#tangle newsletter

[indierpgnewsletter]

There's Other Kinds Of GM Advice: Theatricality versus Transparency

(This first appeared on the Indie RPG Newsletter)

I find that broadly there are at least two kinds of GM advice – and they have a very different philosophy underpinning them.

The first kind of advice aims at all costs to maintain verisimilitude. It’s a solution that you can implement without breaking the players’ immersion in their characters. This can just be stuff like Matt Colville explaining that if your players are taking too long discussing plans, guess what, orcs attack! We’ve all probably played a game where people were going in circles and not able to decide what to do. If it looks like we’re not able to decide, we’re probably going to be relieved if the GM makes something happen to break the deadlock and prompt us back into the action.

(Historically, this kind of thing was taken to egregious lengths like Gary Gygax saying if players start acting uppity, have a rock fall on their head. It’s mostly gone now but reddit tells me that Cyberpunk Red which came out relatively recently still says something similar.)

The second flavor of advice involves breaking character and talking to your players directly. I know “talk to your players” is a mantra repeated so often that autocorrect suggests it as soon as you type the letter t. At its worst, this advice is vague and unhelpful. We’ve all considered talking frankly to people in our lives, we just find it awkward and hard and annoying. But, but, but – at its best, just describing the problem as you see it and escalating it from a character discussion to a player discussion will make it go away instantly. Like magic. (If you’re not sure what that means: In a previous issue, I discussed Jason Tocci’s excellent advice on escalating conversation in this way.)

And since the theatrical flavour of advice has the weight of history on its side and transparent advice keeps getting boiled down to mantra form, I thought I’d write down some examples of situations and some alternative ways to handle them:

Situation 1: The players are marines discussing whether to dive into the alien lair and recover their stolen engine (their main goal) or go and see if another missing team of marines is okay. There is only 45 minutes left and this is a one shot.

Theatrical: The other marines suddenly come on the radio and say, “hey we’re okay, please complete the mission.”

Transparent: “Hey, folks. There’s 45 minutes left. If we don’t do the alien lair now, we won’t be able to do it at all. Is that fine?”

Situation 2: The players are low-level fantasy nobodies who have a famous wizard friend. They’re about to tangle with some medium-level bad guy and decide to call in their wizard friend.

Theatrical: When the players try to contact her via a telepathic phone call / spell, she sounds breathless and says she’s busy doing something way more important like fighting a dragon.

Transparent: “Hey, folks. If we get the wizard in, she’ll absolutely make this fight a cakewalk. We won’t even need to roll initiative really. Is that what you want? Or would we rather have a fun fight?”

Situation 3: The players were having fun exploring when they meet a cool NPC (an android! an elf! an android elf!) who has this interesting backstory with an urgent, earth-shattering hook. They go along with the android elf because it seems more important but immediately look like they’re having less fun.

Theatrical: Narrate how the android elf meets a group of other android elves and have the elf say, “Hey, now that I have these folks helping me, you can leave it you want!”

Transparent: “Hey, folks. Talking to you as players here, do we want to stick with this whole android elf plot here? It does mean that we won’t do any open-ended exploration. Which would you prefer?” If they want to ditch the elf plot, you could just retcon it entirely or do the theatrical solution.

All of these situations have happened at my table. They’re all relatively low stakes and I think whichever way you handle it, it’ll probably be fine. But that said, some situations absolutely work better when done transparently so if you’ve never tried the transparent way, give it a shot. If immersion matters a lot to you, try it at the end of the session.

/End

PS. The theatrical options often still require the players to willingly suspend their disbelief and go with it. If a player didn’t play along, they might just say “I thought their radios weren’t working, otherwise we could’ve just contacted them before. Why can they suddenly contact us now?” or “Oh, the wizard is fighting a dragon right now. We can totally wait. There’s no reason we need to fight the bad guy right now.” And sometimes I can’t shut off that part of my brain either so I won’t judge. But if there’s a way to sidestep that situation even coming up, I’m going to take it every time.

[eenslaved]

BDSM erotica. Fictional characters over 18.

This was so fucked up.

Not for the first time, Ari wondered what the fuck she was doing. She took stock of her situation again.

While all her college friends were busy interning and building their networks and teeing up job offers — or summering in Europe on Daddy's yacht — she was here, still on campus. Providing menial labor and other more prurient services to a man twenty-five years older than her. 

So yeah, here she was, on her hands and knees, running a sponge over each kitchen tile like she was restoring a da Vinci. Oh and let's not forget, she was bra-less, in a thin and worn crop top baby tee that basically left her boobs hanging out, and denim shorts that were cut so high, they were basically underwear that showed the undercurve of her ass and rode into her crotch.

Being treated like a slave, when she wasn't being talked to like she was an airhead bimbo or some misbehaving girl.

She tensed as footsteps entered the kitchen. She could feel him staring at her, his gaze on her bowed head, her swinging breasts, her raised butt.

"Still not finished, Arielle?" His deep voice was shaming. "Is that needy pussy of yours distracting you, slut?"

The casual, degrading way he talked to her was so mortifying. "No, sir. I'm sorry. I'm almost finished."

"Did you do the laundry yet, slut?"

Oh no. She knew she had forgotten something.

"I...not yet."

He frowned. "You know I like my sheets line-dried in the sun, Arielle. And you wouldn't need to do the sheets quite so often if you weren't so...messy."

She felt almost light-headed with humiliation. And arousal. Because he was right, wasn't he? Last night he had tied her to the bed and spent over an hour fucking both her holes with two toys. When he finally let her come, she had squirted all over his hands and thoroughly soaked the bed while she quivered, overwrought with a shaming pleasure. 

"I'll get the laundry started right now," she offered.

He shook his head at her. "It's too late today, Arielle. You've missed the hottest part of the day already and the sheets won't dry as I like. You deserve to be punished for that, don't you?"

Ah! Why are you letting him do this to you?

"Yes, sir," Ari said humbly, from her knees at his feet.

"I'd like to hear you say it, Arielle."

"I deserve to be punished, sir."

"Bad slut," he said softly. "Come here. We'll take care of that punishment right now."

Ari followed him. Dread and need were all tangled up in her belly. 

He didn't draw out the punishment, once she was laid over his lap. Just brought his firm hand down on her ass in a blistering spanking. When it was over, he sat her, bottom stinging, over his thighs, so he could fondle her breasts under the joke of a top.

"You'll try harder tomorrow on your chores, won't you?"

"Yes, sir," she sniffled, squirming over his lap. 

"Good. You're a silly slut, Arielle, but I know you can do better."

Want more of my writing? Subscribe to my newsletter. Buy my books. Follow me on X.

[thewitchwolf]

Happy full moon, darlings. It's time for the fun to begin. The Sullivan coven of witches have long been the stewards of a magical forest that is home to various denizens, such as werewolves, vampires, spirits, and more. Recently, the forest's magic has become strained and corrupted, causing the Sullivan parents to seek answers with the fey, leaving their three daughters as caretakers in their stead. A decades-long peace agreement between the vampires and werewolves has grown in tension as two of the sisters find themselves tangled in their affections for a pair of bold and warmhearted wolves, the hypnotic charm of the head vampire, and their devotion to their magical duty. When Evie, the eldest daughter, is accidentally bitten by her new werewolf boyfriend, the sisters must work alongside their lycan suitors to uncover the truth of the forest's foggy past and the magic's corruption in order to save their lives and their loves before it is too late.

We are officially launching our Patreon for The Witch Wolf! This Patreon is meant to serve as a community hub and general support for the project. The webcomic will be posted for free here on tumblr every full moon in 8-10 page batches (though the release date is still a secret ooooh), so the Patreon is entirely optional. There will be lots of exciting BTS posted, though - including sketches, designs, world building, fics, little comics, and SMUT - as well as a monthly newsletter!

This is a massive passion project for us and we're so excited to share it with the world. Please know that the Patreon is for extras only, and whether you’d like to join us there or just stay to let us tell you a story, we are thrilled to welcome you to the forest of The Witch Wolf.

[jennamoran]

The Far Roofs: the Rats' Books of Names

cover art by Isip Xin

Hi!

Today I’m going to talk a little bit more about my forthcoming RPG, the Far Roofs. I’ve previously talked about

general principles,

the rats,

the campaign,

the Mysteries, and

my favorite Mystery.

Today, I want to talk about a key setting element:

The rats' "books of names."

So, the high concept here is pretty simple. The rats of this game are pretty cool, but not cool enough to deal with god-monsters on any kind of equal basis. The Mysteries aren't like Goliath to their David, at least not usually; they're more like Scylla and Charybdis to their Odysseus. Sometimes it's possible to negotiate. Sometimes it's possible to fight back. But a lot of the time, "winning" a confrontation with a Mystery is more about surviving. Making it through.

Except ...

Just like it was for human mariners, a situation where the whole environment they travel through is full of impossible horrors one just can't do anything about ... that's kind of untenable. Humans never made the sea safe, but they did learn to navigate it. They figured out how to sail, how to chart, how to not get constant scurvy, how to knot rigging, all that stuff.

In like fashion, the rats have this multi-generational project to, basically, nibble away at the "Mystery" part of the Mysteries. To not just survive their encounters, but to come away with a bit more information every time.

To learn, eventually, how to handle all of this stuff, all these monstrous divinities that haunt the Far Roofs.

The Books of Names, in short, are a sacred tradition of the rats and pretty much a defining feature of their interactions with the Mysteries. Most families of rats keep their own set. The shelves of the rats' great libraries overflow with huge and magnificently illuminated Books of Names—dozens or hundreds for any given Name. Over the generations, at a grievous cost, the rats are grinding down the impossible magic of the roofs into something comprehensible, something they can grapple with. To record truth, and insightful commentary, and eventually learn to live with even the greatest and most awful Mysteries.

What this all means to the rats is a little tangled. They worship the Mysteries, I think, and hunt them; they are hunted by the Mysteries in turn. They dream of one day defeating or destroying them, but I don’t think they’d like the world where they’d been destroyed. They are hammered into shape, both as individuals and a people, by the Mysteries, and I don’t think I can ever really fully express what these books, or the Mysteries themselves, mean to them.

They are rich, like cake, like wine, like a well-loved and annotated cookbook. They are generations of wisdom, bound in form.

To the rats, they are, I think, life itself.

Let me show you what an example is like! Like, what you might see opening up some rat family's Book on the Mystery Hoop Snake.

.

Quick Hoop Snake sketches, by Jenna

.

So your typical Book of Names is going to start with a couple of introductory pages, maybe some sketches or whatever, and then move on to what the rats call a Mystery's "heralds," the ... ways you know that the Mystery is near. The things that you see when it's interested in you, when it's considering haunting you, or just passing by. The things that it emerges from, in the world.

It'll usually start with a list, with lots of room left to go, like:

.

Heralds of Hoop Snake ...

* blurred vision * getting turned about * sudden light or sudden darkness * the sudden realization that something is, and has been, very wrong * * * * * ...

and then, like, a couple pages set aside to go into each of those more, with a mix of personal statements (often newsletter clippings, because the rats send these comments around) and summarized opinions or facts.

Like:

.

Blurred Vision

“I saw it on the road. Down the alley, past the milk crate, in front of that old cabinet someone left out on the street. I was rubbing my eyes, and they were a little blurry, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure I’d seen it, or what I’d seen. It was just this blur of colors rushing by, all these colors. And I thought, a flag? A mural? Someone’s shopping bag, caught by the wind? It wasn’t until I’d had that happen like three more times, these half-caught glimpses of color, in the rain, when I didn’t have my glasses on, from the corner of my eye, that I actually saw Hoop Snake direct.” — Alyona Waynwright, 2018

.

NOTES

Gavrilo writes that Hoop Snake lives in the confused sensorium. The world jumbles up, and Hoop Snake comes out.

Ioanna comments: “Little incongruities become bigger ones.”

Constantinope Volkov accidentally summoned Hoop Snake through an abstract in-progress painting. He could not later replicate this feat.

Elsibet Križ proposes a mechanism similar to the way that new, unknown scents temporarily seem like improbable combinations of the known—how your first encounter with a cat does not produce the sensation, “Ah, this is the smell of cat” but “oh no, my parents are being ripped apart. The world is shaking. Why is there peppermint?” You mistake the world, and Hoop Snake is there.

Meredith McCawley (human) comments that when she is very sleepy a pile of colored yarn can look like a snake to her; the passing lights of the cars, like eyes.

Kesterley Novác pushed on her eyelids to watch shapes spin. They got more and more detailed until one day she saw Hoop Snake! Trying to chase Hoop Snake into her eyes she wound up headbutting the wall.

.

Getting Turned Around

You are nodding along. You are small, they say. And meek. You are but a child. I will fix that for you, they say. You think, “Wait, what?” In that “Wait, what?” there is a snake. — Iodine Petrova, 2012

.

NOTES

Maria Augustine, Leverage Jordan, and Daisuke Ozlov attest this experience of Hoop Snake: “we are confused, and then, we are not confused. A snake takes its tail into its mouth, and rolls.”

Kaeda Vanagir was noted as having frequently become lost in the weeks before her June 1993 disappearance chasing after Hoop Snake. (May she one day return.)

Jezdimir Czerny likened the moment of seeing Hoop Snake to becoming turned around, to feeling like you know where you are and where you’re going, and then you look up, and you’re actually somewhere else.

Violeta Schulz was flung from a spinning ferris wheel and, before she landed, a snake burst from the bushes to, as the witnesses described it, “drink her down like wine.”

I found a Hoop Snake scale in a little store that I’ve never seen again.

Hoop Snake Scale

.

“I was literally just popping out to buy the news. Only, I hadn’t had my coffee yet, and somehow I wound up … I don’t even know where. It was a garden, up on the roofs, but it wasn’t a rat garden, and I don’t know where it is, and I can't find that place now. There was a colored banner, there, tied to a tree. It fluttered like a snake in the wind.” — Presley Weekes, 2014

.

Sudden light, by Jenna Moran

.

Sudden Light, or Sudden Darkness “There were noises in the dark. Thumping. Crashing. I thought it was the cats. My brain was so sleepy. I couldn’t put it together, except: oh, the cats got down here. We don’t even have cats. So I stagger out there. I’m not even dressed, just a long shirt on. I didn’t have my glasses on. Everything was just a blur. And I look at the cats, the thing I thought was cats, and like, for just a moment it was. For just a moment, it was cats, moving in the dark. Then it was ‘cats,’ like, one thing, one item, one animal, with two parts, that were shaped like cats. Like a dromedary, if cats were humps. It stuck its tail in its mouth. It began to roll away. ‘Like Hell,’ I said, but I didn’t give chase. I wasn’t dressed!” — Lucy Stokes (human), 2004

.

NOTES

Valery Merlin experienced frequent incidents of his electric lantern coming on unexpectedly and blinding his eyes, sometimes accompanied by a fulgurative scent. This ended when the flare of the light revealed a snake like a coiled spring; he fell over, the lantern broke, and the incident thus resolved.

Priscilla Augustine reports a summer cold that stuffed up her nose to the point of intermittent blindness, during which intervals objects would fall of their shelves, slithering or rolling noises echo through the halls, and glittering snake scales appear in unlikely places. Later, Hoop Snake appeared; when she complained that she could not chase it owing to her cold, it leapt up her sinus passages, cleared them out ... and vanished.

In 2007, Tsubasa Kysely reported such high levels of paparazzi harassment that “I can hardly see from all the flashing.” He would ultimately disappear in what is believed to be a Hoop Snake incident; may he one day return.

When our senses become unreliable, Eureka writes, the world becomes the inexplicable.

.

The Sudden Realization that Something Is, or Has Been, Very Wrong

“The funny thing was, that wasn’t the first time I saw the snake. It had already been there. It was in that picture frame, hanging over my bed: this picture of a snake. Sometimes it moved. It was in the background on this show I watched. I would go outside, and sit on the edge of the roof, and there’d be a snake there, all curled up with its tail in its mouth, and I’d say to it ‘hey.’ I had to keep moving it out of the sink. One time, I think, I walked into my house, but it wasn’t my house. It was the snake. And I still didn’t realize. I still wasn’t able to really process, here is something inexplicable. It was just part of the world I thought I knew, until one day, I looked at it with fresh eyes and went ‘oh my freaking saints, that is a snake.’ It was like it was laughing at me, when it stuck its tail in its mouth. Like it was making fun of me. I took a step towards it, and it rolled away. Another step. Another. But there wasn’t roof underneath me any more, so I fell.” — Mikhael Bygones, 2015

.

NOTES

Gavrilo writes that we often fail to recognize the presence of Hoop Snake in our lives until it has already been present for some time.

Meriadoc Ozoles was famous as “the Chasing Mayor” because she kept running after bits of colored string floating by in the breeze. It wasn’t until she caught one and it turned out to be Hoop Snake that people remembered that colored string doesn’t normally just float by all the time.

Maglev Brunsinick grew up in a burrow that turned out not to be real: he wandered out one day, and looked back, and there was only a snake. "I should have known," he says, "looking back, what with the way Mom and Dad were just internal organs. But, like, I was a kit?"

Torrin kept tripping over her grandmother's tail everywhere in the house. One day, she spilled hot oatmeal all over her grandmother's tail. "Oh no!" she said, and tried to clean it off, but her grandmother wasn't in the room. The tail wasn't reacting to the heat. Also, it was a snake tail. She dashed in to confront Hoop Snake; startled, it threw aside her grandmother's shawl, looked every which way in a panic, and then flung itself away down the drain.

Vasilisa writes: "What is reality but a snake we won't see?"

.

“At some point I realized that I did not work at the company. I think it was the looks people were giving me. Steve. Like, there was Steve, and he had this look in his eye like, ‘why is there a rat here. Why is the rat wearing a suit. Why is the rat carrying a folder with our third quarter projections.’ I was just strolling along, on top of my game and on top of the world, but I couldn’t help shriveling a little at all the looks. At this growing disorientation, like: Why is this place? What is it for? Why was I heading to my cubicle to spin around and around and around on my swivel chair when the skies were so blue; when the roofs were so high? Who even hired me? Who decided that this was the way life would be? Why do people who don’t do any work get paid so much more than us rats down here in the trenches who do? And the more I tried to just cope and keep moving, the louder the questions got inside my heart, until I spun around and I pointed and I said, ‘because I’m damn good at this, STEVE.’ He was so gentle. I was … I wasn’t expecting that he’d be so gentle. ‘If only,’ he said. ‘If only that was why anyone found their way here.’” — Rufica du Lac, 2016

.

Jenna Talking Again

It's basically that kind of thing! Plus a lot of blank room left for more.

After that section on the Heralds, it'd move on to the "weapons" of the Mystery, the way it hurts you, the way it messes around with your life; like, for Hoop Snake ...

.

The Weapons of Hoop Snake ...

* ridicule * confusion * anything you don't expect them to be * * * * ...

.

... but, I think I'll stop there for now.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse at the rats' Books of Names! Don't forget to check the kickstarter out!

[formulaforza]

daddy-daughter dance-- d.ricciardo

pairing: daniel ricciardo x reader word count: 770 a/n: just like. who else would I write this about yk?

He’s been talking about it for ages, dreaming about it since you found out you were having a girl. They still do those, right? He’s asked, said his sister went to one every year when she was young. 

They do, still do it, you learned when she was five, and a newsletter came home with her from school advertising it. Baby, look at this, you told him, tapped on the headline in the corner of the page. Father-daughter dance. 

It was a Saturday, and he’d made a whole day out of it. Woke up early, earlier than usual, and made her favorite breakfast, served it to her in bed, woke her up with a soft kiss on the forehead, moving her sweaty hair from her face. 

After breakfast, they go to the spa–get pedicures. Daniel sends you lots of pictures, even more videos of her giggling uncontrollably in the big chair. After much contemplation, she chooses rainbow nails, with rainbow sparkles. A classy decision, Daniel tells her from behind the camera in the video he sent, very smart. 

When they get home she gifts you with two sets of foam toe separators, says they’re for the next time the two of you have a girls night. You thank her, put them in the bin that all of your nail polish is in, and then you start on her hair. 

She has his curls, long and thick and  wild and unruly. They’ve never been easy to tame. You wet them down, soak them with a spray bottle and slowly work through the tangles. “Are you excited to go to the dance with daddy?” You asked her, tugged on her hair and apologized. 

“I’m so excited!” She told you, mirrored your actions on the Barbie doll in her lap. “Me’s and Daddy will has so much fun.”

“You and Daddy will have so much fun.” You nod, re-align the part of her hair. “Daddy is sooo excited, too.”

“Really?” She says, shoots her eyes up to meet your in the mirror. 

You smile at her smile, at the crooked baby teeth and apple cheeks. “Oh, yeah.” You tell her, nod, reach for the curl cream. “The only thing he loves more than dancing is you.”

“You think?” She says, the th- sound horribly enunciated, dull and lispy and adorable. 

“I know.”

– –

Daniel’s in your bedroom, receiving updates from you, in your daughter’s room, via text. She’s wearing purple. You told him three outfit changes ago. Blue. I think we’ve settled on blue. She had not, in fact, settled on the blue dress. Yellow. Yellow, for sure. You finally said, after she looked into the mirror and said she looked like her favorite princess. 

You couldn't’ remember if he had a yellow tie–he has to, you think, you hope, because he is dead-set on matching her and there’s no way you’re going to make her pick a different outfit, no way your sanity can last another trip through her closet. 

She asks if you can put makeup on her, and you can’t imagine Daniel’s reaction to that–his little girl in makeup. You put the tiniest amound of blush on, a dollop of sparkly lipgloss, and run a dry spooly brush through her eyebrows and eyelashes. “Fabuolous!” She declares, spinning around in her dress and her dress-up disney-princess heels. 

She’s waiting on the couch, patiently playing with the tule on the skirt of her dress, picking at the sequins and the sparkles. She’s taken one of your purses hostage, a tiny white baguette bag slung over her shoulder. She put your lipgloss in it–just in case, Mom, she told you. Your lipgloss, and an old phone, sceen cracked and practically unusable, one she uses when her imagination is feeling extravagant. 

Daniel walks through the door with a bouquet of yellow and white flowers in his hand, and two plasti boxes–a white corsage and a matching boutonniere. You pin it on him, and he double wraps the elastic band of the corsage around her wrist so it doesn’t fall off, tells her she looks so lovely, beautiful like always. 

You take a million pictures of them on the front porch before they go, so many they’re both begging to go. We can’t be late, Mom, your daughter told you, huffed and crossed her arms. “Yeah, Mom.” Daniel teases, “We can’t be late.”

“Okay, okay.” You say, snap a couple more pictures, kiss them both goodbye. You watch on from the porch, hand over your heart, smile on your face while he helps her into the car like it’s a chariot, a horse-drawn carriage for a queen.

[kyova]

Important to remember that while we’re infuriated over Biden’s spinelessness concerning the genocide in Gaza, the GOP are even more on board with it, while many Democrats are becoming ever more critical.

From a recent Tangle newsletter:

The link to the rejection: https://www.axios.com/2024/03/20/schumer-rejects-netanyahu-address-senate-democrats

The link to the invitation: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johnson-says-plans-invite-netanyahu-speak-congress-rcna144427

Plus the GOP is more than willing to throw lots of others under the bus as well, no matter how much we object. Womens’ rights, trans rights, the rest of the LGBT, minorities, the poor, the homeless, immigrants both documented and undocumented. They’ll vote for more child labor and child marriage, like they have already. More red state legislators will be emboldened to loosen regulations protecting workers, protesting, the environment, victims of police violence. Healthcare reform will be out the window, as they’ve been complaining ever since the ACA was enacted but never offered a viable solution in the decades since.

Saying “I’m not going to vote as protest” just gives those people a better chance, as their base doesn’t care how awful their candidates are. They will vote no matter what, and we’ll get another Trump term in which he’ll have four more years to not only subvert democracy as he has openly promised many times, but appoint more young conservatives as judges (possibly including more Supreme Court judges) to enforce their will on is for decades.

[heartfullofleeches]

ITS CLYDES DAY?? LETS GOOO

Maybe if you dont already have something in mind for him I could request him booking reader from the cafe to spend the whole day with him? Or maybe reader surprising him outside of work for his birthday?

Bro I'd love to bake a cake with him or something I think itd be cute as hell

Hopping off his moped, Clyde speeds to the front of the cafe, stopping briefly to fix his tangled hair in a passing window. Waking up at the crack of dawn per usual, he was surprised to see he had the off from various odd jobs and even more shocked to receive your call minutes later.

Still in the process of waking as he raced over, the rabbit struggled to remember what was so important about today. Couldn't be a special event, Clyde checked the newsletters religiously. Couldn't be your birthday either. He'd requested the whole week off for that. What could it be-

"Happy Birthday, Spot!"

Oh- right.

Waiting out on the front step, you greet Clyde for his special day dawned in rabbit ears and your attire adjusted accordingly to match down to your apron fitted with a tail and marked with a birthday message. Seeing you, breathtaking as always, Clyde berates himself for showing up in his work clothes from last night. You unknowingly brush off some of that shame as you place a birthday hat on his head, minding his ears. Clyde wipes at his face as he forces a laugh.

"Master... what's going on? I don't remember telling you today was my birthday."

"You wrote it down when you signed up for the newspaper. When it became clear you were going to be a regular I memorized it. We've got a lot to do today so we should head in."

The waterworks flourish as you lead him inside the building - Clyde bumping into you at random due to the tears caught in his lashes. His birthdays weren't always the greatest as a kid. He planned to come in later in the day without telling you to avoid the plague bringing it up may cause, but for you to do this for him... He really did pick the best human to call his.

The room you frequented when Clyde rented you for the day had been decorated with the help of your fellow hosts - centerpiece comprised of the cake you made from scratch and the candles placed atop it. Clyde could tell just by looking at it that it wasn't from the cafe, and that alone made all those bad years melt away. He was happy you hadn't lit them before hand because he couldn't see himself wanting to ruin any part of what you created. Eating any piece of what you wasted your precious time on felt sacrilegious.

Fixing his face to the best of his capabilities, Clyde points at the cake. "If it's alright with you, may I take those off? I, um, don't do well with candles."

"Sure, go ahead." You could've sworn he liked them just a week ago- but it's his day.

Clyde plucks each candle from the cake and wraps them in a napkin, pocketing the stolen wax once you look away. He smoothes the tiny holes in the frosting and takes the first of many pictures throughout the day, including the layout of the room and as many of you he could sneak. Catching on, you pose for the final one - flashing your biggest grin. Clyde drops his phone, his heart dropping in his chest.

"I'm sorry, Master I was just..."

"It's okay, it's okay." You pick up his phone, throwing an arm across his back as you pull him in for a photo. You stare directly at the screen meanwhile Clyde is stuck on you like you were the center of his entire world. Slipping the phone into his pocket, you grab something from your own.

"After singing for you I planned to take you out for the day, but there's one gift I should probably give you now."

In your hand is the slip of paper Clyde signed after his third visit. Alongside information needed for the letter, there was an option question at the end. What can our staff give you to make your special day one of a kind? Caught in that stage of puppy love before his life became meaningless without you and devoid of shame in the heat of the moment - there was but one answer Clyde gave.

"A kiss from my master."

[darlingillustrations]

My backyard is a bog. Mold creeps into the soft things in my house, marking them with spores. Mushrooms spring from my yard. At night, the trilling of frogs fills the air. Brambles tangle the walkways and pinecones crunch under step.

My path seems to bring me nothing but anxiety. I long to connect with something older than myself, something wiser than myself.

It makes sense that things would try to grow off of me. I am a warm heartbeat. I have fire in my veins, a fire that drives me to do amazing things, to create deep art and love fiercely, but being raised in harmful environments, that fire and passion from my youth was controlled and directed by church and family in ways that infested my soul like mold, like a worm in the belly, leeching my strength away.

I burned all the hotter to keep myself from being snuffed out. I got out, years ago, longing to feel alive, but being free isn’t enough. Without anything holding me back, without any framework in place to temper my passions, I all-too-quickly pour myself out, facing burnout and weakness.

It is tempting to long for the security of being controlled, to start the cycle of losing myself all over again. It is understandable to loathe the mold I carry within me, the spores infesting my mind.

This morning, I opened my windows and thought about how far I’ve come in my life. In the window above my bed, a clay crow with a prism dangling from its tail refracted the light. I chose this bauble as a birthday gift for myself years ago because I heard once that crows symbolize our ancestors. I liked the idea of something older than my traumas watching over me.

Instead of tearing down the moldy rooms of my soul, I think I might make peace with them. Instead of trying to kill off the parts of me that are crumbling, I can make friends with the worm that eats away at me, I can turn him into something wiser, something stronger, something that is a part of my inner bog, one essential microbe in a larger ecosystem.

So let this be Bog Season. Let this be the season of finding balance through decay.

Let the mold grow inside my heart. Let moss cover me like a blanket while I rest. Let the frog song rise up from my throat when I greet the insomniatic night. Let the crows come, picking at my eyes until all I have left are hands with which to feel my way forward. I will fall into the strange heat of that decomposition, lying fallow as a field in the hopes that the warm soil of my dreams will grow richer with each passing rain.

This is my temperance.

This is my divine darkness.

This is how my ancestors will guide me, fermenting from within.

This prose was originally written for my newsletter. If you'd like to experience more of my creativity, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

[charliejaneanders]

The saga of Anakin and Luke is crying out for a fresh retelling. It's nearly fifty years since Mark Hamill first appeared as Luke Skywalker, and filmmaking has, to put it mildly, changed a lot since then. The prequels and the original trilogy are full of important events which George Lucas brushed over or simply ignored. Some of this was because Lucas just didn't care about it — but a lot of the backstory became hopelessly tangled after the retcon in The Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader is Luke's father.

My latest newsletter: Reboot Star Wars!

[shock-micro]

i can tie anything back to any of my brainrots. my mind is a tangled web of connections in which i am trapped. anyway this is how the letter in the utdr newsletter can connect to isat actually--

[dserpentes]

Hello, I'm Mar! (They/Them and She/Her) 🐺✨

I'm an Illustrator and Animator from Portugal💚💛❤️

My work is very based in Fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons. Tieflings and Elves being what I draw the most but I really love Witches, Vampires, (Were)Wolves, as well as I draw a few animals and anthros from time to time too! ✨🌕✨

I also like to represent Portuguese Culture, Folklore and Myths when and whenever I can! Mainly trying to include small things in some character designs or in stories.

My Art tag || Animations tag

🌕Kofi: Commissions, Memberships & Store ✨Patreon: Memberships ✨Commissions TOS || Commissions Queue

🐺Newsletter - monthly updates about commissions, store, cons, etc

🐺 DISCORD SERVER

🌟instagram.com/dserpentes 🌟twitter.com/dserpentes 🌟twitch.tv/dserpente 🌟youtube.com/dserpente 🌟dserpentes.carrd.co

✨ My OCs Archive (Toyhouse)

Even if I am more of an Original Character artist I still enjoy drawing fanart! Here are some of the Fandoms that I am in:

Doctor Who

Critical Role

Baldur's Gate 3

Tangled (the series)

The Arcana Game

Touchstarved

SJMaas Universe (ACOTAR + Crescent City)

Dungeons and Dragons

Humblewood

Demigods

[leebrontide]

June's Shed Letters Newsletter - Let Me Promise You Some Feelings

The best marketing advice I ever got was not to try to sell people the thing itself. Instead, you promise people a specific emotional experience they’ll get from the thing. I don’t know if that’s actually good advice, but I understand feelings better than I understand most things, so I’ve clung to it for at least 10 years now.

But it’s not a brand name beer I’m trying to convince you will fill you with swagger, or a cookie I want you to believe will deliver warm chocolate chip nostalgia. it’s a big damn brick of a novel, with a lot of different feelings inside it.

I keep reaching for food metaphors here. I think that’s because one of the things I like about stories is that as you take them in you change them. When I read a book all in one rush I say I’ve eaten it whole. Or sometimes I’ve taken it in, bite after bite. I chew on the ideas, and then, if the story is good enough to stay with me, I digest it and it becomes a part of me.

If I’m very lucky and if I’ve done my job right, the book I’m offering you won’t just be the thing I made anymore, it’ll become a little part of other people, out walking around in the world.

Please forgive me if that sounds arrogant. I guess since changing people, at their request, is the career I’ve trained for, that puts bread on the table and mediates my every interaction, I can get away with making a declaration like that without cringing. People change all the time. That’s my day job and it’s what I write.

All right, I’m navel-gazing. This moment has been a long time coming and I want to savor it.

Let me promise you some feelings.

The book is about all the feelings tangled up in reunions, Faustian bargains, family, gender, several horror and mystery tropes, disability, being brand new to a career. It’s bursting with insecurity, fear, love, rage, betrayal, shame, repulsion, and ambition.

I wrote the feelings big and lingering in the hopes of offering catharsis and the sense of being seen to the people who read it, knowing every person who reads it will take in those feelings in a different way.

So.

If you’ve wondered if you really know anything about yourself when people who see you seem to be seeing someone else, then Yael’s experience with xyr family’s history with that genetic engineering cult, and xyr worries about xyr gender, are likely to strike a chord. If you’ve ever felt too far behind your peers to ever catch up or too far outside of the communities you need to ever belong, then you’ll have Opal’s experience trying to actually make it as a pro hero. If you’ve ever worried that your envy or bitterness would lead to people you love but envy leaving you all alone, then Jamie’s willingness to take risks that scare the people who love her will make intimate sense to you. If you’ve ever been brave enough to reach past what seem like obvious signs of rejection to try to heal, even when you suspected that that bravery might be stupidity, then Issac’s attempts to fix what’s been broken may ache.

If you’ve ever worried that you are simply not enough, then all my efforts to attach my words to those memories and show you how four fictional, deeply imperfect characters lived through it are for you.

So it’s a book about superheroes, and missing people, and the US’s only full service hospital for genetically altered people. And it’s a coming of age story and a family drama and a deeply Midwestern period piece for a period that hasn’t happened yet.

But mostly it’s feelings. I’ve dredged them up, sifted through them, prepared them, and laid them out for your consumption.

I hope you enjoy it.

After a spring they barely survived, the superhero team/family the Sentinels, head to rural Minnesota for long awaited reunions and a chance to finally start to heal at the countries only full hospital for genetically altered people. But, when they realize that alterds have been going missing from the area it’s clear that someone’s kept the Sentinels from being sent in. They need to decide who they can trust- and fast, or thousands of people could die.

For sale now in ebook or paperback formats- more purchase options to come!

And of course, book 1, Secondhand Origin Stories, is also available as an ebook here, here, or here, in paperback on Amazon on your preferred independent shop, and audiobook available on Audible.

With all my thanks for joining me this far,

Lee Brontide

[ughgoaway]

Matty as Flynn Rider and Annie as Pascal because she's one of those kids.

Maybe Annie tells reader about the costumes and asks her to be Rapunzel

Or Matty as Peter Pan and Annie as Tinkerbell

it's no longer Halloween, but as someone who is professionally delusional, I am gonna ignore that <3

"Because she's one of those kids." HAS ME DYING AHAHAHAH, YOURE SO RIGHT SHE IS.

but I like to think Annie watched tangled for the first time at uncle George's house, maybe him and Charli were on babysitting duty and charli was like "oh Annie I have the best film for us to watch!" Of course she was expecting Annie to fall in love with rapunzel and her long beautiful hair but NO! not our Annie, she became OBSESSED with pascal.

this obsession turned into her begging matty for a real chameleon and George having to physically restrain matty from buying her one. "But she really wants one George!" and George is just like "Matthew. you can barely look after yourself. your shirt is literally on backwards right now. Do not get a chameleon for a 5 year old" matty then looks down at his backwards shirt and concedes.

but that does not stop Annie at Halloween DEMANDING to be pascal and matty be flynn, and he is not complaining about being a character who's whole thing is how hot he is. Annie brings this up to you in class one day an BEGS you to be rapunzel. and whilst officially you can't say she convinced you... she convinced you.

you show up just with your normal hair and a few extensions in but with flowers pushed in everywhere and as soon as matty sees you at drop off he feels his knees get weak. you standing matching with his daughter and him with beautiful flowers surrounding your face, a glowing smile and the most beautiful dress... how is he meant to cope??? he literally feels his heart brighten at the thought of you all being matchy matchy. I think the receptionist (who secretly but not so secretly ships you two) INSISTS on taking a pic and it ends up in the school newsletter.

"Parents even accidentally matched with teachers! here's Miss y/n and the healy family accidentally having a group costume!" and let's just say that school newsletter gets kept by both of you for no specific reason...

[dk-thrive]

Most nights, staring at the ceiling for hours, my mind is a tangle of bits of string

In a recent Washington Post newsletter, he (Ron Charles) marveled at the actress Judi Dench’s astonishing ability to recite most of the lines from her long-ago parts in Shakespeare plays. He wrote:

"Such memorization is a lost art, and much substance was lost with it. In high school and college, I used to memorize hours of stage dialogue and long passages from the Bible, which were a great comfort to me in times of stress. These days, only the stress remains. Most nights, staring at the ceiling for hours, my mind is a tangle of bits of string, and all I can come up with is something like: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Won’t you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff?'”

For those of you not fluent in Fleetwood Mac, that last sentence is a lyric from the song “Second Hand News.”

— Frank Bruni, from "The Love of Sentences" (NY Times, May 2, 2024)

[formulaforza]

miss americana & the heartbreak prince

—02. over the ocean call —word count: 6.1k —warnings: language, sexual innuendos —a/n: don't get used to this update schedule my loves. school starts back up again on monday.

In late October, the sunrise is perfectly timed to be at it’s blandest point during Chris’ morning commute. 7:35am, and the sun painted the sky shades of pink and orange and yellow half an hour ago while Chris was curling her hair. Now, it’s not dark, but it’s definitely not light, either. More of a blue hue covering the entire state, painting the parking lot with the emotions of a sleepy Monday morning. For the first time since she landed back home, Chris is feeling the exhaustion of the weekend. 

She piles the bags onto her shoulder–a Jansport backpack and an Earth Day tote she’d been gifted by a student just before summer break last year. In one hand, she’s got a tangle of lanyards, one with her classroom keys and school ID, another with her car and house keys. In the other hand, an oversized travel coffee mug; one that made the morning commute perched between her legs because it’s too big for the cup holders in her car. 

She scans her badge at the office door, greets the secretaries while rummaging through her mailbox, ducks her head into the principal’s office with a single warning knock. He’s not in yet. Her keys jangle and the heels of her booties echo the entire length of the quiet hallway to her classroom. She unlatches the door with her elbow, opens it with her hip and flicks on the lights. The room still smells like shaving cream from the spelling activity she’d left for the substitute on Friday.

In the time it takes her to boot up her computer and answer some missed emails from the weekend, she finishes what’s left of her coffee and heads to the teacher’s lounge to brew another cup. On her way back, she swings by the cafeteria. 

Forty-percent of the district live below the state poverty line and qualify for free and reduced lunch. The lunch ladies are hard at work getting ready to start serving some hungry kiddos. All of the teachers in the district are allowed to eat breakfast and lunch as provided by the cafeteria, and even though Chris already ate breakfast, she snags a full tray–mini pancakes, syrup, a hashbrown, a clementine, and a carton of strawberry milk–and takes it back to her classroom. 

Chris has one student, Quinn, whose family can’t afford reduced lunch prices but also won’t request for Quinn to qualify for the free lunch. She thinks it’s an ego thing, that Quinn’s mom just isn’t able to accept that the family needs help. It’s a single parent household and the mom works two full-time jobs to try and make ends meet. After a newsletter was sent home in need of parent signatures at the beginning of the year and returned with Mama written in sloppy green crayon, Chris learned that Quinn was living a relatively self-sufficient life. As self-sufficient as a five-year-old can be. 

Chris sets the styrofoam tray down on the table in the front of the room and starts to get the place ready for students; she starts pulling down chairs, cleaning up the classroom library, updating the calendar on the white board and re-organizing the magnetic daily schedule. Normally she’d have a lot of this done before leaving the day before, but since there was a sub, nothing was done before locking the room up for the weekend. 

At eight-twenty, Quinn knocks on the open door and trudges in with a backpack that’s half the size of her. “Hi, Miss Elliott,” she says through a yawn, plopping herself into the chair in front of the breakfast tray and digging in. 

“Hi, Quinnie,” Chris smiles from her computer. Quinn relays that she missed Chris very much, a lot while she was gone on Friday and Chris’ smile grows. “I missed you, too. Did Mrs. Bliss do your hair up all nice?” She asks. 

Quinn nods around her spork, around a mouthful of mini-pancake. “She did a braid,” she mumbles. 

“You love braids!” Chris says, opens the bottom drawer of her desk and starts pulling out hair products. Quinn gives her a thumbs up as a confirmation of the braid love. 

She spends the next fifteen minutes brushing through Quinn’s tangled hair. Mondays are always the worst because Quinn has all weekend to get it knotted up. She settles for a ponytail, braids the strands after it’s all smoothed out and puts a pink bow at the base of the pony. After they’re both finished–Chris with the hair and Quinn with the breakfast–the kindergartener heads back to the gymnasium to wait with the rest of her classmates. 

She puts some final morning touches on the classroom before she goes to collect the kids and start the day, and like most Monday mornings around Robinson, time seems to move backwards. By the time she drops her kids off for their morning special–music on Mondays–she feels like she’s worked three ten hour days. She keeps busy during the downtime, making copies and grading word searches and putting newsletters into student mailboxes. It’s not until lunch, until her daily phone call with Hannah, that she remembers all about the unanswered text from the unknown number sitting in her phone just begging to be overthought. 

“Can I, uh, can I tell you something?” Chris asks Hannah. “You can’t tell Chase.”

“Did you kill somebody?” Hannah laughs, Chris doesn’t. Might as well have, she thinks, because flirting with a racing driver is just as bad, if not worse, when it comes to Chase. He and Bill forbid Chandler and Chris from ever getting with a driver, even just for a night, when Chris was barely old enough to conceptualize what exactly a one-night stand was. She was thirteen, at most, and was still under the impression she was supposed to stay pure until marriage or else she’d go to Hell. 

“Can I tell you, or not?”

“You can always tell me, c’mon,” Hannah says, and Chris suddenly feels guilty for suggesting Hannah was anything but trustworthy. They’ve been best friends for decades, a relationship that predates Chase and Hannah, predates Reid, predates puberty and elementary school and potty-training. They’ve always told each other everything, but, in the past couple years–since Chris’ best friend got engaged to her brother–she’s always a little hesitant with the stuff she doesn’t want to get back to Chase. 

Outside of the fact that she expects Hannah to put her partner before her best-friend, Chris hates the idea of having to put Hannah between the two of them. She hates it, but she needs to tell someone about the text burning a hole in her phone, and who else is she going to tell? “Okay, so,” Chris smiles, realizes she’s smiling, and forces herself to stop. “There’s a guy.”

Hannah audibly gasps on the other end of the line. “There’s a guy? What’s his Instagram? First and last?”

“Do you want his social security number, too?” Chris laughs. Do they even have social security numbers in France? She clicks the spacebar on her keyboard to wake the monitor, types the question into the search bar. Oh, they do. Now she just feels silly. “We met this weekend.”

“Oh?”

“He’s a driver.”

There’s a long pause. Chris chuckles, because she doesn’t know what else to do. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Hannah clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, exhales heavy through her teeth. “Is he hot?”

Chris nods, and with a smile on her lips again, “Very.”

“Did you hook up with him?”

“Hannah!” Chris whispers through gritted teeth, looks around the room for the sudden presence of prying ears, clicks the volume on her phone down a few notches. 

“Chris!”

“No, God. I just need to text him back.”

“You gave him your number?!”

She actually recoils out of surprise with Hannah’s tone. “That’s more absurd than the idea of me hooking up with him?”

“Yes,” Hannah deadpans.

“I don’t like you.”

“Well, little late on that realization, honey.”

“Can you just help me figure out what to say to him?”

“Yeah, but first,” Hannah pauses. Chris can hear the tapping of her freshly done acrylics on the glass phone screen. “I’m looking at a picture of all of them. Which one is he?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

Hannah groans, and Chris can imagine her pout so vividly. “You suck!”

“Okay,” she ignores Hannah’s temper tantrum. If she’s going to ask for help, she’s going to get the help. “So, he texted me and basically just said ‘hey,’ what should I send back?”

“Uh, just say ‘hi’ back?”

Chris pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs, “You literally have negative game.”

“I’m getting married in two months!”

“To my brother.”

“Got me there.”

Chris spends the next fifteen minutes drafting texts with Hannah as her peer-reviewer in the notes app on her phone. She doesn’t like any of them, they all feel forced, feel like they’re too strong or too weak or just all together strange and off-putting. Hannah calls her a chicken and Chris hangs up on her, sends a single kissy-face emoji in a text and calls it a lunch period. 

After lunch and after recess, Chris’ class does more English. They practice writing their names and their letters and working on the way they hold their pencils. Chris is a real stickler when it comes to the way children hold their pencils. She took an ergonomics class her junior year of college for extra credit and some of it still sticks with her years later. 

After that, it’s group reading and snack time. They read Rainbow Fish on the city-themed rug that came with Chris’ classroom when she started. They spend the rest of their afternoon crafting their own Rainbow Fish out of construction paper, glitter, and glue. 

The last task of the day, and arguably the most stressful, is pickup. She drops all of the bus-riders off in the cafeteria, and that’s the easiest part of it all. It’s the back blacktop that’s the horrifying part, the hoard of parents and the four and five year olds anxious to run off to their mommies and daddies without letting Chris know first. Everyday that she survives pickup without any of the kids being abducted is a gold medal day in her book. 

She heads to the Pre-K hall after that day’s episode of Survivor to pick up her nephew–Hannah’s son–Reid, and take him back to her classroom. She prints worksheets for tomorrow in the teacher’s lounge and when she comes back, has to re-tidy up the classroom behind Reid’s wake of destruction.

It’s not until she’s in the car, after she’s loaded up her bags and strapped Reid into his carseat, that Chris finally texts Charles back, and it’s about as creative a response as his original message. 

She regrets the double text before she even pulls out of the school parking lot, but there’s nothing she can do about it now. It’s been months since she updated her phone, and she’s sure she doesn’t have the ‘undo send’ feature in her outdated software. And even then, she’s heard it notifies the person that a message is unsent, and the only thing worse than regretting a double text is letting the other person know that you regretted it. 

It’s a fifteen minute drive back to Chris’ house, Reid in tow. By the time she gets back there’s a new message from Charles.

Okay, okay. The double text didn’t scare him off. He’s deeper than a Georgia frat brother, that’s definitely a check in the win column. 

Per usual, it’ll be another hour before Hannah is back from work to pick Reid up, so like always, he and Chris share an after school snack from her fridge. Reid is a talker. He can droll on and on about the most obscure, irrelevant moments of his day like they’re the greatest thing to ever happen to a human being, and can listen to the sound of his own voice until he’s blue in the face. He tells Chris all about his day, about play time with the kid who picks his nose and wipes his boogers on the rug, about David’s bad day from storytime and all about Chase’s race. If there’s one thing the world’s most talkative kid likes to talk about more than anything else, it’s Chase’s racing. 

Chris sips lemonade from a purple bendy straw and stares at her phone on the counter, open to the messages app.

“Are you texting to my mom?” Reid asks. 

“I have other friends besides your Mom,” Chris quips, slides her plate of animal crackers across the table to him. 

“Nuh, uh,” Reid shakes his head, chomps down on an animal cracker with the grace of a clown slipping on a banana peel, crumbs pouring from his mouth onto his shirt, his lap, the wood tabletop. Chris reaches over and swipes them onto the ground.

Chris laughs out loud, steals Reid’s attention away from playing make-believe zookeeper with the cookies in front of him. She wonders how quick he regrets sending it, or if she just has a one track mind. 

She giggles a kind of hair-twirling, blush-inducing, feet-kicking giggle that makes Reid sigh loudly. “I’m trying to focus!” He says, glares at her with a hippo in one hand and a gorilla in the other. She snatches the gorilla and eats it in two bites. Reid, dumbfounded, is met with a smile from his aunt who promptly and dramatically licks her fingers.

She wishes she could be having an, of course he remembers moment, but she is genuinely shocked by it, moreso by the fact that she doesn’t even remember telling him about it in the first place. It had to have been during the Hot Lap, surely, sandwiched between her screams at two hundred miles an hour and his giddy giggles with each gear change. 

Why would he ever remember that, she wonders. She’s sure that if she told Chase about it, under regular conversation standards on a regular weekend, he’d forget about it before the end of the hour, and he’s her brother. Her own blood. But here’s this guy, in the middle of this insane weekend, remembering a stupid little thing she tells him while he’s trying to focus on driving a car faster than any sane person’s reaction time could ever handle. It’s shocking. 

Reid is gone, picked up by Hannah, and dinner is started when she messages him again. Chris is terrible with crushes, really. She’ll tell you it’s one of her worst traits; how easily she falls into a crush, how quickly her adult exterior melts away into nothing but a teenage girl hoping to be asked to the homecoming dance. She’s simple, easy to attain. Call her beautiful or remember something she thinks is important and you’re in her good graces, racking up points in a pro and con chart in her head. Charles has already done both of those things.

Her phone rings three minutes after she sends it. Facetime call: Maybe: Charles. Crap. 

She checks herself out in the reflection of the microwave window. She’s still got on her morning makeup, and even it’s last leg is better than nothing. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, also from this morning, and falls messily around her face. She’s changed from work clothes into a pair of leggings and an old purple sorority hoodie, the neckline cut into a v and the ends of the sleeves tattered with tears and grease and loose threads from loving the cotton a little too hard. It’s not ratty… it’s just, comfortable. An acquired taste. 

Has her kitchen always been this messy? Did it come like this? Has she ever cleaned it? Why, why, why does she keep a high school picture of her and Hannah on the fridge?

She rolls her sleeves over themselves and tucks as many frizzy hairs behind her ears as she can manage before she sets her phone up on the counter, against the backsplash tile, and answers it. 

He’s greeting her with a smile, childlike almost, the way his dimples dig into his cheeks. Stupid. She remembered him as cute and she remembered right. She smiles back because even through a screen, even when you barely know him, it’s a contagious smile complimented with soft, warm eyes that manage to make it look like he doesn’t have a care in the world. 

“Hello, Chris Elliott.”

“Hello, Charles Leclerc.”

“Tell me all about this dinner you’re cooking?”

“If you insist.”

“I insist a million times.”

They talk all evening about dinner and rainbow fish and how Chris is not, under any circumstances, going to be one of his girls. His dimples make her worry that she could be convinced to, though. 

“Okay,” Chris says, sets her phone up against the hotel end table and takes a couple steps backwards so her entire figure is in frame. “Good? Bad?” She asks, spins, holds a thumbs up to the camera when she’s finished showing off the outfit. Charles smiles at the sound of her voice pouring from his airpod. “Keep in mind it’s the only thing I brought.”

She’s in a hotel room somewhere in Virginia. He doesn’t know where, exactly. He’s in Mexico, race day, breakfast in his hotel room with Joris and Andrea. The guys are bickering in the bathroom; Joris, attacking Andrea’s red on red ensemble, Andrea, attacking the seven hundred hair products Joris has stacked up on the vanity. They’d already eaten and knocked on Charles’ hotel room door until he woke up forty-five minutes later than he was supposed to. 

“You could wear a rubbish bag,” he answers because he’s almost certain she could, but also because he knows it’ll make her blush. He smiles when it does, when she pretends it doesn’t. “I don’t know that you should be asking me for outfit advice, my fans are not fans.”

“I think you dress well,” she hums, and he watches her catch her reflection in the mirror, analyzing the sundress from every angle. He doesn’t need to analyze it, always has been a fan of sundresses, no matter the color, no matter the fit. You can never go wrong with a sundress, he thinks. Never. “Like right now, you look sharp.”

“‘I’m in pajamas,” he says. 

“Sharp pajamas.”

He laughs, drops his head and shakes it. “You’re cute.”

“What about the outfit?”

“Cute too,” he says around a spoonful of food. “What’s under it?” He quips, bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t burst into laughter at her strawberry tinted cheeks. It’s exactly the reaction he’d been looking for, the one he’d found too much amusement in over the last few days. She blushes easier than anyone he’s ever met, and it’s more than just bright cheeks–it’s in her smile, pursed and big and adorable. It’s in her eyes, wide and unable to keep any semblance of direct contact with him. It’s a direct contrast to her normal state of being, to her normal attentive listening. She blushes too easily and he has too much fun making her. 

It’s her words that always seem to take him by surprise, when she moves close to her camera again and almost whispers, “You wanna see?”

He coughs, clears his throat and looks around the room to make sure neither of the guys have appeared over his shoulder. “Very much, I would like seeing.”

She laughs. “You wish.”

“You’re a tease.”

She shrugs, reaches over her phone and out of frame. She grabs her purse and when she does, the phone falls face down onto the wood. “Sorry,” she squeaks, picks it back up. “Good luck today, yeah?” She tells him, a confident smile on her face. He nods, mouth full, and holds up a thumbs-up, waves at her quick goodbye. 

It’s not even a couple minutes before his phone is buzzing against the plastic tabletop. A picture, from her, by her, of her. Her, and white lingerie and a little bit of imagination that has him doing all the blushing. 

Fucking sundresses, man.

She sends him a picture of the whiteboard in her classroom, decorated for the Halloween party that day with fake spiderwebs and ghost stickers and pumpkins and all things Halloween that don’t scare a five year old to death.  She also sends him a picture of two store bought sugar cookies with orange frosting, purple and black star sprinkles on top. 

It doesn’t take long for the time difference to bite them in the ass, for the optimal time for communication to be hindered by sleep and work and meetings and more sleep. An hour too early for him, a few hours too late for her, not that she’d admit it, miss I would be awake and grading these papers whether or not I was talking with you. 

That’s what she’s doing, sitting on her living room floor and grading papers on her coffee table. He’s making breakfast, but really he’s watching her grade papers and talking to her whenever she remembers that they’re having a conversation. 

It’s cute, he thinks. Extremely so, the way she struggles to multitask. The way her voice will trail out into silence in the middle of a sentence because she’s trying to decipher a kindergartener’s little chicken scratch handwriting. It’s cute, the way she carefully flips through her book of stickers to find the perfect one for each and every paper, the way she carefully puts them on and makes sure they’re pressed down firmly so they don’t fall off somewhere between her coffee table and their desk. It’s cute, the purple pen with the sparkly gel gripper. 

“I want to see you,” he blurts out in the middle of it all and it takes her a minute to process it. He watches the gears turn, watches her practically jump out of her skin at the sound of his voice like she really forgot he was there for a moment. 

“You’re looking at me.”

“In person,” he laughs. “I want to see you in person.”

“I’m going to Arizona this weekend,” she says, and he can’t even believe she’s entertaining the idea. He was sure, actually, that he’d be getting another one of her I’m not going to hook up with you, Charles, lectures. It would be the second or third of the week, and no matter how many times he’s told her do you think I’d be up this early for a hookup, she remains unconvinced of his motives. 

“I know.” She’s going with her brother. It’s the finals, or the playoffs, or something like that. He’s listening, trying to remember, he really is. None of it makes any sense, though. Formula One is so much easier to wrap your head around.  “What about next weekend? You could come to Brazil.”

“No,” she yawns. It’s gotta be at least one-thirty there, she should be asleep. He shouldn’t be keeping her up. “I’m too busy with work that week. How about the one after?”

“Abu Dhabi.” He says it like a statement, not a question. Like, if we're going to wait that long, might as well wait until I’m home.

“I could come,” she says, and it surprises him because nobody wants to come to Abu Dhabi. He doesn’t even particularly want to go to Abu Dhabi. It’s felt a lot this season like it just never stops. Like, no matter what he does, he and the car and the team can’t get in sync. He’s ready to reset for next year, really, to challenge Max instead of shaking Checo off his ankles for a few more weeks. 

“You want to come?”

She looks up from the papers at him, confused, clicking the back of her pen against the pages. “Do you want me to come?”

“Do you know how long that plane is?” He asks. “My family will be there,” he adds, and now you’d never guess he’s the one who wanted her to come in the first place. He doesn’t tell her all these things because he doesn’t want her there, he does. He just also wants to make sure she knows what she’s getting herself into, the lion’s den she’s climbing into, the shallow end of the pool and the nose-dive she’s taking. 

It’s crazy enough to meet up somewhere neither of them live. It’s a whole other monster to do it at a race, where his family is also present. 

“Do you,” she pauses, pointing the pen at the screen, “want me,” and then at herself.  “To come?”

He shrugs. “I would not have said I want to see you if I didn’t want you to come.”

Even though he didn’t want to keep her up all night, he kept her up all night with planning. And, despite the incessant need to make it clear she isn’t a hookup, Chris also refuses to come under the guise of any sort of label. He’s not mad about that, flying her in under the implication to anyone that she’s his girlfriend… especially when she’s not? It’s a recipe for disaster, for drama and death threats and cross paddock glares for just existing. It’s something he wants to avoid for himself, but more importantly, something he wants to avoid for Chris, who didn’t sign up for any of this, who doesn’t reap any of the benefits of his life. She’s too good for the drama, he thinks. 

Somehow, the conversation about the rooming situation requires more dancing than the refusal to put a label of any sorts on their… acquaintanceship. Where does she stay? With him, he wants to stay–stay with me, please stay with me. Does he see if someone can pull a few strings and get her a room in the same hotel, or would it be better for her to stay somewhere else? Better for who, he doesn’t know. He wants her with him, wants to pretend he doesn’t know half the drivers and half the teams stay at the same hotel, that people are always waiting in the lobby and outside waiting for pictures and signatures with their favorite zoo animals. 

He scratches the back of his neck, “You could stay with me, if you want to.”

“Yeah,” Chris nods. “If you want me to.”

“If you want to.” They both chuckle, horribly nervous and awkward because they’re so terrified of making a wrong move, of coming on too strong or too careless. 

“It’s your job,” she says, still fidgeting with her pen. Actually, now it’s just the glitter gel gripper that she's messing with. “Your life. I’m the intrusion–”

“You’re not an intrusion,” he interrupts, because she isn’t and he needs her to know he doesn’t think she is. 

She smiles, looks up from the pencil grip in her hand to smile at him. “Okay, I’m the… guest. Tell me what you want me to do.”

He wishes he could reach into the phone and grab her hand and still it from bouncing the gel grip against the coffee table. Softly, he replies, “I want you to stay with me.”

She nods, and equally as soft, biting down on a smiley bottom lip, “Then I’ll stay with you.”

She mentions to him in passing that she’s on Thanksgiving break for the week that follows, letting it hang in the air with silent implication. He knows her game, completely aware that she wants him to make the next move–invite me to stay, I'm not going to say no, she’s telling him. I’m not going to say no, you just have to ask.

And so he does ask. Something about it’s only fair that you see my home country after I’ve seen yours. Really, he couldn’t care less about being in Monaco. He just wants to see her. Her and the purple pen and sticker book and nose crinkle when he tells a bad joke and the tug of the corners of her lips when she tries not to blush. He wants to see it all in front of him, right there where he can reach out and touch it. 

He wants to take her on a date. He wants to take her on more than one date. Cook her dinner and show her around and memorize her presence when she’s not with her dad, when she isn’t screaming in a speeding car, when she’s not on the other side of the globe. 

“Well,” he hums. “Now I’m excited.”

“You should be,” she says, smiling at a stack of spelling tests as she tucks them away into a folder. “I’m great fun.” He pauses, watches her with a small smile. She yawns again, stretches her arms above her head with a quiet groan. She’s up entirely too late. He’s kept her up entirely too late. I bet, he thinks. “What?” Chris laughs. 

“You’re adorable when you are sleepy.”

She plays the voice memo and listens to his voice echo off the wall. He’s laughing, and she wonders what it would be like to be the wall his voice bounces from. You look like a commercial puppy, he says, it’s adorable. 

“You’re so annoying,” she says into the phone microphone, “How’s the weekend going?” When she listens to it back after sending, you can still hear the congested sniffle in her voice even though she’s regained her composure. 

Screwed by the weather, he responds. Sprint Race is soon. 

“Good Luck!”

Enjoy your movie day. 

—

He calls on Sunday night, late and unplanned. She’s already in bed, reading her book to wind-down before turning in for the night. His name on her screen makes her smile, even if she doesn't know the reason for the call. They’d been careful, when it came to calls, tried to make sure they planned them out so they didn’t spend all day, every day talking to each other. 

“Hi,” she greets, hesitant. “Everything okay?”

“Uh,” he chuckles, but it’s tired. Tired and upset and far away from the phone. He doesn’t really answer, he just sighs. 

She slides her bookmark between the pages and sets the book on her nightstand. “What’s wrong?” She asks, adjusts in bed so she’s sitting up straighter and pulls her legs close, crosses them under the sheets and puts him on speaker phone.

“I wish I was home,” he finally tells her. “Race today fucking… it’s like this, I don’t know.”

She didn’t watch the race. He knew she wasn’t watching it, that she was practically hibernating this weekend after a crazy week at work with what seemed like a never ending series of state testing. She didn’t watch the race, but now she’s really, really wishing she had. “You don’t have to show face with me,” she tells him. “Tell me what you want to say.”

“My fucking boss isn’t even here,” he starts, and he doesn’t stop. He’s got a lot to say. A lot to say about strategy and the championship and the car and himself and the season. It’s more than this race, it’s a lot of races, a lot of meetings, a lot of things she doesn’t really understand. 

Chris just listens, because it’s about the only thing she can do. She can’t give him answers or solutions or advice, and even if she could, it doesn’t sound like he’s looking for any of those things. 

She gets out of bed because she’s terrified that she’s going to fall asleep on him. She takes her water bottle and a blanket to her screened in porch, sits on the patio furniture and sips water and listens to the hum of the bugs and the sound of his voice on another continent. 

She calls him in the back of her Uber, on her way to Atlanta to catch her flight. She’d debated with herself about telling someone she was going, just out of pure convenience, saving the hour drive to the airport by just… flying there. That would require telling one of the two people in her life that know how to fly a plane–Chase and Bill–that she was going to Abu Dhabi and Monaco to see a racing driver. That would not go over well, even a little bit. So, she doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going and Hannah is the only person who knows that she’s going anywhere at all. Chris is sure her best friend could guess where she’s going, but she can’t prove anything, not when Chris has turned off her location sharing and refuses to confirm or deny what flight she’s on. 

“Are you gonna be weird when you see me?” She asks him, because this whole thing is so incredibly weird. It’s not normal, flying for seventeen hours across the world to hang out with a guy you haven’t even gone on a date with yet, a guy you haven’t spent more than a few minutes with. It feels almost illegal, letting a guy pay over a thousand dollars–he refused to tell her how much her ticket was, but she possesses the ability to use google flights–to come hang out with him. She’s not a sugar baby, right? Right? No, she isn’t a sugar baby. 

“Yeah,” Charles says through a yawn. He’s already in Abu Dhabi and it’s the middle of the night there, half past midnight, at least. He should be sleeping. “So weird.”

“You should go to sleep.”

He smiles. “Sleep is for the weak.”

Chris rolls her eyes with extra gravitas. She knows he sees it because he laughs. “Good night, Charles. I’ll see you in…” she checks her watch, “nineteen hours.”

“I can’t wait to be sooo weird when I see you.”

“I’m going to watch Cars 2 on the plane. As preparation.”

—

She does watch Cars 2 on the plane. She watches Cars 2 and eats a shitty chicken Caesar salad as dinner with a ginger ale, because ginger ale is only good when you’re on a plane or have a stomach ache. After the stale meal in the stale air, she takes two melatonin gummies, shuffles her favorite playlist, and sleeps. 

She wakes up an hour before they land in Paris, where she has a short layover. It takes the majority of said short layover to figure out where the heck she’s supposed to go. Once she’s figured it out, she spends the rest of the layover walking around the gate area, already exhausted with the idea of sitting still. She eats a chocolate croissant and has a coffee and listens to the people around her speak different languages with fluent ease. 

The flight to Abu Dhabi is shorter, but she’s awake for all seven hours of it, so it feels a million times longer than the first one. Also, somewhere between the first and last sip of what might be the best coffee she’s ever drank, nervous little butterflies have begun wreaking havoc in her insides. She’s giddy, the kind of giddy that should be reserved for little kids. Giddy and fighting a stupid little crush with the most insane stakes. 

It’s six o’clock local time on Friday evening when she lands in Abu Dhabi.

<last chapter masterlist next chapter>

[beneaththetangles]

Beneath the Tangles Prayer Group | August 5 - 11 Prayer Requests

Here are our prayer items for the week:

5 - Pray for our Discord server—may it be a place where Christ is the center and lead of conversation as the members talk about faith and also their other interests, and as they build friendships with one another.

6 - Pray for “Above Anime,” our twice-monthly newsletter. May the devotionals encourage readers in their faith, the newsletter help readers discover our pieces, and Hayley have wisdom and strength as she develops it.

7 - Pray for Whitney’s wisdom, courage, and ability to manage her own busyness as she leads our Twitch account, for the Holy Spirit to be moving on the platform as we seek to develop something unique and special there for God’s glory, and for our stream to be a godly presence on a platform full of viewers who need to hear the words of life.

8 - Please pray that our Facebook account (http://facebook.com/beneaththetangles) will help our audience connect more deeply with Christ and continue our work of building God-centered community, and for WacOtaku as he leads the efforts.

9 - Pray that the Beneath the Tangles Tumblr (http://beneaththetangles.tumblr.com) will grow in followers and be a place where Christians and non-Christians alike will read and be impacted by our articles, and for @thathilomgirl as she leads it.

10 - Pray that the BtT Twitter (http://twitter.com/AnimeTangles), Mastodon (https://sakurajima.moe/@beneaththetangles), and Threads (https://www.threads.net/@beneaththetangles) ministries will engage our community and point them toward content that honors Christ, and for wisdom and righteous words for @mdmrn, @KhakiBlueSocks and @thetangles as they these platforms.

11 - Our small group meets tonight. Pray that it will be a time of learning, prayer, worship, and accountability for the attendees and leaders.

Prayer Warriors: @moezy-chan​ @bearypangolinelephants​ @gasexplosionatthescalpelfactory @christian-otaku @tomodachi-to-koibito

If you’re interested in participating, please do the following:

1. Follow @beneaththetangles 2. Message me, reply to this post, in some other way let me know that you want in