#storytime with hope

[ofstormsandfire]

so my stepfather (who shall henceforth be referred to as Bob The Bastard, because his name is bob and he is a bastard) is under the impression that he bought a copy of goncharov online for fifteen dollars a couple of days ago.

I am not on speaking terms with Bob The Bastard, to be clear. I convinced my mother that it was a real movie and she informed me of that.

obviously, Bob The Bastard cannot have actually gotten his hands on a copy of goncharov, because goncharov did not exist last week. given his track record of always needing to have the latest greatest thing, this means one of a few things:

A) he knows that goncharov isn't a real movie and is purposefully playing along in an attempt to be Hip With The Kids, unaware that his favored pastime of being a dick and a control freak means he will never, ever be truly Hip With The Kids.

B) he does not know that goncharov isn't a real movie and someone actually managed to sell this moron a copy of a movie that doesn't exist, in which case I am incredibly curious as to what he actually bought.

C) he does not know that goncharov isn't a real movie but, in an attempt to not be clowned on by the stepdaughter that makes no attempts of hiding the fact that she despises him, is claiming that he has heard of it and currently scouring the internet for a copy.

D) mom is just straight up lying to my face and has not brought this up with Bob The Bastard at all. she is well aware that I despise this man and could be lying in an attempt to make him seem cooler. I highly doubt she has any idea that goncharov isn't a real movie, because she is bad enough with computers that she doesn't know how tabs work in a web browser.

obviously, I'm hoping for option B, because my shitty stepdad getting scammed out of even fifteen dollars is hilarious, or option C. I doubt he's on tumblr because he wouldn't last five minutes here, but it's possible he found out somehow from it breaching containment.

anyway. one way or another, this should be funny, and I am very much open to suggestions for further clowning on Bob The Bastard that do not involve me actually getting back into contact with him.

[jun-hug]

FUCK ME bro I'm actually so mad at myself

so I'm in train waiting for departure and as the seat beside me was free naturally MOST DEVASTATINGLY BEAUTIFUL WOMAN JUST ask me if I mind. no I certainly didn't. And usually I wouldn't look twice at the person I'm madly fallen at the first look at in love with because I'm respectful (asocial). But As fate would have it, a week ago I decorated my phone case with handmade stickers including a rainbow version of junimo. As fate would have it SHE KNEW ABOUT STARDEW VALLEY AND tapped my shoulder just to say that to me and I almost died right then right there she's talking to me. I can't look her in her eyes longer than one fifth of a second but I know they're beautiful and now hold interest AS I SAy "ahahaaahaha yeah gonna play todaaay, made them stickers myself actually" very awkwardly. She looks like she's amazed???? as if. well I'm deep in my panic I had to make sure nothing I say is slurred (I failed) I laugh (awkwardly). THEN she says "my, you gotta open a business" - and now I will, angelic stranger, just because you said so. Then she says she loves playing too, especially Sebastian, and I agree cus Sebastian is in fact very nic nice BUT THEN MY NO BRAIN NO FILTER MOUTH says "now I'm playing Haley as love intresdsd" and she looks at me SHE LOOKS AT ME. I know I'm red as hell by that point and I can't take it anymore because if I stay any longer I'm going to become a puddle of blush and won't be able to utter no intelligible sound. I say I have to go it's my station (it's not, mines the next one) but with the last droplets of my courage I wish her a nice day and she said same to you and I went.

I got back home on foot and I'm still shaking and blushing.

I never got her name. And I'm probably not gonna meet her again ever and I'm about to think about this for the next two weeks.

Thank you for listening to my tragic social skills story.

[bylrndgm]

JULIE AND THE PHANTOMS (2020) // JULIE E OS FANTASMAS (2011) 1.01 - Wake Up // 1.01 - Enfrentando Fantasmas -> Julie meets the Band.

[dreaming-like-a-girl]

When my partner and I first got together, I hated how I looked.

Constant bullying had destroyed my self esteem, and paired with that I'd had a major injury while skateboarding that prevented me from doing any physical activity, so I was feeling unhealthy too.

Early on, he'd get this dreamy expression when he looked at me, and I'd shrug it off, laugh, change the subject any way I could. I thought he was making it up. Now, sometimes, if I'm very lucky, I can look in the mirror and see myself how he sees me.

He'd send me selfies, just him smiling into the camera, even though I knew he didn't like taking photos of himself, so I started to send them in return. At first, I'd avoid looking at them before I hit send. Then I started taking them more and more. Now, I look at those photos and see my smile, and think they're the best and happiest I ever look in any photos. I don't delete them anymore.

As an artist, I've always pushed myself to do better, falling into the habits of comparing myself with others. I've never given up, but I'd never been as proud of my work as I was when he started complimenting it. He wanted to keep every scribbled sticky note I'd give him, no matter how silly, treating them like treasure and stowing them away. He'd be in awe when I gifted him proper artworks, putting them straight on his wall. Now I post my art online and I'm pursuing a career in art with confidence.

When I first confided in him that, despite being a cis woman, I'd felt a huge sense of dysphoria related to my boobs since a very young age, he was immediately understanding. First, he helped me try sports bras, and I felt a huge weight had lifted off my shoulders. Recently, he's introduced me to trans tape, and this is the closest I've ever felt to being myself.

Too scared to talk to my GP about mental health, my partner helped me come up with a plan of what I wanted to say and finally convinced me to go, coming with me and helping when I got stuck. Hes been helping me through the long but rewarding trek that has been therapy ever since.

Now that I'm nearing the tail end of my physical recovery, I've been terrified to start skating again, slowly chipping away at the fear with my physiotherapist. But my partner has decided he wants me to teach him to skate, so now we're going to learn together.

I've got a long way to go and I'm still figuring myself out, but I'm so lucky and happy that I'm not on this journey alone.

[gilears]

lost & found

gorgug-centric gen fic, 7k, slice of life

The bad kids are notably not very good at checking the Hangvan’s lost and found bin for their missing items. Every so often, Gorgug takes it upon himself to clean it out. (or: 5 times Gorgug returned an item from the Hangvan’s lost and found, and 1 time something was returned to him.) (read here on ao3)

[paro-h]

Homecoming

This is a place of comfort and safety.

This a place where families are whole.

This a place utopian and endless.

This is someone’s soul.

Holding forever a gentle gaze.

Holding yourself in warm embrace.

Looking through a muslin haze.

Open with a smiling face.

[thebestworstidea]

TSS Storytime!

Once again, I joined the @tss-storytime event.

This year I was paired with @glacierruler and their story Jenga a story about magic, prejudice and dog walking. Well, more than that, but it wouldn't do to just repeat their description. More art under the cut.

[innervoiceartblog]

[moss-sprout]

Fizz: *insults Siren, calling him selfish and pathetic for deciding not to kill himself*

Kappa: Yo wtf, stay away from us. I'm not helping you with anything

Fizz:

[drowsydomme]

somehow it's an unspoken rule that i'm the person in my social circles who orders for everyone while at a restaurant/cafe which is fine, right, except that occasionally a server/barista will get flustered because they like my voice so much 🥴

[aritany]

I want to hear a wedding story! (Only if u want to share ofc)

GOODNESS.

where to begin. notably, the funniest part of this story is the wedding night (no, not in the way you're thinking), so stick around for that.

previous context is the divorce story, which is significantly less funny, but it does talk about boobs, so, you know.

buckle up, folks.

okay pov you're me. you're 19. your now-fiancé just proposed to you in Front Of Your Mother, with whom you have a notably Contentious Relationship. you do not take this for the red flag that it is. instead, you start planning a wedding.

also, you're in university, because you're 19, and you're taking seven courses and your now-fiancé Wants To Fuck, (as many young christian men do, also because you, as previously mentioned in divorce story, have excellent tits) so this wedding is happening in 6 months.

weddings are very expensive. notably. you, being practical, and also very nearly friendless, are keen on a <30 person event. close friends and family only. your now-fiancé, on the other hand, knows Probably All Eight Billion People On The Planet, and so if it were not for budgetary reasons, would very much like to hold a 300+ person shebang. fortunately, budgets. 130 people on the guest list, all of a sudden. you mourn your intimate wedding dream privately.

as a rule, wedding planning is very stressful, but fortunately, your now-fiancé is an Exceptional Event Planner, so he's very eager to take over on the planning, including (and this is important), wedding night accommodations.

you realize very quickly into the planning process that this wedding is exceptionally transparently a way for your mother (youngest girl of 5) to show off to her siblings (all wealthy, she married a musician, life's rough, perhaps chill out, arlene) and as such, Choices Are Being Made. you are very nervously trying to not butt heads with her, considering the aforementioned Contentious Relationship, and previous experience/fear for your life expectancy.

believe it or not, your mother marrying a musician was an important point, because they popped out several musician babies to form the Von Trapp Family Nightmare of their dreams, and as such, your mother reminds you, there are expectations in place! people are practically coming to the wedding for the music! she tells you and then gets very huffy and insists it's a joke. you let her hire a guitarist for the prelude, because, whatever.

it is possible, due to your as-yet-undiscovered autismal nature, that you are not doing as well as you might think you are at disguising that you're not all that pleased, but overall you stuff it down. compromise is a part of life, whatever. more on this later.

the wedding day approacheth. you throw a bachelorette party with 5 people including your 15 year old sibling, because you are very cool with lots of friends. you get very smashed. mother is not pleased, due to the presence of said sibling, which is perhaps her only valid moment in this story. sorry, noa.

the night before the wedding is where things get a little bit spicy. because of the Contentious Relationship, you can smell a storm coming from a mile away, but all you know for sure is that your mother is Not Pleased With You, which is very stressful until about eleven pm, when your father elects to pull you aside to Have A Chat.

in said Chat, he tells you that you could really do a lot more to make your mother feel more special during the following day. you say, father? on my wedding day? he, also autismal, also afraid of your mother, says, you heard me. you ponder this, and then end up explaining awkwardly and painstakingly why you will not be doing this, due to the Contentious Relationship, Also, Abuse. your father, now sitting with the brand-new information that his wife Sucks, Like, Severely, doubles down.

through the balcony window, your mother sees you Having A Chat. assumedly, she feels very left out. you smell danger so you go inside to mitigate. she understands that she is the topic of discussion, and, i shit you not, throws everything she's holding onto the floor and marches out of the room.

you do not see her until forty-five seconds before the ceremony. instead, you go to your room, and you cry so hard you give yourself a nosebleed, and you sleep for about three hours.

wedding's a bit of a blur. mostly you remember eating bread in a golf cart after the ceremony, and that during the reception, your dress was so uncomfortable that it overshadowed almost everything else. also, you and your dad (who does not dance) choreographed a whole 5 minute deal to one of your favourite songs for your father-daughter dance and now you can't hear it without feeling like you're going to throw up, due to the bigotry.

NOW.

let's get to the juice.

you are ready to leave about .3 seconds into the reception, but it's sort of the whole deal that this is The Party that you're supposed to really stick around for, like, the whole time. so you are VERY brave. you dance like nobody's watching, or whatever. (you dance like everybody you know and respect is watching, because they are.)

eventually, you get to leave this party. you drive away in your car together, and you're very newly married, which is, naturally, very exciting.

now, earlier, i said we'd revisit compromise. here's where that's going to happen. see, when you're planning a wedding, you have to be very careful about the budget. your fiancé-turned-husband also happens to be very frugal, a quality that is frequently very useful, however.

However.

apparently, the budget didn't extend to a very nice wedding night. and, like, you're you. you're honestly just very relieved to not be financially and emotionally dependent on your mother, for aforementioned and i hope deeply obvious reasons. you do not have high expectations. you're not expectation champagne, or anything.

however, you're also not expecting to pull up to a comfort inn in the industrial area of downtown, an institution so fine that it is now Permanently Closed. you, in your terribly uncomfortable wedding dress, traipse into reception, where the receptionist proceeds to stay on the phone for 45 minutes.

eventually, she gives you your room key and tells you that your room is in the annex.

the annex, you think. that could be nice. maybe that's a special building. and it is. oh, it is special. you lug yourself and your suitcases across the parking lot to the annex, a grey building with grey windows that looks a little bit like a hidey-hole for a serial killer. you open the door.

inside, a double bed. it is concave. in the corner, a dog bed.

you realize very abruptly that for you, on your wedding night, with intention of Consummation™, YOUR FRESH HUSBAND HAS BOOKED FOR YOU THE ROOM THAT THEY GIVE YOU WHEN YOU SAY YOU'RE TRAVELING WITH A DOG.

/fin.

[siberian-xanadu]

You know it’s probably a good thing I never got to go to a Rush concert because I probably would’ve been SOBBING through the whole thing and annoying everyone else around me <- person who cries watching live videos because I’m That Insane

[pm-00]

I am so excited for that "post-travel" period of time where everyone is settled back home and they sit down and do a storytime, show pictures or react to videos and posts about the trip.

And the "back at the server" phase were those who travelled together spend an hour reminiscing and complementing stories together, repeating the new inside jokes and being super in-sync and the ones that didn't travel together share stories about their respective little adventure and repeat again and again how they wish the other person was there too.

[gilears]

hang ups and hanging out: how to successfully exit a summer paranoia spiral

riz and the bad kids (gen), 4.1k, friendship slice of life

It’s summer, and it’s getting dire. Riz’s mom tells him he needs to relax. Last time he relaxed on purpose, he relaxed into a fever dream of every personal problem he’s ever had, and he only narrowly avoided addressing it then because he had more pressing things going on. Frankly, he’s avoiding it even more narrowly now. The last time he relaxed not on purpose, he was in a tree in Fallinel getting rocked to sleep. And, well— Maybe he could do that. (or: a “healthy” and “regular” amount of teenage angst, the value of being able to hand sew, and the delicate art of relaxation.) (read on ao3)

[phantom-fleetways]

I loved your neo chaos sonic au

If it's okay to ask could you tell us more about it👀👀

Oh! Of course!

Frankly I haven't done much world building for it, since I have other AUs who are utter attention whores and life just LOVES to make me unable to draw for some stupid reason or another. But I do have some simple concepts I would love to share! If you feel like you can bare my aimless rambling, feel free to read the rest under the cut.

First off, setting. Generally speaking, Neo Chaos Sonic's timeline takes place after the events of Season 2's finale and the early portion of season 3's episode one.

But instead of Building Alpha Grim Sonic after a lot of dilly dallying on Nine's part, he decides to fight fire with fire. (And maybe he's a little scared of being alone, although he would never admit it.)

So he rebuilds Chaos Sonic instead. And to insure that he'll be able to beat Sonic, Nine decided to give him untethered access to the Paradox Prism.

This of course leads to Chaos Sonic deeming his normal build being to... Easy to deal with. And he is allowed a modicum of freewill by Nine. So who is he if he does not ascend to godhood to ensure the plan's execution? It's gonna be a temporary upgrade. And Nine did give him full access to the Paradox Prism.

Leading to this beautiful outcome!

It's a MAJOR upgrade. And it comes with a hip skirt! And who is she to go against a hip skirt?

After choosing a new form of befitting of his newly born Goddess status, NCS decides to make the Grim their perfect little paradise. Their powers are simple, as she is all powerful but not all knowing or anything.

NCS can change their appearance however she sees fit. Although due to his vanity, he mostly stays hedgehog robot shaped. And generally before war is brought to her doorstep, she just stands about as tall as NMS would. So they definitely Tower over Sonic and Nine easily. They also can pool liquid metal off of them and when the liquid metal touches the ground, they become Grim Sonic Troopers. All of which seem to reflect different small aspects of her personality. Also she has glitter beams and shit. He's a magical girl, they gotta have their glitter attacks.

After a while of their new arrangement, NCS stops referring to Nine as either "Best bud" or "Sir". And starts calling him Martyr or Prophet. Treating Nine as a prized possession and less like a friend or even someone they wish to protect and keep happy.

Nine isn't initially concerned about this though. Since he's certain that they are still loyal to him. Which is true, he is. But ultimately that loyalty does not outweigh her natural selfishness.

I believe that inevitably, there will come to pass a point where Neo Chaos Sonic decides to "sacrifice" Nine to herself. If only to make Sonic run a fool's errand. If you know ANYTHING about the ending of KH3 and the whole "Save the 7" segment with Riku? Like that. (For those who don't know, imagine Nine floating above an altar of some sort with his body partially transparent blue.)

I don't really know if Sonic and Co from prime would succeed, since I really just designed Neo Chaos Sonic for the sake of designing him. But I would say that in order to take down Neo, Sonic would need to brace the abyss™️ to find Shadow's missing Chaos Emerald. Since I'm a wedger a bet that Shadow would be logically able to use Chaos Control in the prism that Neo Chaos is using to power themselves. Buuut in order to do that, Shadow would have to get close enough.

There is the possiblity that allowing Sonic to shatter himself would fix everything too. But ultimately I have no clue cuz I just haven't thought far yet.

Overall, the AU is very shallow at the moment. And seeing as I have other far more complex AUs I'm working on, it might be this way for a while. So, I'm sorry about that! But I did enjoy rambling a bit, albeit a bit aimlessly.

I just really love this design and I really love how pretty they came out! Neo Chaos Sonic is a treat of a concept to me, since I adore Neo Metal Sonic. Favorite flavor of Mets to be honest. And I figured a Neo form for Chaos Sonic would do them good!

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Oh god.

This summer you sent our mutual friend a package, to get to me. An heirloom, a bit of camp history. Passed down to me.

And on that package, your phone number and address. Your phone number, that I had long deleted from my phone because the urge to call you was always too strong.

When I last saw you in person, you said that when you finally moved to the city it would be with your girlfriend. You would move in together. And surely, she would become your fiancee and then your wife.

There it is. On the package. Your new address, in the city.

I have to keep myself from calling you right now. You probably have my number blocked, and I truly don't know what I'd do if you answered. But I would give anything to hear your voice again.

Even if it's just you saying, "Hello? Who is this?" While her voice is in the background, asking you what you want for dinner.

At this point, I don't even need to be the voice in the background asking what you want for dinner.

I just wish I could be the voice on the other end of your phone call.