandere relationships like you specified. dedede having power over the relationship leads to. okay im so sorry im gonna be honest i still dont know but hey its better than before at least. this is probably a personal side effect of me not having any attachment to 64 sob sob im so sorry swordsman i have no clue what to do with your ass

i think like. this gives me the same vibes as dam//eta//meta where i can kinda see it if i squint really hard. like it works as a concept that says something deeper about both of the character's inner states and development rather than being a traditional romance. but also whenever i see it out in the wild im right back to square one of not remotely getting it at all. likeeee if you want to make matterdede a thing of dark matter swordsman learning how to experience emotions through dedede and dedede. okay i still dont know but ill say growing from trauma sure. and then both of them get to understand each other in a unique way by being bonded or whatever then cool i guess? but then at the same time if you go that route i dont see them being traditionally romancey in the slightest and so any art i see like that throws me off?? i dunno i have a lot of thoughts. none of them manage to overshadow the initial Why however, which i think is the issue

[rebelpeas]

BAM QUESTIONS

✨ 🎶 🎯 🤲 🤡

HI QWERTY thanks for the questions! i skipped two that i have already answered (✨ and 🤡) this time bc im sleeby tonight 😴

🎶 - Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

i cannot write without music LOL i make playlists for my long wips and try to only listen to those songs while i’m working on the wip, so it’s a sort of “sit down and focus” soundtrack. for oneshots i tend to loop just one song the whole time i’m writing. lately, i’ve been listening to fold i by motherfolk and chinese satellite by phoebe bridger!

🎯 - Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which?

shoutout to the mine theory truthers of devil town! i think at least one person had guessed every reveal, twist, or plot point in devil town by the time we got to the end, with the one exception of (SPOILERS) wilbur being involved in quackity’s dad’s death in any capacity, or, like. anything about karl. i did not see anybody guess that, which was kind of funny and i suspect is probably part of the reason chapter eleven ended up being the most memorable scene in that fic.

also. you with a certain character in footnotes LMAO but you know this

🤲 - Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

this is less of a snippet and more of An Entire Scene because i couldn’t decide which part to grab and just got. all of it. but here is a 500 word chunk from act two of pds 70b for you! warnings ahead for discussions of unreality and death.

“I think I’m going to die in this car,” Wilbur tells Tommy, who is sprawled out across a blanket with one arm over his eyes. It’s just shy of noon; the sun beats down above them, shielded only by the overhang of the building they’ve stopped at for the day. The teenager raises the corner of his lip in the tired approximation of a grossed-out sneer.

“What?”

Wilbur thinks he was pretty obvious the first time. “I’m just gonna keep driving it around until it breaks. Then I’ll live out of it wherever it stops, and eventually I’ll die there. Gonna die in the car. Be buried in it. It’s my tomb, all decorated already and everything.”

This causes Tommy to lift his arm, blue eyes finding Wilbur’s with a scowl. “Has anyone ever told you, you’re fucking morbid?”

“I don’t know,” Wilbur says. “My memory’s bad. That’s insensitive.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy says without a bit of venom to it. He settles back down. “Stop talking about death and let me nap, would you?”

“Okay.” Wilbur puts his back against the wall. “What about you?”

Tommy heaves a sigh and Wilbur can hear the eyeroll that goes with it. “I’m never going to die, actually.”

“No,” Wilbur corrects. “What’ll you do when the car breaks?”

A silent pause hangs between them.

“Well,” Tomm starts, slowly. “I imagine it’ll still be a good while til that happens. Told you, Tubbo’s good with cars. A right mechanic. He’ll keep it moving, and we can go wherever. See who else we can find that’s still around. Oh, we could start a–what’s the word, for like, end of the world shit?”

“What?”

“A community,” Tommy says. “With survivors. We can start farms.”

“I don’t think plants have been growing.”

“What? Oh.” Tommy frowns. “Well, maybe they just need different conditions. We can figure it out.” And after a moment, “How haven’t plants been growing? That doesn’t make any sense. They haven’t died.”

Wilbur shrugs. “You ask the apocalypse how it all works. I haven’t the slightest clue.”

Tommy covers his face again. “I’ll ask tomorrow. Goodnight, Wilbur.”

Wilbur lets him sleep this time. After a few moments, Tommy’s breathing slows into something slow, heavy, and even. He’s a quiet sleeper, whether that’s in the passenger seat of Wilbur’s car or on a blanket in an empty hotel’s lobby, just by the doors where an occasional breeze blows through. The breeze is louder than Tommy’s breathing sometimes.

It startles Wilbur the first time he mixes up the wind for someone breathing. Then it gets stuck in his head. He keeps looking over, half-expecting for Tommy to be gone and to be alone again. Even after the night spent driving together, and the morning spent together scrounging for supplies and finding a cool enough place to sleep, Wilbur still doesn’t quite believe that Tommy is real.

Doesn’t quite believe he’s going to stay.

Tommy is some sort of ghost, he’s pretty sure. Something like a sketchbook high above a canyon, or a name written on a calendar, or a wallet sitting on his dashboard, only a little more tangible. A little louder, when he’s awake, and a little more insistent about it.

So Tommy is the last dredges of Wilbur’s sanity trying to survive, one last-ditch effort to wake himself up and get back into the car and start driving, again, and again, and again. Maybe he isn’t even alive. Maybe it’d worked, back at the canyon–maybe this is just the hallucinated last moments of Wilbur’s life, played through in vivid detail.

Maybe nothing’s real. Maybe trees never fall if no one is there to see it go. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Tommy is still asleep. One arm over his eyes; blonde hair spilled over maroon carpet. His chest continues to rise and fall. Real or otherwise.

Wilbur dozes off just behind him, and he dreams of something dark in between glittering lights and velvet fabric bundled up inside of his chest.

[florencepuhg]

he wants to tell her the truth SO bad

[fadeintolight]

one thing i’ve noticed since 2020 till now it’s that for both of them, people here are thinking that just because it has been past ten years suddenly they all have a say to navigate the closet in the best way which is something that you’d literally never know that’s stuff in contracts and i remember when holivia got messier and people were blaming harry too and then louis left syco and he was seen writing and bmg and all that and then bg stuff started to come back and they started blaming him and saying he’s gaslighting us idk plus all the ‘gaslighting’ he apparently does by not giving credit to fans for getting all the clues that’s another topic 😭 but yeah point is idk how you after being so many years in this or if you’re new to it like me maybe you’d be more annoyed or tbh idk each to their own but yeah it’s bizarre how suddenly bc it’s been years then it’s their fault and they want this and are doing it to ‘keep both sides of fandom happy’ and not just bc of the heteronormative homophobic society/industry 🤷🏻‍♀️ suddenly they forgot all the decade of queer coding they did and continue to do

!!!

people in fandoms built around non-fictional people confuse real life’s hardships with a tv show that occasionally does fan service. we are not owed ANYTHING from them just because we still choose to be active in this hellhole. and this is something i too have to remind myself often. im not here to get a standing ovation or a shoutout from them when this is over. i do believe they try and show us they appreciate our presence every now and then but dude after a decade this might not be so high on their priority list - understandably. that doesn’t mean they gave up on their goals to be free - we literally have no idea what they agreed to do first in order to make that happen.

it’s sad to see how their queercoding lost its value to so many in the fandom here. when to this day it’s all they have to communicate with?? i know i make fun of bluegreening and half the time it’s probably not meant to signal anything but the fact that they still put effort into seeking out ways to wear these two fucking colors for US essentially only for people to have witty comments like “how about ending babygate” is just sad. you think they share a piece of raisin bran for a brain? and they just forgot about everything that has them chained to the closet because it’s oh so much fun to use a kid as a prop and have a different white trash beard every year?

[starglitterz]

celebrating birthdays is much more difficult than expected.

feat; diluc x gn!reader

warnings; i forgot how 2 write lol,,, food mention,,, not proofread we die like how everyone thought kazuha would <3

a/n; KOIII! @chichikoi !! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY LOVE !!! im not sure what timezone ur in but this is scheduled to post for 12am 15/9 aka as soon as ur bday starts in my timezone! i hope u like this mwahhhh also theres a better letter for u in the a/n utc ♡

please reblog ! it helps a lot :)

diluc.

diluc ragnvindr has rarely been close enough to anyone to celebrate their birthday, nor does he feel the need to. he pretends he doesn't remember the birthday parties crepus and him threw for kaeya when they were young, and the parties he had for his birthdays too - isn't he too old for that now? he doesn't feel so inclined to sit awkwardly with a party hat on his head while he waits for everyone to finish singing happy birthday. but with you, things are different. he desperately wants to commemorate your special day, the day you were brought into this world, the day that's the sole reason he's able to date you now. unfortunately, he has zero clue how to.

originally, he considered asking the knights for their opinion, but when he thought of how kaeya would tease him, the proud smile jean would wear as she realised that he was asking for help from the knights of all people, the way eula would take this as just another reason to exact vengeance, how klee didn't even like him, and how albedo probably had no idea too, diluc changed his mind very quickly. hence, he sought assistance from none other than the workers in his house. hillie and moco were unhelpful, merely starstruck at the chance of speaking to their boss face to face, while connor suggested making you a special brew, which diluc rejected. thankfully, adelinde and elzer managed to save the day. adelinde whipped up a delicious birthday cake that was your favourite flavour, with elaborate edible decorations and a 'happy birthday!' illustrated on it with icing. elzer, with his eye for detail and skill at handling important affairs, plotted out your schedule and found the perfect time for diluc to surprise you - right after you wake up the next morning.

-

to say diluc is terrified would be an understatement. he's been in so many battles, defeated hundreds of fatui members, yet here he is; quaking in his boots at the thought of you disliking his surprise. but then he thinks to himself that he's got to thank you somehow for everything you've done for him. the way a smile from you brightens up his entire day, how your warm hugs never fail to cheer him up, your reassurance and light scolding whenever he overworks, the infinite wonderful memories the two of you have made together that he keeps hidden like precious treasures in his heart - he's so lucky to have you, and diluc is planning to show you just how grateful he is today.

from outside the door of your shared bedroom (no, he still can't get over the fact that you live with him! and sleep in the same bed!), diluc lights the candle on the cake in his arms. he can hear the sounds of you faintly stirring, and his cheeks redden slightly with excitement and anticipation as he thinks about how he's going to gift you with a kiss too, aside from the present waiting for you downstairs; it's something you've mentioned wanting for ages, and diluc recalled you saying that and purchased it. the candle flame flickers gently, and diluc smiles at no one in particular, imagining your joyous expression when you see it. it may not be his birthday, but as he looks up from the dancing flame and enters the bedroom, diluc makes a silent wish.

archons, i hope they have the best birthday!

quill speaks !

koi,

happy birthday !!!!!! i rlly hope your bday goes amazing, and that you have the most awesome day ever! shoutout to you for being one of the no1 diluc simps omg i hope u like the fic too <3!!! you're super funny and friendly all the time, i love seeing ur posts and even willingly followed the brand new koithe2nd for a clogged up dash! LOL but seriously, you're a great person, the only person i can tolerate making fart jokes (besides genesis), and i rlly hope we get to become closer friends & that diluc comes home for u ASAP ! mwah i think that's all for now, happy birthday again koi !! keep being the super awesome person you are, ily <3

xoxo,

quill <3

um to the rest of u 🙄 /j

i cba to use my taglist for this post im so tired im sorry </3

but anyways heres a tag for my beloved sarah @almondto-fu bc hashtag elzer mention 😋

i know i said i wasnt going to be writing but kois bday bash is an exception!!!!!!!!!! im going back into hibernation now !!!!!!!!! /hj

anyways i dont rlly have much to say except that i had to go boil water halfway thru writing this and then nearly cried bc of injury pain but its ok who cares we die like crepus 😎‼ LMAOOO pls im too tired to tag this properly i just wanna sleep ahhhh goodnight all of u !!

hope you enjoy your stay at quill’s dessert cafe, and do check out the menu if you’d like ! 🍭

© starglitterz 2021. do not repost or modify in any way.

[navyhurricane]

wtwp spoilers ahead!!

content warnings: moderate mentions of descriptive gore, might not be suitable for everyone

i had mentioned this on twitter and now im making it a reality: welcome to my interpretations of the ‘where the wicked play’ side stories i’ve written and posted:) if you’re interested, they’re all posted on my ao3 

anyways this is the first one that i wrote and published, enjoy:)

-

jaws dripping all your greed - https://archiveofourown.org/works/35780938

-

You started from Darkness.

alright well to start it off i haven’t written second person pov since my self insert days so this was definitely new. i am positive this fic began with some insane thought that manifested at 4am and then i was furiously typing into a doc. i wanted something that was both unknown and completely transparent, and using a second person pov was attention grabbing enough to me to work with. 

as we continue in the fic, we’re introduced to ‘you’. ‘You’ seem to know everything and ‘you’ seem to have no real kind of family, but it’s referenced that ‘you’ had to come from somewhere. i really liked this kind of introduction because it was so vague and so exact at the same time, and leaves a lot of it up for interpretation whilst handing you every single clue that you could possibly need. 

-

You should start over.

Start from the beginning.

You started from Darkness.

i will be honest here this was me trying to refocus on what the actual objective of the piece was, and i felt like using the beginning in a twisted narrative was good to recenter both mine and the readers perspective. And it worked, because now at this point you know more about ‘yourself’ and where you came from, as well as your general outlook on life and things that exist, ie. the moon, the sun, the darkness, all of the things that are titled. 

the titles are important as well. it’s kind of poked at in the summary itself, but the use of proper nouns on things that are usually improper (the moon, darkness, light, etc) is on purpose and with a point. names have power according to ‘you’, and by giving these otherwise mundane things names gives them something else: meaning. i will come back to this a little ahead:)

-

You started from Darkness, and that was where you belonged.

shoutout to ant @/bugboydwt on twitter and @lovelyybugz on here for giving me one of their favourite lines from this fic! anyways we will continue

repetition my beloved <3 again with the starting line and then added on with something that really solidified the personality aspect of the perspective. when we watched movies as children, the villains were always featured in a darker area of the world, whether it was the lighting or their words, their actions or even just the colour scheme that they were painted with. 

‘Darkness’ in this setting can be read as direct and indirect. directly, it means that the thing we’re talking about belongs in the shadows and places where there isn’t sunlight or life, and is something that should be feared. 

indirectly, it is something that should have never been created at all. 

-

Names.

Fickle things, don’t you think?

names:) this little bit goes on to say:

You never had a name.

and it’s leading enough to believe that there was a time when you didn’t have any power. it was this thing that existed and was aware of its existence, its past and origin, and the names of other beings, but it never had one itself because it wasn’t important. 

just because it wasn’t important enough to name doesn’t mean it didn’t have power, of course:)

-

It was something you heard on the streets, and people—people, oh, people were new.

i adore this line. i feel like it gives a more in depth look at the personality of the perspective, showing something egotistical and not quite mocking, but definitely a taunt that comes with learning about something you can corrupt. this is the perspective of what really is the main villain of wtwp, and the desire and only drive that it has is now to ruin whatever it can.

a lot of this fic is internal monologue and giving life to something that doesn’t have any verbal dialogue was actually difficult because in my experience (with dnf fics and others wow) there is always verbal conversations. writing this was more like a constant stream of conversation with something that wasn’t myself and something that didn’t exist at all. kind of like talking to a wall. 

but, by adding in that hesitation or pause with ‘oh’, i felt like it gave more depth because instead of speaking the words, you could actually see the train of thought via the monologue.

-

It was a greed that burrowed to the bottom of your stomach, rotted and broiled in ivory and amaranth, and there was nothing you could find in sedimentary stone to quench it.

imagery <3 this fic is very, very imagery heavy, especially when it comes to the emotions that ‘you’ are feeling. again, it was harder to get a point across without verbal conversation, but i feel like adding in choice words such as these it was enough for people to understand how it felt. 

this is the part in the work where it gets into what i wanted to achieve: the greed, the jealousy, the desire to have everything just so that no one else can.

-

People were not the cause, but they were who you decided to blame.

another shoutout to bella @/snowchcster on twt and @snowchcster on here for giving me one of their favourite lines as well <3

now. we know that people who are greedy usually have other emotions that run hot right behind it. one of those—at least to me—is rage, and i felt like adding in the narcissistic trait of pinning blame on someone else was fitting. here, the vines are blaming the people that it had learned about because it doesn’t have a name. it couldn’t blame the moon or the darkness and it didn’t want to blame itself, but it could blame the people.

maybe it doesn’t make sense logically, but that’s the point: it’s not supposed to. 

-

Can you feel the pain of your discontent? Oh, they have what you want, do they not? You are greedy. You are envious, and your bitterness sits on cobblestones through pernicious distaste.

something that became a theme in this work is the rhetorical questions; i think it started to add ambience to the fic but then became useful in the way that it became a taunt. the narration is half from the perspective of one single being, but then there’s all these questions that are coming that aren’t really answered. i liked it because really, the vines aren’t one being in particular: just like in the dsmp, they’re spread out and scattered and while they are the same thing, are they really all the same being?

this small paragraph is one of my favourites simply because it can be split up into half of what is ‘one being’ and half of something that isn’t. it’s still ‘the same’, but all of those questions are violent and thrown at you with really no answer but the obvious. 

-

Because they were unsure. You were this thing, curled and red to the base like a snake to strike, rattling a tail like an infant’s toy and taunting with the words you would never speak.

They were curious.

And, oh, how good you felt to not be the one unknowing.

i will say it again i love my imagery in this fic

anyways, in the start of the fic it was referenced that ‘you’ only knew what was important, but at the same time it is never mentioned how old the vines are. even in ‘where the wicked play’, george has a comment somewhere that he doesn’t remember a time when the vines weren’t around. so, with that in mind, think of how people grew and evolved, and think of how there was probably a time in the vines’ period of life and growth that people weren’t a thing. 

ill let you chew on that for a little lol

in that paragraph, it is actually quite literal in the sense that the vines in wtwp are everywhere. in the corners of buildings, on the walls, over the stones. this is pointing at a time when it started to become more prominent, and when people where more unsure and starting to become afraid of the flora that was trailing over their kingdom. 

-

How does it feel to have curiosity?

Does it decay?

Does it wither when you have found your answers?

Do you feel the necrosis of it, tangible until it disintegrates across your tongue and leaves you slobbering rot and bile?

i simply love this entire passage let me live i had the time of my LIFE rereading this after i had slept eight hours and came back to a 4am frantic masterpiece

this is mostly describing the process of curiosity, and the discovery of human emotions. like most people, a question that you might have doesn’t always stop at one, so what the rhetoric is is does the curiosity ever fade?

the short answer is no, and the long one is that the vines only wanted to know because it was just another thing that it could possess. 

-

You were never truly hungry, but you could never be filled.

Again in reference to the curiosity. this is written more like it’s actual human hunger, but when i was writing it i was thinking of the crave for knowledge. you were never truly hungry because you knew everything you needed from the moment you existed, but you could never be filled because your greed created a bottomless pit you never acknowledged. 

-

But, then came a king.

i feel as though this may come off as obvious, but this is schlatt. however, this is schlatt when he is very, very young, and extremely new to the rule of a kingdom. in the first chapter of wtwp it’s referenced that the kingdom was ruled nicely, and then war happened, and then schlatt took over. in chapter 12, puffy explains that when schlatt was deemed king, he extended a hand to snowchester and started a pact. 

his reasoning is that he wanted power. he was young and greedy, and this is the vines realizing that such a person exists. 

the next few paragraphs are the vines simply debating over the existence of the new king, and how it reflects its place in the world and the kingdom. at the same time, the people in the kingdom have lost the fear that they had of the vines—’you’—and have begun to show their distaste for the very presence of them. 

and, at the same time, you are reading about the vines starting its descent into the destruction of people and realizing that the people have already begun their destruction of ‘you’. 

-

Curiosity was never worth the death of your siblings.

again, people ask questions and they usually don’t stop. this is just one of those times where humanity should have stopped, even written in fiction. 

-

And soon, the King was a title.The King wasn’t respected by you—it wasn’t a title that was gained through power and it wasn’t a title that you meant to give.It wasn’t even a name.

at this point, schlatt has become important enough to have some kind of impact on the vines’ life, and it wasn’t by choice. everything else wasn’t by choice either, but ‘you’ needed something more to represent a being that was presented to you that could potentially do something that mattered. 

-

Now, you already have power.

You had plenty.

You started from Darkness—there was no need for a King to stand in and feed you from bloody palms, hoping that your nips were not deeper and trembling as you licked between it’s dirty knuckles.

im just staring at this rn i love this passage. 

here, i kind of based it off that saying like “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”. obviously, the vines don’t need help. it has power and it knows that it has plenty of it, but it wanted more.

and, it also knew that by injuring the King, it would take away any chance of gaining that power, so: it never bit the hand that fed it, but it was never all that hungry in the first place. 

-

The King stared at you, and you stared the same. The King never gave you a name, but it gave you an offering, and you stared at its open palm with slobber over your stained canines. 

Blood. A body. Fingers and bones, and stretches of land over stones.

more references to that saying:) as well as rhyming, i dont think i did that on purpose but also it fits so i will never change it. 

as for the offering, think of it like how schlatt extended a hand to snowchester. both of these beings want power, and both of them know there is something to gain from having a kind of pact with the other. schlatt didn’t give it a name because he didn’t have that kind of power over the vines, and the vines only gave him a title because he has something that mattered. 

thats the distinction: schlatt doesn’t matter, but he has something that matters. 

-

You have no name, but they still whisper an echo of a title even whilst in the Light. They are afraid, you see, and even as your tongue curls over the uncut fingernails and it slices along the edges of your muscle, not once do you pull away to smile. Bare your teeth and let them gleam with the Moon, lick your lips and swallow galefulls of jealousy to people you do not know.

i just adore this paragraph, im putting it in here because it is very tangible and i like it a Lot

-

You didn’t believe in names, but you have attained one.

You are the Vines, and you have been starved for too long.

and finally. the reveal. 

im sure that for anyone who was deeply invested in the wtwp lore that it was easy enough to tell from the middle of the fic what ‘we’ were, but at the same time only using the name that people know it as at the very ending was impactful enough for me to want to post this. just the same as schlatt in this fic, the vines didn’t have a name or a title until they were impactful enough to matter. who gave it the name? well that’s completely up for wild interpretation because i don’t have an answer for it. but, regardless, it has a title and it has a name, and now it has enough power to really matter.

-

at the very end of it all, this is still incredibly up for interpretation because i didn’t have an outline or a real good idea of what i had truly wanted for this fic; i literally opened a doc at 4am and started typing, but these were just some of my thoughts that i remember having while doing so :) it was fun to write in the perspective of something that wasn’t a single person, and it was fun to explore the more violent writing style compared to what i usually write.

anyways, that’s my writers interpretation of my fic! if you made it all the way to the end and could actually understand my ramblings, congrats you get a cookie <3

until next time hehe

[imagining-in-the-margins]

oh god i have so many anons omg im sorry lmao

Here are some TB&TB Anon Asks 🐇 !

Check the last few answers for a ton of headcanon discussions!

1. I do have a playlist for TB&TB! You can access it here (along with some others!)

You are amazing, and thank you for your kindness 💕

2. Thank you, friend 👽 I’ve been writing, both fan fiction and original works, since I was about 12 years old. So, however many minutes that is! Writing is one of those things that you will literally always get better at the more you write (as long as you continue to enjoy yourself!)

Also, I sold my soul to the angst gods.

3. Ahhhh I was falling asleep when I came up with that exchange and I turned around and frantically typed it into my Discord so I wouldn't forget, lmao!

The universe colored eyes is also referencing a line from Part 7's dream sequence, for those who missed it!

4. Impending doom...? No... Not me... Never... 🌝

5. Big thank you to everyone who sent in a favorite line! You all make my day! It makes me so happy to see people get excited about the same parts as me. The callbacks to the honeysuckle language in the Prologue are some of my favorites.

Sometimes I worry I'm too heavy handed with the metaphors, but I just love nature so much.

6. Aaaaa I wrote that at like 2am when I couldn't sleep! Also, as to how I do it... I've no feckin' clue. Brain say word, word go down.

7. First off, I am so not annoyed with you! These made my day, honestly. It was especially great to see someone guess so many things that will be confirmed in canon, lmao!

I'm not incorporating the Daddy kink into this fic, but I do think it would probably shock him badly enough that he would completely stop whatever he was doing while he processed what just happened, lmao!

This will be confirmed in canon.

I don't specify hair type/length the best I can, so I won't be confirming it in canon, but I do tend to picture her with ponytails/puffs!

Spencer is already a (show) canon fan of soap operas! I think it'd be funny watching him discuss how manipulative a lot of rom coms are, but then slowly falls in love with the tropes. One day he doesn't call one out and she just looks at him like 👀

This will be confirmed in canon.

8. The first one will be confirmed in canon on several occasions.

I love showering scenes, but I won't be including one in this work to make it more accessible to Readers of all races, since many hair types have remarkably different hair care routines!

This will be referenced in canon.

Please, Bunny would be mortified the whole time. She'd probably kick him the first few times.

Again, I love these, but they aren't accessible to all body types, so I try to avoid them! I agree with you, though, that would drive him crazy.

She does fall in heels in the Part 3, lol! I suck at heels because I have ankle problems. Shoutout to my clumsy bitches. I don't specify height, though I usually picture all of my Readers at my height (5'6").

He definitely already knows the skincare, but he would pretend like he doesn't just so she could teach him something. She's too excited for him to break it to her.

She hates when he cuts it because it means she has less of a canvas to work with!

9-10. I'm sorry the picture messed up! I don't know what my computer is doing. But I have the missing text (When the couple moves in together spencer buys a sign to the door that has 2 bunnies on it with their names on it).

I personally love classic rock, but I know not everyone will. I fully agree with your headcanon, and I share it! Technically, we do see her recognize two different songs from the 80s (Don't Stand So Close to Me & Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want). She would also have heard from Derek all of the music he had to introduce Spencer to!

Hamsters are so cute! I personally am a cat person, but I could see her with literally any animal!

Pastels are a must with a nickname like Bunny.

Spencer WOULD be ticklish. She would be a menace.

Spencer makes the mistake of saying "Good Bunny" in front of Derek exactly one (1) time and doesn't say it for another month.

I have a running joke in the Discord that later the couple has two kids they nickname "Birdie" and "Bee." When Bunny asks him for his B-nickname, he replies "Bastard." Idk why, but the bunny sign reminded me of that lmao!

All it takes is Bunny shushing Spencer once and him looking positively terrified of her wrath for them to realize who is really in charge there.

He's just so used to dry cleaning! It's not his fault 😜

Him and that kitten would be inseparable after that. He would spend hours telling her why cats are great companion animals for autistic people!

Thank you for sending me these! I had a blast, and I love you, too!

[no-brand-gays]

okay here are my thoughts on and a very loose rating of the discographies of the major idol anime franchises (disclaimer that i haven’t listened to Every Single Song of any of these series and i’m 

-love live: i think...i’d be biased in saying ll has the best idol franchise discography...but i don’t think it’d be a stretch to say that they pour a LOT into their music production. i do think there’s a lot of ll stuf that sounds the same and none of the full groups have a sound that differentiates them from each other but ll’s also good at mixing up sounds and concepts, so there’s no character or unit that’s really locked into just one style. i feel like ll prioritizes catchiness and energy a lot of the time so there aren’t many songs that aren’t fun to listen to, which i definitely think is one of the most important things in idol music. there aren’t even that many bombs which you’d think would mean they play it safe but i don’t think you can talk down the variety in the discography. aki hata is also a lyric writing god and i do think it’s saying something that even 10 years into the run as a series we’re still getting songs that sound new. you can tell when they’re being lazy but that’s a pretty uncommon situation and you’d be damned to find a ll song that isn’t at least fun to listen to. favs: mermaid festa vol 2, blueberry train, angelic angel, snow halation, ps no mukougawa, shoujo ijou, doki pipo emotion

-idolm@ster: before you come at me i want you to know that i have felt this way about idolm@ster’s discography for the last 7 years and my opinion Has gotten better over time but wow. so many idolm@ster songs are so boring. i think one thing you can really say abt love live is they’ve mastered the art of making OPs and EDs and group singles that all kinda sound the same but are still fun to listen to. i think what makes im@s discography good is that they’re not afraid to really jump into weird concepts for their more out-there characters. like what other franchise is delivering to us ai like hamburger. nobody. so those more unique songs are almost always hits but a lot of the generic idol pop songs feel pretty watered down and hard to get into. they do get that right pretty often too but bc their discography has gotten so huge over the years there’s a lot of filler. favs: kyun! vampire girl, do dai, s(mile)ing, romantic now (uzuki mix)

-aikatsu: honestly? i would place aikatsu’s discography at LEAST at 2nd place. they’ve gone through a lot of changes in producers in the last few reboots but there are sooooo many consistent hits and i feel like it gets written off for being a kids series when the music is honestly so top tier. aikatsu doesn’t do big group songs all that often and each season only comes w a few one-size-fits-all generic songs so most of the discography is tailored to one or two characters in particular which makes for some amazing variety. the fact that it’s for kids even means the songs are more catchy and energetic so even the ones that are kinda dumb stick in your head. i don’t know how much i can speak for these past few seasons but you can really feel the passion that went into most of the songs. the general sounds of aikatsu are clean and bright pop and emotional pop rock and theatrical ballads and genuinely i have no clue why the music alone hasn’t made it mega popular. there are definitely duds though, especially when it comes to songs that weren’t made to be performed. favs: diamond happy, koisuru mitai na caramelize, summer tears diary, hello new world, heart skip, dramatic girl 

-pretty rhythm: kinda similar to im@s in that a lot of their music is kinda boring in its early 2000s idol sound but i’d honestly argue that pririzu does that sound better. like it all sounds very nostalgic and classic and gets this quality of timelessness from that. this is probably the franchise i’ve listened to the least though so i’m not the best authority on this. favs: you may dream, cherry picking days

-pripara: pripara is definitely an acquired taste and the franchise i’d be least likely to listen to with my friends in the room but the one thing you can’t deny is that the production is so crazy tight. pripara definitely gets most of its fame for how off the walls crazy it is and since that’s such a part of its identity i can’t fault it for how many songs are similarly whole hog wild but even though i never want to hear the omurice song again in my life pripara has continuously delivered hit after hit. their generic idol songs (like make it and dream parade) are some of the best in the genre and whatever subgenre they’re pursuing they never fail to bring the energy. i do think a lot of their out of the box songs (like the ones that are made for visual-based performances that aren’t really meant to be cohesive songs) are flops but the entire first season is made of 10/10s which is so crazy. the crazy concept songs usually hit too. favs: marble makeup a ha ha, zero week old, suki suki sensor, realize

-bandori: hot take but bandori has some stinkers. i don’t know why the first few months of bandori songs had so many flops (tokimeki experience...yes bang dream...that’s how i roll...) but i do think they’ve stepped up their game since then!! i think...as time has gone by bandori has become a franchise people really care abt and with it the content has gotten better too. like holy shit. NOW you can see how much the producers are putting their hearts into the music but it definitely took a little while (not that there weren’t good songs at the start too, shuwarin dreamin is one of my absolute favorites). i think it’s really impressive how much they’re found their footing w each band’s sound, they all really feel believable as artists, and it’s blown up so clearly they’re hitting it out of the park these days. favs: hidamari rhodonite, kimi ga inakucha, shuwarin dreamin

-bonus shoutout to zombieland saga bc the production is so all over the place. when they wanna write a good song holy shit do they write a good song but sometimes you get To My Dearest. which im still sort of baffled by. could the writers not figure out how to rewrite those 20-syllable lines to sound even half singable or 

[kingjasnah]

Y'know how MB Era 2 and SA 1-5 take place roughly around the same time? And how in RoW Sazed was talking about Wax? And how we're getting The Lost Metal before SA5? And I think Sandman mentioned Wayne was going to be a worldhopper? What if he just shows up in SA5? What if Melanie's with him? Actually, what if the whole Era 2 gang just like shows up somewhere on Roshar? The possiblities...

hold on was he talking about wax??? god lmao did i miss that. if u are referring to the "i need a sword of both ruin and preservation" epigraph i had a tiny mental list of people i thought it was gonna be and ngl wax didn't make my top three but if i just missed a context clue somewhere good for him

but i DEFINITELY think lost metal is gonna play in heavy to SA 5 like..........well. kelsier is back in play now. and scadrial got so many shoutouts in row....if anything i expect to see what the ghostbloods look like on the scadrial side of the universe, maybe some trade between worlds consequences that were alluded to in row and in secret history. then again, didnt sanderson say there would be a secret history 2? the thought fills me with dread but maybe we'll have to wait until then for answers

something tells me that if the era 2 gang start worldhopping it'll be after the SA time skip the boys have a lot to deal with on their own planet im not sure they can resolve in one book. but i think wayne and shallan would vibe :)))))))))

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

ok, so. i finished sly 2  again the last time i played it from beginning to end i was 11 and man. despite knowing every single story beat it still hits deep. maybe even deeper now that im old enough to understand some parts :°>

im giving my 2 cents under cut but the long story short is that, while i still need to replay sly 3 to give a proper review of the trilogy, i can already say that this is the perfect sly game - the only one, from what i remember, that REALLY made me feel like a master thief from the beginning to the end 

i forgot to write a post when i re-finished sly 1 but all you have to know is that “great story, i was surprised to notice that most missions had something to do with fucking with the main baddie rather than them being just a funny little platform level, any level that doesnt imply platforming kind of sucks and FUCK the racing levels in particular, 7.5/10 the final boss is good yall are just mean″

anyway. sly 2 makes (almost) everything better than the first one. this is the big one, the one with the fan favorite plot, characters, locations and bossfights and... i can see why. i remembered the story and the character very well and im glad they aged perfectly, but now that im older i can also appreciate stuff that as a kid i couldnt really sit down and notice. the character development the gang went through is great, and from what i remember from sly 3 it just gets better and better. the scenery and the color schemes are really beautiful, and accompanied by a really great soundtrack that really fits the scene, the missions are fun, the boss battles are WAY more entertaining than i remembered (more about em below) and to my surprise even the missions i remember dreading the most, like the barrel mission in the last level or most of bentley’s, were really fun!!! playing a sly is, as always, the best way to play this game, but exploring as murray and, to my surprise, even bentley is lots of fun too, and especially the hacking minigames were much more entertaining than i remembered.

or maybe its just me being used to bullet hell and twin stick shooters :°>

IN-DEPTH LEVEL TALK

the black chateau: years later i still have no clue why its called like that, but i digress. paris in this game really feels like home, and it’s a very good tutorial level. unsurprisingly to anyone, dimitri is still my favorite claww member, even if his bossfight is probably the one i enjoyed the least he STEALS the scene

a starry eyed encounter: as a kid, this was my favorite level for a simple reason: dancing with neyla and carmelita nadfsmg. im sorry im a slut for rhythm games and fancy dresses and this one feels Nice. not exactly my favorite map, but i appreciate the colors a lot in this one in particular surprisingly to everyone but especially me i really liked the helicopter missions. it plays way better than i remembered and i appreciate that ty

the predator awakens: this one used to be my least fav as a kid, but i changed my mind this level slaps. big shoutout to the final mission ofc, rajan my beloved your fight was FUN as FUCK and im sorry but that one mission you play as bentley, where you have to drug him and steal his stuff is still terrifying nsfmdg

jailbreak: the best level. no i dont take criticism. i love the heavy atmosphere and the ost, and the fact that the entire mission revolves around saving the gang really makes this one stand out. biggest shoutout especially to the final video. seeing the gang not like a group of thieves, but as a FAMILY, really warmed up my heart. this is the level that really makes you realize that hey, these guy care for eachother a lot. cry about it.  ...also its the level that forced me to realize that playing as bentley is very fun actually? idk in the first three i really felt nervous while playing him, but since he starts getting confident i can feel brave as well!!! baby.

a tangled web: ...ok am i allowed to say this one is my least favorite fnadg. its not BAD, far from it, but i feel like there’s a little too much going on and the map feels a little wonky to navigate with anyone who isnt sly. this said the contessa battle is ok, i like how she uses clockwerk’s eyes and saving carmelita is very nice.  plus... i forgot how BAD the tank controls were. like. they’re genuinely some of the worst i’ve ever played. who’s idea is that. not even hearing my sweet, dear, precious carmelita being funny is enough to save this garbage. we don’t complain enough about the tank levels in this game. also paraglider my beloved. i missed you so much.

he who tames the iron horse: LOVE how big the map feels. L O V E how you need to directly enter jean bison’s room while he’s there (as much as i hate the bug (?) where he walks directly in a very specific table if you hide under it) and MAN attacking THREE TRAINS S L A P S!!!!!!! easily second favorite level, jailbreak wins the emotional trophy but this one is SO good also shoutout to the bullet hell battle with neyla, i completely forgot about it and it was SO FUN and i love it, it would’ve been my absolute favorite battle in the game if it wasn’t for...

menace from the north, eh!: way less interesting than the previous level. i feel like it’s the weakest level of them all, with frustrating and overly long missions, especially the goddamn canada games... until the very end comes. the final twist sells the level, and so does the boss battle with jean bison. i didnt mention it before, but i feel like he’s the most boring character in the game... and it’s funny, considering how his battle, instead, is the best one to me :°) “fighting” as bentley is FUN, terribly nerve wrecking but also fills you with adrenaline, and man idk i really like this one a lot. the final part really leaves a bittersweet taste that doesn’t leave for the rest of the game, and that’s Really Nice. it’s a very good safe

anatomy for disaster: ok can i say that i dont really get why people hate this map so much? yes i KNOW that falling is always bad but it’s not that hard to navigate and i have big love for how they played around it.  arpeggio first of all... we hardly knew ye but in my heart you’re alive and well, but please move aside because man. m a n. clock-la may not do much other than being a stage hazard, but hearing clockwerk flying around for the entire level really sells this one to me. it’s a little sad we don’t stop and focus on sly’s emotions, but given how quick the whole level is i can put that little criticism aside. working as a team really slapped, and while i hate the turret battle with burning passion the one that follows, as simple as it is, is enough to not make me fully hate the final boss. about that, while the fight itself is my least favorite of the trilogy and i personally like dr.m and clockwerk more, i can say that neyla is the main antagonist that shines the most for a good reason. she was there from the very beginning, and even as she dies she manages to leave a deep open wound in the gang. i used to be annoyed by the fact that she doesn’t seem to have much of a reason to openly antagonize us other than “i want to be powerful”, but... actually it works perfectly. i don’t really need to know what led her to aim for immortality, beucase the desire for power and eternal life is enough. she’s corrupted by greed and hatred, and fits her perfectly with clockwerk and m.

the only big criticism, apart from Tank And Turret My Despised, is that you can’t replay the missions... and i’m glad that sly 3 fixed this u3u  i just want to dance more with carmelita damnit............

overall... there isn’t much else to say. i love this silly raccoon and his gang ok.

9.5/10.

again, i still have to decide if its my favorite sly since i still have to replay sly 3, but i can already openly say that this is the best one.

[frillshark-fr]

How do you get people to always buy your dragons? Genuine question

i was gonna say something like “haha i have no fucking clue” but that would be a lie i think about this a lot actually so i might have some insights i’ve been breeding dragons as my primary activity on FR since i started playing FR (in 2014...) and people have only started actually buying dragons from me consistently like, 5-6 months ago, despite 2-3 attempts at running a genuine hatchery onsite that always died due to lack of interest & not really being worth the effort. 

so ive thought a lot about what the hell is happening now and why my dragons are suddenly consistently selling and I think ive come down to these being the main points of advice i can give: 1. make friends! be friendly! don’t be weird! be a cool and fun person to interact with! 2. post consistently. post your dragons consistently. post about other stuff consistently. just be an active member of the community 3. POST YOUR SHIT IN THE “#FLIGHT RISING” TAG. THIS IS PROBABLY THE ONLY TRUELY HELPFUL THING I SAY IN THIS POST 4. make pairs that are sexy as hell and be openly proud of them. make dragons and pairs that you like, not what you think will necessarily sell. people can tell when you like stuff and being genuinely passionate about something, whatever the fuck it is, will get other people passionate as well longer versions/explanations under the cut because man this got a mile long. i wasn’t kidding when i said i think about this a lot and i am so sorry if you wanted something concise and useful

1. to be a little glib. i am mutuals/friends with more clout in the FR community than I do kjdshfdsfdhjhkfdf shoutout to everyone who draws their dragons really good on a regular basis because i am riding on your coattails to sell my dragons. i love you this was never my intent, obviously! DO NOT BEFRIEND PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU WILL GET STUFF FROM THEM IT’S JUST A REALLY BAD THING TO DO TO PEOPLE!!! i wouldn’t be friends w/ people if i didn’t genuinely like and get along with them! no amount of pixel cash is worth putting up with people you dont like or abusing people you admire!  but i’d also somehow feel wrong to just... neglect mentioning this factor. idk it’s probably a self-esteem thing sjdkgfhdsf i just Don’t feel like my #success has been totally out of my own effort because its not like im #hustling or whatever i just posted dragons and stuff happened

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2. being consistent! just. posting consistently! posting Every Hatchling I Have and Talking About Them On Tumblr!  Once I had a couple nests just sell super fast likely due to aforementioned clout, i was emboldened to just post more of my nests more often and I swear this has more effect than anything else. i just needed the self-esteem boost to Start Doing That posting consistently makes ppl follow u for ur content which gets even more people to look at your dragons which gets more people to buy your dragons.

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2a. Also just post a lot in general, even if you aren’t necessarily posting about your dragons for sale. it definitely helps! just be friendly and active and people will come

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3. post your shit in the tag. not in “#dragon-sales” or “#fr-dragon-sales” or anything weird like that because I don’t know if anyone actually looks at those, but people definitely browse “#flight rising”. no matter how many followers you have, more people will see your content if you post it in #flight rising than if you just chuck it into the void. 

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3a. however! do not put links into the post if you want it to actually show up in the tag. tumblr is cool in that it doesn’t actually matter that much when you post something, the same way it really matters on twitter bc twitter has algorithms that decide for you what it thinks you want to be seeing whereas tumblr just shows you everything in chronological order. if you post something into the tag at 1am... it will still be there at 2pm when people log on and start scrolling.

the only thing tumblr seems to consistently hide from a tag (and possibly a dashboard, but idk) are posts with links in them, as a half-assed attempt to limit spam. instead of linking to your sales tab/to the dragons directly in the post, reblog it with the links instead. to reduce latency between a post going up and the links being available, i type out the links in the initial post, cut them, post the thing into the tag, then very quickly reblog, paste the links, and post the reblog jdhfsdf. i don’t know if that benefits anything really? but it can sometimes take me a while to type links, so if i posted, pressed reblog, typed up all the links, then posted, it’d be like ~15 minutes where someone may see the post, think “oh i would like to buy those dragons”, then can’t find the link, think “oh well, i will just find it later”, scroll on, and just... completely forget about it. so uh. go quick?

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3b. the armchair sociologist in me also thinks self-reblogging has the added benefit of like... you know how people are more likely to tip a barista when a dollar is already in the tip jar? or how people are more likely to take one of those little tabs on a flyer if one of them is already missing? i think that works with notes, too. i don’t know why i think that or why it happens i just swear once a post gets 1 note, suddenly it gets Even More Notes, and if it doesn’t get any notes for a while it will sit at 0 notes until the end of time. so giving yourself 1 obligatory note makes people more likely to interact. i think

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4. all of these are hard to quantify but this one is especially so: have cool and unique dragons. make your pairs sexy as hell. don’t put all your eggs (hah) into the one basket of selling dragons that are technically “popular”. we have all seen triple white/triple obsidian/triple orca/triple any other popular colors and cherub/pere/stained or wasp/bee/glim pthahlos or whatever. they’re pretty! we get it! but everyone has had one and everyone has had those pairs and market for dragons like that can be super oversaturated. try to break free from that and sell dragons that people can only get from you. I can’t tell you what to do though bc that rly depends on you. make pairs that you find exciting or interesting and people will feel that. i have a very specific theme and aesthetic that i don’t feel like is especially common on FR and i am genuinely very enthusiastic about it. marine shit is my Thing:tm: both on and off FR and dragons are one of my many ways of expressing that   if you have a Thing:tm:, either some fr-centric aesthetic (like being super into plague or earth or light or something) or something more general (such as any of the -punks or -cores)... just fuckin roll with it honestly. if you’re goth? make got h dragons. like scene stuff that looks straight out of a middle school in 2010? rock that hot-topic lair. outdoorsey type? make dragons that look like you’d meet them on a hike in the woods. it really works with anything!  people can tell when you really love something and i know that seeing someone really love something, even if it’s not necessarily MY thing, makes me really excited too!! 

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4a. never show fear. people can smell fear. never be like “well this one isn’t that good” because suddenly now you’ve planted the idea that it’s ugly in other people’s heads when they may have really liked it had you not accidentally suggested to them that it’s an ugly dragon. people are EXTREMELY suggestible to even VERY minor cues so be always a little bit bolder than you think you should be you’d be surprised at how many times ive been like “eh, this one’s kind of a dud, i’ll probably have to exalt this one when the auction expires” and then that hatchling is the first to sell. never ever ever ever decide what other people like for them. always act like your dragons are the hottest shit in all the land and Believe It. this is what people mean when they say “fake it till you make it”

- 4b. also, idk if it’s true of everyone but it’s really off-putting to see someone having serious pity-parties for themselves, on sales posts or otherwise. ive had bad experiences with people who are uncomfortably quick to self-depreciate (because they were using their genuine self-hatred to manipulate me or my friends), so i might be a little more trigger-happy about avoiding this behavior than others, but don’t weaponize your sadness to guilt people into doing what you want. it’s really not cool.

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okay i think that’s my entire manifesto on how i do dragon selling. anon i am so sorry im sure you were expecting like “believe in yourself :)” and here i am dissecting dragon selling like it’s a frog in a science class

edit: AFTER ALL THAT I STILL THOUGHT OF ONE MORE THING. It’s not really a Point, just a Reminder:

i don’t post about all the times i have to exalt dragons that don’t sell. you are seeing me being very selective about what i post. you dont sit and stare at my lair or click through offspring lists or check old sales posts. there are a lot of times where someone just doesn’t sell. even now when i’m selling stuff pretty consistently i will still sometimes have dragons that don’t sell for seemingly no reason. even dragons I think are sure to sell will sometimes just... not. and that’s ok! you gotta just be.. ok with that. it’s par for the course. i typically list dragons for 7 days on the AH, give them a couple more days after their auction expires (partially because i forget, partially to give them a grace period for people to pm/ask me about them), and then exalt them after that point. w/ some dragons that i don’t think got a fair shake for one reason or another (such as the sales post not showing up in the tag or something) i do a little clearance (like the halloween dragons i recently posted) but for the most part if they don’t sell, i just exalt them. 90% of the time i don’t even bother to level them up i just press the exalt button and call it a day. it’s fine

[hongism]

finding beauty in your darkest places - chapter 4

Pairing: TBA (i have no clue at the moment, ot7 for now)

Genre: Psychiatric Clinic!au, Heavy Angst, Fluff

Word Count: 6898

Warnings: strong language; deals with mental and emotional illnesses and disorders as a heavy theme of the story, future graphic depictions of disorders - please do not read if this makes you uncomfortable

Rating: PG-13/Mature

Summary: Everyone has their issues, and everyone deals with them differently. Jungkook thinks that avoiding his problems is the best option out there.

aka

Jeon Jungkook is the newest patient at the Omelas Specialized Psychiatric Clinic, and he just wants to get in and out as quickly as possible so that he can go back to university and be with his friends again. Of course, that doesn't work out according to his plan.

a/n: you guys, huge shoutout to Mari, Em, and Ivory my lovely wordsprint buddies who were a huge support and inspiration to work alongside ;-; im honestly thrilled that i felt inspired to write this so soon and im even more excited to share it with you guys because i honestly love this chapter. i really hope you guys like it as much as i do! Also thank you so so much for such wonderful feedback on my survey, seeing your responses and reading through them makes my day! Feel free to go back and redo the survey whenever you want as the story progresses and things change~

ALSO

This bit is important too, because i want to make sure that it is clear and understandable.

The content of this story is heavy and difficult stuff. I am not writing it in a way that holds back from the ugly parts that are real life in these kinds of situations. It is dramatic because that is part of my vision with the story. I say that the genre is heavy angst because it is. It is heavy and dramatic and overwhelming at times because that’s the way life is. I completely understand if this isn’t your cup of tea, but please please do not complain about the heavy and dramatic nature of the story. I love you guys and i want you to love the story, but i also want to convey a message with this story and am taking the steps i believe are necessary to reach that goal. Please understand that before reading.

Chapter:

3 | 4 | 5 

Finding Beauty in Your Darkest Places

Chapter 4: A Slip into the Darkness

...

“Rock, paper, scissors — ha, yes! Paper beats rock, I win.” Taehyung leans back, nearly falling off the stool he’s precariously perched on, and claps for his win over Jimin’s presented rock. Jungkook slouches on his own stool, arms folded under his head on the granite counter. He watches the exchange between Taehyung and Jimin with amusement. Jimin protests Taehyung’s win, saying something about how Taehyung didn’t play fair and they should play two out of three instead.

“What are you guys even playing for?” You ask as you place the butter knife in your hand down. Jungkook glances in your direction, noticing that you have six crackers already covered in peanut butter on your plate, but six more naked crackers still sit on the other half of the plate.

“Who gets to name the gang,” Taehyung explains. He leans over the counter and snatches one of the crackers off your plate, popping it into his mouth and smiling through the food. You don’t protest the action. Instead you blink at the spot on your plate where the cracker just was and shake your head. “And since I won, I get to name it!”

“What gang are you talking about? I didn’t even realize there was a gang in the first place.” You return to spreading peanut butter across your crackers while Taehyung sighs as though disappointed in your question.

“Us. We’re a gang now, right? Since we’ve been planning and doing all this covert stuff that no one else knows about?”

“Sure, we can be a gang if you want us to be.”

“Yay! Oh, now I need to think of a name for us. Our operation is ‘Find the Teddy Bear’, so we can be the Teddy Bear Gang.” Jimin stifles a laugh, pressing his lips together to hide the smile, and Jungkook just buries his face in the crook of his arm to hide the amusement spreading across his features. “Hey, don’t laugh at our gang name! This is important business. We have to be serious about it. Y/N, you don’t think it’s funny, right?”

“Hm? Oh, of course not.” Jungkook peeks over his arm to catch a glimpse of your face, and despite your claims, he finds a grin on your lips.

“You guys are mean. Flat out mean. I don’t appreciate this.” Taehyung huffs and sits back, crossing his arms over his chest as he does. “But I do appreciate all the stuff you guys are doing to help me. Have you learned anything new recently?”

“I’ve been asking around,” Jimin responds once he buries his laughter. “I talked with Eunbi, Hanuel, Miyeon, and Hyewon but none of them know anything.” Jungkook sits up at the mention of Hyewon, peering at the back of Jimin’s head. Did she mention anything about me? Anything about what happened a few days ago? No, Y/N promised that she would make sure no one found out. Did she stop Hyewon from saying anything before Jimin talked to her though? Is she even going to keep her word?

“I have enlisted the help of Seokjin.” You cut into the conversation, slicing through Jungkook’s thoughts at the same time. “He is going to talk with the nurses and see if any of them know anything. He said he would help Tuesday and today because he is on duty to help them sort through medications. Perfect time to ask questions.”

“Why couldn’t one of us do that though?” Jimin asks. He props an elbow up on the counter and rests his chin on a clenched fist. You pay no attention to Jimin or his question. Instead, you continue with your train of thought as though Jimin didn’t even open his mouth.

“He didn’t get much from Tuesday’s chat, but he confirmed that the nurses who were in Taehyung’s room at the time of the bear’s disappearance didn’t take the bear out. They changed the beds and that was it; the bear was already gone at that point.” A flash of silver crosses Jungkook’s vision, then a clatter resounds. You blink at the counter in a similar manner to the people across from you, staring at the knife that suddenly left your hand. “Anyways, another important thing to note is that today is laundry day.”

“Why is that important?” Jungkook inquires when no one else does.

“I have a plan to sneak into the laundry room. Any volunteers to help me?”

“Oh, me! I wanna go!” Taehyung’s hand shoots up, wiggling in the air above his head, and he grins at you. Eyes wide, you drag your gaze over him before shifting them over to someone else.

“Jungkook. Thanks for offering.”

“What?” It’s a chorus who echoes the simple word, Taehyung and Jimin speaking in unison while Jungkook falls a bit short and repeats after them.

“I’m sorry, Tae, but I really need you to be in the safest possible position. I can’t let you get in trouble because of me. It’s why we don’t eat together, and this is ten times worse than meal times.”

“Why would you rather throw Jungkook to the wolves then?” Jimin motions towards him, his hand hovering near Jungkook’s chest, and Jungkook shakes his head a few times. “Why don’t you just pick someone you don’t care about like me instead?” Eyes waver, your gaze flickers over Jimin, and Jungkook can’t catch the emotion that lingers there because it’s gone too quickly. Jimin’s lips fall into a frown, brows knitted together.

“It’s my plan, so I get to pick who goes with me. I pick Jungkook, and that’s that.”

A huff of air leaves Jimin’s lips before you finish speaking. He redirects his gaze to the counter under his hands.

“Okay, Jungkook, do you have some time? Let’s go discuss the plan.”

“Why can’t Jimin and I be in on the plan as well? That’s not fair.”

“Tae, I’m sorry. The less you know the better. If I get in trouble or caught for this, then they won’t be able to tie anything back to you if you don’t know anything. Even if they find some way to drag you into it, they won’t be able to get any information from you. Please trust me on this one, okay? I’ll make sure it won’t be a repeat of the fight.”

“I trust you,” Taehyung says. He drops his volume as he looks at you. “I do. I just want to make sure you’ll be safe too.”

“That’s why I’m bringing someone with me, and I’m sorry it can’t be you. I will be fine.” Taehyung doesn’t say anything in response and lets you walk away from the counter. You grab hold of Jungkook’s sleeve as you round the corner. “Come on. The sooner we get this sorted out, the better.” Jungkook hops out the stool and follows your lead back in the direction of the rooms. “Wait out here for a few minutes, Jungkookie. I need to have a quick chat with someone.” Turning on your heel at the mouth of the hallway, you motion for Jungkook to take a few steps back. He tilts his head to the side at your demand, confusion taking over, and it continues to seep through his body as you walk up to Hoseok’s door and knock a few times. “Try not to have another panic attack and puke on the floor.” You disappear into the room a moment later. Jungkook is left standing in the hallway wishing he was anywhere else because all he sees when he looks around are memories of the panic attack that struck a few days ago. The choking sensation.

Queasiness.

Drowning, drowning in a sea of darkness without end.

He shakes his head to clear the thoughts out, refocusing his eyes on the hallway. Fourteen tiles across, fourteen tiles from door to door, fourteen tiles from wall to wall. Half tiles in the doorways. Four of them. The menial task of counting grounds him, reminds him of the reality that surrounds him, and separates the darkness creeping in from the light ahead of him. Jungkook takes a deep breath as he stares forward, blinking into the brightness seeping in through the window at the end of the hallway. A door slides open, and it’s not Hoseok’s; rather it’s the room beside his. Jungkook realizes that he’s just standing in the middle of the hall and staring forward, which is probably a strange sight.

Platinum blonde hair bleeds together with the white on the walls. Hyewon steps out of the room, eyes on the floor as she slides the door shut again and starts walking in Jungkook’s direction. She maintains her pace as she passes him. If he’d never spoken to her before, he would let her keep walking, but now his hand reaches out and grabs hold of her wrist. What follows next happens in an instant; however, in Jungkook’s mind, it seems to occur in slow-motion, Hyewon’s blonde hair whipping through the air while she turns to face him.

“What the hell are you doing?” She yells as soon as his fingers touch her skin. Jungkook retracts his arm as though burned and blinks at her with wide eyes. Silence hangs between them for a few moments before Hyewon’s features relax, the anger ebbing away as her brows return to a normal position. “I—uh, sorry about that. You caught me off guard, and I wasn’t expecting that.”

“No, no, it’s my fault,” Jungkook insists, bringing his hands up. “I should’ve said something or…not grabbed you like that? Um, I just want to apologize for the other day and behaving the way I did when you tried to help me. It was — I was rude and insensitive. I should’ve been nicer? Yea. I was going through a tough time right then, you caught me at the wrong moment, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for my attitude or the way I treated you.” Jungkook doesn’t know what he is expecting from Hyewon in terms of her reaction; a smile and cheerful laugh is not on his mind at all though. She grins, eyes finding his, and lets a bright laugh fall from her lips.

“I didn’t hold it against you, you know. In my mind, your reaction made sense and was justified in the moment. I was the one pushing a bit hard for answers. To reassure you though, I’ve done the same thing, so it doesn’t make you a bad person or anything like that. I mean, look at how I reacted when you touched my arm. If you ever do want to talk, my offer still stands and I’d always be willing to listen.”

“Why though?” Jungkook can’t help but to ask the question, because her insistence to help him is something foreign to him.

"Well," she starts, gaze finding the ceiling as she speaks, "when I came in, I didn't feel like I had anyone to talk to, and there are times when I still feel that way, but I believe that it's important to open up rather than bottle everything inside. If you keep it locked up all the time then nothing good will come from that, right?" Jungkook glances over her soft features, the gleam in her eyes bright. "Ah, sorry for rambling a bit and making a hasty exit, but I have an appointment to go to actually. I'll catch you around though! If you need me, you can probably find me in my room or somewhere nearby." Hyewon turns to leave, but Jungkook doesn't let her go without saying something in response first.

"You're really nice and kind-hearted, Hyewon!" He calls out to her back. She grins at him over her shoulder. "I'm surprised to find a person like that here." Hyewon only laughs, eyes disappearing behind crescent shaped eyelids. She waves at him before returning to walking away, and Jungkook stares at the back of her head. How can a person like that be friends with people like Mingyu and Yesung? Is it a facade?

"You done hitting on other patients?"

"Shit!" Jungkook flinches as you speak, unaware that you opened the door and stepped out. You snort at his reaction and cover your mouth when the unprecedented noise leaves your mouth. "I wasn't hitting on her; it's called being nice."

"Being nice? What's that?" You poke your tongue out, toying with the corner of your lips while you grin at Jungkook. "It's all a joke, Jungkookie. Learn how to take one." You pull your tongue back between your lips, click it against the roof of your mouth, then start walking down the hallway. Jungkook jogs to catch up with her.

"Di-Did your talk go well?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The—I mean your talk with Hoseok," Jungkook clarifies. His throat constricts a bit after he speaks, suddenly aware of how this might come across to you. You stop walking to face him, one brow raised.

"You have zero concept of privacy."

"And you were just eavesdropping on my conversation with Hyewon."

"Cute, Jungkookie, but you were having said conversation in a public and open hallway. It didn't seem like you were trying to hide the conversation in any way." With your retort, Jungkook realizes that he's losing the fight.

"Sorry, I won't ask about your personal life again."

"I highly doubt that, but okay."

"Can I ask you a question about Hoseok though?" You roll your eyes, visibly debating the question, but Jungkook doesn't wait for your permission. "Namjoon told me a bit about him a few days ago, but I've been wondering…why does he never talk to other patients? And stay in his room all the time?"

"What demon has possessed you?" You ask. "Why do you want to know so badly? Do you not have the ability to drop the subject and mind your own business?"

"I feel like I need to know because I need to know when I'm overstepping my bounds with other patients." Your gaze turns into a glare as you squint at him. Jungkook racks his brain for the right words to say that might convince to talk about it. "Uh, on the—on the first day I was here, you said…you said something about sticking to the truth. Honesty is the best policy." A laugh tears through your chest.

"You are nothing but trouble, Jeon Jungkook." You point to the door to your left then grab hold of the handle and slide it open. "Go on in." He does as asked, unsure of what to expect inside her room. Even though it's the same basic structure and layout as Jungkook's room, yours contains more decorations, including dark curtains over the windows and a few rugs scattered across the floor. There's only one bed in your room too, as well as a desk in the corner, but the thing — or things in reality — that catches most of Jungkook's attention are all the stuffed animals strewn over your mattress. There are at least six, if not more; Jungkook can't see the exact amount due to the unmade state your bed is in. When you catch his looking, you stab his shoulder with your index finger. "You better not make any smart-ass comments."

"Of course not!" He raises his arms in defense as you sidestep him to go to your desk. He stands awkwardly in the entrance of your room, right in front of the door that you closed, and watch as you snatch a pen off your desk and stick the end of it in your mouth. Plopping down on the rug in front of your bed, you motion at the empty space in front of you.

"Look," you say as he seats himself across from him, "I am only going to tell you about Hoseok because everyone else her knows and maybe you'll feel special or something by knowing. Hoseok…isn't a new patient by any means, but he hasn't been around for a long time when compared to other patients here. For the first couple weeks after he got here, everyone thought he was fine and that nothing was wrong with him. No one understand why he was admitted here since there were no signs of anything being an issue. He was bright and loud, enthusiastic, optimistic, always talking to everyone he encountered." You hesitate, tugging on the pen in between your teeth, and gaze at something in the corner of the room. "Well, that was all a lie, an act really, and he was just trying to hide what was really going on in his mind. After…after things got more clear? I don't know how to word it, but his behavior made more sense once the mask started to crack. The little oddities he had — strange and random behavior, a weird sense of speech, constant confusion — they all started to add up and pile on top of each other. It seemed to happen so quickly that it was had to accept that the person we had grown accustomed to was actually nothing like that in reality. He still interacted with the others at that time, but the bubbly personality disappeared. He was…flat. Blank, didn't show much emotion, didn't speak much and whenever he did it was nonsense either grammatically or entirely unrelated to anything. It's—there were too many symptoms to list, and those things combined with his other disorder — the behaviors contradict each other, but the disorders make sense together.

"And, you know, it wouldn't be surprising if everyone in this clinic suffers from depression, but since his is atypical, it feels so different than anything else I've encountered. It's sad and unfortunate because Hoseok may never get to leave this place. Cases like his rarely get better, and there's not much Omelas can do for him. With a hopeless case, sometimes it seems like they aren't trying to do anything for him. I honestly don't feel bad for many people, but I do for Hoseok. He's sweet and nice, probably the nicest person I've ever met. It isn't his fault that he has to deal with the issues he has, and it isn't fair either. Someone so pure and kind — he doesn't deserve that kind of pain and suffering. It makes me wonder how things like that can happen to such a good person."

You pause to take a few deep breaths, eyes fluttering shut. Jungkook doesn't make a sound, and he's not sure he's even breathing at this point. Even with your eyes squeezed shut, your expression seems so melancholic that it hurts to look at your face, so Jungkook stares at his lap instead. The image before him is a dark and blurry one, an image it feels like he shouldn’t be looking at or witnessing.

"Before coming to Omelas, I didn't really care about anyone except myself. No one was important in my mind, and there wasn't anything who deserved my time because of constantly being let down. Now that I've been here though, surrounded by many people like Hoseok and Taehyung, I can't help but to feel for them. I wish there was more I could do to help them, because they deserve that. I know I'm not in a position to help them in all honesty, nor am I a person who can provide that for them. I’m not a good person, not someone anyone should look up to. I make a lot of mistakes, and yes every person does, but it’s—it’s just different. They don’t need a person like me in their lives, but it’s too difficult to just walk away from them." Jungkook reckons it’s like a landslide —  the slippery slope he’s falling down — and at the bottom is your deepest, darkest place. Your guard is down, the brick walls Jungkook has found around you are not standing right now, and so when he asks his next question, he keeps his volume low as though it will keep you in the vulnerable position.

"Is that why you do things for them, like getting Taehyung the teddy bear and talking with Hoseok?"

"Yea, whatever good it does. Hoseok tries to be alone all the time, but I know that he doesn't actually like it. He stays alone because he thinks it's for the good of other people. For him personally, however, it's not good. Everything is difficult for him. Maybe by visiting him when I can and talking to him when no one else makes an effort to, I'm doing something good. If it is, then I think it's the only good thing I can do. I always come up short, yet when I’m helping them, it feels like I’ve been given a chance to fix things."

"That's not true though. Everything you do for Taehyung, and all—”

"Fuck," you cut Jungkook off, eyes snapping open. The grief-stricken expression drops from your features, and you replace it with a blank slate, hiding your vulnerability again. You toy with the pen in your mouth, twirling it a bit with your tongue as you stab a finger in Jungkook's direction. "I swear, Jeon, if you breathe a word about this—” 

"I won't, I won't. Don't worry." Jungkook reassures you.

"Good. Now we need to discuss the plan for the laundry room heist tonight. That was the whole point of coming here, but you distracted me."

"Why did you choose me to help? Jimin said he would've gone."

"Have you already forgotten our deal?" Jungkook purses his lips and leans back.

"I want confirmation that you've done your part first," he requests. You scoff.

"We already made the deal."

"I-"

"No one has brought it up or mentioned it, right? So I've done my part. Even the nurses don't know. I took the bullet for you and said that I was the one who vomited in the hallway. I sure wish I could've seen Mingyu's reaction when he saw it outside his door though. That would've been fucking hilarious." You laugh to yourself, and Jungkook relents, trusting that your words are honest. "Besides, the deal was that I would keep it a secret and in return, you would do four favors for me. I didn't really want to use one of those favors on this, but that's why I asked for four and not three. I assumed you may not want to do this."

"I have no problem with doing this though. I was just curious as to why you picked me over Jimin."

"Well if you're on board, then I get to keep the favor for later. I'm sure I can figure something out." Jungkook opens his mouth to ask one more time about Jimin, but you continue speaking and he doesn't have the opportunity to. "The nurses collect all laundry from the rooms starting at 8 p.m., then work on it until curfew at 11. They do rounds to make sure everyone is in their rooms, finishing at 11:15, and go to their side of the ward to sleep or do whatever they do over there. Now, we need to meet at 11:27 on the dot, because the cameras in the hall will catch us otherwise. At 11:27, there is a break in the cameras' recordings because of a glitch. Two and a half minutes. That's all the time we have to get to the laundry room before the cameras come back on and recover from the glitch. We can search the laundry and stuff for Taehyung's bear for as long as we need to, but if it isn't there then we have a problem, because that means it could be in someone else's room or hidden somewhere else. If we can't find it in the laundry room, we'll search the kitchen as well. No one usually looks in or uses the cabinets since there's a pantry, but if Mingyu truly is the one who took it, he might hide it there. And if not, then we'll have to regroup and think about other possibilities tomorrow. Everything make sense so far?"

"Yep, crystal clear."

"Good. Now, the cameras in the kitchen have a blind spot, so if we push the fridge a little bit then it will cover the camera view enough for us to do what we need to do in the kitchen without being seen. It would be best if we move the fridge before tonight though, otherwise it might look a bit too suspicious. As for getting back to our rooms without the cameras catching us, there is only one other time where there's a glitch, and that's at 3:33 a.m. We will have to kill some time if we finish early and wait it out."

"How are we gonna kill that much time?" Jungkook asks, unsure of how long this whole operation is going to take. It shouldn't take long at all to search the laundry or the kitchen. There's no way.

"Of course we can sit in the dark and talk about our feelings."

"What?"

"Man, you have a terrible sense of humor. Terrible. You're going to be responsible for moving the fridge by the way. We should go back to the kitchen now to move it, because I have an appointment soon. We aren't going to talk about this again — especially not at dinner. You can't say a word to Yoongi or Namjoon or Seokjin. Taehyung doesn't need to know the plan either, okay? All in agreement?"

"Ye-Yea, it's just a lot of information at once," Jungkook admits. He rubs the expanse of skin between his brows and tries to recall the whole plan, but he can't remember the exact timing of things and it's fuzzy already.

"I can do a recap when we meet up tonight. 11:27, remember that much for now." You tug the pen out of your mouth, cradling it between your index and middle fingers, and stand up. "Come on, let's head back." You toss the pen onto your desk, and Jungkook hurries to join you by the door, nearly tripping over the rug as he gets to his feet. He trails a few feet behind you while the two of you walk until you start talking again, then he jogs to fall into step with you. "Say, Jungkookie, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Uh, no thank you?" Jungkook responds, but he has a nasty feeling that you are going to prod for answers no matter what he says. In fact, you laugh at his response, then --

"What do you have?" Jungkook chokes on air even though he knows he should've expected such a question from you. "I have some ideas, and I've been doing more thinking since finding you in the hallway. To be transparent, I've never seen something like that out of other patients. Although, I'm not the most observant person so that means nothing."

"It's anxiety. That's all," Jungkook says through gritted teeth. He doesn't want to continue a conversation on the subject, and frankly, he doesn't want to have it with you of all people because you saw him in his most vulnerable state of existence. You don't put the topic to rest, however.

"You gotta clarify. There are five major types of anxiety disorders and then tons of subtypes within each one as well. Hell, I can say I've got 'anxiety' but that doesn't really mean anything since there are so many options under that umbrella."

"Why do you want to know?" You huff at his question and fold your arms over your chest.

"I'm nosy, okay?"

Jungkook doesn't follow up with anything else, and maybe if he stays quiet, you won't continue to pry for answers. Please don't ask again. Just drop it. Is this some sort of punishment for asking you personal questions?

"Oh, Namjoon, you're here!"

Sure enough, as the two of you step into the kitchen, Jungkook's gaze falls on Namjoon, who sits at the counter with a spiral journal set out before him. The man looks up when you call his name and pauses his careful strokes to greet you with a dimpled smile. You return the smile, joining him at the counter and sitting beside him without hesitation. Jungkook on the other hand freezes in place and blinks between you and the fridge. If the only reason in coming to the kitchen was to move the fridge, then you both are screwed now because of Namjoon's presence.

"What are you two up to?" Namjoon inquires. A tapping noise accompanies his words, pen finding purchase again the counter top.

"We ran into each other when leaving our rooms," you explain without batting a lash. How can you lie so easily? And to one of your friends at that? Jungkook swallows, fighting the lump that swells in his throat.

"And you happened to be heading in the same direction?" Perhaps Namjoon sees through the lie, or his intuition tells him something that Jungkook's doesn't, or maybe he's simply known you long enough to be able to recognize when you are lying.

"Well, I was coming to get the peanut butter crackers I made earlier, but Taehyung must have snagged them since they're gone." Jungkook glances at the counter and notices that you're telling the truth about that at the very least. There are no traces of your plate, the crackers, or the peanut butter — the knife has disappeared as well, and Jungkook laughs at the idea that Taehyung stole all of it while you were gone. "Jungkook was only walking with me because I was being nosy and asking a lot of personal questions."

Namjoon heaves a deep sigh and halts his pen tapping in favor of side-eyeing you. He doesn't comment on it though. You offer a forced smile to defend yourself before redirecting your attention to Jungkook.

"Oh, you didn't finish telling me what branch of anxiety you have."

Namjoon coughs, Jungkook glares at you, and you simply keep grinning like a Cheshire without a care in the world. Dammit what kind of game are you playing? Jungkook clears his throat. The heat is travelling up his spine and through his limbs, leaving his fingers cold and shaky. Namjoon's focus is on Jungkook as well now, no thanks to you, and the weight of all the attention cripples him. He fights to breathe and carefully swallows each gulp of air like he's never breathed before.

"Panic Disorder," he chokes out at last.

"Neat," you say. And that's all. You add nothing else to the simple spoken word, and it nags at the pit already growing in Jungkook's stomach. The vulnerable girl he saw not too long has disappeared. The replacement reminds him of the devil, a demon without care or remorse, because that sickly sweet smile sticks to your lips like glue. If he thought he had you figured out, Jungkook would have to backtrack on everything he's learned about you so far. All the behaviors and mannerisms he thought he could attribute to you permanently are out the window. He doesn't know you, doesn't know anything about you, can't decipher which parts are real and which are the roles you play to throw him off.

"Y/N, don't be mean about it," Namjoon chastises. He flicks your arm, and you retaliate with a soft 'ow', rubbing the skin where he hit you. "It must have taken a lot for him to admit that. The last thing he needs is for you to treat him like a joke. Jungkook, I empathize with you and understand that your struggles must be pretty tough. Being in a new place like this with such…eccentric people around you probably doesn't help much either."

"Thanks…” Jungkook trails off, and embarrassment starts to settle in over the anxiety bubbling in his chest.

"Hey, I get it. It's probably easy for you to feel overwhelmed or like you're drowning, but as far as I can tell from the albeit short amount of time we've interacted, you seem to manage it well. Even so, I think you should be a bit more willing to be vulnerable. Not with Y/N — no offense, but also some offense intended."

"Wow rude, Joon. My heart is hurt."

"Anyways, I'd love to help in whatever way I can. I'm sorry if I've gotten somewhat annoying because I don't answer most of your questions and tell you off for asking so many questions. I'm always willing to be a helping hand though, or a listening ear for when you need it." Namjoon doesn't break his gaze with Jungkook. The younger can't help but to compare Namjoon's offer to Hyewon's earlier one. The overlap is uncanny, and if Jungkook didn't know better, he would almost assume that Namjoon and Hyewon discussed this beforehand. Namjoon, however, just contains that warmth and kindness in him; Jungkook saw it the day he came to the clinic, and it hasn't faltered except for two times. The morning of the fight between you and Mingyu, and when Jungkook asked him about your relationship with Yoongi. Namjoon nudges your side with his elbow all the sudden, breaking his stare with Jungkook.

"You should return the personal answer with one of your own. It's only fair, and it would satiate the poor boy's endless curiosity." Namjoon surely knows what Jungkook would ask you about, especially since it's one of the only questions he has ever asked Namjoon in relation to you. Seeing as Namjoon answered his other questions, that leaves the one. The glance Namjoon exchanges with Jungkook confirms his suspicions as well. Why does he want me to bring that up again? Last time he got defensive and angry with me for asking.

You narrow your eyes at Namjoon's suggestion, and Jungkook can see the way your jaw shifts even from the distance he's at.

Namjoon flashes his dimples your way, taking in the serious expression on your face, then laughs.

"You would never honestly answer a personal question or allow such a question to be asked though."

"You aren't wrong, but I am still awfully curious about what his question would be." You shift your chin in Jungkook's direction, but he can't look at you while Namjoon's gaze bears into his skull. The man shakes his head slightly even though you can't see him. Jungkook knows it's a warning. He knows Namjoon is telling him not to ask. Yet you are presenting a golden opportunity on a silver platter, and Jungkook is greedy. This chance — Jungkook doesn't want to pass it up.

"I would ask about Yoongi and your relationship with him." His voice starts confident, but it dies to a mutter as he sees the way Namjoon's expression shifts.

"If you'll excuse me, I just remembered that I agreed to give Hanuel a book, so I should go take care of that." The stool slides against the tile floor, and a hideous scraping noise rises as it does, Namjoon standing and snapping his journal shut. He doesn't wait for you or Jungkook to offer a farewell or speak at all and makes a hasty exit. If he didn't think Y/N would answer the question, why would he leave?

"I'm sorry, Jeon, but I don't recall that being any of your business. You shouldn't be asking things like that. How many times will I have to repeat myself?"

"You said that you wan—” 

"You see, here's the thing. I told you this the first day — the first damn day — and then I reminded you four days ago after your panic attack. Don't. Just don't. Some things will get you in trouble, and some information is withheld for your own good." The illumination in your eyes turns dull as you speak, words leaving your lips with a sharper tone.

"You said that you wanted to know what question I would ask." Jungkook defends his actions, unsure as to why you got so furious all the sudden. "That's all I was doing. I wasn't asking for answers, or expecting them, because Namjoon said you wouldn't answer."

"Okay, fine. You don't need to get all defensive. Just move the fridge now while no one is around."

Jungkook sighs at your response and turns to the fridge. "How much do I need to move it?"

"Four or five inches away from the wall, maybe slant it to the right a bit too."

Jungkook follows your orders without complaint. What is her problem? She said she wanted to know, and all I did was tell her.

"Look, do you want to know why that would be my question? I can tell you the reason if that's why you're upset."

"Who said I was upset? But go ahead and enlighten me, Jungkook."

"I don't know anything about Yoongi. I can't approach him, I don't know what his personality really is like behind the stony front he puts up, and I have no clue how to get on his good side. From what I've seen so far, nothing about your relationship makes sense, even as a friendship. Mingyu and Yesung obviously mentioned Yoongi for a reason, and Yesung asked something too specific that had implications of something besides a friendship. It's not th—” 

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I am not asking you to!" Jungkook retorts. He is just as surprised as you are at the volume and vehemence behind his tone. Taking a moment to breathe, Jungkook returns to speaking in a calmer manner. "I simply don't understand a lot of things, and this is one of them. How can you be friends with him when he doesn't do anything to defend you or help you. He did nothing when Yesung and Mingyu verbally attacked you."

"You think I can't fight my own battles? Am I weak to you? Complacent and helpless without a man to back me up? You don't understand and frankly you wouldn't even if someone spelled it out for you." You stand as you speak, leaving the comfort of the stool and stepping away from the counter. "That's not how it works."

"That's not how what works?"

"We are going to carry through with the plans for tonight," you say and blatantly ignore the question Jungkook posed.

"Any time I confront you with something personal, you run away." He regrets the words when you turn around, the fury in your eyes making his blood run cold. Your eyebrows lift as your eyes widen, and the scowl across your lips is nothing short of terrifying.

"Excuse me? That isn't running away from confrontation. It's keeping my private and personal life that way. You aren't a part of that, and I have zero intention of bringing you into my personal life in the future. You don't know me, Jeon Jungkook, and I don't know you. We are simply two people at the same clinic who interact with each other out of necessity. You are nothing but a means to an end. I am in this for myself. I couldn't care less about your side of things, and I am being fucking honest about that too. This is fairly simple, Jungkook. Get your nose out of my business, keep your head down, and do your part of the deal. I won't say it again." 

The words bite at his skin, a pinprick sensation all over his body. Nothing but a means to an end. He doesn’t know which version of you is the real one. Nothing. In your eyes, Jungkook is meaningless. Nothing new, no change, and no different from every other hell hole I’ve set foot in. You don’t care about him, and that much is clear. He is merely a fresh fish in the sea of familiarity around you. Since he knows nothing, you can use that against him and everyone else in the clinic. 

It shouldn’t hurt as badly as it does, because you have a valid point. Jungkook doesn’t know you, and you don’t know him. The two of you may as well be strangers, like the next door neighbors who merely know each other’s names or the two students who pass one another in the hallway. 

“I understand,” Jungkook says through the swell in his throat.

“Good,” you mutter back, head ducked away from Jungkook so he can’t see your face. When you walk away, your pace is slow, and you drag your feet as though unsure of the movements. A glance over your shoulder before you disappear from Jungkook’s sight. Once he can’t see you anymore, he squeezes his eyes shut to block out the image of your expression.

Slam.

A clenched fist makes contact with the side of the fridge, and it trembles under the force of Jungkook’s attack. He brings the same hand up to his forehead, pressing hard against the skin between his eyes in an attempt to alleviate the pressure building up there. It’s in that moment that he realizes the version of you he witnessed in your room — the vulnerable one who spoke without a care — that was not your darkest place. Your darkest place is the version of you that parades throughout the clinic with a mask over you, and Jungkook has to figure out how to face that reality.

...

written by: jungtaeyoongles

a/n: take the survery here!

consider sending me a ko-fi!!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

[nopickls]

Author meme! 

Tagged by @zevons :****

Author name: redandgold (AO3)

Fandoms you write for: I think it’s been almost entirely football at this point although I have written for the occasional other fandom, especially in the early days; am, like everyone, guilty of some HP dabbling, and have also done DPS / CDC. I have like a million WIPs for the Terror, and a BBC Ghosts / RoL crossover which I really should finish at some point in time. 

Where you post: AO3, pretty much! 

Most popular one-shot: By hits it’s strangeways, here we come which! Thank u! I honestly enjoyed writin this ESPECIALLY since it gave me the opportunity to wank over England’s propensity for being shit at everything (Narrative wise is beautiful but I wish they would stop)

Most popular multi-chaptered story: hahahhahahaha what does it say when all my multi-chapters are because I ran out of space in the footnotes for references 

(I am v bad at writing multi-chaptered things... I feel like I prefer one-shots - it’s tighter somehow? more fun?) 

Favourite story you wrote: oofa doofa i’ve been reading my writing recently for a kick because I haven’t done anything in so long and it feels like im LOSIN it bc i used to write like...good shit... anyway I digress: I honestly like most things I write but have here you are with your faith because I love...the apocalypse.. I love killing off David Beckham. 10/10 would recommend

Obligatory shoutout to if it seems like i’ve been lost, so good it got ripped off 

Story you were nervous to post: ahaahha basically every fwic i write out of my comfort zone be it germ fic for @bayernluvr69 or iker fic for @strikerbacks because i NEVER KNOW if i am doing them justice and also like every xabifips fic in the WORLD but esp summer sang in me a little while because it was like a truly Deep Dive and one i am still unsure if I have surfaced from

How do you choose your titles: remember how the entirety of 2018 i used only billy joel song lyrics? Don’t Ask Me Why

Do you outline: usually! I write by breaking stories up into pieces and leaving a quick line of summary for each piece, and then from there it just spirals into mass disorganisation (I don’t necessarily write the pieces in order) - but I do tend to have the ending in mind already because that’s the most important thing to me (and probably something that comes through in my writing). I dooon’t like writing without outlining because it makes me feel like I’m not in control (as if having an outline does! ha! lies!) and anyway, a lot of my stuff needs to be tightly plotted otherwise it just. devolves into very Little (i.e. a hot mess).Even in terms of character studies, which I adore but don’t usually have strong plot points, I’d plot out what I want to say about this character and then see how I can weave that into a story.

Complete: Literally never published an incomplete work in my life, i feel like it goes against my asian school work ethic

In-progress/ Coming soon/not yet started: (combining these two since i have no in-progress fics up): oh jesus a LOT. Starting with the terror since I have the most for that: 

- hartnell/tozer shut up shut up shut UP - fitzier and the after effects of scurveh (don’t try this at home lads) - blade runner tozer it’s perfect fight me - blanky/hartnell Her au - fitzier groundhog even though people have done this PERFECTLY already - fitzier ghosts????? idk what to do with this yet - an over-elaborate space au - soooome pacrim i am sure that’ll crop up eventually - and I’m sure I’m missing something but I can’t remember what (i tried this at home lads) - OH was it terrebus, yes probably that

fooball wise: 

- beville wwi - wow is that literally it??? alarming

and a completely random, extremely niche the captain / nightingale ghosts/RoL crossover 

Do you accept prompts: always!! I used to do so many more prompts than I do now and I kind of miss it tbh 

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: idk i just desperately need to finish at least one terror fic!!!!!!1 otherwise it makes me feel like a FRAUD i’m going to say fitzier x scurvy since that’s the one i’m closest to finishing (it’s actually space i’m most excited for though. i love space. haven’t got a clue how to write it but. love this game)