#they're reasonable road trip distances

[jonathanrook]

canadian friends. mutuals. followers. what is there to tourism. in toronto.

[imaginesig]

Today, Tomorrow, Forever

SMAU with writing

Nicholas Hoult x Reader

Yn and Nicholas Hoult have known each other since their Skins days, but it wasn't love at first sight. How did they go from a one sides rivalry to dream marriage in 17 years?

Movie release dates/years have been edited for the sake of the story!

Idea sent by @ateliefloresdaprimavera

2024

nicholashout with ynhoult

liked by user12, aarontaylorjohnson, ellefanning, and 902,104 others

nicholashoult 17 years ago made the worst mistake of my life, 11 years ago I had the best conversation ever, and 6 years ago I married the love of my life. I never imagined that one person could be the reason my world turns, but here she is. Happy anniversary my love 🤍

tagged no one

aarontaylorjohnson happy anniversary!!

elliefanning best couple ever!!

hughgrant happy anniversary! I'm so happy to have met little you and watched as you've grown into an amazing man

scarlettjohansen beautiful!!

sebastianstan 6 years is no small accomplishment, I hope its a good ones guys!

mikebailey here from the start!!

joedempsie so happy for you guys, happy anniversary!

aprilpearson most beautiful bride ever!!

user1 they're the only couple ever

user2 stop the way he looks at her 😭🤭

user3 its the fact he still looks at her the same now as in that photo

user4 Nick putting Yn first in his own post is the most Nick thing he's ever done

user5 Yn is everything and he's just Ken

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2007

N.H.

A laugh rang loud and clear across the busy set. My ears perked up at it and my eyes immediately rolled. There is only on person who has a laugh like that, a laugh that carries through the air with an annoying volume: Yn Ln. I glance towards the noise and notice a small gathering; April, Mitch, and Mike stand around with her laughing at something. Yn looks proud, so it must've been her joke.

"Oi! Nick come join us!" Mitch calls to me.

"I'm good mate, there's some lines I was hoping to review before we start filming again!" It was a lie. There were no lines, I reviewed everything exhaustively yesterday, a bunch of 'Michelle I'm sorry this' and 'Sid get laid' that. I just can't go over there. I can't imagine anything more dull than flocking around Yn and listen to whatever nonsense she spews into conversation.

"Alright we're going to pick up at scene 6. It's our last of the day so let's make it good!" Calls our director. We all fall into place, April by my side, and the others in a semicircle.

"After we're done for the day we should try that place for dinner," she says to Yn.

"Oh yes!" replies Yn with a cheery smiles. I can't help but scoff under my breath.

Y.L.

Across our fake circe, over the chatter of set I hear Nicholas scoff. It stung somewhere deep in my chest and tripped up my good mood.

I was over the moon to book this gig. Like almost every actor here, Skins was my start; from here I'd book more and more until I've reached the stars. My character was an awkward, ugly duckling but she was mine and I love her. This experience has been the best things thats happened to me ever; I've made so many great friends. There is only one problem: Nicholas Hoult. He's a phenomenal actor and a wonderful guy to everyone but me.

I can't recall what I've done over the past months to make him dislike me; at our first read throughs we were cordial and made wonderful small talk, but as filming progressed he distances himself and always has a noise or eye roll to accompany my words. The worst part was he's cute and seeing how hardworking he is around set doesn't help the school girl crush I have for him. And the nail on the coffin? He's a gentleman and so kind to everyone else, just not me. I'm a lucky girl, I suppose; you can't please everyone, so having 7/8 actors be my friends was fine by me. Plus his negatively was only ever a stumble in the road, not a ruin to my day.

Twitter--

2024

Youtube--

comments:

user1 he's so whipped, like Yn did not need to be mentioned for The Menu quote but she was

user2 no cause why did he go on longer about her and the Skins quote than any other line

user3 I'm crying why does he remember the entire Skins line off the top of his head

user4 get yourself a man that talks good about you even when you're not there

user5 the smile he had when talking about Yn makes me wanna cry

user6 he is so in love

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2008

Y.L.

"Cheers!" A round of glasses clinking filled my ears. The core cast got together to celebrate the wrap of season 2 for Skins; we were currently tucked away in the back of some local restaurant in Bristol. I was sat at the end of the table, with Mitch on my right and Dev on my left; everyone was joking and sharing stories, it seemed every member at the table was holding at least 3 conversations. As Cassie would say, it was lovely. The warm lights reflected off of the wooden table and casted a gentle glow on everyone, including Nicholas at the other end of the table. We made eye contact as the table erupted into a roar at something Kaya said; I felt my cheeks burn with the stretch of my smile, but Nicholas's quickly turned from a bright laugh to a tight lipped smile. I rolled by eyes and chose to ignore him; I've let go any wish I had to understand his dislike of me.

I tore my eyes away from Nicholas's direction and looked around, my heart grew heavy. I am so glad we are all geared up to start new projects, but I'm so sad to see everyone separate. I hope we'd all be able to keep in touch. The conversations slowed down so I grabbed my almost empty glass and tapped on it, "Not to make this a cheesy movie moment, but I wanted to let you all know how grateful I am for Skins. Not only has this shown given us a jumping point, but its connected us all..."

N.H.

"...connected us all..." there she bloody goes, killing the mood with some dumb speech. Yn's words soon sounded like the parents from Charlie Brown. Yet, I looked forward to pretend to listen. This is the first time I've really looked at her out of character. I've gotten used to her brush out curls that would frizz out in the English humidity and the hideous fake glasses they'd put on her. All apart of the ugly duckling role she plays. Off set she looks fine, I wouldn't say anything special.

I look down and watch the condensation drip down my glass and onto the table; as the droplets raced I couldn't help but wish Yn was just a little funnier and more interesting.

2024

Youtube--

comments:

user1 they def went home and screwed after this

user2 I felt like I was interrupting something

user3 imagine having to be apart of the crew to film this

user4 Yn was way to excited there's no way Nicholas isn't getting slapped in bed at some point

user5 its the way he gave his answer away with the ask me off camera

user6 also Yn calling Nicholas instead of Nick when she asked 😭 girlie knows how to get what she wants

user7 they're both so possessive but polite

user8 I've never seen a celebrity be so comfortable and laugh (enjoyable not uncomfortable) at these, I love it

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2010

Twitter--

2011

Twitter--

2013

Twitter--

N.H.

My bed felt softer and fluffier than a cloud when I flopped into in face first. It had been a long few months; Warm Bodies finished it wrap, I went straight into auditioning for new projects, and before I could blink I was swept up into press for the movie. I'm living the dream, but sometimes I just want everything to slow down.

My eyes just fluttered closed when my phone let out rapid buzzes, one at a time. I sighed in relief when it went silent, but was quickly disappointed when it started again. I rolled over to retrieve it from the bed beside me. Messages from the old skins group chat filled my lock screen; we made it after a meet up a couple years ago, but it was only ever active on someone's birthday, that was until today. The messages informed me that our old show was trending on twitter with fans pulling old photos, clips, and interviews from our time. I smiled and replied quickly before loading up the app for a quick trip down memory lane.

...

My room slowly grew darker as hours passed. Hours have passed as I went down the rabbit hole of Twitter reminiscing; at some point I ended up clicking on different links to interviews the cast has done. The current one was Yn answering a question that I can't remember. A pit formed in my stomach, she was beautiful inside and out. Every interview I saw her in, she had nothing but praises for everyone else and took every compliment with such humility. I was in awe of her answers, despite being formed on the spot came out with the poise of a well rehearsed speech. I made a horrible misjudgment.

"Whose do I most admire of the cast? I'd have to say Nick," the guilt in my chest grew, "he's so talented that you'd think he was a pure asshole if you only watch the show. We're not the closest, but I've seen from being around him he is an absolute sweetheart. That's what makes him admirable, his absolute kick ass work as Tony while being a fantastic cast mate."

I wished she was lying, but I can tell it's all genuine. I spent those years annoyed by her and mentally tearing down this girl, but she wasn't a girl. Yn was a poised young women who was down to Earth and spent her time raising people up. She was right we weren't close, because of me, but she still through so highly of me. I wanted to hit myself, she could've been an amazing friend and I was too dumb to let go of stupid stereotypes from a fictional show to see it.

I turned my phone off and rolled over. Tonight, I fell asleep with the beautiful sound of Yn laughing in my ears.

2024

Twitter--

2013

N.H.

It was warm inside the event hall; I was currently sitting at my assigned table at the EBA Awards. I was nominated for my role as R in Warm Bodies, but seeing as I wasn't a huge name I was at the beginning of the carpet. I looked around to see other people mingling to pass the time as everyone makes their way in, but no one stood out so I stayed seated. Somewhere in the distance I heard a loud laugh; it was eerily familiar and certainly beautiful but I couldn't seem to place it. I pulled out my phone someone stopped near the table causing me to look up.

A breath got stuck in my throat as Yn Ln stood in front of me looking like a picture of perfection,"hey Nicholas! I saw you and wanted to catch up..."

Instagram--

celeb_updates

liked by user4, user1, user83, and 892,820 others

celeb_updates just days after the EBA Awards, former cast mates Yn Ln and Nicholas Hoult were seen on a supposed date! It's the first time they've been seen together/publicly interacted since the last Skins event they attended in 2008

tagged: no one

user1 omg the bad boy and good girl??

user2 we used to pray for days like these

user3 I'm thrilled with the idea of them just being friends much less ON A DATE

user4 OMG GUYS I THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY! I was hoping we'd get some content with them both attending the EBAs!!

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2017

Marie Antoinette (directed by Sofia Coppola) Premiere

X-Men: Dark Pheonix (directed by Simon Kinberg) Premiere

Instagram--

ynln

liked by user1, aprilpearson, ajcook, and 892,203 others

ynln secrets out 💍

tagged nicholashoult

nicholashoult I love you so much 🩵

ynln right back at ya 🩵

ajcook so excited!!

aprilpearson the scream I let out-- congrats guys!!

mitchhewer never saw it coming but you two work so well together!

user1 omg omg omg omg

user2 that first photo is giving total romcom vibes

user3 right?? I love the shot through the window

user4 part of me is so so excited, but another part just died because wdym Tony fell for C/N??

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2018

Instagram--

ynhoult

liked by mitchhewer, nicholashoult, larissawilson, and 928,029 others

ynhoult allow me to reintroduce myself...

tagged: nicholashoult

aarontaylorjohnson absolutely stunning bride!! Here's to a long, wonderful marriage

larrisaawilson party like no other! Many congrats

aprilpearson what a night!!! Love you both

user1 im actually crying

user2 ok my turn now...

user3 their personal cake is too cute

user4 the third picture 😭

user5 they're back in their skins party era

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nicholashoult

liked by mikebailey, ellefanning, hughgrant, and 893,924 others

nicholashoult today, tomorrow, forever

tagged: ynhoult

hughgrant Congratulations! I hope its a long and happy marriage

ellefanning beautiful ceremony and killer reception

mikebaily congrats mate!

user1 the polaroids of the guests are so cute

user2 between the two of them there were more famous actors as guests at their wedding than the oscars 😭

user3 I want a love like this

user4 they're so intimate its adorable

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[embracing-the-ineffable]

Ineffable discontinuity and the Bentley's roadtrip transformation: new back doors and other changes (after it was yellow), and Crowley... didn't notice?!*

*Also, as a side observation, did he leave the Bentley window open during the ball and everything that happened after? Why?

Have you been longing to be even more perplexed by the ineffable discontinuity of Good Omens season 2? Do you love endless data in the form of screencaps? If so, then please join me on this wild ride! Here are some highlights:

Top photos: Season 1, episode 6, after Adam reboots reality; S2e2, before Aziraphale's e3 road trip. The Bentley is a gray and black 2-tone car with 2 doors (only 1 handle is visible on each side).

And on the bottom is s2e5, while Crowley is driving, it's a solid black car with 4 doors and smaller silver hubcaps.

(edit: For those of you thinking about the different Bentley models used in s1 vs s2 (discussed in detail below), or the difference between the full car and half car set, just those three full car pictures above demonstrate that the new s2 Bentley model is NOT the reason for this mid-season shift. For more details about the half car set plus other ways to tell the Bentleys apart - without talking about color - see my newer post with handy diagrams, here.)

And the s2 interior?

Here's e1, after Crowley talks to Shax, and e3, as Aziraphale arrives in Edinburgh (which is also when the Bentley debuts as a 4-door). And look at this blocking - how both characters are posed so similarly with their backs to us in these shots!! It's so deliberate! :

And look at the seats! In e2, Crowley is talking to Shax again, and in e5, Crowley just parked the Bentley before the ball:

When Crowley, who is so tuned in that he senses the car is yellow and driving too slow even from a distance, sees the "new" Bentley in e4, he doesn't act as though anything has changed, he just happily and purposefully walks up and opens the back door that was never there to put his plants inside.

THE BACK DOOR THAT WAS NEVER THERE

For that matter, Crowley and Aziraphale both seem to be unaware of the changes! This feels like both a metaphor and a functional plot device for season 3. There's more discussion at the end of this post!

Thanks to comments and observations awhile back from @bbbitchvibbbez , I did some careful searching for s2 scenes featuring the Bentley, and this post is the labor of love and irrational obsession result!

If you want to see lots more Bentley screencaps and discussion, including Crowley nonchalantly using the new back door, and possibly also leaving the Bentley window open during the ball and everything that followed, please keep reading:

Some background and context:

Ok, so there was a different Bentley "actor" for s2. The s1 actor was a 2-door, the s2 actor is a 4-door. If you look carefully, you'll see that in s1 the backseat side windows are smaller than the front side windows. In s2, they're the same size. I talk more about the windows - with handy diagrams! - in my newer Bentley post, here.

There's also been some controversy about the interior color of the s2 Bentley, black vs brown, and how that could relate to the s2 body swap theory; here are details about that from @lonicera-caprifolium and @picturesque-about-it. I don't think my findings support (or disprove) that theory, but take a look at what I found and see what you think!

(*Please don't ask Neil about any of this, he's already given us the answers he wants to give, and he's not going to spoil the surprises in s3 now by telling us what's really going on!*)

Here's the episode/scene breakdown:

S2e1 on the street with Shax - gray, two toned, two doors (one visible door handle on a side), brown interior - both the seats and the inside panel of the door. Notice how the door is hinged at the back, and opens opposite the way most modern cars do (this is called a suicide door):

More s2e1 photos, the Bentley is in a lot of scenes this episode and as far as I can tell it stays the same gray 2-door for the whole episode, but it's frequently in dark lighting to make it harder to tell it isn't actually black (I've brightened most of these shots). It also has larger silver hubcaps, and I notice consistent brown seats (these interior pics are from three different scenes):

In s2e2, the Bentley is only in two scenes, and it's the same as s2e1. Now, you can see in the larger photo below that it's obviously not the SAME as s1 - the backseat side windows are too long - but the production team DID try to make the new Bentley "actor" look the same as in season 1. It's a gray 2-tone car with 2 doors (1 handle visible on each side) with larger silver hubcaps. As an aside, what's with the red lights on the car in this shot?? I mean, yes, it's a reflection of another car's brake lights, but why put that onscreen?

Also, in case it's relevant, Crowley is wearing his turtleneck throughout this episode, and still has the silver-sided glasses from e1:

Ok, now we have s2e3, and as Crowley meets Muriel and gives Aziraphale his car keys, we see he's no longer wearing the turtleneck, AND this is when his glasses change to black-sided ones:

Outside, we see the Bentley looks the same as the rest of s2 thus far, as Aziraphale sets off for Edinburgh. Gray 2-tone, brown interior (with window bullet hole decals very visible), with larger silver hubcaps. There's only one handle visible, so it's still meant to look like a 2-door:

Ok, here's where things start to change! Azi is driving and the Bentley is yellow. The seats might (?) be black, there's still only one door handle on the side, the silver hubcaps are still larger. But when he "changes it back", NOW it's black:

And by the time he pulls into Edinburgh, Transformation Complete. (Did Something Else Happen?? Or is this an effect of Aziraphale finally being welcome to take care of this extension of Crowley? More speculation at the end!) It's a black 4-door, two handles clearly visible on the side, with smaller silver hubcaps:

And the interior? The door panel, at least, is black now - and it has a texture that wasn't there when it was brown. Here's e1 next to e3 (and appreciate, again, this very intentional parallel blocking of the two actors!):

In s2e4, we see the Bentley in two scenes; at the beginning when Aziraphale meets Shax-as-hitchhiker, where we see the bullet holes and the black door lining, and at the end when the Bentley is reunited with Crowley:

When Aziraphale parks the Bentley back at the bookshop, we see the bullet hole decals and that it's still a black 4-door:

So he goes to meet Crowley, they come back with the plants. We can see that the camera is to the rear of the car, and the front of the car is to their left. They're standing on the left side of the car. If Crowley opens the door, we won't see the interior door panel, right? Because the Bentley doors are hinged on the back, instead of the front, so the door will open towards us:

WELL. Mx "I can feel when you drive below the speed limit" and "change it back!" Crowley very eagerly walks up to the BLACK car, greets it with some sweet baby talk, and then opens the suddenly-existing BACK door with a hinge on the front (so it opens away from us) as if this is All Perfectly Normal, and we can (barely) see the door lining and it's BLACK and textured:

A few more shots of Crowley, standing at the brand-new back door of the Bentley, still wearing those black-sided glasses:

And in case you're wondering, in s1e2 when Anathema gets a ride in the Bentley, she climbs into the backseat from the front driver door, and she climbs out through the front passenger door. There wasn't a back door on either side. Here she climbs into the Bentley, and you can see Crowley fold down the front seat, and there's clearly only one door on that side, and it's hinged at the back. (When she gets out on the passenger side, it's harder to see, but you can tell that door is also hinged at the back.) :

In s2e5, Crowley drives the Bentley to the bookshop, and then we only catch a few small glimpses of it while Aziraphale is recruiting shopkeepers to the meeting/ball. Here's Crowley driving the black 4-door Bentley with small silver hubcaps, and here he is getting out of the car with black seats. The front door is still hinged at the back, as it always has been. The window is open - his hand is reaching through to open the door - so we can't see the bullet hole decals:

The next time we see more than a hint of the Bentley, it's the end of s2e6 and Crowley is standing next to it, watching Azi leave with the Metatron. It's still black, with 4 doors and black seats and smaller hubcaps. We don't see the bullet hole decals, but perhaps the window is still open from when he parked it in e5? (And WHY would he leave the window open? Was someone supposed to come by after he parked it to deliver something to the Bentley, or take something out?) Emotional photos ahead:

I over exposed that last picture, to make the colors really easy to pick out. The seats are absolutely, definitely black.

So... what does it mean? Why did it happen, and why didn't Crowley notice or react?

I love the metaphor that Aziraphale subconsciously created a back door for - or into - Crowley, especially with all those references to the "back channels" of communication between heaven and hell. I'm thinking it could represent - or actually be - another way for them to communicate, or like another entrance to his heart; it's something that Aziraphale doesn't realize he changed or added and that Crowley hasn't noticed yet either, even if he's making use of those changes on some level. I'm sure other metaphors could also fit!

And I'm reminded of something @theeminentlyimpractical said, "Crowley, despite his whining, fully accepts the idea of "our car," which fundamentally transforms the Bentley". That post was liked by Neil, so there could definitely be something to this "our car" transformation line of thinking.

So, was the transformation a subconscious effect of Aziraphale finally being welcome by Crowley to drive the Bentley, and caring for and taking responsibility for this part of Crowley? Or did Aziraphale consciously do this, or did Crowley? Or maybe the Bentley is sentient, and it chose to be bigger/different now, to accommodate both of them. Or did the change happen in response to Something Else We Didn't See?

Is Crowley's (and Aziraphale's) apparent non-reaction another example of an unreliable narrator or some memory tampering? Is manipulation of the Book of Life involved? Are there multiple timelines? Is someone time traveling? Or is it just that Aziraphale and Crowley already discussed the changes off screen, before Aziraphale left Edinburgh?

If Crowley noticed the changes, I would have expected a comment about them. Either, "change it back!" or a reluctant, "those are changes I can live with", or... Something. But instead, the production team went to some trouble to make sure the hints are there, but hard to spot (you can review the similar, careful s1 hints about the appearance swap here, from @fuckyeahgoodomens); as opposed to, for one example, the way they very clearly pointed out Maggie's mysterious spelling mistake, both on screen and in the dialogue. So I feel reasonably certain the Bentley's transformation is a careful, subtle hint about a Secret Something Important That Will Be Revealed In Season 3. I think it's both a metaphor and a plot device*.

What are some of your favorite metaphors? Your most reasonable theories? What about some of your biggest, wildest, most improbable theories?

*And if you enjoy Good Omens metas, theories, clues, etc, I have a big pinned collection of those from the fandom, here!

[flyingcatstiel]

SuperbatWeek 2024 fic recs

Day 7: FREE DAY!!! Superbat? | Superbat! | Superbat

a song came after by susiecarter [T, 4,500 word count]

It requires every ounce of will he can bring to bear to force himself to meet Clark's eyes. Clark looks shocked; the expression is undiluted by anger or dismay, though perhaps he simply hasn't had time to grasp what just happened. His eyes are wide, round, impossibly blue. Color is rising into his cheeks. His mouth is half-open, slack, with the slightest damp shine where— "That was," Bruce makes himself say, and then stops. Christ, what word can he use? What adjective is there that acknowledges his trespass fully? "Inappropriate." Inadequate, but it's the best he can do, and Clark needs to hear something, needs to know Bruce recognizes his own mistake for what it is. "I apologize. I—"

Comment - This fic starts where usually fics with a similar trope end. Bruce is out of the dream world where he lived happily with his husband Clark. For thirty years. Now he's to deal with the cold reality where Clark is not his beloved. Muscle memory is his biggest enemy.

Conflated by PamiGami [T, 31,900 word count]

“Are you sure you’re feeling quite all right, sir? I was but fairly sure the head hadn't been impacted.” “No… no, please. Listen. I’m in his body, but I’m not him. I can prove it.” Ill at ease, Clark rubbed at the back of his head, not stopping to think about the weird sensation of feeling not his own curls, but somebody else’s hair. The man continued to stare at him with piercing and scolding eyes. “I believe you.” He nodded. “Mister Wayne doesn’t say please this early in the morning.”

Comment - Somehow, Batman and Superman have switched their bodies, their apartments and their day jobs. Clark and Bruce are left to figure out what to do and why they're sharing a body with some random civilian. Identity shenanigans, full throttle.

Just a Formality by FabulaRasa [E, 4,600 word count]

Bruce and Clark get married, for reasons. And then they fall in love. Nope, it's not Victorian time travel! I am straight up about this.

Comment - Clark didn't know that some things on this earth could be as painful as kryptonite. Things like fake marriage.

Saudade by liodain [T, 20,400 word count]

It's midsummer, 2006. In the wake of his son's death, Bruce Wayne tries to outrun his grief on a cross-country road trip. When his car breaks down on a dusty road in the heart of Kansas, a friendly stranger stops to lend a hand.

Comment - A soft, melancholy start to a beautiful long distance friendship between a grieving father and a Kansas youth with a heart of gold. Also known as a fic where Bruce and Clark meet before the events of Man of Steel and it changes everything.

ship-to-ship combat by pomeloquat [M, 76,800 word count]

"Clark. What the hell is this," Lois asks, staring at Clark's Bruceman WIP folder. Clark's first instinct is to fly away, but that would still leave his fic on display for her to see. His second instinct is to blast a hole straight through his laptop screen with his heat vision, which isn't much better. Clark, in an attempt to make some spare cash, unintentionally stumbles into the world of superhero fanfiction, becomes a prolific writer for Gotham's OTP, and tries his best to fend off rival fans who want him to convert to superbat instead.

Comment - Triple identity shenanigans and a love letter to fandom and shippers. This fic has everything - heartbreak, heartache, unrequited feelings in double doses, self sacrifices and near misses, ship wars and RPF. And on top of that, it's the funniest fic I've read across many fandoms, hands down.

tell all the truth (but tell it slant) by susiecarter [M, 33,000 word count]

It takes a while for Batman and Superman to work things out, once Clark comes back from the dead. Pretending to date each other in order to explain why Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are in the same place so often? Doesn't help as much as you might think.

Comment - When Batman himself is organizing and micromanaging a fake dating narrative to keep their superhero identities secret, what could go wrong? Apparently, everything. It's the worst time of Clark's life, it's the best time. It's a love story.

And last but not least, some spicy superbat fic recs!

Caught In His Gaze by DontStopHerNow [E, 1,500 word count]

This was supposed to be a stakeout to be sure Clark Kent had not lost his mind due to Kryptonite poisoning. Batman gets more of an eyeful than he expected when Clark does what people do alone in their apartments, though. He cannot look away.

What's In A Name? by frozenpotions [E, 15,000 word count]

Clark accidentally walks— or rather, flies in on Bruce enjoying a private moment. He'd probably have an easier time moving past it all if Bruce hadn't been saying Clark's name.

take a pic, strike a pose by shipyrds [E, 5,600 word count]

It’s probably a good thing Clark’s in private, because when he does check his notifications he almost cracks his phone in half. Bruce has sent him a picture. He’s in the suit, in the Batcave, and there’s probably other things happening in the picture, but Clark can’t really see any of those, because Bruce is– posing? Or maybe the camera just caught him like that; maybe he just happened to be catching his cape one-handed, setting off the sinuous curve of his bicep, the Bat logo straining across his chest. -- Bruce sends Clark a pic. Unfortunately, it goes out to some other people too.

My other superbat fic recs are here.

Happy reading!

[jaerie]

So here are some favourite fics I've written. Soz I don't have anything new to post today in celebration of another trip around the sun but hopefully someone will enjoy reading something on this list. I know all my self-recs are probably the same fics... but they're still my favourites 🤷🏻‍♀️ 🤣

Behind Smoke Stained Curtains 

It was a particularly lonely night when Harry walked through his door with a flurry of snow. He was a little rough around the edges with a trucker hat pushed down over untamed long hair. He looked a little greasy, a shower definitely not in his recent past. His tan Carhartt work coat was smudged with dirt and oil and caked with grime, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The scent was overwhelming as soon as he walked in, unmasked alpha from days on the road stewing in a cab of his own pheromones. Louis was sure it was so deep into the fabric of his coat that no amount of washing would ever truly remove the stench. The worlds align when Louis meets an alpha from the road with as many secrets as he holds himself.

Train Tracks and Porcelain 

At the first hint of light, Louis was slowly brought back to consciousness by the growing swell of activity around him. It started in the distance with loud clanks and clatters and rose with the hollers of men and thudding of boots against the solid earth. He listened as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes and tried to place any sounds he was familiar with. It took him too long to remember that he wasn’t back in his rented room. The energy was what floated to him next, a buzz that made him peek through the leaves to see what was going on. The next moments happened in the strange slow motion of dawn. Shadows were forming into people and things and, there in the middle of it, Louis watched the humongous head of an elephant emerge from a box car right in front of his eyes. Or a Water For Elephants inspired AU

Mr. Tuesday 

Tuesday. Harry loved Mr. Tuesday. It was true that most of his clients were regulars, but there was just something about Mr. Tuesday that would make him stand out amongst the others even if he hadn’t booked almost every single Tuesday with him for the past year. It was the first day of Harry’s work week and Mr. Tuesday always eased him into it in such a pleasant way.

Old Photographs & Times I'll Remember 

Carefully he set that negative down and lifted the paper to see there was another beneath. This one again was a young man, this time posed against an antique car. He lifted a few more negatives out one by one, each a portrait of the same man with various backdrops. The man in a meadow, in an office, leaning against a doorframe — even one in his underwear grinning at the camera. On the edge of each negative printed in slanted, handwritten characters were the initials and date. H.S. 1924. He quickly but carefully packed them back into the box and buzzed with excitement. He couldn’t wait to develop them to see exactly what had been captured in the images. It was a find that felt like a puzzle to piece together. H.S. was likely the man in the photographs as well as the owner of the suitcase. Who was he? Why had his suitcase found its way into Niall’s attic? Was he still alive and well somewhere in the world? A camera, a suitcase, and a relationship forged through time.

Donor-Conceived 

When Harry receives the worst news of his life, it's now or never if he wants to carry a child of his own. Without an alpha, it's a daunting idea. But after it's a go, he finds another omega having a child from the same donor and become fast friends. It is only logical that they raise the boys as half brothers, making sure their sons keep up the relationship with the only connection to their anonymous father. It seems like the perfect plan but life doesn't always work out that way.

The Orchards of Jessop 

At age 40, there isn’t much excitement in widower Louis Tomlinson’s life, but wasn’t that the reason he’d moved to Jessop Island in the first place? Back then he hadn’t thought retiring before he reached 30 and moving to the countryside would mean that he’d be doing it alone. Now, just to fill the space, he welcomes lodgers into his home that pass through working as temporary labourers at the orchards just up the road. They’ve all been young adults eager to start lives of their own after one last summer of freedom. All of them have been much the same, coming and going from Louis’ house with just enough social interaction to keep the house from feeling so empty. But when a global pandemic shuts down the world, being quarantined with a quiet twenty year old who keeps to himself might turn out to be an awkward arrangement. By the time the restrictions have been lifted, their relationship has developed into something Louis isn’t quite ready to give up. With their twenty year age difference, Louis has to be prepared for the inevitable outcome when the reality shatters the private world they’ve been living in. He’s not sure he’ll be able to let it go.

I Think You're Already Home 

Seeing Louis Tomlinson today, it would be hard to guess that he was ever once a member of the world's most famous boyband. These days he doesn't even the leave his own house. The truth is he can't leave his own house. He can't even remember the last time just standing at an open door didn't send him into a debilitating panic attack. But, against his friend's advice, Louis is ready to add meaning to his life again. He's ready to start a family. So what if he doesn't have an omega? There are plenty of surrogacy services just waiting to help the rich and famous become parents. He just has to find the right one for the job.

Tonight's the Night

Tonight’s the night. The night Harry has been waiting for. Everything has been carefully planned, nothing left to chance, the scene set and waiting for their arrival. It’s time. Harry lives a double life. During the day he's Harry- trusty blood spatter analyst, at night his darkness comes out to play. So far he's been able to act his way through a normal life without drawing attention. What happens when that is no longer the case? Or a Dexter AU where Harry is Dexter, Liam is Doakes, Niall is Masuka and Gemma is Deb.

Sisterwives 

This was it, the moment Louis had been waiting for his entire life. Giddy excitement bubbled up as he held hands and stared up at his soon-to-be alpha and husband and grinned. The ceremony was small and simple, but Louis didn’t mind. Fresh flowers pinned into his hair and a brand new outfit was all he needed to feel special in front of their few witnesses. It was just some members of his family and a few of the church elders in attendance as was customary for any marriage beyond the first wife within the faith. First wives were the ones to have elaborate weddings with the whole community involved. An alpha’s first wedding was a celebration of an their coming of age, his first steps into fulfilling God’s prophecy. There were many glories for an omega that came with being a first wife but also many responsibilities. Louis had never aspired to be a first wife or even a second. He wasn’t experienced enough to be the leader of an alpha’s many wives and children and he didn’t think he’d be up to the task. Louis was just fine in the position he was stepping into as the seventh. Or Louis thinks he's getting everything he's ever dreamed of. Harry helps him find what makes him truly happy.

The Post-War BP 

The eight year war has left the country's birthrate severely stunted with a lack of virile alphas left to bring it back up. To ensure the survival of the country, the government opens The Breeding Program where young omegas can apply to carry an alpha's child in exchange for benefits. Louis' family is struggling and the BP is one of the only ways to secure a roof over their heads. Harry was drafted at the age of eighteen and spent six years of his life defending a country he doesn't recognize when he returns home. The government made the bed but it's Harry that has to lie in it.

Captain Jack 

Captain Jack will get you high tonight And take you to your special island Captain Jack will get you by tonight Just a little push, and you’ll be smilin’ Louis has been searching for something and Harry is there to give it to him. Drugs, sex, disappointment, and the tangled web they’ve woven that keeps them trapped in the same cycle.

The Wilds 

The creatures that Louis observed every day weren't exactly human, but yet they were. Researchers had plucked some of them from their secluded island and transplanted them into an enclosure against their will like a bunch of zoo animals. Louis didn't think they were. But he was only paid to do the yardwork, he didn't have any say about the wilds that lived there. That was until an unfortunate accident changed his life forever and made one wild in particular his top priority.

Stay Close, Hold Steady

Found on the banks of the Mississippi as an toddler, Harry goes on a quest to find his biological family. Louis tries to be supportive, but maybe he just doesn't want to be left behind.

OmegaVision 

Tomlin Networks Presents: OmegaVision starring Louis Tomlinson! The world's first 24/7 reality channel available in over 150 countries worldwide following the life of the first male omega born in over a century. Follow Louis through his daily routine, the ups and downs of growing up or just leave him on for comfort. There are many reasons to tune in but, no matter what yours may be, there's always a part of Louis that is just like you! Or a Truman Show au that nobody asked for where Louis is Truman and Harry just wants to be his mate

Saving's What I Need 

We've all had those moments. A flash of something on the side of the road, a swerve, an instinctual slam on the break pedal. This is the story of the one time Louis' reflexes were just not quite quick enough and the beautiful white dog that was on the other side of the impact. He just doesn't know that beautiful dog is Harry.

As We Were, As We Are

Alex is a British soldier who has been injured in battle, Louis is a RAF pilot with amnesia. Somehow they put each other back together even if they get separated along the way.

Woke Up Feeling Knotty 

Beta Louis has a kink for knotting and the secret aesthetic porn blog he runs about it is more than proof. When he accidentally finds out his alpha best friend Harry is one of his biggest fans, he knows he has to come clean after everything that has already happened between them. Harry just might be willing to help him out anyway.

and the truth shall set you free (...maybe) 

Betism: A religion based on the belief that the beta gender has been chosen by God to protect and defend the purity and dignity of the human race by resisting and condemning the lustful ways and flawed biology of the alpha and omega Harry is a Betist and Louis is an alpha who runs with a bad crowd. This is what happens when two worlds collide.

[lotties-ashwagandha]

Can I request something where Tess is in love with Reader ,who is Joel's friend (younger ) and they're all a trio team,nobody dies. Reader is a daredevil ,also in love with Tess but self conscious with all the battle scars. It can be anything you want :)

LET ME HAND YOU MY LOVE

pairing: tess servopoulos x reader

word count: 2669

notes and warnings: ok so i accidentally wrote it as fem!reader bc i thought for whatever reason that that was part of the request,,, but if that’s not what u wanted feel free to imagine smthn else lol 😅 TW blood, gunshot wounds, scars, stitches, fire <3 title from “hold me” by fleetwood mac. ty anon for the request i love it

“We’re gonna get fucking bit or infected or some shit,” you grumbled, checking behind you for infected for what must have been the millionth time.

“We’ve talked about this,” Joel said, his patience obviously running out. “It’s not worth the risk after what happened last time.”

The last time he’d been referring to took place a few weeks ago. You’d been accompanying Tess and Joel for a trip to Bill and Frank’s, as you had a thousand times before. The route was clear and practiced, frequently traveled by the three of you. You were the only ones in the area, or so you had thought, but out of the shadows had come raiders. The three of you had been outnumbered, out-armed, and despite the astounding skill each of you had in fighting and shooting, you’d barely made it out.

“We killed all of the raiders,” you argued. “There were a few who got away but what the fuck could they do? We just shoot them and move on.”

“You’re just upset because this route takes longer,” Tess accused, a small smirk playing at her lips.

You shrugged. “Cutting through a bunch of abandoned buildings after spending three hours walking through the woods really fucking sucks.”

“At least there haven’t been as many infected as we thought.”

You nodded, though at the reminder you felt a bit unsettled. It had been uncanny how little clickers you’d encountered on your way to Bill and Frank’s. Even on the established path you always took there were always a few stragglers that migrated to the area that you hadn’t yet had the chance to take out. It was strange how empty and silent your travels had been.

You were dipping into the residential area of the city, and though you were still a few blocks away from your destination, it flooded you with relief. You knew that once you made it onto Bill and Frank’s street, you would be safe, secure with the abundance of traps, fences, and constant patrol Bill ensured was consistently present.

A rustling from inside a small white house across the street stopped you in your tracks. You were in the middle of the road, Tess and Joel still continuing forward, unaware of your pause.

After a moment you kept walking, dismissing it as your imagination. You’d already been unsettled with the new path, and you wouldn’t be surprised if you’d tricked yourself into hearing something that wasn’t there.

Again, a movement, a shifting noise, a soft click. Too brief and insubstantial to be clickers, especially with the lack of infected in the area.

“Stop,” you ordered quietly.

The two of them paused, Tess moving to eliminate the slight distance between you before you reached a hand out to stop her.

“Someone’s here,” you breathed. The three of you exchanged quick glances, and slowly you reached for your gun–

The sound of a gunshot set you in motion.

The three of you fled across the street – you lost sight of Joel, he went in the opposite direction – but Tess was at your side, the two of you breaking open the door of a house across the street.

“I knew something was going to happen,” you huffed, positioning a chair in front of the broken front door to keep out your attackers. “We should’ve taken the other fucking path, we knew it better, and–”

A bullet flew through the window of the living room, sending shards of glass towards the two of you.

“Shit,” Tess hissed, maneuvering her way through the glass to you. “You okay?”

You nodded. With every gunshot that sounded outside your breathing quickened ever so slightly, nerves tightening in your chest and sending a nauseous discomfort to your stomach. “Did you see how many raiders there are?”

“No.”

“Fuck.”

“Where’s Joel?”

“I don’t know!” you shouted over a series of gunshots. Gingerly you peeked out one of the still-intact windows. Joel was crouched in the grass at the side of the house next door. The raiders attacking you had come out of their occupied house, shooting from behind an old truck. “It looks like there’s five of them,” you said. Turning around, you saw Tess crouching behind the blown-out window, loading one of her guns. “Tess, what the fuck are you doing?”

She looked at you as if it were obvious. “I’m gonna shoot them, what else?”

“You’re gonna get shot at that angle, they’re directly across from us,” you argued.

“Better than getting bit.”

“Either way you’ll be fucking gone, so no, it’s not better. Not to me.”

She gave you a rather questioning look, and then you realized what you’d said, the sentimentality of it. You had not meant to say it, not really, and though it was true, it hadn’t been the best moment for it.

You cleared your throat, recovering. “I think if I go through the back of the house, I can sneak around the side. I’ll cover Joel and he can do that weirdo shit he does where he sneaks up and chokes people or shoots them or whatever the fuck.”

She stood, tossing her backpack onto the ground furiously. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Just stay here.”

“Fuck that!”

You sighed, silently wishing for once she wouldn’t be so stubborn. “Do we have any more Molotovs?”

“What, are you gonna have me set Joel on fire when he gets up there?”

“You know what? Just fucking figure it out then. But don’t get killed, I can’t be bothered to carry your backpack too from now on,” you said, and rushed through the kitchen and out the back door of the house.

You crouched, taking careful steps, crossing quickly from the side of the house to the side of the next door house where Joel was stationed.

He heard you before he saw you, and quicker than you could stop him he had pointed his gun at you.

“It’s me,” you snapped, and he pointed it away with a rather grumpy shake of his head.

“Where’s Tess?”

Before you could answer, screams erupted from around the truck a few yards away. You weren’t surprised to see the vehicle covered in fire, and that Tess took your advice after all had you shaking your head with a small smile.

“Let’s go,” Joel said, beginning to move towards the truck.

“Think she’ll throw any more?”

“She’ll see us.”

You didn’t take time to doubt his assurances, following him in his rush towards the truck. The two of you crept up to the vehicle, traveling as quickly as you could without being noticed.

You looked back, attempting to see Tess through the window, for if you were being honest you were actually quite averse to being blown up by a Molotov cocktail, and—

A sharp pain struck your shoulder, and you staggered back. It felt like the joint was being ripped apart, something searing through your skin, burning your muscles like fire.

Looking down slowly, your mind went completely blank — a bullet was lodged a few inches under the end of your right collarbone, and blood had already begun to seep into your shirt, trailing down your skin.

In looking back, you realized, you had paused just long enough. Your attackers had recovered mostly from the Molotov, and were back to shooting.

Joel stood crouched behind the bed of the truck, completely oblivious to your condition.

It’s fine, you attempted to convince yourself. It doesn’t look that bad.

It looked pretty fucking bad, and you knew it.

Nevertheless you dove to the bed of the truck beside Joel, using your other arm to handle your gun.

“There’s two left,” Joel shouted, not sparing a look back at you. He rose with his gun, taking a shot, and you heard someone fall to the ground on the other side of the truck.

One left.

Determined to ignore the pain in your shoulder that had your head spinning, you crept towards the front of the truck. The shooter came in to view — he was still occupied with trying to take out Joel.

You didn’t waste a moment. At the pull of the trigger of your gun the man went tumbling to the ground.

Finally you allowed yourself to slump down, sitting with your back against the side of the truck. The cool metal against your back distracted you from the pain for a moment, and you forced yourself again to look down at the gunshot. The bloodied area had grown in size, and almost half of the front of your shirt was now covered. You supposed you ought to put pressure on it, but you didn’t really want to touch it, and you didn’t know if pushing against the wound would only drive the bullet in further.

“Joel,” you half-shouted, and he came around the truck to meet you. “I think I got shot.”

“Shit,” he cursed, allowing himself a moment to take in your state before moving away again. You vaguely registered that he was calling for Tess, and after a moment you could hear both of them jogging up the driveway.

You couldn’t bring yourself to stand just yet. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, you knew, and you needed a moment to recover from finding a bullet under your collarbone.

“Fuck!” She shouted, and as you met her gaze you saw the fear that was present, the single fleeting moment of helplessness that crossed her features. You’d never seen such distress from her, and instantly it startled you, more so than it had startled you to be shot even in the first place.

Tess kneeled down beside you, touching your shoulder, and you flinched.

“It’s not that bad,” you attempted, your voice slightly strained, and she looked at you as if you were insane. “Just don’t freak out, it’s not a big deal.”

“You’re bleeding out!”

“Okay, yes, but don’t put it like that, you’re making me nervous!”

She didn’t respond to you, turning to where Joel loomed rather awkwardly above the two of you. “We need to get her inside.”

“I can get myself inside, it’s my shoulder not my legs!”

This time, she only gave you a look that implied her patience was quickly running out, and if you hadn’t been in so much pain it would’ve made you laugh.

Irritably, you allowed the two of them to pull you to your feet, Tess leading you back into the house you’d broken into earlier with one hand on your waist and the other forcing your hand to your shoulder to apply pressure to it.

Once inside, she dragged you into the dining room, clearing the table and sitting you on top of it. You would never admit it, but you felt your face heat up slightly, and even if she hadn’t disappeared with Joel to find alcohol and needle and thread, you wouldn’t have been able to look at her without turning completely red.

After a moment she came back, opening a bottle of rum and setting it on the table. She gestured to your shirt. “Take this off.”

The picture of the scars littering your body flashed briefly through your mind, and you hesitated.

Tess sighed. “Look, I’m not wanting a fuckimg strip show, I'm trying to stop you from bleeding out.”

You smiled slightly, shaking your head at her comment before doing the best you could to lift your shirt over your head, Tess helping you to remove your injured arm from its sleeve. You hoped desperately that she wouldn’t notice the scar over your right bicep, or the one just above your ribs, or the one trailing your sternum.

She gently moved the strap of your bra, and before you could give too much thought to the subtle action she was digging into your skin to dig the bullet out with tweezers.

Pain like fire shot through your shoulders, blinding you to anything else but the searing agony under your collarbone.

“It’s out,” Tess muttered, grabbing the bottle of rum. “On the count of three, alright?”

“I don’t trust you to count all the way to three without pouring it on me, so just go ahead and—”

You didn’t get the chance to finish your sentence before the terrible sting of the alcohol in the bullet wound overtook all of your senses. It felt like she had lit a match and shoved it into your skin, the pain unbearable.

“Almost done,” she assured you, though as you watched her thread her needle, you began to doubt her reassurances.

You didn’t have the energy to respond, so you just watched silently, dreading what was to come.

“Did you kill him?” Tess asked, briefly meeting your gaze. “The one who shot you?”

You nodded, your voice hoarse as you spoke. “Of course.”

She turned back to the needle and thread as she spoke. “Good girl.”

After a moment, and without warning, she shoved the needle through your skin. You hissed in pain, instinctively grabbing onto her wrist to ground yourself. Softly she reassured you, but you couldn’t hear her exact words, too overcome by the sensation of the needle poking through your skin again and again as she stitched up your wound.

To your great relief, it didn’t take nearly as long as you’d thought it would for her to finish sewing the wound, and soon she was tying and cutting the thread.

“Thank you,” you breathed, and she nodded, taking a drink of what remained of the rum before passing it to you.

For a while the two of you remained like that, passing the bottle of rum back and forth as you sat on the table and she stood at your side, cleaning your blood from her hands with a rag she’d found in the kitchen. A strange sense of peace enveloped you, for although your situation was extremely uncanny, the aftermath seemed oddly domestic, as if this had happened so many times before.

You’d been lost in thought when you felt her finger trace the scar on your bicep, and for a moment you froze before meeting her gaze, a thousand awful conclusions coming to pass in your mind’s eye.

“Is it from before?” She asked, meaning before the outbreak, and you shook your head.

“Will you tell me how it happened?”

“Someday.”

She seemed content with that answer, and after a moment you found her even closer to you, this time trailing her hand over the scar above your ribs.

“I hate them,” you whispered quietly, “the scars.”

Maybe it was the rum, but you felt like you could tell her anything without consequence, a thousand possibilities rolling out before you.

Tess shook her head, seemingly almost in awe with the scars, now moving to gaze at the one on your sternum. “They mean you survived.”

Your hands had drifted to her shoulders, and she had come a bit closer, so that mere inches separated you.

You moved one of your hands to the back of her neck, pulling her in, and in a moment your lips met hers, and the throbbing pain in your shoulder dissipated, leaving you with nothing but her, her to overcome every sense. You could’ve stayed like that forever, nothing else existing but Tess.

She was the first to pull away, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips. “Rum really goes to your head, doesn’t it?”

You laughed breathily, shaking your head. “Actually I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”

“Good,” she nodded, “because I have, too.”

“Oh, fuck!” You heard, and the two of you turned to see Joel at the entrance to the kitchen, his face turning a bit red. Quickly he turned around, walking back into the kitchen. “I knew all along, I mean, but shit!”

“Oh fuck off,” Tess shouted back to him, handing you your shirt. “I was just, you know, stitching her shit up.”

“Uh huh…” you heard him grumble, and after a moment the back door slammed shut.

———

Taglist: @cartoonpeoples @thedeconstructionist @cordeliass @paulsonsratched @christies-fleur @traumatisedfangirl @goodeday2u

[divorcedfiddleford]

ok last thing i SWEAR im gonna shut up after this but i just wanted to post michael rianda's outline for the jack kerouac wendy episode that i mentioned. it definitely needed a lot of work but i do like it in concept. image ID/transcript below the cut (warning it's LONG)

[image 1 ID: a screenshot of a tweet from michael rianda. it reads: "I Found a Lost Wendy Episode of Gravity Falls! We were always trying to crack a Wendy episode. This was my favorite. I love the teenage feel of wanderlust + getting excited about reading "On the Road." I love the backstory and flaw. It didn't work but I always liked it." end image 1 ID.]

[image 2 ID: a screenshot of michael rianda's outline. from here i will simply transcribe what he has written, only fixing typos that interrupt screen readers.

Episode 3. Wendy's "On the Road" This is the first in a series I did where I wanted to get to know a character better, and I started with that desire, and followed it through.

Cold Open: A woman answers a phone at a Wal-Mart type superstore place. Wendy's on the other end with Dipper and Mabel. She asks to be transferred to extension 234. Extension 234 connects them to the stores loudspeaker speakerphone. Wendy starts making joke announcements over the loudspeaker: Wendy: "Clean up to aisle 6, customers seem to be projectile vomiting all over eachother." Mabel and Dipper are laughing hysterically. The woman can't hang up on Wendy so she calls the cops. Wendy's still going. Soos asks if she could get in trouble for it. Wendy brushes him off. Then the cops show up. Stan sees Wendy arrested and swells with pride- "she HAS been learning from me (quietly weeps) I'm so proud."

Act One: Open on Manly Dan... by his age it must be the past- he teaches his boys to chop wood and they're all struggling. A huge tree drops in the distance. When the dust clears... it's little Wendy. He tells her to climb aboard his shoulders my little axechild! They happily gallop off. They love each other. It's very sweet. Cut to present day: A confrontational Manly Dan is bawling Wendy out for getting in trouble for the prank phone call. He tells her not to be so impulsive and do the first thing that pops into her head. Wendy insists Manly Dan is the most impulsive person she knows, besides the cops left her off with a warning. She brushes it off by saying she has to go to work.

B story. (Not sure what)

Wendy's reading On the Road at work. She's getting progressively more pumped about this book. Mabel asks what it's about. She explains it all and the kids are pumped. They're swept up in this romanticized teenage vision of hitchhiking on the open road. Stan has to leave for some secret portal reason and Wendy's like: "Let's do this right now!" (Secretly she just doesn't want to go home and deal with her dad.) "Let's do it let's just hitch hike. Leave town! Start a new life! Like Jack Kerouac!" Mabel is enamored.

End image 2 ID.]

[Image 3 ID: picking up from the transcript of the previous image:

Soos is wary of leaving the shop at first. But Wendy talks them into it. A couple of her friends come. Lee, Nate, Thompson, and Tambry. They get on the road and are immediately having fun. Things are looking up. Soos is worried. Wendy: "Easy Soos, we're in Oregon... it's just going to be a bunch of nice hippies..." Cut to a terrifying crazy red eyed driver without a face driving towards them. Act break.

Act Two: Wendy and Co are having fun just like you should on a road trip/vagabond adventure. They're stopping at mini-marts and getting lame snow globes- and making fun of them. Things are looking good. It's like a road movie. They all relate to each other about problems with their parents. Wendy doesn't say much but she has a flashback to her and her dad drifting apart.

Stan B Story.

The scary faceless driver comes by and offers them a ride. (they can't see his ghoulish faceless self) Wendy immediately says yes before anyone else can decide. People are like "I don't want to go hitch-hiking." "Wendy: It'll be fine! Come on- this is the adventure of our lives. People in those stories never said, no I'm scared." She makes them all go in. It's creepy and tense in the car. Eventually the guy reveals himself to be a horrifying ghoul face and locks the doors. They all go screaming into the distance.

Act Three: He takes them to the "End of the Road" Diner. Or you hang a lampshade on it and have it be Bob's Big Boy but with a David Lynch head on the outside. There are other people that get taken there and stay forever and are sort of these lost souls that are stuck there. From all different eras. It's like this terrifying Lynch-ian dark version of an idyllic road trip stop. Basically it's a Lynch parody fest with Soos and Mabel. Like these little creepy old couple are walking in fast motion out of a wall and Soos is pushing them back in. "Whadda you doin grandma and grandpa... get outta that mouse hole. Get back in that mouse hole you goofs." (Probably too insane) Anyway, everyone wants them to have "the special" and after you eat the special, you stay there forever. Wendy's really guilty that all this is her fault.

End image 3 ID.]

[Image 4 ID: the last of the transcript:

Wendy wants to impulsively react, but remembers her dad. She thinks carefully what to do and comes up with a plan- and chops down a tree on the driver. They all come home- relieved to be back in Gravity Falls, and her dad is chopping wood in the back- he's still mad at Wendy.

Wendy: Hey... Dad? Manly Dan: (grunts) Wendy: Can I chop some wood with you? Manly Dan just nods and waves her off. They fell the tree. Manly Dan: Haha! That's my little axechild! Wendy smiles and keeps chopping.

Something like that- obviously a lot of variables to be figured out- but I love the teenage feeling of this and love that it gives Wendy a story and a flaw. Still needs work to make her better but it's a start.

End image ID.]

[starzzmissthesun]

I'm here to hear!!!! Please rant about whatever you want cause I want to know everything abt this fic

Hii!!! So first and foremost I made a basic post about this and the characters' roles a while a go here,->

But I'll go into more depth now, because I have the full idea of exactly how it'll all go, though I still want to keep some stuff secret just cause it'll be more fun for y'all I think. As I said, this isn't going to exactly follow the plot of preachers daughter, but I will be using the main themes and subjects surrounding it, along with ones to do with the individual identities of reg + barty. This is set in Louisiana between 1995-1999, though there are memories to when they were kids(but not very often). Sirius is about 10 years older than reg and left the family when reg was just 8. And once his dad died 2 years later, his mother (who was already dealing with some issues) falls completely grief stricken and falls further into her mental illness, leaving Regulus to take care of both of them for her. Barty and reg used to be friends when they were quite young, but the first few years after orions death kept Regulus quite busy and he was kept home by his mom most of the time to "protect him" so they grew distanced. Eventually they got competitive with their schooling and all that. So this is where we pick up the story, Regulus is on his first day of grade 10, and because it's such a small town, they're in all the same classes. Now, the things I used from the story of PD especially were the different parental relationships, generational trauma(for both of them, but shown in VERY different ways), religious trauma(specifically Catholic because that's what I grew up in so it's the deno. I know best, but also. Cults. ), lots and LOTS of fate, the American Dream and pressures from it. This story is very dark and is very horror adjacent, but more so in an eery "some things not right" , disturbing kind of way, though there are some VERY in your face moments that are used for very specific reasons. The main settings for this is the small (made up) town of St peters louisiana, a road trip up the east coast, Nebraska (😧), Helena Montana, and California. There is SO SO SO much foreshadowing and metaphors/symbols I've hidden all over the place. Like genuinely, every thing they do or don't do is incredibly intentional for each character and themes. There is extreme foreshadowing within just the first few chapters. Anyways, any other questions, feel free to shoot another ask!! Also I will be putting out the pintrest board I made for it soon(which has lots of main plot points littered throughout it), and the chapter by chapter playlist because each chapter has a specific song. It's gonna veryyy long, ive still got the last quarter give or take to finish drafting out and I'm at 53 chapters so far. Anyways! I've started writing it finally cause I've been drafting this out for the last 4 months🙏 but, yeah, any thing else at all you're curious about to do with this send me an ask cause it my favourite thing ever😭

[spamtoon]

DCRC PKNA Week 11--Silicon Time!

thankfully our little book club break has meant i've had enough time to rest, get into what is potentially a new hyperfix, and feel motivated to read paperinik! ...and um ducks on the road. at some point that's not now.

you know what. im feeling ultra relaxation for this issue let's go to the cove. nevermind i got distracted and entered the pizza parlor

angus fangus cosplay

starting off and first of all i have to say dear lord. the airport experience is indeed horrendous as someone who has been on an airplane recently the sign "clogged toilets delay flights" baffled me. like i understand why but im also like okay. the toilet is clogged. there are two toilets per plane surely the line woudlnt get that long

im gonna be real i thought big nosed human guy was gonna be exclusive to silicon. like i didnt think he would just. also show up here

the idea that angus fangus hasn't had a day off makes me wonder like. was the new zealand thing last issue technically a work trip despite the fact he was there to save his tribe. because if so that rules

it's nice getting to see scrooge again despite the fact he's probably gonna be written out of the story. i missed him

thought he was wiping his sweat with his money for a second here i'm goign to be so honest. and in the second panel he's sillouetted for no reason it amuses me. i mean i know why hes threatening to ruin donald and uno's situationship but he doesn't know he's doing that

i love you chilling in purple shirt donald

i love their little dumb mirco-bickers. they're so domestic

rip to whatever italian pun was lost in translation here. unless there was no pun and donald is just like ughhhhhhhhhh because he does not care

hi little drink serving robot... these things did exist in the 90s but they were very very basic and mostly for flash. which is why it would absolutely get on the news when the only other news is its hot. donald's pose and uno's response is also so cute im. who would have expected comic silicon would have Uno Content

ohohohohoho... oh no, how tragic! how tragic it would be if a certain robot enjoyer skipped to the next town over for this specific day--nevermind he's on vacation too he's at the supervillain convention in florida (SORRY)

cog these car panels are cool... i am once again praising paperinik action moments

rest in peace all the computers at duckburg technofinancial im glad they at least got a viking funeral

it feels so werid to see angus fangus in a tank top and shorts. he belongs in a trenchcoat. and i just

the way he gazes into the distance makes this panel feel so much more contemplative than it actually is i love it

i love how the evronians have a whole division that's job is just. to deal with xadhoom. who is presumably killing evronians off camera all the time

i hope its a story where its the computer in the tower that did it like we saw in the start but he's just messing around. he's just like hi uno!!! :) remember when ducklair made you i was there when you were born uno and he's like oh BROTHER this guy STINKS !

:// i know the computer literally said the evronians might be useful but like i saw computer wanting to use the spore hatchlings and i was so dissappointed. especially disappointed that he wants to shut uno down. i think. at least i assume its a computer hence the name silicon if it was silicon and it wasnt even a computer there was a guy in front of it i would be SO dissappointed but im pretty sure its the first ducklair sentient technology at this point

i have absolutely zero thoughts about this robot rhyno thing its just an important enough detail i have to bring it up. actualy i do have a thought and its look at him. he's so fucking stupid looking. neutral connotation ITS FUCKING DUE AGAIN? FUCK OFF DUE. i gaslighted myself into thinking we were gonna get a different computer but no. okay. alright

of all the villains to figure out donald's secret identity im so. two. of course. not that he's going to get it i dont know if they'd go that route but

im gonna be so real after his introduction issue i fulyl expected them to never use due again

this panel si so dramtic (i LOVE the rainbow windows) but out of context its just like TWO !!!! im so mad

i know its the 90s but i like how it was confirmed later in ducktales 2017 if due did launch donald like that it wouldn't have done anything as long as he thought about the triplets (or maybe uno in this case) hard enough. our bravest man on two worlds... (yes i know they're different donalds)

IM SO MAD donald just kinda handwaving away the duck avenger's inveolvement. they hate each other so much

im so mad the way he's just. at channel 00 news now. due and the evronians deserve to be fighting each other for a while i think

and that was silicon!! i enjoyed seeing more of uno but i was disappointed the computer turned out to be. due again. but maybe im just a little loser who always wants a new robot OOPS i miss lyla lay hopefulyl we see her next issue considering we're going back to channel 00. hoepfully she had a really good vacation while this was all giong on

[winterpinetrees]

The Ambush (The Gap Years part 20)

July 2nd 2019

Coconino National Forest, AZ

After three weeks on the road, Marin's luck runs out. They're on the run from an entire empire, remember?

..............

The car lurches to a halt, and if Marin hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, he might have died right there. Well, not really, but his chest is going to be bruised. He’s about to ask if there is a deer or something in the road when Sierra calls out a magical glow. Only humans can sense magic on instinct. He looks behind his seat to see a cord of light clinging to their rear bumper. It’s about 9am on State Route 87, a narrow road with scattered pine trees on either side. There isn’t a single other car in sight. In a human story, the lack of other cars would mean safety. Here, the isolation means that there’s no reason for elves to hold back. They’ve planned for this, but they haven’t practiced. It’s time for their first real ambush. 

Unable to escape, Brian spins the car right to put a human and automobile shield between Marin and their enemies. The cord of light ties back to absolutely nothing, but the nothingness shimmers a slightly tan white. Colored light combines to white. That’s basic magical theory. He calls to the humans that they’re fighting multiple opponents of equal power. Sierra jokes that they’re all nothing compared to the power of gun. The fact that she’s kind of right is part of how they got into this situation in the first place. Seven billion wild, fanatic, humans armed to the teeth is a threat to anyone with a brain. Marin casts a spell over the car. It’s mostly an illusion to hide their actions, but should protect the car as well. Then they move.  

Clay’s job is cover fire. He sweeps the hair away from his eyes and balances the concussion rifle on the windowsill. It’s difficult to keep up an illusion when you’re being shot at. Honestly, few elves outside of his family have the skill and the raw power to pull it off.  As magical weapons, concussion rifles are especially dangerous, because the only thing that can reliably stop them is a magical defense. The soldiers will have to choose invisibility, or risking broken bones at the hand of the human boy who already killed a noble. The invisibility spell flickers for a moment and then breaks completely once the soldiers realize it has started to crack. There are five of them in dark gray armor and featureless helmets on the side of the road. 

Brian kicks his door open and crouches behind the front of the car. It’s electric, and there isn’t really an engine there, but it’s something to hide behind while he shoots with a magical pistol. The weapon is Zerada’s orange now instead of his green. He can tell from the sparks that it’s set to stun. Clay’s gun isn’t. However, Brian is drawing more of the fire. Probably because he looks more dangerous. Brian is a stereotypical wild human. He’s big and muscular and the scar on his jaw makes him look like a soldier, even if Marin’s learned that he got it tripping down the stairs as a toddler. Marin slips out of the car as well, and Sierra passes behind him to take the driver’s seat. The Audacity is her creation. She’s better behind the wheel than swinging a baseball bat. 

Are there more soldiers behind them? Probably, elves traditionally fight in teams of nine, but maybe the soldiers looking for them are spread so thin that there isn’t a full squad. Marin looks over his shoulder at the other curb while he climbs onto the roof. When he was little, he wondered why Lazarus Sondaica, the first Apex and the founder of his genus, chose to master illusions while on campaign. He fought with a staff and a greatsword, so wouldn’t strength or speed or a ranged ability be a better skill? There may not be soldiers on the left side of the road, but if there are, they don't see him judge the distance, plant his quarterstaff into the ground, and vault across the pavement. Now he knows that Lazarus chose the signature of his line because illusions are real magic. The Mercurali and the Eight-Points who follow them have their tricks, but the only thing that can truly stop an illusionist is a more powerful one. With the rest of his family in custody and Arjuna probably retired, he’s about as powerful as there is. 

Marin lands as quietly as he can and swings his staff in a wide arc.  He’s testing to see where his opponents are, and holds a dagger in his left hand. A soldier appears, then a second, and Marin moves quickly to get behind his target. On the other side of the street, Zerada flies through the air and pounces like the fox that is the symbol of her family. The humans probably need more help than he does, but it still stings. She’s fast, and her skill with charms means that she’s hard to keep down. Marin remembers a thousand- really, they’ve been doing this for decades- sparring matches against her, and the way he would always lose focus at the end. She jokes that he just can’t bring himself to hurt his betrothed, but Marin knows there's magic at play.

It’s not too challenging to stay alive though. Marin just keeps hidden and stays moving. The faceless gray armor has weak points, and these are commoners he’s fighting. They may be more physically capable of fighting with a few flesh wounds than he or Zerada are, but they heal slower, and they aren’t afraid to run. His mother would talk about commoners some nights, when he was quiet and she’d had a long week with the High Council. She told him how they didn’t care so much about legacy, and that even the Voyagers, who built their culture around hurricanes and rocket ships, didn’t worship danger like they did. Marin was struck by her wording. He’s been training since he could walk, but did he revere it? Marin weaves between three skilled soldiers without even being scratched. He certainly isn’t this good at anything else. 

Marin manages the final soldier with a strike below an arm. His dagger is short and he angles the strike to be less damaging, but they’ll have to get medical attention quickly. He’d have loved to capture a soldier instead, but his tutors were always clear that mind control only delays problems instead of fixing them. They can get intel from Zerada’s allies to the northeast without holding someone captive. Besides, a gun set to stun would be more helpful than a dagger for taking prisoners. A conscious elf can always switch worlds, unless they’re within range of one of the Betrayed. After a final check of his surroundings, Marin lets his spell end and walks back to the car. He leans against the now-dented front and smiles at Zerada. Her twin daggers are soaked red. There’s a splash of blood on her chest as well. It’s not hers. He can recognize the consequences of a messy strike. 

“Is anyone hurt?” Marin asks, looking at Brian, who has a history of injuries. The human can take it though.

He runs a hand through his blond hair. “I could feel a few shots, but I’m alright”.

“You messed up the car though…” Sierra replies. 

“I needed something to hide behind! There isn’t an engine in the front anyway,”

She rests her head against the steering wheel and sighs.

“And one of you needs to charge this rifle once we get on the road,” Clay adds.

The gun’s emerald detailing is duller than it should be. He hates charging gadgets. It burns him out and takes hours, but it’s the only way for Clay to make himself useful in a fight. Marin opens the back left door, which swings upwards instead of out like most car doors, and moves to step inside. Then there is light behind him, and he turns to face it, and something shatters. It isn’t glass. The bone in his upper right arm bends and snaps. He roars like one of his family’s sabertooths before he even registers the pain.

“GET IN THE CAR!” Clay yells, lifting the rifle to aim behind Marin.. They’re all yelling, but he’s the only one saying words. 

Marin has always been the son of the Apex. He was never expected to wield the scepter, but his quarterstaff feels like part of him, and Lazarus knows he can fight. That’s why the prince is able to keep his footing, even as a shot from a concussion rifle strikes right below his shoulder with the force of a cannonball. The shock is white-hot and familiar. Marin throws himself into the car and lifts his head to see the ninth soldier backing away. Brian fires a shot, but the enemy has gone to the other world before it can connect. In eighty-six years, Marin has broken several bones. High nobility are fragile like that. He knows how the next few hours are going to go. 

The shock will last a few minutes. He’s filled with adrenaline (so much more than from that easy fight), and the world is tinted green from his glowing eyes. That’s part of how Marin knows it’s bad. Usually the mind filters that out. He’s in the middle back seat with Clay to his right and Zerada to his left. The boy pulls supplies out of his messenger bag. There’s fear in his brown eyes, but his hands are steady. Brian may look more like a warrior, but Clay is a far more dangerous human. 

“I’m going to splint this and then we’ll figure out our next steps,” he says, holding a roll of bandages. His dying gun is forgotten beside him.

Marin closes his eyes and tries to focus. His arm burns and he can feel something shift when he breathes, but he’s a nobleman. He controls his body, not the other way around. Marin focuses on the break in his arm. Clay’s hands are cool, and he distantly realizes that he has begun to cry, but he needs to look deeper. The bone has broken into three pieces. One has shifted to nearly block an artery. He lets his magic coil around the break.

“Zerada better still have allies where we're going. You need more than my first-aid. An x-ray, at least”.

“The bone is in three pieces. I can hold them together, but it will take some of my magic,” Marin explains calmly. 

“Three pieces… that’s a segmental break. You need surgery,”

Zerada shuts him down. “He has magic. High nobility heal quickly. And I will have allies. Genus Adust is huge. They can’t have killed or captured everyone. It would look bad”. 

No one talks for a long time. 

“Normally people are in a lot more distress about a break this bad,” Clay says.

“I’m a prince, Clay. Pain is just your body giving a warning”. He remembers training with his mother. The scepter of his genus isn’t gold or bronze or any metal that existed outside of Lazarus’s void-cursed dreams, but it is dense and heavy. He flexes his left hand and thinks of proper form, and how long it took to learn. 

“How did you learn this anyway? I’d thought that the powerful human families were…” the first word that comes to mind is unfit. Unfit to rule, and maybe even unfit to live. Survival of the fittest. A proper plague will decrease the human population, but unless Ishtar has some tricks up her sleeve, the richest humans will fare better than the subjects they want. He finds a better word. “Soft”. 

“Some of the other kids I climb with taught me. Sometimes someone falls”. Clay narrows his eyes. “Calling an ambulance is a great way to get caught somewhere you shouldn’t be. They’re expensive too. That’s not an issue for me, obviously, but it is for them. And I can only throw so much of my father’s money at issues that are a whole lot bigger than us”. 

“You want to be a doctor?” 

“Whatever helps people when and where they need it.” 

“Well then you’re off to a great start,” Sierra adds.

“I was thinking more about general medicine at a lower cost, and less being a field medic for an elf prince with hollow bones”. 

His bones are not hollow. 

Brian scoffs. “Oh please. We’re off on an adventure. Try to enjoy it!” 

The humans don’t have all the details, but they certainly have found themselves on an adventure. Shooting soldiers, defending the last free heir to the throne, driving across their country just before it changes forever… they’re in a legend, really. 

But his injury is worse than he’s letting on. It’s going to take a lot of focus and magic to hold his humerus together, and his illusions have been their strongest asset this whole time. Still, Marin lets himself imagine a world where they win. One where they rescue Zerada’s brother and all of his cousins, and prove his grandparents’s lineage wasn’t a waste after all. He’d retake the throne with Zerada by his side and create a new age, and he wouldn’t even have to go mad within the void to do it. With the elven world revealed, Sierra would have all the elven tech she wanted. Brian would love the thrill of noble courts, (seriously, Zerada is a lot)  and Clay could finally fix the systems he hates instead of just kicking at the edges. 

Zerada told him a few nights ago that the humans all took a gap year because there was something they couldn’t face about the rest of their lives. It wasn’t just a joyride like what she planned. Well, win or lose, if they unite the realms or die trying, the humans will never have to face the world they grew up in. They get to matter, and they have hope. It’s not a gift equal to saving his life back in San Fransisco, but it’s the best he can offer from this deep in the woods. 

..................

long ago I imagined this fight taking place in a Denny's parking lot. That wouldn't make sense with new lore though.

[arthropod-concoctions]

(AO3 - ch 2)

Scott and Jimmy didn't care much about politics. They knew that their house was located in disputed territory, but they also knew the dyed leather they bartered would be in high demand no matter who the land belonged to, and the rumors of warfare in the distance never bothered them. They were fine staying where they were.

They were fine, until Jimmy went on a trip to the market and came back Red.

- - - - -

Jimmy arrived at the village right before sunrise. He'd set out early, wheeling his cart over the roads by the moonlight, to prevent the fresh beef he was bringing from being spoiled by the sun. People would always trade more for fresh meat; and he was hoping to barter for enough supplies today to last him and Scott another few weeks at their hillside farm. The residents of the village were happy to see Jimmy and gladly traded and chatted with him; the last couple times it had been Scott that went out to trade, so Jimmy hadn't spoken with many of the villagers in a little while.

Near the end of the morning, Jimmy had traded all of the beef and most of the dyed leather for various foods, clothing, and a few other things. While packing up, he noticed some commotion on the other end of the market square. He realised it was an argument between the old pottery saleswoman Efe and another woman he didn't reccognise. He'd never seen anyone pick a fight with Efe; he decided to go over and investigate.

“...tell you right now, these pots really aren't worth as much as you seem to think!” the unknown woman, who was wearing a yellow shirt-- faded yellow, not as high-quality as Scott's dye-- was yelling at Efe. She was holding a clay pot in her hands.

“What's going on here?” Jimmy asked as he jogged up to the pair. He nodded at Efe, who smiled at him.

“This woman is refusing my very sensible offer of ten coins for this pot,” the stranger said, looking at Jimmy. She had yellow eyes, he noticed-- matching with her shirt.

Efe just shrugged. “The coins aren't worth anything. They look nice, but they're not going keep me alive.”

“They're currency, don't you understand that? You, other guy.” she faced Jimmy again. “What would you pay for this pot?”

Jimmy looked at the pot. It was well-made, but nothing too special. “One, two steaks maybe?”

“And how many loaves of bread would you trade one steak for?”

What did bread have to do with any of this? “Look, if Efe doesn't accept the barter, just back off, okay?”

The argument was drawing a crowd now- most of the villagers seemed to be on their neighbor Efe's side. One other villager, Sunny, stepped forwards and put their hands on the stranger's shoulders. “I think you should leave.”

“Don't touch me.” she shrugged their hands off. “You're green. I'm yellow. You're not allowed to attack me.”

“...yes? No one's 'allowed' to attack anyone,” Sunny responded. No one had allowed the red-lifed to be killers either- they just couldn't be reasoned with. “I'm not attacking you. I'm just asking you to leave.”

The stranger closed her eyes and sighed. “Fine,” she said. She turned around to leave, but didn't return the pot she was still holding- in fact, she raised it high, then dropped it to the ground. Efe gasped as it hit the ground and shattered into a dozen pieces.

Then chaos broke loose. Several villagers rushed at the stranger when the pot shattered-- Jimmy joined them. She responded by picking up shards of the pot and throwing them around. Some people grabbed their tools to use as weapons, and the peaceful market square very quickly exploded into a messy brawl.

Somehow, a shard of hardened clay ended up in Jimmy's chest.

- - -

Jimmy woke up lying on a bed inside a house, Efe and Sunny looking down at him, concern visible on their faces. He got up and looked down at his chest. There was a hole in his shirt, and a massive stain of blood around it. His actual skin only showed a small scar, as if nothing much had happened at all.

“The fight dissipated after you fell down,” Efe said. “We figured we should clean the wound, get you somewhere covered to wake up again.”

“Wow. Efe, I'm so sorry this happened.”

“Hey, if you're gonna feel sorry for anyone, it should be yourself. I mean, you died!” Sunny responded. “That other woman left town though, luckily.”

“Oh my gosh. I did die, didn't I?” Jimmy touched the scar on his chest. He could still remember the sharp pain of getting impaled by the shard, but he felt no discomfort now. “I'm yellow now.”

Sunny nodded grimly. “I kept your cart of stuff here as well. Didn't want people looting it after that ordeal.”

“Oh, right, thanks,” Jimmy said, and he got up and followed Sunny to the door, where his cart was parked. “I think I'm headed home now. Thanks for having me.”

“I appreciate you trying to help me, Jimmy,” Efe said. “Travel safely.”

It was now afternoon, and Jimmy was walking back home, lost in thought. He was yellow-lifed now. He'd always figured that, given his luck, he might get killed and become yellow one day, but that didn't make it any less of a shock when it happened. How was he going to explain this to Scott? Would he want to dig a grave for the chance that Jimmy turned red? And if so, should Jimmy help with that? The answer was yes, obviously, but Jimmy found the thought of preemptively digging his own grave to be a bit grim.

“Hello there!” Jimmy was shaken from his thoughts by someone calling out to him. Two men were sitting in a booth by the side of the road, waving at him.

“Hello hello! Seems you're walking quite a long way with that big cart, would you like to buy some boots to make the walk more comfortable?” one of the two asked, a big smile plastered on his face. “It's just twenty-five coins.” the other man's eyes went to the hole in Jimmy's shirt, but he didn't say anything.

“I don't have any coins, sorry,” Jimmy responded, smiling back.

“Well, that's fine, we can barter. You've got a lot of good stuff with you, I see,” the first man responded, nodding to Jimmy's cart loaded with various essentials.

“No thanks. My own boots are fine.”

“You sure? Impulse, show him the boots. Here, just look at these beauties.” the second salesman now pulled a pair of blue boots out from under the counter of the booth. “Surely those are better than... whatever it is you're wearing now.”

Jimmy was getting annoyed now, but he had to admit, they looked like good boots. They seemed sturdy, set with pieces of metal, and the coloring of the leather was done cleanly, about as good as Scott could do it.

In fact, they looked exactly like boots Scott would make. Like the boots that had mysteriously vanished from their supplies some weeks back, that Scott lamented for days afterwards.

“Uh,” Jimmy said, “these are my boots.”

“That's the spirit! Now, looking at your stuff, I think that bottle of-”

“No.” Jimmy stepped forwards, laying a hand on one of the boots. “I'm saying these are my boots. These are boots that my husband made, that were stolen a few weeks back. And now you're trying to sell them to me.”

The smiles vanished from the two men's faces as they shot glances toward each other. Then the second one- Impulse, apparently-- said: “Iiii don't know what you mean by-”

“You're a terrible liar,” Jimmy cut him off. “I'll be taking these, thank you very much.”

“NO YOU WON'T!” the first man suddenly yanked the boots from underneath Jimmy's hand and took off running.

“HEY!” Jimmy shouted, then pursued. Chasing the man was probably not the smartest thing to do, he realized, but after the day he'd had, he would not let these thieves get away with Scott's boots on top of it. He was a faster runner than the thief, and closed the gap rapidly. “GET BACK HERE!” he shouted, as he was almost close enough to grab the man by the collar-

When he suddenly turned around and swung the boots hard at Jimmy's head. The toes of the boots, tipped with metal, slammed into his cheek, and Jimmy heard something crack as pain flashed across his entire head.

Stars covered Jimmy's vision as he heard the thief laughing. “Woo, these boots are great! They function as melee weapons too!”

Jimmy felt something dripping down to his neck. “Uh, that hit harder than I expected...”

Jimmy felt himself falling backwards. Distantly, he heard the second thief yelling: “Tango, you idiot, didn't you see his eyes were-”

Then Jimmy's head hit the floor, and everything went black.

- - -

He was on fire.

Jimmy opened his eyes to see flames coming off of his hair, his clothes, his skin. He yelped, jumped up, and immediately dropped back to the floor as he remembered the instructions his parents had drilled him with as a child. He rolled across the ground a few times until the fire was out, then realizing he didn't actually feel the flames at all.

Now slightly calmed down, he looked around to get his bearings. Scott's boots, now stained with blood at the toetips, were lying on the ground a few feet away, near the scorched grass where Jimmy must've been laying earlier. His cart of traded goods was on the road a bit further away. Nothing else was on fire, and the two bandits were nowhere to be seen. They must've set Jimmy's body on fire and ran, trying to prevent him from respawing-

Again. He'd died twice now, and respawned both times.

He was Red now.

Jimmy suddenly felt chilled down to his spine, and he looked down at himself again. His skin was ashen gray, flaking off in places. His clothes were a ragged mess, and though there weren't any mirroring surfaces nearby, Jimmy knew exactly what his eyes would look like.

He felt lost. If explaining his first death to Scott would have been difficult, this would be impossible. Should he even come back? He didn't want to kill Scott. Going home would just endanger him. Should he leave and go live in the forest, like the wolf-man? That thought sent a shiver down his spine again. He'd encountered the man once, and didn't want to do so ever again, even if they were theoretically equals now.

Jimmy picked up the boots from the ground, and walked to his cart. Fortunately, one of the things he'd obtained today was a cloak, which he took and draped over himself, to cover his burnt clothing and red eyes. As he pulled the hood over his head, he noticed footprints in the dirt, leading away into the distance; probably belonging to the thieves, who had fled the scene. Numbly Jimmy wondered if he should chase them and get revenge. It'd make sense for him to do, as a red-lifed.

But he didn't want to do that. He just wanted to go home.

So he took his cart and continued along the road.

[alinalioness]

Adventure under water 5 Chapter:The first problem.

Meanwhile, with heroes.

The heroes sailed with Ariel and Flounder in search of the sea kingdom.

Alina:To be honest, I'm already starting to like being half an octopus. Even though I just like being a lioness.

Fiona:I like being a mermaid myself.

Dynamic Dolphin:And when I look at my tail instead of my legs, I feel like I'm completely a dolphin.

Ariel:It's so great to spend time with you.

SpongeBob:By the way, what are you doing at the castle?

Ariel:Nothing special, except that we are hosting a concert for the people of our kingdom.

Alina:With songs?

Ariel:Yes, with songs. This is our favorite.

The heroes noticed how they were already far from the resort and decided to take a break.

Carlin:I suggest you get some rest and hit the road.

Everyone stopped, so some decided to just sit down or lie down.

Katya:Will it be a long trip?

Alina:Who knows? After all, her house is very far away.

Krash:I wonder if I can jump like a dolphin? (Came out of the water performing a dolphin trick and into the water) Cool.

Meanwhile, with eels.

The eels in the distance saw Krash descending to the heroes.

Eel No.1:Here they are.

Eel No.2:And how do we lure them in?

The first eel noticed a great white shark, which she was swimming and looking for food. (If anything, these sharks can't stop because they're going to die.)

Eels:I have an idea.

Meanwhile, with heroes.

The heroes were still resting and talking to each other.

Iben:If we had our own bracelets, I would have fun in the water with my husband and my children.

Ariel:Do you have children?

Iben:Yes. And some of my friends have it too.

Flounder:I can't imagine how interesting it will be to spend time with them.

Haoyu was lying on a rock and looking at the sky. He couldn't imagine it when he was in the water. Until Leo, Emma, Yuri and Cass came up to him.

Leo:Well how?

Haoyu:(Sat down) Everything is fine, why?

Emma:It's just that you haven't thought about Fiona? She's having fun with the fish right now.

Haoyu looked at Fiona, where she was stroking one of the various harmless fish.

Haoyu:Well, when I talked to her, everything was fine. I was still afraid to admit it, though.

Cass:To be honest, I noticed that she loves you too.

Haoyu:Me?

Yuri:But this is just an opinion. And so you need to check the feelings, whether there is or not.

Haoyu:*Gasp* Okay, I'll try. (He swims up to Fiona) Hi.

Fiona:Oh, hello Haoyu. Did you want something?

Haoyu:Yes, I just wanted to ask... Do you feel anything (Leo, Emma and Yuri are a little scared)?

Cass:(In a whisper) Or maybe this is normal?

Fiona:I don't know, what are you doing?

Haoyu:Well, I mean in the heart (He lays his hand to his heart). Like feelings...

Fiona:Oh. Everything is fine. Although I feel that...

Haoyu:What?

Fiona:What's the matter with you and my friends. Although I'm worried about you right now.

Leo, Emma, Yuri and Cass:What (Leo fainted)?

Cass:I knew it.

Fiona:It's just that you're nervous for some reason when I'm here.

Haoyu:Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that I'm a little bit...

Leo:Come on, come on...

Emma:Please...

Haoyu:I just can't explain when I'm nervous... (Leo, Emma, Yuri and Cass put their hand to their face)

Fiona:Haoyu (Holding Haoyu by his hands), if you're not scared, just don't say it.

Haoyu:Good (Leo, Emma, Yuri and Cass took their hands off their faces).

Fiona:Maybe... Have fun?

Haoyu:Well... of course.

Fiona spins with Chaos like a dance that they both laugh at. The four of them, looking at this, do not know how to answer.

Yuri:What is the conclusion, even though he did not confess?

Leo:He can assume that she treats him well. (He sat up as he was lying down) She really seems to love him.

Cass:But we still have to support and take a closer look.

Fiona and Haoyu stopped spinning while she decided to play catch-up with him. Despite a good way to catch up with her, he noticed that she was not there. Suddenly, someone covered his eyes with his hands and it was Fiona. When he took her hands, she hugged her, making him blush.

Leo, Emma, Yuri and Cass:Or is it true?

Alina:Guys! It's time to hit the road!

Fiona and Haoyu:Oh...

Fiona:OK (Lets go of Haoyu from hugs), we're sailing.

As the two of them were swimming to their friends, Haoyu noticed that the shark that the eels had noticed was swimming towards them.

Haoyu:Shark!

Fiona:What?

She saw the shark with a frightened look, while Haoyu took her by the hands and swam away with her to friends.

Heroes:Let's run!

While the heroes swam away from the shark, the eels swam after them with an evil smile.

Eel No.2:At what point will we take the bracelets?

Eel No.1:When they should have gone up on land.

The heroes are still swimming away from the shark and decided to hide by crashing from each other. The shark, having lost, decided not to stop looking.

Sandy:Judging by this, it's a great white shark. She can't stop.

Flounder:Why?

Sandy:She won't be able to breathe then.

Eels, seeing this, understand that they need to act.

Eel No.1:We need to look for it. And if there's a chance, we'll steal it unnoticed.

Seven girls, seeing a shark, think how to stop it.

Lula:We have to do something, we can't just sit here. Do you have any plans?

Sanya:I don't know, but we need something stronger from this huge predator.

Alina, looking at the shark, came up with something and swam after it.

Cristine:Alina, where are you going?

Everyone was looking in horror at Alina, who she stopped where the great white shark was.

Ariel:Alina! No!

The shark noticed her and began to swim. They were ready to throw to save Alina, but noticed how she put her hand to the shark's nose. This makes the shark's eye twitch and swim away. Everyone was watching in fright, but in interest.

Daisy:What was it?

Lan:Apparently, she put her hand on the shark and it swam away. It happens.

Cristine:Alina, don't do this anymore, it's better someone from OK?

Alina:Good.

Carlin:Well, as it is, we are all saved. We're on our way.

The heroes continue to swim while Fiona swam up to the Haoyu.

Fiona:Haoyu.

Haoyu:Yes?

Fiona:Thank you for wanting to protect me.

Haoyu:Oh, you're welcome. I was very afraid of you.

On the surprising response, Fiona kisses him on the cheek (Note:That's not all, so Haoyu must admit). It makes her swim away that Leo, Emma, Yuri and Cass are looking at her in surprise.

Cass:It's true. But how?

Dynamic Dolphin:I see you love him.

Fiona:To be honest, I've been in love with him for a long time, before we came on vacation. I really see that he's still nervous.

The eels, looking at the heroes, were unhappy.

Eel No. 1:We'll have to find another way.

The two enemies continue to pursue the heroes.

To be continued...

[discet]

So what's the trio like in the Scorched Earth AU?

Aw man, Im glad people enjoy the SE!AU Edit: Wow this post got long. Context for the AU

The trio in the au grew up in the small settlement of Old Saint. All are 15 (everyone is 2 years older in this AU.) Born within a season of each other, the girls I think were raised together probably from infancy.

Anne's parents ran the Inn/restaurant in town. They are good doting parents, though a little strict with Anne trying to keep her safe.

Sasha father was a woodsman while her mother raised some kind of chicken-adjacent animal. They weren't divorced but they reaaaaally should have been. Sasha has a reasonably

Marcy's father was a kind of town tinkerer: forging tools, fixing stuff, etc. Marcy's Mom was a trader, often doing circuits around the valley delivering some of the tools and inventions her husband makes. Very attentive to her education, but are often busy for most other things.

Timeline

Age 5: The three of them are fully conscious kids and are adorable little kiddos running around and being sweet.

Age 8: All learning bits and pieces from their parents trade. Anne learns to forage for spices and herbs in the forests around Old Saint and cook some of her family recipes. Sasha is taught how to identify tracks in the forest to avoid monsters and how to handle an axe. Marcy learning tinkering, math, and figures

Age 10: Starting to grow more independent and exploring the forests around Wartwood. The Trio sets up a kind of secret hideout in one of the natural caves a short distance out of town.

Age 11: One summer just before the summer melts the mountain pass Marcy's parents approach the Boonchuy's and ask if they can look after Marcy for the summer. They and a few other merchants from the valley have joined together to form a little caravan to head to a major settlement to trade outside of the valley they should be back before the winter. Marcy and Anne were of course on board, summer of sleepovers. The Boonchuy's are of course happy to look after her. Marcy gives her parents a big hug as they head off.

Age 12: The summer and fall pass by but they don't return. Then the valley gets cut off again and now Marcy is with them for the winter. But it's probably all right. They got waylaid or delayed... but then the summer comes again, the pass melts and Marcy's parents still haven't returned. So Marcy just... doesn't really leave and the Boonchuys carve out a little bit of their home for her to make her own. (They never get news of what happens, but some time during the road trip I think they find the remnants of the caravan, destroyed and looted). Marcy ends up starting to help out keeping the books and fixing up things around the Inn

Age 13: Sasha has had enough. Now an important detail for this AU, Sasha has pretty good relationships with her parents individually, but has been in a cooking pot of toxicity since she's been five. In the middle of two people she cares about as they snipe and hurt each other. She blows up at both of her parents just unloading years worth of repressed frustration with the both of them before storming out for the day. She goes and retrieves Anne and Marcy from the Boonchuy's and they all go off ranging for the day in the forest so she can just be somewhere else. Night comes and as the trio is finally deciding they should head back, they see a bright light coming from the town along with smoke rising.

It was the herons they're told, came in, wrecked a great deal of the town. They find Sasha's parents among the wreckage, and Sasha has to deal with the guilt that the last thing she said to her parents was that she "hated living in this house with you!"

With no other place to go, the Boonchuys of course step up and take Sasha in as well. Sasha helps out around the inn as a waitress on busy nights and provides meat for the kitchen thanks to her new obsession - monster hunting.

Sasha becomes possessed by the idea of killing the herons who killed her parents. Marcy and Anne narrowly convince her to not just storm straight into the valley to look for their nest. Eventually landing on the argument that she should work her way up so that when the time comes she'll be ready. Which is how Marcy and Anne get kind of dragged into her obsession and we get a bit of that toxic dynamic from canon. With Sasha pushing her friends into ever more dangerous situations and dismissing their concerns about them.

Age 15

Start of story. The trio have become pretty adept monster hunters in the intervening years. Marcy specializing in trapping and knowing the weaknesses of various creatures (many a late night in the archives equivalent to make sure they were prepared for anything they meet out there). Anne with her athleticism is on scouting duty and more often than not in charge of leading creatures into the ambush. Sasha of course is the muscle, dealing killing blows when the plan goes right and straight up fighting when things go wrong.

Bee and Oum are of course concerned about this new hobby, and not just for Anne's sake since they've come to see Sasha and Marcy as their own. But its hard for them to raise too much of a protest since by this point they've probably saved various folks around town and driven off some predators together. They're just relieved when the three of them come home at the end of the day.

Also just some quick outfit ideas.

Anne wears mostly lightweight clothing to stay agile on her feet, with a chitinous breastplate to keep her organs safe. Maybe a hunting spear to hold monsters at bay.

Marcy doesn't wear a lot of armor herself instead relying on mossy looking cloak to camouflaged her. Wields a heavy crossbow she fashioned for herself to aid a fight from afar.

Sasha wears armor Marcy fashioned for her of furs and chitin and wields with her father's woodcutting axe.

[leonawriter]

I think one of the (several) reasons I prefer the Royal ending to the vanilla one is that in vanilla - as I remember it from watching a video - they say a lot of things such as "we can do whatever we want now!" except... that's a kind of vague statement.

Royal really made them think about what it was that they wanted, so that they COULD do it! So they could actually achieve those things! Big ambitions and those "I can do anything" feelings can be kinda like balloons. It's nice to have an ideal like that, but without grounding that bubble of confidence can be burst by mundane things.

"We killed God, we can do anything!" sure but what about the next time you're faced with something you thought you were over? There's a reason so many stories go "I had this amazing adventure and now everything after it feels bland and boring and I'm depressed." A reason why so many works have Joker feeling this way even after third semester.

Thing is, though, that third semester gave them the ability to go "we can do anything, and we know it'll take work to get there, but that's good actually." And so what if it's not the bright and bubbly feel-good road trip it was? It's more real.

I've also seen people prefer how Akira takes his glasses off more in the vanilla version, but- I think he does in Royal too. It simply takes the same or similar amount of distance from Tokyo and the need to mask that the original did... but in Royal his friends aren't there because they're ensuring his safety and privacy, and he only gets on the train at the end of it.

So I think I prefer Royal's because they feel like they've actually reached a certain point in their character development that they simply didn't in vanilla, and there's so many things that highlight it if you compare them not with "I enjoyed it better" or nostalgia goggles but "what does this show?"

[ellies-cycling-notes]

Day 1: Narragansett to Long Island

Distance Covered: 82.27 miles

Total Time (including rests): 9:54 (7:14am-5:08pm)

Time spent riding: 7:04

Average Speed: 11.6 mph

Apples Eaten: 3 (fuji - 6/10, granny smith - 7/10, fuji - 7/10)

Overview of the ride itself:

Today's ride was split up into 2 parts: I first had to bike down to the Cross Sound Ferry in Connecticut (approx. 43 miles), then I took the ferry to Long Island and had to bike to my campsite (approx. 39 miles). I will refer to these as the pre-ferry and Long Island parts of the ride, respectively.

The pre-ferry component of the ride was more pleasant for 2 reasons:

1) it's the first part of the ride, so I wasn't that tired for it

2) There wasn't much shade in the Long Island portion, and it was HOT today. I almost considered stopping to get cold water when I was only 5 miles away from my campsite.

The pre-ferry part had one large comparative downside, though: it was really hilly. I think it would've made the fact that I was already tired so much worse if it had been the second half of the ride.

During the pre-ferry part, I took a snack/early lunch break around 20 miles in. I then obviously took another break for the ferry ride (it was about an hour long). During the Long Island part of the ride, I didn't take any breaks and just biked all the way to my campsite.

That's it for the bookkeeping, now for the fun part: thoughts, ideas, and things I noticed on the ride!

Bike Roads Terminology

I spent a lot of time thinking about this at the beginning of the ride, because I realized I'm going to be referring to certain types of roads in this blog, it'd be good to have a description of what I mean when I use those terms.

Disclaimers: (1) these are not official terms for types of roads, they're just terms I tend to use (2) my usage of these terms may not be consistent and is subject to change (3) there may be roads that do not fall into one of these categories; that's fine, these categories are neither holistic nor rigorous

Key:

Name/Road Type - Definition - Difficulty Level (# out of 10) (this number represents how much I don't want to ride a road of this type - thus, a lower number is better) - Reason for Difficulty

Road Types:

Highway - Interstate roads, wide lanes, cars going 70+ mph, will sometimes have wide shoulders you can bike on; are usually named something like I90 - DL: 9 - Highways are some of the most unpleasant roads to ride on; cars going way too fast and there's no good place to ride; luckily, bike routes will practically never have you actually riding on a highway

State Road - 2+ lane roads, usually have a speed limit of 30 or 45 mph, or, in rare cases, 60 mph; aren't super busy; will sometimes have rather wide shoulders that can serve as bike lanes; these are often roads that are named things like Route 9 - DL: 4 or 7 - Not the most pleasant, but not hard to ride on; the two different difficulty levels are for whether or not there is a wide enough shoulder that it can be treated as a bike lane

Side Road - These are roads that exist mostly in more rural areas, are usually 1-2 lanes, and are notable for having a lot of connections to driveways of houses. Oftentimes I'll refer to side roads as state roads and vice-versa; this is because they have many overlaps of features; cars usually have a speed limit of 15 or 30 mph, or rarely 45/60 mph. A notable difference between these roads and state roads is that side roads are more likely to be hilly and curvy; and side roads will typically have street names such as Collins Road - DL: 4 - while there are usually much fewer cars on side roads than state roads; the hilly-ness of side roads can make them be much more unpleasant at times; this is issue is amplified by all the baggage loaded onto my bike for this trip

City Street - roads in cities; what more needs to be said? Speed limits can range from 10 mph to 30+ mph - DL: 2-8 - while never as dangerous as highways, city streets can greatly vary in difficulty due to many reasons, including (but not limited to): amount of traffic, smoothness of pavement/number of potholes, rudeness of cars, pedestrian traffic, speed limit, and existence of bike lanes

Main Street - this is a subcategory of city streets. When I refer to city streets, I am usually referring to them in cities or other large urban centers. Main streets specifically refer to a central street of a small town; while they do not have bike lanes, they are usually much more pleasant than city streets. I call them Main streets because that is often what they are actually called - DL: 3 - Main streets are pleasant to ride on, and the cars on them are usually rather nice; the only downside is that they are not built with bikes in mind, so oftentimes the pavement isn't the best

Bike Trail - Paved roads that are specifically there for bicycles (and sometimes runners). These trails are often completely out of the way of cars, and sometimes follow old railroad trails that are no longer in service - DL: 1-2 - these are some of the best roads you can ride on; they sometimes get difficult if there's too much traffic or the pavement isn't well-kept, but the advantage of being able to ride without worry of cars on mostly flat ground more than makes up for the disadvantages

Hiking Trail/Gravel Road/Off-Road - I'm grouping these together, because all that matters is that these are all types of road I would be fine riding a mountain bike on, but because I have a heavily baggage-laden road bike on this trip, I want to avoid them as much as possible. They usually have very little traffic, but very poor pavement, either dirt, gravel, or some other soft or grainy material - DL: 8 - still better than highways, but otherwise the worse (see my initial rant)

Shoulder - This is not a type of road, but rather a part of the road. It mainly exists on highways and state roads, as the space for a shoulder on other car-based roads is often taken up by parking spots. It refers to the section past the white line that defines the border of a road. Sometimes it's miniscule, taking up only a foot, in which case you have to ride in a car lane, and sometimes it's larger than a car and makes a decent bike lane. On highways, the shoulder is often intentionally rough so that if a car accidently drifts onto it, they'll notice and readjust themselves. - DL: N/A

That's all of them for now! For reference, on today's ride, the pre-ferry part was an even split of mostly state roads and side roads, with a small number of bike trails. The Long Island part had a large number of state roads, a smaller number of side roads, and a tiny amount of gravel roads.

Notes on the Ride Itself

Gold Star Memorial Bridge Bike Path is closed - it's the only 1 bridge anywhere near New London (where the ferry to Long Island is), and I couldn't bike across it. Luckily, there was a shuttle that could carry my bike across that comes every 30 minutes, but for the like 10 minutes between learning about the closure and discovering the shuttle, I was really stressed out, because I didn't know if I'd be able to make it to the ferry in time.

I had an opposite feeling not 30 minutes later when I arrived at the Ferry port at 12:05 (my ferry ticket was for 1pm), and the guys at the dock told me I could just get on the 12pm Ferry which hadn't left yet. This didn't really affect my plans much, except for the fact that it meant I didn't have to idle around at the port for an hour, and would instead have an additional hour at my campsite in the evening. This also ended up giving me more time to work on this post :) !

Small things I saw/experienced on my ride:

a deer: it was on the shoulder of the road, maybe 20ft ahead of me. I wanted to take a picture, but it noticed me and ran into the woods before I could

an upside-down construction sign: this was an orange construction sign where the metal pole that served as the base of the sign was standing upright, and then at the top of the pole there was a orange rectangle, on which all the words (which were construction details) were upside down

shakiness: for the first 30 minutes (maybe longer) of my ride, I was still getting used to the balance of my bike with my luggage, so I was rather worried I'd tip over. This shakiness largely contributes to why I do not want to ride on any gravel road/etc. if I can avoid it

the cemetery: for some reason, my Google maps suggested I take a shortcut through a cemetery on Long Island, so I spent a good 5-10 minutes riding through an empty cemetery before getting back on actual roads. The funniest bit of this is that it really wasn't even much of a shortcut, it saved a minute, tops.

Old Main Road: this is another Google maps strange occurrence. In Long Island, there's a long state road called Main Road, which my route followed along for a good portion. However on a part of the Main Road (around here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/cgfphLKsKeJnXKBY8 ), Old Main Road splits off of Main Road and then rejoins less than a quarter mile later. This happens twice in quick succession. The strange occurrence I was referencing is that both times Google Maps suggested I take Old Main Road, even though that route would be slightly longer.

large roadkill: on the ride, there was a rather large roadkill I saw (the size of a large cat). I almost ran over it, and didn't get a good enough view to figure out what animal it was.

private communities/streets: on the ride, I saw a lot of places that were either private communities or private roads for residents only. My favorite, though, was the Oakwood communities. I'm biking along, and up ahead, I see a sign that says "Private Road - North Oakwood Residents". I'm like, fine. But then I turn my head, and on just the other side of the road, a sign says "South Oakwood Private Community". I latched onto those 2 communities and spend the next several minutes of my ride thinking up imaginary feuds that may exist between these 2 near-identical communities across the street from each other.

Post Ride Notes:

I did about 20-30 minutes of yoga after finishing my ride, which seems to have really helped my sore body (especially my back, which was really hurting at the end of the ride).

Camp setup went well (there might be some pictures in another post). My campsite doesn't have a shower, but it does have potable water, so I might soak my head at the very least (I have not yet, as of writing this post).

I have eaten 3 PB&J sandwiches today, and I haven't even had dinner yet (as of writing this, again). I expect I'll probably start getting tired of them in a few days, so I might need to switch up my meal prep (probably after Philadelphia or maybe DC).

Design Notes:

I spent a lot of the ride today thinking about the blog itself, my road classification system, and being stressed out about whether I can actually do this, so this section is rather short. I hope it will be longer in future posts, as it's the part I enjoy thinking about/writing the most.

Why I'm not good at Narrative Design:

I spent some time on my ride today thinking about Narrative Design. I think it was brought forth from the fact that I've been reading a lot of works recently, of which the quality of the narrative varies greatly. I like to think in terms of systems, but I can't create a holistic system that describes a person, which makes it really hard for me to do narrative design on a character level. On the other hand, I don't have the same issues with designing worlds, because I'm able to start by designing the mechanical systems of that world, and then other aspects sprout forth from that. A good example of this is fictional histories. Because these histories can be broad strokes, I don't have many issues designing a general system from a world, and then basically determining how I believe history would play out if that world worked according to that system. That's also probably why I so often have issues with worlds in media that have magic, because they're often just based in some time period of human history "but with magic", without taking into consideration how the existence of magic would have affected the development of that world. The issue I have with doing the narrative design of characters is sometimes similar. I often know one note which I want a character to hit, but everything else is left as a blank slate and never really filled in.

That's all for tonight! Some of this is written as I thought it up on my ride, some of it was revised to make more sense, and some of it probably still doesn't make much sense. Hope y'all enjoyed these random trains of thought!

Today's Pics -- Next

[vox-monstera]

Tropes Tag Game!

Thank you to @ghostoffuturespast and @another-corpo-rat for the tag! 🥰

Rules: Choose one, both, or none of the following tropes!

Key:

Bold - yay

Strikethrough - nay

plain - ambivalent

italic - there is a caveat upon which I will elaborate

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // oh no there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt-comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high school romance or middle-aged romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bend // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane

Caveats:

Secret dating: There has to be some really good drama and a good reason to date secretly, otherwise why are we here?

Kid fic: The characterization of kids is so hard to do. If it's done well though, I love it!

High school romance: Same as kid fics. Also, some people get too... weird with high schoolers and forget they're still children.

Tagging @shimmer-like-agirl, @gamerkitten, @merge-conflict, @wanderingaldecaldo, e Bugs (that's YOU!) 💕