#still can't see from the latter end of a longer post though

[itsbenedict]

oh for fuck's sake they removed the floating icons again. i'm gonna start throwing furniture at stuff

[nuri148]

My Take on Levi's Age

I originally wrote this as a rb addition to another post. I've been meaning to make it a stand alone post since then, and with all the talk about Levi's age since the publication of bad boy, here it is, finally.

If you ask me, Levi could not have been more that 4-5 years old at the time Kenny found him around 829.

Why?

He's severely malnourished, probably spent several days cloistered in the room with Kuchel with nothing to eat. So my guess is that, though he was old enough to speak and understand Kuchel was dead (even if he could not quite grasp the bigger concept of Death), he was too young to go out and procure himself and his mum some food, be it by stealing or begging. And for that, he's need to be very young.

I lived in Greater Buenos Aires more than half of my life (the infamous "conurbano"), and I've seen lots of very small kids, 4-5 years old, begging like pros for either change or food. It's unfortunately very common in impoverished areas. And I wasn't even in the bad ones. So, in that aspect, the Underground wouldn't be different from our villas or Brazil's favelas.

Kuchel was a prostitute. She wouldn't want Levi to witness her at work. It is fair to think that as soon as he was old enough to cross the street she'd let him roam and go play with other kids while mummy's busy. There, he'd quickly learn how to come by a piece of moldy bread to stave hunger.

So in order to just sit starving by his mother instead of going out looking for help, Levi must have been young enough that his mum could still keep him under wraps; too young to know his way about the Underground's streets, too much of a rookie in terms of using his charm or his cunning to get a bit of food.

Uri Reiss inherited the Founding Titan in 829. BUT, nowhere does it say that Kenny's encounter with Uri happens right after the latter became a titan. So Kenny might have joined Uri up to a couple of years after 829 (not many, as Rod Reiss still looks young in that flashback).

So Kenny finds Levi between 829 and 831; And Levi is 4-5 then, meaning he was born, at earliest, in 823 (considering his b-day is only one week before the year's end, that'd make him 5 in for most of 829) and latest in 825 (same if Kenny found him in 831). That makes him 10-12 years older than Eren and company. , ~20 when he joins the SC, ~26 during seasons 1-3, ~30 after the time skip, and ~33 in the epilogue.

"But Yams said he was thirty-somethiiiing!"

TLDR: I wouldn't consider canon some spur-of-the-moment answer given by Yams in a panel where he's probably tired, nervous, and doesn't have his timeline handy.

Allow me to speak here as a writer: the whims of your imagination often don't align with the logic of what needs to go on the page. So it is perfectly possible to imagine your character in a way that is inconsistent with your timeline. You see them with short hair and summer clothes fixing lunch in their sunny kitchen in a scene and, when they move to the dining room you see them with hair 4 inches longer and serving supper as a snowstorm rages outside. When you write it, you're going to have to pick up one, and go back to your notes often for continuity after, bc your brain keeps forever placing the kitchen in sunny summer and the living room in a winter night. Oh, and they're both simultaneously on the ground and the second floor. Escher pictures make more sense.

The story of AoT spans many years, so we don't know which year Levi is the default Levi in Yams' brain. It could even be the Levi from the time skip, or from a future after the last chapter that only exists in his imagination. Also, Yams has bungled up numbers before so, personally, I don't trust him much in that department.

In any case, Math is a hard science, so if Kenny found Levi with 4-5 years in 829, he can't be 30+ in 850. 5+21=26. No matter what Yams says.

Additional notes:

The original post. With additions. I recommend reading the quoted twitter thread.

Another, recent twitter thread on Levi's age

A lengthy post by an actual psychologist providing scientific foundation for Levi's age when Kenny finds him.

I saw yet another post on Levi's age recently, but I can't find the link rn and I have to make lunch. if/when I find it, I'll add it (and others I may come across)

[hyperpotamianarch]

So, for the time being, I pretty much dominate the #alternate jewish history tag. By which I mean, all posts under this tag are ones I either wrote or reblogged. This is, of course, meaningless. Even so, I intend to take care of this little corner of my supposed kingdom, though invaders are fully invited. Please, it would be my pleasure if you add to this tag.

Either way, this tag currently has three AUs. As the purported owner of this tag, I intend to list them - while tagging the original creator when necessary.

The first AU is going to be the one I conceived of, naturally, since there can be no ownership disputations of it: the Jewsade.

The Jewsade is an AU based on the historical divergence of His Dark Materials. However, it's an AU worth exploring for its own merit IMO. Its divergence point is around the 1520s, with the Jewish false Messiah David Reubeni and Shəlomoh Molcho. In our world those two ended up eventually killed by the Spanish Inquisition; in the world of the Jewsade, they succeeded in getting the artillery David was trying to obtain and used it to conquer Eretz Yisra'el from the Ottomans. What happened with it later? Currently it's a riddle I can't answer, possibilities range from a disaster by the hands of the Ottoman Empire or Portugal to the continued existence of a Jewish kingdom in the Middle East, barely holding its own against both Christians and Muslims who want to take the Holy Land to themselves. Exploration of it is still at work, and I'm considering presenting it in random documents of various sorts from the period. It doesn't currently have a clear masterpost, I might work on that in the future.

The second AU I've put under this tag belongs to @aviad1b. This is the Hasmonean independence AU. It's not too well-built as of yet (and might also be related to the next AU, we'll see), but the basics are: the Hasmoneans don't give up their independence to the Romans and remain a kingdom for longer. This is a bit of a hard feat, because the Hasmoneans were sort of allies to the Romans even prior to that and the civil war is what caused them to turn to a passing Roman general to solve the dispute. After you avoid that... well, the Hasmonean dynasty still needs to keep its independence between the ever-greedy Rome and the rising Perthian empire, which is not going to be easy by any means. Even if they manage surviving one civil war... well, there will be others. However, it might be interesting to picture them somehow still prevailing, despite all the odds.

The third and more recent addition comes from @magnetothemagnificent's idea of a world where the 2nd Temple was never destroyed, the 2nd Temple Still Standing AU as I chose to call it, if you have different suggestions I'm open to hear them. A lot of the discussion on it includes the note of how much we don't know what the world will look like. Christianity might not exist, or be way smaller. The Jewish Diaspora would be way smaller adn would be mostly merchants. New technologies would be applied to old traditions and sometimes adjusted to them - the beacons to indicate the start of the month will stay, but their role would be fulfilled more with modern communication technology; flights to Eretz Yisra'el will commonly have space for cattle for the Korbanot; Cohanim would dominate the field of dermatology in order to be experts on Tzara`at, some working in construction (and some with textiles?) for the other types of it as well; religious institutions will be vastly different, with structures from 2 milennia ago surviving to the Modern Day in some form; Levyim maybe being dominant in fields of music and poetry; maybe melodies used for written texts in the place of punctuation; no written Mishnah or Talmud, things are mostly kept oral; and a lot more stuff.

There's the question, with that latter AU, of how that might happen. No rebellion against the Romans might be a possibility, though a bit hard to pull up. The Hasmonean Dynasty retaining independence can help, hence the reference I've made earlier. The Great Rebellion could also (maybe) fail before it escalated to the level of besiegeing Jerusalem. I really don't know. And unless you go by the "History is a rubber band" theory of time travel, there really isn't any way to know. So I suppose we should all just think about it a little more, and making stuff up can work, as long as you keep an eye on historical events.

Now, you might accuse me of certain hautiness in writing this. Please don't. Believe me when I say, I'm just enthusiastic about alternative Jewish histories, and would like to popularize the use of that tag. I would really like seeing farther AUs based on Jewish history - I had the pleasure to encounter a couple on Facebook, following a workshop on writing alternate Hannukahs in a meet-up organized by a group of interest on Jewish Fantasy in Israel. But there can be many more, and while I would love to contribute where I can and where my help is wanted, I prefer not to start any more than the one I'm already working on. So thank you to all the participants.

Note: the reblog chain for the Hasmonean Independence AU I shared here is only an exchange between me and Aviad. However, the 2nd Temple Still Standing thread includes (beside my and Magnetothemagnificent's posts) contributions from @alyssumlovesthecosmere and @fromchaostocosmos, hope you don't mind I'm tagging you as well.

[auto-theist]

Dear Commander.

cross posted on ao3

Erwin,

I find it hard to write this with the formality you expect. We are at war, no longer with mindless titans but with true intelligent invaders. I understand you intend to protect our people but I do question the certainty behind your actions. Are we certain that this ends with the beast? Can we guarantee that Eren is the ending we want to place our faith in.

I should not speak selfishly as a soldier. I understand my position is to simply follow your orders. I have full trust in your words just as I have for years, yet deep down I feel a sense of dread that I cannot escape. For once in my years of work with the scout regiment I wonder if this really is the smartest move. We lose so many soldiers daily that I question when their lives will stop ending in vain.

Perhaps I am out of line in saying this, you can reprimand me accordingly as you see fit, but I wonder when enough will be enough for you Erwin. Will it be standing on the parapet surrounded by cheers of success, or will it be the cruel fate of damnation as failure greets you with death by its side. I cannot allow the latter to occur. Your readiness to give for the cause of humanity is strong and admirable but these men cannot act without you in the lead. I cannot act without your orders.

Captain Levi Ackerman.

Scout corps.

Erwin

I never received a reply to my last letter. Even now I shall not receive one. Guilt eats away at me nightly for what I failed to do. If I were not fighting for your honor I would have abandoned humanity long ago. They informed me of your passing. I wish they were wrong, I would have rather you hated me than left.

My selfishness seems to be my curse. To love you was the worst thing I could do. My existence proves itself to once again be fatal to those I care for. In all these years I had grown too comfortable, and had found you immune. Now I lay here restless, unable to sleep as the screams echo in my head.

I acted selfishly in your parting as well. I saw their eyes, the fear when I had gotten ahold of the serum. I could have very well brought you back, it's how humanity could have continued to thrive instead of fighting the war we waged. I couldn't bring myself to. I could not lose you again, as for such I hold no regret for the choice I made.

Armin seemed the rightful choice at that moment. He held the same calculating look, the determination in his spirit. A part of me feels as though you possessed him, that your soul echoes in his eyes. I can't fight the grief I feel when he stands the way you used to. A mirror image of your beliefs, I trust his leadership just as I trusted yours.

I have never felt such conflicting guilt before, the grief of missing your touch. I no longer can reside in our room. I've instructed the cadets to not move a thing. It's the only way to truly feel your presence. The empty cup of coffee you had finished still sits on the desk. The books you had pulled for your nightly reading are still at the foot of the bed; the same place they were left when you eagerly explained them to me that morning. Your night clothes are left in the hamper, yet to be washed. Your smell clings to the room and suffocates me in an emptiness I cannot explain.

On nights where I am silent enough I can still hear you, mumbling to yourself about plans, checking on numbers. Others I can hear you saying “I love you”. Those nights truly make me question if you're really gone.

I told you to give up. To stop chasing your dreams. To die already because you were destroying yourself. I wish you had not taken me so literally. I miss nights by your side, the warmth of your touch, the soothing echo of your voice as you would read. It has been years since I've felt sick from grief. I had grown accustomed to the sadness of death.

You haunt my every step, my every move. I was so reliant on your guidance that I fear a part of me died with you. My selfishness is to blame. I am to blame. I cannot find the words to apologize. Deep down I do not regret not saving you. I could not live with myself if I were to watch you die again.

I've asked them to bury you with my cover. Hanji made threats to dissect them if they failed to. As humorous as they were, I could not bring myself to smile. Perhaps joy is the part of me that died with you. I'm not upset about it in the slightest. Of all the things you could take I would want it to be my heart. It has always been yours commander. In return I have taken your cover. It took time to get used to moving in the extra fabric. My movements were sloppy, I hope more blood wasn't placed on my hands for my faltered movement. I could not part with it. Your scent on the fabric is bittersweet, encouraging me in battle and haunting me in rest.

I have given my all to the scouts. I have given my all to humanity. I have given everything I am at your request Erwin. I feel as though I'm lost without your command. Every order as comforting and sure as the embrace we used to share. Suffering came with the job. Suffering was so common, so normal. I wish you had suffered long enough for me to at least say goodbye.

Captain Levi Ackerman.

Devoted partner.

[pttucker]

⸢And everyone lived happily ever after.⸥ I always hated that phrase. However, the current me dearly wished for that phrase to become true. [Constellation, 'Demon King of Salvation' has reached his ■■.] [You have become the 'Oldest Dream'.] The disappearing lights in the distance resembled the Constellations that still remembered me. And with that, my endless voyage got underway. [Your ■■ is 'Eternity'.]

I was this close to making a reaction post about the supposed "miracle" that happened and why the worldline wasn't collapsing despite Oldest Dream no longer dreaming.

I mean, I was certain it was because Dokja was maintaining the dream and maybe he himself hadn't realized it yet, what with him literally being Oldest Dream. Guess he had one final trick up his sleeve.

I will say that I'm super amused that my theory of him being an avatar and not knowing it was apparently 100% correct but in a manner I completely did not expect. If I have to pick, I wanna say that the moment he chose to break himself apart was right here:

That left only three people behind. "Kim Dokja." It was unknown who among Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk called that name out first. The former asked with a questioning pair of eyes. "We are getting off together, right?" [Someone has activated 'Lie Detection Lv… '] That prompted Kim Dokja to smirk softly. "Of course. We should." ['Lie Detection' has confirmed 'Kim Dokja's' words as truth.] "Let's go."

Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. Dokja scheming until the very last second. Sacrificing himself for his companions One. Last. Time.

Though not as much of a sacrifice as before; he'll still get to "read" about them just like he loves and technically he will also get to live with everybody in a big house just like he wanted. So while part of me is clenching my heart, it's overall a happy ending.

And I looooove that we've circled back to Dokja's ■■ and why it has both the meaning of Eternity and Final Chapter.

I'll admit that I'm still a little fuzzy on what exactly happened with Secretive Plotter, the 999ths and Oldest Dream. I guess they reached the epilogue of their stories and this is the epilogue of Dokja's story? So now they're off in an entirely different worldline once again?

And it seems we have 34 chapters of epilogues to go through now! As well as ongoing side stories! The latter of which I still need to figure out if anyone is currently translating into English.

I'll admit when I heard that ORV had ongoing side stories I wasn't certain what exactly they'd be about but it appears we've still got a lot to wrap up even after the happy ending and you can't tell me that at least in one future side story (or maybe one of these epilogues) Dokja doesn't meet himself again or at least realize that he's missing half his memories.

...Or perhaps his companions will realize something fishy is going on, what with living right beside him and Dokja not remembering a whole 50% of his life. Hmmm.

A tale of this new world continued to flow on. But then, just as the subway's doors closed, Han Sooyoung looked behind her with a slightly unsure, hard-to-read face of someone that left something behind. Even Yoo Joonghyuk looked back, too. The only person who didn't was Kim Dokja. Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk's gazes ran into each other, and they began growling at the same time. "What you looking at?!" "I should ask you that, you basta…"

Well, if nothing else, I do dearly wish to see more of these three idiots together. I love that both of them refused to get off the train until they were certain Dokja was coming with them and they both seemed to sense that they'd just lost something.

And I do wonder how exactly the world is going to go on after all of this mess and if they really will try to take Joonghyuk's sword from him. (Not a good idea.)

I mean, they seem to still have all of their abilities and stats? I think? So they're just supposed to live in normal, modern day Korea as if nothing happened while having superpowers??? And I assume most of the world's population is gone unless that was miraculously rewritten.

Or...???

Guess I'll find out.

[rockinlibrarian]

Two AO3-Writer Year-End Surveys that astonishingly don't have THAT much overlap in questions.

And I believe they were both originally meant to be "Ask Me a Number" Games so they wouldn't be as long as this is? But I'm using it as a proper yearly wrap-up. And I've done so for the past two years at least. So there.

I apologize to whomever wrote these surveys that I no longer have your info because I just dumped them both in a Scrivener file. I'm pretty sure I personally got both sets of questions from @uniasus. So that's sort of credit. Anyway, to begin:

I better put it under a cut for length, even though I'm afraid no one will click through. You can click through and THEN skim! I give you permission!

Survey Set 1:

How many words have you written this year? 36,643 new words POSTED to AO3. Don't even know how many words I've WRITTEN. But it's more than that.

2. How many works did you publish this year? Seven. And this year I didn't even update any previously posted ongoing fics.

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)? Mayyyybe "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely"? Because it does a really fun job of combining characters from two different fandoms, and some of those characters were quite complicated to write and I think I pulled it off.

4. What work of yours has the most hits? This is always weird to answer when you've done Yuletide and inevitably the work that WILL have the most hits— and kudos, and comments (judging by one year's previous Yuletide at least)— will get them all in the very last week of the year. But AS IT CURRENTLY STANDS, the answer is "New World Symphony" — by a lot (936), actually, so maybe the Yuletide fic WON'T be able to catch up.

5. What work of yours got more feedback than you expected? I have a kind of complicated answer for this, involving my two new multichapters, because it's not so much more feedback as "not the feedback I expected). When I started "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely," I thought it would get more attention than "New World Symphony," because it's Gen and a post-season-4 fix-it, as opposed to the latter with its controversial ship. But even AFTER I posted the former, "New World Symphony" got way more kudos (and, as you see above, hits). Someone on the TUA Discord pointed out that it's about finding a niche— something can be more generally appealing, but it's got loads of competition that way, people may never find it— whereas they're going to come LOOKING for your weird ship if they also ship it. ON THE OTHER HAND, though, I'd also figured "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely" would get relatively more attention from TUA fans, because it's a bigger fandom than Legion…but instead, Legion fans came out of the woodwork to be the primary readers of that one! Now if they'd just go and read "The Magic Man of Oz" while they're here…!

6. Favorite title you used. If you stick only with titles I've actually PUBLISHED… possibly "Viktor Squares a Love Triangle" in "Beginning of Something Else Entirely." But my absolute favorite title I wrote this year is for Chapter 5 of "New World Symphony": "Fugue for Strings and Synth." It is SUCH a good title you have no idea. Maybe in three years when I finally post Chapter 5 of "New World Symphony" I'll say it again.

7. If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? No use of song lyrics this year. I don't think. I may have made lyric references without thinking about it too hard, since I do that in real life, but nothing's standing out, and nothing in the titles. No Sound of Music ones since I didn't update "Captain with Seven Children"…

8. Pairing you wrote the most for this year? Um, Fiktor. Still. A couple just platonically, even. And I worked really hard to keep the platonic ones that way! If you ask I can still point out the places where my shipper heart was poking through…

9. Favorite pairing you wrote for this year? Well, obviously Fiktor as far as / pairings go. But & pairings I can't narrow down, because I found so many fun ones combining the Legion and TUA characters for "Beginning of Something Else Entirely." Those characters were destined to meet! On the obvious side, the Chaos Couple of Lenny & Klaus is RIGHT THERE, but I'm probably proudest of pairing up Allison & Syd, who just— their relationships with their powers and their similarly checkered pasts, they're so good for each other, especially with Syd's post-Astral-Plane growth to lead the way. And speaking of the astral plane, Oliver Bird & absolutely anyone.

10. What work was the quickest to write? "Brother and Also Brother Home for Christmas" literally took me an hour, and part of that was just watching the commercial it was based on a few times. Somebody on the TUA Discord server pointed out that the Folgers Incesty Christmas commercial was practically a ready-made Fiktor fic and as the only Fiktor writer there, well… I responded. —I started filling this out before I spontaneously posted "Did Anyone Ever Tell You You Look Just Like Aubrey Plaza?" which was probably physically written in even less time, but I'd been telling it to myself in my head for a few months already so I'm not sure that counts?

11. What work took you the longest to write? No idea, especially since two are multichapters that are still in progress.

12. How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year? Well besides the two I started posting this year, there's "Captain with Seven Children" and "Tesseract" which are still slowly in progress, a couple more bits and pieces side works for the Legion/TUA crossover now-series, aaaand… I think that's it? How many is that?

13. What’s your longest work of the year? "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely" at 18,377 words posted so far, and that's not even counting the additional 2,248 I've drafted. Then again, "New World Symphony" has a LOT drafted, so with its 12,655 posted… no, with draft chapters it still only comes to 18,305, so "Beginning" wins.

14. What’s your shortest work of the year? That would also be "Brother and Also Brother Home for Christmas" because it's a retelling of a 30-second commercial. Unless you count "happy birthday," which is a piece of visual art and therefore appears on AO3 as having a Wordcount of 0. It technically has a wordcount of 12, which is still the shortest, but @destinyandcoins wrote those words, anyway. See... some number below for more.

15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you? ALL OF THEM.

16. What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? For just this year, it's a tie between "Remix" and "TUA Masked Author Summer Remix 2024 (Umbrella Academy)," with two each, because I did two remixes for said event. And otherwise none of the fics had ANY overlapping tags! … For all time, it's still "Backstory." …oh, after I added "Did Anyone Ever Tell You You Look Just Like Aubrey Plaza?" I double-checked because I thought there might be some overlap with "Brother and Also Brother," but no, I tagged one "ficlet" and the other "flash fiction," and only one of them as "crack" even though they both probably count. And apparently "Brother and Also Brother" is the only one I tagged "pseudo-incest" in. Because they're NOT brothers in "New World Symphony," I guess. It might be… pseudo-pseudo-incest?

17. Your favorite character to write this year? I THINK it may still be Oliver Bird. He just keeps consistently delighting me, enough that I felt the need to squee about how much I love writing Oliver Bird on social media several times. There's also a character in my Yuletide fic that I kept having to STOP myself from squeeing about how much I loved writing, being that it's STILL A SECRET that I WAS writing them. I'll tell ya later.

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year? I had a lot of trouble getting into Diego Hargreeves's internal voice when I first started trying to write his scene in "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely," but once it clicked I ended up really enjoying it! I also found writing David Haller's alters butting in to a conversation to be an interesting challenge, but that one really did feel more like a puzzle, a challenge to overcome, than that it was actually giving me trouble.

19. What’s one pairing you want to explore next year? I don't… know really? No, that's not true, I have been thinking a lot about the father/daughter aspects of Oliver Bird and Syd Barrett. Maybe it's me still missing my own dad; and I'm writing this crossover full of crappy or at least absent dads in both sources, EXCEPT for this foster-father relationship that was only established in one episode and never got to be explored further, but now that they're living together again post-Astral plane, I just feel like Syd and Oliver are going to be hanging out a lot, especially since she's been avoiding David— Oliver's really the closest thing to a best friend she has at Summerland now (though also now she has Allison!). I did throw that soup-making scene into Chapter 2, but I love the idea that it's just COMMON for them to be doing father/daughtery stuff around all the time, and maybe you'll see more of it in the chapters to come.

20. Which work of yours have you reread the most? None are really sticking out. Either "New World Symphony" or "Beginning of Something…"

21. How many kudos in total did you get this year? Again with I KNOW I'm going to get a boatload in this last week on the Yuletide, and I just posted another new fic that has gotten two kudos in the twenty-four hours since I posted it, so— as of me writing this it's 156. Oh, and that's just on new fics! I got a lot of kudos on old fics, too! ("The Invitation" is still going strong at #1)

22. Which work has the most comments? Currently (again, Yuletide people are so good at leaving comments, so this may change in the next week) it's "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely" with 36! And most are from Legion fans! Holy Legion fans Batman! To cross your Marvel/DC streams!

23. Did you do any collaborative works this year? Yes, technically! The TUA Masked Author event was focused on Remixes, and I did TWO! One was an elaboration on a drabble written by @faithfulcat111 , the other was an actual piece of VISUAL ART based on @destinyandcoins' "Notes from Nowhere" when I realized I could actually do art for it that didn't require me to draw people!

24. Did you write any gifts this year? YES BUT I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT YET. Unless you count the remixes, which were also kind of gifts for their original writers. I mean I would have considered a remix of my work a gift at least.

25. Did you receive any gifts this year? Yes! TWO! One proper Yuletide gift and a BONUS one in Yuletide Madness! I do a happy dance! But I can't actually read them for another couple of days! I'm still so delighted though!

26. What’s your most common category? Gen

27. What do you listen to while writing? This year I listened to my Legion playlist (combining the actual score-soundtrack with the needle-drops) a LOT lot while writing "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely," because Viktor is also listening to it in the story. But to be honest I listened to the Legion playlist a lot when I WASN'T writing, too. IT'S JUST SUCH A GOOD SOUNDTRACK!

28. Favorite work you wrote this year? Eh, tie between "Beginning" and "New World Symphony." Depends on what I'm more in the mood for. That goes back to the one I reread the most question, doesn't it.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year? Okay, the next survey breaks this question down farther, into beginning lines, ending lines, dialogue, and funny bits, so see down there, but I guess I can put my favorite lines that aren't any of those four things here:

He giggled, and Five set a new goal for the week: to make the little Russian boy laugh at every opportunity. —that was my ship threatening to slip in the otherwise platonic "What's In a Name?"

Less hopeless than he thinks? What did that mean? He'd have to deflect and think about it later. —Just the right amount of a look at the way Klaus works.

Blonde, conventionally pretty. The kind of girl she used to have to Rumor studio execs into not wanting as their lead. —Allison's first impression of Syd is just exactly what she would think.

[Allison to Syd Re: the Birds]: "You're their daughter?" Syd startled, then slowly broke into a wry smile. "Well….Yes." She nodded sharply, as if she'd only just decided this. "In a way. The Birds have been second parents to me. Sometimes more literally than others." --Because! Like I said in #19 above. I just feel like Syd genuinely considers the Birds to be her parents now, and she's maybe not put it into words until this moment.

It wasn't like someone could sneak up on Viktor. Especially not someone with his own musical motif— a high, looping piano, melodic lines joining in canon. —there is so much potential for the ways Viktor's powers could work, and I love coming up with new ones.

"OH." Cary's eyes lit up. He started shaping an imaginary sphere in his hands. "I invented— but I didn't, you see, that's the fascinating part— this orb came from the future to kidnap David and warn him about this— catastrophic future if he didn't— well, I don't know, but I do know my own work, and I could tell I invented it— but that future never happened and I never did invent the orb, but the orb itself," he emphatically tapped the table, "remained." —It's just so Cary, and I've missed writing Cary.

On the lower level was a big round atrium with a large tableau in the center: a hill of real plants and trees and taxidermied mountain goats, as if the building in the middle of the forest couldn't bear to remain separated from the forest by anything as silly as walls. —sometimes I write good description. Actually is this good description or just nicely metaphorical description?

"And, Viktor—” She leaned in. “When I say 'power,' I'm not just talking about the ability to manipulate energy waves. You have power just by existing in the world— in a society. In a family. You've always had that power, even when you felt the most powerless. What you choose to do— or not to do— can have huge effects on those around you, whether you realize it or not." —Melanie is directing this right through the screen at ME.

"Not me. I don't get to be loved. I don't get to be happy. I am…fated to wander from universe to universe, alone. I can't even get annihilated from existence properly!" —best single line of angst I wrote this year.

And the whole of Viktor discovering smart phones in "New World Symphony."

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year? I don't know. I am tempted to answer with some interesting facts I learned while writing my Yuletide piece. Oh, here's one: when I was first writing David and Viktor's conversation in "Beginning" Chapter 2, and suddenly realized I'd been writing Divad instead of David Prime the whole time.

ALRIGHTY THEN, here's Survey Set #2!

1.How many fics have you worked on since January? Maybe…9? 10 if you count "happy birthday" as a fic? I have a couple side things going on in the "Beginning of Something Else" crossover universe that I'm not sure how much count as separate. —Actually one of those was "Did Anyone Ever Tell You You Look Just Like Aubrey Plaza?" which I just posted.

2. What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? It's not something new to ME, but I never POSTED a fic written in script form before "Brother and Also Brother Home for Christmas."

3. What piece of media inspired you the most? (This can be the fandom you wrote the most for, the one that spawned the most ideas, the one you thought about the most, etc.) I guess Umbrella Academy, by sheer numbers.

4. How many fandoms did you write for this year? Just three (and two of those in the same fics). Or at least I POSTED fics for just three— worked on some others.

5. What ships captured your heart? Um, nobody new. I'm still not a shipper, and I'm still inexplicably obsessed with Fiktor.

6. What characters captured your heart? All…of them? I've never written so much Klaus before this year, and he kind of writes himself, which is quite fun, so maybe I'll go with Klaus.

7. Did you write for any new fandoms or ships this year? Nope. Spoilers for Yuletide I guess— yep it's one I've written for before. But I have quite a few obscure or at least rarely-written fandoms on my list so don't get cocky.

8. What fic meant the most to you to write? I think— I think this question is making me oddly uncomfortable actually. It's probably "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely," because it was my response to TUA Season 4 and there was so much negativity around so I was like "No, see this? I've got an idea. I'm gonna make it work. It's gonna be great." And I think I put a little too much on its metaphorical shoulders, and I got a little desperate, like I was going to save the fandom, but nobody actually cared so I got all Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria about it, like everyone was yelling "STOP TRYING TO MAKE 'Everyone loves Beginning…' HAPPEN! IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!" But then, like I said above, the Legion fans found it and made me remember everything I loved about it, so now I'm just writing it for the fun of it again.

9. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on? Conversely, "New World Symphony" was really just for my own enjoyment, and it's very happy because things are actually working out WELL for everyone for once, so I think that one was the most pure enjoyment.

10. What fic was the most satisfying to finish writing? Not sure any really fits the bill. Getting the Yuletide fic in on time was satisfying for that reason, but also unsatisfying because I know I could make it better if I just had more time…!

11. What fic was the most difficult to write? I don't think the fic ITSELF was difficult to write, but real life and the writing of my Yuletide fic were vying VERY hard for my attention. It was down to the wire, and I really wish I'd gotten more of the fic done BEFORE the last minute when I've also been prepping for Christmas.

12. What fic was the easiest to write? Not actually sure. Oh, now that "Did Anyone Ever Tell You You Look Just Like Aubrey Plaza?" exists— that one. Like I said, Klaus writes himself, Lenny almost writes herself (she's so much more crass than I am that it does take a LITTLE work to get in the mindset), and this totally crack conversation between the two of them definitely wrote itself.

13. What were your shortest and longest fics posted this year? See 14 and 13 in set 1.

14. What were your go-to writing songs? As 27 in the first list said, I listened to the Legion playlist on shuffle. But if I had to pick just one song, at least to start, I'd usually go with "Darkness (Full Suite)" because it captured the whole mood best, and was also instrumental so perhaps better for writing than the needle drops. Though if I was putting the playlist on and NOT necessarily trying to write, I usually started with "Undiscovered First." For no reason other than I love it. (I just looked at the comments on that YouTube video and 2/3 of them are "Who's here from Legion????")

15. What was the hardest fic to title? "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely." I even put up a Tumblr poll.

16. What's your favorite title of the year? See #6 in Set 1.

17. Share your favorite opening line: "Klaus had more experience with the Afterlife than any living person, and this wasn't it." This is the only one I don't feel compelled to give multiple answers for, because how can you beat that?

18. Share your favorite ending line: My ending lines suck in comparison. Plus I have this problem of extending my natural endings with little epilogues. For example, I think my answer to this is from "What's In a Name?" which emotionally ends with, "They could make of themselves whomever they wanted to be," which is a GREAT closing line on its own. But then I add this little scene:

The three giggled through the keynote speech, drawing a cumulatively bizarre caricature of the speaker together. Ben had started the doodle, then encouraged the others to collaborate. It was silly and subversive and utterly language-barrier-demolishing. The tall blonde boy who’d joined their table waved impatiently backward at them, keeping his eyes dutifully on the keynote speaker. “Tyst! Our lecturer is speaking!” Ben added the tall boy to the doodle.

—which I ALSO love, actually, but it's much less of a closing line. Also, yes, that was Luther making a little cameo there. Don't know how subtle or not it was. I figured pointing out that his nametag had a Swedish flag and an aerospace symbol on it would be a little too obvious. The other ending vying for this answer is from my Yuletide story, which has even LESS of a standout ending line and is more like Very Short Concluding Scene than Epilogue too, but I love the imagery of it. Tell ya later.

19. Share your favorite piece of dialogue: Conversely, my dialogue is my favorite part of my writing, because it tends to come easiest, and is basically hearing the characters in your head so— I have a lot of contenders, but I think I'm going to go with this scene (first speaker is David Haller, I add since he doesn't get a tag until far into the conversation):

"I heard about what's going on with you and your wife. And all I can say is, time travel sucks ass." The irritable jitters were back. "Hey, let me pose a scenario for you guys. Is it cheating to hook up with a future version of your own girlfriend?" Diego and Luther exchanged a glance. "What, like…in the future?" "Whenever. She came from the future. You went to— time travel. It's confusing, is what I'm saying." Luther frowned, and drew in the air as if connecting the dots. "Well, is that really different than hooking up in the future without time travel?" "That's what I said! But if there's also a version of you in her future, who's very different from you now—" "So you're cheating on yourself?" Diego clarified. "No, they broke up. And that future ended up not happening." "So it's a separate timeline." "But they're still the same person," Luther offered. "Wait, no. That's like saying our Ben and Sparrow Ben are the same person." "But aren't they? In a way?" "No." "But you're talking about two versions of a guy who was raised differently from birth," David said. "I'm talking about a potential future version of the same girl." "So she was going to turn into the future one?" "She didn't. But she could have, is the thing." Diego shook his head. "Damn. Time travel." Luther looked sympathetic. "I'm sure if you just explained to her—" "Hah. Too late for that. She's gotten all kinds of new ways to be pissed at me since. This is where Divad used to butt in to remind us that we're fundamentally unlovable, but no, he's trying to self-actualize or some shit now don't even think of it, Divad, it's my turn, we need to be angry."

I love it for so many reasons. First, it just flows nicely, like you can hear these guys having this "philosophical" discussion, it's just how it would go. Second, I kind of lied about the first speaker, because it IS technically David, but he switches to Dvd during the first sentence (find the moment!), and it amused me that Diego and Luther are completely oblivious to the fact that this guy's alter personalities are having an argument right in front of them. Third, the seeming randomness of the topic, which sounds theoretical at first, unless you know (or until you realize) that it's not theoretical, and this has been nagging at David— or at least at Dvd— for a year or so and suddenly he's talking to someone ELSE facing time-travel-complicated-fidelity-issues so he can't resist getting an outside perspective.

Runner up: every single conversation Oliver Bird has with anyone whatsoever. Wait, I'm going to give you a preview of "Beginning" chapter 4, because this is exemplary of one of those times I just kept squeeing "I LOVE WRITING OLIVER" after:

"She's right, you know." "What?" He turned to see Oliver Bird poking his head out of a room. "Your— what should you call her. Conscience?" "You heard… Delores?" "Is that her name? Old-fashioned, but charming. Our Lady of Sorrows. Martini?"

20. Share your funniest line: Hard to choose, first being that I don't know that I'm the best judge of my own humor; second being that they inevitably are probably all in my Yuletide fic, which is the only straight-up comedy I wrote this year. Again, I'll get back to you on that.

21. What's something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story? I answered the first part in 30 above, but it DID change the story a bit, in that it made me way more aware of which of David's alters might be fronting at any time, and I realized I could do more with them intentionally. For example, the scene at breakfast referenced two questions ago.

22. What writing programs did you use? Did you write by hand? I keep most of my stuff in Scrivener, because I love the ease of adding interconnected files and pages, particularly as I tend to write out of order. I compile it into Word before printing and/or posting it. And I do write by hand, usually in the middle of a draft, when I have the basic shape of the chapter/work down and need to fill in the gaps. I also edit by hand.

23. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year? What drives me nuts is that I had an answer to this— I remember distinctly feeling "Wow, was THAT satisfying to write!"— but I forget what it was, now. Maybe Viktor and David's conversation in "Beginning" chapter 2. Talking to a guy with a dissociative disorder was REEEELY enlightening for Viktor on a lot of levels.

24. Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing a fic? When I posted my Yuletide entry, I went to bed. It FELT like a special thing to do!

25. How did you recharge between fics? I was so busy in real life I don't think I noticed much. I just wrote whatever I felt like writing in the moment.

26. Did you create fanworks other than fic? *preens* as referenced in 14 and 23 in the previous survey, I made an Art!

27. How many events did you take part in? (bangs, exchanges, ship weeks, zines, prompt memes, they all count!) Two! The TUA Masked Author and Yuletide!

28. If this were an awards show, who would you thank? First I'd like to thank @versaphile for doing all the research and posting it on AO3 on How the freak to write David Haller (Not to mention the deeper characterizations of his alters in "When My Fist Clenches…" which I was probably drawing on even subconsciously). And secondly, to Guest User Valerie, who's most recent comment on "Beginning…" was just what I needed to hear to stop feeling like it was all Pointless, made me feel motivated again. And thirdly, @sunnymarbles, who was sitting across the room most of the time I was writing and gamely put up with me speaking my thoughts out loud and occasionally asking them questions like "Which one of these concepts is funnier?" and also supplying a made-up brand name for my Yuletide fic.

29. What's left on your to-do list for 2024? My annual round-up post of life events and media reviews!

30. What would you like to write next year? Continue "Beginning" and "New World Symphony" and maybe get back to "Captain with Seven Children." And as I've said for like the past three years now, I SWEAR I'm going to update "Tesseract" and finally post "Child of Hypnos"! But maybe this time I mean it!

[devisopod]

Levity Creek!

Chapter two

Have I gone over writing rules yet? No. Will I? Probably not right now.

I feel like short chapters are the way to go atm. Maybe if I get really into it I'll make longer posts. For now, this is what we get. Slow buildup, short additions, and objectively boring shit

I don't think anyone's gonna go back and read this but me lmao

______

The road out of Oklahoma and into the next few states was as long and uneventful as I planned for. Flat, long stretches of nothingness, and eventually piss-poor radio signal.

To no real surprise, but my ultimate dismay, it got colder the further north I got. Laughably, I became thankful that my engine acted as a space heater by the time I reached California. The weather back home was nothing like this and I was beginning to wonder if I was even built to withstand this kind of change. Maybe it's dramatic to think that way, but I certainly don't mesh well with temperatures below sixty degrees Fahrenheit. And neither does my van, which I found out very quickly.

Needless to say, I didn't stay in Palo Alto much longer than it took me to get the engine back up to snuff. Though, I left with more cargo than I intended, and boy, was I unprepared for it.

Fiddleford insisted that I pick up Tate on the drive up if I could. That way we could "bond". It was an awkward conversation, but even for a pushover, he has his way of being persistent. That, or I suppose that I'm just a pushover myself, which is a trait I gained and blame him for entirely. Of course, in the end I relented — albeit, reluctantly.

Now, I don't know much about Emma May given that she came along after Fiddleford and I grew apart. Still, she welcomed me like she knew me, and that made me a little less apprehensive about the whole thing. I'll admit, however, that the interaction was somewhat forced on my part, and on hers it seemed. She was distant and didn't appear entirely present in the conversation. Which, naturally, struck me as odd. Here I was, a practical stranger that was taking her son across two states. Yet, she didn't bat an eye. Regardless, I'm not one to pry.

Coming to terms with being an aunt and temporary guardian, my attention drifts back and forth from the road to the kid strapped into a carseat behind the passenger side. He's barely made a sound since I got him settled in. I'm not sure if that's more comforting or less, but I'm leaning toward the latter the further out I get. To give him credit, he's not misbehaving, but a quiet kid doesn't always make a good one.

His hair hangs over his eyes, squished into place by a hat that's arguably too big for his head. I can't even really tell if he's awake or not, and for a while I wonder if he's mute. In all honesty, I just keep looking back to make sure he's actually still there.

Dealing with kids has never been my strong suit — I'm not even adept at interacting with people my age. I was expected to be "bonding" on the way, but over what, exactly? Involuntarily being confined to the same space for the next six hours? The whole thing has me feeling like nothing short of a disappointment. Whether it's to myself, to Tate, or to Fiddleford, I have no idea.

As a result of my uncertainty and overall discomfort, I spend a lot of time in silence the next couple of hours, and so does Tate. In fact, he makes next to no indication of being there at all for the longest time. There were periods that I almost forgot he was with me and I would be lulled into a relaxed state. Those never lasted long. It wasn't until after we passed the state line into Oregon that he sneezed and I nearly sent the van off the road.

Meeting what I could only assume was his gaze in the rear view mirror, I could see that he was uncomfortable, and probably had been for a while. I always was a sucker for a pitiful look, my sympathy knew no bounds, but I never could help it. With a short exhale, I turn off at the next exit and into a gas station lot. The van rolls to a stop in one of the faded spots and grumbles down to a silence once I've pulled out the key. I unbuckle myself and turn in my seat to face Tate more head-on. On top of being snotty, he was holding tight to his thin jacket and crossing his legs. No doubt about it, he was holding it in, and here I was hoping he wasn't still in diapers.

"You gotta use the bathroom?" I prompt gently.

For the first time on the trip so far, he actually responds with a short "Mhm" and a nod.

"Alright," I grunt, pulling myself from the driver's seat and over the doghouse into the back.

I open the side doors and hop out onto the pavement before working to figure out how to unbuckle this poor kid from his seat. I can only imagine he's wondering why I'm having so much trouble as I struggle with each little belt. It's almost embarrassing, really, and it only makes me feel worse when I know he's probably been holding it for the past hour or two. Once I've finally gotten him out, I pluck him from his seat and set him on the ground next to me.

"You stay close, m'kay?" I say, looking down at him curiously while we make our way toward the station.

"'Kay," he answers quietly.

To my surprise, he grabs for my hand and holds onto it tight. Probably an instinctive reaction for him if I had to guess, but it warms my heart anyway.

Yeah, I could be an aunt.

PREV | NEXT

[theflyingfeeling]

well said, Niko 👏

so I went to exit my emotions in Germany last weekend, details below:

we went to the shows in Berlin & Leipzig, with a VIP experience for the latter

and guyyyyyyyyssss let me tell you, BC really did not lie when they said we were there to Exit our Emotions 😩 the shows went straight to the very top of my personal BC shows list, the energy was amazing and all the new songs sounded incredible live, even the ones that weren't necessarily my #1 favourites, like Where's the Exit and Wolves in California. Especially the former sounds sooooooooooooooo good live 💖

and because I was there mainly to enjoy myself and to exit the fuck out of my stupid useless emotions, I barely took any videos or pictures (I never take pictures anyway, how do y'all manage to take such amazing shots at shows?!) despite having relatively good spots to do so. I kinda wish I had more so I could think back to the shows afterwards, but on the other hand I felt like I got way more out of the show when I put my undivided focus on it, and besides indoor shows are always challenging on that regard due to the flashing lights etc. and I felt like every time I was going to film the lighting was not appropriate so in the end I just couldn't bother 😅

I don't really have much else to report from Berlin other than that the venue was great, I had an excellent view and had the best time ever 🥰

not least because I met so many BC tumblr friends!! it was so nice seeing everyone, please come to the Nokia Arena show y'all, we'll be your host it's hocus pocus 🥺

and then there was Leipzig 🥴

I mean, this is my initial reaction immediately after it (written in my drafts):

🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈

but yeah, as you can see from this post, @exitemotions and I had bought some silly little gifts to give the guys (rock hand glass markers not pictured), and we were so incredibly chill about the whole thing, like, NO ONE has ever been as chill as we were in advance of the VIP experience, I'm tellin' ya 💅

(we were so chill in fact that when we came back to the hotel room afterwards, we noticed we had forgotten the ceiling light on. you know, because that's how chill and zen and calm we had been upon leaving for the venue 💅💅💅💅💅)

the acoustic set was fucking cute, almost like a little campfire hangout 🥺

about giving the gifts and having our pictures taken: I feel like I was working on some kind of autopilot and can barely remember much anything 🙃 which I'm kinda mad at myself about lol, but I guess the guys liked the gifts (Olli said the glass markers were important, as my foreword for them was that they'd no longer have to fight about which glass/cup was whose, and I remember Tommi saying that socks are always useful. the others are owners of feet as well, so I suppose they agree 🧦)

we had made all sorts of grand plans for our individual pictures with the band but ended up with having "regular" ones after all, because while there was no feeling of rush per se at the m&g, everything was still happening relatively fast and sort of in their own course, and if we had wanted to do any funny poses or whatever, we should've been faster and in a little...sharper mental state to ask for them 😂😭

but we were chill though, I promise 💅

(I'm just cringing at myself so hard because I look like a fucking teacher standing for a class photograph 😂💀 it's funnier if you know I'm actually a teacher lol)

during the show we were on 2-3 row because we kinda missed our cue to run and reserve our spots before the acoustic set. personally I blame Santeri the tour manager for this (and also the fact that there were so many people there who had already been to VIP on this tour before, so they knew what to do 🤷‍♀️ meanwhile we were just left standing like "...wat 🧍‍♂️")

the show was just as great as the Berlin one, I honestly can't put them in order because they were both amazing and really made me forget about my sad little life 🖤

Rock Band From Hell was also alright. the one with no shirt on was hot

Ghost Kid was cool too. the one with no shirt on was hot

...so hot in fact that I already fell in love with him at the Berlin gig, and so when we were on our way to the merch booth after the Leipzig show, we ran into him and I flirted chatted with him a bit and had my picture taken with him 🥰 he was soooooo sweet and funny and I hope he'll stay true to his promise and keep the thing I said to him ('the drummer of BC could never [swirl the drumstick in his fingers in between every beat like you do]') "just between you and me" 🤭

from the merch booth I bought the XOXO longsleeve which looks super nice (sadly the quality isn't as super though dfgdgdsdh)

the next day it was time to return home, and as @kraeuterhexchen was seeing me to my platform at the railway station, I broke into tears in the middle of an escalator and didn't stop crying until boarding my plane lol

it's just that I was really nervous about travelling back to the airport from Leipzig because I had two changes of trains and the horror stories I've heard of Deutsche Bahn always being late were only adding to it, and that stress somehow triggered some sort of emotional meltdown in me and I realised the trip that I had been waiting for 6 MONTHS was now ending?? there had been so much talk about how we'd "do this and that when we go to Berlin/Leipzig and see BC" and now it's all done and gone and ?????? how does one move on after that 😭

but mostly I've been crying about the gift I gave to Olli 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

some of you have already heard about this, but I had made Olli this pin cushion ring:

...because I wanted to "support his sewing hobby", as I told him then sdhfhdfhfhfh

he seemed to really appreciate it, and as I demonstrated how handy it was (because you can wear it and easily put the pins there while sewing instead of having to reach to a pin cushion further away on the table), he told me he only had this huge pin cushion ("a brick" he called it, the one you can see on this video), and aaaahhhhh I'M SO ANGRY AT MYSELF for not remembering much else or barely daring to even look at him to see his reaction 😭 I do remember he got very excited when he heard he was getting a sewing-related gift though ("yessss" he said, if my memory doesn't fail me too bad) 🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

and I'm so sad I didn't even get a picture of him with it, because Joona the photographer was in the possession of my phone at that moment 😔 and I also forgot to tell him I had made it myself, though I believe it's self-evident. but, you know. still 😭

and the reason why I've been so emotional about it is because I had made the ring weeks ago already, shortly after the album release event, and since then I have admired it every day (because hellooooo is it not the cutest?!) and I had imagined all the scenarios in which I'd give it to him, what I'd say about it and how he'd react to it (I wondered if he'd even know what it was, but of course he immediately recognized it as a pin cushion when I showed it to him 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭), and yesterday it just suddenly hit me that when I'd be back home, the ring would no longer be there on my table for me to admire and hold in my hands, because Olli has it now? it's OLLI'S now, as intented, and yeah idk why but even now, two days later, I'm still literally crying about it as I'm writing this because I had grown strangely attached to that silly trinket and now I'll probably never see it again 🥺😭 (I guess I should just make one for myself too lol, my old one that I made almost 17 years ago is a wee bit shabby)

anyway, if anyone sees him, can you please tell him to take good care of it 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

the world's biggest thanks to everyone who I hung out with on this trip, but especially to @kraeuterhexchen whose stunning art I can now admire in calendar form on my kitchen wall every month of the year (yes I shall keep you updated):

...and to @another-sun the organizer extraordinaire, as well as to my travelling companion @exitemotions (thanks for all the laughs with a touch of chaos in between <3)

here's me with BC again, the only other picture that's not blurry af lol

in conclusion, 🎵 never again, never again 🎵

...until next time 👀

[shrinkthisviolet]

🚥🔨 ✂ 🧜‍♂️📃

🚥: Is there a character choice or plotline that you regret but is now canon and you feel like you can't change it?

Idk if there's a specific one, but if I had the choice to do this over again, I'd write the arcs in order—s1 and then s2. I feel dissatisfied sometimes with the way I wrote certain things in s2 (Barry & Morgan's relationship, for example, not being quite as close-siblings-esque as it is right now), because there were things I hadn't figured out yet. It's not so severe that I feel the need to overhaul it and write it from scratch*, I think I've mostly worked within that limit fairly well, but…even in terms of writing style, you can kinda tell that my writing style improved from s2 to s1…which is sorta the opposite of the effect you want to have 😅 it's not a bad arc by any means, I'm still proud of it (and it's not finished anyway, so it'll still end strong), I just…sometimes I wish I'd written it after s1 instead of before

*however, I probably will end up tweaking part of Morgan's reaction to Barry's paralysis in 2x06 to be more about "oh my god my invincible big brother is paralyzed", not just about "oh my god Zoom is terrifying". And a while back, I did tweak one of the other oneshots in s2, which originally had Iris not knowing Morgan was Sentry (that is obviously not the case anymore, so I edited it). Minor little tweaks like that are ones I might make (and I will undoubtedly recommend rereading the posted fics of the s2 arc once the s1 arc is finished), but overall, I've managed to stay surprisingly in line with the s2 arc so far.

🔨: Are there any whump tropes that you'd love to see your OC's reactions to even though you couldn't or wouldn't put it into your actual story for whatever reason?

Oooh well I'd love for Barry and Morgan to be captured together by Zoom at some point, but idk if it could work. One of them at a time, maybe, but…I don't know if there's really a feasible way to have them both captured while still fitting in with the way s2's plot unfolds (and I do love s2 and its plot for the most part, so I don't want to disrupt it too much…aside from the few divergences I've already planned)

✂: Is there a plotline that you'd planned to write but for whatever reason has been abandoned?

Oooh well back when Barry & Morgan were just friends, not siblings, there was going to be more awkwardness with Henry and Tina dating, due to Barry and Morgan facing the possibility of stepsiblinghood and feeling awkward about it. That still remains in a sense—the awkwardness is just about gaining a stepparent, and not about also gaining a stepsibling. It included the latter originally, but since Barry and Morgan chose each other as siblings as early as 1x14, it would make no sense for them to feel awkward about becoming stepsiblings.

Oh, the consequences of becoming very attached to them 😅 I fast-tracked their sibling dynamic. I don't feel too bad about it though—honestly I can't imagine s1 without their close relationship, and it strengthens 2x06 (Morgan's reaction to Barry's paralysis is no longer just about Zoom, but also about Barry)...and future arcs in the series. I can live with losing part of the "stepfamily adjustment" plotline, because a) I still have part of it anyway and b) Barry & Morgan being this close from so early on is better in the long run

🧜‍♂️: If your OC could choose to be a nonhuman character, what do you think they would choose? If they are a nonhuman character, would they choose to be human or another sort of nonhuman character?

A siren (the aquatic kind specifically)! Morgan had a mermaid fascination phase, and she loves singing. Plus, after making this moodboard + blurb…I'm quite fascinated with the idea myself (siren!Morgan fic one day mayhaps?) 👀

📃: List a few words, without any explanation, that have to do with ideas you have for future stories or chapters that may or may not ever get written.

betrayal, grief, longing, loneliness, family, new beginnings, trust

oc ask game!

Taglist (send an ask or DM to be added or removed):

@arrthurpendragon @ocappreciationtag @raith-way @vexic929 @ironverseocs

@thechaoticfanartist @tempests-of-hope @negative-speedforce @starstruckpurpledragon @angst-is-love-angst-is-life

[imtrashraccoon]

And the winner is....

Chocolate!

With Cookie Dough coming in a close second and Oreo in third.

Thank you to everyone who voted! I didn't think even a dozen people would see it, let alone 68! I enjoyed reading the tags of those who reblogged my poll as well!

While I am disappointed I can't write the scene I had in mind for the bubblegum flavour for Bad Sansuary, I will likely save it for a much later chapter in The Nightmare of Apathy as it's too good to scrap completely. Killer gets to be slightly less unhinged, this time...

Updates to my writing projects and Bad Sansuary under the cut so this post isn't too long XD

I have plotted out the entirety of the plot according to the prompts list for Bad Sansuary!

I think it will be fun as well as challenging to actually write, especially as I won't be winging it this time. Though I'm wondering if I should make an introductory post for my headcanons for the boys or if you guys going in blind would be just as fun. Not that there's anything too different from the normal interpretations anyways.

I aim to write the chapters ahead of time again so I have more time to focus on other projects and responsibilities. I plan for them to be longer as well but I'm not promising anything just yet.

I don't have much in the way of other updates, although I am nearly half done writing chapter 2 for The Nightmare of Apathy. The bad news is I probably won't have much time to finish it until the end of January.

I'm also nearly done writing another bonus chapter from the Self-Ship Underfell Papyrus challenge. Remember that? I'd like to post it sooner rather than later but I can't make that promise either.

As for my other projects? Who knows! I work on them whenever I have time and the inspiration. I have not forgotten The Hand We've Been Dealt or Baston and Hemlock, don't worry!

In the meantime, thank you for making this a great latter half of 2023 for me! I never imagined I'd have half as many people reading my garbage writing. Many of you have given me so much inspiration and motivation to keep going.

I'm not far from the 50 follower milestone and I kinda want to do something to celebrate. It depends how quickly it comes though and how busy I am. Still, I appreciate every one of you who read this far!

Thank you for making the end of my year awesome! You've made a raccoon very happy. (⁠つ⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)⁠つ

[thatspiritualbabe]

Date or Wait: The Dilemma of Being in Separation with Your Twin Flame

Hey everyone! So it's been a bit since I last posted. Where do I begin? I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately. As always, I continue to see lots of signs from the Universe. He misses me, he's thinking about me, he loves me, we can't stay apart, he's coming back for good. All very promising things, some of which I've seen evidence of as he continues to watch all of my snap stories. But then it hit me: has it really been a year since all of the problems started with my twin flame?

There is a lot to unpack and eventually I plan to in a much lengthier article on my twin flame journey. In summary, I've dealt with getting the run around when it comes to making plans to see each other in person, opening up only to become avoidant, ghosting after talking everyday for 5 months, reuniting briefly only to be blindsided by a third party (who clearly he had no problem making plans with her--still kinda salty about that not gonna lie). I've had multiple separations and reunions--the latter of which did not live up to expectations. Through my work with spiritual coaches/psychics I've built up the reunion to be my twin flame telling me everything I wanna hear. I am so sorry, I fucked up, I made a huge mistake with her, I love you and you're the only one I want to be with. I expected to get the commitment I always wanted. Instead, the reunions to date have been him trying to be a part of my life without acknowledging what happened, no apology, no commitment, and repeatedly asking can we be friends?? can we be friends?? can we be friends?? I've set boundaries from the day I discovered the third party (3p): no. To my knowledge the last few times he reached out he's been a single man. But it is important to me that he acknowledges what he and I had before the 3p, that he takes accountability for his involvement with 3p, and works with me to find a way to move forward with me after the 3p. And I let him know that. I won't settle for less. It definitely is progress that he's no longer involved with her, and that he's been frantic over losing me (even though he hasn't yet offered the commitment). But until that day comes, we'll remain in separation.

So what's a woman to do? If you're reading this article, you're likely a chaser dealing with some twin flame pain yourself. You can't deny how drawn you are to your twin, even when apart. The runner feels it too, but because your twin is not as enlightened as you are they will behave in ways that don't make sense logically, and therefore difficult to comprehend. During my first separation after the ghosting incident is when I began to learn about twin flames. I always thought it would be a cut and dry straightforward one and done separation and reunion. So I held onto every sign. I turned away other guys who expressed interest in me because my twin flame is coming back. "Universe, if you're testing me I'm making it clear to you who I want!" Never ever would've expected to reunite only to be confronted with a 3p. Welp. The ghosting was a little over a year ago and the 3p was about 7 months ago.

The twin flame dynamic kinda forces you to tune out logic. If you haven't read my article on how logical societal influence can get to your head check out the link below!

How Societal Influence Makes it Difficult to Navigate a Twin Flame Journey

I'm a hopeless romantic, so of course I still want to believe that one day my twin flame and I will be reunited. I definitely think by dating someone else he can learn I'm the only one for him (though it really fucken hurts that it happened). But I can't deny while I'm waiting on that ultimate fairytale reunion, I'm putting my wants and needs on hold. I'm not in a relationship. I'm not going on dates. I'm not having sex. Would it really be the end of the world if I did those things with a man who's not my twin flame? Would I be happier if my wants and needs were being met now?

I recently was diagnosed with cancer, and although the type I have is treatable and I'm optimistic about my prognosis, it's impossible to hear the word cancer and not worry about your mortality, and all you still wish to accomplish. Suddenly you wonder will I ever be in a relationship again? Get married? Have children? and then maybe it doesn't make sense to put all of your eggs in one basket. Life is too short.

I've debated waiting for my twin and dating other men for quite sometime now and I come to a different conclusion every time. I can't tell you what to do; you know yourself best. But I've wanted to share my experiences to show you you're not alone on this journey. So today I tell you this: I still love my twin flame, and I still hope we'll reconnect in the way I want someday. I want to see everything the universe, spiritual coaches, and psychics said would happen unfold in real time. But, also another amazing man has messaged me, and I am learning to embrace male attention again after being hurt, go with the flow and see where it leads. I wonder what tomorrow will bring. :)

I'm rooting for you, beautiful souls!! If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read. I appreciate each and every single one of you who has supported me. If you made it this far, also please consider liking, following, and sharing. Even if I reach one person, I'm happy to be helping that one person and making a difference. <3

[ichika27]

OnS Chapter 129

Tumblr making it hard to make a post also made me too lazy to make this. But I want and need to make this cause this is the only way I could do a "read back" of sorts for chapters no longer accessible in mangaplus. Ugh tumblr wtf stop with the stupid updates!

Anyways, title of this chapter is "The First Vampire". More lore stuff!

The others have now realized that their king might have done a very bad thing.

Shika Madu utters an apology to everyone as large, powerful bolts of light destroy the tower.

An angel appears to tell Shika Madu of God's disappointment at what has been done. Shika Madu pleads and ask he be the only one to suffer as the other had nothing to do with the ritual he was trying to do but the angel said Earth is also done for and with a snap of his fingers, what appears to be balls of fire started raining down.

Amon gets saved by another angel while someone else tells him to go to where their king is. Even after everything, they still see Shika Madu's safety as their top priority. Everyone else around Amon is dying from the rain of fire as he runs of to get to their king.

Shika Madu is angry at what's happening but he is told he could only blame himself for this. He still pleads for everyone else to be spared but it doesn't work as he's told that even their souls would be left to suffer in hell.

Oh, and one last cruel thing the angel does is leave Amon alive just to kill him in front of Shika Madu to show the latter how much he fucked up. When everyone else had finally been killed, the angel tells the others to focus their lightning solely on Shika Madu.

After everything he'd been through and while he's still being burned in lightning, Shika Madu asked to just be killed. Unfortunately, he's informed that he's now basically immortal so he could suffer alone for eternity.

With their jobs finished, the others leave for Paradise. Shika Madu has a message to be passed on to God but he's denied and told that as a sinner, his words would never reach God's ears.

And so Shika Madu was left to burn... and burn.

There's like two timeskips: one says a millenia has passed and another just said "more time...". Shika Madu thinks it's been tens of thousands of years. In the end he's just... sitting there burning until he finally accepted what he's done to deserve all this.

Something happened and he started to feel better and even used his power to shieled himself from the sunlight.

And homonculus Yuu is alive! He saw everything (he didn't show up until now though, wtf?). Shika Madu still plans on bringing everyone back from the dead but he now has no tower to collect the light he needed and even if he did, he's an undead now so he can't use the power of light anymore.

Homonculus Yuu also still has angel Mikaela in a coffin and it's revealed Shika Madu had some kind of backup plan: all the power he needed? Mikaela has them in the form of keys (the ones Ferid was collecting in the present time) but in order to use them, Mikaela has to be revived first.

He then decided to play God since it's the only way to collect the darkness he needed (like how God has the angels to collect light). Using homonculus Yuu, he created a human as he can't make angels.

I guess this would be the first "Yuu-chan"?

Mika and Yuu are here! I guess they weren't there the entire time (That'd have been boring to watch just one guy burn for a millenia). They're confused as well if the homonculus Yuu is Yuu-chan's first incarnation or if it's the newly created human.

Another one popped out and this one looks like a Mika except it's a girl it seems.

And then more were created.

Shika Madu uses his power so that the souls of the dead angels would occupy the new humans as he'd need them to collect darkness.

The new human Yuu sees angel Mikaela's coffin looks inside. He then starts to answer as if he's talking to someone. Mika and Yuu sees this and realized something but looking back, it seems Shika Madu himself hasn't noticed yet.

The new Yuu finds out that his new friend is dead and can't play with him.

Mika and Yuu are confused as to how the other two could converse. Mika thinks that since this is part of Yuu's memories, Yuu should know what the other two are talking about. Yuu is having trouble though and the newborn Yuu says something... unexpected.

It seems angel Mikaela told him to let himself get possessed or something and the newborn Yuu says yes without hesitation.

Once past Yuu gets possessed, current Yuu finally remembers: he's Mikaela.

--

Tumblr's new post editor is making things so difficult. I have trouble rearranging the images and coupled with a faulty mouse, I was about to lose my patience lol.

Okay, I felt bad for Shika Madu, not gonna lie. He did care a lot for his subjects and would've wanted to get punished on his own but of course, he's the king so everyone under him would get in trouble, too. That last one was also cruel with the other angel letting Amon get close enough for Shika Madu to watch him die.

Was the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures die in that rain of fire? Is this how the lore of our planet went in this universe? lol

So he gets punished by being left an immortal who burns in the sun. It seems he's been continuously burning for years, too (I found the timeskip funny, I'm sorry. Also, did it never become nighttime at all where he is?). He finds a way to finally become immune for a bit (like a magic sunscreen) and so he's become a "vampire" in a way (no word on if he nees blood yet here).

He ends up creating humans as he's not permitted to create angels like God does. At first I thought this might mean he's the "God" of this world's humans but he knows what humans are before he made some so there are probably humans who already existed at this point and he just mass produced more for his own need.

There's multiple Yuus now. It'd be confusing if the next couple of chapters would still show the past so if it ever happens, I'm gonna have to use nicknames for them to differentiate. Also, I love how Mika and Yuu-chan (I'm just gonna call our Yuu this as it's his nickname anyways) seem to just accept how weird things are getting in their commentaries. I love their interactions.

Speaking of the new humans, they all seem to have their own personalities (or they were about to have them) but then Shika Madu had the souls of his dead angels occupy them and suddenly there's a change as shown when human Yuu (the new one) reacted when a soul entered his body.

Okay, so there were lots of angels in the angel city but there can't have been a really huge amount of them so I'm guessing the amount of new humans made also had a limit and was just enough to house each angel soul. Angel Mika seem to have his own stuck in his dead body since human Yuu got to "talk" to him. They already have a connection but since human Yuu talked to him after getting possessed by an angel already, is this connection with human Yuu himself or was it with the angel possessor and if it's the latter, which angel was it?

We can only see half of the convo since we could only see human Yuu's side but it feels like angel Mika isn't as hesitant to use others if needed. I mean he's asking for human Yuu's body to use when I think current Mika wouldn't want to do that to anyone. But human Yuu immediately agrees and so angel Mika does it (which means either there're now two angel souls in human Yuu or angel Mika's soul kicked out the previous one).

And finally, they're starting to explain the "Mikaela" thing. The new humans are capable of being possessed by angel Mika probably cause Shika Madu and homonculus Yuu made them. He wasn't paying attention so there's a chance Shika Madu didn't even know that at this point yet. The human Yuu is the first one to try and was the only one who could right now since unline the other new humans, he was the only one who could "hear" angel Mika. Anyways, I'm guessing that's why this memory seem to be a shared one between Yuu-chan and Mika's because it, in a way, is.

Theory that the souls of Shika Madu's precious subordinates are also compatible with new humans who are their look-alikes but it's not a prefect reincarnation where they are themselves from the past which is probably why Shika Madu doesn't care much for them.

That said, another Shika Madu-Guren parallel: they both want to do the ritual correctly in order to bring back their people: the angels for Shika Madu and the humans for Guren. It's probably why letting Mika live and having the keys would probably help revive the angels for Shika Madu while killing Mika and having the keys would let Guren revive the humans.

Well, that was long. I better read the next chapters before I get too lazy to make another post and the chapters get wiped by mangaplus.

[copperbora]

I really appreciate this post too; this is the first time that it has flickered across my radar. I often feel invisible, or like a dog barking at the wind.

Due to my neurodivergence I struggle with bathing and cleaning my room; honestly I usually only manage to do the latter maybe once or twice a year. ADHD makes menial chores like taking a shower stupidly difficult; to my brain showers seem to take absolute hours which could be spent on far more interesting things (my hyperfixations rule me like tyrants that toss out fistfuls of the most delicious candy constantly which I can't help but lap up.)

Right now, I haven't showered in weeks. I thought that perhaps I'd get better at showering after my poor mom passed away last month before her time and she didn't need it at any second in an instance but I'm currently alone in my house, have been for hours, and no shower has taken place, nor will it. It took me years to understand why showering is such a struggle for me and this year I finally had to find a new version of selfcare which is more acceptable for my neurodivergent brain.

Back when my hair was longer (right now it is shorn in grief,) I brushed it out with spray-in cat shampoo - it worked! Also: combing with a good metal comb and wiping my skin down with a warm, damp, soapy facecloth is soothing as well as effective. Hygiene doesn't have to look the same for everybody.

Using a gentle kids' flouride mouthwash instead of brushing my teeth, because science hasn't so far shown brushing to actually make a difference anyway. (Flossing, using flouride and eating less sugar does though. I struggle with the latter. I'm still eating my feelings a little and my incompetent thyroid doesn't help.) Using kids dental hygiene products because the harsh menthol in most adult ones burn my mouth, making toothcare prohibitively painful.

There's more but it's a stretch enough just talking about these things. I always feel like people think me a fruitcake when they hear that I struggle with these things that are so easy for everyone else.

My poor mom who once hiked more than 20 kilometres at a time in a day over rough terrain spent her final years gradually becoming more and more physically disabled. In the end she could no longer even get up. To all the other disabled souls out there: I see you and I will hold the door open for you should we ever meet in person. Being us is so hard. I send you love and hugs from afar. Being gaslit is the worst.

shout out to “gross” disabled people.

people who can’t shower/bathe people who can’t shave people who can’t wash their clothes people who need help going to the bathroom people who have nasty habits (biting nails, picking nose, etc) people who can’t brush their teeth people who can’t go to the doctor people who can’t clean their room people who can’t make their beds people who vomit a lot people who wet the bed people who constantly have diarrhea people who’s physical deformities are seen as repulsive

and every other kind of person I missed that deserves to be here too.

you are people, first and foremost. your thoughts deserve to be heard, discussed, acknowledged, no matter what. you are not lesser. you are just another person. you should never be ignored for what you can/can’t do. you deserve care.

to abled people: check yourself. make sure you listen. and you can reblog, just don’t derail. maybe don’t add on, either.

[tehuti88-art]

7/19/24: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's characters from my anthro WWII storyline are Rebekkah Schindel, without head covering and with head covering, and Hanna Schindel. They're the wife and young daughter of Isaak Schindel, who I never posted here but he's in my art blog (1/27/23). Rebekkah is pregnant when her husband is imprisoned for defending them so he doesn't get to meet Hanna until much later. There'll be more about them later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se.

Regarding their design: Rebekkah is a German spaniel and always wears the head kerchief out in public. Hanna is nearsighted and wears really oversized, secondhand spectacles since they're poor; Isaak is a boxer (uh, the dog, not the profession), so Hanna takes after both parents. Her design's a bit iffy but she's kind of an awkward-looking kid so maybe it fits.

TUMBLR EDIT: Most of Rebekkah's and Hanna's part of the story has already been outlined in Isaak Schindel's entry; Schindel himself is the primary character of the trio, so their background details are mostly undeveloped. The rest of this entry will be written individually to avoid repetition.

Not much to say about Hanna, she's just a little kid. I'm unsure of her age as I'm unsure how long her father spends in the labor camp, though she's likely older than I had originally envisioned, as it seems Schindel ends up in the camp not long after(?) Dannecker takes over, which is pretty early on, and remains until Reinhardt orders the gates opened as Allied forces are taking the city. Given the extended timeline of the war in my story, this could be up to around ten years or so. (I know inmates of camps often didn't survive beyond a few weeks to a few months. Schindel remains alive for as long as he does as he serves as kapo, so he isn't starved (too much), beaten, or worked to death, or executed.)

My brain doesn't picture Hanna as that old, so, maybe, as I mentioned, this is partly due to her just being awkward looking. I originally imagined her as blond, but that makes no sense, perhaps my mind just conflated her with another Jewish child character who IS young and blond, Gabriele Zweifel. In any case, no matter what her age, Hanna is half German spaniel, half boxer, though takes largely after her father Isaak. Her boxer features are prominent, including a bit of an underbite, a snubbish nose, more rust/tan-colored fur, black hair, and a short, chunky build. (Schindel is stocky and short, shorter even than Rebekkah, but physically strong.) The features she inherits from her mother, meanwhile, are her lack of black facial mask, somewhat longer fur on her ears and maybe tail, and her curly hair. Her eyes are sort of halfway between her mother's golden-brown and her father's hazel, though closer to the latter. Her hair isn't very long, and she wears these big, goofy-looking spectacles as she's quite nearsighted (her mother frets over her odd behavior when she's still barely more than a baby, until a doctor friend determines that Hanna simply can't see well, and gives her an old pair of adult spectacles to use until the family can come out of hiding and get a proper checkup), so she's definitely not very feminine or girlish; she might even be a bit of a tomboy. Still, when Rebekkah invites her estranged husband back home to stay (see HER ENTRY), and Hanna hugs her father for the first time, Schindel rubs tears from his eyes and tells Rebekkah that she's beautiful and "takes after you," to which Rebekkah tearfully smiles and says, "I thought she takes after you." "Doesn't matter," Schindel replies, "she's beautiful."

Obviously, both mother and father care for her deeply, and endanger their own lives to keep her safe. Schindel takes increasingly shady and dangerous jobs to provide for his pregnant wife while they're still living in the ghetto, accidentally kills a ghetto policeman while defending Rebekkah and is caught while she escapes, and then assumes the detestable role of Lagerälteste, or kapo, while in the camp--keeping his fellow prisoners in line, and often intimidating or even beating them--on the orders of the commandant, Ernst Dannecker. (This job entitles him to a better bunk, food, clothing, and treatment from the SS, yet doesn't quite excuse him from Dannecker's psychological torture.) His antagonistic duties lessen under Dannecker's replacement, Hasso Reinhardt, who often puts him to work running errands within the administration building, and treats him so much more favorably than Dannecker did that Schindel remains behind when a wounded Reinhardt orders the gates opened, and tries to protect him from the arriving Allied troops. Reinhardt ends up having to vouch for Schindel, as the soldiers can't believe an inmate would stick around to try to help the commandant; Schindel actually bursts into tears when Reinhardt is taken into Allied custody as a war criminal and taken away. He's soon set free after it's determined that he's indeed a prisoner, yet it's a while before he can return to Rebekkah and Hanna, due to the harsh stigma against him for his own wartime activities; he nearly commits suicide, yet decides instead to find a job and try to keep going until he might get a second chance to reconcile with Rebekkah.

Rebekkah, meanwhile, is the brains who helps plot out her and her husband's half-successful escape from the ghetto--at Schindel's request, as he knows she's "the smart one"--and, near term, she has to go on the run without him, and then into hiding with extended family, throughout the war. Acquaintances on the outside help provide for her and Hanna, once she's born, and keep the family informed; through them Rebekkah learns of Schindel's "promotion" in the camp. She's overjoyed to learn that he's alive, yet distraught to learn at what price; similar to Schindel, the thought of Hanna needing her is largely what keeps her going, so both parents, despite the distance between them, keep their daughter in mind as their motivation. Rebekkah manages to keep Hanna safe until the war's end, when friends provide her with funding and the two move into a tiny house in a newly constructed neighborhood near the city's edge. After she reconciles with her husband, he moves in and provides for the little family with his typesetting job.

Hanna is active and curious, doesn't talk much (another reason I imagined her as a lot younger), but is quite affectionate and emotionally demonstrative with her parents; i. e., she's a hugger. Loves hugging. I guess this is how she best communicates. Perhaps she has some sort of mild(?) learning/developmental issue (a thought just struck me, she reminds me somewhat of children I've encountered with Down syndrome--they were always the nicest, sweetest kids I met, just utterly accepting, unlike most of my peers); she's not stupid, but she's not bright, either. Yet she's very sweet, loves exploring the world around her, and hugs her parents frequently, including her mother while she's preparing supper ("Liebling, you have to let me work!" Rebekkah protests), and her father when he leaves for work early every morning (Schindel never, ever protests, just hugs her as tight as he can in return--"My sweet little Hanna! Be good to your Mutter, ja?"). She's definitely a daddy's girl, and Schindel doesn't mind that at all, no matter how odd looking or acting she is, he adores her to bits.

I don't think the Schindels ever have any other children; I'm pretty sure Hanna is an only child. I imagine Rebekkah feels wistful about this, having wanted a big family no matter how impoverished they may have once been (they're better off after the war than before, but are never well off), though Schindel is happy and content as they are: "We have the perfect daughter, the perfect family, what more do we need...?" And indeed, when Hanna pops back into the room, hands dirty from digging in the dirt, and soils both parents' clothes while throwing her arms around them--"Ah!--Hanna Liebling!--my dress!" Rebekkah exclaims, trying, and failing, not to laugh, while Schindel hugs her back and gets ink on her--they have to agree, their family, while small, is just perfect.

[Hanna Schindel 2024 [‎Friday, ‎July ‎19, ‎2024, ‏‎12:00:33 AM]]

[fyrefrostanimus]

Nightmare'd Evans

Even if these designs are nowhere near done (the only two designs of ANY of the Nightmares I have completely sketched are Nightmare Fredbear and Nightmare himself) I might as well post what I have as of Halloween!

So I always thought that Evan (or Chris, as he was known as for the longest time) ended up trapped in nightmare purgatory for some reason. Only when GoldenDuo came along did I really change my mind, but I still really like the idea even though he's my favorite character in FNaF. I guess that if I love a character, I make their life hell.

I already had a self-indulgent AU where the Nightmares stopped messing with him after a while (he no longer had a heartbeat, and that's what mostly got their attention). But I never really considered what would have happened in that context if he'd managed to get close to one of them. Really the little sketch I did of Nightmarionne Evan made me think about that and I decided to at least do the rest of the Nightmares (maybe the Jack-O's in November? still pumpkin pie season then) with that idea with some trivia about each one because I overthink this stuff a lot.

Should be very obvious that these aren't meant as canon. They're goofy little sketches that may end up as part of an AU. Who knows honestly.

There's going to be exposed bone/muscle in some of these and a fair bit of body horror at the end, but I'll put those under a cut since it's a minority compared to the rest.

Nightmare Chica'd Evan

Since I wanted to base Nightmare Chica in general on a velociraptor/vaguely raptor-like dinosaur, I could go absolutely nuts with this design. The main decision for Evan's design based on her was "does he have full hands connected to his arm wings or does he just have a widdle thumb that can't do much or anything?". I ended up settling for the latter because it's just funny to me.

Trivia

Evan can't fly but he sure thought he could at first. He's kinda peeved that he lost access to his fingers but isn't able to fly but he's at least figured out how to pick up a crayon and draw.

Those sharp claws on his feets can do serious damage so don't piss him off or scare him. Luckily he's more apt to bite.

Bouncing off that last point, being like this (like a lot of the other Nightmare'd designs) affects his fight-or-flight response. Here, Evan's more likely to defend himself with a bite before recoiling and asking himself what he just did.

Nightmare Bonnie'd Evan

I've always been iffy on the basic design for Nightmare Bonnie in general, since unlike the others there's no real inspiration you can draw from. There's Monty Python and the Holy Grail's killer rabbit, but he already has the personality and I wanted to keep the canon color scheme. The problem wasn't Evan's design but just Bonnie's.

Trivia

Evan can jump pretty high/far with the rabbit legs, so he can get around fast. You'd lose track of him easy and that's how he'll manage to spook you.

He will hear you coming. Don't even attempt to sneak up behind him because those radar dishes on his head will pick up on where you are and he'll look.

He has funny little fangies that often stick out of the corners of his mouth since they're too big to hide completely while also being comfortable for him.

Evan's much more likely to kick. With how strong his legs are it could break a bone if it hits the right spot. (He's basically a kangaroo)

Nightmare Freddy'd Evan

Not much to say here except that this would probably be the 2nd/3rd most easy Nightmare'd version for Evan to access. If he cuddles up with the Freddles enough he's pretty much just another of them.

Trivia

The tiny bear poof tail Evan has does wag when he's happy but you can only see it from behind.

Evan's main response to fear remains to curl up into a ball and cry. The difference is that you now have to deal with the papa bear.

Nightmare Fredbear'd Evan

The first complete sketch of the group! Another that would be pretty easy for Evan to access (mainly because these two are pretty closely connected with Nightmare Fredbear coming from Evan's fear of Fredbear). I kept Nightmare Fredbear's design close to canon, since I really liked most of the elements of his design and thought they made sense.

Trivia

Evan is really uncomfortable the mouth on his stomach. It doesn't do much, but he probably finds some way to tape it shut so he doesn't have to think about it.

His neck fluff is nice and warm, at least that's a plus.

Evan doesn't really have much of a fear response like this. He may jump a bit, but it's not something big like the other Nightmare'ds.

Nightmare'd Evan

How would Evan even get to this point, to be honest? Design-wise, I decided that Nightmare as a representation of death from the Bite of '83 was a good basis, but I'm not much of a fan of the semi-transparency with a brain inside. It's a cool detail but it's not my cup of tea. But since I can make my own design, I went for a tooth-centric idea. Unlike Nightmare Fredbear, Nightmare doesn't have an extra mouth: he just has a lot of teeth growing out of him like horns, spikes, or sometimes even armor. The head teeth specifically resemble a crown for the heck of it.

Trivia

Evan's little tooth crown is made up of basically baby teeth! If he were still aging they would probably fall out and grow bigger full-size ones, but that's not happening. Only the canines are actually long enough to show through his fluffy hair.

He has longer claws than the other Nightmare'ds, not counting Foxy's hook-claws.

He has two rows of teeth. It's definitely hard to see but they're there and they're still pretty sharp despite being smaller.

Evan defaults to intimidation in this design. He's a little to small to accomplish that, but he tries and that's what matters.

And now we're onto the one with exposed muscle/bone and body horror. The body horror is lower down, but both have the formerly mentioned anatomical attributes.

Nightmare Foxy'd Evan

You know how Nightmare Freddy and Nightmare Fredbear are tied/undecided on 2nd/3rd place? First place of easiest to access actually goes to Nightmare Foxy. Headcanon in this case is that so much of Nightmare Foxy's behavior comes from being jumpscared by an actual person that he feels compassion to a degree, so there's your explanation. Only other addition is that Nm. Foxy's eye covering is torn bedsheets.

Trivia

Evan has slightly longer claws on the hand where Nightmare Foxy's hook is than on the other hand.

He has catlike pupils that contract into slits when you shine a light into them suddenly. He hates sudden bright flashes since it screws up his vision for a bit afterwards.

The lack of skin around his mouth and only having the muscles needed to open and close his jaws makes him really bad at showing facial expressions (His remaining eye can still squint/close). Just look at the ears and tail to tell: he's like a dog.

He got the long tongue and has managed to stick it in his nose hole once. He hasn't done that since getting weird looks from everyone around him.

Evan's more likely to run like this. It's in Foxy's general nature to run around, so he probably has high energy (he'd love playing tag if anyone would end up visiting).

Nightmare Mangle'd Evan

It's body horror time again, folks! I guess getting bold for day 27 of Apoctober and attempting three heads paid off, since it makes drawing two easier. I knew I wanted Nightmare Mangle's design in general to look plain wrong. Mangle got screwed up in Kid's Cove, so why would the nightmare realistic version look any sort of normal? The heads aren't "one fox and one endo" but I thought the funhouse mirror/old circus freakshow idea fit the rather bright white-and-pink color better than anything else here.

Trivia

Evan definitely hates this Nightmare'd version the most. Sure, he doesn't like having a mouth on his stomach when he's Nightmare Fredbear'd, but a mouth that doesn't really do anything is way better than a whole other head that's essentially a younger brother attached to his body (on other terms, he's starting to understand why Michael didn't like being stuck watching him all day every day). And we haven't talked about the awkward way one of his legs splits at the knee (at least I think it's the knee but it's digitigrade legs and I can't quite tell), resulting in two other legs: one under his control, and the other under control of his other head. Plus the third arm pokes him in the face a lot and he can't actually stop it from trying.

His shirt actually rips when he ends up in this form, although if he were to switch to any other form somehow it would mend (ghost logic).

If you thought Nightmare Foxy'd Evan was bad at facial expressions, now he can't even blink so you have to rely on just body language to tell how he's feeling if he doesn't tell you.

If scared, Evan will just freeze and shiver like a chihuahua. He can't run as well, so maybe you won't see him if he doesn't move?

TL;DR please help him he wants some cuddles

If you have any questions about these, please ask. I'd love to talk about them or put them in silly situations (or just draw them in general).

[queenangst]

imagine if lou failed that charisma saving throw… in a different game, a helpless pinocchio could do nothing but watch the stepmother devour his father.

the fact that, until the reveal, he saw her as his mom?? his complicated, weird mom with a past (“all moms have pasts”)??? hurts. what gets me is that, between looking at the monster that ruined his happy ending and the entity holding his father hostage, he turned to the latter “in the childlike way that Pinocchio is young” because she was his maternal figure.

HE’S JUST A LITTLE BOY I CAN’T

i did have this thought during the episode though, what i'm worried is going to happen is now that pinocchio is presumably free from stepmother's control that she'll just devour or kill geppetto... since pinocchio is no longer useful to her, geppetto isn't useful to her either - since he's always been a tool to keep pinocchio compliant. and since someone brought it up to me, i think geppetto is still alive up to this point, considering it was his blood that boosted pinocchio's powers in episode 4, and she's had no reason to kill him... but now she may not have a reason to keep him alive.

and yeah every episode as we see more and more of pinocchio interacting with stepmother or talking about her my heart really breaks. imo i've been interpreting pinocchio as accepting of his situation because he knows he has to, bc stepmother is 'taking care' of geppetto. some people have said pinocchio is a bit naive or trusting towards stepmother, but i dont think so... i think he just knows his own position with her. you can really see it in e4 when they're talking post-death that... in my opinion, pinocchio is acutely aware of his position and how little power and agency he had at that point. and this episode, when he was talking to miss muffet - he described how it was all or nothing. all responsibility. that how he sees his own story is that he needed to (and was forced to) grow up and that he can't be a little kid and have fun. combined with the times of shadow and how it was so important that pinocchio needed to be able to lie, that he would break off his own nose... is just really awful and telling. and when stepmother gave him pinocchi-crow, partly as a familiar and partly so she could watch him, he admittedly hated it.

but also, he's never had a maternal figure before. he called her mom. he consistently downplayed and left out information about her to his friends (partly, i think, to protect them/to keep his business to himself with geppetto, and partly for her sake, too). i don't think pinocchio loves her, not the way he loves his father. but as he said, she's helped him and given him gifts. she has looked after him to an extent. obviously from the outside this is abuse and manipulation, and pinocchio is aware of some of that, but i think he does care for her in some way.

and ultimately he is a kid. he's just a boy. a boy on strings.