#the back cover of the book and there’s like no photo or even a mail address for her to send gifts

[sukirichi]

hiiiii im so excited for you to drop that keiji one shot, is his love interest going to be introduced in dtd or will it be a new character?

hi anon! nooo keiji’s love interest will not be introduced in dtd sadly, but maybe i’ll give a lil teaser at the epilogue?

it will be a new character though! the reader in keiji’s one shot is a princess from another kingdom who is a huge huge fan of this writer. she loves collecting signed books and when she heard that her favorite author is having his first meet and greet + signing event, she just had to travel to inarizaki to see him ;) but she never expected that her favorite writer was actually a prince (and that he’s the prettiest man she’d ever seen)

[imaprettygirl]

A drop of ink, a blot spread across time

(Vintage au)

Plot summary: It was 1950s when pen pals were popular and almost everyone had one! You used to have a handful of them but the camaraderie between you and them faded as you got older. One day, you found a newspaper on your late great-grandpa's shelves in his bedroom. Excitedly, you flipped the papers to get to a specific page and bingo! There was a section for the addresses of people who are looking for a pen-friend much like yourself. After randomly choosing, you sent out your first letter and he replied back! However, you noticed something weird in the photo he sent...

Crds to @drinkthesky for the divider!

Men I deem fit: Alhaitham, Albedo, Imbibitor Lunae/Dan Heng, Dr Ratio, Diluc, Zhongli, Venti, Neuvillette, Scaramouche, Sunday.

(Fck alphabetical order, I can't do that sh*t)

The amber glow of the afternoon sun bathed the room as the open windows situated at the opposite of the door allowed sunlight streams to enter the room as its panes quivered in hushed symphony due to the beckoning of the hot air. If you moved closer to the windows, you could see dust particles illuminated by the natural light. Even after the passing of your great-grandfather, the bookish scent of his cologne still lingers in his bedroom along with his possessions which were either coated with a thin layer of dust or covered with a big white cloth.

The wooden floor creaked beneath you as you walked towards his bookshelves in hopes of finding pieces of classical literature and maybe learn a thing or two from it. You delicately traced your index finger through the long vertical rows of books, leaving a trail of dust on the pads of your digit. As you peruse through countless novels only to be unsatisfied until you saw a newspaper at the edge of the shelf, untouched by the dust that plagues the rest.

'How strange...' you thought to yourself as you rubbed your thumb and index finger against the surface of the paper to determine its texture: it was sandy and rough, definitely ancient but the format was similar to the ones your dad reads in the morning so it must be a freshly produced newspaper, albeit printed in a different quality of paper.

Or so you thought...

The newspapers in your hands gave you a glimmer of hope; it was an opportunity to find a pen friend! You used to have a few ones but stopped writing to them either because they used too much colloquial words or they had at least twenty spelling mistakes in each sentence which gave you a migraine whilst trying to make out if your correspondent was writing in a foreign language or not. But this time, maybe you could hit the jackpot and find an actually nice pen-pal. Excitedly, you flipped through the papers and stopped at the specific page which had a list of names along with their addresses under the bold heading:

'Pen-friends! Make new friends around the world!'

Your eyes scanned across the list of names, allowing your intuition to guess the personality of that stranger based on their names alone. But then, a specific name caught your eye- it was uncommon which was the main reason it stood out from the rest of the names which probably were taken from 'Top 10 best names for children of this year'. You took a closer look of the address below that person's name and turned out, both of you lived in the same area! A surge of enthusiasm rippled throughout your body and immediately tucked the newspaper into the inside pocket of your coat.

~~~~~♡~~~~~♡~~~~~♡~~~~~

The curtains of your living room slowly opened as you peeked your head out and pressed your face against the glass. A day had passed after you had sent your very first letter and heck, you even went a mile far by sending a photograph of your two cats to make a memorable first impression. Then- just like you had anticipated- the postman on his bike suddenly came into view and halted his vehicle by your mail-box and placed a letter inside. You clutched the folds of the curtains unable to contain the happiness blossoming inside you. As soon as the postman disappeared out of your eyesight, you rushed outside to take the letter out of the mailbox. The first thing that greeted your eyes was the immaculate handwriting and the scent emitted from the paper.

'How sweet of him...' you thought as you continued reading the letter in your mind. The paragraphs were neatly organized and made of outdated vocabulary that you wouldn't understand had you not taken an interest in classic literature. You could tell this man practiced utmost eloquence just by his letter alone. Overall, he wrote a few things about himself and asked you about your hobbies, what you like and blablabla.

But then, something struck within you concerning with the photograph he sent and notes written behind it:

"The construction of the mall is making my ears bleed. I cannot stand the constant sounds of the drills and other sounds coming from it. I daresay, you must be experiencing the same disturbance as we are only one street apart from each other. Perhaps we should plan to meet up after the mall opens. What do you think of it?"

The more you stared at the photograph and the note, the more confused you became. The picture showed the mall with the same as the one down the street but it was still in construction according to the photo. 'Huh?' A frown stretched across your face. That specific mall had been going on more nearly a century now to the point that the community had been urging the government to shut it down in order to build a more innovative one. Didn't it finish construction like a hundred years ago? But his photo told a whole new different story.

Suspicions rose inside of you as a spiral of questions revolved around your head- you found it difficult to process it. Not missing a beat, you hurried to your room to find that newspaper you took from your late great-grandfather's shelf. You mumbled in frustration when you couldn't find it; you swore you left it either on the desk or on the bed. Finally, you found it under the bed and oh my...

The letter was published a century back in time which meant that...

"T-The man I just sent a letter...was from the past...." The newspaper dropped from your hands. Your letter had ripped its way out of the fabric of time and went into the mailbox of a man who lived in the same area as you but different time period. He was in the past, you were in the future.

Still, a part of you felt curious about the interaction between two people of different dimensions. So you decided to reply back to his letter. What could go wrong...right?

To people who are more knowledgeable in time travel or parallel universes, pls don't attack me, I know what I wrote may or may not make sense for some of you but pls don't mind me 😭😭😭

And also, not proofread because I wrote this around midnight and I'm literally on the verge of dozing off- (Ik I have such healthy sleep cycles and I have to wake up at 6 am yayyy!! Sleep-deprived-students-core😘🙆🤗)

[scary-grace]

(secret) santa, baby - part 5 of a shigaraki x f!reader fic

Shigaraki doesn't want to participate in the office's Secret Santa exchange, but when Toga promises to make it easy on him, he gives in. But making it easy for him makes it a lot harder for you -- you're the one who got his list. Office AU, no quirks. A fic in 12 parts. Divider by @ wcnderlnds

part i part ii part iii part iv part v part vi

part v (sitting on santa's lap)

When Tomura ventures into the mailroom to stick his first shot at a gift into your mailbox, there’s already a gift waiting for him in his. Or in front of his. It’s a little too big to fit. Tomura checks that the coast is clear, tucks his gift into your mailbox, and comes back for the one his Secret Santa left him. It’s not just bigger than the other gifts he’s gotten. It’s heavier, too. And there’s a note on top of it, the handwriting Tomura’s gotten familiar with: READ ME FIRST.

Before he can unfold it and follow instructions, there’s a burst of laughter from the break room down the hall, and under cover of it, you step into the mailroom. Tomura wasn’t expecting you to come in here right after he left you a gift. He can’t be here when you open it, and he can’t leave, either – not unless he wants to knock you over on his way out the door. What he needs to do is play it cool. “Hey.”

“Hi,” you say. There’s another burst of laughter from down the hall. “What brings you up here?”

“Checking the mail. What else would I be doing?” Tomura sounds like an asshole. “You have a gift. I see it in there.”

“Oh,” you say, but you don’t go for it. You’re watching Tomura. “What did you get?”

Tomura shrugs. “I’m supposed to read this,” he says, waving the card at you. You nod, and Tomura starts to unfold the message, for sheer lack of anything better to do. Before he can get more than a sentence into it, even more laughter erupts. “What’s going on in there?”

“Mina got a gift from her Secret Santa,” you say. Tomura tries and fails to remember which one Mina is. “And I think her Secret Santa must be a friend of hers, because there’s no way somebody would buy a book of Christmas smut for somebody they didn’t know.”

“Christmas smut,” Tomura repeats. The words aren’t connecting. “Huh?”

“It’s called The Naughty List,” you say. “A bunch of smutty short stories that are Christmas-themed. She’s been reading them aloud. Right now I think it’s about wrapping yourself like a gift and hiding under your neighbor’s tree, but the best one so far was about seducing a mall Santa by sitting on his lap and telling him all the naughty stuff that happened all year. Did you ever do that?”

“Sit on a mall Santa’s lap and lie about the stuff I did all year?”

“No, the photo op,” you say. “As a kid.”

“My family didn’t go for Western holidays,” Tomura says. Maybe that’s true, or maybe he’s just blocking something out. Most of the holidays he remembers with his birth family didn’t end well for him. “You?”

“My parents tried,” you say. “They really wanted the photo, but I was scared of the Santa.”

“Weird.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” Tomura says. “Just weird that you’re scared of mall Santas, but not scared of singing a Christmas carol in front of Yamada’s weird acapella group.”

“I sweated through my shirt trying to sing that,” you say. Tomura blinks. “It was for a good cause.”

Tomura looked up the other five verses to the song after you went back upstairs. You weren’t kidding about what it was going to be like. “Yeah. I owe you.”

You shake your head. “No, you don’t.”

Tomura doesn’t know what to say to that, and you don’t look like you know how to follow up. What would Tomura say if he could get his shit together, anyway? He already said thank you. He can’t tell you that you have a nice voice or that he got the song stuck in his head or that he was wondering if you had anybody in mind when you were singing it. Those thoughts need to stay inside his head. Nothing good is going to happen if any of them make it out of his mouth.

He has to say something. “You got a gift. Are you going to open it?”

“I’ll open mine here if you do,” you say. Tomura nods, and as you start prying open the bag Tomura stapled shut, he unfolds the note his Secret Santa left and reads it.

Dear Tomura, it starts. I know this wasn’t on your list, but I think it could help if you were out of other options. I get eczema on my hands in the winter, too, and this stuff is the only stuff that’s ever helped.

Knowing that his Secret Santa has eczema on their hands, it should be easy to figure out who they are, but Tomura can’t recall ever seeing somebody around the office with messed-up hands. Maybe the stuff really does work. He opens the box and comes up with a jar of hand cream with an unfamiliar name. Tomura looks at it, then back at the letter. I’m sorry if this is overstepping. It’s just something I noticed. If you do use it, I hope it helps. Sincerely, your Secret Santa.

They noticed. What does that mean? Spinner’s been going overboard on gifts for the person whose list he got because he wants to show her that people other than her boyfriend notice her and appreciate her. How much attention has Tomura’s Secret Santa been paying to him? Probably too much, or they wouldn’t have taken his stupid, half-assed list and turned it into a chain of gifts he actually wants. Too much, or they wouldn’t have known how badly his hands have been bothering him this winter in particular.

It’s weird. Tomura should feel weird about it, but he doesn’t. He feels – warm.

Across the mailroom, the paper bag tears as you give up on trying to pick out the staples. Tomura looks up and finds you staring down at his gift. He can’t read the look on your face, and he’s apparently a lot worse with suspense than he thought he was. He almost asks what you think of it before he remembers that you’re not supposed to know who left the gift, and modifies the question at top speed. “What did you get?”

“A pen,” you say slowly. “I put one on my list, but I asked for a cheaper one.”

Tomura knows. “Did you actually want the cheaper one, or were you just trying to come up with an easy list?”

“I didn’t want to make anybody overspend on me,” you say. “I mean, I know everybody else is – Mina’s Secret Santa didn’t take the price tag off that book – but I haven’t been here that long, and I didn’t want anybody to get my list and think I was asking for too much.”

Tomura thinks you weren’t asking for enough. That’s why he got the nicer pen. “Do you like it?”

Your grip tightens on the pen, like you think somebody’s going to take it away. “Yes.”

“Then don’t worry about it,” Tomura says. “The thing I got wasn’t on my list. You don’t see me overthinking it.”

He’s sort of lying. He’s definitely overthinking it, just not the same way you are. You study him for a second, then hit him with the same question. “Do you like it?”

“If it works,” Tomura says. You nod and leave the room without saying anything else.

He tells himself to wait to try it until he gets home so he doesn’t slime up his keyboard, but then he realizes that he’s only putting it on the backs of his hands and loses patience. It doesn’t change anything about how his hands look. They’re disgusting, dry and red and cracked and still trying to bounce back from the paper cut he got a week ago. But they feel better. A lot better. It’s the first hand cream Tomura’s used that doesn’t sting when he puts it on.

It smells okay, too. And sort of familiar. Tomura spends longer than he’d like to admit staring off into space, wondering where he smelled it before.

<- part iv. part vi ->

[snarp]

Real True Law Stories

This is heavily-paraphrased because 1) it happened a while back, and the conversations were longer and involved a lot more of me going "no! no! augh," and 2) the case was not actually about Ale-8 bottles, but its actual focus was similarly-specific, which would have made it really easy to look up.

Dad: Can you value a collection of old Ale-8 bottles for me, honey?

Me: ...possibly, but I'm not going to. Is this a blasting case again? Did someone's designated used Ale-8 bottle shelf fall over?

Dad: No, they got stolen. He had this shed or big closet or something totally full of collectible Ale-8 bottles, he's got all these insurance photos, he'd had them appraised by the national Ale-8 bottle expert -

Mom: Dear...

Dad: No, he's definitely really upset about these lost Ale-8 bottles! He's traumatized! Do you think I don't deal with liars? ...He thinks his estranged drug-addict relative stole the Ale-8 bottles.

Me: No. That did not happen.

Mom: That's probably not what happened, dear.

Dad: Drug addicts steal stuff all the time, what is this -

Me: Dad, no, this is fucking logistically -

Dad: - don't, I'm telling the story, stop it - "logistically" -

Me: A drug addict would not steal and hock a huge collection of Ale-8 bottles! They're heavy and fragile and that's a ridiculous specialist hobby, logistically it'd be way too -

Mom: The bottles were definitely stolen, dear?

Me: Why wouldn't you just steal, like, the TV? Or the car or whatever?! You don't steal the Ale-8 bottles!

Dad: They were stolen! He was gone! He'd had a fight with this person, he couldn't get back into the house for a while, he came back and the bottles were gone, he was heartbroken!

Me: No! You don't steal the collection of Ale-8 bottles, that's not what you steal!

Dad: No, they knew he really liked these bottles, it was revenge or something? Seriously, he keeps asking me why I can't make the police go and arrest this person and find out where they put the bottles, he's really angry! He misses his bottles.

Mom: *sigh* Okay, dear. So the Ale-8 bottles were stolen and insurance won't cover them.

Dad, to Me: So you're going to try and value the Ale-8 bottle collection for me. It'll be easy.

Me: I am not.

Dad: He has a spreadsheet.

Me: No. - You said he already had it appraised!

Mom: Before the Ale-8 bottle heist...

Dad: He did! I mean. There's this guy who writes Ale-8 bottle valuation books, he lives - somewhere, and the client knows him over, I guess, an Ale-8 bottle club? Ale-8 bottle mailing list? On the internet. - and he came on this road trip to just look at these Ale-8 bottles in the guy's shed or closet! Does that make sense?

Me: If this is an actual collecting hobby that other people engage in, and not a scam - if Ale-8 bottle collecting is something that's real - then yes, that's normal if you've got a valuable collection, I guess? How much did he say all these Ale-8 bottles were worth, is this even a sane case to be taking if he's telling the truth?

Dad: [a very large number]

Mom, who has been quietly thinking about this while we do our manzai routine: Well, there are definitely other Ale-8 bottle collectors, honey. [name] likes them, I think?... That seems awfully high. He had them in a shed? Like a garden shed?

Dad: I've seen the book! He showed me the Ale-8 bottle book! It was a shed or a garage or a side room or something. They weren't outside.

Me: If what you're trying to figure out is whether this guy and the appraiser are for real, I'd just... look around online and make sure there are actually people buying and selling these things, and talking about them to the extent he says there are, I guess?

Mom: If there's a real community and a real buyer base.

Dad: The Ale-8 bottle book had numbers in it, like values.

Me: The numbers don't mean anything if his buddy wrote the book and if they're the only two people who care about Ale-8 bottles!

Dad: You know, you're awfully suspicious of these Ale-8 bottles...

Me: It's a completely ridiculous story. - You're suspicious of them, too! That's why you even asked me to value Ale-8 bottles!

Dad: You're just not a trusting person. You're paranoid. You know, I trust all my clients completely -

*My Ale-8-bottle-related-outrage HP drops too low and I die.*

Mom: No. What she's saying is that their book value -

Dad: Yeah, that's the word, their book value! Like a Kelley Blue Book value for a car, that's what this other guy does, he does the Blue Book for the bottles. So all I have to do is show the insurance company the Kelley Bottle Book, right?

Mom: No.

Dad: It's fine! The insurance company will be completely cooperative. What are they going to complain about, it's right there in the book.

Mom: Does the book reflect the market values of the bottles? The street values? Are these the prices that people pay on eBay or wherever when they're buying the bottles?

Dad: I don't know.

Mom: Are they the prices he paid for them?

Dad: I don't know. Probably.

*I finish my corpse-run and resurrect.*

Me: There's got to be an actual market for there to be market prices. People who buy the things and have opinions about how much they're worth and stuff.

Dad: Can you research that for me, honey? Research the Ale-8 bottle market?

Me: I'm not going to do that. You have [name] in the office, right? You are paying her money to do this stuff for you, correct?

Dad: You never want to help me. Help me research Ale-8 bottles. I don't know why my daughters never help me.

Mom: And then you have to prove all this stuff to the judge and jury. Will they believe that Ale-8 bottles are worth anything?

Me: Please show us how you will emotionally convince the jury that these Ale-8 bottles are worth money. Make it sound like you're really sad about the loss of the valuable Ale-8 bottle collection.

Dad: Nnnno! *laughs* Oh, my god, they're such bullshit! They're these little bottles! And he had zillions of them! He must have some sort of trauma in his past, I'm going to ask [Psychiatrist Who Acts As An Expert Witness In PTSD Cases] to examine him... - Well, this is some southern thing, like the little toy stock cars that guy had. I don't know, maybe a southern jury will buy it?

Me: Say that "a jury of your peers" means "a jury of Ale-8 bottle collectors."

Mom: Yeah, hope you get a collector on the jury or on the bench.

*- several months later -*

Dad: So do you want to hear what happened at court the other day? With my Ale-8 bottle guy?

Me: You're going to tell me about the Ale-8 bottle guy regardless. Did it turn out to be insurance fraud?

Dad: No, actually! - well, I don't know. "A reasonable doubt for a reasonable price!"

Mom: Dear.

Dad: So obviously the insurance guys are like, "this is bullshit! It's bullshit! Ale-8 bottles aren't worth anything, the whole thing is bullshit!" And I'm like, okay, well. And they don't want to go to mediation, and they give us this lowball number to settle, and, obviously, no.

Dad: So we go in front of Judge [X] the other day, and I'm like, *solemn expression* "Judge. My client has had his extremely valuable Ale-8 bottle collection stolen, and his insurance will not pay for it even though he had it personally appraised by The Ale-8 Bottle Man."

Me: Who is his buddy and who may well be artificially inflating the prices of stuff he and his friends have a lot of, sure.

Dad: You don't know that!

Mom: And opposing counsel said…?

Dad: So, [Other Lawyer], he got up there and he was like, "Well, Judge, I mean. Ale-8 bottles, right? They're Ale-8 bottles." And they start - but then the judge goes, "Actually. I wanted to say, I was looking over the documents in this case. And, well, I've got a bit of a collection myself - I've got the - 1492 Foofrall-something Bottle and a mint-condition Bluh-buh-buh Bottle, and" and then he just sits there and lists all these Ale-8 bottles he's got for like, several minutes.

Me: Is this a joke. Did this actually happen.

Dad: It happened! It did happen!

Me: Mom!

Mom: I know, dear. It happened. He is not making this up.

Dad: So I get out of there and I go over and talk to opposing counsel, and just! The looks on their faces! They looked so defeated.

Me: They've got to be really suspicious of you right now.

Mom: "Is this why he took the case? Did he know?"

Dad: No! I had no idea! I was just as flabbergasted as they are, I've never heard him - okay, did you know this terrible fact about Judge [X]? Did you know he was one of them? The Bottlers?

Mom: I did not know this. I knew that he golfed.

Dad: So, long story short, I kind of think that this case is going to settle?

Mom: Unless the bottles are just in his basement, and he posts a picture of them to his Facebook without thinking.

Dad: Huh?

Mom: Like your other guy.

Dad: Those weren't bottles.

[lisbeth-kk]

May Prompts (28) Empty

The Luckiest Girl in the World (chapter 28)

Summary: Will Rosie be able to keep her secret from her parents until the big day?

Twenty-Eight Years Old

Seen in hindsight, the trip to Greece was a catalyst of what came later. On our last evening, Timothy and I had dinner at an almost empty restaurant on the cliffs of Fira. The sun was about to set, and the sea was bathed in colours of gold. When Timothy took my hands in his and asked me to marry him, it really was the perfect ending. Cliché, perhaps, but who cares? Luckily, he hadn’t bought the rings at one of the ridiculous jewellers on the island but brought them with him from London. (I said yes, by the way.)

***

As if faith wanted me to keep my secret from my parents, they were away on a three-week trip to New Zealand when we arrived back in London. I called Dee before I went to Baker Street to collect mail and check the fridge for outdated milk and decayed body parts. She had closed for the day, but when I called with my inquiry, she was instantly intrigued and asked me to pop into 221A before I left.

It was strange to see someone else living at Nana’s. Her old furniture had been donated to second-hand shops, new wallpaper, art, and futuristically designed chairs, tables and shelves made 221A look like something taken out of Star Trek or whatever. The kitchen and bathroom were recognisable with bits and bobs I remembered. Nana’s oven mittens, the kitchen utensils and the wallpaper. Over the kitchen table was a big photo of Nana.

“I’ve made some sketches for you,” Dee said after she’d inquired about the trip. “One on each shoulder, yes?”

She showed me her drawings and after some discussion, she made the adjustments I wanted. 

“See you tomorrow at six,” Dee said when I left. 

“Can’t wait!” I retorted excitedly.

***

Dee’s Den was everything you don’t expect a tattoo-studio to be. (At least if you’ve never set foot in one.) Airy, spacious and clean in the extreme. The first time I entered, I felt I needed to take my shoes off.

“No customer of mine will suffer from an infection. I’ve seen enough of that shit,” Dee said gravely.

Her improved sketches had been coloured when I arrived the next day, and they looked even better than I’d dreamt of. The tattoos would adorn each shoulder. One red poppy on the left, and a bee on the right. A t-shirt would cover them, and by the time Dad and Papa were back, they would’ve healed properly so I didn’t need to wrap them in plastic, and the soreness would be gone. I hoped to keep them a secret until the wedding day. My dress would be sleeveless and make sure to show off the tribute to my beloved parents.

***

We decided on a May wedding, and it was Dee’s idea to check if the venue from Nana’s funeral was available.

“She would’ve been so pleased that you all had some good memories from that place. Dancing and laughing, celebrating love.”

Both me and Timothy loved the idea, and we were in luck. Normally, the place needed to be booked at least a year and a half in advance, when it came to weddings, but they’d had a cancellation due to a broken engagement. Nine months to prepare.

***

I chose Liwia as my maid of honour. We had stayed in touch over the years, and she adored my parents, after they’d given her shelter when she needed it in the middle of her teens. Bella had been switched for Iris. They’d been together almost eight years, and Iris was six months pregnant with their first child. An unknown donor was the father.

“I’ve been meaning to ask if you were traumatised when you stayed with us,” I said on the final fitting of our dresses.

“What do you mean?” Liwia asked, clearly puzzled.

“Board games,” I explained dryly.

She laughed wholeheartedly and admitted that she’d never played Scrabble, Cluedo, orMonopoly, but stuck to chess and card games.

“Wise choice,” I retorted with a grin. “Though I have experienced knights, queens and bishops being thrown across 221B.”

***

My uncles picked me up at the salon where I’d been styled and dressed. Uncle Myc cocked an eyebrow when he saw my tattoos, but he was unable to hide how moved he was by this permanent gesture. Uncle Greg…well, he wasn’t that subtle, and needed a stern talking to from his husband to avoid ruining my dress and hair when he teared up and embraced me.

“You’re going to destroy them with this, love,” uncle Greg murmured.

I hadn’t been nervous before, but when the familiar place came into sight, my palms started to sweat, and my heart pounded in my chest. Inside, Timothy and my parents waited. The most important people in the world, apart from the men helping me out of the car. I kissed them and let them go in first to find their seats. One of the staff stood waiting for me to open the door once I’d decided to enter.

For a while I just stood there, my head blessfully empty. And then out of nowhere a wave of emotions washed over me. The memories of all the preparations and anxiety of the last week, regarding the flowers, the last seat arrangements we had to change the day prior, one of my shoes that disappeared without a trace… 

“Come on, Watson. You can do this,” I interrupted myself, using Papa’s former name on me to get me out of the unending loop of trifles and keep me focused.

I nodded to the man by the door who opened it for me, and I slowly made my way down the corridor to where Dad and Papa waited. They stood hand in hand outside the door to the ceremony room and turned abruptly when they heard my heels on the wooden floor.

“You look…”

“Oh, Bee…”

They were both teary-eyed, which didn’t bode well. I hoped they’d piled up with tissues, because this well would not be emptied any time soon.

With my heels on, I was the height of Dad. I seldom wore high-heeled shoes, so it was an alien feeling to stand face to face with him, literally speaking.

“You look gorgeous, sweetheart,” he whispered in my ear when he hugged me.

“Thank you,” I said and turned to Papa.

He’d frozen and he blinked profusely. Dad looked worried at him. He still hadn’t seen the tattoos. Papa’s eyes darted between them, clearly shocked to the core. I took his hand and squeezed it.

“Do you like them?” I asked quietly.

“Like what?” Dad inquired; his eyes hadn’t left Papa’s face during all of this.

“Look at me, Dad,” I said and finally he saw what Papa had seen minutes ago.

“Oh, my god,” he said and covered his mouth with his hand. “Rosie.”

“They are…” Papa clearly knew but was too shaken to believe what he’d deduced.

“Yes, Papa. They are. My tribute, homage, or whatever you want to call it. To you and Dad. To show you and everyone how much you mean to me. Dee made them while you were away. You have no idea how proud I am that I’ve managed to keep it a secret until now.”

Finally, out of his daze, Papa cupped my face and kissed my forehead and cheeks, careful not to disturb my hair or makeup.

“My precious girl,” he murmured. “I love you.”

“Stop! You’re making me cry,” I protested and tried my best to stay composed.

Dad sniffled and batted his eyes with a handkerchief.

“I’m never going to survive this day,” he muttered.

“John!” Papa exclaimed. “Don’t you dare.”

I knew I had to take the lead, or we would be stranded outside that door forever.

“Come on. The game is afoot,” I teased.

Also available on AO3

YES, there will be a continuation tomorrow.

This is also my entry for this month's Sherlock Challenge and the prompt ink.

@calaisreno @sherlockchallenge @totallysilvergirl @keirgreeneyes @raina-at

More tags in the replies

[copperbadge]

Some more treats from the PO Box!

The card reading "Joy", along with the stickers and the awesome Hawkeye tag, came from @jadesymb; I very carefully made sure everyone was mostly covered by a sticker, and thank you also for the giftcard! (I didn't put it in the photo because I immediately put it in my wallet before I could lose it.) It sounds like your family had an amazing year, you must be very proud!

The other set of stickers and postcards came from A. (wasn't sure if you wanted me to use your handle) as a thank-you for taking some postcards and sending them back for philatelic reasons :) I even got a wax seal, you can see it in blue up near the top! Love the pride lion and the kittycat, and of course the book postcards too. I dropped the Chicago postcard in the mail today and I'm going to try to get to Des Plaines to send the Illinois State postcard in the next little while -- if I can't, I'll just send it from a different zipcode in Chicago :)

And of course there's the Freak In The Sheets mug from @banesidhe :D It's become my go-to for video call beverage cups.

[ohtobealady]

🧡 for Cobert, please <3

Yay! Thank you, sweets. This one is inspired by the recent Daily Mail photos. I hope you like it!

🧡 kissing in bed / lazy kiss / cuddling

————— 🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡 —————

She couldn’t help but to laugh, aloud, at Baxter’s flourish of her hands.

“And I believe that’s all, m’lady,” her maid smiled behind her, and Cora looked up at her in the reflection of the mirror.

“Well then,” she laughed again. “Good night, I suppose!”

They giggled together like schoolgirls before Baxter said good night, taking Cora’s evening dress and heading for the door. “Good night!” Cora called after her and looked back again at her own reflection. She grinned.

Beside her, she heard the sweep of the dividing door and she watched Robert enter, robed and slippered. Cora glanced up at her husband who bobbed his brows once in greeting at her, but otherwise moved to the bed.

Never mind, she thought with one last look at herself—-another grin. She tried her best to calm the smile she wore as she stood after him, but it couldn’t be helped. It came bubbling up again, softly, as she thought of Baxter’s gesture and shrug of her shoulders. Why it had taken Cora so long to do it, especially after Mary, Edith, and even Baxter had, now she wasn’t sure.

“You’re very cheery tonight,” Robert noted in her direction as he untied the knot of his housecoat.

“Yes,” Cora took off her dressing gown, too, and draped it at the end of the bed. “I am, a bit.” She tugged the sheets back just as Robert began to, working together. When she felt the tickle at the nape of her neck, she smiled again. “I feel rather free now that it’s done. And I can’t believe how little time it took Baxter tonight. Certainly makes less trouble for everyone.”

“Oh.” Robert’s voice dropped, and he fell into bed. “Your hair.”

She frowned at his tone and brought her fingers again to the soft ends at her jaw. “Yes.” When she tipped her head at him, a curled end brushed at her ear. “Robert?”

He hummed in response, adjusting the pillows behind him.

“You don’t like it,” she noted, but Robert avoided her gaze.

“I never said that.” He glanced at her quickly and then down again at the bunched sheets on his lap.

“But you haven’t said you like it,” she prodded, lifting her knees and climbing in bed beside him.

“You’re fishing for a compliment, then?”

“No.” She watched him do everything except look at her, now leaning to his side table for his book. “Though would it be so terrible of me? I would like you to approve.”

She didn’t know what to make of his push of air and little shake of his head, and Cora stiffened at it.

“Well, Baxter likes it.” She pushed her legs beneath the blankets and pulled them to cover her. “It certainly will get her home earlier to her husband.”

“And so then I suppose Molesley must also approve.”

Cora narrowed her eyes. “And Mary says it suits me,” she added, touching the ends again and looking at Robert. “She says it’s very chic.”

“There you are then,” beside her, Robert grunted. “If you have Mary’s approval, you certainly don’t need mine.”

Cora sighed, audibly, but shimmied herself down into the bedding. “That’s not really the same.” She stared up at the canopy of their bed as he turned the pages of his book. She studied the tassels dangling from the fabric, and she thought of hours before, when she arrived home from the coiffeur. Robert’s reaction had been silent, his mouth had gone slack for a moment before he cleared his throat. But she hadn’t realized he didn’t like it.

Eventually, Cora heard as Robert closed his book, and when she felt the warmth of his gaze upon her, she allowed herself to peer up at him, still sitting as she laid flat, the lamplight working to set a glow to his face.

“It’s not that I don’t like it, exactly—“ he began, but Cora interrupted him.

“—-you just don’t find it attractive.”

This time it was Robert who sighed, and his eyes went out to the room. “Of course I find you attractive.” He leaned and replaced his book, but continued. “But—“

“But?”

“Cora, you’ve not had short hair all your life. Aren’t I allowed some time to get used to it?”

She lifted her chin. “Rather difficult to get used to something you won’t even look at.”

But then he did. Above her, Robert turned and leaned over her, and he looked at her.

In spite of having been married for forty years, and in spite of him having seen her in ways that only husbands and wives see one another, Cora felt her face flush at his attention. And then, when he lifted a hand to brush at the short ends of her hair, she swallowed down a rush of nerves.

“You’re right.”

Cora blinked. “Am I?”

She smiled a little when Robert nodded. “Of course you are. It surprised me, is all. But it—-“

She felt the tickle of a smirk at the corner of her mouth. “It what?”

Above her, Robert rolled his eyes. “It does suit you.” He shifted slightly, and drew nearer. “It suits you very well.”

She couldn’t tease him now, the deep timbre of his voice, and Cora felt herself blush again. She lowered her gaze.

“Darling.”

As he beckoned, she looked to him, and he descended upon her. His mouth quickly found the line of her jaw, and then her cheek, and his hand traveled from the ends of her hair to her bare throat. His coarse fingertips made her soft skin come to life.

“Mm,” he hummed against her ear and she felt warm. She felt him kiss her jaw again, her bobbed hair caught between her skin and his lips. “Perhaps I do approve.”

And for the hundredth time this evening, Cora laughed.

[raquellemonsta]

Hi!! Just saw ur post announcing that you’ll be taking requests so I’d love to send one in! I would love love LOVE a timeskip! Tobio x supermodel/influencer/celebrity gf who is like the IT girl of Tokyo and is super gorgeous Bcs I’ve just forever had this thought that timeskip tobio just SUITS so well w like specifically a famous celebrity that compliments him yk?? And not to mention he’s also canonically attractive like YESS. It just makes so much sense bcs I def think Kageyama fits into the unpopular/quiet guy trope with the ultimate sunshine/popular gf yk?? So so excited to read it!! <33

i LOVEEE this idea. i think his personality perfectly contrasts a popular/famous cosmo girl. i kind of went crazy with this one, and it has it's own little twist on it so the two aren't initially dating (also enjoy the lev cameo <3). hope you like it!!

timeskip! kageyama x celebrity/model! reader

4.0k words

(part 2)

----

you live a pretty normal life. you have lots of friends, lots of clothes, and your very own makeup brand. plus, you have millions of followers on all of your social medias, enough brand deals and fan mail to fill up an entire house, and weekly photoshoots for fashion magazines. and not to mention a beautiful penthouse in the most expensive part of tokyo. okay, maybe your life isn't that normal.

at only 23, you've been on the cover of famous magazines (both in your home country and abroad), developed your own million-dollar beauty brand, and even starred in a few popular movies. the spotlight has always seemed to find you.

when you were younger, you participated in pageants, first locally and eventually moving up to larger-scale competitions. you would start to get spots in commercials for random products. you had become locally well-known, however it would be at the end of your teens that you would be catapulted into real stardom.

when you were 19, you were crowned miss universe japan and were the runner-up for the miss universe competition. ever since, you had become a national celebrity and were known internationally as well. you now lived a lavish lifestyle and surrounded yourself with glamorous possessions and people (though not to say you didn't appreciate and even miss your life before fame). as tokyo's beloved 'it' girl, your life is exciting and lots of business at the same time.

which brings you to now, you were sitting in the backseat of your car after just leaving your manager's office. you kept replaying the conversation you just had with mr. gushiken.

"i don't understand what you're trying to say" you admitted.

"you're going on 24 (y/n), and you've never publicly dated anyone! you're going to become less relatable if you keep it up" he warned. your manager has been on your case about getting into a relationship to boost people's view of you. personally, you didn't care how relatable you are, but the more you thought the more you realized people might find it weird that their favorite megastar hasn't shown any sign of a love life. that didn't mean you wanted a 'pr' relationship though. you want love to find you, you don't want to force it or fake it. if that means waiting for the right person then so be it.

when you finally come back to reality, your driver informs you that you're almost to your destination. your manager booked you a shoot for some designer handbag brand that's going to pay you a large sum for the photos. you're even getting a free purse from their new line, so you're not going to complain.

entering the studio, you're greeted by an intern and shown to the set area. you're caught off guard when you see lev haiba at the set with you. you are aware of him, though you've never collaborated with him before. you most often see him in perfume/cologne advertisements, while you usually appear for fashion brands.

with the context that your manager wants you in a relationship, though, you start thinking that maybe you're being set up. a sinking feeling in your chest causes you to consider what dating lev would be like, and then onto lev himself. what is he like?

"hey (l/n), it's nice to work with you!" lev excitedly greets you. he has a wide grin on his face and talks faster than you can even keep up with.

"i'm happy to work with you too lev" you smile back. you make your decision then and there.

lev is very handsome, he's a model for crying out loud! but he isn't your type. superficially, you've always been into tall guys with dark hair. but honestly, appearance didn't matter to you as long as he had certain other traits. personality-wise, you liked when guys aren't like yourself. you find yourself clashing with lev simply because the two of you are very similar in your dispositions. it's nice as a friend and colleague relationship, but you don't see it working out romantically.

"alright ms. (l/n), please follow me" a younger man calls for your attention and lead you to a dressing/makeup room. your makeup took a little over half an hour, and then you were helped into the elegant red dress you were given for the shoot.

following the same man back out, you see lev already waiting for you so the shoot can begin. you shake hands with the photographer before getting some individual shots with the bags. then, they decide to have the two of you do some photos together. at first, it's innocent enough, but then they start asking you to get into some slightly more intimate poses. for example, the photographer has their intern move you two into a pose where your back is to lev's chest. they have him place his arms around you while you hold a handbag (and he has one over his shoulder). it's a very couple-y pose and you can just picture your manager scheming with the shoot photographer.

the thing that finally puts you over the edge is when they expect you and lev to kiss. that basically confirms your suspicion that this was some sort of plot to make the public see you and lev as a couple and spark a pr relationship between two models. your heart picks up its pace, but not in a positive way. you start to breathe heavier and feel on the bring of an anxiety attack. the only thing really stopping you is knowing how it could affect your reputation.

it's too much. i need to get out of here.

you settle for a kiss on the cheek, before announcing that you're not feeling very well and rushing off the set and back to your dressing room. you chug from your water bottle and breathe deeply, knuckles white as you clutch the edge of the table. you give yourself a few minutes to breathe before quickly getting out of the red dress and slipping into a slightly more casual black one. you grab your purse and walk back down the hallway, saying thank yous and byes to people as you go.

you give a more personal goodbye to lev, and give him a kind smile to show that it's not his fault that you ran out. he smiles back at you in understanding as you leave the building, your driver waiting out front for you. the sun is getting lower in the sky, and the streets are still bustling.

after that interesting shoot, you really need to unwind. you have your driver bring you to an upscale club in the heart of tokyo. you aren't an alcoholic by any means, but you really wanted a distraction and didn't think you would find it in your quiet apartment.

finally reaching your destination, your bodyguard opens the door for you. you thank your driver before walking up to the entrance of the club. several of the people in line excitedly point at you, whisper-shouting that you're even prettier in person and various other compliments. you grin at them before happily greeting the bouncer. this is a club you frequent, and the bouncer is used to seeing you.

you walk inside and immediately feel the speakers vibrating the floor. this dark front hallway merely conceals the colorful dance floor and lit-up bar. one of your favorite things about this club is the lighting perfect for insta pictures. you say hi to some of the people you recognize before feeling the need for a drink.

you head to the vip section and take a seat. your bodyguard is hidden away in the back, giving you some semblance of privacy while still ensuring that he'll be ready at a moment's notice, though you doubt you'll need his assistance here. while waiting for the server, you look down from the indoor balcony that gives a view of the dance floor. there are actually a lot more people here than usual, now that you think about it. there's a lot of really tall, really hot guys here tonight on top of that. a server comes by and you order a drink before asking about all of the extra people here tonight. he tells you that japan's national volleyball team are here

you wait for your drink by doing some more people-watching. you look around the vip area from the chair you're on when your gaze falls on a man across the room. he seems vaguely familiar, but you can't put a name to the face you're currently openly staring at. he's insanely attractive and fits the tall, dark, and handsome archetype to a t. even from where you're sitting you can tell he's particularly muscular, and his features are sharply defined.

is it cheesy and cliché to say this is love at first sight? you can't think of another way to describe it. you feel your heart start to thump faster in your chest, and unlike earlier it's a positive feeling. you look back at him and to your surprise, find that you're making eye contact with him before he quickly averts his eyes.

did you just catch him staring at you?

now you have to find out about him. by going over to him and asking? well no, he had three other guys currently sitting at his booth with him, which runs the risk of him blowing you off even if he is interested. so you do what makes the most sense and ask random clubgoers about him instead of approaching him. like any drunk person down there would ignore a pretty girl anyway.

you head down to the dance floor, where the music is nearly deafening, and try to ask around to find out who this guy is. it takes only one person to find out the identity of the handsome 'stranger'.

a girl around your age is able to tell you that it's kageyama tobio, a professional volleyball player. that explains his excellent physique. you look his name up on your phone and sure enough find the man and numerous pictures of him throughout his career. damn is he hot, especially in his action shots. you also realize you've definitely seen him online before, probably in a headline as part of his impressive volleyball team without even realizing it. apparently, he's a very talented setter and a key part of his team, despite being one of the younger ones on the team (when you see he's 24 you want to yell out loud that finally an attractive guy is actually your age and not a questionable amount older).

you're told by others that he's 'emotionally unavailable' and that he is already in a committed relationship (with volleyball) though. you aren't going to let that stop you, plus he was actually staring back at you earlier. that has to count for something! besides, even if it doesn't work out, the chase itself is fun.

you make your way back up to your seat. you feel eyes on you and find him at the other side of the vip intently staring at you again. one of his teammates (you assume) is sat across from him, though his attention is clearly on you. you wave at him and give him a flirtatious wink, which causes him to furrow his brows. he looks behind and then around himself while you continue to stare at him. is he really so surprised you're interested in him? does he not know how attractive he is?

when he's finally alone, you decide to make your move. pushing your chair back, you make your way over.

"hi. mind if i sit?" you ask. you're not going to beat around the bush or worse- make him feel like he's wasting his time.

he looks at you, likely recognizing you as the beautiful woman across the room that seemed interested in him. he then takes in the rest of you, and you're happy you had decided to wear a short but flattering black dress that highlights your favorite features.

"hey. no" he shortly responds. he shifts over in the booth despite the entire rest of it being empty. you take the opportunity to be close to him and sit in the area he made space for. you bump his shoulder accidentally before placing your drink down.

you sit down and get a good look at him up close for the first time. you have to say, he's even more attractive in person compared to your phone screen. his eye contact with you is inconsistent, as you'll catch his gaze for a few seconds before he looks away with pink cheeks.

"i haven't seen you here before" you say, "what are you doing here tonight?" you question, taking a sip of your drink. you want to hear from him, even though you kind of already know the answer. you look up at him to find him already looking at you, for some reason surprised that a pretty girl is actually this interested in speaking with him. after several moments of his incredulous look, he finally answers you.

"i'm on japan's national volleyball team" he explained, "we're here for 'team bonding' or something". he doesn't say much but you find yourself hanging on every word he speaks. he has an alluringly deep voice that you noticed more with his longer sentence. "i know who you are" he says.

you're shocked by his sudden assertion. honestly, you shouldn't be because you're literally one of the most famous people in tokyo, but still. you honestly feel kind of bad that you hadn't really known who he was when he caught your eye from across the room earlier.

"really?" you ask.

"who doesn't?" he responds.

kageyama does know you. he knows a lot about you, truthfully. you've been his 'celebrity crush' for several years, ever since he happened to see you on the miss universe competition representing his country.

he had been visiting home, watching tv with his sister. miwa has always been a big fan of reality tv and beauty competitions. he hadn't really been paying much attention to what she was watching, opting to play some random game on his phone while waiting for dinner. that was until his sister started freaking out and squealing at the tv. who was the older sibling again?

"tobio it's her! miss universe japan!" she excitedly shouted. "she's so beautiful" she had quieted down a little, but still had her eyes glued to the screen. kageyama looked up from his phone and at the screen and was surprised to see a breathtakingly beautiful girl wearing the 'miss japan' sash. she was smiling brightly and he felt a thump in his chest even though the smile wasn't directly aimed at him.

words on the bottom of the screen came up: 'miss universe japan: (l/n) (y/n)'. he immediately went to look up your name online, and found plenty of pictures of you, along with your instagram with hundreds of thousands of followers. he only scrolled for a few seconds before following you and looking back up at the screen, entranced.

it was a whole new thing to see you in front of him now. slightly older from the first time he had laid eyes on you, but still just as alluring. your smile still makes his heart skip.

"well, i'm honored that the kageyama tobio knows me" you say. he merely stares back at you in awe at finally meeting you in person as he tries to think of something to say.

one of your favorite poppy songs comes on and you excitedly jump up. he gets slightly nervous at your quick action.

"dance with me?" you ask. you have a wide smile on your face and hold your hand out to him.

"i don't dance" he tells you. which is true. whenever he comes to clubs or bars, he feels out of place. while his friends and teammates are able to unwind and attract the attention of women, he finds it much harder to do either. he's much too quiet and emotionally reserved to hold the attention of most women, while others are put off by his 'unsettling' smile.

"it'll be fun! there's so many people here no one will be looking at you anyway, you have nothing to be worried about" you reason. you can clearly see the inner turmoil written on his face.

little do you know, kageyama is so nervous he's going to embarrass himself in front of you. he's never gotten this much personal attention from such a gorgeous girl, let alone a famous one he'd been crushing on for several years. he's almost always had fangirls, but people have always said he's unapproachable and too volleyball-minded for girls to ever have any attraction beyond physical. you've been talking to him for this long though, so he can't help but think this is different and you might actually be genuinely interested in him.

he mutters a small 'ok' and you take your chance before he can change his mind. you grab his hand and pull him from the booth and down the stairs all the way to the dance floor. turning around to face him, you have to look up to meet his eyes again. definitely over 6 foot, but he doesn't tower over you as much as lev does. it's a good, happy medium. he's standing very stiff and looking around at everyone before he looks back down to you. you give him a warm smile, encouraging him to loosen up a little.

you decide it seems like he needs you to help him. you grab his hands and sway back and forth in a goofy way. he only follows your actions, letting himself be wildly flailed around by you. he can't help the smile that breaks out onto his face, one he hasn't let himself show to anyone in a very long time (due to the many comments people had made about it). when you give him a strange look, he quickly tries to go back to his straight face and pulls his hands out of yours, turning around so you can't see his expression. he's already managed to mess up.

that's not how you see it. you're surprised at how his smile makes you feel. you finally understand what people are talking about when they say they have butterflies in their stomach. you feel light and airy, while also being tied down to this world next to him. your entire body heats up and you swear you're about to catch on fire. you haven't felt this way for a guy in a very long time, especially not this quickly. everything about him demands your attention and makes you wish you didn't need to blink so you never have to miss a glimpse of him.

"your smile is cute" you tell him honestly. it's a little unconventional, but you mean what you say. you can tell it's genuine and true, and that in itself is what makes it so beautiful. he gives you a strange look with something you can't really grasp. the best way to describe it is like he's really seeing you for the first time. not just your face, your body, your looks. he sees into you.

"you're gorgeous" he tells you. it's something you've heard thousands of times but it holds an entirely different meaning when you hear it from his mouth. you glance up at him and find him giving you an intense look of admiration and maybe even more.

"kiss me" you whisper. he doesn't respond verbally, and instead grants you your request. the butterflies in your stomach explode and go all over your body. it's an amazing sensation that leads you wanting more. his lips are slightly chapped, and you have to admit he seems slightly inexperienced, but you don't care. if anything, it's endearing. you hear some of the people (they sound like guys so you guess they're probably his teammates) whistle and holler in your general direction, but neither of you pay any mind to it. his arms fold around your back and pull you in closer, causing you to reach up and place your arms over his shoulders and around his neck. after what feels like forever, you pull away though he follows you. you hide your face and just embrace him. he's so warm and the feeling calms you. you feel safe with him, and wish the two of you could just be alone with each other.

you tell him as much, and he offers up his place for the two of you to go. you smile at him before texting your driver and your bodyguard (who was watching you now), telling them the address you would be heading to.

honestly, the rest of the night is history.

a package turned up at your apartment, something which at first makes you a little nervous. being as famous as you are, it's unsettling to think a 'fan' might show up at your door or have bad intentions with you. fortunately, the package is addressed to you from your manager. why not just text me, we're in the 21st century? you think, but pass it off as him being an 'old man' (he's about 50, so you decide).

you sit down with the package on the couch in your patio. opening it up, you find one of the most popular celeb news magazines and immediately recognize the two people on the cover. it's a picture of you and tobio walking down the sidewalk after one of your recent coffee dates. he had been walking you to one of your friends apartment buildings to visit her (and more importantly her dog). the photographer had caught you animatedly talking about god knows what, but you were more interested in tobio. he was looking at you intently with the faintest smile that most people probably wouldn't notice. if they didn't notice that, though, they definitely would notice the look in his eyes: lovestruck. if it was a cartoon you were sure he would have literal hearts in his eyes. you held your frappuccino in the hand not intertwined with tobio's. though you could find paparazzi annoying and even creepy at times, you have to admit you love everything about this picture.

the picture of course has a caption. in big letters it reads:

'tokyo's hottest new couple!: (l/n) (y/n) & kageyama tobio are official!'

you can't help the smile on your face. flipping through the pages, you finally come to the one about you and kageyama. a small slip of paper falls out when you do so, and you find it's a note from your manager:

congratulations on front cover again. he's a keeper - gushiken-san

"what's that?" a familiar voice behind you questions. you feel arms wrap around you and you smile. it seems someone's finally gotten out of bed.

"us" you show him the cover, to which he makes a low hum in response.

"i'm putting this on the fridge" you joke. you turn around to face him in all of his bedhead glory, wrapping your arms up around his shoulders.

"seriously? i look weird in that picture" he scoffs. you playfully swat him for making such an objectively wrong claim. you always help him with his self-esteem. he never doubts his abilities in volleyball, but in nearly ever other part of his life he needs some assistance. even now that the two of you are actually dating he doesn't feel worthy enough, friendly enough, attractive enough for someone like you. you do everything you can to convince him otherwise. he is worthy, sweet to you, and definitely attractive enough.

"you look handsome in it! but you always do so i'm not sure why you're surprised" you teasingly flirt. his cheeks darken and you reach up to pinch one. he moves his head away but moves back to gaze sweetly into your eyes. you look back just as sweet, and can't help but be lost in his beautiful blue eyes.

"if you say so" he responds with a kiss to your cheek. you respond with a kiss to his lips, followed by many more.

[ghosttotheparty]

a mess of holy things 1 also on ao3 // next cw: implied religious trauma/abuse

It feels weird to be in this room.

It’s so… empty.

Not that Steve’s room at his parents’ house back home is full. His walls were always void of photos and art and everything people on TV had, still are now that he’s gone, always covered in that wallpaper his mother picked when he was eleven. He was never allowed to talk badly about it, not that he would have had he been granted permission. But these walls don’t have wallpaper on them. They’re bare, white, empty.

He stares at them when his parents leave.

He sits on the edge of his bed, which is smaller than his bed back home, and naked except for the two blue suitcases he brought with him, and he looks across the room. At the bare wall. He doesn’t really feel the urge to cover it with anything, but it still feels sort of unnerving to look at. Like there’s something wrong with it.

But Steve doesn’t think the walls are what his father is worried about with him living here for college.

He’d had to listen to him for weeks after getting the acceptance letter in the mail. The school is popular for its business course, which of course is the reason Steve applied in the first place, despite his indifference when it comes to business, but it’s in the city. Steve had never been to a city before today.

It’s noisier than it is back home, he thinks as he turns to look out his window. From where he’s sitting he can only see the tops of trees; he got lucky in that his room faces away from the other dorm buildings around his, and he takes a moment to watch the leaves blow in the wind for a moment. He can hear voices from downstairs, muffled but still audible. It sounds like they’re arguing, but Steve can’t tell if they are or not; he had the same issue back home when he could hear his parents’ voices from his room upstairs. Though they were usually arguing when he cracked his door open.

He can hear cars from outside, a motorcycle revving, a distant siren that fades after a few moments. Some laughter that somehow feels more distant than anything else.

He stands after another second, crossing the small distance to his desk that’s in front of the window, setting his hands on the chair as he leans over it to look outside. He’s on the third floor. When he leans over farther he can see some people gathered in a circle in the grass. One is laying on his back, his hands on his belly as he laughs, and as Steve watches, a girl next to him reaches over to smack his leg. One boy in the group is smoking a cigarette. Steve looks away.

There’s a corkboard on the other side of the bed, next to some shelving. Steve looks at it, listening to the boy laugh. He doesn’t think he has anything to put on it, but maybe he can get a calendar or something.

It feels so quiet in here. Even with the noises outside.

But he’s never minded the silence.

He unpacks slowly. He does the cardboard boxes first. There isn’t much, just some old textbooks from his father, textbooks he used when he went to business school. Steve tried to tell him that they probably use different textbooks now, especially considering he goes to a different school than the one his father went to, but he insisted these books are the best, so Steve stayed quiet. He doesn’t like to argue, especially with his father. The books are padded with his bedding, which he tosses onto one of the suitcases while he unpacks, as he stacks the books on one of the shelves next to his desk.

His winter clothes go into the wardrobe, his towel and soaps into the bathroom, and when he finds his paper and post-it notes and stationary, he makes a note to buy toilet paper and a bathmat. He knew he’d forget some things.

When he unpacks the suitcases, he does so slowly. He won’t admit it to himself, but it kind of feels like he’s procrastinating as he does it, like he doesn’t want to get to it.

He knows what he’s looking for, what he’s avoiding. It’s in the second suitcase, carefully wrapped in one of his favorite sweaters, and when he spots the red knit, he pauses, standing up straight and just looking for a moment.

He unpacks everything around it. It’s hot in his room when he finishes, and he’s sweating through the shirt he’s wearing. He opens his window and plugs in the fan his father packed for him before he pauses and cracks open the window above his desk. The group of people has left, probably because the sun is going down now, but he can still smell the cigarette smoke lingering in the air. But he can’t tell if it’s just his mind providing the smell because he knows it was there or not.

That’s happened before, him smelling or hearing things that he knows aren’t really there. Lingering cigarette smoke or weed smoke, the remnants of secular music that rattle around in his head like it’s empty except for echoing drum beats. It’s frustrating. He doesn’t want to hear the music, or smell those smells, and he knows he’s not supposed to. He’s caught himself humming along to songs that he doesn’t even know more times than he can count, and every time he just lets his head fall. He recites prayers that tend to take the place of the music.

His suitcase is empty except for the sweater. He supposes he should just finish so he can make his bed.

He kneels on the mattress, reaching over into the suitcase to pull it out, holding it with both hands like it might break even though he’s had it for as long as he can remember, and he knows that it won’t shatter to pieces in his hands. He still kind of feels like his hands have that ability. To break anything.

Especially something like this.

He unwraps the crucifix, and he doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath. The cross is wood. Jesus is gold. Steve doesn’t think it’s real gold, but it’s gleaming at him nonetheless. He drops the sweater on the bed again, and with a shaking hand, he sets the crucifix on one of the shelves next to his desk. It’s up high, looking down at the rest of the room in judgement.

Steve looks away, exhaling.

He puts the sweater in his wardrobe, folded carefully so he doesn’t stretch the yarn. And then he makes his bed. It’s hard to get the corners of the mattress right because of how the room is laid out, but he manages it, and when he’s done, he takes a shower. He’s grateful to his parents for paying for him to have his own bathroom, grateful that he doesn’t have to wait for showers to be available or risk having to talk to people in the hallways.

He thinks that might be part of why they paid for it. They, meaning his father specifically. He makes the decisions. Steve’s mom just agrees and stays quiet.

His dad doesn’t like the idea of Steve being in the city.

Not because of the noise, or the trash, or because it’s something that’s foreign to Steve, somewhere that he doesn’t feel particularly, entirely safe, but because of the people that Steve is surrounded by. In his words, heathens and hippies, chain-smokers and Satanists. Steve had to very carefully tell him that he’s responsible for who he spends time with, and he’s always been conscious of his friends’ mindsets and focuses and goals. Which is the truth. His only friends from home he met in church as a child.

Though met may be generous; their mothers had been friends and they had been stuck together in the playroom when they were small, but as soon as they were old enough to sit still, even when they didn’t want to, they were separated to sit with their families. But they were all Steve knew, so they stayed together in school, even when Steve decided he didn’t really like them that much. Which is why he’s kind of glad he’s here in the city; it’s so much less likely that he’ll run into a familiar face, someone he went to school with. He feels just inches closer to escaping.

Escaping.

He shouldn’t be thinking about that.

He shouldn’t be thinking about leaving home. He shouldn’t be happy about being here in this empty room instead of in his parents’ house.

It’s highlighted in his copy of the Bible, the one he got when he was ten that he’s kept on his bedside for almost a decade. It’s highlighted in yellow. Important.

Ephesians 6:1-3.

1 aChildren, bobey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2 aHonour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

It’s hard sometimes. But he tries. And he likes to think that that’s enough for now.

He doesn’t have anything to eat. His parents didn’t get anything for him on the way to his dorm, and then they left right after helping him move everything into his room and lecturing him about being mindful of who he’s friends with. So he just takes a shower and says his nighttime prayer, and he goes to bed.

His room isn’t as dark as his room at his parents’ house. There are lights outside, lining the sidewalk his room overlooks, and they peer through the windows when he pulls them shut. He stares at the ceiling. He kind of wishes there was something to see on it instead of white paint. But when he closes his eyes, he can pretend he’s facing the sky full of stars.

He manages to drift off after a while, but he wakes up around midnight to the smell of weed. He wrinkles his nose, blinking his eyes open and squinting as his eyes adjust to the darkness. He rolls over, furrowing his eyebrows as he looks across the room to his open window, and he sighs heavily. His limbs are sore as he gets up heavily. He’s pretty sure he has a bruise or two on his legs but carrying in the boxes.

He’s still squinting as he leans over his desk to look out the window. There’s another group of people where the others had been earlier, and of course Steve would get stuck with the room right above a popular smoking spot. There are fewer people in this group than there had been in the other, but two of them are smoking, watching a third as she spins at the center of their little circle. Her skirt fans around her legs, and another person starts clapping. The girl giggles and sits back down heavily, reaching for her friend’s cigarette. Steve watches for another moment before he pulls his window shut. He moves his fan closer to his bed.

It’s not that it’s particularly weird to not have friends.

But he doesn’t speak at all without anyone he knows around, and his throat starts to feel weird after about a week. He didn’t realize how little he spoke when he wasn’t with his friends. He knew he didn’t talk much at home, but that’s… different.

It’s not necessarily that he wasn’t allowed to talk at home. He just wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t have to.

And now he doesn’t have to because there’s no one to hear him. Attendance is taken in the form of a sheet of paper by the door, every student’s name typed out neatly, waiting for a signature next to it, and Steve isn’t to volunteer answers when his professors pose questions to the class. He listens quietly. Takes notes.

He supposes he’s avoiding the others’ eyes after a while. He doesn’t know why; it’s like he’s scared that they’ll look into him, that they’ll find something he doesn’t want them to. A few of them offer friendly smiles, polite waves, and Steve reciprocates, but in a way that lets them know he won’t be joining them, or making conversation, or any of the things normal people do. Steve doesn’t really think he counts as a normal person. His parents would say that he isn’t like the others, because he’s enlightened, because he’s saved.

But he’s starting to wonder if that’s exactly what it is, just… Maybe not in the way his parents think.

He doesn’t know if he feels lonely. If he knows what it feels like to be lonely. It’s an odd feeling, this uncertainty, but he doesn’t think it’s a bad feeling. The solitude is nice sometimes. The quiet. But he does wonder if this is what his life is going to be like from now on, so quiet and slow and…

Boring.

It’s boring.

He’ll barely admit it to himself, but he’s bored in his dorm room. Bored of the white walls and plain blankets, of his textbooks and his professors’ droning voices. Bored of the same breakfast every morning (eggs and toast, a cup of black coffee), of the same walk to his lectures (past the other dorm building and two lecture halls, through a pathway that cuts across a park that’s spotted with benches and trash cans). Bored of his degree. Already.

He doesn’t tell his parents all of this during their weekly phone calls, of course. His voice is rough as he speaks to them, but they don’t question it. Of course they don’t. Steve doesn’t think they even notice. Their calls are always filled with the same conversations:

My classes are going well.

Everything is turned in on time.

I have an essay due in a few weeks.

The outline is already done.

My hallway has been quiet.

My professors seem nice.

I haven’t made any friends.

I’ve been focussing on my schoolwork.

Friends aren’t my priority right now.

They let it slide. As long as he’s passing his classes, as long as he’s praying. They don’t ask if he’s been to church since he started college. (He hasn’t. He doesn’t know if he wants to, even though he knows where the church is in the city, even though he knows what times services start and end. He practically has the schedule memorized.)

And he’s bored.

Bored.

Bored.

The library in the city is better than the one on campus in Steve’s opinion.

It’s a bit noisier with the city outside, with cars and trucks and motorcycles, sirens and construction and shouting, but it’s not just students there, which Steve thinks is what he likes. On campus, every room is filled with people his age, people he should know how to talk to, people he should be spending time with and chatting with and becoming friends with, and there’s this pressure on his chest the whole time. Like he’s doing something wrong as he’s looking through his textbooks and analyzing his notes.

In the city, there are a few people that Steve would recognize as students at his college, but there are also children carrying picturebooks, whispering loudly to their parents, and teenagers doing their homework, and elderly people looking through shelves of books, and Steve somehow feels less lonely here.

He starts going to the public library a few weeks into the school year on a whim; at first it was just to see what the library was like, just to get out of his dorm room and finally explore a little after so much boredom, but it’s become a common thing for him. It’s nice to see the city, even if there’s a sense of wrongness that follows him around as he looks at the other people. At the women in their short skirts, at the couples making out against the walls of buildings. All the people his parents would scoff at and turn toward Steve to give him a lecture because they can’t give it to the person they’re actually judging.

But for some reason, Steve likes seeing these people. He doesn’t know if it’s a sense of adventure that he gets in seeing these people and not hearing a whole spiel about how they’ll end up in Hell and how God is watching them, and oh, may God lead them to the light, despite the fact that they tend to look pretty happy with themselves as and where they are. There aren’t as many of these people in the library (save for the couple Steve saw making out behind a bookshelf; he managed to get away before they noticed him there.), but he still likes it there. There are so many more people in this public library than the one in his hometown, but it’s still just as quiet.

There are more study rooms in this library than the one back home. There’s one on the second floor that Steve likes: it’s small and sort of tucked away into a corner, the door creaky and a little hard to push open. The table is wobbly the same way his desks were in high school, and there are old doodles on it, some in ink or smudged graphite, others carved into the wood and smoothed down over time.

Every time Steve reaches for the door, he says a little prayer that there’s no one inside, and so far, he hasn’t walked in on anybody. He always anticipates it, stepping inside and making wide-eyed eye contact with a stranger, mumbling an apology in his rough, barely-used voice before he leaves and never comes back just because he can’t handle it. But maybe his prayers are working. Or maybe he’s just lucky.

He thinks he’s just lucky.

He’s also lucky that no one has come in while he’s working. Maybe because it’s so tucked away, hidden in some bookshelves, nobody really sees it.

The quiet city sounds are even quieter when he’s in this room, the vehicles and sirens and loud laughter all muffled behind the walls, and the sounds of his studying seem unusually loud in turn, the scratching of his pencil, the turning of his pages, and soft thuds of the table leg tapping the ground as he works, wobbling back and forth and back and forth. He likes it here. It might be his favorite place that he’s found since he started college, quiet and peaceful and away from it all.

He hears a truck pass outside as he turns the page in his textbook. It’s a second-hand book, one he bought after reading the supply list for one of his classes, and some of the lines are already marked, highlighted in a fading yellow or circled with smudged pencil. He ignores the annotations at first, copying down the text that he thinks is important, and then he goes back to see what the book’s previous owners thought was important. He hesitates, then writes it all down too.

He startles when the door opens abruptly, jumping and looking up, his hand fumbling with his pen. He drops it as a man enters the room, carrying a backpack. He’s got long hair that seems to obstruct his vision until he tosses his head, flicking his hair out of the way, and he closes the door behind himself, letting out a breath before he looks up and his eyes meet Steve’s.

“Jesus Christ—”

Steve’s eyes widen as he watches the man startle, turning to hide his face as he presses a ring-clad hand to his chest.

“Sorry,” the man says breathily, flinging his hair away again. “Shit. Uh.” He takes another breath, awkwardly running a hand through his hair, pushing it back, facing Steve. It’s longer than Steve’s ever seen on a man, past his shoulders and wavy, frizzy like it should be curly. There are bits of metal on his face, piercings in places Steve’s never seen: on the bridge of his nose between his eyes, on his eyebrows, his mouth. “There usually isn’t, uhm, anyone in here.”

“Oh,” Steve says finally, blinking at him. His eyes flick up and down the man’s body, scanning the angel on his t-shirt, patches and pins on his denim jacket, the rips in his jeans. He’s never seen anyone dressed like this before, so… dark. Even his boots are intimidating. The rings on his fingers look heavy, and Steve has to tear his eyes away from them.

“I’m just… I’m just studying,” he says finally. “If you… wanna share.”

“Okay,” the man says, and he’s smiling awkwardly now. He has a nice smile. It digs lines into his cheeks and makes his eyes squint, but Steve can still see how dark and shiny they are. Like a deer’s.

He watches the man sit at the other end of the table, watches him set his bag on the ground and pull some books out of it to set them on the table. Steve glances at the books and stops, staring. Atop one book that's plain brown, untitled, the spine bare, are a few colorful ones, reading Dungeons & Dragons above various illustrations of monsters. Steve feels the man glance over at him, and he looks away sharply, back down at his textbook and notebook.

It’s suddenly too quiet, even though there’s more noise than there was a minute ago. Steve listens to him rifle through his bag and glances out of the corner of his eye to watch him pull a pen out of the biggest pocket.

Steve looks away again. Finishes the sentence he’d been writing when the man came in. Turns the page of his textbook and tries to read the next paragraph.

It’s not a minute later that he looks up at the man again. He’s sitting funnily. One leg brought up onto his chair, arm around it, his cheek almost resting on his knee. The rip in his jeans shows his skin under it, and he looks even paler against the dark fabric. He’s writing in the brown book, and Steve’s eyes skim down to his hands. He’s right-handed, and his nails are painted black. The polish is chipping.

Steve looks back and forth between him and his notebook, glancing and staring, noticing something new every time he looks. There’s a tattoo covering the back of his hand. It looks like some kind of flower.

When he leans back in his seat, looking down at his book, he lifts a hand to his mouth and nibbles at his nail for a moment before he grimaces and lowers his hand. When he lowers his hand, Steve can see the tattoo that’s covering his neck and throat; it’s a bat, its wings outstretched, its mouth in some grotesque expression. Steve looks away.

He feels nervous, somehow.

The man seems nice enough. He smiled at Steve. Apologized for his reaction. He’s being quiet, respectful of their shared space. Keeping all of his things on his side of the table.

But the angel on his t-shirt has a skull instead of a face. He’s wearing at least three necklaces, silver chains and one with a charm that Steve can’t quite identify. There are tattoos on his fingers, partially hidden under his heavy rings that click every time he does something with his hands. The patches on his jacket have symbols on them that would prompt Steve’s parents into prayer.

And Steve isn’t sure how to feel about him.

He knows he isn’t supposed to like him.

But it feels odd to dislike someone because of their hair, their clothes, the art on their skin.

And he has a nice smile.

Steve faces his notebook but can’t tear his eyes away from the man. He watches him write, glancing back and forth between the colorful Dungeons & Dragons books and his brown notebook, watches him twist one of his rings around his finger, watches his lips twist as he thinks. It’s a while that Steve sits here, watching and staring, looking at his tattoos, at his piercings, at his hair (which he keeps re-tucking behind his ear).

“I can feel you looking at me,” the man says finally, and Steve drops his pen, his face flushing with heat.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, eyes wide, but the man just smiles at his notebook, scribbling something down before he looks up at Steve again. And Steve can see his piercings clearly now, two through both of his eyebrows, one through the bridge of his nose, one on either side of his bottom lip. They’re silver studs, and they gleam in the sunlight coming in through the window.

“‘S okay,” he says lightly, gently, smiling. “I get it a lot.”

It’s quiet for a moment as they look at each other, and Steve feels oddly self-conscious as the man’s eyes flick over him, like he’s analysing the shirt Steve is wearing, the way his hair is pushed back. But the man’s smile doesn’t waver, even as he leans over his notebook and gestures to Steve with a jerk of his chin.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Uhm.” Steve finally looks away, glances down at where his handwriting has lifted up off the lines of his notebook, distracted. “…Business management and administration.”

“Sounds exciting,” the man says dryly, and Steve just shakes his head, which prompts a laugh from him. “I’m assuming you go to college here?”

“Uh, yeah,” Steve says awkwardly, crossing his arms over the table. “I’m a freshman.”

“How are you liking it?”

“Uh,” Steve says again. “…I like it.”

He just raises an eyebrow like he’s amused, silently promoting Steve, like he’s poking him in the side.

“It’s kinda lonely,” Steve says with a light shrug.

“You don’t have friends?”

“I…” He shrugs again. “I’m not… very social, I guess. I had friends in high school, but I think…” He hesitates, oddly unfamiliar with the sound of his voice after being silent for so long, but the man looks so patient, listening closely like he actually wants to hear what Steve has to say. “I think I didn’t really like them that much,” he says finally. “I took a gap year after grad and they all left for college and it was like I… I could breathe without them.”

He shrugs again, but the man is just smiling now. Like he gets it. He has a really nice smile. Steve looks at it, at the way his piercings shift slightly as his lips curve.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Steve blinks. Looks back into his eyes. (They’re so dark.)

“Sorry,” he says, cheeks flushing with heat again. “I just… I’ve never seen anyone like you before.”

The man’s smile turns sly, and he sets his chin on his palm, resting his elbow on the table.

“Never seen a freak?” he says smoothly.

“I don’t know if that’s the word I’d use,” Steve says hesitantly. The man laughs brightly, almost childishly, and Steve can’t suppress his own smile.

“What’s, uhm. What’s Slayer?” Steve asks, glancing at the man’s shirt, watching him lean back to look at his own chest like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing.

“It’s a band,” he says. “One of my favorites.”

“What kind of music is it?” Steve asks curiously, and he doesn’t think he'd never be talking this much if it were anyone else, but the man’s eyes are trained on him so kindly. Steve knows he should be avoiding him at all costs, but he seems sweet in a way that Steve can’t really describe.

“Metal,” the man says lightly.

Steve looks at him blankly, and he starts to smile again, pressing his lips together.

“What kind of music do you listen to?”

“I don’t listen to music.”

“At all?”

Steve shakes his head, squeezing his upper arm.

“My father says media distracts the soul from its righteous duties.”

He looks up at him nervously, because that’s such a weird thing to say, isn’t it? But the man’s eyes are sparkling at him, and he’s still smiling.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You look righteous.”

“You don’t.”

A laugh bursts out of him, and Steve finally cracks a smile, tilting his head at him.

“Yeah, I know,” he says finally, still beaming at Steve.

And then they fall quiet, just looking at each other. Like they’re both studying each other, taking note of what’s different. His long frizzy curls, Steve’s carefully tamed hair. His painted, chipped nails, Steve’s bare ones that he’s never really thought twice about. His worn t-shirt and patched jacket and Steve’s collared shirt that’s tucked into his pants.

“I, uhm…” the man finally says, hesitating, tapping a finger on the table lightly. “I live really close to here, if you wanna give Slayer a listen.”

Steve blinks, taken aback by the invitation, but before he can respond, the man gestures to Steve’s books.

“Unless you’re too busy with business management.”

Steve flips his notebook shut silently. The man laughs brightly.

“Sure,” Steve says, surprising himself. His parents would kill him.

But it feels kind of exciting, putting his books in his bag as the man does the same, still smiling. Steve thinks he must smile a lot.

permanent taglist: @estrellami-1 @theplantscientist @spectrum-spectre @carlprocastinator1000 @starman-jpg <3 holy things taglist: @stevesbipanic @pearynice @ao3whore @slowandsteddie <3 (comment to be added/removed to/from either list!!)

♡ buy me a coffee ♡

[bobbybutterfly]

SO @32girassoisdevangogh! REMEMBER WHEN YOU TOLD ME YOU WANTED MY DESIGNS TO BE MARKETABLE PLUSHIES?!

Well. These are not exactly plushies but…

Tada! I can’t believe I actually managed to “finish” them in time. We’re leaving for England on Monday so it was a race to have them somewhat finished. I made Bamsaegi first. Originally the plan was to make these “dolls” completely out of cotton, loads of glue, some pipe cleaners and sting. It did not go as planned. First up instead of cotton I ended up buying wool because I figured it’s close enough.

It was just SOOO MESSY and wouldn’t keep its shape no matter what. My mom saw it wasn’t working and asked me why I didn’t get proper cotton from the drug store. I only went looking in arts and crafts because I thought what they would have in the drug store would be pressed into round shapes. You know. Those things you use to remove your make up. The next day mom took me to the drug store and turns out they had exactly what I wanted.

Finally. I could get properly started. Except no! It was a horrible material to work with! The cotton constantly kept sticking to my paintbrush I used to apply the glue. Additionally the cotton kept picking up all kinds of dirt. At times turning black. Would not recommend. I don’t know how the YouTuber I watched made it look so easy.

I was at the end of my patience. If I want to make 3D stuff I would have to go and use DUN DUN DUN polymer clay. Or regular clay. JUST NO. I hate the feeling of clay stuck to my hands. Autism? What are you doing here?! I had to figure something else out. I didn’t feel like learning to sow. So. This thing with cotton and glue reminds me of something else. Papier Mache!

I actually used to think that this cotton mess would be better. I thought that papier mache takes an enormous amount of paper. Probably because the one time I did it prior to this project was in art school as a kid with a neurotic teacher. So. Where was I going to find the paper I would need?

There’s this saying in Slovakia that we’re one hundred years behind monkeys (joke about evolution meaning we’re behind the rest of the world). I didn’t even need to leave the house to get what I needed. The mail box was full to brim with catalogs. Plus there were recently the EU elections. Which meant a large news paper looking thing with all the parties written out on it. Perfect!

So that’s how Bamsaegi came to be. I first made a skeleton out of pipe cleaners. Covered that with crumpled paper. I found it kind of ironic that I’m making a character from a communist propaganda cartoon out of a bunch of advertisements. Additionally papier mache would be something you couldn’t do in North Korea. From the book I read paper there is rare and kept a close eye on. For obvious reasons of course. If I would ever have a serious gallery exhibition of these dolls/sculptures I think I would expand on that.

As you can see I ended up covering him in cotton. I wanted the texture and also it smoothed out the bumps. This was before I learned that if you want it smooth you got to cover it in a bunch of small pieces of paper. I first covered the base with glue. Then took a thin bunch of cotton. To smooth it out and to make it stick better I would run the paint brush across it in the direction of the fibbers. Lastly I painted it with watered down acrylic colours after it dried. I was surprised at how painting it went so smooth. Very satisfying.

I decided to first do a more show accurate character. I thought the stylised proportions would be easier. Obviously he’s not perfect. With the colours and the off proportions he’s looking very retro. Like the 70s and 80s communist era toys I saw in an antique shop. I like to think that if they made official toys back then they would look like this.

Onto Geumseagi. He started off as a Disney Prince Eric from Little Mermaid doll by Mattel. So the size of your average Ken. I sadly don’t have the original doll photo. He cost 14 euros (technically 13,99). I thought I would cut him out of the papier mache and use him as base for other dolls. He’s still buried in Geumseagi today. I didn’t want to risk cutting him out of there. And I like the added weight. Those stupid boots were a terror so I don’t think I would want to deal with them when making a new project.

So the head. Originally I wanted to mould it out of clay. But once I realized that I wouldn’t be cutting him off the doll I decided to use the original one. The clay one would be too heavy and hard to keep on the neck. As you can see I chopped off his nose, chin and let’s say gave him a rather brutal hair cut. Knowing what I know now I would have cut off even more of the hair. From my drawings I know big foreheads on squirrels do not look good.

And there we have it. Geumseagi in my style. In 3D. There are 2 tiny spots on the legs where the original doll pokes throught. The pants were rushed not gonna lie. I like that it’s a bit wrinkly. It reminds me of my paintings with the different thicknesses of paint. Making something 3D that looks like my paintings is something I wanted to achieve for a while. I’m glad I don’t have to learn how to use Blender. Unfortunately it does mean I can’t use the dry brush technique because it emphasises those crevices. For shading I then have to go manually where I want it. Like under the chin and around the pockets.

I’m excited to see what ya’ll will think. Sad that I discovered this just when I’m leaving. Grandma probably won’t want ripped up news paper and glue all over her kitchen.

PS. I’m adding his tail when I return. Too much work.

[unholyverse]

waterparks // kerrang january 2018 #1705

(full article text under the cut)

LIFE COMES AT YOU FAST

The past couple of years have been such a whirlwind for Waterparks that the trio have barely had time to breathe. Beyond all the bluster and bravado, it's taken a private toll on Awsten Knight. On the eve of new album Entertainment, though, the frontman is ready to go again…

Words: Jennyfer J. Walker // Photos: Andrew Upovsky

A few years ago, Awsten Knight dropped out of college to focus on his band, Waterparks. To gain the funds to do so, he spent his time teaching guitar and babysitting. Today, the Texas-based trio—completed by guitarist Geoff Wigington and drummer Otto Wood—are one of the most in-demand young bands on the planet. The name Waterparks first became synonymous with more than just being a fun place to hang out in your swimming trunks in 2016, with the release of their debut album, Double Dare. And the three-piece have only gotten bigger since. After forming in 2011, they picked up Good Charlotte's Benji and Joel Madden as managers (and Benji as a producer), toured the world with All Time Low, sold out Camden's Underworld (4,846 miles from their hometown) in under an hour, and recorded second album Entertainment, which is out next week.

There have been personal moments that made Awsten realise he and his band have 'made it', too, like when he was awarded Tweeter Of The Year in the Kerrang! Readers' Poll ("That's literally just all the dumb shit I said on Twitter," he says, baffled as to why anyone would care about his caps-lock musings). Then there was the time a Japanese fan flew to a U.S. show, and turned up to meet Awsten looking exactly like Awsten…

"He was dressed just like me!" the singer says in more disbelief. "He dyed his hair blue and he had my necklace [the rainbow foot one]. He was straight-up me! And I was like, 'Oh my God, some guy in fucking Japan, who doesn't even know my language, likes my shit that much that he's dressed up like me… that's fucking awesome.'"

Ask Awsten to reflect on his band's success, to properly look back and take it all in, and he'll get uncomfortable.

"I don't really look back at stuff as much as I should…" he admits. "I feel like if I stop to think about any of that too hard, it would freak me out. So I think the best thing, at least for now, is to keep my head down and keep working as fast as I can and as hard as I can to keep it going."

And how do you feel when you're forced to reflect?

Before replying, he thinks for a second and exhales, making his lips vibrate.

"It kinda doesn't feel like it happened…When we got back from Japan I was just tired and laying there, and a week later I talked about it in an interview, and they were like, 'You just got back from Japan with All Time Low,' and I was like, 'Oh yeah! We did do that, huh?'" It doesn't feel…"—he thumbs through the pages of his brain dictionary, looking for the right words—"…it doesn't feel real."

The only time Awsten really nods to his achievements is within the blue walls of his childhood bedroom, where he's rested his head for the past 20 years, and is currently doing so while the band take their first proper break in two years. In between shelves crammed with DVDs, books ("because reading's tight") and his bed there's a nightstand. On the top sit a pack of Twizzlers and a pot of vitamins, and in the cubby hole below rests a stack of six or seven magazines, all of which have Awsten's face on the cover. He'll only take them out to properly look at when new ones arrive in the mail- there have been two this week - but he likes having them there, when he's in the room. "Being able to see those things is small," he says. "But it's enough to be like, 'Okay, cool.'"

[Image of the band walking around with the caption, "The gangs of New York aren't quite what they used to be."]

Awsten's aware that few bands take off like Waterparks have. It's a fact people remind him about often, including his friends and mentors Benji and Joel.

"They tell us, 'Your band is extremely special,' and I'll be like, 'Thank you so much!' I'm thankful to hear it…'"

The Maddens' elder brother Josh, meanwhile, has taught the frontman that it's important to take time for yourself in order to survive in any successful band. "Josh told me, There's Waterparks Awsten and there's Awsten Awsten. They're both the same guy, but you need to make sure both of them have the same love and care. It's tough to do…"

He lets out a brief laugh at what he's about to say. It's something he often does.

"Girls have accused me of being a workaholic before. It's still hard for me to answer when people ask, 'What do you do when you're not doing music?' I don't have that much to say…Which isn't a good sign of progress on that front, because it's what I'm doing all the time. If it's not for Waterparks, I'm working on music for somebody." He has, though, taken steps to care for poor neglected Awsten Awsten while he's been off tour. He's learned the importance of getting the recommended eight hours sleep and not staying up all night working on band stuff. He's started going to therapy. And he's training at a small boxing gym in downtown Houston.

"It's definitely a dumb-guy chemical thing, but Otto and I will go through phases where we're like, 'I just wanna fucking fight someone!' Pretty much the entire last tour I was in that mode. I thought, 'I better actually prepare and be good at this shit if it does happen!'" Now, one of the goals on his bucket list for 2018 is to win a boxing match.

Such drive means the frontman's never struggled to keep his eyes on the prize when it comes to Waterparks. As soon as our morning chat ends, Awsten says he'll start working on more music.

His self-assuredness and stronger-than-graphene vision for the band mean he's never had to fight to stay true to himself, either. He's more likely to walk into the record label and tell them what's what.

"Dude, honestly, I'm so fucking good at marketing!" he says, not-at-all modestly. "I've got a vision for us, and I know what we are. I'm aware what works and what doesn't. I'm a control freak, which I guess is a thing I should work on, but it's definitely kept things very true to who we are."

New album Entertainment is saturated with that same confidence, and the frontman says he feels no pressure whatsoever putting it out.

"When it was getting made, nobody knew [since it was done in secret], so they couldn't get hyped or anything. Now, if anybody wants to have expectations, it's already done. There's nothing I can do."

Doesn't a little part of you worry about whether people will like it?

"Not really," he says, shrugging his shoulders, "because I know it's good. Not to be cocky about it…I just think it's a very good album. There were songs I thought would make the record that didn't, which means everything on there is the best of the best."

The most confident man in rock does have one Kryptonite, though: his feelings. That became apparent three weeks before the release of Entertainment, when Awsten tweeted a picture of two pages from a spiral-bound notebook. On those pages was a handwritten letter, in his trademark caps, explaining that he'd gone off Waterparks' second record. The words were fairly cryptic, stating, "the last couple months have [been] weird, difficult, and everything else that sits in the realm of 'bad'. I lost a lot mentally and physically. Certain things happened and to be overly honest with you, Entertainment was ruined for me. I stopped listening to it, and felt weird to hype it in interviews. However, the worst part was the pure dread I felt thinking, 'Fuck. I still have to tour on this and sing these words every night.'"

Yet fans knew the note related to Awsten's break-up with his TV actress girlfriend, Ciara Hanna, the subject of much of the album's lyrics.

"I was glorifying people and things that I really don't fucking like and that really sucked," he says.

How did you feel about the future when those songs were ruined for you?

"Very fucking bleak!" he says. "I was like, 'Fuck, I'm ready to make another album, let's do that instead!'"

Would you have scrapped Entertainment if that was an option?

"There was a time that I would have said yes. But it's a piece of fucking art, and it would be a shame to let certain people or things ruin that."

In order to feel excited about the album again, Awsten had to change the meanings of the songs in his mind.

"My love songs are not about anyone now," he says. "They're just about love. And the dark places I was put in because of certain people or events? Those are stories. Every album is going to be a snapshot of where I was at that time."

Which explains why he thanks Ciara "for filling me with too many feelings" in the CD's thank you notes.

Quiz Awsten about which songs on the album are the most personal to him, and he'll say "the ones that make me go, 'Agh fuck!'" are Lucky People, Rare, TANTRUM, Crybaby and We Need To Talk.

"I try to keep my shit together around other people," he says when asked if there were any breakdowns in the vocal booth, "but the day Crybaby was made, that was one of the worst days of my life…" What was happening that day?

"I don't wanna talk about that, if that's okay," Awsten says meekly. "I feel like I give a lot to people, and some of the stuff that is written about on this album, I haven't told anybody about, 'cause it's just very… low, dark, personal shit. There are certain things that people don't need to know."

One song he is comfortable delving deeper into is diss track TANTRUM. An album highlight, it sees Awsten rant his frustrations away.

"TANTRUM's blunt as fuck!" he offers. "A lot of the stuff's metaphorical, but that one's like, This married guy tried to fuck my girlfriend and I'm gonna kill him when I see him!' I was like, 'I'll put his name in it, fuck it! I don't care."

We point out that when the guy in the song hears it, Awsten might just get that boxing match he's after…

"I just might, but I'm prepared," he says seriously.

As we wrap up our interview, Awsten's pouring his second coffee of the day, ready to resume being a workaholic. We ask how he's feeling after what's been a frankly terrible couple of months, and at the start of what's set to be the year of his career.

"I mean…" he pauses. "If someone has empathy and is able to feel certain things, like a functioning emotional brain- or in my case, maybe it's more emotional than it should be, I don't know yet—everyone is a work in progress."

He lets out a particularly-Texan "GOD DAMN!" and laughs at how corny he sounds.

"But everybody is literally just doing their best. Everyone is working on it. I'm working on it…"

ENTERTAINMENT IS AVAILABLE VIA EASY LIFE RECORDS ON JANUARY 26. WATERPARKS TOUR THE UK IN MARCH — SEE THE GIG GUIDE

IT'S A FAMILY AFFAIR

THE MADDENS AREN'T JUST MANAGERS FOR WATERPARKS. AS AWSTEN REVEALS, THE TWINS ARE MORE LIKE FAMILY

"The Madden Brothers are the fuckin' best! They've taught me a lot. I knew about the idea of having role models and shit, had them and I've definitely h before, but actually seeing them at work, and the way they accomplish things and get shit done [is very cool].

"I wouldn't be who I am right now without them. What's cool is, I'd never in a billion years be like, "You guys are like me…'but we often have conversations about what we want to to accomplish. Last night I talked to Benji, and he said, 'Dude, everything that Joel and I did, see in you.' And I was just like, 'Fuuuuuuck!

"They're more like friends than mentors to me now. Half the shit we talk about is not even band related. We talk about life, how to be different and things I want to be involved in…I want to accomplish a lot. Some of it is musical and some isn't, but I want them to be my team for all of it."

[gurinpotte]

hi there!

Do you happen to have THIS COVER SET of the hunger games series?

If so, would you be up to scan them or take a nice hi-res photo and send it to me as a big favor?

I happen to live in Brasil and have just bought the books in english! The english version is not so common here so they are lovely second hand books but they are sadly the ugliest covers I've ever seen (well, aside from the CF one). Take a look:

It also happens that I am a graphic designer irl. It already pains me that the books are different editions and CF is bigger than the other ones, but I'm being so brave about it. So I want to at least make some jackets for them with the covers I actually like but it's been impossible to find hi res images of the covers on the internet. (which I feel very betrayed at)

So I thought I'd ask if anyone on here could help me with that! I just need a good shot of each of the three Mockingjay symbols, really. You could send me them via WeTransfer, I think it's pretty international and doesn't require signing up or anything, pretty anonymous. Just select to create a link instead of sending as e-mail!

I'm even thinking of adding some everlark reference to the back of each jacket, hehe.....so far I thought of the bread for THG, the pearl for CF, and a nice dandelion for MJ....*darkly unseeingly staring at the wall* being a graphic designer has to have it's perks at some point after all

Thank you!

[cafalla]

Starlog Magazine (December 1995, Issue #221) Scans

It's been a while since I posted about a scanning project. The most recent magazine I scanned was this Starlog Magazine from December 1995!

Starlog originally started out as a Star Trek magazine, but evolved to include all things sci-fi, fantasy, and nichely nerdy. I don't think nichely is a word, but hey, this is my blog and I say and do what I want lol.

Here are some scans I like from the magazine! There is also a link to the full magazine at the end of the post if you're interested in seeing the whole thing!

Let's start off with this subscription form for the magazine.

This takes me back. The thought of filling out a form and mailing it in to purchase a magazine subscription feels so alien now (haha).

I also wanted to point out Robocop, one of my boyfriend's (and my dad's) favs! I actually only recently saw the movie for the first time with my boyfriend, and it was so fun and surprisingly gorey! I wasn't expecting it at all. For some reason I thought the movie was silly and campy? And I mean it was, but the blatant gore and body horror that would come out of nowhere was so shocking to me!

---

Speaking of filling out mail-in forms to make purchases, this magazine is full of them! Mainly they're for merch and memorabilia. Here are a few of my favorites.

This selection doesn't even include all of the things available to buy from the magazine. I think my favorite are the audio cassettes/CDs and the Star Trek face t-shirts. The pin collector in me also admires the page of Star Trek pins.

The signed movie and tv photos page is SO interesting, too. I wonder how they decided the prices for each celebrity? Part of me can't imagine these are real, but if I was a celeb...I certainly would take 1 second to sign a photo if it was being sold for $40 and I got some kickback lol.

If you could have one of the singed photos from a celebrity on that list, who would it be?

I'd have to pick Gary Sinise!

---

There are actually quite a few story articles in this magazine. Each have around a 3-6 page spread full of pictures - they're quite fun to look at! Here are some of my favorite pages from the various articles.

I really enjoy how they all have drastically different color backgrounds.

The cover article about how Toy Story was created/animated is cool! I picked this page because I love watching how animators work, especially when they use themselves as reference (like in the above pic).

---

Lastly, just a couple of random parts from the magazine that interested me.

One was this article about a fantasy fiction author.

The article included many different covers of her books. I wish these could've been in color! I've never read older fantasy adventure novels, but these all looked super appealing to me. I'll have to keep an eye out for some of her books while thrifting.

During the scanning process, I spend a lot of time looking at the front and back covers of the books/magazines I'm scanning. I found myself absolutely enthralled with the back cover of this magazine.

Something about the colors, art, and design just piqued my interest while scanning. I've never heard of this game, much less played it, but I do want to know more about it! I'll probably see if there's a let's play online.

Gosh this is such a cool looking ad for this game. I'm sure the game itself is probably nothing great, but this ad sure is great to look at.

As always, you can view the full magazine for yourself over on my Internet Archive account.

Thanks for stopping by!

[misterradio]

house of leaves has my mind blown at such random stuff. page 97 has a check mark in the corner.

[i'll add random other musings below]

notation 127 references a real book which is even on archive dot org..!!! and it says to check out a diagram But you need to log in to view the book. AAGHH!!

page 119 it is now time to be confused on how to read this 👍

nevermind the box is just all one long footnote. and the backwards box is like a reversal of the previous box.

"this is what happens when you hurry in a maze. the faster you go, the worse you are entangled"..... UH OH !

the footnotes along the sides are just BUILDING NAMES?? and then ARCHITECTS ??????? i do really like the cyclical nature of these notes, one makes u flip thru several pages and then you have to turn the book upside down and flip back thru the same pages. the last note in this series is right at the 2nd page in this sequence but along the side. makes me think of. a spiral ::-) makes me smile.

im just now realizing some of these notation marks are letters instead of numbers....X appears several times (that footnote is on page 107) but theres also like, LL (but if the first L was reversed)? and this one is F (page 122). not sure if there is a meaning here

page 127 guys this is scary

(page 151) "I was sorry to hear he disappeared. Do you know what happened to him?" HE WHAT?????

(page 620) okay i decided to read some more letters from (checks her name) Pelafina and. this is one is. ::-(

okay i finished her letters and wah........... sad. i wonder what was the one jewelry johnny kept from her.

(page 154) i already forgot what these different names were for ermmm lol. great hall and antechamber. i forgor

(page 159) the fact that the stairwell was around 13 miles long for Roberts' crew and then for Navdison its 100 feet.... LOLLLL F--K the explorers in particular

(page 192) YAY JED and wax !!! i never thought id be so so happy to see them again. yayyy. but now getting out is the next obstacle.. F--K OFF I CANT BELIEVE HOW SOONI SPOKE f--k this book

SICKENIINNNNGGGG!!!!!!!

(page 263) I LOVE THAT there are occasional emails from people after the 1st printing and someone says "what was all that crazy stuff in the introduction about guns and blood?" THATS WHAT IM SAYIINNGGGGG

(page 272) this makes me think that the stairwell is analogous to a throat..

(page 305) once again. witnessing the staircase lengthen and groan. makes me think it is literally swallowing navy.

(page 318) im so so glad wax survived YAY

(page 320) this made me get up and start pacing and smiling. like. this house wants navy so bad. SO BAD

(page 326) JOHNNY BECOMES SELF AWARE THAT HE A FICTIONAL CHARACTEr (scary)

btw i did find ouf the letters used in notations are actually symbols bc there is a photo of a graph of them on the inner cover. i dont actualy know how to look up what they are called at all tbh. theyre like. aircraft related.

(page 342) bruh this is new and scary. fhe house's shifting horror now extending beyond the imposible hallways but into the main house ...... what the......

(page 397) everyone in this book is so FREUDIAN !!!! like all the psychology is so fruedian i think.

(page 402) im so fascinated by these dream scenes i didnt expdct this book to really have a dream scene but there u go ^^__^^ im sad the promised third dream is missing......

OH YEAH BABY WE ACTUALLY HAVE A MINOTAUR PRESENT also in a dream scene. EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR A MINOTAUR PRESENCE

(page 406) this is some like. reverse tma thing. you know how in tma everyone who gives a statement to jon has nightmare of him. this is like what if jon did something to absolve everyone of their nightmares. huh. (also i havent gotten past this part i dont even know what navidson Does back in the house yet.........)

OH I JUST REALIZED THE SKETCHES IN APPENDIX II ARE JOHNNY'S. he mentioned doodling on any scraps of paper he had like mail and i was like heh. just like in the appendix. OH WAIT

i love that tgis chapter does NOT end in a period and ends with an open-ended sentence that segues into the next chapter. thats so neat ::-) idek if navy is still alive like wtf i dont know yet SHHH shhhh

(page 425) the dread this is imbuing in me. the floors tilting slightly wherever navy goes to guide him along. youre at the mercy of this house now..

(page 465) WHAT THE ? THIS BOOK IS WITHIN THISBBOOK? (navidson has a book titled house of leaves) WHAT?

(page 468) this desolation almost made me cry somehow . maybe logcially its not the worst thing thats happened in this book but the nothingness is crushing

this part makes u turn the book around a lot and i really did get a sense of dizziness while reading bc i realized i didnt know whether the text i was reading was really along the bottom of the page or what... also im still so tripped up that they mention this book by name, even say how many pages it has, and that 'maybe some of the pages are hard to read'. bro.

the song on page 479 is apparently "when johnny comes marching home" which i had to look up but thats where the tune of that song the ants go marching one by one comes from???? u learn something new every day.

i like that the footnote on page 488 is another of those aeronautic symbols (theres a chart of some of them on a collage in the back) and this one means "heavily injured, need a doctor"...............

(page 527) "and whenever she laughs the notes sing a call to Victory" STARTS BAWLING

okay i done YAYYYYYYYYY AAAUUUUUHHHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHHHHHHH i have yet to finish the appendices....

[stargazer-sims]

Haru + Notebook

@dandylion240 can you believe I managed to keep this one short?

__________

A notebook, Haru thinks, is an odd gift for someone who can barely read or write.

Part of him wants to be annoyed because Eden should really know better than to give him something he can't use, but he can't bring himself to be upset. Eden sent this to him all the way from Canada after all, and that on its own means something.

The notebook is bigger than normal. It's at least twice the size of the ones Ryu and Senjirō like to write their lyrics in, and maybe three times the size of Taiji's journal. It's bound on the edge with a thin metal coil. The front cover has a picture of chrysanthemums, Haru's favourite flower. He smiles when he realizes Eden obviously remembered that.

He's still contemplating what he's meant to do with the large notebook when Taiji strolls into their room. Taiji glances over at him, where he's sprawled on his bed with the book in front of him.

"Nice scrapbook," Taiji comments.

Haru scrunches up his face in confusion. "Nice... what?"

"Scrapbook," Taiji repeats. "Where'd you get it?"

"Eden sent it to me in the mail," Haru tells him. "Scrapbook?"

"Yeah, you know," says Taiji. "You put your memories in it. Photos, old movie tickets, birthday cards... stuff like that. Or you can draw pictures in it."

"So, it's not for writing?"

"Well, you could write stuff in it if you wanted to, I guess, but there probably aren't any lines on the pages."

Haru flips up the cover of the scrapbook and discovers that Taiji is correct. There are no lines. The pages are a rich ivory colour, edged with a border of delicate pink in the same shade as the flowers on the front.

He looks up at Taiji, intrigued. "How did you know?"

"Uh... because it says 'scrapbook' on the cover," Taiji says.

"Oh."

Haru closes it and studies the cover again. There's text in fancy white letters at the top. The font is pretty, but Haru has no hope of decoding it, and decides he'll just have to take his friend's word that it says 'scrapbook'. He can barely read Japanese, his first language, at the best of times. Unless he's feeling particularly mentally sharp, he doesn't even try to tackle English, and even then he needs it to be written in nice big unambiguous fonts.

"Did Eden send you anything else?" Taiji asks.

"Yeah. He sent me a card with a note."

"Want me to read it to you?"

Haru nods. He picks up the card that was in the package with the scrapbook, and passes it to Taiji.

Eden has figured out by now that unless he sends an email or text which Haru can have his iPad's screen reader speak aloud to him, any written correspondence will have to be read to him by an actual person. He's learned to keep handwritten notes polite and clean, so as not to embarrass Haru or make things awkward for his designated reader.

In the note, Eden explained all about the purpose of the scrapbook, and said that he's started compiling some memories in one of his own.

"At the end he says 'I love you'." Taiji concludes.

Taiji hands the card back to him. He runs his fingertips over the image on the front, and smiles when he recognizes it as one of the note cards Eden had bought in Harajuku that summer when they'd visited Tokyo together. He loved showing Eden all around his home city, and he can hardly wait for the opportunity to travel to Canada, so Eden can show him around his own hometown.

A book to put your memories in. That's what Taiji had said.

Haru opens the card and gazes at Eden's painstakingly precise handwriting. He can decipher some of the words, and could probably read them all if he put the time and effort in. He's not too worried, though. The important ones, he knows immediately on sight; the kanji for his own name, the one for love, and Eden's name printed neatly in English letters.

He doesn't have to think too hard to decide what the first page of his new scrapbook will contain.

[andersunmenschlich]

Threats

I much prefer them mailed from outside my secure residence. I'd rather not get them at all—these two new ones were not precisely welcome—but getting them in my mailbox was less worrying than finding them (as I did the previous) inside my home.

"You might be asking why you received this," one piece of hate mail asks, presciently.

The back of the mailer assures me that complete strangers performed a religious ritual over said mailer, and (improbable though it may seem) are even now in the process of ritually petitioning their deity on my behalf.

"Oh good," one might be tempted to think. "I could use a little help with the rent. Or, hey, we're talking supernatural intervention here: I wouldn't mind a healing spell. My everything aches."

But no.

It would seem that, rather than helping me in any way, the focus of these believers in the occult is threatening me.

"At some point in your life," the inside flap of the mailer informs me, "you definitely did something that upset our god. That means you won't go to a good place after you die unless you accept a sacrifice that was made on your behalf."

Well.

On the one hand, it's not much of a threat. They have an easily-offended invisible friend who won't let me into their imaginary afterlife clubhouse? Oh dear.

And on the other hand, maybe they've sacrificed something I'll like. The mailer isn't big enough for a rack of lamb, but perhaps they killed a bank account or two? I'd accept $200 if they really wanted to sacrifice it for me, or even $5 (though that doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice).

Unfolding the next bit, however, reveals that the sacrifice they're referring to is nothing I can accept.

The claim is that their imaginary friend sent them his imaginary kid, the plan being for said kid to be executed as a criminal... instead of me. Apparently. Oh, and them too. Delightful.

It's an interesting combination of insult and clickbait, this bit. I deserve to die nailed to a stick, apparently—but I don't have to worry about it if I use this one weird trick, which will make the imaginary kid's execution count as mine, and then (because I'm already legally dead) I won't have to die!

...A bit of an escalation from the original threat, but here we are.

Apparently the two choices are "die" or "go to our imaginary friend's afterlife clubhouse." That second one requires the first, but this mailer doesn't seem to have noticed that.

The last bit of unfolding shows that the one thing these weirdos have actually given up is an aluminum model of an execution device. The one weird trick is a ritualistic chant (with the caveat that if you don't "truly BELIEVE" in the magic then it won't work), and they follow this up by telling you that after you've done the ritual you need to visit their website and join their group.

The second piece of hate mail is subtler about the whole thing.

The future is going to be a beautiful, wonderful place, it says. They know this because they have a book that says their god is going to make the future a beautiful, wonderful place. Can you really believe what their book says? Absolutely, because the book says that you can. Want to know more? They are entirely willing to send you more claims in print form (the booklet they say they'll send you says "Enjoy Life Forever!" on the cover) or in the form of an actual physical human being (no photo provided).

If you didn't already know that their deity demands blood to satisfy its enormous offense at how awful you are, you wouldn't know until the extra claims turned up... and they already had a foot in your door.