#this is another one that got some extra Paragraph Breaks for tumblr

[blindrapture]

SATURDAY JULY 2ND, 2011 (Rael's Exodus IV: EAT)

8:12 AM I dreamt of a wide ocean. Storm clouds flocked in, and then a finger rose from the sea. It extended, revealing a hand, and then an arm. It was an absolutely giant arm. Then I heard Genesis playing. The arm became a shoulder, and something else was about to rise out of the water when I woke up. I woke up to “The Fountain of Salmacis.”

8:20 AM “Good morning, passengers. This is your captain speaking. We’re over halfway across the Atlantic, making great progress, should be touching down on New Jersey soil on Monday. “Now, uh.. it seems that a lot of you are gone. Well, don’t worry! We’ll pull through this, the rest of you, and we’ll survive. In the meantime, we’ve got some fantastic music here. Still in Yates’ collection, and uh.. well, it’s really growing on me! It’s some great stuff. That was Nursery Cryme, Genesis, for the second time. And uh.. I think we’ll give this one here a try. Meddle, by.. Pink Floyd! “So yes, smooth sailing, all that. Stay alive! Fitzgerald out.”

9:02 AM Donnie’s up. We’re gonna go get some breakfast.

9:14 AM There’s a kid here in the hall. That’s Miss DeNumante’s kid. Brian’s his name, I think. He seems.. quiet. Is he alright?

9:15 AM Donnie’s taking care of him. She’s taking him with us.

9:21 AM Bacon and eggs for breakfast! Yum.

9:30 AM Ms. Desmond walked by the door. I asked Donnie if she can leave Brian here for a bit. She’s getting Chef Gusteau to look after him for us.

9:33 AM Where is Ms. Desmond going?

9:34 AM Donnie’s caught up. She scared me. >.>

9:35 AM Terry’s gone in a circle. She’s going into the dining room. ..Brian’s staring at her. He’s following her with his eyes.

9:36 AM WHOA HEY HEY HEY OH GOD TIGER STRIPES SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!

9:37 AM She got away. She killed Chef Gusteau, and she got away with it. Goddammit! Motherefsdfjfuckeffsdi9gis, everyone’s dying. But you should have seen her. She picked Zach up and just freaking threw him at a wall, fucking superhuman strength. Then she grabbed a knife. My god, the Rake and Masky are dead, but we’ve got even bigger problems.

9:50 AM “Uh.. attention, passengers? Captain speaking. I’ve just been informed that.. the ship’s chef, Zach Gusteau, is.. dead. “Hm. Maybe there’s really a problem going on. Could everyone gather in the bridge? Everyone that’s alive, that is. We’re gonna have a meeting and a headcount. In the meantime, stay alive. Fitzgerald out.”

10:44 AM We did the headcount. Passenger-wise, there’s Richard and Meredith Burgandy (who freaked out over their door being kicked down, but didn’t mention any papers), Mister and Missus Finch and Omar (Mister and Omar were quiet and stuck together; Missus looks highly stressed and lost in thought), Mister and Missus Haggard (stayed away from each other the whole time, refused to acknowledge each other’s existence), Mister and Missus Tickrand (said not a word), and Brian DeNumante (said not a word). And of course, Jordan and DonDonnie and Jordan. Crew-wise, there’s Captain Jonathan Fitzgerald and Doctor Jackson. That’s it. Ms. Terry Desmond was absent. We counted fourteen people left. Nearly half the boat’s dead. o_o People wanted to know what’s going on. Captain Fitzgerald explained that there were two deadly serial killers on-board, but they have both been dispatched. So now there’s “nothing to worry about.” People are still worried. I don’t blame ‘em!

11:03 AM ..Doctor Jackson’s wait Mister Finch is leading Doctor Jackson to the deck. Omar’s with them. I’m gonna follow them this time.

11:08 AM ..o_____o They threw him overboard! They threw him overboard! What the ffff

11:09 AM And now they’re helping him back up. And.. now he’s quiet. HELLO I WAS JUST LEAVING

11:11 AM I WISH I CAN MAKE IT BACK TO MY ROOM

11:23 AM Oh hi Donnie, please may I have a cuddle, thank you.

11:25 AM We’ve clearly got some sort of.. I dunno, conspiracy or something going on among certain passengers. Except it’s an apocalyptic conspiracy of monsters and stuff. God, I don’t know. I really don’t, journal. I’m still tired. I mean, I’ve been sleeping a lot lately, but I just.. sometimes I don’t want to wake up at all, y’know? I just wanna be back in America. I wanna get off this ship alive. ._.;

11:58 AM Door knocking. o_e ..it’s the Haggards.

11:59 AM They’ve decided that the safest way to make it through this trip alive would be to stick together. They want us to come with them and get all the other passengers together for the rest of the trip. That’s the smartest plan I’ve heard yet.

12:14 PM The Burgandys agreed to stick with us.

12:19 PM ..I saw something. Someone.

12:20 PM TERRY She’s gone where is she what’s she planning?

12:21 PM Wherever she is, she’s following us. o_e

12:24 PM FCN MFS MISSUS FINCH, fucking no, that’s just no c’mon where did she even get a gun She k TERRY GODDAMMIT NO DAMMIT GETB AK Goddammit. I can’t help anyone. WAIT WAHT THFUFKC HOLY FCUK OH MY GOD WINGS

1:02 PM First of all, Missus Finch is dead. Looked to be a suicide, but what difference does it make at this point? Ms. Desmond struck again. This time, she got both of the Haggards. She was gonna get more of us, but then Mister Finch stepped in and knocked her to the ground. Then he >_< His back it ripped open All this blood everywhere but it wasn’t blood It was water D: And out of his back extended two giant wings of flesh and pulsating organs. He’s a fucking Flying Zombie, somehow he’s augvjsdvaI junfodsi She ran then she retreated The Burgandys ran too. Fast. Donnie and I are back in our own room. It’s the safest we’ve been just shut up, gah. Brian’s okay. He is. But will we be? After long enough? >.<

3:39 PM Fell asleep. Dreamt of water. Water. More water. My watery grave. …fuck it, I’m going back to it.

5:25 PM Woke up to banging on door.

5:46 PM It’s Mister Finch and Omar. “Follow You Follow Me.” That’s.. what Mister Finch said. Then they left. ..I’m.. gonna follow them.

5:47 PM Donnie’s coming too. Mostly because Brian ran right out the door and is following the others like we are.

6:01 PM It’s the deck. ..Mister Finch, Omar, Brian, Mister and Missus Tickrand, and Doctor Jackson are gathered here. Looking at me blankly. “Rael, it appears to be time to tell you about my private matter.” I asked why everyone else is here. They all said “I’m the only one here.” At the same time. I hear splashes from below. What have I gotten myself into. Mister Finch steps forward. “In madness, you dwell, Rael. Welcome to the End Complete.” The.. what. "You like that style of music, don't you? You and your friend. It gets your attention. I realize this may be a lot to bear, but— as much as I would rather not admit it— I need.. another pair of eyes." I.. but who? Who are you? “Oh, must you ask such questions? ..I suppose, yes, you must. Ordinarily I would relish the challenge of placing myself within your words, and perhaps it would benefit me to consult with the others on the ways they would recommend, but this is a strange time for all of us. I will try to be brief.

"If you are to identify me, and not any of my bodies, I believe the accepted nomenclature coined by humans is the Evolutionary Adverse Trigger, or, pleasingly, EAT. In fact, I would insist upon EAT, rather than the former. You humans are better at coming up with acronyms than you are at scientific names. How have you not yet figured out the necessity of the aesthetic consideration in functional, scientific contexts? You do not separate the mind and the body, and you do not separate the aesthetic from the functional. It's just a matter of efficient communication." Uh. Okay. o___o; EAT. Hi.. EAT. "I digress. I am not used to the habit of direct conversation with humans. Are we done with the matter of identity? I would like to proceed." Yeah. Sorry. "Please. You've noticed the progressive instability of our environment?" The.. ship? "The Earth." Oh. The apocalypse thing. "What do you know of the reason?" donnie "Rapture is coming." "Yes. Rapture. Do you know anything of Rapture?" Religion? Something about rabbit holes and doors. And INDISEN. "Going down the list, firstly, this has nothing to do with any Earthly religion, past or present. Second is the dDoors. That's capital-D, journal-keeper." Y-yes, got it. o: "You've read the papers I helped you obtain?" Yes. “So you’ve made the connection between ‘rabbit holes’ and Doors." Uh! looking at donnie she's looking back at me Um! No, EAT. "Well, Rael, they're one and the same. The Doors are the 'rabbit holes.' And the Doors are the key to Rapture, the key to identifying, navigating, and, perhaps, addressing Rapture."

donnie "Addressing? So you're.. 'against' Rapture?" "You have to ask? Understand: No living thing on Earth wants Rapture. Not even we Fears want Rapture." ..'Fears?' "Capital F, make sure you get that. It's a term that has stuck among my peers. They seem to like it. I believe a human invented the term for us first, as throughout your history we have inspired your storytelling, in fact your drive for abstraction— itself born from storytelling— comes from us. As storytelling, and by extension verbal communication, has trended in many directions over hundreds of thousands of years, so too have your names for us. And, as horror is your culture's current storytelling drive, it was only natural that your new name for us would stem from horror. Hence, 'Fear,' as I understand it." Uh....… "You used to call us 'gods.'" .… oh god. "Quite." donnie "Was the Harlequin a g-- a Fear?"

"Yes. And we know what you two did to her. You are attracting attention, as humans aren't normally known for dealing such decisive action to us— though, again, these are special circumstances. Most of my peers will want to get a look at you, and indeed some are already planning to. I hope, for your sakes, that they will decide you are a curiosity rather than an X factor. An X factor makes plans interesting. You do not want to make their plans interesting." ...>___<;; "..of course, some of us aspire for nothing less than to be made curious, and I count myself among those ranks. It might even be in my best interests to keep the two of you... alive. You have inertia. Your story is underway. You have— in fact, you are— an opportunity to test some theories and find out how some uncertainties work. You can help me learn of the Indisen if you're careful." R-right! Indisen! Let's talk about them! "The Indisen are another X factor, albeit one that pose a threat to me." Why are they called 'Indisen?' "Oh, I made the term. It stands for Individualistic Sentience. I do not think I handled the aesthetic value of the terms as well as the Genera did with mine…" Sorry, individualistic sentience? What does that mean? all the bodies are looking out at the sea. Pausing. "I want you to first understand that I have many bodies." We're looking at them, yes. "No, you are looking at a group of them. This one you are specifically focused on, formerly Edward Finch, is but one of thousands." o_______o;;;;

"These days, my bodies are known as Camper. We are the Camper. EAT is the Camper, and the Camper are EAT, being of knowledge." they all said that at once. I should have expected it, but, it's still disconcerting. "And then the Indisen are Camper who.. are no longer a part of me. This was not possible until May 21st. On that day, I lost all sense of a single body. Upon investigation, I found that body, that Camper, acting of its own will. Hence: Individualistic Sentience." ...so Ms. Desmond… "The body formerly known as Terry Desmond is no longer a human. She became me. Then, not that long ago, she, too, became detached from me. The Indisen are dangerous, Rael. They're fighting back, against me, and against bystanders. I do not observe discrimination in their hostility, not predictably so anyway. They're acting very much like cornered animals, but with the very real potential to be as intelligent and cunning as any of you." ..shit. okay. And you say they arrived on May 21st? "The first day of red sky, yes. So I am led to believe they are directly connected to Zan— the.. apocalypse." Huh? "Never you mind. I still have uncertainties and suspicions. As far as facts are concerned, I've told you all you need to know. Now we come to the end of our discussion, and I must ask that you pay close attention to the Indisen from now on, wherever you should meet them. More than that, do your best to stay alive, won't you? If you were of sufficient interest to the Harlequin, you will be of interest to me, and I like to be interested."

....… .....… Okay!! .....… .....… Wait, we're turning to leave now, but actually, I should probably ask you something. "Please, ask." There's a festival in the rabb the Doors, a music festival, with a crowd of bodies that.. remind me of you. And it's. It's literally called the Camper Festival. "…" Is this.. your thing? "You've managed to give me completely new, pertinent,information after a single conversation. I am processing the information, and I am processing the fact that you have volunteered it." So. You didn't even know about it? o_o "I didn't." ... "You've had a long journey. I suggest you return to your rooms and wait for sleep."

11:00 PM six

(Attached: “And there you have it, there’s the abstract equation herself. ‘Being of knowledge,’ that’s very much her kind of self-description. Not at all accurate, but Salmacis rarely tries to be when it comes to herself. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say that’s a side effect of never really having a singular body to identify with. Salmacis is, at all times, many bodies and one mind. Always getting more bodies, and with the apocalypse losing them. Depersonalization is probably second-nature to her. Salmacis is, you could say, 'classically’ minded. It doesn’t believe in ruling through fear, though don’t let that fool you into thinking it’ll never go out of her way to intentionally scar a person for life. It’ll just do it for the sake of.. curiosity. To see what happens. Never stand in her way, never threaten her, and never threaten her planet. You’ll find out why some call her EAT. Then you might get to join her mind, and you’ll never worry about your problems ever again. You’ll never feel again. You’ll never do anything of your own will, for you will no longer have a will, or rather you’ll come to terms with the idea that perhaps none of us ever had one to begin with.”)

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[rowan-post]

r p a d v e n t c a l e n d a r

Here's a prompt, challenge or encouragement for every day this December. I'm one day late because this is a busy time of year, so take all these with a grain of salt. You can queue some of them, and ignore others. They're designed to be done one each day, but you can pick and choose what suits you.

Write a winter holiday starter!

Find a winter themed meme and reblog it.

Muse headcanon prompt - what, if anything, do they celebrate? And how do they feel about it?

Change your blog theme to fit the season. If that feels overwhelming, just change your avatar picture.

Go through your mutuals and write up an ask that details everything you like about them, be it anonymously or not.

Write an open holiday starter that anyone can join and open the proverbial doors.

Make an effort to send out a few memes to your mutuals and followers, extra points if it’s holiday themed.

Muse headcanon prompt - what do they wear to the holiday office party?

Write holiday letters or postcards from the POV of your muse to another muse and post them on your blog. 

Write a starter where winter is the enemy - be it because of a violent blizzard or a terrible winter witch.

Muse headcanon prompt - if they went on a holiday vacation for the season, where would they go?

Clean up your muse bios and make them ready for the new year.

Find or make some winter themed moodboards and post them to your blog. 

Write a winter poem to the RPC and post it. Tag it with #RPCpoem, so we can all see them!

Take a break. We’re mid-december and things are getting stressful for a lot of us. Leave tumblr for a bit and carve out some time for IRL recovery today, even if it’s just 10 minutes by yourself in the bathroom.

Find a winter fairy tale and write a starter OR a headcanon based on that (from https://fairytalez.com/ for example). Doesn’t have to be fairy tale themed, just take some inspiration.

Make a pinterest board of your muse and their holiday celebration during winter. If they don’t celebrate, show us what they’re doing instead.

How would a winter holiday with your muse sound like? Make a playlist.

Search the open starter tag (or any RP tag you follow) and take the plunge. If there��s an open starter you like where the blog is open for newcomers, reply to it. If you find a blog you like, follow them. 

Send someone in the RPC a gift. For example: Write a little drabble, just one paragraph, of what your muse would give their muse. Or see if you can tip their blog, if you’ve got the finances to. Or just send them that picture or pin that made you think of them, even if you don’t dare to.

Muse headcanon prompt - this is usually a time for family, found or otherwise, which is either a good or a terrible time. How does it look for your muse and what is their relationship to their family like? 

Mistletoe time. Make a starter call for some winter kisses, see if anyone takes the bait. 

It’s time for another break! This time, try shutting down the internet and your computer a little earlier before bedtime. 

Muse headcanon prompt - if your muse could wish for just one thing this season, what would they wish for?

[solheimisms]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER. REPOST.

name.      Sera/Seraphina

pronouns.      she/her

preference of communication.      Discord if I've given it to you, otherwise tumblr IMs on my Ashley blog (virmireisms) as that's connected to my phone. It doesn't matter if you're messaging me on Ashley about my other blogs, it's just easier to reach me on that blog and keeps it better organized for me.

name of muse.       Miranda (Natalya) Lawson

rp experience / how  long.      I have been RPing since 2005/2006 or so, but only on Tumblr since early 2021. Prior to that I have been on other social media & primarily spent many of my years around the world of forum RP. I've been around a while, to say the least.

best experience.      I don’t think I specifically have any “best” experiences. I’ve had a mix of good and bad. I think so far the best I’ve had though is much of the welcoming and encouragement I’ve got in this verse from people & even from my mutuals that know nothing about ME who have wanted to write and interact. ME is a wonderfully rich universe with a lot of potential & I'm always happy to share my love of it with others.

rp pet peeves / dealbreakers.      People who don’t fill out my interest tracker and don’t bother to interact in other ways. My rules are pretty clear, and if you’ve no intention of filling it out, I won’t assume you’re interested in interacting and will likely eventually break the mutual, especially if you followed me first; I assume that by following or following me back, you’ve read my rules and actively chose to ignore it, and that is not on me. It's in my rules for a reason, & anyone who has filled it out can attest that I'm pretty quick to interact & reciprocate once it's filled out!

Multi-spaced text is another; it causes eyestrain and gives me headaches to read. My job requires me to be on a computer and extra spaced text forces my eyes to work harder to move from word to word, and my eyesight is bad enough as it is. Also, too excessively styled text is distracting from the writing for me, so I tend to avoid it. Lastly… prose that intentionally breaks grammatical rules or uses way too many archaic words is a no for me. If I need a dictionary for half the words in your sentence as a very fluent native English speaker, I'm sorry... but no.

fluff, angst, or smut.      Angst, smut, and fluff kind of in that order. I get times where fluff is great, but I find that it kind of peters out after a while and begins to feel repetitive. Angst is great as long as it’s not repetitive; there needs to be a break in the clouds, so to speak, when you’re writing it. 100% angst all the time is exhausting, and maintaining the needed ebb and flow of it is what keeps it interesting and engaging. Smut is smut, I’m neither great nor experienced at it but I don’t mind it; I don’t write extensively kinky things with muses & do prefer there to be some sort of basis or plot behind the idea, at least to set the scene, which is why I usually only write smut with the intent of or inclusion of a ship (even if that ship starts with a casual encounter/one night stand/FWB scenario). Smut for the sake of smut is boring to me.

plots or memes.      I’d say plots, but I’m not against memes. That being said, while memes can be great to start something, I do eventually prefer to transition to some kind of plot to work with around them. I consider all memes to be options to start a thread, so they’re always welcome to be continued as one.

long or short replies.      Long replies are preferable. I can handle short replies for a little while, but short threads don't often go anywhere. They're okay to feel things out, especially with a new partner, but I do greatly prefer longer threads. 3-5 paragraphs is comfortable for me, & I'm capable of keeping up with longer. I never expect partners to match exactly how much I write as it depends on the thread, but as long as the minimum is within 2-4, I'm usually fine with it. It really depends on the writing sometimes, as I’ve had partners who could come back with 3 paragraphs and I can work with that, but some who did more than that and gave me barely anything. It’s not so much about the length as it is the content of the writing and what you include—body language, habits, and facial expressions of muses, to me, are very key things to include in your prose & are what really set the scene for the interaction.

best time to write.      Late at night, honestly. I'm very much a night owl, so even when I work at 8am I'm usually up much earlier. Whether I wake up at 7:30am or 11am, I’m usually up til 2am anyways.

are you like your muse.      Not really. I'm not nearly the kind of flirt that Miranda is, nor do I have her level of confidence. I'm probably more like a few of my other muses (such as Ashley) compared to Miranda, but even then there's still some differences. The only thing Miranda and I do share is a preference for tea over coffee. I think Miranda would drink coffee but prefers tea, whereas I will not drink 99% of coffee. The closest I might get is an iced capp or a really sweetened iced coffee.

tagged by: @waywardfeathered tagging: anyone who wants to steal!

[rebloged-content]

Recommended Sanders Sides creators

Marry Christmas, everyone! And a wonderful December day to all of you who don’t celebrate Christmas, too. Let’s be honest right off the bat, though: I’m only using the date as an excuse to do this list anyways.

So. Throughout the time I’ve spent as a part of this wonderful corner of the sanders sides fandom over here on tumblr, I’ve often found a new creator and wished I’d found them sooner. It kind of makes me wonder who else I might miss. If you do to, here are a few creators I’d love for you to check out. You’ll probably recognize some of the names, if not all, but maybe you’ll find a new favorite creator here?

And to the creators in question, I really love your content. If you’ve made it onto this list, you’ve definitely cause one or two sleepless nights of reading for me, because who needs sleep if I can have this, right? XD Whatever you’ll find written next to your name is the impression you’ve left on me and… Well, just know that you’ve made some days of my life at least a little happier, all of you. And I hope to repay the favor by telling you how much I appreciate you releasing your content into this world… Well, repay the favor at least a little, I suppose.

Let’s begin, then, shall we?

@5am-the-foxing-hour Because this? This is who you go to if you want to read good Janus-content. You are in a mood to read sympathetic Janus? Wanna see the danger noodle just casually interact with other sides? Go to their short stories. I mean, “the cult”? Prime example of how to tell a story with impact in just a few words. 8 paragraphs, but boy did I read that one on repeat. Or “water spray bottle”, this one is fun, short and will make you laugh. An energy drink for the fander heart, so to say.

Then there’s their mafia-au, “there’s more in me than precious metals”. Six are out so far, and I adore every single word of every single part of this. Protective Remus, sassy Janus, angst, comedy relief, destruction, Roman-Remus-sibling-rivalry, braincell Logan, survival instinct Virgil, working together over a common enemy… This fic has it all, believe me. Take your time and read it, because you will read the entire thing in one go once you start. At least I did, and I didn’t even notice.

And their advent writings? Those had me squealing and jumping around in a way I will deny if anyone ever sees it. I don’t even know what else to say, they are fucking fantastic and that’s that.

So, yeah. Go check them out, before I start fangirling about them even more. You know my personal favorites now, so just go there. You won’t regret it.

Next up is @coconut-cluster. Ah, yes, Lexi. Lexi, whose uni-AU started as self indulgent and has become the loceit story on tumblr. We all know her, or at least most of us do, and we all love her too. And while I also drop everything I do at any point of time I possibly can once I realize the uni-au has any form of new addition, there are a lot of other fics created by her that you should check out as well.

Did you, for example, ever want a sappy prinxiety one-shot with the sappiness only being implied, a mutual understanding of “we’re-not-saying-we-care-but-we-both-know-we-do” born from joking reassurances and a not-a-date-nope-only-a-break? While that may seem to be a tall order, that is exactly what “before the sun goes down” is. Plus there’s ice cream. Or maybe you’re more of a logince fan? Do you want a fic where Roman isn’t the prince but serves His Highness? Do you like sincere talks while you’re procrastinating showing your face to the subjects you don’t really want to rule over? In that case, you really should read “Viva la Vida”. Careful, though, this one is so sweet you’ll probably get a toothache… There also is an analogical fic that I’ve enjoyed very much: “Cracks in the Ceiling”. I love it, because it’s just calm. Fears creeping up on you, thrown away by a trusted friend with a few words, just by being there and playing into the metaphors you head created this time around. It’s calm, and there’s not really a climax or anything, but it doesn’t need one. Because it’s just a glance into everyday life. It’s beautiful in its own right, really.

What I’m saying is, Lexi has a lot more wonderful stories to tell than the uni-au. It’s the most popular one, sure, and it’s one of her best works. But you really should check out her other fics as well. Lexi herself once said that she writs fics she’d like to read. I would figure it’s because of this, but her stories are mostly things you don’t really find anywhere else. Dynamics, stories, world building, all of those are aspects you may find somewhere else. But Lexi is just one of those people who see what they miss in a fandom and create it themselves, and among these creators Lexi is my favorite. She just has that certain skill that makes that approach to writing result in the most enjoyable reading experiences. Lexi’s fics are special, because they’re different, because they are authentic and you can feel that when you’re reading her work.

@djpurple3 is another talented individual I want to talk about. I have to confess, DJ is, as far as original content goes, almost exclusively locked in my brain with the fiction “I just keep loosing my beat”. 23 Chapters so far, one better than the last. It’s a bitter-sweet story following Remus and his children, after the bitch of a mother has been brought behind bars. Abusive piece of shit. Yeah, I don’t like her much. But the story is so full of love and support, everyone trying their best, everyone seeing how much the others deserve the world and wishing they could give it to them… Roman and Remus have a sibling-dynamic I would die for here, too. Patton is just the most adorable friend to Deceit - here Damion - Virgil is a precious bean, Logan is cute and the teacher we all wish he’d had ourselves and… god, I could keep gushing about this fic forever. I’ll stop now, though, before I’ll start spoiler things. Wouldn’t want to do that, especially since I really, really, really want more people to give this a go. It’s not underrated, I just think everyone who doesn’t is missing out by a lot, so… Go over there and read DJ’s fic right fucking now, if you haven’t already read it at least once. Thank you.

@delimeful​, our wonderful lime-friend with a cute cat making a terrifying face in his header. First of all, there is the WIBAR universe, short for “Watch it burn and rust”. 5 chapters in act one, 4 intermissions (one of those with three chapters), one chapter of act two, as well as three extras and an au of this au called “the end of being alone”, and I’ve lost count of how many nights I spent reading those instead of sleeping like I should. (Or interacting with family. Or being productive. Or… It’s really a good story, okay?!) WIBAR is a deathworlder au. So a space au in which humans are regarded as dangerous deathworlders who can survive on a deathworld like earth. In other words, Virgil is the only human, and boy does that scare everyone around him. And the best part? You can feel the development, the shift in mentality regarding Virgil, feel the moment approach in which he isn’t a threat but a companion instead.

And, apart from the fic that inspired me enough to start writing “TINND!R?” over on my writing blog, there are a lot more amazing fics to read on lime’s blog. He wrote “How easy you are to need”, for example. It’s soft, it pulls at just the right heartstrings, it’s achingly hopeful and, god, the ending still has me in tears, even after the fifth - ? sixth? something among those lines - reread. This one’s a werewolf au, actually. Virgil is the werewolf, Logan, Patton and Roman are the humans.

Do you want yourself some of that pre-AA dynamic? I’d recommend “to taste your beating heart”. In this, Virgil gets separated from the rest of his group of vampire hunters and gets turned into a vampire himself, loosing his memories. And he’s “Anx” now, not “Virgil”, goddamnit! He isn’t their friend anymore, why don’t they understand that? Well, probably because they can still see Virgil’s old habits shining through. There’s a lot of tension, a lot of angst and a whole lot of frustration involved in this.

He also wrote some amazing one-shots. They’re mostly so well written that I’m almost sad not to be waiting on a continuation. There’s “the littlest mermaid”, in which Virgil goes to investigate a noise, finding a scared, tiny mermaid in need of help. In “community gardens” we have Remus being Remus, gaining the interest and friendship of the forest’s giant Logan. “Magical mutualism” tells the tale of a witch and a demon making a pact beneficial to both parties and opening the doors neither could have gone beyond alone. The way we’re all confused about our ships not actually having set sail yet comes to a hight in Virgil in regards to his friends in “amateur matchmakers”. And this is the point at witch I stop talking before I actually recommend every single one of lime’s fics instead of just my favorites as I had planed because I started to gush too much… XD

Let’s move on to @muppenthings​. Mupp is an amazing artist and she created a giant mermaid au. There’s this one orca who’s just… We love her, but I actually don’t think she’s the brightest. I really, really love her, though. Virgil himself is being a little protective over his human friends and casually so. I love this comic series for the art style, but I also love the way it makes me crack a laugh at least once per work. Or appeal to my mother-instincts, if it’s about baby Virgil. Too cute for his own good, I tell ya! And the facial expressions! The detail, the jokes, everything about this is wonderful. You should at least take a look.

@whenisitenoughtrees​. Cat got me with “This cup of yours tastes holy (This lie is dead)”. “A slow voice on a wave of phase” was next, later “Infinity and beyond”, “we are not alone in the dark with out demons” and “changing of the guard”. And then, suddenly, the night was over. I’ve read almost all of the fics in one go, and I’ve been semi-frequently visiting her master post ever since. When “There’s an endless road to rediscover” came out just a little while back, that lead to me re-reading through almost the entire list. I don’t regret it, my plans for that weekend would like to disagree.

These six fics I mentioned here are, by no means, the only ones I enjoyed. Those are just the ones I’ve found myself opening up again and again in sleepless nights. Those are the ones that pop up in my head and have me smiling to myself in the middle of god-knows-whatever-I’ve-been-doing-at-the-time.

Angst, fluff, hurt-comfort, you’ll find everything in that list. And something I’ve grown to like about Cat’s fics even more than anything else is the quick change between feeling perplexed, a startled laugh at certain wordings (you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it) and apprehension. These fics will have you at the edge of you seat, swooping you away on an emotional roller coaster. And, god, the way Cat writes from Remus’ perspective? The introductions of her stories and the way she redirects to the main topic after going into detail on something? I saved a few paragraphs as screenshots on my phone because I love them and I want to read them again when I’m down. I just… Cat’s great.

Next up is @eliemo. Because Elias Virgil is the royalty of Virgil angst. From the touch-starved Virgil we’ve all had a head cannon of at one point in “Heart of Ice”, over ace Virgil panicking over telling his boyfriends that he his ace and didn’t think to tell them before in “Love our way” to so, so much more.

Mostly EV follows the story arc of an underlying feeling of dread at the beginning, which slowly grows into panic, exploding in a storm of angst and concludes in everyone, or at least whoever is around, coming to the rescue and helping to calm down, with the end being the hope for getting better in the future. They always manage to convey the confusion, fear or just the general thought process so well that you can’t help but get absorbed in the story. They know exactly what to say and what to leave between the lines to get the maximum effect. And, your heart will definitely be shattered after their angst. Still, the way the sides comfort each other and support each other so well every time is just… I love their stories, a lot.

I want to make two more suggestions if you want to check out this creator. A Janus angst fic, which can only be described as “ouch” you’ll find under the name “snake bite”. It hurts in the best way possible, because Janus gets the comfort he deserves.

The other suggestion gets a lot darker. It’s about Virgil having been abused by the “others” before he got accepted into the light side. The others are shocked to find out what has gone on behind their backs and they help Virgil in every way they can to recover. Of cause it’s a rocky path, though. This would be “Learned Behavior”. The series/au has twelve stories so far, one of which has two parts. You’ll find the master post for this pinned to the top on their blog.

If you like angst, you should also give @maybedefinitely404​ a look. Ly has a soulmate-au going, in which they use the concept of “you hear the music your soulmate listens to”. "Music in my head” is a prinxiety fic, but the two of them have yet to meet. Four chapters and two mini-fics in. The reason I mentioned angst is because in this - spoiler alert for the first few chapters here - , Virgil gets put through conversion therapy. Luckily Janus and Logan are better foster parents than the ones who did that to him.

They also have a master list for all their soulmate stories, featuring different ships. Apparently they participated in soulmate month, if I understood that correctly. And to be honest, that was how I even found their account. I absolutely adore their anxceit fic, which takes place in a human au. It’s starting off pretty sad, but the bonding moments are absolutely wonderful. It’s a lovely story, and the ending is one of the best ones I’ve yet to read. Their logince fic took my breath away, too. A flower shop/tattoo artist au, and Logan is the tattoo artist. Stunning writing, wonderful world building, just the right amount of backstory to have everything make sense without overwhelming/drowning the reader in unnecessary details. Their moxceit fiction… Well, this one had me in tears within the first few paragraphs. It’s terrible and you feel for Janus, whose perspective this is written from. The ending, though… Gods! The ending was so indescribably cute. To be honest, all of the soulmate stories are great, these three are just my personal favorites.

Concerning their one shots, you’ll probably have to figure it out on your own concerning this. I haven’t been able to read all of them yet, as sad as that makes me. Definitely palling on doing it in the future, though. I did read two of them, though. “Pippity poppity” really was amusing, and I am so looking forward to the second part of “The Boy who sings next door”. The way they write the dynamics between the sides? I live for that.

Another creator I would like to recommend is @maybe-im-tired.They don’t have a master post, as far as I could see, but they only post their content anyways, so… “Can’t take my eyes off of you” is my favorite out of their fics so far. I mean, the way they managed to fit the sheer chaos that is intrulogical into this one short fic is amazing. And you could take about two thirds of what Remus said and put it up on your wall as out-of-contexts-quotes. Don’t worry, he says them out of context anyways, and they will definitely make you laugh. 

The series of short stories for the human au that starts with “Glowing stars” is another au by them that you will almost certainly like. We have Logan and Virgil as kids (about 7 I think), Remus and Patton as single parents, Roman as the most adoring uncle, Emile as babysitter and Remy as his amazing partner. Remus is a great father, wonderfully chaotic as well. And a teacher! Imagine that, Remus as your teacher... He’s great with kids though, as long as they aren’t entitled villains come to make his precious Virgil feel bad, that is.

They also wrote a bunch of “random one shots”. They are all amazing, but my favorite has to be this one. It’s a logince one, once again human au. Patton may or may not tell his big brother’s crush about the feelings he wasn’t prepared to share yet. You know, as small kids do. It’s soft, it will make you smile as much as Logan does, and I love Remus in it. I generally like how they write Remus, okay? I know how much I’ve said it, but I’m not even exaggerating. They always write him differently, and all versions they write him as are so, so lovable and just… I wanna hug the life out of all Remus versions they wrote, okay? Take a look, you’ll know why.

Anyways. Let’s continue with @figurative-siren-song. This is the last account I’ve followed and I’m still sad about it having taken me this long to find them. Little salty, to be honest. (I’ll stick to they/them because they said just not to use she/her, and, well… consistency, you know? Don’t have much, so I have to get what I can XD). When I finally did find them, I went through their entire master list (at least all of the ships with characters I actually know. I’m kinda bad with the shorts characters, so I usually just… avoid them? Idk. Personal preference, I guess), and, well… I would honestly recommend every single fic on that list. They call themself “Repair Fluff King™️” and they deserve that title. But when they warn you that a fic will be angsty, it will be angsty.

I found them through the anxceit fic “A Deal”. Well, through an animatic by their friend on youtube that had linked the fic, but details. I’ve been reading this fic up and down again and again. It’s just so good! And when they talk in the second part and Janus explains why he proposed that deal. Or in the continuation, which i can’t talk about because I will probably spoiler things! So wholesome!

 Also, their losleepxeity fic “We’re worth it”. So soft! The nicknames, the plot, the everything. It’s softer than clouds look, and we all know that means something.

But, really. Everyone will find something for them by this creator. So many ships, all incredibly well written, and soft and fluffy without getting boring in the slightest. It’s as energizing as coffee, actually. And, let’s be honest, this whole fandom drowns itself in angst most of the time. Take a break from that, repair your broken hearts with goof fluffy content that you’ll want to read over and over again. Go check this creator out. You will love them. 

Last but not least… @myfriendsasthesides​ A blog by a creator who just takes the wonderfully chaotic dynamics of a friend group and using that to give us content of incorrect sides quotes. Maybe it doesn’t fit with me going on and on about fics here. I don’t care. Follow them and turn on those notifications, please, because seeing even one post of theirs on your dashboard will make your day. It’s funny, it’s absurd, it’s chaotic, it’s making you jealous of them for having friends like that. Believe me, you will want to see those posts. It’s just… the random shots of serotonin and dopamine out generation needs really fucking desperately 100% of the time. 

That’s it with the list! Eleven creators I absolutely adore, and I’m sorry I was babbling so much all the way through, but… Well, actually I’m not sorry. And actually, half of the reason I even made this post is to tell them how much I love them and fangirl about them a bit. So… Yeah. Well.I love you guys and hope you’ll have a wonderful day! And to everyone else reading this: I hope this helped you ind some new creators you can enjoy. And a good day to you too, of cause.

Sincerely, Joy 🖤

(@joylessnightsky/@sanders-sides-fic)

[anxious-logic]

5 Times Janus Gave His Boyfriends a Nickname, and 1 Time They Gave Him One

A Secret Santa gift through @sanderssides-secretsanta for @jowritesthingss here on tumblr!! I hope you like it!

Ship: Romantic Roloceit (Roman/Logan/Janus)

Word Count: 2,385

Warnings: Food mention, overworking, self-deprecating/negative thoughts. Let me know if there’s anything else!

Summary: Janus loves his boyfriends a lot, and shows that love in unique ways. And maybe his boyfriends will return the favor.

-1-

Janus was curled up on the sofa, reading a book on his bed under his heat lamp. The room was quiet, only the occasional rustle of pages from him or his boyfriend interrupting the silence.

Janus shifted slightly, readjusting so his legs didn’t fall asleep. He basked in the feeling of the heat hitting him at a slightly different angle, warming some of the skin that had been previously cool. He searched for where he had left off from his book.

He was startled out of the comfortable silence by a quiet buzz coming from Logan. The other side took out his phone, tapping on the screen a few times before the soft buzzing ceased.

“Bedtime,” Logan said quietly, placing a bookmark in his spot and standing up. He stretched his arms over his head.

Janus noted the page he was on before leaning over to turn off his heat lamp. He let out a quiet, mournful sigh as the heat dissipated, before standing up.

“Sleep well, darling,” he said, standing on his toes to brush a soft kiss across Logan’s forehead. He pulled back to see the other side blushing red.

“I- ah- you as well,” Logan stammered uncharacteristically before quickly making his way out the door.

Janus frowned as his eyes followed where Logan had been.

What was that about…?

 -2-

Roman looked up in surprise as Janus knocked on his doorframe, peeking his head in.

“Roman?” he asked quietly. Roman rolled his shoulders back, putting down his pen.

“Come in,” he replied.

Janus gave him a small smile as he entered the room, his hands full with a sandwich and a glass of water. He saw Roman’s face light up at the sight of the sandwich.

“Crofters?” he asked hopefully.

Janus let a smile spread across his face at his boyfriend’s excitement. “Yes.”

Roman held out his hands, his fingers opening and closing. “Gimme gimme gimme!”

Janus let out a small chuckle, handing the plate over to Roman. His boyfriend bit into it, his expression turning to pure bliss at the taste of the strawberry Crofters.

“Fank oo,” Roman mumbled through the sandwich.

Janus put a hand on Roman’s shoulder, squeezing slightly.

“Remember to take breaks,” he said. “Your work is important, but if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”

Roman quickly swallowed his sandwich. “Princess Bride? Yes.” He reached over for the water glass, quickly depleting it.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” Janus said after a moment. “Remember to take breaks, beloved.”

Roman choked on his water, spluttering a few times and clearing his throat. “Ah- yes, of course,” he said distractedly. “I’ll… remember that.”

Janus leaned over, giving him a kiss. “See you later.”

He walked out of Roman’s room, barely keeping a straight face. As soon as he made it back to his own room, he closed the door behind him, collapsing back into it as he let out the laughter he’d been holding in.

Nicknames, huh?

He could work with that.

 -3-

Janus softly tapped his knuckles against the dark blue door in front of him.

“Logan?” he called gently. “Are you in there?”

There was a pause, and he could very faintly hear rustling coming from inside the room.

“Yes,” Logan called back. “I was under the impression I was not expected until dinner, has that changed?”

Janus glanced at his watch. “It’s eleven thirty at night, Logan.”

Suddenly, the door opened, letting Janus speak face-to-face with his boyfriend. “I- eleven thirty? When- what?” Logan appeared distracted, but he was focusing intently on Janus.

Janus raised his eyebrows, feeling his lips quirk up. “New special interest?”

Logan shook his head rapidly, as though trying to clear something from his mind. “I- apparently so, I suppose.”

Janus held out a hand in invitation. “I can make you some dinner, and you can infodump what you’ve learned, if you like.”

Logan glanced back, seeming conflicted, but grabbed onto Janus’s hand. Janus rubbed his thumb over the back of Logan’s knuckles, not wanting to overwhelm him.

“Or if you’d rather, I can bring food up here. But I’d like to be sure that you finish it, because special interests can be fun, but you need to stay healthy regardless.”

Logan gave a slow nod. “Can I finish this article, and then you can get me to come down for some food?”

Janus brought Logan’s hand up to his lips, laying a gentle kiss on the back of it. “Of course, dear.”

He let the hand slip out of his fingers as Logan blushed slightly pink, turning back to his room. Janus just barely heard a giggle as the door closed behind him.

…Hm. Something to remember.

 -4-

Janus gently combed his hands through Roman’s hair, the creative side’s breath hitching slightly.

“I don’t- I can’t-”

Janus hummed quietly as Roman collapsed forward into him, his arms coming up around Janus’s back. Janus materialized a few more arms, securing one around Roman’s shoulders and rubbing another up and down his back.

“I know, sweetheart,” he said gently into Roman’s hair. “It’s hard, I know it’s hard, but I promise it’ll be okay.”

He knew that the words didn’t help the situation – creative block was an absolute bitch, and when it came right before a big deadline like this? Well, everything just built up at once, and there was no hope of Roman staying together any longer.

(Which was okay. Because everyone deserves to break, sometimes.)

Right now, it was two days before a major video was due. Thomas had been under a huge amount of stress recently, between video due dates and his new boyfriend (!!!) and, well, have you seen the state of the world? Not all of it was bad stress (again, the boyfriend), but it was stress nonetheless.

And then Roman had hit a creative block right as Thomas was gearing up for a last-minute editing spree, and it had all spilled over.

“It’s going to be okay,” Janus said into Roman’s hair, rocking them back and forth slightly. “I love you.”

He heard Roman take a shaky breath, and felt his arms drop down from where they had been draped over Janus’s shoulders. He made his extra arms vanish, leaving one hand bracing the back of Roman’s neck and one hand still gently rubbing circles on his back.

“Thank you,” he heard Roman mumble, from where his head was still tucked into his neck.

“Of course, sweetheart,” Janus said, pressing a kiss onto the top of Roman’s head. “Anytime.”

 -5-

Janus was overwhelmingly content.

He was snuggled between his two loves, their body heat keeping him warm. Logan was infodumping about black holes – terrifying things, in Janus’s opinion, but the way Logan presented it just made them fascinating – and Roman was also listening along. Janus was curled tightly into Roman’s side, his head on the creative side’s shoulder, and one leg thrown over Logan’s lap. Logan was gesturing as he talked, his hands occasionally flapping with excitement.

Janus felt a warm feeling in his chest that couldn’t be explained by the closeness he had to his boyfriends. He closed his eyes, tilting his head further into Roman’s neck as he let a happy smile spread across his face, letting himself enjoy the peacefulness of spending time with his boyfriends.

Janus tuned back in just in time to hear Logan fall silent in the middle of a paragraph. He frowned to himself; Logan didn’t usually stop so abruptly, and when he did, it usually wasn’t for a good reason.

“You okay?” he asked, letting his eyes flutter open and lifting his head up to look at Logan.

The other man was staring at him, a sappy smile on his face.

“I am perfectly optimal,” Logan said softly. He relaxed into the couch back slightly, a smile still firmly on his face. “You two are the closest thing to perfect that is possible.”

“Thank you, love,” Janus said, hearing the besotted note in his voice.

“I love you,” Logan said, before carefully, gently picking up Roman’s hand from where it was curled around Janus’s shoulder and raising it to his lips. “Both of you. An infinitely large amount.”

Janus felt Roman tense. “You don’t mean infinitesimal?”

“I assure you, I do not,” Logan replied shortly, but Janus could tell that the annoyance was false.

He relaxed back into Roman even more, reaching a hand over to touch Logan’s thigh. “Love you too.”

 +1+

Janus wasn’t doing well.

He couldn’t help it. He was doing his best to stay happy, stay calm, keep it together. But, well.

He always told Roman that it was okay to break sometimes. He supposed that advice had to go for him, too, eventually.

Every time he looked in the mirror, all he saw was the inhuman scales, glinting back at him. The snake eye, staring soullessly at him from his reflection. The layers upon layers of his clothes, hiding (always hiding) more and more and more lies and truths and who Janus himself was-

And, well. Today it just happened to be worse. And so today was the day he broke.

He was staring at himself in the mirror again, trying to ignore what his thoughts were telling him. (Because they weren’t true. He knew they weren’t true.) Because – no. He did what he had to, at the time. He was honest with his boyfriends – as much as being the literal personification would allow him to be. He didn’t manipulate anyone in the Mind Palace, or Thomas. (At least, not anymore.) He wasn’t inhuman. He did deserve what he had. And he did deserve a breakdown.

The only problem was, it could be really hard to listen to those thoughts when others were screaming over them constantly.

He was manipulative. He wasn’t honest with people. He was inhuman. He didn’t deserve any of the good things in his life. And no way in hell did he deserve a breakdown.

His intense eye contact with his reflection was interrupted by a gentle knock on his door.

“Janus?”

Roman’s voice floated through the door. Janus ripped his eyes off of the mirror, hastily wiping the tears from the human side of his face.

“Yes?” he called back, doing his best to hide the quaver in his voice.

“Are you well? You have not been out of your room today.”

Logan’s voice joined Roman. From what Janus could hear through the door, his voice was steady, but the short, precise words showed his worry and preoccupation.

“I- yes,” Janus called back, almost choking on the word. Lying. “I’m just… tired.” Manipulative. “A bit of time under my lamp and I will be well, I’m sure.” Inhuman.

There was a pause. Janus could hear quiet murmurs from the other side of the door, but he didn’t try to make them out. He knew what they would be saying anyway. He can survive without us. He’ll be fine. No need for us to worry. He enjoys having time alone.

And, well. All of those things were technically true, but not right now. Right now those statements just hurt.

“Can we come in?”

Janus startled at the sentence, looking at the door in surprise. “Yes,” he said before he could engage his brain-to-mouth filter.

The door slowly opened, light illuminating the room Janus hadn’t even realized was still dark.

“May I turn on the light?” Logan asked quietly. Janus nodded, before realizing that the other two couldn’t see him.

“Yes,” he agreed, still slightly stunned.

The light flickered on in the room, Janus’s eyes quickly adjusting to the brightness to reveal his boyfriends’ worried faces.

“I’m sorry for being blunt, Janus, but you don’t really… you don’t really look okay,” Roman said hesitantly. “Are you sure?”

Janus was about to say yes again, tell them I’m okay, I promise, before the echo of manipulative lies reached his mind, and he felt tears well up in his eyes once more.

“Oh, sweetheart, no,” Roman murmured, reaching out to Janus before pausing. “Can I touch you, is that okay?”

Janus nodded, letting Roman take a step forward to envelop him in his arms.

“May I- also-” Logan began haltingly. Janus interrupted him by reaching out his arms and making grabby hands, opening and closing his fingers a few times. Logan obligingly stepped around the tangle of Janus and Roman, pressing up against Janus’s back to sandwich him between them.

“What’s going on in that beautiful head of yours,” Roman murmured into Janus’s ear.

Janus couldn’t help but crack, telling them all of the lies that his head was telling himself. Lying. Manipulative. Inhuman. Undeserving.

“Oh, darling,” Logan whispered into Janus’s ear. “I promise you, you are not manipulative. You did what you believed you had to do, and you are no longer the same person you were then.”

“And you are human,” Roman added quickly. “Well- we’re manifestations of another person’s personality. But we’re as close as we can get. We all have our own hopes and dreams, our own personalities. We all have different feelings. Just having beautiful snakey traits doesn’t change any of that, and doesn’t make you any less human.”

“To add on, you absolutely do deserve everything that you have,” Logan interjected. “You work hard for Thomas. You do the best that you can, with the information you have. We all do. If you don’t deserve it, if you’re not human, than neither are we.”

Janus sniffled, shifting slightly to wipe the tears off of his face. “Okay.” He looked over to his bed, where the heat lamp was glinting enticingly. “Can we- can we move to the bed?”

“Of course,” Roman said gently, nudging the three of them over towards Janus’s bed. “We can stay as long as you need, love.”

“Thank you,” Janus managed to whisper as they all laid down, shifting around and tangling together. Roman snapped comfortable clothes onto all three of them, t-shirts in their signature colors and coordinating pajama pants appearing on all of them.

“It’s going to be okay, love,” Logan said gently as Janus tucked his head into his chest. “These thoughts can seem like the worst enemy to face. But I promise you, beloved, we are here to help you fight through them.”

Janus smiled.

[spnfanficpond]

Pond Diving - Katelynw93

Welcome to today’s Pond Diving Spotlight! We hope that you enjoy this little insight to our members and perhaps even find some useful tips for your own writing. Happy reading!

Want to volunteer, send us an ask! We’re looking forward to learning more about all of you! Not sure what PD is, you can learn more here.

“Don’t Be Koi About It” - All About You

Name: Katelyn, but most people call me Kate, Katie or sometimes even Kat.

Age: 27

Location: Originally from Kansas, but have been located in Upstate NY for the last six years.

URL: @katelynw93​

Why did you choose your URL: It’s usually the username that I use for everything and if I’m being honest, I’m not very creative when it comes to titles or names. Lol. I’ve been meaning to change it; I just need to decide on what.  

What inspired you to become a writer: Well, when I was in middle school (maybe seventh or eighth grade), my best friend and I decided to write a story together and post it on a fanfiction site (Can’t remember the site name, though.) And I just loved it. We never did finish that story. Lol. But eventually I started branching out and found some roleplay writing sites.  

How long have you been writing: Started writing in middle school (2006/2007), but really got into it in 2009 with RP. However, September of this year (2020) was the first year I started really writing fics by myself and opening posting them. 

What do you do when you are not writing i.e. Job/Hobbies etc? I work a lot, usually an average of 40+ hours a week; I am a manager at a popular food chain restaurant and on the weekends, a cashier at a gas station to provide a little extra cash for my family. When I’m not working, my time is spent with my two kids; Alekzander (Zander) who just turned five this past November and Lincoln (Link) who will be two in February. Outside of work and my family, I’m usually writing. Sometimes if I’m feeling extra creative or inspired, I’ll create a few crackships for couples I really enjoy. Lol. 

How long have you been in the SPN Fandom? I actually found Supernatural around the same time I started writing, so back in ninth grade, so 2008/2009. It was honestly an accident too, because I was searching for Smallville episodes (I have an unhealthy addiction to Superman and DC/Marvel.) and stumbled upon an ad for Supernatural. Was instantly intrigued and fell in love. Seasons 1 - 5 (the Kripke era) are my favorite. 

Are you in any other fandoms and do you write for them? Oh yea, I love TV shows and movies, and as I’ve already stated above, I love DC and Marvel. I’ve also written for Grey’s Anatomy and am willing to write for more, but SPN, DC and Grey’s are currently the only ones I’ve written for. I love The Vampire Diaries, One Tree Hill, Private Practice, Station 19, 9-1-1, Game of Thrones, The Witcher, Merlin, Dexter, Psych, and so, so many more. There are too many to list. Lol.  

Do you do any writing outside of fanfiction? If so, tell us about it? Other than RPing, not really. I mean, I did try to do an original story with my friend when I was younger, but it never went anywhere. But I am willing to try someday. 

Favorite published author: Other than the really big authors like; J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin, Jim Butcher, Nicholas Sparks, Suszanne Collins, I really like (and maybe it’s cliche) Stephenie Meyer. The Twilight Saga made me fall in love with reading and eventually, that love led me to writing. Those books hold a special place in my heart.  

Have you ever read a book that made an impact on your life? Which one and why?: Well, I guess I sort of answered that one already. But there truly are so many amazing books out there and still so many more to discover. 

Favorite genre of fanfic (smut, angst, fluff, crack, rpf, etc): Oh man, I’m not gonna lie, a majority of what I read is probably smut. But I am particularly fond of angst. I want you to make me cry. Really dig and stab into my emotions. Lol. And then come back in with some fluff. Haha. 

Favorite piece of your own writing: Well, that would have to be Sweet Cherry Pie because it was really the first piece I’ve ever finished and published online. It was inspired by an RP that I am currently involved in and they are my favorite couple in said RP. It got so much positive feedback after I shared it that it inspired me to keep writing. I was so nervous about posting it, but I am glad I did. 

Most underrated fic you have written: Oh I’m not sure. Maybe Love Bites. I am a sucker for Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries crossovers. I really loved writing this fic and am eager to write more. 

Story of yours that you’d most like to see turned into a movie/tv show: Oh damn, um, it’d be cool to see any of them like that. But maybe Sweet Cherry Pie or Out of the Fire (my firefighter!Dean series).  

Favorite Tumblr Writer(s): There are so many, but I usually find myself reading work from; @impala-dreamer​, @katehuntington​  @deanwanddamons​, @muchamusedaboutnothing​.  

Favorite Fic from another writer: This one is tough because there are so many amazing fics out there, especially ones that I adddddore; but if forced to choose, one story that will always stick with me would have to be Treacherous by @idkhaylijah​ OR The Sullivan Series by Kate Huntington 

Favorite character to write: Dean Winchester. I adore Dean and he’s probably the easiest for me to write. I have written the most fics with him and I portray him often in the RPs that I do. 

Favorite Pairing to write: Dean with anyone, but my favorite would be Dean x Caroline. 

Least favorite character to write (and why): That’s a tough one, cause there’s not really any that I’m uncomfortable with or dislike writing. Maybe characters with accents, because I don’t really know how to capture that in writing yet? I’m pretty open with my writing and am willing to try mostly anything. 

Do you have anyone you consider a mentor? Oh definitely. When I first started RPing, there was another girl (Jocelyn) that I used to write with and she influenced a lot of my writing. She was older than me and had more experience and gave me a lot of tips on how to get better. She is an amazing writer and had the potential of going far with it, but life happens and unfortunately, she doesn’t write anymore. But she is booming on Youtube, so that’s pretty impressive. It’s pretty cool to see how far she’s come. 

Do you have any aspirations involving your writing? I used to want to be a journalist when I was younger, but other than that, not really. I just want to have fun with it and write something meaningful for someone, and always improve and get better.  

How many work-in-progress stories do you have: I have a few ideas jotted down, maybe ten, but I haven’t actually started any of them. I have so many bingo cards I need to finish, but with my work schedule, it’s been pretty crazy. 

What are you currently working on? My main project is Out of the Fire.

“Pond Diving” - All About The Writing

What/who has had the biggest influence on your writing? Definitely the RPing that I’ve done and am currently doing. My friend Alesha has been the longest RP partner that I’ve had and her writing is phenomenal - and it helps a lot too when your mind's work in similar ways; her and I always seem to be on the same wavelength when it comes to writing. I love it. But like me, she has a very busy schedule and writing is limited. 

Best writing advice you've been given: Have fun with it, write what you want to write and always be open to helpful criticism. And don’t stress about it, either. Write in your own time. It’s meant to be fun, not stressful. 

Biggest obstacle you’ve faced in your writing: Just finding the time to write and getting over being so self conscious about my writing. I don’t let anyone in my real life read what I write.  

What aspects of writing do you find difficult when you write fanfiction? Just capturing the personalities of the canon characters sometimes; if it’s a character I’m not used to writing, I worry about portraying them the right way. And I have trouble individualizing the characters (separating them from myself/my own personality), like when I create an OC for an RP, sometimes when I have too many, their personalities all become the same in ways (if that makes sense?). And accents. I have trouble with accents. Oh, and fight/action scenes. They take me a bit.  

Is there anything you want to write but are afraid to (and why): I am always going to be afraid, no matter what it is that I’m writing, because I worry about it succeeding. I want to write for other fandoms though, I guess, but like I said, I worry about capturing the characters right and having a decent storyline that is unique. 

What inspires/motivates you to write: Honestly, positive feedback. I love hearing what people think about my writing and it motivates me to continue. 

How do you deal with self-doubt: That’s a tough one. I guess I just look towards my writing friends or beta’s for reassurance or I go back and read the positive comments and likes on the fics I’ve already shared. It encourages me to continue. 

How do you deal with writer's block: I usually listen to music and I’ll look up gifs of my favorite characters, create stories in my head with those gifs or I’ll create gif sets of specific scenes. If that doesn’t work, I’ll take a break and watch one of my favorite TV shows for inspiration. 

Do you plan/outline your story before you start: For my RPs, I have a group chat with those I’m writing with and we usually shoot ideas back and forth, but mostly we wing it. For my fics, I normally just wing it, but with Out of the Fire, I have a rough idea of what I want from each part. With that said, my ideas or plans often change as I’m writing. These characters have a mind of their own sometimes. Lol.  

Do you have any weird writing habits: I don’t know about any weird habits, but I always have music on and I guess I have to do it in spurts. I’ll write a few paragraphs or sentences, pause and scroll tumblr or facebook or gifs, and then go back, reread what I wrote and then write a few more. Rise and repeat. 

Have you ever received hateful comments on your fic and how do you deal with it? So far, no I haven’t, and I hope I don’t ever have to deal with that. But I know it’s bound to happen. I guess if I were to ever encounter that, I’d like to say that I’ll take it as a learning experience but I honestly don’t know I’d feel about that.  

Conversely: what’s been some of your favorite feedback on your fanfic? Oh man, I guess my favorite would have to be ellewritesfix05 reaction to the secret santa fic I wrote for her; Dean Fucking Winchester. And all the positive feedback I’ve gotten for Out of the Fire.

If you could give one piece of advice to a new and/or struggling writer, what would it be? Have fun with it. Write what you want and what you’re comfortable with. Don’t be afraid of constructive criticism and most importantly, don’t stress. Writing is fun.

[thisisthehardestthing]

wait r u fr? tumblr ate the ask? pls i’m so fuckin mad i literally typed paragraphs about how much i loved it so here we go i’m gonna try to be more coherent this time:

this mafia fic is my favorite haikyuu fic i’ve ever read and one of my fave fics in general. like the amount of hard work and research u put into it is so clear and it shows in the amazing quality of the fic. ur pacing, the flow of ur words, ur characterizations of tanaka and val, the way u pull off that last scene. everything is so well done and all of those things are super hard to pull off on their own so props to u for being able to do all of those. like wow i really am in awe of ur talent and i’m so thankful for ur hard work and the fact that u posted this like u rlly took me thru an emotional ride and gave me such a good piece of writing to enjoy and i love that.

okay so: details. i love the way u include the little things in the fic. stuff like the name of the designers and the names of organizations and stuff in the fic helps me picture the scenes so much and it just really adds to the extravagant feel of the fic.

with symbolism, i could literally write paragraphs about how well u included symbols in this fic. like i deadass gasped when the viper necklace was crushed in the final scene at the end right before tanaka did it. the parallels!!!! god ur so good at writing and obviously ur brain is huge to have thought of that and seamlessly included it into the fic.

okay so idk what the proper term for this is but like, the way that action happens in the fic is so well done and not predictable but still in line with what you’ve revealed to us about the characters. like ofc tanaka would pull the necklace out of his pocket at just that moment as a way to reveal to daichi what he felt. it’s just so perfect and so true to the person he is in the fic. about his characterization, god i love it so much. all of the pain and yearning and sheer want in his person were clearly conveyed thru his perspectives and his actions. like that boy just wants to be loved and that’s why it made such good narrative sense to have daichi ask him who he loves more in the scene right before the ending. like i saw the tag for death and expected a million things but u somehow managed to surprise me and yet still stay true to the world and characters u created and ugh, it’s all so perfect.

speaking of, the pacing of this fic is so good. like u manage to take us thru a whirlwind time period that doesn’t feel fast or drawn out or anything other than perfect. u have such a good awareness of pacing that it makes me so jealous and yet so pleased as a reader. like nothing about their love confessions or trysts felt rushed or forced. it felt so natural and true to the people they were and the world that they live in.

also i said before in the other ask how i love the way u utilize sex scenes in the fic. u sprinkle them in at just the right moment and they manage to be hot but they also reveal so much about the characters involved. like i’m specifically thinking of the scene in tanaka’s home where she asks why he won’t touch her and he says that she didn’t give him permission. like the love and devotion in that way of thinking felt so true and yet in the end he still did it and ugh that breaks my heart in the best way bc i know my pain as a reader is nothing next to his pain as a character. i would actually love to pick ur brain about how u decided on the ending. did it come to u in the moment or did u set out writing the fic knowing it would end up like that? so many questions rlly bc u created a world and a cast of characters that are so interesting like i would literally read books about them. (esp val. i loved how headstrong and proud she was but also how weak and emotional she could be. her ending made me sad but u kno, it made sense) and i’m especially curious to find out how tanaka copes after. like i can’t imagine that daichi would just accept his loyalty again but u do manage to surprise me in the best way so who knows. but i also mourn for him which is a little odd for me bc after finding out that he knew about daichi’s affair i felt betrayed and it hurt for some reason which is so interesting bc i trusted him and felt like i knew him, but u still managed to keep parts of him hidden, which is so cool.

oh and despite the tragic ending, u fed us so good with scenes of the two everywhere. like i love how we got to see tanaka and val in their own homes and at parties and we truly got to see how they act when they’re alone and when they’re comfortable and when they’re playing the part of loyal bodyguard or loyal wife. ugh it’s all so good and tbh i only finished it like maybe half an hour again but i already want to read it again bc it was so fucking good and the way u write emotions like yearning and heartbreak is so good like ugh. everything about the way u wrote this fic was so amazing and fuck tumblr for eating my ask but i hope i at least manage to repeat the majority of what was in the og ask lol.

hello anon <3

It is the weekend so I finally have enough brain power to reply.

I wanted to be selfish and keep this in my inbox forever, because this might be the kindest, most appreciative thing everyone has ever said to me about my writing. Toska is a piece of my heart and my soul in written word, and to have received something like this? It’s... indescribable. You have picked up on so many of the small details, symbols, and more that I littered throughout the fic, and you’ve called out the things that I was excited about people reading and reacting to.

Fic Spoilers below the cut.

everything is so well done and all of those things are super hard to pull off on their own so props to u for being able to do all of those.

Thank you so much. I constantly worried that it was too long, too boring, that there wasn’t enough smut in there to be sexy, or that the plot ultimately didn’t make sense. This means everything to me. Pacing is one of the most important things in a fic to me, because I am the kind of person that easily loses interest when I read. 

details. i love the way u include the little things in the fic.

ahhhhhhhhh!!!! I’m glad this helped you to picture everything! I actually used real life dresses, shoes, locations (google Villa La Vigie, it is STUNNING). I was a fashion student, and I now work in the fashion industry so small details to convery luxury is extremely important to me. I love that it made all the difference to you.

i could literally write paragraphs about how well u included symbols in this fic.

fuck, wow. this. This is what I was truly hoping for. I love figuring out foreshadowing in movies, in books, in tv series. I try to write things that foreshadowing what going to happen in the end throughout of every one of my fics, but this is the first time someone called it out, and I am truly grateful for it. The viper necklace thing is a moment I was very proud of. and when Tanaka tells Val to stop talking about Daichi when they’re alone on the bed together: that’s the first instance where we see his guilt that he knows. Also, when Tanaka says “why dont i finish what I started,” is another thing I linked to the ending.

the way that action happens in the fic is so well done and not predictable but still in line with what you’ve revealed to us about the characters.

kasjsdfhksjdfsd I always thought people could see right through me and how I was going to end it!!!!!!! This means so much thank you! I kept thinking, “fuck people know he’s going to kill her, this is so predictable, all these extra scenes are so boring, is it even worth it?” so AH thank you!

thank you again for the pacing comment <3

i love the way u utilize sex scenes in the fic. u sprinkle them in at just the right moment 

hehehehehehe this makes me very happy. tbh, I wasn’t expecting there to be SO MUCH PLOT when I wrote this fic. I had mapped everything out and planned for it to be about... 5k? words? It ended up being 21k all together lmao. I actually thought there wasn’t enough smuttiness in the entire thing, so thanks for letting me now that it was just the right amount. I was worried because the only time I actually describe them fucking with Tanaka’s dick inside her, is that measley one paragraph at the Monte Carlo Casino. When I realised that, I was in utter shock. I was texting @mindninjax in the discord server like “FUCK. I can’t believe I haven’t actually written sex sex.” Then I went into thinking how disappointed people were going to be and phew, it was a whirlwind of a night.

i would actually love to pick ur brain about how u decided on the ending. did it come to u in the moment or did u set out writing the fic knowing it would end up like that? so many questions rlly

ask away, send in questions. I built this world beyond what I’ve written. I have character layouts and plans for every person I introduced, and have ideas for fics on all of them.

To answer your question, I knew exactly how I wanted it to end before I began writing. That end scene is what I thought of first. Exactly like that, with it being cut off mid-sentence to represent her being shot. That sort of “boom” or feeling of shock where you just stare at the screen is the exact reaction I wanted to get when I finished writing, so I hope that is what happened.

So just, thank you so much anon. For everything, for taking the time to write out this ask a second time after Tumblr ate the first one. It has kept me going since the day you sent it. I really appreciate you, and please, chat to me anytime x

Thank you.

Spasiba x

[ohkimani]

tbh.

Besides the obvious decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest decision I’ve made as an adult is dedicating my time to living and growing as an actual adult as opposed to spending my time fighting an endless fight on Taylor Swift’s behalf like I used to.

Though I would still go to hell and back for her, I just...have better things to do. 

For instance, valuing my career and future over a multimillionaire who has not only her own but her great-grandchildrens’ futures figured out financially just seems far more important to me now.

Taylor has laid the foundation for so many young artists in ANY field to succeed and have their art valued, as it should be. I love the idea that there have already been so many thriving musicians succeeding because they were encouraged and inspired by Taylor's strength.  I love the idea that there are women in different fields who may have at least an extra ounce of strength within themselves to fight for the greatness, rewards, and respect they deserve.

However, in my time, spending countless hours, days, weeks, months, and years fighting for a woman who, in the end, doesn’t need to be fought for feels almost....humiliating?

 I’m grateful for every second I’ve ever gotten to speak to Taylor and even share the same air as her. yet in the back of my head, i have always thought back to how many nights I've sorted through some mean, sometimes racist, threatening, and discouraging messages because a woman made music that i deeply appreciated.

The social media aspect of Taylor's relationship with her fans has always struck me as bittersweet (as it has most of her fans). I made my first Tumblr account about two years before Taylor joined, forgot the password to that account, then made a new account exactly a week BEFORE she began her first bunch of unbelievable interactions with fans. 

I had the privilege of briefly experiencing genuine and warm feelings that came with everything every fan posted. though it was such a brief time, I got to know what it felt like to be a part of a real online fandom. It wouldn't be another 5, almost 6 years until I find this feeling again upon reactivating my twitter account (where Taylor's eye hardly reaches) 

Amidst these 5 years, I would find myself almost collecting badges of approval from Taylor, and finding that these badges would provide me an image of invalid importance in the eyes of numerous people which happenstance would find me in the presence of. 

One blog would continuously be spammed with likes from Taylor which drew me to an entirely different blog. With this blog, I would face the same supportive spam though coupled with (in hindsight, well deserved) anonymous hate and scrutiny. By the time I had settled onto the third blog (which had been there all along, just not as active) I was smart enough to figure out the formula.

I discovered the simplicity of what not only attracts Taylor's heart but her fans/followers. [this part is incredibly blunt and I would very much appreciate if there was just like....understanding about how undiplomatic I could possibly state this] Something short, particularly sweet, relevant, including the word “y’all” at least once, and rapid-fire posting. That was it. It wasn’t self reblogging constantly. It was posting what you knew everyone wanted to read and repost for themselves. That’s not to say it wasn’t what I actually felt. God knows i said these things MULTIPLE times before I actually posted them. I just knew everyone else could relate.

Pretty soon, this all got to my head (if the above paragraph wasn’t obvious enough). My follower count skyrocketed, Taylor herself was a frequent active follower and all I had to do was abandon my sense of self, devote myself to everything she said and did, and i was in her good favor. simple enough-- right?

It wasn’t until after I started paying attention to my own life that I realized where my priorities should be. Not only that, I noticed something incredibly immature, and VERY human about myself: I had abandoned my one source of validity, and in finding others receiving this attention, jealously racked my nerves beyond comprehension. 

Luckily, I didn’t deal with this jealousy in the way most people do where they take it out on others. I, instead, began focusing on what made me who I was beside my passion for Taylor Swift and everything she has ever done in her life. I began to give myself the same love and support I used to give Taylor and when I transferred that energy, I found that valuing the validation her brief moments of attention used to give me wasn’t a bad thing at all. V

aluing the fact that her eyes wandered to my tiny corner of the earth every now and THAT small act giving me new confidence for months to come, didn’t make me less of a person. It made me a lost person.

Embracing the fact that I used to have Taylor's attention--and that this was actually important to me and my self-esteem--became the breaking point I needed to know that I was me before I was a Taylor Swift fan. Embracing this allowed me to love me even more because I knew I had that love to give, I just needed to know where that love belonged.

I’m incredibly drunk and every time I’ve been drunk these last few weeks, I’ve thought about how to formulate these thoughts into something cohesive. I guess this is supposed to serve as a statement to the many anons I’ve received asking why I don’t talk about Taylor as much or even why I’m not as active anymore.

I am well aware no one will read this but I felt it was important for myself (and my blog for that matter) to be laid out as plainly as possible. 

A rich white woman does not need my help living her life any easier and I think she knows that.

I love you and hope you love you as much as I do 

xoxo

[phantom-le6]

Film Review - Justice League vs The Fatal Five

Hello all, and welcome to my first review on Tumblr in the wake of Facebook scrapping its Notes functionality, thereby forcing me to shift platforms (a practice I hope I won’t have to keep repeating).  To kick off my use of this new posting platform, I’m reviewing one of the two new films I got for Christmas, or rather the two films that are totally new to my collection; the other films I got were better copies of films I already own.  Anyway, we’re taking another dip into the world of DC Comics direct-to-home release animation with a look at Justice League vs The Fatal Five.

Before we get in the review itself, however, quick bit of house-keeping for anyone who hasn’t read one of my reviews before. The structure of my reviews is intro paragraph or two, a plot summary for anyone who has seen the film before and wants to refresh their memory, then the review itself.  The plot and the review are both clearly labelled, so to avoid spoilers just scroll past the section headed as ‘plot’ to the one labelled ‘review’.  Got all that? Ok, then here we go… 

Plot (adapted from Wikipedia):

In the 31st century, Mano, Tharok and Persuader of the Fatal Five attack the Legion of Super-Heroes' headquarters for their time sphere. Star Boy, Saturn Girl and Brainiac 5 try to keep them back but fail. Just as the villains activate the sphere, Star Boy leaps at them and is taken along. Arriving in the 21st century above Earth, Star Boy triggers a boobytrap Brainiac 5 programmed, trapping the villains inside the sphere in a stasis field. Star Boy comes down in Gotham City while the sphere ends up in Metropolis. Star Boy discovers his supply of medicine, needed to stabilize his mind, was destroyed in his rough landing. As his medicine doesn't exist yet, Star Boy's increasingly erratic behaviour gets him apprehended by Batman and taken to Arkham Asylum. The stasis-locked time machine is picked up by Superman and brought to the Justice League's headquarters for analysis. 

Ten months later, Jessica Cruz is struggling with the trauma of her near-death by a murderer who killed her friends, making her afraid to leave her apartment. To add to her anxiety, she has been chosen by a Green Lantern power ring and Wonder Woman keeps trying to recruit her into the Justice League. In Gotham, Miss Martian is trying to prove herself to Batman for membership in the League, but her inexperience works against her good intentions. While trying to unlock the secret of the strange sphere, Mister Terrific accidentally brings down the stasis field, freeing its occupants. Superman and Mister Terrific fight them, but Superman is wounded by Persuader's axe and the villains escape.

 Star Boy's memory is jogged by a news report of the fight, and he breaks out of Arkham. The Justice League members compare notes about these mysterious assailants and discover they are time travellers; and from Star Boy's words, Batman deduces that they are after Jessica. When the three villains attack Jessica, Star Boy comes to her rescue, followed by Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Mister Terrific, and Miss Martian, who force them into flight after a hard struggle. In the aftermath, Star Boy and Jessica form a close friendship based on the fact that both of them are struggling with their mental health.

To find out more about their guests from the future, Batman instructs Miss Martian to telepathically link them (Batman, Miss Martian and Jessica) with Star Boy's memories, thus learning about the Legion. They witness a battle between the Legion and the Fatal Five, which ended with the capture of Mano's lover Emerald Empress and Validus; as there was no prison that could hold them in the 31st century, the Legion took them to Oa in the 21st century. They also learn that if Star Boy misses more than two doses of his medication, it will cease to work and prevent him being in the Legion. 

Upon their awakening, the League receives an ultimatum from Mano: Surrender Jessica or all American cities will be destroyed by bombs created by Tharok. The first bombings start in Metropolis, forcing the Justice League to move out. Left behind with Star Boy in the Watchtower, Jessica is contacted by Tharok through her ring, forcing her to surrender herself to the Five and enable them entry to Oa's prison cells. Despite interference by Kilowog and Salaak, Emerald Empress and Validus are freed, and when Jessica fights back, Persuader cleaves her ring in two. Afterwards, Emerald Empress has her Emerald Eye of Ekron steal the energy of the Central Power Battery, and the Five return to Earth to recover the time sphere. 

In the meantime, Star Boy discovers Jessica's absence and informs the League. The heroes proceed to the time machine's location, a secret US military base, where the Fatal Five force them into battle. Emerald Empress subdues the Justice League and then initiates her master plan to use the Lantern's power to destroy Earth's sun, wipe out humanity, and thus prevent the formation of the Legion in their time. On Oa, Jessica recovers her faith and determination, and by reciting the Green Lantern oath, she reassembles her power ring. Brought back to her apartment by the ring, Jessica flies to the base and prevents the Fatal Five from escaping back to their own era by bringing the whole base down upon them, killing the supervillains. 

Superman, Jessica and Star Boy race after the Eye, but are too late to prevent it from plunging into the sun. As the star cracks apart, Star Boy sacrifices himself by lowering himself into the sun's core and using his powers to reverse the fracturing. In the final scene as the Justice League members commemorate Star Boy's heroism, they are joined by the Legion who have come from the future to honour their fallen comrade. Batman also grants Miss Martian admission into the League for her bravery.

Review:

This film is basically an original story not adapted from anything in particular, and although it is done in the style of the DC Animated Universe that originally revolved around the Batman, Superman and Justice League animated shows of the 1990’s and 2000’s, it is apparently meant to be a stand-alone narrative.  Cast-wise, we get back the like of Kevin Conroy, George Newbern and Susan Eisenberg to reprise their roles as the DC Trinity (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman) from the Justice League animated series, and well-known voice actors like Kevin Michael Richardson and Tara Strong also feature in this production. 

In terms of character, we’re certainly getting a bit of a different Justice League line-up while also getting DC’s future team the Legion of Superheroes worked into the mix, primarily through the character of Star Boy and the film’s antagonists the Fatal Five.  In terms of the League itself, the customary League core that is the DC Trinity is in place, but then we have no Flash, Miss Martian in place of the better-known Martian Manhunter, and Mr Terrific to add to the team’s diversity in place of using Cyborg.  Finally, we have Jessica Cruz as the team’s Green Lantern, and it’s the use of her and Star Boy in this film that makes this film stand out from any other DC films, because both of these heroes are neurodiverse. 

As fans of more modern DC comics stories, or anyone who has looked into this film’s behind-the-scenes extras, will know, Star Boy is a schizophrenic, but by the 31st century there is medication to manage the behaviours that this form of neurodiversity can cause, so it’s not an uncommon idea among DC’s writers to show Star Boy getting trapped in our time without this medication.  During the Justice League era between Infinity Crisis and Final Crisis (not long before DC did its new 52 reboot and decided to stick to buying pre-2000 Marvel lore), the comics did in fact do this as part of the Legion coming back in time to bring back Wally West, the then-Flash who had become stuck in the Speed Force with his wife and children during the Infinity Crisis. 

By the same token, Jessica Cruz is a Green Lantern who has crippling anxiety following a traumatic event, so she’s having to use a lot of willpower to overcome that anxiety and function like anyone else.  Given that Green Lanterns are chosen based on their ability to overcome great fear, not only does it make a lot of sense for someone battling anxiety to be chosen as a Green Lantern, but it also very effectively demonstrates a much more positive and healthier take on mental illness in the world of superheroes. Granted, DC isn’t being particularly original in this regard; Iron Man’s alcoholism in the comics and his PTSD in the MCU show that Marvel has at least one heroic character that they’ve been willing to showcase as a positive example of what people can do despite being mentally different to others.  Sadly, neither company has yet done a good, positive, accurate take on autism yet, but then if they did, I’d have less fodder for my novel writing. 

Putting two neurodiverse heroes at the core of this film really makes it a great one to watch just because for once it means the neurodiverse characters aren’t the stereotypical crazed villain types and the idiotic stereotypes that stem from such misuse of the mentally divergent in fiction get combatted a little.  Granted, it would have been nicer if DC and WB could have demonstrated this kind of pro-mental health attitude in its live-action film wing by not making the Joker solo film and doing something more akin to this film in its place. There is no doubt in my mind that DC and WB need to put more of the staff behind their animated films on DCEU projects if it ever hopes to seriously compete with the MCU. 

Otherwise, the film is largely just a good diversion; well-animated, well-performed, but not a huge level of plot depth despite putting two neurodiverse characters front and centre on the side of the heroes. Hopefully going forward DC and WB can address that on some future film, either animated or live-action.  For now, I’m going to content myself by handing down a score of 9 out of 10.

[severalspoons]

Long Rambling Trigun Meta Discussion 2

I *hate* the reply function in Tumblr. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t function. It doesn’t even open up a findable page so I can respond, and I can’t directly answer the reply. That’s why I reblog.

So, here’s the next best thing:

tiggymalvern

I don't recall anything like that fic you mention from either canon. It's a lovely idea, if only I could imagine Vash and Knives stopping arguing with each other for long enough to do it.

This fic I’m remembering was surprisingly hard to find, and now I’m wondering if it’s from FF.net rather than AO3. Will share once I find it!

The twins argue while doing it, IIRC, and have very different approaches. Luckily for the humans, in this fic the engineer likes the plant and takes care of it well, given how little is actually known about how to do so post-crash. Even so, Knives almost kills the engineer, but Vash stops him and leaves behind a little journal full of advice and encouragement. 

IMO, I feel like this is something Vash would be motivated to do more than Knives:

-- to repair his relationship with Knives

-- because he feels responsible for the people Rem saved

-- because he wants the bulb plants to be safe and happy

(listed in the order I thought of them)

But Knives would see this as slight progress towards Vash seeing things his way, so he’d go with it. What do you think?

tiggymalvern

I've never been entirely clear on the manga ending myself, and I think Nightow left it somewhat ambiguous deliberately. Vash and Knives are fighting, and then the earth forces attack them both, Livia intevenes and Vash and Knives fly off and

six months later we find Vash in hiding with the people who saved him, because Knives convinced them to, and then Knives plants an apple tree to help feed the peopl looking after Vash, and then he vanishes...

I assume he chose not to stay with humans and just went off somewhere, but it's left open

Interesting! Yeah, I got the sense it was supposed to be deliberately ambiguous, too. 

Many people say that Knives died giving his last energy to save Vash, to the point where I thought that was canon. 

No matter what happened with Knives and the tree, I have questions. If Knives planted the tree before dying or disappearing or whatever, I’d want to know where he got the apple seeds, and if providing the energy to make that tree survive on Gunsmoke killed him. If he turned into a tree (which I thought was the canon, but maybe not?), how? I can see why you didn’t interpret Knives as turning into a tree.

All I know for sure is, if Knives were dying, he’d want to do it on his own terms. Ideally in a way that would express his point and make an impression on Vash. I was going to say that creating a tree doesn’t seem like Knives’ style, but then I thought about the apple tree scenes in the anime. However that tree came to be, Vash would most likely associate it with happier times on the ship. Maybe he’d be fucked up enough to see it as a gesture of love. 

Maybe it was the closest thing to a gesture of love someone as manipulative and self-absorbed as Knives could manage...

tiggymalvern  Knives really is a person with no middle ground. When he believed Rem's teachings, he believed them wholeheartedly, that everything would turn out fine and people just needed to be given a chance. When he rejected those teachings and decided it was all just rubbish, he went maximum speed to the other extreme. Reject ALL humans, not just the individuals who had proven that they suck. And reject as in eradicate, not just avoid... 

I love Knives’ all-or-nothing way of being. Maybe because I know and love so many people with a little streak of that. And it’s so believable. Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere about how a misanthrope is a disillusioned idealist.

Knives thinks in utilitarian terms (”the greatest good for the greatest number with the least possible sacrifice”) as a kid for the few short scenes before he turns evil. He also seems to think in terms of groups rather than individuals (”humans,” “spiders,” “butterflies”). It saves him the grief Vash goes through at coming to know and lose so many people, but it also helps him justify a racist ideology. I love that about him, actually. If I were to write a Knives redemption fic, a key arc would be helping him learn to see others as individuals. I have a few paragraphs of something like that written...

Kids definitely need wonder and to see the beauty in the world, but it's also a good idea to mention the possibility of weird strangers offering candy that are best avoided. For these bizarre new non-human children, those warnings would have been extra pertinent, and maybe would have reduced the shock of what came after. Knives is definitely more mature than Vash in those flashbacks. Like you say, he wants to discuss issues with Vash, and Vash just parrots Rem. 

Agree.

I have a theory. Earth, in Trigunverse, seems a lot like our world, only worse.

I’ve seen a lot of people’s sense of wonder, beauty, fun, and curiosity squished. I was the weirdo in preschool, among other four year olds, for being too much like that. Maybe on Trigun Earth, a bleak place to begin with, that’s the norm. (And destroying people’s wonder/curiosity/etc. leads to depression and the ennui of modern life, but that’s another essay).

Some people, like those who run Waldorf schools, overreact by going to the opposite extreme. The worst, most ideologically rigid ones, deliberately wait to teach kids to read so they can explore the world unmediated by words a little longer. (And will even discourage kids who learn to read early, grr). Waldorf philosophy assumes young kids are basically sensing, feeling, and imagining beings, rather than thinking ones. 

I get the sense that Rem is one of these sorts. She was squashed and made to feel worthless for the way she saw the world. Maybe that’s part of the reason she was so depressed and needed Alex’s help. She’s raising the twins the way she wished she had been raised.

That sort of parenting wasn’t appropriate for a plant, of course. But no one had raised independent plants to adulthood before. No one knew what was appropriate. No one knew how to teach them about danger (or how not to). 

Growing up as a neurodivergent person in the Dark Ages, the only kid with allergies and sensory processing problems, etc., I understand all too well how badly things can go when even the most loving parents just don’t know what to do, and can’t find helpful information anywhere. Where helpful information isn’t just hard to find, but it doesn’t exist yet. 

So as critical as I’m being of Rem, I sympathize with her. She really didn’t have much to go on but her own knowledge and experience, and she bravely did the best she could.

Vash isn't thinking for himself yet, but he's a kid, so that's allowable. It does make it harder for Knives, though, who feels he has to be responsible for them both. 

You know, Knives does feel responsible for them both, and I hadn’t thought much about it and about the implications of that. No wonder he was so frustrated and furious. There’s definitely a sense of “something is deeply unfair and wrong” for a child trying to raise not only themselves, but their younger sibling(s).  Perhaps that’s part of the reason I saw Knives as caring about Vash, in his toxic, screwed up way. 

Plant biology is MASSIVELY confusing, and the more you try to piece it together, the more your head hurts LOL. But I think that's almost the point? ...Leaving the readers struggling to figure out the plants is the human perspective.

What do you think about the anime being so much from a human pov, especially considering that the most important characters in it are not?

Wolfwood is the support Vash needs to learn to control his plant powers among other things, the powers that have terrified Vash for so long that he ignored them. But Wolfwood isn't scared of them - or rather, he is, but not scared enough to abandon Vash because of them. He knows all about Vash, he knows all about July and the hole in the moon, he's seen Vash transform into some weird crazy thing with feathers, and Wolfwood still stays. Wolfwood lets Vash know that Vash's mistakes can be forgiven, and Vash is still a worthwhile person despite them. And because Wolfwood believes it, Vash can start to believe it. 

Between how well you put this and the dynamic itself, I’m...blown away and don’t know what to say. 

– “Vash, take care of Knives.” This breaks my heart because so far … he hasn’t. First he follows Knives around. Then abandons him. Then attacks him. I really do think Vash was trying. He followed Knives around for so long while being so angry with him for what he'd done, and yes, part of that was because he didn't want to be alone himself, but part of it was him trying to follow Rem's advice. 

Yeah, true, he did try at first. I undervalued it because by the time the series starts, that was far into the past and Vash probably doesn’t even remember it, but still.

In the manga, Rem specifically says, 'Vash, don't leave Knives alone,' because I think she recognises that Knives is prone to extremes and needs a balance. 

See, that instruction makes so much more sense. And I think the plants would have agreed. (Well, of course they would. They’re a collective consciousness, after all).

Rem probably also knew it’s bad for anyone’s health or sanity to be alone, and an emotionally unstable twin plant even more so. Knives would be in a solitary confinement of his own making.

Vash tried and tried to get Knives to change; he spent so much effort trying to explain why genocide wasn't the answer. But Vash failed, and eventually he recognised that he was always going to fail. So he left Knives, because he needed a life that wasn't that failure. He needed to do something to compensate for Knives. He took upon himself the responsibility of not only protecting the humans from Knives, but protecting the humans from the worst in themselves, which Knives' actions brought to the surface. And that is one hell of a lot to take on, and not a recipe for a happy life.

Yeah, that’s...a heroic life, but not a happy one. In a way, it seems almost as doomed as trying to change Knives. 

[chaoskirin]

Book Review -- The Heartstrikers Series

This is a book review about the first three books in the Heartstrikers Series, which starts with Nice Dragons Finish Last.

I liked these books, but I didn’t love them. It's definitely a solid three stars, and I'll read the last two books to see where it goes. Overall, if you like fantasy with YA elements, you will probably enjoy this series.

This review will contain some minor spoilers in order to justify my rating, with some MAJOR spoilers at the end.

First, the good. The plot is absolutely solid and it's clear the the author had a good idea of what she was going to do before she wrote it. It has a very mobster-type feel which I would expect with the way the dragons are characterized. The writing is occasionally clever and the main character is likable, relatable, and I'm able to empathize with his situation. The author may be projecting a bit as Julius' situation can get a little heavy-handed, but the theme of a found family is definitely present and well-executed.

I love the world that's been created. I'm originally from Detroit, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that the entire first book takes place in a sort of ghost-town version of it. I can picture the descriptions of the houses (I used to work in an old mansion converted in to an office, in fact!) and it's pretty clear that the author is from Detroit, or at least spent a lot of time there. Sometimes it got a little name-droppy as far as locations were concerned, but I kept hoping the author would namedrop the place where I'm from, so it's a fair trade. XD (She did not, sadly, but it was still fun to read about.)

The spirits and how they exist is also very interesting. Algonquin is an amazing villain in the second ant third books, and I can't wait to read more about her and the other spirits in the last two books.

There's also a great amount of action interspersed with the narrative, so that kept things interesting! Some books tend to either get lost in endless exposition or endless action sequences, but this book balances them very well.

Now for the not-so-good.

I picked up the first book expecting dragons. The title is "Nice Dragons Finish Last," after all, and while it's very clear from the description that the main character, Julius, is "sealed," I had hoped that there would be at least some mythological creature action. This is kept to an absolute minimum, though, in favor of dragons in their human shape. It's even a rather contrived "rule" in Detroit that dragons aren't allowed to be there. This trope has become outright cliche... I've been reading books for years and this was a common theme way back in the days of Dragonlance--take an incredibly powerful being and shove them into human shape, but add a coolness factor by calling them a dragon. (I wrote this part after the first book: there's much more ACTUAL dragon action in books 2 and 3. I still wish there was more.)

But they aren't really dragons. They think like humans, they act like humans, they seem to have the same emotions as humans... Except for another fantasy trope, which is taking every member of a species and shoving them into a single alignment (lawful evil in this case). Julius is the one exception, so it's a very Drizzt Do'urden situation and it's always been odd to me that every member of a species could be evil/good just because of what they are. (this is especially a problem with goblins and rampant antisemitism, but that's another discussion entirely.)

It's a problem that allows justified racism. If the entirety of one species is mean, it's really easy to make everyone hate them, and you lose the nuance of what real racism is. I would suggest that people not write about racism unless they've either experienced it or they've consulted with members of their community who have been the target of it. This becomes more of a problem in the second and third books when Julius is trying to prove that Not All Dragons Are Bad. And it becomes clear that both humans and spirits are very racist against dragons, but it completely lacks the reality of what racism really is. As one poster on tumblr said, "racism isn't just one species being mean to another."

Essentially, it puts all dragons on an uphill battle against everyone else, fails to become a proper allegory, and discards depth and warmth.

A small problem that I should mention is that sometimes plot points sort of fade? There was a situation where Julius' mom visits and he was very mean to Marci, and she was very upset about that, but it's never actually addressed. It sort of fizzles and ends and then everything moves on. It should have at least been mentioned and tied up.

Another problem is repetitiveness or filler text. When I'm going through beta reading for my books, I ask my readers to tell me ANY TIME they skim over text. When your readers are skimming, what you've written isn't interesting, and it has to be changed. I found myself doing this a lot in this book. I forced myself to read back and see what I've skimmed over, and it was usually information I'd already read being presented in a slightly different way. My advice would be to allow the readers to infer information without explaining it into the ground. One thing I would avoid is the discussion of plans before executing said plans--even if they ultimately go wrong. It's enough to say that your protagonist HAS a plan, then let the text speak for itself. These planning phases were what I tended to skip the most.

I can supply one sample of repetitiveness without spoiling the story too badly: One of the main characters is talking with a dragon character about a plan at the beginning-ish of book 3. And breaking the text down to its basics, it goes like this:

Amelia: You have to. Marci: I don't know... Amelia: But you have to. Marci: I don't know... Amelia: You really should do this. Marci: I don't know... Amelia: It's a good idea. Marci: Okay I'll do it. Amelia: Are you sure? Marci: Yes I'll do it. Amelia: Are you sure???

And the argument became VERY spread out over the whole chapter, interspersed with the same explanation of why Marci Should Do The thing, most of which I ended up skimming to the part where Marci ultimately accepted Amelia's idea.

Another chapter I skipped was in book 3 where two human characters had lunch with Marci. And as soon as it became clear they were discussing stuff Marci basically already knew, I just skipped the whole chapter. It was an unnecessary bit of writing that could have been summarized in one or two paragraphs instead. I went back and actually read it later. I didn't miss anything.

(my examples are from the third book because I just finished it and it's the freshest in my mind, but this is an issue in the first two books as well.)

I think there's a certain amount of realism in conversations like this. The problem is that your readers have already figured out where something is going, and they want to get there. If the author reads this, my suggestion would be this: Sometimes it's okay to cut events out when they're uninteresting. If you hate writing it, and your beta readers hate reading it, it can go. I wouldn't follow the advice that you should cut out EVERYTHING irrelevant to the plot, because sometimes it's fun to have fun, but the extra boring tedium can be safely summarized.

Next, Marci.

I first want to state here that my PREFERENCE is writing female characters. Most of my characters are women. And I understand there are a lot of readers who outright dislike all female characters, but I'm not one of them. I feel like that's an important thing to state before going into more detail about my issues with Marci.

I wanted to read more of the series before posting this review, because I felt Marci was a shallow character after book one. She felt like a female character who was STRONG, but NOT a strong female character.

And through the first book, she felt like a prop to the other main character, Julius, instead of a character all her own. (And to be fair, her ENTIRE story from the first book is sort of... hand-waved in books 2 and 3.)

In the first book, Marci isn't really written with a story arc. She's a sort of deus ex machina for Julius; she appears into his life mysteriously as he's looking for a mage, first of all. And while it SEEMS that she does have her own arc, it becomes clear by the end of the story that she's only a catalyst for the dragons' stories. The thing she's protecting eventually ends up in the hands of the dragons; she's essentially just a walking suitcase for them. She's a roadblock for the villains. And there's not even a true explanation of Why She Has The Thing They Want except that it's really cool and she wants it.

This alone may have prevented me from reading the rest of the series, but I'm VERY glad I did--While Marci has a slow start, her story does pick up in the second and third books and she becomes much more likeable. She still feels like a prop at times (other characters refer to her as a "weapon" even) but within that description, she's fighting her own battles and has become much less shallow.

I do wish she had more agency. I wish her decisions truly felt like hers, instead of the manipulations/machinations of those with higher power. But she's not the worst-written female character I've ever read, and the author makes it clear in the second and third books that she knows how to write good female characters (cough chelsie cough) so I can forgive Marci's shortcomings.

There's one Bad thing that I want to address, too, which mostly came up at the end of book 2 and throughout book 3. And this is a fairly major spoiler, I'm sorry.

You don't give a tyrannical dictator power after you defeat her. You just don't. Julius could have banished his mother if he refused to kill her. He could have let someone else kill her. He could have done any number of things. But the first thing he does is give her a seat on the new council and is just like "yes you still get to make decisions." And as you can imagine, this goes very wrong.

And book 3 is FULL of Julius refusing to let his brothers and sisters kill anyone, even when it's justified. This has always been a trope that rankled... You can't write about a coup and then have nobody die. It suggests that genocidal dictators Can Change If You Give Them The Right Opportunities, and we all know from real life that that doesn't happen. Tyrannical people in power will fight to keep that power. They don't learn. And props to the author for showing that these people don't learn, but... seriously, you don't keep people around who actively want to kill you.

I was so annoyed with Julius by the end of book 3, and the hoops the writing had to jump through to show his decision was good and right. He felt naive and almost stupid. And (VERY major spoiler here, just stop reading if you don't want the end of book 3 spoiled!)

...

...

...

...

...

...

Julius' mother had enslaved his sister for hundreds of years. When the sister was released, she immediately tried to kill her mother.

This would have justified ALL of Julius' actions up until that point if he'd just LET HER. Bethesda hurt Chelsie the most out of ANY Of her children. It would have been a PERFECT way to allow Chelsie to get her well-deserved revenge AND end the problem of Bethesda (who REALLY deserves to die.) And Julius made her stop, because That's Not How We're Doing Things Anymore.

I don't like that Bethesda is effectively not paying for the thousands of atrocities she committed over the last thousand years because the main character is a pacifist. It just doesn't sit right. And IDK if the author is building to Bethesda's death in the last couple books or not, but letting Chelsie kill her would have been the PERFECT end, and I'm really disappointed. No end for Bethesda would have been better than that.

Anyway.

As I said at the beginning of this review, I still recommend reading the series. It's a really interesting urban fantasy-type book, and while it crosses into YA territory, the fantasy aspect is interesting enough to keep me reading.

[tksfandomhellhole]

totally didn't just give up on the tumblr app and boot up my laptop just to post this

Fandom: Apex Legends (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Mirage | Elliott Witt Summary: 

Mirage is his own biggest fan, because he knows no one else will be.

Mostly an introspective/character piece I did a few weeks back for Mirage and lowkey a plea for buff (which is finally happening!!) Caustic is technically there as well.

Mirage would be elated if you told him that you'd find his picture if you looked up "Self-absorbed" in the dictionary. The idea of negative press doesn't exist to him.

Or at least that's what he tries to make it seem like.

So it would come as a surprise to most that perhaps the most egotistical and self-absorbed of the Legends does not check the ratings or read the comments on any forums about the games.

In fact, aside from hanging fanart on the walls, he keeps any fan letters in a box under his bed only for days where he's at his worst.

(He tends to have a lot of those)

Because the reality is, Mirage is his own biggest fan.

If he wasn't, who else would be? He's certain it's no one.

Growing up the youngest of four boys, it was easy for Elliott to internalize a lot of things that his brothers didn't really mean.

One of those things was that being the youngest made him the weakest.

When his brothers went off to fight in the Frontier War they told him he had the very important job of staying here and watching over their mom. He knew it was just a way to make him feel better about not being able to fight the good fight. That once again he was being excluded because he was the youngest.

It didn't really make him feel that much better when the war was still going on and he was sitting at home feeling useless.

And it definitely didn't make him feel any better when they were reported MIA once the war ended. That now he'd never get the chance to prove himself. That he had stayed at home, useless, while his brothers had fought and lost their lives.

Elliott hates being useless.

Unfortunate that his curse of uselessness seems to have followed him into the games, the one place where he thought he could finally prove himself.

Most of his teammates wouldn't guess it, but Mirage actually brings his 110% to every game.

Problem is, his 110% is not even 70% of some of his more skilled teammates.

And when everyone besides you brings something valuable to the table, you have to hide your inadequacies behind self-deprecation and humor.

Today he's the jump master and the pressure to not make a shit landing might already be getting to him a little. "Just a thought, we could land here." He throws out, trying to gauge his teammates' reactions to the spot. Annnnd dead silence. Great. He takes their silence as confirmation and launches anyways.

"Follow the leader! Or don't- do whatever, as long as we win."

Of course, suddenly his teammates find some other spot far more interesting than the one he pinged, and take that as invitation to silently break off.

He lands on his own and loots as quickly as possible. By some stroke of luck, it's not an active spot, and he gets the drop on an enemy Lifeline.

"Nobody had your back, huh? Hate when that happens." He tells her, irony not lost on him.

He loots her stuff as quickly as possible and drops out, hoping to avoid any smoke from her teammates.

"I'm down!" He hears Wraith say over the comm lines. He takes a look at his map and finds she's none too close to him.

But what is Mirage, if not at least a good teammate, even at the cost of biting off way more than he can chew?

"Uhhh, okay, don't panic, I'm coming to save you." he says with what feels like is becoming his trademark uncertainty.

He makes it all of thirty yards before the squad from earlier runs up on him, and two of them against two of him doesn't work out in his favor. "Bad news, I'm down!" He says over the comm line, using the few extra seconds his knockdown cloak buys him to inch his way into a corner out of sight. Another squad joins the fray, and the first squad ignores him in favor of not dying. He watches the firefight go down suddenly regretting his choice of words earlier. He'd much rather his team all be in one place right now.

To his relief, he can see on the map that Caustic seems to have made his way towards Wraith's now banner and recovers it.

He's not too optimistic about his own outlook though. Caustic is not the fastest legend and there's still a sizeable distance between them.

There's also the fact that Caustic has no real reason to come recover him anyways.

Mirage isn't the worst shooter in the game, but he's no Bangalore. And he's no Pathfinder, no Crypto, no Gibraltar- hell even Revenant at least deploys a death totem that he doesn't care who uses.

No he doesn't do any of the things that everyone else does. He's just another- or well several- pretty faces for people to shoot at.

And he tries, he really does. He keeps an eye on everyone's shields and weapons, keeps an eye out for useful equipment, revives and respawns teammates as soon as possible, but deep down he knows it isn't good enough. There's no advantage to teaming with him. And if there's no advantage, it means anyone stuck with him is at a disadvantage.

When he first joined the Apex Games, the last thing he was worried about was the other people. He was used to looking out for himself- he had already learned the hard way that he was the only person who'd care about what happened to him outside of his mother. So he outfitted himself with his holo-tech and did his best to make a name for himself in the games. He didn't realize at the time how integral teamwork would become, and how lacking that in turn made him.

No matter which way you flip it, all he is good for is eating bullets.

He wants to improve his holograms in some way, but he's no Wattson, and he didn't inherit any of his mother's genius. So instead he tinkers with an old holo-suit every weekend trying to figure out a way to make the modifications he wants a reality. Instead he jokes about how bad he is at this while putting in extra hours at the range whenever possible. Instead he enters combat with the confidence of a seasoned pro and none of the skill to back it up.

Self-absorbed, self-serving, and insufficient. Well aren't I just the greatest person to have on the team? Mirage thinks loathingly.

Maybe it's more fitting if he dies here alone, nothing but fakes to back him- the biggest fake of them all- up. Maybe he was wrong to think he could really be a Legend, much less a champion.

As his eyes begin to cloud over, he's ready for death's cold embrace yet again.

Instead, someone's shoes are in front of him now, and a muffled sigh of discontent is heard as a hand on his shoulder pushes him backwards gently and he's suddenly jabbed.

He really doesn't know when Caustic got here, but he expresses his thanks as Caustic pulls him to his feet.

"Your gratitude is acknowledged, let us move now before the ring comes in." The remnants of the earlier fight are still here in the form of half looted deathboxes, and he has to scour through some of those for some heals and ammo before they move on.

It's looking like the respawn beacon they were heading for won't be in the next ring, unfortunately for Wraith, so they cut their losses and head to the center.

They encounter another two or three squads, and one rambunctious Octane along the way, Mirage continuously finding himself downed in increasingly ludicrous ways.

"I've been observing... I hate to be the first person to break it to you, but I dont think you were really made for these kinds of games, Witt." Caustic confesses, while reviving Mirage for the 4th time.

He just sighs. "Yeah... yea, I know."

"So then why do you do it? Why the masochistic endeavor of placing yourself in an environment where you are the weakest link?"

"Wow, ok, little harsh there." He says, pride hurting more than the injection site of the syringe. "I just... want someone to remember me. And I guess I thought, 'What better way to be remembered than dying in the most glorious bloodsport of our generation?"

"A foolish sentiment. Life is insignificant; why not accept your fate?"

"Listen, I don't have to explain myself to you." Mirage says, a little defensive, and more than a little annoyed.

"Have it your way. Your incredible knack for narrowly defying death has provided me an insurmountable amount of data. So much to notate..."

"Glad to be of service." Mirage mutters bitterly.

Mirage does feel a little stupid when he compares his reasoning to other people's. It's not noble or some part of a larger plan. He isn't searching for answers. He isn't doing it because he has to. He isn't even being straight about it and just acting out of boredom like Octane or Revenant.

He's just worried that once everyone has forgotten him it'll be like he never existed at all.

His mom has already started forgetting... who will be left when she's gone?

It's the one thing that truly terrifies him.

So he keeps going on, even though he's the weakest link.

He keeps going on even if he's the biggest joke amongst the legends.

He keeps going on, even if everyone else is laughing at him and not with him.

Because as long as they're laughing he knows they see him.

Really, he's more concerned about what's gonna happen once they stop finding him funny.

No respawn beacon will ever be able to save him then. 

---

They don't win the game.

He wakes up alone in the med ward, common procedure for the squads upon elimination from the game.

He heads back to his room, not bothering to check the results, congratulate the champions, or talk to any of the other legends.

No one stops him.

He sits on the floor next to his bed and pulls out the box from underneath, taking out a letter at random.

The words start to blur about a paragraph in, and he puts it back once he realizes his tears are just drenching it entirely at this point.

He's ready to go home.

But there's nothing left for him to go back too.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

1, 4, and 10! (Frankly, I'm interested in all of these, but I'll take these to start!)

Thank you! These are from this ask meme

1. What made you start writing fanfic? 

Hmmm you know, I had read, I think, 3 fanfics ever (i’m lumping the 3 harry potter novel-length Neville POV pdfs a friend sent me in college once into one group tho), before 2015. And always only things friends had linked to me/I wasn’t seeking them out myself. I tried looking some up once to see what the hype was about but never got interested in anything, even when the writing was objectively good (I think some Marvel, some Dr Who, etc that friends posted and which crossed my dash).

Trying to be as brief as possible on the leadup details, after a very low period for all of 2014 and while I was between jobs/living with my parents, I started DA:I just after Christmas and put in 104 hours/beat the game within 8 days, one of which I did not play at all during. So! You can say the Obsession had kicked in as they are wont to do.

I had a job lined up for March onward but nothing to do for the rest of Jan/Feb, so I played the game another two times, joined the good ol Bioware Social Network/forums, followed a bunch of new people on tumblr, and joined an online chat group or two about Inquisition! Fanfic was popular with everyone else, and while at first I wasn’t as interested in it as I was in talking about game meta/lore, after reading a couple I realized I actually enjoyed videogame-based fanfic much more than the kinds I’d bounced off before. I’m pretty sure it’s because in the games you get to make your own character/choices, so you don’t always know what’s actually coming next, and there’s someone “new” you’re reading about even if the other characters are the same. There’s just a lot more room to develop characters and side storylines while not contradicting the main plot, since a lot of what happens in games is implied/off-screen conversation/skipped over time-wise. It was also a good outlet for the mess of emotions DAI left me with (as a solasmancer: :( :( :( ), and it was people I knew who were creating it, so it was a fun way to engage with the online communities that were at the time my only social outlet. 

As someone who has written my own stories since childhood (I’d won NaNoWriMo that year with an original middle grade novel concept), it was pretty natural for me to transition over, about a month after I finished the game. My first couple attempts were very much figuring things out/playing with the genre, but I jumped in pretty fast. I wrote two short/messy one-shots, a few tumblr only drabbles ≤100 words, and then the third fic I ever started is Fallout From the Fade, my on-going longfic that is now the single longest story I’ve ever written and its been uuuhhhhh 5 years whoops. It’s been a long process but I’m the kind of person who jumps around between ideas but if I latch onto something it doesn’t really leave me (even the NaNo novel from 2007… i was 15… please i dont want you in my brain anymore) so even though sometimes life takes me away from stories for a long time I always have them in my head and intend to come back to them :) 

The biggest thing for me though was tumblr prompts/prompt boards. Fanfiction was the first time EVER that I was actually writing for an audience instead of myself (I have entire original novels that no one’s ever read on my harddrive). I very quickly learned that I’m good at writing angst and oh boy it’s a rush to directly hear from people that they Felt Something because of what you wrote. So most of my story stars I get from the kinkmeme or asks because then I know, specifically, that I’m writing something someone else wants to read. It’s also interesting to me in the psychology that way–I will often read through peoples blogs to get an idea of what they’re into theme or headcanon wise, and incorporate those into my works. I am very interested in the reader/work relationship and having that extra element of control over it is something I like to play with. 

Wow, giant answer. Stopping there.

4. Do you think your style has changed over time? How so? 

I think I’ve gotten better at writing for the conventions of the genre. Fanfic is more about emotions than plot than original work, though both can play a role/stories can vary on how much of each they put in. But the more you write about a character the more you explore their backstory, personality, motivations, etc and I think the better you can understand them to write more. Really though, I go into each fic with a different style in mind though. Some are more economical, and I put a lot of work into show-vs-tell. Some I go past purple into ultraviolet with the prose, especially for shorter works. A lot of it is self-indulgent, but I’m pretty mindful about the tone I write in and what I want it to convey when paired with that specific plot.

10. What’s a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?

I have yet to meet someone as into the concept of meta-narrative as I am. I am constantly thinking about the relationship between the reader and what I’m writing, and how that will be affecting their reading experience. I’m big on using  fic to create a sense of tension, leaving people on cliffhangers wanting more, and basically using things like paragraph length/repetition/clues/word choice to either keep the reader engaged or jolt them out of the story for a moment in order to wring as much emotion from them as possible. There’s definitely times I don’t get it right but I think I hit the mark a decent amount. This is one of those things that’s “invisible” to the reader though unless they’re directly looking for it, so, I don’t know that it’s something anyone would think of unless they’ve talked to me about writing–though if you have, you KNOW i go off about meta-narrative within my first three comments.

For more traditional themes, on the physical side: as a career botanist/geologist, I am always very aware of nature and setting. Sometimes maybe too much so. So a lot of my metaphors/allusions/breaks between plot or dialogue involve nature in some way, especially plants, water, and light. I’m being very indulgent in a current WIP and going on about the weather (I HATE that weather is a stereotypical “boring conversation” marker because i LOVE meteorology and its very important!!! esspecially if u spend all day running around outside!! as both I personally and my OCs do) but I try to tone that down normally. 

On the figurative side: I write a lot about mental health while trying to keep it both realistic/non-glamorized but still as big as it really feels; I write about complicated relationships and not being fully aware of your own emotions/reactions (love me a flawed narrator); about things the character has lost like family/identiy/language; and I can’t keep away from stories about self-sacrifice, duty, transcendence, futility, and rage. I have yet to write a piece that can truly be described as fluff, I think.

Aaaand I’ve gone on FAR too much already, so I’ll end it there! Thanks so much for the q’s!

[buckskinblues]

This isn’t writing advice per se (more like formatting), just things that I take for granted knowing that when I come across I realize that not everyone does, in fact, know about when it comes to writing. You don’t have to pay attention to it or follow it. Just take it as me rambling pointlessly if you want (or even me being a big old meanie). I’m focusing on fanfic because if you’re serious about working on OG writing I...really hope you already know these things and I mention things specific to using tags and all that (I also focus on Ao3 rather than any other site since it’s the best and also the only site I use for posting anything).

First off, if you don’t use paragraph breaks. Fuck you.

Stop using “~” at the end of sentences to denote someone saying something in a “singsong” way or whatever. Stop using it in general. It looks bad and it breaks immersion because it’s not any sort of capitalization or formatting that is usually used so it can be jarring and also just looks stupid as fuck. The dialogue itself, the dialogue tags, and the context are all you need to carry the mood and convey feeling. Anything else is you trying way too hard. (The “~” is a tilde and is used in some other languages over letters to change the pronunciation and it’s also used in math/engineering to mean something about numbers...so basically if you’re writing in English you shouldn’t be using it because there is shit all reason to do that).

Either capitalize correctly for titles or don’t capitalize at all. Stylistic choices only work if you’re consistent about it, otherwise it looks like you don’t know what you’re doing rather than making a deliberate choice. And yes, even something as small and simple as the title can come across this way. It’s the first thing people see when they come across the story so it’s important it doesn’t look dumb as hell just to capitalize the first word and none of the others. It looks like you typed it out on your phone and auto correct got the first word but not the others. This is only for titles though, if you forego using capitalization in the body of your work just know you’ve committed a grave sin against humanity--you’re damned if you’ve done this for a chaptered work and not just a “stylistic” choice in a drabble.

Stop using...those letters that are from different alphabets and symbols you pasted from unicode or wherever else. It’s not aesthetic. Some phones and computers may not read them and they’ll just be square blocks. They’re hard to read for some people. They represent completely different sounds in the alphabets/languages they’re supposed to be used in. Just...stop doing it.

Don’t mix two different characters’ dialogue in the same paragraph. Each person gets their own paragraph. This is how people know who is talking when there are sometimes just one dialogue after the other without anything else to tell who is who, besides the fact it alternates. Paragraph breaks.

Epithets. Stop using them. Pronouns exist for a reason and context works wonders. “The blond haired agent, the doctor with glasses, the grumpy hitman...” it gets old when you use such things to refer to a character more than their names, especially when you’re using epithets in dialogue tags. And it’s especially unnecessary when they’re the only character in a scene or the only other character being referred to by another who’s speaking. (Also when you use the same epithet multiple times, all the time...I wanna die). Very low level children’s books use epithets often because children are just learning about things and have the attention span of a goldfish. But I hope you have faith your audience is above a kindergarten reading level. The only time I ever use epithets is when a character’s name isn’t revealed yet to the main POV and there really isn’t any other way to get around referring to them until it is. Though you can skip doing that if they’re literally the only other person the main POV could possibly be interacting with. And you don’t want to do this for very long because it wears out its welcome fast. It’s okay to use character’s names to refer to them...that’s why they have names.

Do not do things like “!!!!!!” or “?!?!1!!” Just one exclamation will do. You can use “?!”/”!?” but don’t like...repeat it a bunch of times. Like...I get it, they’re surprised.

Is this a chapter story or a script? Are you writing a play? If you use: Character A: Blah blah blah. Character B: Wah Wah Wah! Consider...not doing that. I mean, DO do that if you’re actually writing a script...but you have no excuse for not knowing how dialogue is actually supposed to be formatted in stories because...I mean...you have read right? It’s the same in every book and story. The bar is low here. It’s not obscure knowledge. Children’s trade books use: “Blah,” Character A says. You have no excuse for not doing the same.

Walls of tags. Ugh. Walls. Of. Tags. Again, I gotta say. Fuck you. Tags are for categorization but you still want to keep them as simple and clean as possible. I’ve legit had to scroll past a wall of tags that took up so much damn space they were all that was on the screen. Do. Not. Do. This. Everyone hates you for it.

Speaking of tags: / is for romantic and/or sexual relationships and & is for platonic friendship. Do not mix up the two. Do not use both. If it’s a slow burn from friends to lovers you still only use /. If there’s no romance at all use &. Do not put “platonic but can be read as--” no. It’s up to you, the writer, whether it’s platonic or romantic so use the tags correctly.

Request booklets uwu. I hate those. I hate them because it’s a shitload of different fandoms, a wall of tags, and (usually) little to no actual content. You’ll get one-shot collections in the fandom tag when there isn’t actually any content for that actual fandom in it. It’s Ao3, it’s an archive. If you want to take requests make a Tumblr blog. In general I’m of the belief that one-shots should be...one-shots. On their own. There are lots of reasons for this. You can add a summary for what the one-shot is about instead of just giving the audience a title and shit all else. You can put it in the proper fandom tag without pissing off people who come across the “collection” and there be nothing for their fandom actually. The only time it makes sense is if the one-shots are all happening in the same universe and to the same people and they stand alone because they’re not chronological but they’re still in the same timeline for the same people. A series is fine. But it’s essentially like someone crosstagging here on Tumblr and using as many tags as possible to get attention.

If you have a chaptered story that follows a specific plot...do not add one-shots or AUs of that story to the that story. Perhaps that may not make sense but there is nothing more infuriating than thinking the story is updated when it’s just something tacked on, a one-shot or something, that interrupts the story and pisses you off because you don’t care you want to find out what happens next. If it all happens in the same universe, put it in a series. But don’t clog up the actual story with diversions. This has happened and while I really liked the writer’s stories I was fucking pissed as all hell. When I saw an update I thought the cliffhanger would be resolved, but no, it was a one-shot...

Use an author’s note for introductions or extra information NOT the body of the work. Please and thank you. Similarly you can add a tag or edit the summary to say the story is on hiatus or will be left unfinished until further notice.

Gender-neutral smut...it doesn’t work.

It’s okay to write OOC. Just like...warn people if you KNOW it’s really OOC.

It’s okay to character bash, honestly. Just warn people you’ll be doing it and that you know it’s petty but you hate writing about them in a positive way. For the life of me writing Sakura (from Naruto) was always a pain in the ass for me, so I understand. Just be self-aware about it and warn people so that they can’t come crying about it. (The power of “well, I did warn you...” is strong).

The relationship tags are only for the MAIN relationship(s). Background ships can be put in additional tags or vaguely mentioned in the author’s note. But please don’t make people think a ship will be more prominent in a story than what it actually is.

Stop using quotes for summaries when they don’t actually tell the readers anything. Summaries are for letting people know the basics of what they’ll be reading about so they know if it interests them. A vague quote from some famous person says absolutely nothing. Quotes can be used to great effect at the beginning of chapters or the end to drive home a theme or add a nice touch but they aren’t summaries on their own.

Use whatever tropes/cliches you want. Seriously. Especially if it’s fanfic. Just do what you want as far as actual content. If you enjoy it that’s all that matters.

So essentially write about whatever you want but remember the formatting is important. Basic capitalization and grammar that isn’t immediately terrible is important. Categorizing properly is important. These are things that really aren’t all that hard, seriously. Once you learn about doing them you just...do them.

[vankoya]

As I said, I wanted my review to be full and for your eyes only. But... Okey. Never mind. Since The Devil skates on thin ice is officially over, I think I’m ready to write my little review. Not so little tbh. 🤣 (1)

First of all, I wanna say that your style of writing is really stands out of all fic writers because of alikeness with literature. I mean it’s really classy and reminds me of all books that I’ve read not only in English but in my mother language. Full of this beautiful descriptions, metaphors and other stylistic things. (2)

Every time I read stories written by you I found something new to me.Like new words or phrases.And at the same time I can find so many common grounds.I can’t stop wondering,my mother language and English are so alike.It’s like I finally can believe that all languages were one language back then.“Anyway,prepare yourself;this is going to get long, and it’s strewn with angst.”-I think this phrase could be used as description for the whole story. U almost made me cry by the end. (3)

The plot isn’t so unique. I mean, lots of authors write stories from lovers to enemies and back. But I love your choice of AU. Everybody usually choose basketball for Yoongi. And I enjoyed that u somehow choose my cup of tea. I’m in love with ice. I’m not rly into winter but ice is definitely my thing. (4)

[I cut out a few parts here just because this was going to be too long! But the story about you and your friend was really sweet; I’m glad you had someone like them by your side during that time!]

Min Yoongi. To be honest if I saw this guy in flesh, I mean your Yoongi, I would definitely fall for him completely. He has almost everything that I like in man. Confident, strong, with right thoughts, loyal, able to wait till right moment, passionate, man of an action first of all. I see real life Yoongi this kind of man as well but... He isn’t suitable for an ice hockey. Too thin and short. It isn’t stop me from likening him anyway. (8)

Lead fem. It’s definitely me. Like almost 100%. I use phrase “keyword ....” like a lot. It’s one of my favorite. And another thing that makes us so alike - our love for ice and figure skating. I was and I’m still madly in love with this sport. And we both came through trauma. But I can’t fully recover from it emotionally. I’m still afraid of doing some tricks. Specially Lutz and Axel. (9)

She is stronger than me. And I can say that jumps are one of the hardest things in figure skating besides spins. You need to put a lot of effort to make it beautiful and right. Like u have to be fast and jump really high to make it correctly. Other characters. They support and show us other sides of main characters like the extras should do. Specially I love that u put members of other kpop bands into your story. Like Yugyeom and others. (10)

My favorite scenes. First one on skating rink. It was at the very beginning of the story. When they were arguing. God it was cool. But I’m too Dory to remember all the things that I like in this one. Another one is scene at Yoongis room when he was thinking about the night when ice starts to melt a little. And I’ll add a scene on the roof to this one as well. (11)

Third one is a memory of the past with hair scrunchie. Whole scene made me so soft. G O D. It’s too romantic for my lonely ass. And ultimate fav the scene before an accident. It’s so adorable and once again reminds me of me and my friend a little cause we were found of skating catch game. Like who is fast enough to run away from another and last longer. (12)

One of the things that really bothered me was Olympic team. To be exact if I’m not mistaken usually Olympic team includes only best members of every single team. I mean every single athlete who suits the team by the level of experience and abilities. The whole team which won some championship or something can’t become an Olympic team. But maybe this rule works only in my country. 🤷🏼‍♀️ (13)

Another thing is little lack of experience or knowledge about both kinds of sports. I’m really into ice hockey and figure skating and some things weren’t exactly right. Specially about hockey. The game is really fast and if u ever had seen it’s live you understand that even a defenseman is able to score. Btw the game could be dirty like members of both teams are always fighting and got ejected. But most people doesn’t even know simple terminology of the game. So I just deal with it. (14)

I’m not trying to criticize you at all and I mean no disrespect to you when Im saying this but... Some things are a little far from reality but it’s a fiction so it’s okey. One more thing is you need to shovel the snow to skate on the lake. And it was never mentioned. (16)

I know it from my experience because I had to shovel the snow away to skate on the river. And it was really hard. But it was also unforgettable to skate on rivers ice surrounded by trees covered in pure white snow. It was like I was in The Snow Queens winter land from Hans Christian Andersen tale. (17)

Anyway you did your job so well. I really enjoyed this story. You are such a good teller and I love it so much. Also you made me wanted to go to the skating rink. It’s a good sign cause my acting teacher said that the art should make such impact on human beings to do something. I haven’t been on a skating rink like for year and a half. But I will go there this Sunday for sure. (18)

I can definitely say that I’m so thankful to this plagiarism thing cause it lead me to such a good authors and people. You all inspire me to write. Like I already was a ficwriter, but since I found all of you I wanted to try to write something in English as well. And I did but I’m scared to death to show it. I’m pretty sure in my abilities in my language but English is a whole different story. (19)

I’m waiting for the “We were made out of stars” series, cause it’s reminds me of Hancock movie with Will Smith. I rly love this film and your short story was so alike with its plot but without any superpowers and stuff. Another thing that it’s reminds me of is a novel by Hilary Duff-Elixir. It also was about remembering past lives and all this things. So I’m looking forward to this to come out. Thank you for breaking my heart.Now I need to buy a plaster for it.Hope your week started well. ❤️ 20

P.S. And JT. He was the love of my life as well as Usher and Chris Brown when I was in my early teens. After that I fell head over heels for Alex Turner. But not for so long. I found Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd in 2011 when I was something about 16 and things changed. P.P.S I’m pretty sure that I made a lot of mistakes in my review, so I’m sorry for that. Have a nice day. 🌸💜🌸 (21) End

Woah, what a long and in-depth review!! Thank you so much for taking the time to write and send all of these—I was sure I had done something bad when I checked Tumblr for the first time today to discover 20+ messages in my inbox sdfghs. But I’m so happy to see that you enjoyed and related to the characters—that’s all I can really ask for!! 🌸💝💐

As for your criticisms, that’s fair. I’ve actually never seen snow in my entire life and I’ve only been ice-skating once or twice on an artificial rink, so my personal experience is highly lacking. I tried to do as much research as I could without spending hours pouring over information and watching videos that were only going to be attributed into less than a paragraph, though that clearly wasn’t enough. But, as you said, this is just fan fiction and it’s only something that I’m doing for fun and to build my writing skills, so certain details and facts are going to be glossed over—whether it be intentionally or unintentionally!!

Thank you again for taking the time to send this and for reading. I’m delighted to hear that you loved the story, despite its few slip-ups in providing factual information!! (And I’m glad that you’re looking forward to WWMOOS hehe) 😌💗✨

[hellforcertain]

i like how one of the few reasons i can pinpoint when about i got sick is that i can use snowmageddon (late 2014/early 2015) as a starting point 

this is really long and i’d appreciate you not reblogging this but i don’t think i’ve ever written any of this out, and i would keep it private somewhere else but i kinda want to feel idk. validated? i never really put it into words like this until now. would also appreciate if you respond to this in some way (either a like or a reply) if you read it.

[cw for suicidal ideation in one part; skip the paragraph that begins “at some point that spring...”, after i talk abt my grandpa, if you don’t want to read it. it’s referenced in the next paragraph too. idk if there’s anything else i really need to warn for, but tell me if i do.]

i injured my knee thanksgiving 2013, when i was a sophomore. i was hiking in the hills around my parents’ house with some of my cousins, and it had snowed recently so everything was slick and slippery, and at one point my feet slid out from under me and i tumbled down an incline until my right knee connected with a tree. that thankfully stopped my fall but like, at what cost.

it was so bad that jo had to half-support me walking the couple blocks from our dorms to tufts to have an x-ray done in december 2013, which had been recommended by emerson’s health center (which was a joke; when i saw... i think an NP, she had to flip through a book until she found the “knee” section before she examined me). i couldn’t attend several classes of one of my courses the rest of that semester bcos it was in the building furthest from my dorm and i could barely walk there; i barely made it to the final. i never heard from the health center about the x-ray, so i figured that at least it wasn’t broken. it still bothered me but it became more manageable than it had been (not entirely tho bcos iirc i failed or didn’t complete two courses spring 2014, but that was also bcos of the undiagnosed adhd).

i moved directly into the studio from my sophomore dorm in may 2014, and lived there until june 2015 (which encompassed my junior year until i dropped out in november 2014).

my parents wanted me to fly down to spend a week in florida with them in august 2014, and i think this is what happened: the morning before i left on that flight i rolled off my futon badly and banged my bad knee against the (hardwood) floor really hard. i was in pain for a lot of that trip -- flying certainly didn’t help matters -- and when i got back it didn’t get better so i bought a cane a couple weeks before classes started back so i could get used to it before i had to use it to get to class.

(at the end of that trip, my mom forced me to let her clean out my ear with a qtip, jabbed it in too far and fucked up my ear, and then the next day i got on a plane back to boston and the issue got so bad i couldn’t walk down the street without holding onto a wall. i don’t think my eardrum burst or anything because it was better by the time i actually got to see a specialist about it and i haven’t suffered any permanent effects from it as far as i can tell, but at times it felt like it.)

i bought a cane in mid august 2014, and i know bcos i ordered it off amazon. the florida trip might have been in mid august, so there’s a possibility i banged my knee on the floor before the florida trip, and bought the cane when i realized i wouldn’t be able to walk in florida without it.

i know i reinjured my knee in august 2014, and i know i bought a cane then, and i know i also damaged my eardrum in august 2014 when i was in florida (well, my mom damaged it). i’m not sure exactly what order those took place in.

it got worse as the semester progressed, and i started doing less and less well in my courses, because not only was i dealing with the still-undiagnosed adhd, i was also in a lot of pain all the time. i remember making the conscious decision to stop going to my spanish class bcos the professor would have us stand up and walk around the class and talk to each other a lot and i couldn’t manage standing up for even that long, and i was so scattered and so fucked up from middle & high school that i couldn’t ask for help and the easier option was just to stop attending. i made the decision to go on medical leave late that semester -- probably in november or december 2014, i can’t remember which. there was the death of a family friend who i had been close to around that time too, and i was in too much pain and too swamped with trying to catch up on all these courses i hadn’t been attending to fly to florida and attend her funeral, which was another stone on top of all the others weighing me down (when i told my parents i had dropped out, i told them that it was her death that sent me into a breakdown, which wasn’t entirely a lie; i just didn’t tell them i’d been having a breakdown for months up until then).

i started getting sick and feeling pain that i couldn’t explain at all -- sure, i knew why my knee hurt, but i didn’t know why my joints were stiff and painful, and why i was hurting randomly separately from the joint pain. it got so bad that some days i had to crawl to get to the bathroom, and it was only a handful of steps away from my bed. i stopped doing my t shots bcos it was too much effort when i hurt so much already -- it got to the point that my periods started back up again, though i only had them very rarely. i think the only thing i managed to do was go to my shifts as desk guy in one of the dorms on campus.

when i went to visit my parents at some point, my mom thought it was just bcos i needed to get in shape and lose some weight to lessen the stress on my bad knee. tbh i don’t know when that happened, i just knew it was when i was still a student bcos i went to the gym once with a friend and it was really fuckin painful and terrible and just made everything worse. she might have said that when we were in florida, actually. idk.

living in the studio meant i lived totally alone, but jo was there a lot bcos i had an extra bed (i’d bought a loft bed bcos i wanted one and had never had one as a kid and this place had high ceilings, but i’d also bought a futon for cheap off a guy who was moving out of the building, which turned out to be a real blessing when i couldn’t make it up the ladder to the loft bed; when jo stayed at the computer labs late working on projects, they’d come crash on my loft bed bcos my building was near campus and by the time the labs closed, the t had stopped running) and i made kinda-friends with the security desk guy

that fall and winter i’d say i saw delivery guys more often than i saw my own friends (bcos i literally couldn’t handle the walking that grocery shopping would have required, and i didn’t know abt grocery delivery services at the time. idk if they were even a thing at the time). all “groceries” were bought at the cvs down the block, bcos they had things like butter and shredded cheese and tortillas (i ate a lot of tortillas that year) and pre-cut fruit, and the walgreens across the street from cvs had frozen burger patties that i think set off the smoke alarm every time i cooked them; anything else i ate was from delivery guys. i dissociated a lot that year, very very badly, and some delusional tendencies i’d had in high school came rearing back up. 

bcos i couldn’t do much else i threw myself into this site (esp on one of my sideblogs), and if you look at the amount of stuff i reblogged/posted then vs now you’d see that i had p much no other life. which was... not good but i also made some really good and valuable friendships then -- including em so like, not everything from then turned out bad. sadly, a lot of irl friendships stagnated, and it wasn’t the other party’s fault. i also played a lot of skyrim bcos it was one of like. two games i owned for my ps3, and even though the rest of me hurt a lot, my hands were surprisingly okay.

(i also went through a series of nb identities and pronouns that never really fit bcos that was the heyday of tumblr’s whole “if ur a trans man ur evil for wanting to be a man, u should be nb instead” phase and i was far too concerned with all that bcos like i said, i didn’t have much of a life outside this site at the time.)

i don’t recall much of thanksgiving or christmas breaks at my parents’, except that i got my name legally changed during i think christmas break 2014. iirc we had to reschedule my flight back to boston bcos i had to wait an extra day to be able to get everything done that i needed to, and bcos we needed to change the name on the flight. i remember crying at some official bcos they said that they couldn’t get me a new... driver’s license maybe? until a couple days down the road, but i had to be back for college by then and i have everything else done please just let me get my license today. and since it’s a small town in the south they totally folded, thankfully. i was just very stressed at that point, i hadn’t even meant to cry at them.

then snowmageddon happened in early 2015, and classes were cancelled and roads were closed and the t like, half shut down until like may. it was especially bad for me because most of my friends were in allston and they couldn’t exactly get downtown to hang out with me much. iirc, my friend who was an RA left college around the same time i did, maybe a few months before? i think i was still working desk shifts when they left, so it had to have been before i did.

march 2015 was good and bad: during jo’s spring break (and what would have been mine if i had still been in college), we escaped the snow and took their car on a roadtrip down the blue ridge parkway (well. that was the plan but it was closed thanks to the snow, so we drove down I-95 and ended up in asheville nc like two days after our leisurely road trip started. i turned 21 on that roadtrip, and so no longer had to rely on my friends to buy me alcohol, which was nice. we celebrated it at this local restaurant in whatever town we’d stopped at that night, and all i remember is that you could buy steaks from a counter at the front, and the drink i ordered for myself was incredibly orange.

my grandpa also died that march; he’d actually been dying since february, but i didn’t go to see him then; jo and i were in knoxville tn at one point, and my parents wanted me to drive up since knoxville is only like three hours from my hometown, but by then he was p much in a coma so it wouldn’t really be visiting, would it, and also it would have been mega unfair to drag jo into that mess. iirc his funeral was that april, bcos there was a funeral service at my parents’ church where he occasionally preached at, and then one at the mennonite church he attended after moving in with us, and then they had to get him to ohio for the big service (which was the one i attended).

(this was the grandpa who thought i was possessed by a demon for being trans so like. lmao. didn’t mourn him much then, and still haven’t.)

at some point that spring, after the spring break roadtrip and grandpa’s funeral, my dysphoria got really really really bad, bad enough to trigger the most suicidal episode i’d had since middle school/high school. it was a culmination of the negative thoughts and feelings i’d been having since i moved into this place (which had only worsened as i got sicker and when winter hit). i didn’t do anything, but i had to call a friend every time i left the building for like a week so that i didn’t walk into traffic. 

i moved out of the studio at the end of april or may of 2015, and went back to live with my parents for a bit because the lease for my text apartment didn’t start until september 2015 (since i was living with friends/former classmates who were still in school and weren’t going to be in boston until classes started back up in september). moving out was an Ordeal bcos my dad came up to help me and brought my sister, who hated boston so much that she was on the edge of a panic attack the whole time, which made her impossible to deal with. at one point we got into a fight over something super minor and it escalated and ended with her screaming at the top of her lungs, in my empty echoey studio that had the door open so god and all my neighbors could hear, that she wished i was dead. this was not the first or last time she expressed this sentiment, and was tame compared to some (like the time she said she’d stab me in my sleep). i told her i’d been suicidal weeks earlier and she left the building to go take something to the car and when i didn’t follow her (bcos i was cooling off), she freaked out and had a panic attack all over our dad. she didn’t tell him why, or that she was at fault, and when i came down a few minutes later he ripped into me until i stopped and told him what she had said. so, yknow. a fun final memory of that apartment.

i think that was when my mom finally acknowledged that my pain wasn’t just a weight thing, and that i should actually see someone when i got back to boston. my symptoms got worse too: i started having horrible pain in my hands, to the point that i couldn’t move them, and none of us really knew what to do. i found some compression gloves online and begged my mom to let me get them but she kept refusing because she was worried i’d mess my hands up worse with them, and i still don’t entirely understand that train of thought, because i was like, screaming crying at them because i was hurting so so much, and some compression gloves couldn’t have been worse than that (and i finally pointed out that they were gloves; i could take them off if they were hurting more than helping). they finally relented, thankfully. 

june 2015 was the first time i met em in person; i decided, almost on impulse, to take a week and drive down to florida and spend the week with them bcos they were living with their grandparents at the time and their grandparents were going to be out of town for like a week. they played a lot of fnv on their ps3 while i played don’t starve on my laptop. the place had a guest bedroom that was technically mine, but i don’t think i ever used it except to get changed; we tended to pass out in weird positions on em’s bed. we didn’t get much else done bcos i discovered that florida weather + my joints wasn’t a great combo, but it was still an amazing week.

that same summer i also got fitted for my knee brace. i think that same summer i got some treatments from a sports medicine doctor my mom is friends with. possibly steroid injections? i’d have to ask her. 

i moved into the medford house with some friends in september 2015, and dear lord was that a mess. the roommates were great, don’t get me wrong, but the house had mice we had to take care of, there was a gas leak at one point bcos the stove’s knobs didn’t work right and didn’t shut off the gas when we turned them off, the boiler was a broken leaky piece of shit that would shut itself off every like two days bcos the water level got so low (contrast the place we’re living in now, where we had to go put more water in the boiler maybe like. three times all winter), the landlord and his wife were total creeps and freaks -- he would only respond to my email even though my roommates tried to open lines of communication at various times, and one time i woke up with her in my bedroom bcos she was checking the radiator (which wasn’t working bcos the boiler wasn’t working and they refused to fix or replace it until winter was over) and she had the audacity to chew me out for my space heater. i was fucking sick, lady. give me a fucking break. the best thing, hands down, about the medford place was there was a corner store with a good deli across the street, so i could go in my pajamas to get a good sandwich and a box of fries. great place, great people.

i got referred to a rheumatologist that fall, and my first appointment with him was in november (i also at some point... i think in spring of 2015 started using testogel, because i wouldn’t have been able to get the stuff for injections refilled while i was in kentucky. i don’t remember when i switched back to injections but i did at some point while living at the medford house, which i once again was terrible at keeping up with).

at the time, my deadname was still on my insurance bcos even tho i’d changed my name earlier that year, i was still on my parents’ insurance and my dad wouldn’t fucking change my name there and wouldn’t give me the information to do it myself. my rheumatologist took one look at me and how i was responding to being called my deadname, and he asked if there was another name i went by that i’d be more comfortable with, and i was rarely called my deadname again after that (and only by a couple nurses until they got to know me better). ofc that stopped being an issue when i switched to my own masshealth plan (in early 2017 i think?).

he listened to the whole mess of a story, felt my joints, and then poked at the middle of my chest (which i now know is a common fibro trigger point). when i recoiled back bcos that hurt far more than it should have, he said “yep that looks fibro-y.” i don’t remember if i suggested fibro and/or rheumatoid arthritis, or if he did. he prescribed me some medications -- including tramadol, my savior that winter. i’d been taking tramadol already bcos i’d had some left over from... i think lasik, and a friend had given me some percocet for very bad days. i was so unused to the tramadol back then that it’d throw me for a loop, occasionally make me nauseated, and also knock me out. it was p great.

back then i’d have to ask my roommate danny to open like, water or pop bottles nine times out of ten bcos i just couldn’t. now, i can’t remember the last time i had a serious problem opening bottles on a consistent basis. there have been some bad days where i couldn’t, but it’s not like that’s all the time.

i improved in fits and starts after that; i can’t remember all the meds i tried with him, but i’m sure they’re in a file somewhere that i could request. i still wasn’t doing anywhere near good, but it was better than before -- if only, maybe, bcos i wasn’t dealing with this totally on my own. but you know what didn’t help? that house’s terrible fucking boiler. we’d wake up some days in the middle of winter and it’d be in the 50s inside the house, and i was the only one who knew how to fix the boiler (i’d taught the roommates, including the subletter we got when danny left for a semester in LA, but apparently the only one who could go down the stairs to take care of it was the fuckin cripple).

spring 2016 was awesome bcos i’d gotten a ps4 and destiny for christmas, and the subletter we got had two cats who i loved and who loved me, and everything was beautiful even tho i definitely still hurt a lot. i can’t remember much of note during this period, health-wise. it was mostly more of the same, but on top of it was trying to balance playing a shooter and having shitty hands that didn’t want me down anything with them.

summer 2016, when i was still in the medford house, em came to visit me (among other people -- they roadtripped up over the course of a couple weeks) and spent several days there. i had plans to take them to do touristy stuff in boston, but that never happened haha. and like we don’t have a solid date on when we got together bcos long-distance stuff can be fuzzy about things like that but that visit was our first kiss.

in september 2016 i moved into the allston apartment, and the less i say about that the better. i started back with a therapist in like february 2017; i hadn’t been to a therapist for years by this time, bcos my previous therapist had moved to a different office in the network and then left the area and i had never gotten back in touch with her after she moved to the other office. i also started on testopel, because injections were once again not working out.

that apartment was p much like living in the studio bcos even tho i had two roommates, it was an apartment i’d found in an emerson group centered on finding roommates, so i hadn’t known either of them beforehand; i wasn’t really living with them; we just happened to share some common spaces. health-wise i improved some as we found medications that worked for me, but i was still not doing even close to good. i had trouble going grocery shopping even though the grocery store was only a handful of blocks away because various parts of me would hurt too much to handle it, and by the time i was halfway home i would be almost dead. so, yknow. not a great time overall.

in september of 2017 i moved into this house with em and jo, and it’s been a fantastic decision bcos im finally living with people who care about me and will kick my ass into shape if i need it. em finally made me go to my rheumatologist and be like “so i know i’ve been saying i’ve been fine but i moved in with my partner recently and they’ve pointed out that im doing less fine than i said bcos i’d brushed off a lot of things as normal that they’ve told me are not, in fact, normal”, which was when he prescribed flexeril, and i think that’s helped me more than almost anything else has. holy shit. im taking a higher dose than my father (who’s like 6′1″ and has at least a hundred pounds on me) can handle but it’s working for me. i also went back to t injections a couple months ago bcos i didn’t enjoy missing everything for a week bcos it took forever for the testopel spot to heal, and i couldn’t sit on the spot until it healed; plus now that i’m living with em, they can remind me when i forget to do my shot. also, after a lot of fits and starts and panic over the last few years, im finally talking with a surgeon about top surgery. 

overall like, i went back and looked at a lot of posts i made several years ago to get dates for this point, and i can barely recognize myself in some of those posts. my illnesses had ground everything else away, until all that was the physical pain and the emotional anguish, and i wish i could tell my past self that it gets better: that he’ll find medications that work for him and he’ll move in with people who he loves and love him back, and that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows here in 2018 but it’s so much better. 2015 me definitely deserved that.

and that’s true: that i’m not cured, and i still have very bad days, but i’m also having more and more good days -- days that were unthinkable back then. i’m on medications that help me physically, and i’ve been diagnosed with adhd and am on a medication that helps me mentally. when i flew down to kentucky earlier this month to attend my sister’s graduation, my dad remarked on how much better i was walking and moving just compared to thanksgiving. i can’t even imagine comparing myself now to myself a few years ago. i think i’m going to save this post so that when i’m feeling down about being sick, i can remind myself how far i’ve come, and how much i’ve weathered so far; whatever storm comes next, i think i’ll be able to handle it.

idk where i was trying to go with this, but it ended up a super overly long chronicle of the last few years. so uh. yeah. like i mentioned before, i’d appreciate if you show that you read all this, either with a like or a reply, esp if you get to the end