#sorry there are a lot of relevant tags hope its not too annoying

[spookacola]

Blessing of the Sea

[ilariyalavorowrites]

Stalking me, Stalking you(CSI Nick Stokes)

Imagine: You never saw it coming, you never knew he was there until the moment he struck. For months, this individual had stalking you from the shadows, trying to find a way into your life. Never quite able to but in his mind, time was running out and soon enough you would be completely out of reach. This was the moment to act, to ‘rescue’ you and steal you away.

Warnings: Angst with a happy ending, kidnapping, hurt but eventual comfort. Suffering, lots of suffering, slow-moving plot, stalking, obsessive behaviour.

Pairings: Nick Stokes x Reader and Reader x OC (one-sided)

Word count:  2,240 words

Universe: CSI

Reader gender: Female

Part one of ten

Tagged: @just-call-me-the-old-hag @horsedragonllama

Next

Sunday, 10:45 am

With your acquired piping hot morning cup of decaffeinated coffee, confined to the conveniently supplied to-go cup, you were ready to head out, to head back home and get the final chores finished before your mother arrived. Tomorrow could not come soon enough, it had been way too long since your mother last visited a few years back but this would be different. 

Dinner reservations had all but been confirmed. You were awaiting the relevant information as soon as your partner had it in his possession as he had insisted on handling this little task himself. This would be the first time your mother and he would be in the same room. It was rather nerve-racking as you hoped that nothing would go wrong and they'd get on like a house on fire.

Lost in your thoughts, as you wandered through the crowded little coffee shop, one that you had regularly visited twice a week over the past four years. You only saw the stranger coming once it was too late to prevent the collision. His shoulder knocked into yours hard enough to send you spinning and before you could react, your coffee flew out of your hand, spilling its dark content all over the tiled floor.

“Damn,” You said, mildly annoyed but knowing the popularity of your favourite coffee shop. There was always a chance that something like this could easily happen. It's just your turn. You would look back and laugh about this later with your mother.

“It’s my fault, sorry about that. Let me buy you another one” An unfamiliar smooth baritone voice spoke, catching her attention. You raised her gaze to meet theirs, ready to politely decline as after all, it was just one cup of coffee nothing to cry over. With a friendly, nonchalant smile upon your lips, you open your mouth to reply…

Monday, 9 am

Evelyn had never been truly comfortable flying but when her daughter had called around two and half months back with an open invitation and her airfare fully paid, she jumped at the chance. After sending one more message to both her daughter and husband, Evelyn boarded the plane.

Driving down had been an option, Evelyn had never been the most confident driver, especially over long distances. On those long lonely straits of road, she would always worry needlessly about every little thing, even if her husband had been along for the ride. Flying had been the only option since her husband was still not back from his fishing trip. An hour and a half was nothing, it would be over before she knew it.

Just before she turned off her phone, Evelyn checked one final time to see if either of them had replied. Her dear Bob had but her daughter had not. This hadn’t been the first message that she hadn’t responded to.

Evelyn had spoken to her the previous morning to confirm what time she would arrive at the airport so that she would be prompt to pick her up but after that, it was utter radio silence. This was hardly unusual due to the nature of her daughter’s job but this felt different. For her daughter was truly a creature of habit, always calling back if she had missed more than one call that day from either parent and replying to text messages by the next morning.

She had done neither of these as Evelyn had tried calling last night and once more before leaving this very morning. She even used the keypad to text carefully a goodnight message and the one before boarding. She preferred to call over using the messaging function on this newer model of phone that had been purchased as a Christmas present. Her family wanted her to try and keep up with the times and have a way of contacting them whenever she left the house.

It had been sweet though but it wouldn’t have been her first choice of present. She knew that her daughter worried about her, but then Evelyn deeply worried about her child’s safety especially since they had not lived in the same state for the last five years. 

All she could do was wait until her plane landed safely at Las Vegas Airport and the sight of that ever-infectious smile beaming from just beyond the barrier in the Arrival Hall. The pleasant image would be enough to get through the flight as she laid back in her seat, closing her eyes and relaxed as much as she possibly could.

An hour and a half flew past and Evelyn found herself standing in the right place with a suitcase in one hand and her purse dainty held in the other as her eyes scanned the crowd. She had checked the signage on the walks to ensure that she had gone in the right direction, as it was most definitely possible that the airport had more than one arrival hall in this terminal but this hadn’t been the case.

She had been walking up and down for the last twenty minutes, her eyes passing over each of the many faces staring back at her from the barrier. None of them were the ones that she had been expecting. This was strange as her plane had not been delayed and her trip through security had not taken long. Maybe her daughter had been held up in a traffic jam, yes that had to be it.

Evelyn made her way through the crowd, all whilst looking for a seat to rest and continuing to wait as she was certain that her child wouldn’t be much longer.  

Minutes ticked past, soon becoming tens of minutes and before long an hour had passed. Evelyn was concerned as her eyes had remained fixed upon the exit doors, watching as they opened and closed as people flooded in and out but her daughter had never stepped foot across that threshold.

With one hand, she fished out that dreaded mobile phone and swiftly dialled her daughter’s number. It rang for a few moments before being diverted to voicemail. Without hesitation, she spoke knowing that she had few options in a city where knew no one beyond her child. 

‘Sweetheart. It’s your mother. I’ve been at the airport for a little while. I know you are on the way and have likely been caught up in some dreadful traffic on the way here so I’ll get a taxi as I do have your address and you head home. I’ll meet you there

She placed the phone back in the depths of her purse before heading outside to find a taxi as seeds of worry and doubt blossomed into life.

Monday, 11:10 pm

Detective Captain Jim Brass had seen it all. There was not much that shook him to the core anymore, after all the years spent with all that he had seen with the ever-loyal team of hardworking CSIs that made up the graveyard shift. 

His officers were just as hardy as he was, well maybe a few were still green and somewhat naive but in time, they would be as hard as diamonds on the outside at least. Seated in his office, he was ready to burn the midnight oil when a quick succession of knocks alerted him to the presence of someone at his door.

The words were on the tip of his tongue, to summon them to cross the threshold and enter but this individual did not wait as the door was swiftly pushed open. He frowned, annoyed at this sudden intrusion but as his gaze fell upon the familiar face of Officer Rodriguez of Day Shift, a thousand questions rose erupted within his mind.

Why was he still here? His shift ended hours ago but yet he remained within the department. His pale and drawn face was far from the usual for this stern man who lived for the badge. 

“Sir, I’m sorry for just entering but I felt that you needed to hear this” His voice lacked its normal steady tone, it was similar to that of the many terrified fathers that he had encountered over the years. “I’m listening, Rodriguez” He patiently spoke briefly, to allow the man to find the rest of his words.

“My partner and I were called to the scene of a 406, from the information that we had received from dispatch just seemed like a run-of-the-mill job. However, when Sawyer and I rolled up at the address, it was far from ordinary”  

Jim watched on silently as the story began to unravel. “A distraught older woman was waiting outside the property for us, and quickly it was established that this was the mother of the individual that owned this unit” It was plain to see the professional nature waning as the officer continued to relay his report.

“The owner was discovered to be one of our own” As he heard the name, the cogs began to turn, as he tried to make sense of what had led to this but yet, he lacked the whole picture as if only a few matching pieces had found and place down upon the table, the jigsaw was slowly coming together. 

However, this still perplexed Jim, why was a simple burglary being hand-delivered to his door, unless there was more to this than a case of a stranger breaking into the home of a member of law enforcement and taking anything that wasn't nailed down. 

A small case that dayshift would need no assistance from either swing or graveyard but this didn’t feel as if they were reaching out for a fresh set of eyes to look over the evidence. He would bite and see where he ended up.

The memory of the morning still fresh lingered at the forefront of Rodriguez’s mind. It was hard to push aside as he relived each step, trying to see if he missed any detail. No matter how miniscule it initially seems could open doors down the line.

“She’s been paid leave for thirty-six hours as her mother was due to arrive this morning. Using a few vacation days left over from last year” He relayed the information readily to the younger man. A basic set of facts that most of the department was already aware of. She had been rather openly vocal about the pending arrival of her beloved mother. 

Each shift had been part of the active countdown that drove many mad but much like any other family, they took in on the chin and revelled at the sight of her excitement. Both men remembered the smile that never faded, it didn’t matter which end of her shift they encountered her, there it would be.

The years of service had not yet tarnished and hardened her heart, but it would come eventually. That one case that they could not get past, sleepless nights and a drive to find a way to justice that went above the call of duty. Jim had his, he knew that Rodriguez had his own.

The sight of Conrad Ecklie and the click of his office door closing behind the said man spoke volumes, this was not going to be good news in the slightest. “Sir, The Detective in question never turned up at the airport to pick up her mother and has not been seen since the morning before that”

Monday 11:20 PM

Nick held his phone as he walked through the station’s front doors, his focus transfixed firmly upon the tiny screen of the device. Still no message back but then again he wasn’t expecting her to answer straight away especially now that her mother was in town. He had the breakfast date to look forward to once he finished this graveyard shift.

Tomorrow was going to be his day with his girl, meeting up with her at their regular breakfast joint and then sitting down to dinner with her mother later in the evening. Nick would message her the details later on during his first break of the night.

Nothing could easily railroad this wonderful feeling, for the first time, in a long time things were going swimmingly with his love life. He never knew that these were famous last words, ones that would haunt him in the days to come.

As his eyes rose from his screen, he could not help but notice the scene in Brass’s office. Ecklie was a familiar sight, flitting in and out whenever the need arose but an unfamiliar Officer who should have clocked out hours ago, now that was unusual.

Catherine lingered in the hallway near the locker room, leaning into the wall behind her with her arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes trained upon the glass-walled office. “Evening” He greeted his dear old friend as he stiddled up beside her. “Do you know what’s going on?” He enquired curious to know if she had any insight into the strange situation.

“No, but I don’t doubt we’ll be in the dark for long. All I do know is that it’s do with one of the day shift’s newest cases” She replied, her curiosity had been piqued the moment that she entered ten minutes earlier.

In tandem, their phones beeped and the same text message was displayed on each of their devices. What a way to start a shift, Nick knew that he would have to tell about this in the morning.

FAMILY MEETING

[yellowvixen]

Hi um so I have a small question you don't need to answer but do you have any advice for new artist

hello!! first of all thank you for asking me, it means a lot!! sorry for leaving this for a few days too, i wrote this all up and then forgot to post is djgjfhsg

so, this is probably annoying advice you've heard before but genuinely? practice!!! try to draw every day, even if it's just for a little bit. also, draw from life! even if your own style is more cartoony (or you want to start drawing cartoons), drawing from life helps develop your hand eye coordination and will help you actually draw what you see in your mind. if you have any art galleries or museums nearby, take a pad of paper and a pencil along and draw the paintings and statues. if you can't do that, hell even get a bowl of fruit and draw that! if you're really set on drawing people then take a selfie! a pic with your friends! it's not cheating to draw from photos, real people move around too much to draw sometimes lol. if you want to develop your own style, look around and see what you like about others! for use of practice, copying art can be fine as long as you don't claim it as your own and if you want to post is then ask permission

another useful thing is to watch process videos! that way you get to see exactly how other artists do what they do. eg how is the line art done- one quick stroke or many short strokes? pay attention to colours too, lighting and shading is weird! shadows aren't just black, one colour can look completely different depending on its surrounding colours and stuff like that.

if btw, i completely misunderstood and you're a new artist to tumblr, not a new artist in general (although if you're asking here, you might be both), my advice for that is to tag your art properly! timings don't really matter (if you're really pressed you can schedule your posts- i do that lol) but tags allow other people to find your art! make sure your tags are relevant: the piece of media, the characters, the ship name if applicable. don't tag characters that aren't in the drawing! other good tags to include are stuff like "art", "artists on tumblr", "fanart" etc. it's also a good idea to have your own art tag, this can be as simple as "my art" (it won't get mixed up with other people using that tag, as searching on your own blog won't include posts on other's blogs) or something more specific like mine which is "vixenart" lol

i hope this will be even a little bit helpful for you :] but remember i am just one person with my opinions! you don't need to follow my advice at all, it's just from my own experience and what has helped me over the years, everyone's different!

[lilikags]

Hi Hi~~ may I request some hcs for kayron, mort, tywin, vildred, and krau with an S/O that is very smart but is very fragile, like they get sick easily and even the smallest hit can inflict a lot of damage, thanks as always!

request !! ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-

‗ ❍ req open at @lilikags (hq, genshin, e7) & @arlitem (tot) ‗ ❍ kayron, mort, tywin, vildred & krau with an s/o who is smart but fragile ‗ ❍ fluff, hcs ‗ ❍ apologies for this being super late, I hope you don’t mind. :0 ive been super busy and i hope it hasn't been too long >< pls enjoy !!

˗ˏˋ꒰ kayron ꒱

-> kayron is extra protective of you. when i mean protective, like- he's the only one that can even touch you, in fear of you being hurt. he's also afraid of himself hurting you- he doesn't trust himself no matter how much you assure him that he'll be okay

-> he does allow a doctor near you though- the best one he can find. the souls down in the underworld aren't exactly the most fit for the job, especially when most of them are moving bones... but he does find a good one on orbis and kidnaps him there

-> please teach him manners. he will listen to you. he trusts you because he knows of your wisdom.

˗ˏˋ꒰ mortelix ꒱

-> mort finds you interesting by your reactions. he obviously won't do anything that could hurt you, but he'd still tease you constantly

-> first time you get sick he literally kidnaps the doctor too when you need it. the council is so close to saying "get some help" because they're so annoyed with him stealing the best doctor in eureka just because you got a cold one day and it's causing them a plethora of political issues

-> when you scold him though he understands but is definitely not sorry for his actions...

-> whenever you give him advice he acts like he doesn't listen. but later he will definitely use it- it lives in the back of his brain.

˗ˏˋ꒰ tywin ꒱

-> he always has someone to look after you when he can't. he's protective and easy to read once you get to know him; you'll know what's coming. though if it ends up feeling suffocating, let him know and he'll suddenly not know what to do and you can set your own terms. as long as they make sense to him. else he'll get upset (at the situation)- and its not often that this happens.

-> super embarrassed about it when asked for no reason at all, but when you're doing your usual work (and he's there, because schniel gave him a day off) but he likes staring at you. it's emotionally healing for him.

-> doesn't know how tf to take care of you, but he studies. his second major is being a doctor and just for you, because he's found a new hobby: taking care of you. he's also just good at it, don't ask how.

˗ˏˋ꒰ vildred ꒱

-> nerdy jokes. all the time. idk if anyone forgot that he actually has humor. canonically. (bc i did forget for a little while with all the drama that happened in ep 1 lmao) he definitely makes jokes relevant to what you're smart about (even if it's just like generally smart- anything you're familiar with)

-> will protect you to the ends of the earth will quit his job- when you tell him "no, don't do that" he'll take a minute to think

-> sometimes (more than not, actually) he's incapable of making certain decisions for himself and he literally asks you to decide for him.

˗ˏˋ꒰ krau ꒱

-> nerdy jokes again but this time they're not that funny. he's trying tho, give him a kiss on the cheek.

-> born warrior not born king. you see, he's not that bad at his job... but you're just smarter at it. what taranor needs is not a commander but a ruler. he won't force it on you if you're not up to it tho,, but he would ask you for advice

-> literally hires the best doctor in taranor. no more words need to be said.

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : lili's notes...

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

➽ please rb if you liked this! it would make me so happy <3

➽ masterlist

➽ tag list in rbs. send an ask to be in the taglist!

[angelswithcigarettes]

“Guardian hands”

Summary: Spencer has a hard time in the academy, he meets Morgan who tries his best to help him through.

Prompt: "You are disgusting"

Warnings: Minor injury, Bullying

Relevant Tags: Autistic Spencer Reid

Word Count:3991

Chapters:4/4

First Chapter:

It is the third group of students coming in, always seven at the time, prepared to train clearing a simple building and Morgan doesn't notice much off of the group accept that one of them looks like he is still very young but sometimes they just do and even if he likes to drill the recruits from time to time he has no intention of making fun of them for something like this.

He knows there are colleagues that do this but he finds it more degrading than motivational, the kid won't be able to grow a beard and be ten times stronger by next week just because you said he still looks like he goes to elementary school.

"You all know what is going to happen, but are there any questions?" He asks standing in front of the group. "You can better ask the question now before I kick your ass for failing this. I won't judge you now."

"If one of us fails do we all?" A man with dark hair asks.

"No it was a figure of speech, you can't fail anything we are just practicing. Besides it's a team effort."

"We didn't get so lucky with that." Another one jokes and Morgan can see Spencer nervously biting his lip. But he ignores the comment, he has no meaning getting involved in their business.

"Okay get your vests on."

"Why do we need the vest?"

"So you get a feeling for it. The guns are probs but I am sure you already know that." He watches them get into their vests and orders everyone working inside the prop house on their position.

When he comes back he sees them joking around. "Okay focus now everyone." He speaks and takes notice of Spencer leaning his head towards his shoulder for a moment a hint that that was to loud for him and Morgan stays quiet for a second hoping he didn't overlooked something important in the paperwork he got for this exercise.

"Man what's wrong now?" One of them asks when Spencer knuckles his eyes.

"Kid you okay?" Morgan asks approaching him and Spencer nods and then looks up to him but breaks of eye contact pretty quickly. "It's okay to be nervous everyone. Now I will go upstairs from were I can see you and for the first try you guys can just try everything you want to clear this house. You have every time,talk it through first."

Morgan leaves them to it walking up the stairs from were he can look inside the house.

He normally likes to work with students who have been longer in the academy but every ones in a while this is fun too. He always with the younger ones is hoping that they leave this encouraged for their next ones,he is harsher on the older ones.

In the beginning he didn't want to teach at all but Gideon had convinced him to do one weekend and now he does it as often as he can.

He sees them debating and then they split in three groups, two people staying outside, three going in through the front door and two through the back door. He has seen worse.

Morgan got in trouble before for being to soft someone had said but he values Gideon's option more than the ones of some agents that already made his life in training a living hell.

The group would have been dead pretty quickly one of them didn't clear the first room correctly so when they all come back out they look unmotivated. "Alright the start was not bad, but you got sloppy then, take enough times to clear the rooms it doesn't help you when you do it fast but overlook someone."

"Dude how could you not see him?"

"I don't know he was hiding good." The man answers one of the two girls in the group.

"That's why you need to be more careful, check behind furniture, don't just light into the room ones and then go back out. Your attempt to leave agents outside was good and you need to watch eachothers backs, the unsub would have had you and you if you don't clear correctly." He points at the different agents.

"I am sorry what's an UNSUB?"

"UNSUBS means Unidentified subject of an investigation, suspects are often referred to it as such."

"What he said." The kid shots him a quick smile and then looks down again playing with the prop gun in his hand. "So try again, more carefully. And concentrate, pay attention to the details."

Morgan goes back up and they do better next time, it's all still pretty unsure but he wouldn't expect different so he talks it through with them step by step and let's them try again when they come back out "Alright everyone we walk through this together, you didn't pay attention to a lot of things but you will learn."

They walk together into the house and Morgan shows them what is important to pay attention to in the house. "Can you even reach that light switch Reid?" One of the students asks.

"Yes,its 4.9 feet above the ground." He answers and looks slightly annoyed.

"Guys attention" Morgan reminds them and continues walking them through and then let's them try again but when it again doesn't work because they miss an important detail he tells them off and sends them in again and again and eventually they start blaming Spencer for their misery simple because he doesn't talk back and is the youngest so Morgan stops them. "He did things wrong but not more than the rest of you,focus. This is going to be your last try."

"He can't even hold his gun right."

"Its not about the gun right now. Keep your flashlight at the right high and I am okay with it." He is about to send them in another time when he sees one of the girls touching Spencer to encourage him and he shrinks away letting out a whine and then turning away from the group. "Reid you okay?"

"Now that starts again,great."

"What starts again?" Morgan asks approaching Spencer.

"I don't know this guy freaks out over the weirdest things. How could he even get into the academy?"

Morgan steps around him facing him now. "Hey kid, you alright?" Spencer shakes his head and then moves his hand up to his head forgetting the gun so Morgan takes it out of it and puts it on the floor while Spencer hits his head with his fist.

"Can I do anything to help you?" The kid,that he has never met before doesn't stop and just stumbles around. "It's okay take your time." Morgan doesn't know what is wrong,but if he would name one thing he would guess that he is having a meltdown that people on autism spectrum can suffer from and he knows profiling with this less time and evidence often doesn't work but if he looks at how the kid acted he is pretty sure it's that. "Does any body of you know anything?" He asks the group.

"No, Sir."

"No we don't know him really he doesn't talk to anyone."

"Alright,you can grab your things, its would have been over in a few minutes anyway." He dismisses them and looks for signs to help Reid.

He is not as informed as he wishes to be right now and the agents that helped come out of the prop house but look clueless too and then Spencer bits out a word.

"Vest"

"What about it?"

"Off" He presses his fingers into his eyes. "Off. Vest off. Need the vest off." He yells and Morgan steps forward resolving the patches.

"I need to get this over your head."

"Vest"

"I am taking your vest off but you need to take your arms down." He doesn't seem to understand Morgan's words so he waits for a moment and then asks again and Spencer takes them down and Morgan can get rid of it and Spencer practically slumps down to the ground and needs a long moment but then calms down sniffing from time to time and playing with his watch and Morgan gives him some space getting some water and his stuff. "Is it okay if I sit down with you?"

Spencer nods but then anxiously rips his jacket and bag out of Morgan's hand.

"Do you need anything?" He gets ignored while Spencer struggles to get into his jacket. "It's okay,no need to stress this. You are safe here."

"Stupid"

"Here" Morgan gently helps him and then the man gets up from the ground hanging his bag around his neck. "Are you sure you don't want to wait for a few minutes in here? I can go out if that helps."

"I go"

"Okay,that's okay."

"Sorry" Spencer mutters and then storms out of the room.

More chapters on Ao3:

[starkcontrasts]

so, hi. I've got a bit of an annoying question that you totally don't have to answer if you don't want to, but,,, I know you're into dc right? at least into batman? or idk I saw your long post about dick grayson rn and I know you post about batman/batfam (?) sometimes?

point is, I've never gotten into dc, never read a comic in my life and I've vaguely watched some of the batman movies while they were on tv but didn't really pay attention, but lately (as in the past two or three years) I've seen here on Tumblr talking a lot about batman and the batfam and all of Batman's adopted kids and how great they're and the found family dynamics and shit and ?? I kinda want to check it out nyself?

basically my question is, as someone who's never read/watched basically anything dc, where should I start? or is there a certain canon I should focus on? or if you don't wanna answer (which is totally fine) dyou know of anyone who may've already talked about this? I'm sure a million people have I just ?? don't even know where to start looking??

honestly a fandom this big and this diverse and with this much different canon it's a bit overwhelming, when I got into star trek at least I knew to start chronologically but with this I don't even know

anyways, thanks for your help! ❤️

not an annoying question at all!! in fact a very welcome question indeed, i love introducing ppl to new fandoms and i rarely get asks (srsly i've only gotten three in the entire history of this blog lol) so it's a two-for-one, win-win deal!

now to answer your lovely query:

yes i do love batman and yes i am a fan of dc and yes i'd be happy to help you on this journey of embarking on a new fandom, should you decide to continue! I'm actually a relatively new-age fan in terms of fully immersing myself in the content, I grew up with Teen Titans and later Young Justice, both of which I attribute much of my beginnings as a dc/batfamily fan to. I watched the Justice League and Batman animated shows when I was younger but they didn't stick as much as the aforementioned two and I know it seems like I'm going off on a tangent but this is relevant to my helping you, I promise!

Much of the comic material I've consumed over the years has degraded in memory - I don't remember most of the issues now, just a few panels and impressions - so I can't help you on the comic-reading front but there should be various accounts here on tumblr that do really good analyses and are much better than me at giving panel-based evidence. (I can think of @hood-ex off the top of my head). Even just searching through the tags of say, the Titans or Batman or the JL or any characters you already have in mind, should turn up at least a handful of comic panels from different issues, if you just want to start by lightly browsing those.

As for certain canon to focus on, the DC fandom is pretty famous for forcing its fans to root through multitudes of conflicting material (so. Many. Reboots.) and authors that have contradicted each other's works over the years, so the only thing I can really tell you is to pick and choose for yourself which pieces of canon you decide feel right for you. I know it's not really all that helpful but I really do recommend just going for the deep-dive and figuring out how to swim from there. Suicidal I know, sounds crazy for sure, but this is a fandom with some serious years under its belt - and all the changing attitudes and cultures that implies - and an excess of material from varying sources.

Young Justice and Teen Titans are both good shows for getting a feel for the world(tho both depict versions just different enough to be distinct in their interpretations) but they mess with canon a fair amount as well, so don't take everything they depict to be same across the board. In this regard, fanfiction actually IS your friend! The more you read, the more you can cross-reference! Even with the bevy of material to choose from, people typically agree on a fair amount of character staples (examples include: Dick Grayson being a very affectionate child, Jason Todd being a literature nerd, Bruce being emotionally-intelligent just...not necessarily acting on it lol) and often times the staples are the ones backed up by the canons.

(I'm not ashamed to admit that much of what's remained in my fickle memory can be attributed to character-realistic, memorable, thought-provoking fanfiction. Fanfiction exists for exploration and, I've found, can at times offer a more grounded, humane take on well-beloved characters that authors being Paid to write sometimes miss out on. Just - always doublecheck the tags and, when reading from authors that are heavily-biased, do your best to widen your exposure to the more objective, as well.)

There's not much else I can think of off the top of my head but my askbox AND my messages are always open if you have any more questions. I'm always down to help a budding fan and, if you ever do want some fic recommendations, I'm down to share links for those too! Thank you again for the lovely ask♥️

(Also, I'm sorry if this didn't do much in terms of providing you with direction but, at the very least, I hope I didn't drive you away.)

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Do you think we’ll ever get a S5?

Hi Nonny!

So, I’ve gotten this question asked in a variety of ways but generally boil down to this exact question, so I’m going to tackle this one first, and answer any others in regards to the actors separately because they’re a whole other can of worms.

I have answered variations of this question in the past, so you can read these if you want, but today’s answer is my most recent opinion:

Do I think there’s Going to be an S5?

Will There be a Season 5? 

Is there Ever Going to be an S5? 

Is it True S5 will Happen (Plus some Mofftiss Shitposting)? 

Will There Be S5 and Will Johnlock Happen? 

What Do You Think it’s Gonna Be About? 

Do You Think it’s On Hiatus Right Now? 

What Do I Think is Going On in S4 and Will There Be An S5

Will Johnlock Ever Become Canon?

Will they ever make a new season?

So you can check those out after reading this post.

In the spirit of my blog, I have two answers for you, and the “honest” answer is the one you won’t like.

That said, do you want my honest opinion or my tinhat opinion?

Tinhat opinion: Yes, because the story is incomplete; too many plot holes and S4′s sloppiness and complete 180 from the original plot is so bizarre (([THIS POST TOO])). Too many fucked up things that make me WANT to believe that it’s clever trick and all will be explained when S5 is finally done. There’s evidence that it was commissioned before S4, but I’ve had this theory very well debunked for me on this post here, and my opinions have changed a lot since that post.

Which segues into this: note I say “want to believe” up above there, though. Important wording here, because I feel like my faith in Mofftiss has essentially disappeared because of S4, since I really do enjoy theorizing and speculating and the evidence was RIGHT THERE. But what changed my mind was mainly the reactions and body language of the actors and my annoyance at the arrogance of Mofftiss acting like S4 was brilliant when no one else agrees with them.

This is where my honest opinion comes in, and this is me speaking without bias and with a heavy heart, and are MY OPINIONS, so you can take it or leave it, I don’t care. I’m not here to deflate anyone’s balloons, but Occam’s razor and all.

Honest opinion: No, at least not in the next couple years. Mofftiss kind of disregarded a large chunk of the fandom and got too cocky (Mofftiss: TFP is the best episode of the series! // Also Mofftiss: Yeah, but we’re not going to pitch it for an Emmy nomination) (Mofftiss: we can make anything and everyone will love it! // General Audience Critics: You THOUGHT so, what is this?) and the general disinterest of all the actors surrounding S5 is very telling to me (see the Buzzfeed “Ben With Puppies” interview, this interview with Martin Freeman, and this recounting of Setlock S4). Occasionally it’s brought up with Martin or Ben and they basically say “we’re on a pause”. I think Martin definitely felt really shafted the last season in favour for his ex (who is a whole other barrel of monkeys I have a lot of opinions on), with what they did to John’s character, and I don’t think he has any interest in continuing on any time soon. And Ben’s Buzzfeed “Interview with Puppies” is super telling to me, honestly (timestamp 1:34 if you want to see the part about ‘Sherlock’) – he was NOT “tee hee, I’m being sneaky” (sorry, I HONESTLY don’t know how people are seeing that response as such…), he was “ah, nope, not touching that one because what I wanted to happen and was told would happen isn’t anymore and we’ve been essentially silenced to talk about it.”

Plus Mofftiss seem convinced that this new Dracula project is their next big thing and even they seem to have lost interest in Sherlock all because they didn’t get the praise for S4 that they’ve gotten in the past. I’ve also read a long while ago that Ben is busy with his production company and Marvel for the foreseeable future AND Mofftiss have ANOTHER project after Dracula, and it’s not Sherlock (unconfirmed on this second point, it was just a mention on someone’s blog and I can’t find any articles on the other project they’re doing after Dracula).

And since I mentioned it: No, I don’t think Dracula is a “secret Sherlock thing” or “will have clues to Sherlock in it”. Yes, of course it’s going to have Sherlock Easter eggs in it – almost every showrunner has Easter eggs to their or their actors’ previous works in literally everything – but those E-Eggs will have NOTHING to do with the narrative or future of Sherlock. So, at the very least because I’m worried about everyone’s mental health, it’s already looking like Dracula’s going to be another queerbaiting mess, so please totally enjoy the show if you want, but don’t look too much into it or any E-eggs that the show has. It’s not a secret Sherlock project.

And let’s not forget the general disdain Mofftiss seems to have for their fanbase, essentially selling out because who cares about making sense, all because we criticized S4 because it didn’t make sense and called them out for their queerbaiting without an explanation of S4 [THIS ARTICLE TOO], especially after… Gatiss I think… admitted to using homoerotic subtext in the series to draw in viewership.

Even if they were doing this all to pull the ACD thing on us (essentially kill off Sherlock in a literal sense), it’s a shit way they’re going about it. To me, it feels like S4 was “revenge” for the fandom figuring out their plot before they got a chance to reveal it, because they were annoyed we figured out TAB. That, and I think certain… people… manipulated their way into having input into what they wanted and usurped Ben and Martin out of either spite or a need to be relevant. *shrugs*. But this is getting too biased, so I’ll leave it there for now.

I have mixed feelings about S4, S5, and what I want. I’ve various theories in my ‘s5 and beyond’ and ‘s4 and beyond’ tags if you’re interested in further rabbit-holing. 

Listen I GET wanting to hold onto hope. Hell, I still do. But sometimes we all need to step back and look at the facts from an unbiased point of view, off of the Tumblr-sphere. I’m still a fan, as we all are, and being a fan means that you also are allowed to question things that make no sense. I really wish people would stop gatekeeping just because we all have different opinions. It’s okay to love something but know that there’s SO many problems with it (ie. Disney).

I say let it rest, and leave the fix-its to the fandom. I’m going to watch it if it ever happens, and of course I’ll start speculating again, but right now, I don’t think is the time for S5 because Mofftiss clearly have their interests elsewhere, but keep dangling the promise of more Sherlock to stay relevant.

So, TL;DR: I think if we get S5, it will be a long time from now, and I fear it will follow the plot of S4, because, like Disney with FinnPoe, Mofftiss are coming off as  “passive progressive” cowards (I saw that term in a YouTube review of TRoS, and I thought it was perfect to describe them: We’ll put social issues and gays in our shows, but can’t make the leads gay for each other).

[theartfuldodger26]

For the prompt I'll be predictable: Harry Potter, Bellamort and Bellatrix 😁

Thanks for the prompts, @bellamort1993! Feel free to answer the same :) 

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character:

 Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort.

 Bella is the closest to my heart, but apparently I waste the most         brainmatter on Tom/Voldemort, so *shrugs*

Harry is my favourite light character, he’s an admirable person.

Least Favorite character:

Umbridge, as is universally accepted.

Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Bellamort (which is canon, bitches)

Delphi/Harry (it will become canon, you just wait for TCC part3)

Tomarry but not Harrymort (nearly counts as canon judging by how often Harry gushes over handsome Tom’s face)

Drarry (I’m human and susceptible to fandom mainstream, plus there’s some fantastic fics out there)

Delphi/Victoire (cause two pretty, hot-headed ladies are my cup of tea any day)

Character I find most attractive:

Bellatrix, hands down. Then Voldemort can do things to me too, but Bella would be my first choice.it’s so nice being bi, isn’t it.

Character I would marry:

No one, I’m happy by myself.

Delphi can be my angsty fuck buddy with whom we meet every once in a while, bitch, get drunk, cry and fuck.

Character I’d be friends with:

Harry, tho I’m not the best of friends and he does bring an unappealing high mortality rate to any occasion. It’s fiiine. 

a random thought:

The wizarding world makes zero sense in so many places. They haven’t had an Industrial Revolution, meaning they haven’t known first hand the new ideas that came with it, and they seem to be stuck in the Middle Ages in many ways, even if they dont seem extremely Christian as these times actually were. We know little about the political system and their beliefs are so random. It’s really confusing.

An unpopular opinion:

Idk what’s unpopular these days. Aside from Albus’ name, I actually liked the Epilogue.

It showed what we needed to know: that Harry and the rest made it out okay. They found the courage to face their destroyed community and rebuild, even though they had gone through enough during the war. I think JKR said it herself in an interview how important rebuilding is after a catastrophe, how it can daunt even the bravest people. The miracles of Japan and Germany bouncing back and better after WWII are relevant real-life examples here. 

A married Harry, enthusiastic about hugging his kids goodbye on their first day of school, a day that to him symbolises a new beginning, is the greatest gift and it does not erase the pain he might feel every day for going through hell in his early life. In fact, it’s this snipet of normalcy what he craved as a boy and refused to daydream about because its weight would be too much,and now he gets to have it. Along with the nightmares and the PTSD and the new challenges yes, but now, in this moment, as he waves to the new generation that he helped create, he’s safe, loved and happy. He deserves it. 

Second unpopular opinion: I don’t give a damn if McGonagall’s timeline is screwed up by bringing her to life in the 20′s. Didn’t really matter to the story before and she’s a freaking badass and comic relief, which is the best combo ever. Is it fan-bating or whatever it was called? Sure. But if she makes the story better with her presense I give minus two fucks about when JKR originally said she was born (also, newsflash: people have the right to change HC’s, especially people who don’t shit about maths, like our dear creator) 

My Canon OTP:

           BELLAMORT

Seriously, I have screenshoted the details of TCC where it shows they’re canon.

My Non-canon OTP:

            Harry/Delphi

I know, I’m sick, it’s fine. *insert dog sipping coffee in the flaming house meme here*

Most Badass Character:

Bellatrix, handsdown.

McGonagall for good people.

Most Epic Villain:

Voldemort, we’d have no books without him. He can be dumb, but it’s cute. 

Pairing I’m not a fan of:

I’m not huge on non-canon Hermione ships, and anything with Snape is gross.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

…Snape? Not his character, but the positive light she gave him by naming Harry’s kid after him. It appeared she was clear on him not being an admirable person, but then he’s the bravest bloke ever? No, ma’am.

On a Fantastic Beasts note, I do hope they handle the backstories of all characters well. We’ll surely get back to this after the FB series are over.

 Favourite Friendship:

The Golden Trio, they work as a three-man-group better, I won’t devide them. Also, as a part-time writer I have to admire how the writing and dynamics were handled, it’s so hard to think as more than one person, not to mention three!

Character I most identify with:

PostAzkaban!Bellatrix feels she’s letting her master and herself down, and so do I. I keep looking for my former self. Who wasn’t much after all, but had some qualities I should recultivate.

Character I wish I could be:

… I’d like to have some Bellamort qualities that I lack, but in general I’m fine working on myself.  

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you:

When I started shipping them:

After I finished the books, so that’s since 2007. 12 cool, angsty years. 

My thoughts:

I love them, they’re my evil babies. In fact, I don’t even have reasons for loving them, as most shippers do, I’d just die for them, end of reasoning.

What makes me happy about them:

That they’re complicately made for each other in their unique goth way. And that in the end they had a kid, which I think helped Voldemort out a lot with his issues with intimacy and emotions.

What makes me sad about them:

That they died *sobs hysterically*.

Also in the books they have like two scenes together. (HE SCREAMED THO)

Things done in fanfic that annoys me:

Seeing Bella’s character butchered down to a snivelling, slavish idiot, though these aren’t Bellamort fics usually.

In Bellamort fics, it feels like a cheat when it says Bellamort but it’s just Bella pining and Voldemort really not caring. I don’t have a problem with the POV, but it needs to be tagged as unrequited. Otherwise I’m open to perspectives.

Things I look for in fanfic:

Good writing, mostly.

I’m also a huge fan of Muggle!AU’s, so if you have that, I’ll read it, no questions asked XD

My wishlist:

On Amazon? :P Fine, I’ll show myself out

I presume this means wishlist on fics/art with these two, but do correct me if I’m wrong. I dont have one, since I write myself, so whatever I want to read, I write. Right now I’m eager to finish the following Bellamort fics:

1. Harry finds out about Bellamort via looking through Voldy’s stuff.

2. BellaDiesButVoldyWins!AU

3. Voldemort discovers his breastfeeding kink

4. A therewasonlyonebed!fic 

5. Tomarry turns Bellamort in Easter setting, Muggle!AU, Harry wets himself in the process

In general I’d say I’d like to see more classic, tropy fanfics with these two, lighter ones, you know. Angst is great, but let us enjoy the coffeeshop!AU too.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

Alone and miserable.

I guess Bella would have been okay with Rodolphus, had Tom/Voldemort never been born.

And Voldemort/Tom would have been fine too with some nameless pretty woman he did not love but had to marry to keep face.

But I think that they would have never been truly happy with anyone else. especially Tom, he’d never be really comfortable with anyone.

My happily ever after for them:

VoldemortWins!AU, they conquer Europe, Bella is Minister for War, Voldemort the Emperor. Maybe they have a kid, maybe a couple more or none at all, who cares, the point is they live and fulfull their dreams of revolutionising the Wizarding Wolrd.

I also have a sappy afterlife!AU where for a while Bella is imprisoned at the family castle for having a halfblood little bastard, goes half-insane as Voldemort seacrhes for her (they had a spat right after they got there), and Delphi kills herself and goes to find her dad in small-child form. They finally get tgether and live deathly ever after in some Norwegian fjord in the frozen tundra. (it’s also my personal happy ending, only it’s cats and snakes)

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character:

I love Bella. She’s a bitch and a sadist, but I love her.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character:

The one and only, his majesty the Dark Lord himself.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character:

Rodolphus, he’s her only friend.

Also, sad HC: Bella was very close to Andromeda until she got too involved with Voldemort and his cause, and they drifted apart. No one wept harder than Bella after Andy left, and it was her who spent days banging on the Tonks’ door to let them speak to her. Voldy could squeeze tears out of his shirt after she fell asleep on him crying about it.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Again, not sure about what’s unpopular.

I believe she suffers from genuine mental illness that tortures her a lot and makes her life (and her shared life with Voldemort too) very hard. Also I find her more self-doubting and reserved than most authors, hard working and largely indifferent to people who aren’t Voldemort.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Actual romantic scene would have been nice, but HE SCREAMED after all. Let’s not ask for too much.

Favorite friendship for this character:

Rodolphus and Andromeda. Recently I’ve started Brotp-ing Sirius with Bella too, before they parted ways.

My crossover ship:

I don’t really have any other fandoms, sorry.

Well, that was fun! Thanks again!

[theeeveetamer]

This may be an odd request, but if it’s not too much trouble, may I get a modern ABO leokumi fic where Leo just becomes really obsessed with Takumi’s scent during his first pregnancy? I sorta headcanon that in all ABO verses that omegas gain a sweet milk undertone to their original scent from the time the pregnancy is detectable, and I imagine Leo would just become enamored with it while Takumi is just really weirded out. Again, sorry if this request is a little odd, but thank you in advance.

I definitely thought I posted this, because I finished writing this like two weeks ago but oh well, I finished it now! Side note, but I did not realize Tupperware is a proper noun. Learn something new every day.

Relevant Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Mpreg, Arguing, Making Up, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Scenting

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305054

That bastard.

He shoved another spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth and grumbled under his breath. He’d been too annoyed to wash the few dishes they’d managed to unpack, so instead he’d spent twenty minutes digging through cardboard boxes to find one clean piece of flatware he could use instead.

Don’t unpack anything! We won’t be living here for very long.

Leo said that six months ago! But his mate was too busy to go house hunting, and he was cooped up in this tiny box of an apartment and crammed in with mountains-upon-fucking-mountains of everything they’d ever owned. He’d already ranted and raved about it over the phone to anyone and everyone that would listen to him, but it was a new city so at the end of the day he was still stuck in this mess by himself. If they’d been moved into an actual house he could have at least occupied himself with unpacking during the day until Leo got home from work.

Speaking of his mate...

Leo promised he would be home by six. It was nearly nine now. He didn’t know why he was surprised; Leo was always late. But it was Friday night and he’d promised he would be home on time to take him out to dinner.

He was going absolutely stir crazy. He wasn’t allowed to leave the house unless he was on suppressants or pregnant, and unfortunately he was currently neither of those things.

Fuck it. Maybe I should just tell Leo to shove it, we can start trying again later.

The little white bottle sitting on the kitchen counter called to him with its siren song of pseudo-freedom. But they were finally at a point in their lives where a baby was possible. Out of school, and Leo was making good money with this new job. More than what they’d been making combined, so he’d quit his job teaching and they moved several hours to the city without a second thought. They’d been able to comfortably bank one of their incomes for the past three years with a little frugal living, and it was more than enough for a down payment on a nice house. Three bedrooms, two baths… White picket fence and dog included.

Well, if either of them were actively searching the housing market. He’d told Leo to just get a real estate agent, but his bullheaded Alpha was convinced he could do things by himself, but he worked far too much to even look at properties. So it was looking like it would be up to him to find an agent.

And although he was itching to get started, there wasn’t much he could do about it until those little pink sticks in the bathroom started reading two lines. There were a lot of things he couldn’t do until Leo finally knocked him up, including going out to a nice dinner without his mate. He was finally going to get out of the damn house for once! He’d really been looking forward to it, too! Leo had made reservations at a little Italian place down the street that he’d been dying to try ever since they’d moved in, but here he was shoveling cold mashed potatoes into his face and watching reruns of some trashy wedding reality show.

He checked the time. It was already ten o’clock, and the sun had long since set, and the only light in the room was the blue glow of the television set.

I’m gonna kill him.

The front door clicked open a little while later. Frustration finally hitting it’s boiling point, he twisted around and chucked the empty plastic Tupperware container in that general direction. It connected -- if his mate’s angry swearing was anything to go by -- though it bounced off relatively harmlessly and clattered to the floor with a wholly unsatisfying thunk.

“Asshole.”

“What the fuck Takumi?”

He slammed the front door shut behind him, rattling the thin walls and probably waking up half of the people on their floor. Well, at least he wouldn’t have to wonder if the neighbors hated them or not.

“You said you were going to be home hours ago! Where the hell were you?”

“Work! Where else would I be?”

“I haven’t left the house in two weeks! You promised that you would be home on time!”

“And that gives you the right to throw things at me?!”

“It gives me the right to be upset!”

“Look, we have this huge deadline and everyone has been working late. My boss wasn’t going to let me leave early just because my mate is grumpy.”

He could practically hear the eyeroll in his Alpha’s voice. Takumi’s fingers curled tighter around his spoon, and his mind went completely blank with rage.

“Grumpy? I’m fucking furious! Why don’t I lock you in the house for a months on end and see how much fun you have with it?”

He got up off the couch and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring straight up into his mate’s eyes. Leo had a good eight inches on him, but it had never bothered him. Even if he had to crane his neck up he never backed down from a stubborn Alpha.

“You’re being completely unreasonable.”

Leo was infuriating. It was always “You’re being unreasonable”, or “You’re too angry right now”, or “it’s not a big deal” but it was! And it didn’t stop being a big deal just because Leo didn’t want to handle it!

The blonde had already retreated under that emotionless mask he’d spent so many years cultivating. Weren’t they supposed to be over this by now?

“I hate it when you do that. With your face I mean, if you’re upset then say something!”

“The only thing I’m upset about is the fact that my mate is throwing a tantrum like an immature child.”

“Fuck you!”

“You started this.”

“Is it so wrong of me to want a mate that keeps his damn word?!”

“Would you rather I get fired? Then what would we do? How the hell are we going to support a baby like that?”

“Ugh! You-- You’re impossible!”

He threw his dirty spoon down on the couch — He hadn’t even realized he’d still been holding it — and stormed into the bedroom. It was pretty impossible to put a lot of distance between them in their little one bedroom apartment. Normally he wouldn’t have minded the tight quarters, but he’d been getting testier the longer they tried for this baby.

He burrowed under the covers, still fully dressed, and tried to cool his head.

Leo only waited a few minutes, just long enough to put his work things away and the dirty dishes into the sink before he crawled into bed behind him. His mate wrapped his arms around his waist and nuzzled the back of his neck.

He sighed. He never could stay mad when Leo nipped at the back of his neck like that.

“Why can’t you just let me be angry? You aren’t playing fair.”

“All’s fair in love and war my dear, and as I recall I still love you.”

“I’m sorry for throwing things at you.”

“I’m sorry, I should have called you when I found out I’d be staying late. I keep forgetting that Sakura and your mother aren’t a fifteen minute drive away anymore.”

They were both so used to operating under the relative freedom that his heat suppressants allowed… Sometimes he even forgot that he couldn’t leave without taking them until he was half way out the door. Before they moved he could call Sakura or Mama up to keep him company, but now he was all alone in this new city.

“I know you can’t help it.”

His mate continued nuzzling along the side of his neck, far longer than he usually did.

“Um Leo? You can stop now, I’ve calmed down.”

“You smell… Really sweet.”

“You’re starting to freak me out.”

“Love… I think you’re pregnant.”

“What?”

He tried to pull away, but Leo’s nose was still firmly planted against his neck. His mate’s warm breath danced over his skin and made him shiver, though it wasn’t a wholly pleasant experience this time. Leo was acting very… Weird.

“You smell different.”

“Are you just saying this because I’ve been emotional? Because I swear--”

“No, really! I think you’re pregnant. Do you still have some tests in the bathroom?”

He shuffled out of bed and practically ran to the bathroom. Leo stood to follow him, but he slammed the door in his Alpha’s face before he could dare. He was still a little upset, and it was always so embarrassing to take these things in front of him.

“Takumi!”

“Talk to me in five minutes!”

He tried to occupy himself until that short amount of time passed, but it was excruciating. They’d been doing this for almost two months, and every time it had ended in disappointment. He could practically envision Leo sitting on the edge of the bed just outside the bathroom door, anxiously wringing his hands and trying to pretend like he wasn’t also worried.

“Leo!” He called out around the three minute mark.

“Yeah?”

“If this is negative and you got my hopes up then I’m going to kill you!”

He wasn’t still mad. Nope, not one bit. It was merely a joke to break the tension...

Gods, five minutes had never gone so slowly before, had it?

The second his timer went off he snatched the little pink stick off of the counter.

Two lines, clear as day.

He tossed the bathroom door open, and before Leo could even stand up he tackled him and knocked him flat on his back. Takumi pinned his shoulders to the bed, legs on either side of his waist.

“Is this a happy tackle or an I’m-going-to-kill-you tackle?”

“Happy, definitely happy.”

Leo beamed up at him with the most brilliant smile. It’d been awhile since he’d seen it, and gods he hadn’t realized how much he missed it. Takumi closed the gap between their lips and kissed him repeatedly, in excited little bursts. When he tired himself out, Leo wrapped his arms around him and drew him flush against his chest, nose buried in his hair.

“I can finally leave this damn apartment! First thing tomorrow we should make an appointment with the doctor… And we can start buying stuff for the nursery! We should probably pick a color scheme…”

“Mhmm…”

“Oh come on Leo! I know you’re just as excited about this as I am!”

“Sorry, love. You just smell so wonderful right now.”

“Stop being weird.” He pushed himself off of the bed and headed for the front door. “Well? Come on, get your wallet! You still owe me dinner.”

“Dinner? It’s nearly eleven!”

“I’m sure somewhere is open. Besides, you’re the one that kept me and the baby waiting in the first place!”

[boarix]

Wraith in the Ruins: A Fallout 4 Story Part XI

Gathering Lemons

Trigger warnings: canon language/violence/gun, drug and alcohol use. Suggestive/mature content.

Bloody mess warning!

Game spoilers!

Please enjoy

 “Data unavailable.”

“Wait… does that mean you don’t know or that you can’t tell me?”

“The age of agent designated ‘Deacon’ is not on file.”

“Dang…”

“Query. Why is this data relevant?”

Wraith spun around on the bar stool she had dragged into P.A.M.’s office, “I just wanna know is all. He won’t tell me cause he knows it frustrates me that he knows everything about me and I know… possibly jack, about him. Thinks it’s a big tickle.”

“Query. What is the definition of ‘big tickle’?”

“He finds it humorous.”

Walking to her office, Desdemona heard Wraith’s voice and stuck her head in to frown at her, “Deacon is not here General. He won’t be back for a few days…”

“Yes, thank you. I’m dropping some holotapes off for Hancock…”

“He still has you running errands for him, huh?” Desdemona’s face held a superior look as she walked away.  

“Rude… ass…”

“Query. Why are you interactions with agent designated ‘Desdemona’ increasingly confrontational?”

Wraith spun around a few more times, considering, “I suppose she’s pissed that I quit and yet I’m still hanging around. She’s probably worried about exposure and it’s manifesting as bitchiness.”

“Query. Why did you quit? Your mission success rate was near one hundred percent. Higher even than agent designated ‘Glory’ and agent designated ‘Deacon’.”

“P.A.M, you can just say Glory and Deacon.” Wraith had winced at Glory’s name and stopped spinning to blink tears away while looking at the floor. “I quit so I could focus on Minutemen operations.”

“That phraseology is not accurate.” P.A.M walked over to stand next to Wraith. Bending slightly at the waist, the modified assaultron seemed to be trying to make eye-contact, “Query. Do you blame yourself for agent designated ‘Glory’s’ termination?”

It was a strange question, considering the source and Wraith was momentarily speechless. “I… I’m very sad that she died. I… I might have fallen for her, had things been different. Oddly enough, no; I don’t blame myself. For once. Her death I blame on Maxson. She has been avenged but I’m still going to miss her.” She stood up and watched P.A.M closely. She was acting strangely. “That was a rather emotionally orientated query, missy. Where did that come from?”

“Since my assistance in its repair, the unit designated KL-E-O has frequently entered my office and engaged me in conversation. Some of the topics would be beyond your capabilities of understanding. Some have been filed under personal developmental data. The topic of a recent discussion was loss and personal accountability.”

“Personal… P.A.M, do you like KL-E-O?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Also, pretty sure KL-E-O is a ‘she’ and not an ‘it’.”

“Logic error. Unit designated KL-E-O has no biological data and does not possess gender-related chromosomes.”

“I’ll let her explain it to you. Do you look forward to your conversations?”

“Temporarily unable to process verbal input. Still processing.”

 Once topside, Wraith waved MacCready over to her and the two headed toward the Minutemen offices. Despite all the positive experiences with synths, he still found himself uncomfortable at Railroad HQ. As such, the former merc had been amusing himself by reading comics while Wraith had run her errand. As they crossed the street he gave her a recap on Grognak’s latest adventure, hoping to elicit a conversation. It didn’t take long for him to realize that she wasn’t paying attention and that she was lost in her head.

“So right about then I slapped Danse across the face and told him ‘No! Bad can! Very bad tin can!”

“Mmhmm. Is that right?”

Sighing loudly, the young man picked up his pace; positioning himself directly in her path so she stopped. Locking eyes with hers, he was clearly annoyed, “I’ve been standing around in the cold waiting for you and now you’re ignoring me. You off somewhere else, or what?”

“I told you to wait in my office, Mac. You chose to stand down here instead.” His pout, as adorable as it was, needled her, “Don’t be a baby. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Oh, yeah? Like, what’s so important?”

“Northern expansion… and asexual synth love.”

“Ugh. Gross.”

“Don’t be like that. You like plenty of synths and robots!” Wraith side-stepped around him and set her hand on the doorknob, “You get along well with Codsworth and Sturges. You and Val have played dart and Horseshoe tournaments as partners! You have always been sweet to Curie.” Wraith, in a bad mood, turned the screw, “And Mags; I’ve head you and her have gotten along really well…”

“Magnolia is..?” MacCready stopped in his tracks, his face turning tato-red.

“And I thought you said synth love was gross. Oh, well I guess lust is something different, huh?”

That hurt him. She could see it. Clenching his fists, he turned and walked away from her.

Oh. Over did it. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

 Wraith tortured herself reviewing their conversation for the rest of the day. Unfocused and irritated she muddled her way through various meetings, embarrassing herself and wishing like crazy the dim, winter sun would hurry to bed. She flip-flopped between being angry with MacCready and his prejudice, to being angry with herself for her lack of patience.

Hancock had been busy with meetings himself and she really didn’t want to run to him with this. Complaining about one boyfriend to another, who also happens to be his boyfriend… It all seemed so grade school.

Shuffling papers around in an angry huff, she willed herself to stay seated when someone knocked on her door, “Enter, please.”

MacCready crossed the room to her desk. Arms folded, he had a determined and grumpy look, “I went to talk to Mags…”

“Didn’t believe me, huh? Like I would make shit up…”

“Let me finish!” Unfolding his arms he whipped his hat off angrily and ran a hand through his sandy brown hair, “Please stop thinking the worst of me! Over and over I’ve watched you be kind, not just to me but to people that I would never even look twice at. Because you took a chance on me, ME of all people, I have looked twice.” He stopped with his hands out toward her, “I’m not saying this right…”

“It’s okay Mac. Take your time. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

Sitting on the edge of her desk, he reached for her hand. Pulling her to her feet, he led her around to stand between his knees. “I went to talk to Mags because I really like her. We were… are friends. I bought her a drink and asked her about… being a synth, I guess. The time we… spent together, wasn’t just mindless… I needed… I’m trying to see if…” Faltering again, he stopped and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to be a good guy, so don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m sorry too. I got shitty with you and it was uncalled for.” She wrapped her arms around his head, bringing it to her chest, “You are a good guy, Mac. I love you.”

There was another knock on her door and Wraith could tell by the cadence that it was Hancock. “Come on in, Mr. Mayor.”

Looking uncharacteristically exhausted, Hancock smiled at his lovers and their embrace, “Can I get in on that? I really need some friendly human contact right ‘bout now.”

“Rough day at the office, man?”

Hancock sighed contentedly as they settled into a group hug atop Wraith’s desk, “Ever have a day that seems to have it out for ya?”

The desk collapsed, sending all three into a pile on the floor.

“No dear. Please tell us all about it.”

 Two days later found Wraith and MacCready in Diamond City. Hancock had been expecting to join them but found his responsibilities to his city too pressing to leave.

“I’ll do my best to tag along with Bossy’s next run. Course, that being weather dependent…”

The cold had been intense, especially at night. So much so that many provisioner caravans, depending on their routes, had been delayed or temporarily cancelled.

Wraith made plans for dinner with Piper before heading over to the agency to check on her favorite detective. Valentine was sitting and shuffling papers in a frustrated way that was very familiar. He seemed to be searching for something and pushed his chair back to look under his desk while tsking and muttering to himself. Wraith giggled when he crawled head-first underneath. Her chortle made him jump and bang his head, causing several items to fall to the floor.

“OUCH!”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Val!”

Rubbing his head, his cheeks burned scarlet, “Oof! That smarts.” He smiled at her abashedly, holding his arms out for a hug.

“Can I help you find something? Where’s Ellie?”

“Believe it or not, I’m not completely helpless without her… not completely. John and MacCready with you?”

“No Hancock but Mac’s along. He’s up with Shaun. We were supposed to leave tomorrow but Mac says he smells snow so I might be in town for a couple of days. Is there anything that you’re working on that I can help with?”

Valentine shrugged evasively and turned back to his desk, “Nothing too heavy right now, kiddo.”

“Oh nonsense, no job’s too small, right?”

Valentine pursed his lips and folded his arms, “Eustace Hawthorne is a missing cat… statue.”

“Cat… like a figurine?”

“Just like.”

“Oh… Val…”

Despite a reduction in height, Valentine’s appearance and body language were still reminiscent of his gen 2  form and as such were uniquely his own. The Railroad had even managed to tint his eyes amber. Tilting his head to the side he offered her a trademark, self-mocking smirk, “What was that about ‘no job too small’?”

“Well, I mean it’s not exactly grand larceny or a kidnapping…”

“It’s nothing less then what I should expect. After all that has happened, I’m lucky the good people of Diamond City haven’t burned me at the stake.”

Her frustration boiling over, Wraith dropped the bright-side pretense, “What the hell?! I thought that we had moved past this. I came and worked that burglary case with you this fall! I… we… Piper…”

“It’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’ve been here before. Things are slow right now but they’ll pick back up. I can blame some of it on the weather. Apparently it’s too cold to get into trouble.” Removing his hat, he ran a hand through his jet-black hair and smiled at her. “Hey, since I have you here there’s something I’ve been wanting to run past you.” Holding his hat in both hands, Valentine looked at the floor, “I want to ask Ellie to marry me. Would you stand with me? Do you think John would too?”

Wraith burst into tears.

“Oh! Don’t you start cause I’ll get going and Ellie will come in to a flood!”

Wraith looped a finger through the fine chain she wore around her neck. Valentine knew that Preston had given it to her after rescuing his group at the Museum of Freedom. Reaching forward she gently grabbed the detective’s hand and brought it up to chest height. When she dropped the necklace onto his palm, Valentine could see that it held two simple gold rings.

Wraith and Nate’s wedding rings.

He tried to pull away as if she had handed him a live grenade, “No! I couldn’t possibly…”

“Please, Val. Nothing could make me happier. Think of them as my wedding gift.”

The detective relented and the two embraced. When Ellie returned she found them both puffy faced but smiling.

“Uh oh. Now what have you two gotten into?”

 Wraith could tell there was something wrong with Piper. All through dinner she had been distracted and quiet. As the children, MacCready and Ellie settled in to play Euchre, Valentine and Wraith joined her in her small kitchen. Valentine rolled up his sleeves to wash the dishes and Wraith grabbed a hand-towel.  

“What’s up Pipes? I can see something is eating at you.”

“Oh Blue, I didn’t want to bother you with it but it’s a disaster!” Piper threw her hands in the air and began pacing back and forth. “The long caravan to Megaton is missing! I had the Radio Freedom operator contact Murkwater and they said that they passed a week ago. A week!”

“This is perfect!”

Piper shared an alarmed look with the detective, “Jeez Blue, that’s not very sensitive…”

Wraith waved her hands at the misunderstanding, “No, no! I don’t mean I’m glad the caravan is MIA. Valentine don’t you think this calls for a master detective and his faithful sidekick?”

“Where are we going to find one of those, kiddo?” Valentine smiled at her, “I guess in a pinch, we’ll have to do. What about weatherman MacCready? Slogging through snow has lost some of its appeal since I’m now subject to cold and damp.”

MacCready sensed that he might be being left out and came into the kitchen. “What’s this about snow-slogging?”

“It hasn’t actually started to snow…”

“Wraith has voluntold us to go looking for a missing caravan, last seen ‘round Murkwater way.”

MacCready’s face was the picture of disgust, “In the swamp?!”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want, Mac. I wouldn’t force you.”

“What I’m I supposed to do? Sit around here with my thumb up my as… butt? You didn’t even bring a rifle with you!”

Knowing full well she could simply pick up a rifle from the Minutemen armory, Wraith gave him a sappy smile, “You’re my rifle, Mac.”

Managing to look both dejected and proud, MacCready sighed, “Oh goody.”

 “It’s snowing!” MacCready’s voice was muffled as he grouched at Wraith through his scarf. “I told you…”

“It’s just a flurry; don’t be dramatic.”

“It can go from a dusting to a full blown Nor’easter at the drop of a hat, sweetheart. We can’t be caught without shelter if the weather turns on us.”

After checking in with the settlers in Jamaica Plain, the trio had elected a rout that circumvented most of the swamp that surrounded the Murkwater settlement. Even so the going was cold, slippery, slow and damp; something which MacCready felt the need to mention as frequently as possible.

“Wraith, I am cold. I can’t feel my toes…”

“I’m sorry it’s miserable out fellas but we’ll be there soon and we’ll be inside and they’ll have a warm fire and it’ll be great. So hang tough.”

“Oh, thank GOD YOU ARE HERE!” The village head, Margaret, looked completely done in, “We lost power this morning! My engineer is missing, we are all freezing and all the food in the walk-in is going to spoil!”

MacCready started sputtering and making incoherent noises. Wraith was almost certain she heard a few things that sounded like profanity.

Valentine kept a level head, “Can’t you just open the freezer doors? It’s cold enough to freeze the Dead Sea out here.”

“No, Val that’s a bad idea. There are probably a lot of animals that will smell the provisions and likely come to investigate.” Wraith cocked her head to the side, “Hey, do yao guai hibernate?”

“They do and mirlurks are dormant this time of year too. Deathclaws however…”

“Yeah, but aren’t they cold…”

“The hell YOU GUYS!” MacCready’s patience had worn through, “I’M ABOUT TWO SECONDS FROM SETTING THE NEAREST BUILDING ON FUCKING FIRE! THAT’S RIGHT, YOU HEARD ME, FUCKING FIRE!”

Wraith set about organizing the settlers into teams: one group to cut ice as a temporary solution for the walk-in, another to build fires from emergency logs and a final, smaller group to help her work on the generators. Valentine moved from group to group, helping where he could and asking about the missing caravan as well as the missing Murkwater engineer.    

Working as quickly as possible, Wraith and her team had the generators back up before dark. In thanks, Margaret put together a large celebratory dinner in the common house. Sitting slightly apart from the rest of the settlers, Valentine broke the news to Wraith and MacCready.

“Behemoth.”

MacCready spat his food, “You have got to be kidding me!”

“What’s the big deal Mac? Should be easy to spot and then…” Wraith pantomimed taking a shot, “Easy.”

“This is just like with the deathclaw…” MacCready held out his rifle, “This caliber will not penetrate through the armor, hide and bone of a behemoth.” When Wraith opened her mouth to protest, he held up a finger, “What I mean is, not like what you want. It’ll be small wounds that will take time to bring it down. The best I could do is blind the thing and we all know how well that works.”

“We have a Fat Man.” Margaret had been walking by and overheard, despite their hushed tones, “Only have one mini but ones enough, right?”

“Oooo. MacCready like big boom!”

“Easy, killer.” Wraith smiled at the village head, “That’s kind of you to offer but I left that here just in case another mirelurk queen decides to drop by. We’ll find another way.” She could feel MacCready’s eyes boring into her head, “Something to add, Mac?”

“MacCready like… grrrr… ruiner.”

“And another thing, the locals seem to think that there might be a chance their engineer is still kicking. Would be bad form to blow the thing to kingdom come, if it has a captive.” Valentine steepled his fingers, “Locating it will be a trial; despite its size we’ll have to track it through the thick of the swamp. That’s no mean feat.”

“…keeps getting better and better…”

“There’s a between zero and none chance this will be resolved without a clear, concise plan.”

“I wish Hancock were with us; he’s a better strategist than I am. All my plans go straight to shit.”

“…and better…”

 It took the better part of a week to locate the behemoth. The Minutemen had encountered the humanoid earlier in the year when they dispelled a super mutant group. Wraith recalled the report that Preston had shared with her: it had been the only survivor and had fled south. The decision to stop pursuit was mostly an act of the soldiers own self-preservation, as changing the creatures instinct from “flight” to “fight” seemed unwise. After the Murkwater engineer went missing, a long patrol had been organized but to no avail. There wasn’t a correlation drawn between the super mutants and the current dilemma so when they found several empty mirelurk carapaces and a large game trail, they chalked it up to a “very large animal”.

The massive super mutant had been foraging north almost to the Suffolk school, to far south of the settlement in a fairly straight line, in its quest for dormant mirelurks. Once the trio found the well-stomped path, they followed it to small shack where the humanoid kept its stash. There they found the remains of the missing caravan.

“Well, that’s really too bad.” Valentine wasn’t naive enough to believe they could find the provisioners alive but he was hoping their end could have been quicker, less gruesome.

“I don’t see any of Henrietta’s gear here… she might be in its basket still.” Wraith was getting teary-eyed, “Poor kid.”

“There is a rise with a tree over there.” MacCready pointed west, “It should give me a good angle. I don’t like the light this early… I want to see… to make sure before we use the frag mines.”

Valentine gave MacCready a knowing smile, “Well, well. I see hanging out with a do-gooder has done you some good.”

MacCready blushed and rubbed his nose, “Yeah, I’m a real philanthropist now. Gave all my caps to charity ‘n everything.”

Set-up was rather simple as was their plan: a blind in MacCready’s selected tree would give him the opportunity to verify if the engineer had somehow survived her abduction. It was highly likely that she had not and to that end, the trio would use a combination of grenades and mines to eliminate the threat.

Once MacCready was safe in his perch, Wraith and the detective hunkered down separately and waited.

And waited.

“Damn. Should have brought walkies. Stupid, stupid… Boy, I hope Mac remembered his night-scope.”

He had. And as the sun dipped below the horizon, the former merc swapped out his equipment. He had been having a hard time keeping his hands warm and so found it to be a challenge despite his expertise. “None of this is fun. This flippin’ sucks! I’m a good guy. I’m a great guy! Wraith needs a good guy. Whelp, I’m that guy. Goody, great guy.”

Wraith felt their enemy even before it showed up on her Pip-Boy. The sound of a behemoth as it makes its way through the world is unmistakable: as if they were the resulting offspring of a union between a great forge-bellows and an elephant. As the creature moved toward its shack, Valentine and Wraith tensed and got themselves into fleeing/attack position. In the event that any of the three of them were sensed or seen, Wraith would engage until the other two were clear and then disappear. Both of her companions had been very vocal about her trying to bring the monster down herself.

“Here we go…” MacCready raised his rifle and took a deep steadying breath.

“Someone, please! PLEASE HELP ME! OH GOD, PLEASE!”

Henrietta was still alive. She was crying.

Wraith fought hard to stay in cover. Her berserker instinct told her she needed to run at the behemoth and tear it apart. With her teeth if she had to.

Calm. Stay calm. Breath. Gotta fall back, gotta regroup… No we can’t. We have to do something now!

Leaping to her feet, Wraith ran at the humanoid while yelling at the top of her voice, “MAC, WE HAVE TO BRING IT DOWN WITHOUT HURTING HER! IF I CAN GET IT TO THROW SHIT AT ME, THE ARMOR IS WEAK AT THE NECK AND UNDER THE ARMS!” She ducked and dodged as her surprised foe attempted to flatten her.

“I’M ALSO BEING A FOOL AND RUNNING AROUND SCREAMING!” Valentine had a borrowed shotgun and would occasionally shoot at the monster’s feet. This was more to drive it to a greater fury than to cause damage. After all, he didn’t want to accidentally kill the person they were trying to rescue.

It was a rather ridiculous scene: two grown adults running around a giant monster in the dark, shouting nonsense and firing their guns at the ground.

As predicted, the beast began to find things to throw at its tormentors. MacCready kept his focus despite the shenanigans, waiting for the right angle. Unable to predict the flight path of such a chaotic development, the trio had a collective “oh no” moment when a rather large rock narrowly missed MacCready’s blind and crashed into the tree’s trunk.

Things were rapidly heading toward shit.    

The tree groaned ominously and the sniper knew his precarious perch would not hold him for much longer, “Common ya big dummy, pick up a BIG rock. Show me what you’re made of!”

As if the behemoth had heard him, it stooped low and using both hands ripped an enormous bolder from the swampy earth. Raising it far above its head, it turned to zero-in on a target; presenting MacCready with a perfect view of its armpit.

“Oh, why thank you.”

The humanoid was so startled by the bullet’s impact that it dropped the bolder squarely on its own head. There was a terrible squishing sound and an enormous gout of blood. It stood that way for several seconds before pitching forward and crashing heavily to the ground. The impact caused MacCready’s tree to fall as well but the young man was able to avoid serious injury by bailing out at the last moment and rolling to safety.

Henrietta was in pretty bad shape. In addition to being malnourished and dehydrated, her left foot had been crushed between the behemoth’s back-cage and the various detritus it contained. Despite the competency of the medics, her foot was amputated.

“It’s going to be fine General.” The engineer tried to reassure an obviously guilt-ridden Wraith, “I will still be able to do my job and it’s amazing that I survived at all!”

Doing her best to school her features into a poker face, Wraith congratulated the young women and told her how proud she was to have someone of her caliber in the Minutemen.

The kid’s trying to make me feel better and she was just kidnapped by a literal monster, held captive for almost two weeks in the freezing cold and then had to have her foot cut off! Jeez!

“What in the Sam Hill possessed you to wander around in the swamp by yourself?”

The young woman blushed at Valentine’s question and mumbled at the floor, “Patrols had been seeing carapaces out there and I wanted some. I wanted to see if I could use them for something and I was too embarrassed to ask if they would bring some back to me.”

 Piper was grateful despite the unfortunate fate of her caravan. “You and Valentine… oh and MacCready… I guess… really came through for Diamond City. I’ll make sure everyone knows it too.”

“I don’t know Pipes; the caravan was lost because I never went out after that behemoth. Preston had even made a point to show me that particular report.” Wraith leaned back in the chair in Piper’s office while running her hand vigorously through her short-cropped hair, “I didn’t follow-up and so people and brahmin died.”

Piper smiled sadly at her friend, “Your hair is getting long. Are you growing it out because of the cold or do you want me to trim it for you?”

Bemused by the change in subject, Wraith nodded stupidly.

“Well, which is it Blue?”

“Umm, trim… please.”

The two women moved to the mayor’s washroom and Piper busied herself washing and trimming Wraith’s hair. The radio was softly playing and Wraith found herself relaxing as Pipers fingers massaged her scalp.

“Blue, do you remember what I said to you when you told me to run for mayor?”

“Mmm, hmm.” Wraith sat up and smiled as Piper leaned against the sink, “You said ‘you’re nuts! I can hardly keep a teenager in line, let alone an entire city!’.”

“And that’s when you said, ‘you care enough about the welfare of the citizens of Diamond City, that you were willing to risk your life!’. You went on to say how my dogged pursuit of the truth wasn’t just to get some scoop. It wasn’t just for notoriety but the most noble of quests; for justice!”

“I don’t know if those were my exact words…” Wraith knew what Piper was driving at, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do but it’s not the same thing. I dropped the ball.”

“You can’t hold yourself accountable for every bad thing that happens, Blue.”

“Watch me.” Wraith stood up while stretching. There was a slight twinge in her left arm and she rubbed it absentmindedly as she stooped to kiss Piper on the top of her head. “I’m not quite ready to make lemonade yet but thanks for the pep-talk.” She smiled disarmingly as she changed the subject, “Did I hear Val right, that he wants to cook dinner?”

Piper adopted her best Nick Valentine impression, “I want to be the sort of man who can cook for his girl! After all, she works hard all day too.” Laughing, she waved her hand dismissively, “Don’t worry. I’m going to help him make sure it’s edible.”

“You want some help?”

“Why don’t you go rest? No offence but you look pretty tired, Blue.”

“I am fine! I guess I’ll go bug Mac and Shaun for a bit…”

  “…the difference between the caliber. Got it?”

“Yes, Mr. MacCready. Hi grandma!”

Wraith walked into Home Plate and offered a wave to her boys, “Don’t let me interrupt. Is there something I can help with?”

MacCready shrugged, “Davidson said we could load clips and magazines; thought that might be good practice. You can help if you want or you could go rest… for once.”

“I’m fine, Mac.” Wraith reached to grab bullets from a shelf slightly above her head. As she took a step back with her hands full, she felt lightning flash through her left arm. Her hand spasmed and opened, sending the box to the floor and bullets everywhere. “Ow, crap!”

“Are you okay?” Shaun came running to help clean up.

“Yeah, kiddo. I’m okey dokey.” Embarrassed, Wraith crouched to grab some of the wayward ordnance out from under a table. Misjudging when she was clear, she clunked her head as she stood. “Ow! Fu…heck!”

MacCready, exasperated, had his face in his hands and proceeded to drag them down his cheeks to expose the pink of his lower eyelids.

“Gross, Mac.”

“No, what is gross is that despite all,” He swept his hands out as if reveling the room, “this; I know you can still whoop me.” He laughed a little even as he started to help. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. My left arm is being… I’ll talk to Curie when we get back. No worries.”

They both looked very worried.

“Why can’t I come with you, grandma?”

Wraith slung her right arm around Shaun and pulled him to her, “It’s still too dangerous, weather wise.”

“Yeahbut, you guys are going…”

MacCready sat in a chair and leaned back with his arms behind his head, “Hancock should be in Sanctuary by now and we said we’d meet him there. I miss Dogmeat too. I want to go home and hug my ghoul and my dog.”

“Oh, I see how it is! I’m not enough for you, huh.” Wraith walked over and gave her lover a kiss that he returned with gusto.

“Ugh, you guys are both gross!”

 “Wraith… SEE… right in front… NOSE! WE HAVE... STOP!”

The shrieking wind tore MacCready’s words from him and flung them around to mingle with the snow. Wraith could make out enough to understand and agreed that they needed to find cover. However, the blizzard made it almost impossible for her to see her Pip-Boy and without the map she was completely lost.

We could be wandering in circles for all I know!

Frustrated and tired, she stubbornly plowed ahead and ran face first into the side of a building. “OW! FUCK ME!”

MacCready’s lips were at her ear, “Can you at least wait until we’re inside?”

Wraith felt a shudder of need pass through her as she found the door. Relieved to see a partially obscured Minutemen insignia, she undid the padlock and let them in. “I don’t know Mac; it’s pretty cold in here. You think you’re up for it?”

He caught her arm and pulled her to him, “Wraith, I could be on fire and get it up for you.”

“Clothes off… I’ll get the fire going.”

“That… wasn’t…”

 Breathing hard, Wraith collapsed on MacCready’s chest. Her head swimming in the high of release, she listened to his heartbeat as it slowed back to a normal rhythm. When she tensed to stand up he wrapped his arms around her to keep her atop him.

She smiled as she laid her head against him. He would often hold her like this after making love. It seemed as though he was reluctant to end the feeling of “oneness”. When his grip relaxed she propped herself up to watch his face. That moment when he opened his beautiful eyes and smiled at her; she could live and die for that moment.

“I’m so lucky.”

“Funny… I was thinking the same thing.”

Thank you so much for reading! Like what you read? Looking for more? Please see my master link post under my bio. Any questions/comments/concerns, my ask is open. =^..^=

[sixvisxpacem]

kansuigyo replied to your post “@kansuigyo  replied to your post: @kansuigyo...”

Once again, I am sorry to hear that :( The oversaturation of DSS and Revolver is a pretty big problem in the VR fandom, and I am sure you've seen that blog by now to know the extent of all this back and forth. So you're not alone in this and I still feel bad from how "entitled" I may have acted regarding the rarepair weeks event. Of course there is the fact that people are afraid of admitting they like or ship something in fear of backlash and that can't be ignored But that is another topic on its own. But yeah, fandoms change. People and their interests shift all the time. But usually people are more focused on what's "current" rather than it being about 'and' or 'or'. It's human nature and the short attention span of people in general. Someday people will ditch what's popular now for the newer series. Or another fandom. It's practically guaranteed. Still I hope someday you will be able to regain your rping passion! Tbh, I was the same for a long time when I couldn't find interest in anything, and even now they are still incredibly unstable, but I don't think it's all too uncommon. It's natural for people with low self confidence to feel this way.

Oh, I didn’t think you were in the wrong back then at all and I still believe that singling DSS alone out is incredibly rude and inappropriate because it really isn’t as though every other pairing has zero content. Plus, given the fandom’s unwillingness to give proper positive feedback and actually interact with the content the so-called lack thereof they keep complaining about, more than half of these people don’t have any right to complain at all imo and I don’t feel sorry for them eiher. In fact, it’s the (thinking) DSS shippers who have my sympathy.

In addition to that, it is true that from an objective standpoint, Yuusaku, Ryouken, and DSS are the most well-conceived and complex aspects of the show, with the vast majority of the other characters not being more complex than 1 + 1, so we’re not looking at the typical “OMG, HAWT M/M PROTAG/RIVAL SHIP” shallowness here, but it’s just obvious why people’d focus on the best aspect of the show rather than on characters that only become ‘interesting’ in fanon. I mean, it’s kinda a flaw of the show itself that a big part of the cast has been so poorly developed from the very beginning, but that has nothing to do with DSS or the (thinking) shippers of that pairing. And thing is, DSS (and Ryouken) are actually the main reasons I’ve been enjoying VR a lot more again even though basically everything that used to be relevant to me on a personal level was written out of the show (which did keep me from enjoying quite a few episodes after it happened)- because with these new developments, the concerns that kept me from enjoying DSS and Ryouken have been put to rest and just about everything I used to describe as “developments and general things necessary for me to like Revolver rather than being annoyed by him” actually occured, which is amazing imo because it wasn’t just one thing, but, like, four things that really haven’t been minor :D

So no, it’s not Yuusaku/Ryouken/DSS that I’ve been getting annoyed with, but the fact that I cannot actively control whether I’d like to see and interact with my primary or my secondary interests because whenever I look for the former, there’s also just the latter. Like, normally, you just track some tags and follow some people based on what you’d like to see and then switch back and forth between them, but in my case, anything of that leads me back to VR (in general) and the places that used to be for my primary interests are just gone entirely. 

And I’m really not going to pretend that the people who ditched A5 for VR alone are at fault for this because those pathetic A5 bullies did gang up on anyone who dares publicly voice an opinion The Hivemind disagrees with and *gasp* call themself a fan?

You are right about how it’s fairly normal for people to ditch something they once claimed to be passionate about for the most superficial reasons, yet at the same time, it really isn’t as though the (Western) fandoms of the YGO anime that stopped airing before A5 are either dead or completely overrun with SJW hypocrites too.

Oh, I’d actually spent a lot of time completely alone with my interests (or only being able to discuss them some days a year) because for one thing, my family despised anything related to anime and for another, as I’ve told you before, German fandoms tend to be, like, twice as braindead as English-speaking fandoms and back in my German fandom days, most of the ‘discussions’ I tried to have immediately turned into nothing more than “this character is hawt, that character is hawt, and they are hawt together”, so it isn’t ‘just’ my low self-esteem making things difficult for me because yeaaaah, positive emotions do compensate for a lot of things.

But thanks for the kind wishes <3 Truth be told, I’m not so optimistic about that because I couldn’t be slower and the quality of what I do manage to put together continues to be lower than it used to be in 2016/early 2017 (and even then, it wasn’t nearly good enough), so I feel like I’m getting worse rather than improving due to the deadly low-empathy + inability to experience positive emotions combo (which only gets worse the more I forget about what positive emotions actually feel like)- as well as various other factors that have been working against me, but... oh well ^^’

I’ll still keep trying for a bit. 

[literalfuckingdragon]

Ah sorry, I was somewhat short handing for the tag rambling while at work there. Basically I just mean like just using the scientific name for describing the thing that the research/info pamphlet/new release/whatever is talking about. I was trying to distinguish between "sex" as in the act vs "sex" as in the body system (whether that be hormonal system, chromosomes, genitals, reproductive system, etc.) because just saying sex would have been confusing on a post about STIs, but i kinda forgot what biological sex can mean as well. I had hoped that by saying "male and female vs man and woman" at least kind of got it across enough, but its totally understandable how it could come across and that's my bad.

I just also get very annoyed at difficult it can be to even sort through information because there's not really a community consensus on language for trans and nonbinary people, and intersex people get almost no mention in the first place.

For example, I can be considered mostly female due to early childhood surgeries and hormones, but now that I'm older and the effects of puberty blockers and early childhood HRT are finally wearing off, my testerone levels are mimicking the same seen in trans men who undergo HRT. I also a uterus and ovarian tissue, but a prostate and testicular tissue and was born with both a penis and vagina. To top it off, I'm androgyne and would be under the nonbinary umbrella. With all of that to consider, it would be much easier to find info categorized under the scientific terms relevant to whatever I'm looking up, like the name of whatever anatomy I'm looking up, versus how a lot of publications tend to be written now using super broad terms. Even something like "this research applies to trans men too" can still be pretty muddy because it's trying to figure out if they mean trans men on HRT, trans men who have been on HRT and have since stopped, trans men never on HRT, trans men with/without surgery(s), is this blurb lumping in AFAB and/or AMAB nonbinary people. That's of course if the researchers actually bothered to look at trans men as a sample group in the first place.

Honestly, I've probably just had to do wayyyyy too much scientific research between school and R&D stuff for work, so I know too well that researchers are really bad at writing and presenting results in a way that actually makes sense and are easy to interpret and understand.

A thread about transmasc exclusion from HIV research - how PrEP affects our bodies, how transitioning might affect a pre-existing HIV diagnosis, and more.

[starrydino]

Hello!! I wanted to do a follow forever/mutual appreciation for 2017! 

Late 2016 I started making gifs and creating gfx and over the past year I’ve met really cool people, but thank-you to everyone, my friends, followers and acquaintances! 

I tagged each person with one of my favorite 2017 songs too hehe (its not really relevant i just wanted to recc songs like usual (ง ´͈౪`͈)ว) 

@kinglywomen my best friend, my partner in crime, who stuck by me for 4 years already. I can’t believe it’s already been this long! Thank-you for always sticking by me and supporting everything I do! I’m not really good at expressing my feelings… but I really appreciate everything you do for me ♡ 

@hypersensing a triple pisces and we’re probably some of the worst polar opposites but you’re very very special to me. You have nothing to be worried about you can always talk to me, I’m not going anywhere! I will continue to annoy you~  ♡

@say-the-name-xvii we don’t talk all the time but you’re such a cool person, we have a lot of the same ideas and I really love talking to you. You’re an amazing and talented writer and I’m so happy we talk! Hopefully we can more in 2018!  ♡

Now a list of people who I may or may not have spoken to but I think are super duper cool and I look up to/wanna be friends with! I hope we can talk more as well!

@hoshidotcom  ♡ / @kassareo  ♡ / @gothwonu  ♡ / @wongyuhan ♡ / @cafewoozi  ♡ / @kyoem  ♡ / @kwoncoups  ♡ / @pabospoiler  ♡ / @armthe8  ♡ / @dinobong  ♡ / @rainoverflower  ♡ / @lassoyou  ♡ / @exxtramint  ♡ / @powerfulhoshi  ♡ / @soeksy  ♡ / @joshhjs  ♡ / @kristian-do  ♡ / @cheolshu   ♡ / @bookwan  ♡ / @17dad  ♡ / @maknaebias  ♡ / @97xh  ♡ / 

If I forgot someone I’m really sorry ;; but thank-you everyone! 

[freshmilko]

Okay so I can actually tell you exactly why the whole killing stalking shitshow went down. And why Yuri on Ice is related when it’s such a completely different genre. It didn’t come out of nowhere, it was just a bizarre series of events that has led to… This.. Disaster.

So basically what started it all was the godsend that is Yuri on Ice. Now I’m pretty critical about the fiction I consume and while I do have some issues with the show, I think they did an amazing job and its a huge step in the right direction for queer representation in media! And people recognized that.

So now you’ve got this show attracting all kinds of different people! Everyone loves an exciting, well balanced show, no matter their usual preferred genre. YOI had excitement, beauty, tragedy, and queer romance all wrapped up in one little single season anime. It attracted a Very Big and Very Diverse fan base Very Quickly.

There was so much love for this anime that EVERYONE felt inspired to create fan works for it! There was a huge influx of art, comics, fics, etc etc. And all of this was loved by the other fans who like and reblogged all these great fan works; so much so that a huge number of blogs basically converted to YOI blogs. And you have all these different types of blogs all becoming relevant to each other because of YOI, so people follow one another and there are all these new connections on blogs, which previously would never have interacted.

And then Yuri on Ice ends. It was still loved, don’t get me wrong, but naturally obsession faded and blogs returned to posting about what they used to post about. And in these post-YOI phase blogs there are also, of course, guro blogs.

Now guro is a pretty controversial subject, so guro blogs tend to keep to themselves and other guro blogs. It’s a pretty closed off and tight knit group on tumblr, for good reason. I’m an outlier, since I don’t reblog any hardcore guro and barely any of the soft stuff, but I follow a lot of these blogs. I personally saw the YOI phase in a lot of them! And I saw them return to previous interests. You know, guro.

But suddenly these blogs have a lot of new followers(many of whom are self identifying fujoshi ((which is a whole other rant))) who came for the YOI, and obviously don’t /mind/ the guro but these new followers don’t know the general philosophy guro blogs follow. Things like always having warnings and tagging potential triggers. Also warning off minors from R18 blogs. And a lot of the time these new followers ARE minors. Hell, I’ve been following porn blogs on tumblr since I was 13. I may be an adult now but I remember being that age and desperately searching for some validation for what I experienced. As an adult, I agree with blocking minors from R18 content for legal reasons, but sneaky kids will be sneaky kids. Especially on tumblr, it’s very easy for immature minors to lie about age for the sake of following this content. And usually that’s harmless, let girls read some josei or yaoi and become comfortable with their sexuality.

But now they have found guro. And all the interests that often go with it. Horror, abuse, psychological horror, you name it. Extremely triggering material for a lot of people. Extremely cathartic material for some (like me). Often kept to the sides of fandom by the use of warnings and tags. And killing stalking is gaining popularity in this little pocket of tumblr. It’s a good horror manga. It’s gross, terrifying, and full of horror. It’s good. But it’s good /horror/. That means it’s not a healthy happy story. Any decent guro blogger will tell you that yes, it’s a good horror, and yes, it’s gross and terrible. But that brings us back to the immature YOI fujoshi!!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all minors. There are definitely many adults who are doing this, too. Because many adults are immature, just like kids. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t hit a magic age that changes you. And you don’t suddenly learn what a healthy relationship is either!! Especially fujoshi and fudanshi who drown themselves in fetishized and romanticized yaoi. It’s these fans that are being exposed to killing stalking, and taking it as another cute yaoi couple that just maybe has a few issues they need to sort out. Such as breaking each others legs and poisoning each other. But they love each other right!!!!!!!!!

Wrong. It’s abuse. It’s horror. Horror loving fans know this, accept it, and when we recommend killing stalking to anyone else? We warn them. We tell it how it is. And we only recommend it to people we know are into this kind of media. The story and relationship are horrible. Horrifying. It’s horror.

BUT!!! It’s not just our little pocket of self aware weirdos anymore. Now there are immature people who “came for the YOI, stayed for the weird porn!!” And they don’t know or don’t care about warnings. They enjoyed killing stalking so why won’t everyone else? They also are so desensitized to abusive relationships in yaoi they think it’s normal. And because of this mindset they have, I see a lot of my favorite non-horror or even nsfw fandom artists and bloggers getting asks that just say “have you read killing stalking? It’s so good!!” And I just cringe so hard because A:this blogger doesn’t read horror and B:this anon did not give any warnings of potentially triggering material.

So now, killing stalking is being romanticized and spread as a “yaoi” to people who are expecting something different and in the first place do not want to read something so gross. And they hate it. And I feel for them. They should never have read something they aren’t comfortable with, and that’s on the anon that sent them the message and gave them false expectations.

But now it’s become a witch hunt. Just like everything else on tumblr lmao. People on tumblr have trouble recognizing the different between reality and fiction, and I have a whole other long rant as to why that is, but I’ll let it slide for now. The point is that these antis equate a person to the fiction they like, which is ridiculous. And so they condemn the people who like killing stalking. Regardless of whether or not the individual actually romanticizes it.

Basically what happened is that whereas before the “morally correct” side of tumblr could just ignore the “less morally correct” sides interests, now ignorant and immature fans are forcing “less morally correct” media to be consumed by people who Don’t Want It. So they blame all of us. And it sucks. But mob mentality is what it is and the only thing we can do now is hope idiots stop recommending the goddamn manhwa to random people and the antis get bored.

Ok so I hope this is coherent at all idk why I decided to type this at 6 am. I just find this whole thing super annoying but also strange and interesting. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

Tldr: probably that fujoshi culture is the worst sorry also children are terrible

Real tldr:WARN FOR ABUSE AND POTENTIAL TRIGGERS ASSHOLES

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Wrap-Up

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

So here are my final thoughts on the book Changeless for those interested in such things:

Once again the big problem/perk of the story is the consistent frivolousness of it all.  The book is much more interested in its supposed comedy of manners than the last.  This comedy of manners mostly boils down to lol Ivy is stupid, and look at how uptight everyone is.  For the most part it’s just not that clever and more often than not I’m just rolling my eyes at it.  I will say this book is funnier than the last one.  There are a few jokes that are just so dumb, they do hit me in a good way.

However it’s kinda frustrating when nobody seems to care about the overarching plot at all.  Like there is an active shooter in the castle and they all just shrug and go to dinner and later bed.  For me personally, and I don’t know if people would disagree with me on this…when I pick up a supernatural action/comedy/romance.  I’m kinda there for the action, and hoping to enjoy it being peppered with a fun romance and silly comedy.  Not for the action to show up once every 3 chapters, and most of it is a couple of unlikable buttholes being belligerently horny at one another and a dumb character off in the corner going, “Duhhh what does this button do?” The action at the center should be propelling the rest of the story but rather it just feels as if it was an afterthought.

But I mean…at least I find the comedy funny a few times, I did not find the action at the center compelling at fucking all.  The ~who dun it spy~ antagonist was painfully easy to guess.  She does a piss poor job at structuring the suspense and wastes a lot of obvious opportunities for drama.  The few dramatic moments we do get I spend the time going, “that makes no sense” rather than, “WILL THEY MAKE IT OUT ALIVE?!”  Part of this issue comes down to the fact the book wants you to miss out on feeling the ~BAD~ emotions.   You’re not allowed to be sad, scared, or confused as to the right course of action. ONLY HORNY AND LAUGHING! ONLY HORNY AND LAUGHING!  Not only are we missing out on feelings that could make one more deeply invested in the characters and story…but there are moments that should be sad or scary and instead are just powered through with oblivious humor, which makes the lead characters seem monstrously callous or thick as pig shit.

Alexia was kinda a plucky idiot last book.  This book her utter lack of human empathy and kindness makes her harder and harder to root for.

Maccon’s asshole-osity becomes increasingly apparent.  He has a very bad case of hypocrisy in this book.  He refuses to share basic information with his wife but gets seething mad when she doesn’t tell him much less vital information. It’s really not hot or the sign of a good leader that his tactic for dealing with people is mostly intimidation, with a pinch of violence, and that he was seriously considering hurting his wife over listening to her. The only thing he puts effort into is trying to have sex with his wife, and he really should have a few things higher on his god damn list.  And honestly? He doesn’t really do much for this story at all. Alexia does all the plot lifting on her own.  The only thing he contributes to is the ending, and it casts him in an incredibly dark light.  And yanno it just sucks to know that he’s going to be forgiven for it and probably for as little as a “My bad.”  

I continue to find the Alexia/Maccon relationship beyond irritating but at least there were a couple of moments were they genuinely seem to connect in an intimate way, which were absent from the last book.  To be clear I am not conflating intimacy with sex when I use the word.  The two of them are most definitely not equals in the relationship. I wouldn’t classify the relationship as abusive, but best case scenario it’s not equal and worst case scenario it’s quite unhealthy with Maccon holding most of the cards.  But…I mean I can see why somebody would find their pissing contests entertaining.  But for me they’re child-adults who can’t speak to one another outside of annoyed sighs and dry humping.  Their banter is just not sexy or funny to me.

The Ivy and Tunstell subplot drama doesn’t work well at all.  The story outright tells you it doesn’t really care about it.  And the way it moves forward is clunky as all get out.  In particular when they just make-out out of nowhere.  I know they were trying to reconcile with how Tunstell saved her…than let that be the event that catapults them back together.  Let Ivy look up into Tunstell’s eyes after the rescue and breath, “….You saved me…and after all those awful things I said about you.”

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh who cares!?

Speaking of which we get a lot more out of Ivy this book than last and I’m just not impressed with it.  I predicted that Ivy was going to be the comic relief dumb friend.  That Alexia would keep her around for her own ego and just be condensing to her the entire time.  Last book we didn’t get that. THIS BOOK WE GET WHAT I PREDICTED IN SPAAAAAAAAADES! Ivy is not framed as lovable, and not even for a second does Alexia interact with Ivy outside of irritated condensation she hides with a snide quip.  Sure Alexia can be snarky toward her, and Ivy frustrated but there is no affection from either of them.

I’M HONESTLY NOT SURE IF ALEXIA IS CAPABLE OF SUCH A THING!

LeFoux was cool though, even though there was no reason why she had to lie about Maccon asking her to keep Alexia safe.  And like the thing about their two dads knowing each other is interesting but honestly there’s probably nothing more to it.  I’m not a big fan of Alexia sexually assaulting her for no reason, or how Alexia needed it explained to her that lesbians are real.  But like, I’m glad the story is getting gay.

I’m kinda confused why Channing was even here?  She OPENS THE BOOK with a conflict about this character and then nothing of import comes out of him or the situation at all.  The whole team up with Biffy and Lyall sub-sub-sub plot should either not have even been in the book at all or there should have been significant more effort made to make their antics increase the drama for the main plot.  I suspect Channing is going to be more plot important next book.  AKA the next Angelique.  

Just like last book the antagonist is super weak.  I mean you could argue that she wasn’t revealed as the big bad until the 2nd to last chapter, you couldn’t build on her much…however her spy antics were throughout the book and none of it is very compelling. There could have easily had a better confrontation.  That Alexia confronts Angelique about spy stuff, and Angelique breaks out crocodile tears explaining, “NO it was LEFOUX!  I’m so sorry my lady, I couldn’t stop her!”And for a second Alexia questions it and hesitates but in that moment of hesitation BLAMO! STAB IN THE BACK! We should have had that stark contrast between her meek diligent servant persona and what a manipulative conniving bitch she’s supposed to be.  Make that betrayal FELT you know?

TL;DR

What’s good?

This book is more humorous than the last.  Again it’s just that NO-BUMMERS train chugging past a lot of dumb jokes in a steam-powered train straight into werewolf-fuckville.  The story getting gayer is enjoyable, and I have genuinely not read a het romance that teases any lesbianism. (Though I don’t read many het romances anyway.)  Despite my distaste for a lot of the characters and how this is all written, LeFoux was genuinely a lot of fun!  Her flirtations were WAY sexier than anything Alexia/Maccon had…but I don’t know if that’s cause I’m gayer than I am straight WHOOPS!  I will say that I think the pacing of the action in this book was better than the 1st.  Also the ending, despite me not caring for the characters, was a pretty good gut-punch.

And let’s be honest, in a trilogy the middle book is the hardest to pull off.

What’s bad?

Everything falls apart on any kind of base analysis.  The story spends way too much time holding your hand on stupid details like the current state of LeFoux’s dimples or is that other hot werewolf, who’s not plot relevant at all, still hot?  The mystery aspect was easily guessed, the plot does not hold water, and if you take a step back from any of these characters…most of them are completely distasteful.  Also this one featured much more open racism and sexism.  So booooooooooo. Would not recommend.

[topicprinter]

Hi all, I recently wrote this post about how Drip screwed over its most loyal customers and I thought perhaps /r/Entrepreneur would get value out of my lessons learned.----If you’re not familiar, Drip is email marketing software that’s pretty heavy on the marketing automation front. I won’t do them the courtesy of a link, so you’ll have to Google them if you want to check it out.They’ve been around since 2012 or so, founded by someone I trusted, but he sold the business to Leadpages a few years ago, and it’s been going downhill ever since.I’ve been using them for years as the backbone of two “side” businesses: IndieHive, which covers this website for freelancers and the related products and services that I sell, and Everleads, a curated lead generation site for freelance designers and developers.In 2016 and 2017, I really dug deep into Drip. I built out dozens of interconnected workflows to carefully shepherd my subscribers through various funnels and sequences with duplicate emails or annoying content that’s not relevant to them. I integrated my web front-end with their APIs so that I could customize the site for subscribers. I wrote bridging scripts to connect it to Mixpanel for analytics, and I used Zapier to hook Drip up to even more services. It was the heart of my entire business, and it was awesome.But throughout 2018, things started to go awry.I kept experiencing glitches in the workflows where people would get stuck on workflow steps that should be instant, like “remove tag”. Or people would end one workflow and start another, but not have any of the data that the first workflow had set. There were honestly dozens of these little glitches, but individually they were minor.Also troubling: deliverability started to slip. Not precipitously, and I can’t prove that it wasn’t just my emails, but I have heard from others that they were having issues with getting their emails into people’s inboxes in 2018.But the most egregious thing for all of this was that support was basically no help at all. I probably opened two dozen support requests in 2018 and I’m not sure they actually resolved a single one. We’d spend hours going back and forth so they could even understand the problem. Then they’d almost always say one of two things:“For a workaround, just insert a number of delays between steps in your workflows so that the system doesn’t get confused!” So all my workflows had little 5 minute delay steps to try and make sure things worked correctly. Which they still didn’t. Wtf.Or they’d just say they need to escalate to the developers and then I’d get an email weeks or months later from some random support engineer letting me know they were still looking into why the most basic functions of their software don’t work right. Awesome.Alarmed by this, I repeatedly researched alternatives throughout 2018, but nothing seemed worth going through the pain of migration and the risk of just having similar issues somewhere else. So I kept resolving to be patient with Drip and hope (pray) that they were hard at work at undoing whatever architectural disaster had led us here.And then…In early January 2019, while I was on a relaxing cruise with my wife for our 15th anniversary, I got an email from Drip:https://ryanwaggoner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/drip-bullshit-pricing-email-2.pngSo basically: “Hey, we’re raising our prices in 12 days! You can keep your current price if you switch to an annual plan!”And if you read it carefully, there’s something pretty important missing from this email.It doesn’t say what the new pricing is**. Seriously wtf.**So I emailed to ask. They responded the next day (so now I have 11 days) to reveal they were doubling my monthly price.Drip raised my price from $184 / month to $368 / month with 12 days notice.That’s just about the worst way imaginable to treat your oldest and most loyal customers.And it was the last straw for me.Now, to be clear, I completely understand wanting to grow a company in a new direction, or thinking that you need to raise prices to reflect more value.But you don’t do it when your platform is half-broken, you don’t do it with 12 days notice, and you grandfather in existing customers, at least for long enough for them to migrate. Also, you tell them the price when you tell them that prices are rising.It’s hard to imagine how Drip could have been more disrespectful to their customer base than what they did here.So as of last month, I switched all my subscribers to ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign for Everleads and IndieHive, respectively. That’s thousands of dollars that Drip won’t be getting from me. I managed to get both setups completely migrated off just before their billing renewal dates, in one case with literal minutes to spare.It was a pain and required some late nights but it was worth it to deny them another penny.I’m not alone in feeling upset about this. Twitter was ablaze for weeks with people who were angry and bailing for greener, more respectful pastures. I’ve taken a sick joy in watching a lot of people migrate off Drip with much larger lists than mine.I also cancelled Leadpages in favor of Instapage. I was already unhappy with Leadpages, mainly because it feels pretty clunky and dated, they aren’t very responsive to user feedback, and they’re still missing some pretty basic things (like being able to pass form data to the thank you page. Seriously?).Side note: I was going to link to the Leadpages idea portal, but they apparently shut it down. Makes sense, since it was filled with hundreds of good ideas with many, many customer votes that had been ignored for years.Regardless, even if Leadpages was awesome, they own Drip and I won’t give another penny to such an unethical company that treats its customers so poorly.And this migration was a huge pain (which is what they were counting on), partly because of how complex my Drip setups were, but also because ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are both pretty different from each other and from Drip. On the surface, they all do some of the same things, but once you dig in, things diverge, which made the migration especially painful.Drip is complicated. Stupidly so. In fact, it’s so complicated that there are a number of problems using it:It doesn’t really work. I mean, it does like 99% of the time, but that last 1% means that some of your subscribers are going to have a bad time. And it’s not just that their emails won’t show up. They might just get stuck in a workflow, or skip some emails in a sequence, or get things at the wrong times, or lose data, etc. And since this happens randomly, the number of subscribers who experience it accumulates over time.The customer support reps don’t really know how it works, because it’s too complicated. So you end up spending hours writing up descriptions of the problem and putting together screencasts to show how things don’t seem to be working, and the only response you get is that they’ll have to ask the developers.It encourages you to setup really fancy complex automations which, even if they did work, are way beyond what you actually need. Just imagine: you can do anything! You can track everything! You can have an unlimited number of tags and fields! Track and automate all the things!Your setup can end up being really brittle and deeply tied to the Drip architecture, which is a problem if you want to migrate off. And it’s hard to expand and modify over time without breaking all kinds of things for your subscribers who are in those automations.The setup is hard to document. It’s easy to end up with a large collection of documents and spreadsheets and screencasts to try and explain not only what you did, but why you did it.It’s hard to audit and debug when things go wrong. And things will go wrong. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening with your subscribers, where things went off the rails, and how to get it back on track without screwing things up further.In the end, Drip for me felt like a really shitty programming language. Technically possible to do almost anything, but so painful that in the end you wish you hadn’t bothered.By contrast, ConvertKit is simple. And yes, I think it’s too simple in places. I think there are some genuine gaps in the functionality that makes it a little too hard to get done the things you want.But I’m also aware of the fact that I’m coming from Drip and a really convoluted setup, so being forced to simplify is probably a good thing.And ActiveCampaign is not simple, but it’s powerful in a bunch of ways that Drip should have been. Additionally, it has the distinction of actually being, you know, functional. Crazy, I know.Also, ActiveCampaign apparently is more open to feedback than Drip. I posted a Twitter thread listing some things that I like about it and Jason VandeBoom, the founder of ActiveCampaign, setup a call with me to go over some of my feedback. And ActiveCampaign isn’t a tiny company; they have hundreds of employees and are much larger than Drip. It meant a lot to me that Jason would just jump on the phone with a random customer to see how they could improve.Meanwhile Drip’s emails aren’t even signed by an actual person. During this whole debacle, I don’t think anyone from Drip actually responded to anyone’s tweets or complaints. A couple days after the initial announcement when things were blowing up on Twitter, they sent this out another email that was basically "sorry, not sorry"Just like their price increase, all of their corporate communication just screams “We don’t care about you. Go away.”So I did.I’m actually really glad that I dropped Drip, after all that. Partly because of how much better ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are as tools, but mostly because it taught me a lesson about how you need to be careful when you’re a small company about who you integrate with, because while your interests may align now, that could change at any point.But this rant has gone on long enough, so I’ll save that point for a future post.Disclaimer: just in case Drip decides to sue me (which would be so on-brand for them at this point), ALL the descriptions of Drip’s functionality, failings, and communications is to the best of my recollection and should not be taken as a literal word-for-word account.----Happy to answer any questions about my experience with Drip, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign. Would also love to hear anyone else's experiences with any of those (or others you'd recommend in the space of email-based marketing automation).Original post: https://ryanwaggoner.com/drip-pricing-review/