#this is unrelated to the rest of the post I just realized something about myself

[bookwyrminspiration]

i know they’re about the age that it could be possible, but can you imagine any of the kotlcrew with facial hair?? because i think if dex walked in with a pubescent mustache I’d drop dead of apoplexy

[devilfic]

❝late-bloomer❞

plot: you've never been kissed before. on a completely unrelated note, what if your best friend offered to be your first? pairing: tasm!peter parker x gn!reader. cw: post-tasm 2, gwen stacy mention, angst, self-deprecating thoughts about being undesirable and insecurity in love, best friends to wouldn't you like to know, eventual fluff, attempts at andrew garfield accurate rambling, he definitely talks you through it I mean who said that. words: 4.3k.

a/n: entirely self-indulgent because I wrote this after crying over being a late-bloomer for an hour ahahaha

Peter is reading something for research when you suck in a breath and finally ask, "What was your first kiss like?"

You hear his voice die in his throat. The small whispering of test results and calculations fall short, but you don't dare to look back. You're hunched forward so he won't see the way your eyes burn and brim with tears unshed because if he did, he'd ask about it and then you'd really start crying. Instead, you busy yourself with your phone, idly scrolling as if your question was pure curiosity alone.

You watch his ankles uncross, hear him sit up and then lean against the headboard again, fumbling for your train of thought, "Uh... sticky, 'cause I was six," Peter laughs, "You should know. You're the one who kissed me."

No matter how many times he tells you this, you can't remember the day you'd been so bold as to plant one right on Peter Parker's lips. You felt like you'd remember that, but you'd been such an impulsive child back them. Bolder. Thicker-skinned.

But Peter remembers, and so does Aunt May who swears up and down that she'd caught it on camera ("If only I could find that damned photo album"). You're the only one who doesn't. It's like it never happened, "No, God... no. I mean like your first real kiss."

"Like with tongue?" You hear the humor in his voice and even your sullen mood doesn't stop you from smacking his knee. "I dunno what you're talking about. That kiss was real to me."

"I'm serious, Pete."

He hums. You're so, so tempted to look back and see what he's thinking, but it would give you away too easily. "It was... it was a kiss. I mean, Gwen- you know. You know. I was crazy about her. I didn't think I just... kissed her."

"How did it feel? Do you know?"

"I felt like I needed to do it. I felt like if I didn't, I'd throw up. Not actually, just... like I'd explode with all the feelings I had for her."

Your finger hovers over a tweet. In your wondering about that feeling of almost nearly exploding, you try to picture that rooftop kiss that Peter had relayed to you between classes, with hushed whispers and childish laughter. It was windy, and I was breathless, he'd said, and I wanted to lay myself bare. And I just... pulled her in. Shot a web and swept her up and kissed her. I think I've lost my mind. You remembered pressing your back against the school lockers to cool yourself as you imagined the scene, the steps it took for you to settle the uneasy churn in the pit of your chest. The euphoria and panic upon realizing that your Peter was growing up.

You felt overwhelmed just imagining it. You barely hear Peter ask why you want to know. "No reason. Was just curious."

You think that Peter accepts that as good enough reason because the room is silent again. You keep scrolling, keep taking subtle deep breaths to keep the tears at bay. You see a picture of a couple on your timeline and scroll faster.

A few minutes of peace pass before Peter broaches the subject again, "What about you?"

"Hm?"

"I don't think you've ever told me about your first kiss."

Your shoulders tense. No good effort hides the strain in your voice, "I haven't?"

A beat passes. You glance over your shoulder and see Peter staring right at you, his lips upturned in a small, resting smile, but his eyes are inquiring. He's trying to read you. Perhaps he's just noticed the heavy cloud hanging overhead. "Nope." He pops the "P". He's waiting.

You could lie. You could say it was Flash Thompson who stole it, mention that field trip to the zoo in middle school when he'd sneaked next to you at the peacock exhibit and pestered you about you and Peter. Peter wouldn't question Flash about it. Even if they'd made amends, any conversation about him would send him over the edge with memories of his childhood bully and how much he pitied you for having your first kiss with him. And all of you were far too old now; Flash Thompson had gone to another state to play football the minute he got his diploma. It'd be so inconsequential, such an easy lie.

But the longer it takes you to deliberate on it, the worse it makes you look. You should've offered up an answer easily, jovially, unbothered. It should be inconsequential. Anything more and Peter would call your bluff because he knew you better than you knew yourself sometimes.

At some point, you feel the brush of a lone finger at the base of your spine and it startles you. Peter's slipped his finger under your shirt, stroking along the middle of your back, "I won't laugh. If that's what you're thinking." He says softly.

Of course Peter wouldn't laugh at you. As much as your relationship was teasing, he knew where you were tender.

But it wasn't laughing you worried about.

"I know." You say, in lieu of a real answer. You fear you've given yourself away.

Now there are two fingers stroking your skin, "You don't... you don't have to tell me, if you don't want to," but you can hear the discomfort in his voice when he says it, like the thought that it's something you don't want to tell him concerns him, "it's up to you."

Just lie. Your breath shudders and immediately you regret it. There's no way he hadn't heard that.

Before you can recover, you're feeling the heat of his entire hand on your back now as it slips further up, as he sits up in bed beside you and rests his chin on your shoulder. The closeness of his breath makes you feel claustrophobic all of a sudden, "Hey, hey. I'm sorry. Did I push? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

You struggle to shake your head, but now your eyes are burning again and you don't think you can stop the tears this time, "You didn't." You insist.

"You're crying, bub," he laughs (not mockingly, never mockingly, never when you cry) and reaches a thumb up to brush away the first warm tear, "what's wrong?"

There's a million things you could say. I've never been kissed before, I don't know what it feels like to be longed for like that, I want to be longed for like that, why haven't I been longed for like that? But it all feels so heavy. Peter picks his chin up to kiss your shoulder and that really does it, "It never happened."

Peter's lips still against your skin. Their warmth slowly peels away, though you feel his breath ghost over the curve of your bone, "What hasn't?"

"A kiss. A first kiss, Peter. I've never had one."

"That's..." Peter sounds almost shocked, disbelieving. He never picks up that thought.

You turn your head away and toss your phone onto the bed, no longer interested in pretending you could distract yourself with anything else. You try to shrug your shoulder out from underneath Peter's mouth but he's quick, the hand at your back locking around you and you can't escape him even though you want to, even though you need to get away from his sweet smile and lovely heartbeat that thuds a little faster against your side.

It was already so much to tell him you hadn't had your first kiss yet, to admit to your best friend who—despite popular Midtown High opinion—has always been so irresistible to lovers, that you haven't gone as far as something so... simple. Something teenagers running your old stomping grounds have probably experienced ten times over by now. You don't think you can handle his pity too, "Peter, please."

"There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all. Everyone moves at their own pace."

You hiss through your teeth. You don't mean to, but the spite overwhelms you like red hot heat for a minute, "It's easy to say that when you've done it already."

You catch Peter's eye and immediately regret it. His untamed brows are drawn together, expression more analyzing than pitying. Even though you're brimming with feelings, he seems as if he's trying to wade through them, search for the gnarled root at the center of it all.

Then, and he says this so carefully that the meaning takes a moment to catch up with you, "There's nothing wrong with you."

It's the sincerity that does it. You shove his hand off of you, jerk away from him in a scramble to stand, but Peter is fast and lithe and he's always been two steps ahead of you even before the bite. He's up on his feet before even you are, coming to stand in your way when you go to grab for your bag, "Peter, move."

"Look, can we... can we talk about this?"

"I really don't want to. Move."

"Why are you shutting me out?"

"Because I want to go home. Move."

"Is it because of what I said?"

"Yes!" You blurt, growing frustrated the longer he blocks your path, "yes. Because I'm sick of being told there's nothing wrong with me when clearly..." Your voice tapers off, afraid to give him the reason he needs to worry about you, "Please. I'm just tired. It'll go away on its own, it always does, I just can't be here right now."

The standoff between you two lingers, feels like you might have to fight him just to escape. It takes everything in you just to keep eye contact with him and not burst into tears.

Peter clearly doesn't want to let you go. You can see that genius brain of his running every possible scenario in his mind in which he convinces you to stay, cry it out, leave happier than you came. None of them come soon enough. You brush past him when he realizes he's got nothing, and even the hand that grabs for you is halfhearted, shrugged off with little force.

"I'll see you later, Pete."

You let his front door shut on its own.

It hasn't been great.

What typically took a few hours to shake off had settled over you like a dark cloud ever since you'd stormed out of Peter's place. Even though you texted him like everything was fine (and dodged any phone calls so he wouldn't hear the truth with those freakishly good best friend senses of his), you had yet to see him again. Had yet to let yourself be seen.

You told yourself that it was just you missing Peter, and you believed that to be true, but you also believed that when he looked you in the eye and told you "there's nothing wrong with you", you hadn't been prepared for the nakedness of it all. He'd dug deep, right to the source. That kind of thing was hard to move past.

So you avoided him. If he came by your place, you pretended you weren't home. If he showed up at your work to take you to coffee, you lied and told him you had plans with a coworker. It had been several days now and you felt more and more cowardly by the minute.

It was Peter. Of all people, it was Peter. Your best friend. You could tell him anything (most things, some kept a little closer to the heart). You should be able to.

And it was silly. Being embarrassed about not kissing anyone. Plenty of people were in the same boat as you and they didn't ice their best friend out about it.

Ugh, now you were just making yourself feel worse.

You'd had enough. You'd end this pity party today. As you make your way through your apartment door, you promise yourself that after you've showered, after you've made yourself a filling dinner, after you've settled into bed, you'd call Peter and ask him to meet for pizza this weekend. You'd talk like civil adults who understand that life isn't a race. You'd share your couch, laugh about the whole thing, and maybe, just maybe, the hollowness in your chest that longed for someone's desire to fill it would finally-

He's sitting in your kitchen.

Legs dangling off the island, mask rolled up to his nose, and a spoon clattering out of his mouth and into a bowl of ice cream. Your front door shuts gently behind you.

You stare at each other for a few seconds. Then you glance through your bedroom door, cracked open just enough for you to see the breeze rustling your curtains. You turn back to Peter, who's cleaning off his bottom lip of raspberry sorbet. "Did you climb through the window? You have a key."

Peter sets the bowl down beside him, shrugs, "You weren't returning my calls."

Your shoulders sag and you drop your things to the floor, "Peter-"

"No, no," you watch him slide off the countertop and bounce over to you, and the nearness you aren't prepared for makes you back away an inch or two, "No Peter. I'm not Peter. I'm Spider-Man. See?" He gestures to the suit.

You reach your hand up and pinch his exposed cheek, then narrowly avoid his teeth before he tries to nip you, "I'm not in the mood. I said I'd call you later, I'm just... busy."

"Busy avoiding your best friend."

You can feel him trail after you as you walk away, beginning to undress. He catches your coat when you throw it toward the couch and hangs it up all neat on a hook. He kicks your shoes to a wall and tugs your belt from your fingertips once you've undone it. Then, unexpectedly, he hooks said belt around your waist and yanks you back to face him.

The momentum throws you fully into his chest but he's sturdy, unmoving as you grip his shoulders and give him the most hostile look you can muster. You attempt to wiggle out of the trap but he pulls the belt tighter, forcing you closer, and then you start to panic as the space between you both disappears, "I haven't been avoiding you, I just needed space." You quickly explain.

"And I get that," he admits, "but you scared me. I've never seen you like that before. Not with me. Not ever."

Of course he hadn't. It was why you kept all of this a secret in the first place. Because you knew he'd worry, and you knew that there would be nothing he could do to fix it. Not like he usually could.

"It was a... brief lapse in self-esteem. That's all. You're making it into a bigger deal than it should be."

"It's not a big deal?"

"No! That's what I keep trying to tell you."

"So it doesn't matter at all."

"Correct."

"Right."

"It's just an arbitrary milestone that means nothing." You grip the leather of your belt but you're nothing against his superhuman strength. Pleading with your eyes, you do your best not to slip back into that vulnerable place all over again. Peter made you feel safe to do that. Way too safe to do that. "I promise. I'm not avoiding you."

You get sick of staring into the whites of his mask and so you grab the edge of it and pull it up to his hairline, little tufts of curls poking out as his face is fully revealed to you. You stare into those sharp, probing eyes of his, forcing yourself to stand the test of Peter Parker's perception.

Suddenly, you're released.

You stumble back a bit, the belt clanking against the floor, as Peter throws his arms up in defeat, "Alright, alright. I get it. I should've let you breathe the other night. I was just worried, is all."

You smile, "And I appreciate that."

Peter quickly glances at you and then away, making an exaggerated show of kicking imaginary dust off the floor. "First kisses really mean nothing then, huh?"

"Zilch. Nada."

"So... doesn't matter when it is, who it is..."

You watch him carefully, "If this is about when we were six-"

"No, no, I know that didn't count. You don't even remember it," his face contorts in a wince, "I was just thinking. Something."

Your eyes narrow, "Uh-huh."

"Well, I mean, is that why? Because you don't remember it? Or... is it because it was me?"

"The kiss?" Peter blows a raspberry, looking more bashful by the second, and nods without looking at you. "It's... it's because we were six. And we didn't know what we were doing. I was just mimicking what we saw. We didn't know anything."

"And now we do."

"Yeah. What are you getting at, Pete?"

He sits on the back of your couch and kicks his feet out in front of him. "If all that matters is that we both know what we're doing, and a first kiss is just a meaningless milestone to you, then I thought that maybe we could give it another go. You know. So when a real kiss comes along that actually means something, you'll have an idea of how it's supposed to go."

You're six years old again.

You and Peter Parker are sitting in the dirt, mouths covered in sticky ice cream that the summer sun melted right up. You're both talking about Flash Thompson's trip to Florida and the hilarious sunburn he came back with when you spot an elderly couple across the park, pressing their mouths together over and over.

You're looking over at Peter and asking about it, sure it couldn't possibly feel good, and he's telling you that when Uncle Ben kisses May good morning in the kitchen he always looks away because it's gross.

And you're thinking... you start thinking something.

You're thinking it would be funny—that Peter would hate you for it, but you're just so curious—and you're pressing your lips to his so quickly that he doesn't get a chance to pull back before you're giggling in the grass. And May's voice flutters in the background, a shrill and delighted, "I caught that!" that makes you both turn tail and run toward the swings.

Peter's still staring at you, waiting.

Part of you feels like it's pity. Like he doesn't want you to feel bad about yourself. Like he doesn't know how else to fix it, because he has to fix it. He has to fix everything. He has to be your hero.

But the other part? A restless and selfish part wants to take it; it's curious.

You take a step forward, the two of you watching each other, waiting to see if the other might back out at the last second. He stays exactly where he is, legs parting slowly, and the silent invitation makes you feel hot under the collar.

When you're standing between them, you feel his knees bump your legs on either side, his hands planted firmly into the couch cushions. You notice the grip he has on them, "Are you sure?" You pause.

Peter tilts his head in that strange, spider-like way. As if he cannot fathom why would you ask such a thing, "Of course. I'm the one who offered."

Your hands shake as they consider where to put themselves, and you get about halfway to his shoulders before he takes them and places them on either side of his face, mumbling something about how it might help you feel more in control, quell your nerves a bit.

Peter's cheeks feel so warm in your hands, and you can feel each swallow he makes the longer you take in his expression. "Should... I move in first? Or..."

He laughs, short and high-pitched, "I guess I can go first."

You know you're supposed to close your eyes, but as he comes in close, you can't help but keep them lidded, taking in every twitch of his mouth as he inclines his neck, shuts his eyes, and kisses you.

Your brain reacts a half-second after his lips touch yours. You've probably stopped breathing, and you have to force your lips to unstiffen so that you could actually feel him. His lips are a little wet—he'd been rolling his bottom lip between his teeth since he'd sat down—and they taste faintly of raspberry. They're not cold though, and the feeling isn't unpleasant.

You don't know how to react to it, don't know if you should move or not, and so instead you curl your fingers into the silk of his nape and wait for the pounding in your chest to stop.

You feel him mouth at your bottom lip just once, and then pull back. "How'd that feel?"

You recall the sensations that went through your brain (all that it can recall anyway, when Peter's looking at you like that), "Slimy...?"

Peter's face falls, and then he bursts into laughter, shakes with the force of it, and drops his head on your shoulder. "There's got to be a better word than that."

"I don't know! I was just thinking about the feeling."

"I don't want to know what it felt like, I want to know how it made you feel. Did you like it? Hate it?"

"I don't know. I'm- I'm nervous."

"Hey, that's okay," his hand rubs your hip, warming the skin there, and you find yourself leaning into it for comfort, "everyone is their first time."

Peter is so, so gentle. Your heart feels like it might give out, but a little less now that it's over and he's not looking at you in disgust. You don't know what you expected, but... this was better. By far. That part of you that felt selfish takes over again, "Can we try again?"

His eyes widen a bit, but he's immediately nodding, "Okay. Yeah. Okay. We can try as- as many times as you want."

You nearly choke on your spit. "Can we?" Your voice comes out a meek whisper.

Peter nods. He brings his legs in so that he's sitting properly now. "Of course. You wanna move me? I can sit somewhere else. Or you can sit if you want."

"No, I like you here," you say, feeling your stomach tighten when his thighs lock against your legs, "um. Is there anything I can work on? How did I feel?"

"Warm. Soft. Just try to loosen up, alright?"

You force yourself to release the tension in your body and move in first this time. Images of rom-com kisses flood your brain, how you memorized their rhythms and the placement of their mouths. You try your best to mimic it, make it feel as good as it seemed to look, when you feel one of Peter's hands slip behind your head and angle you away just a hair, "You're tensing up," he warns, making you pause, "it doesn't have to be perfect. It's just you and me. Breathe for me, okay? Turn your brain off."

You feel your stomach flip a bit, and nod along mindlessly. You try again.

This time, it feels a little different. Not wet or stiff, even if it is still awkward. It almost overwhelms you when, as you're mouthing at Peter's lip, he returns the favor, but you keep your brain empty. You can't focus on the details because it won't feel right. You can't focus on the way it looks because it won't feel right.

So you focus on Peter. You focus on the hand on your hip drawing you closer and the hand on your neck rubbing circles into the knot there. You focus on the feeling of his suit under your pinkies. You focus on the small hum he makes when, with quite a bit of building up to it, you pass your tongue over his.

Almost as soon as you do it, you pull back. Peter is flushed and it makes the beauty marks on his skin stand out more. His eyelashes flutter, a half-smile on his lips that are kissed red. By you.

You open your mouth to ask but he beats you to it, "I think you've got it now... yeah. Definitely." You're so relieved you sigh, sagging away from him, but he catches your hands before they can can leave his face completely and holds them in his lap. You don't dare move them. "How about you? Did you like it?"

You nod, speechless.

Peter laughs and squeezes your hands in his, "Okay, good. Good. I love you, you know? I know it doesn't... replace what you're looking for, but you're wonderful. You're insane and funny and stunning and there's nothing wrong... you know? You're perfect. Take it from your loser best friend who had to get bit by a radioactive spider to get to first base."

You snort, "I mean, if that's all it takes..."

Peter shakes his head and stands, but his hand remains on your neck as you follow his eyes to his full height, "So, we good? No more ignoring me?" You bite your lip, nodding your head. Peter smiles. "Good, cause I'm starving and I need you to split a pizza with me."

"You just polished off a tub of ice cream and you're still hungry?"

"I'm a growing spider, honey. And I missed you." Without warning, the hand on your hip hooks around your back and hoists you into his body, throwing you off balance once more, "I'll swing us there and cover cheese sticks too. Sound good?"

You know you don't have much room to argue when he's being so generous. And not when he's beaming at you, so genuinely relieved to have you back that it would knock you off your feet if he wasn't holding you up.

He was right; this wouldn't replace what you were looking for, but it gets pretty damn close. Closer than you expected, actually. But it's just the adrenaline. This didn't change anything.

Did it? You stare up at Peter.

"We can try as many times as you want."

You might have a very different problem than you started with.

taglist: @yikes-buddy @alexxavicry @theclassicvinyldragon @marina-and-the-memes

[gin-juice-tonic]

So, for Starters: Book Of Bill Spoilers warning. Another opinion from me below. This new one is about the lost journal pages again, of course.

Originally, I wanted to make a super big crazy essay about all the reasons I think the journal pages in BOB (The Book of Bill’s given name) are fake, and show off my super-cool totally completely sound deductive reasoning techniques in the process.  

Unfortunately, knowing myself I’m not sure I’m actually capable of accomplishing such a feat. You all know how I tend to post things in parts, sometimes out of order, often never finished. However I would like to share something in particular that’s been eating at me that I’ve seen… partially discussed, but only partially. And certainly not the part that I would like to discuss. 

It’s about the rats.

You know, the rats.

I saw these rats being talked about since before I was even able to have a look at the book myself. 

But before I get further into it all, I would like to start off with a joke: 

Why did dead rats, eggnog, a land orca, shrimp colors, It’s a Small World After All, and an Anti-Cipherite Suit cross the road? 

Well, that’s easy. To get to the other side. 

Of the book, that is. 

If you’re anything like me, you probably skipped right to the journal pages upon contact with the book. And if you’re even MORE like me, you were probably left a little confounded by them. Not only did they seem… wrong somehow. But they also felt random. Full of odd choices of subject that didn’t make a lot of sense. Could these pages really have come from journal 3? If so, why do parts of them feel so… completely out of context? 

And this is where the rats come in. As I mentioned before, I saw many people discussing them. In particular, they were noting a connection to this passage from earlier in the book:

Many of the related discussions also felt odd to me. Though I lacked the knowledge to be able to articulate why at the time. UNTIL, I read the book for myself from start to finish. That's when I realized something:  This is not the only time something from earlier in the book connects back to the journal pages. In fact, it happens many, many times throughout the earlier passages. (Here is a small collection of them for your perusal.)

And then it started clicking into place. The reasons the pages felt like they were so abnormally out of context… is because they WERE lacking context!

Now, before you can finish saying “Gin, you’re an idiot.” I would like you to ponder these three questions: 

1) Why, if these pages were taken from Journal 3, should they require context from outside of it to be able to be completely understood?

2) Why is it that this context can be found in what Bill Cipher has been writing in the preceding passages up till now? 

3) If you put food in a mogwai’s mouth at midnight EST but drive it over the CST time zone line back to 11PM before it can swallow, will it still transform into a gremlin? 

Okay, you caught me, that third one is unrelated. But the first two I believe require further thinking. So let’s delve a little further into the idea. Consider this the real third question: 

3) Are we to seriously believe that these, the only pages of J3 still lost to us, just so happen to tie into the new topics from the rest of the Book of Bill over and over like this?  

And since you’ve done so well thinking thus far, I’ll ask a fourth question: 

4) Are you aware of the concepts of Watsonian and Doyalist analysis? 

Assuming you don’t and you won’t google it, I’ll skip to the important part. Watsonian analysis is to analyze a story from within it, as if you yourself were Watson making deductions in a Sherlock Holmes novel.  

Now, from a Watsonian point of view, what happens when we try to answer our earlier questions? Why should it be that the Book of Bill provides so many of these points of reference to the journal pages? 

One possible line of thought could be that Bill wrote the earlier passages of his book *around* the idea of what was contained in the pages, but I think this doesn’t work for a few reasons. For one thing, the purpose of the book is to get the reader to make a deal, not to take a whole novel to set the stage for a 3 day mini Ford adventure. For another, not all of what I described prior is really fit to be called “context”, is it? The rats, the “Small World” cassette, and the Bill-Suit are one thing, but Eggnog? Shrimp colors? Land Orcas? I certainly wouldn’t define them that way. If anything, they’d be better suited to being called “references”. And unlike the more contextual ideas, there’d be no real need for Bill to sneak mere references to the pages into his grand story.  And lastly, there are a great deal of Bill pages that have nothing to do with the content in the journal pages at all.

So what exactly am I trying to say here? 

If we do intend to think of the callbacks outlined above as references, the only logical conclusion within the story is that the journal pages themselves are referencing back to the Book of Bill, not the other way around.

But… how? And why? Something Ford has written in the 80’s shouldn't be able to reference something Bill is writing post-weirdmageddon certainly. 

That’s because “Ford” isn’t referencing it at all!

And as for why… Well, have you ever noticed when you're writing a story on the fly, things you wrote earlier all come crashing back to you as you try to wrap things up? I believe personally that the journal pages are not pages actually written by Ford, but more a strange endcap on Bill’s crazy train of thought! That Bill is the one writing them, and the "references" are just fuel that further the pages creation. Almost as if, to quote someone much more knowledgeable than me on this subject…

(This single paragraph has been inserted a good deal after the original writing of this post.) I would like to clarify, I am not trying to claim the ideas presented in the pages have no basis in reality whatsoever. Ultimately, what I'm saying is I think Bill wrote them, and they should be taken with suspicion instead of as complete fact. "Did this event happen exactly this way?", "Does some of this feel distorted?", "Did this part even happen at all?" I think those are questions worth examining with the events detailed on these pages.

In the end, all I've described above (as well as other aspects of the pages I've not mentioned here) leave me with the impression the pages are not real.

As I stated only a bit earlier, the idea that these pages, the only pages of J3 purported to be lost, should be so connected to the rest of the book is beyond coincidence to me. Not to mention that in order to take these pages as total truth, you must give credence to several other passages of Bill's book as well. And I'm not too keen on having to trust him that much.

To all who have read this far, even to those who may have scoffed at the ideas in here or think I've only written up nonsense. Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts.

I am not saying anyone must agree with me on this. I know some people have found the pages to be important and meaningful to them, and I do not wish to give the impression that I think my view is the end all be all correct one, or that I think lesser of those who believe them to be Ford's own writings. I only want to share my own thoughts on them. And to anyone else who found the pages to feel "off" somehow, possibly validate their feelings too.

[eowynstwin]

Hi everyone. It's been a while—exactly a month since I last posted to this blog. How have you been?

A month isn't really all that long, but it's enough time to be able to look at everything that happened and understand it better. In the end, the whole situation (I've been calling it The Fuckening in my head) really didn't have anything to do with me. I was unlucky enough to run across someone willing to hurt anyone they could for attention, but also lucky enough that everyone who mattered to me in this fandom went to bat for me.

So I’ve decided to come back to this blog. I'll be posting about call of duty again as well as posting my writing. I also plan to blog about other fandoms (I’d already been doing it anyway); I've been getting back into rdr2, for example, and there's some writing I'd like to do for that.

There’s more context which I’ll put below the cut, but that’s the most important part of what I have to say; I often regret how long winded I can be, so the rest is just self indulgence if you can forgive it. I’ve thought a lot about this choice and I’m satisfied with my decision. I hope none of you will mind.

So, lol, things were not great outside of fandom stuff when it all kicked off, though I didn’t mention it publicly because we all know by now that asking for any sympathy when you’re the target of a mob is more likely to just get you raked over the coals harder. I’m still not entirely sure about talking about all of this, but I have a bad tendency to clam up when I really should be asking for support. So:

I mentioned briefly before the accusations started flying that I was dealing with bedbugs—turns out it was actually something else, but leading up to a doctor’s visit I was convinced I had an infestation, and I was stripping my bed every day to look for them. I had alarms set to wake me up twice a night to see if I could catch them, so I was not sleeping all that well. I couldn’t find anything, but I had no other explanation, and it was driving me fucking crazy. Post doctor visit it turns out I had a viral infection. No idea where I caught it, and nothing to do but wait it out. I had a massive, gnarly looking rash all over my body, and to add insult to injury I developed a fever that took me out for a whole weekend. (I’m recovered now but I have a nifty new scar on my hip from getting a biopsy.)

Next to that, I was having some PTSD flareups of my own. This was (mostly) unrelated to The Fuckening. Now, I understand that that might be hard to believe, given “Myka’s” claims, and I can’t make you believe me. Nor will I provide details to convince you, other than to say there were some things going on in my neighborhood that recalled a period of time in my life that was extremely unstable, and I found myself irrationally terrified to go home every day. For those of you who don’t experience the symptoms of PTSD, I think it’s appropriate to note that it isn’t just emotional turmoil; I, personally, experience physical pain in my entire body that lingers for hours, days, or even weeks after being triggered. (Everything regarding this, too, is fine now. I have a great therapist and a supportive family.)

All of this to say, I wasn’t exactly thinking rationally when I decided to leave this blog and fandom. And I regretted the decision almost instantly.

However, I didn’t want to let grief make any decisions for me, and also I was still VERY scared Myka was going to hunt down my personal information and either dox or harass me elsewhere. I think this fear was justified; it has happened to other writers in this fandom before.* So I decided to take some time to cool off and watch the situation develop without me.

I don’t think I need to get into the details—although if you’re interested in them, @fulltacs has been keeping track of the drama. Given the most recent development with the four obviously sock puppet blogs that popped up and immediately began stirring shit up again, I realized Myka probably would have done what she did with or without me. I just so happened to give her the ammunition she needed to do something REALLY big. It was pure bad luck.

(Also—and I’m sorry if this is just stirring the pot, but after everything they did to me I feel I deserve to make the accusation—I’ve suspected for a while that the two loudest blogs leading the witch hunt against me were far more involved in this farce than anyone has assumed. I have no proof and I do not want anyone to do anything about it on my behalf, leave them the fuck alone. But I will not forget the distress they caused me for a long fucking time, and the only way for me to let this go is to say my piece. So there. Done. Let that be the end of it.)

Having this hindsight, I feel comfortable coming back. I’m still very touched by everyone’s support, which in the end was louder than the harassment. I also think it’s important for people who care about fighting racism in any community not to run at the first sign of trouble, which I did, and I feel pretty sorry for.

That’s the gist of things. If you’ve read all of this, thank you for doing so!

*I was going to add a paragraph about halfmoth-halfman’s situation but decided against it. For one thing, she wants to be left alone, and for another, talking about the experiences of fans of color, particularly black fans, deserves its own post separate from my white experience, if I should even post about it at all.

[prince-liest]

i know you didn't mean anything bad by it, but it really discouraged me to see you rb that anti-reader-insert post. i write and enjoy both reader-insert and shipfic (my 2016 baby-in-fandom roots were in shipfic, but i'm pretty active in the reader-insert community as well these days). i really look up to you as both a current med student would to a resident (i'm an m2) and a writer would to a more-experienced/established writer, so i guess seeing you agree with a post that disparages a part of the fanfic community that we both engage in made me feel upset.

i definitely understand where people come from when they complain about xreader fics flooding the tags. i've felt that exasperation and annoyance of scrolling through the tags both on ao3 and tumblr, searching for fanart or shipfics of my favorite characters, only to be inundated with reader-insert works that i'm not in the mood to read. so, i get it.

i guess my point is: i look up to you. i really enjoy your writing. and because of my parasocial connection to you (i.e., enjoyment of your fandom takes and writing), it hurt my feelings that you seem to hold a pretty negative opinion about a side of the fandom writing community that i happen to pour a lot of myself into.

please don't feel pressured to respond to this at all-- residency is hard enough without some random anon on the internet nagging at you about some random reblog that is not nearly as important as patient care or saving lives. i don't even really know what the purpose of telling you this was; i'm not trying to change your opinion about reader-insert or anything like that. i think i just wanted to let you know how i felt seeing your reblog, with no expectations that you do anything with that information /gen. but yeah. i hope you're able to get some rest and take some time for yourself soon, and i look forward to continuing to your fics in the future.

Hey, there anon! First of all, it may make you feel better to know that I actually have absolutely nothing against x reader fics at a baseline. It's not my thing, I don't read it, but I don't have enough of an opinion on it to dislike it. I'm a big proponent of "write what you want" and while I've never written x reader content, I've roleplayed plenty of canon x OC ships back in the day, and write a lot of stuff that needs the dead dove tag. This post, to my understanding and in my intent, was meant to express humorous frustration with the ongoing issue specifically of a lot of x reader fics (particularly in the last several months, I suspect either because of Tiktok or due to Twitter's downward spiral) being tagged with irrelevant tags. I've actually had to ask on multiple posts something like "Why is this tagged with [canon ship]?"

Most people have kindly removed the tag and explained that they thought it was good exposure and didn't realize that wasn't how things work on Tumblr, which is great, but it's still frustrating that it's hard to scroll through a lot of tags without seeing lengthy and explicit x reader fics that are either tagged with unrelated ships/characters/fandoms, or undertagged with blockable x reader tags.

Even if I did dislike x reader, though, I just want to emphasize to you: I really appreciate that you look up to me and I'm really happy that I'm able to provide some encouragement to you in the form of someone with a similar creative hobby on the same career path, but also, my opinions on matters of personal taste really don't matter. I am, at the end of the day, A Random Person On The Internet Who Has A Blog, and I encourage you to look at opinions of mine that grate on you and think: "Eh. Just another random person I don't happen to agree with. Whatever, I guess." and move on, because in the long run this will be more fair to both yourself and me. There are indeed actually popular but harmless parts of fandom that I'm growing to dislike a little bit, and it feels strange to be unable to casually refer to or joke about that without being worried that it will hurt someone's feelings that I don't personally like the same thing they do. This is actually some of why I'm on Tumblr and not Twitter - the parasocial issues tend to be stronger on there! I confess that I don't really know exactly what to do about this problem yet, but I'm going to endeavor to not censor myself (as long as I'm not being a dick, ofc) while also encouraging people to not put me up on too much of a pedestal.

At any rate, I'll clarify in the tags of the post what I meant by my reblog, and I hope this at least offered some reassurance to you!

[dramioneasks]

Halloween Fics 2023:

Adoration by flowerfem - E, 31 chapters - Hermione needed time out of Wizarding London and a move to the English countryside in the Fall was just what she wanted. Upon discovering Draco Malfoy was her neighbor, running an apple orchard next door, she realized she had no idea what she wanted. The season was sure to hold rainy days, carved pumpkins, and of course some magic. Buckle up for some fluffy, cozy Dramione goodness. Brief appearances by our favorite Slytherins and Gryffindors. This does get a little angsty in the middle, but rest assured this is HEA at its finest. (pumpkin) Spice throughout but chapters will be marked that have smut. Written for Flufftober Challenge 2023; new post every day of October

Double, Double Slytherin Trouble by kid_n_the_hall, Wanderingfair - M, one-shot - Draco and Hermione's pre-dance snogging is interrupted by two Slytherins who can't wait to show the couple their Halloween costumes.

What Lurks Inside the Corn Maze by erininoctober - M, one-shot - Struggling to stay on top of her classwork, Harry and Ron convince Hermione to take a break and join them for some pre-Halloween festivities.

The Muggle Haunted House by GreenInk_RedLetters - T, one-shot - How the hell Draco Malfoy had ended up in a Muggle Haunted House of all places was a query he'd been pondering over rather seriously for the better part of the last hour. Even more so as he side eyed another bloody animatronic skeleton, willing it with his eyes alone to jump out like the last several death traps had. Pure fluffy humor and Halloween fun as Draco Malfoy is *forced* to attend a Muggle Haunted House with his son. A snapshot in time (a pixar short if you will) of how I imagine the supposed outing if Dramione were endgame.

All Hallow's Eve by skeytchy - M, one-shot - Present-day | Middle-aged Draco and Hermione decide to jump on a Muggle movie reference bandwagon for Halloween, only to run afoul of old fears and insecurities. Featuring: - An ill-fated Barbie costume - Domestic fluff and double entendres - Married people who still like each other??

Lesson number one by thatblondebitvh - E, one-shot - The Halloween party takes an unexpected turn for Hermione. [Draco/Hermione/Theo]

Candy and Love by VicUreno_12 - not rated, one-shot - Draco Malfoy just wanted to attend trick or teat. And when he gets the chance. He meets the love of his love. A muggle girl that he gives his chocolate bar and heart to. Will he ever find her again? Maybe in the walls of Hogwarts.

Sex and Candy - Kinktober ‘23 by undercoverdrxco - E, 17 chapters - For Kinktober, I have put together a kink bingo card that I will be challenging myself with! Expanding my horizons one kink at a time. - A collection of unrelated PWP to celebrate Kinktober the right way with Hermione and Draco -

That One Night That Hermione Granger Dressed Up As Wednesday Addams by allyseisfalling - E, one-shot - Hermione Granger dresses up as a slutty Wednesday Addams at a Muggle-themed Hogwarts Halloween Party. [Draco/Hermione/Theo]

A Truly Maleficent Trick or Treating by Mariana_Monteverde - T, one-shot - 31st October 2006 | Scorpius's first trick or treating or the day Draco learns something new about his wife.

[stalkersdiary]

~NEVER Abandoned, and Never Alone~

A long post with odd topics. You've been warned ahead of time but this talks about some very... personal things. This turned into a vent post very quickly. (I'm not mad at you Seth/JustAThrowAwayHeeHee. I'm just using you as my reason to post as this made me realize I needed to say something.) I saw a response to me and I felt very sad because I never considered this point of view before.

I would NEVER abandon my diary. Mostly because... It's my Diary. It's my place to go to when I need to talk. However, I haven't been doing that and I regret it. Tonight, I want to talk to you. My diary. To be honest, I've spent a lot of this month in... a deep sense of melancholy. My last relationship hurt like hell and no better time to think of it... than Valentine's day. Valentine's MONTH for those who are happy and in love with someone/something. I spent a long time getting close to someone, just for them to hurt me, make me fear my own bed, and then wish that I could kill them. That feeling HURTS when you loved someone and then feel so repulsed by their actions and words, that you wish them death. It's been about 3 years since then, and life has moved on. I however, haven't. When everyone is telling you about how happy they are because they are so in love and you're just sitting there thinking of the last person you dated, knowing you may never date someone again, it feels miserable. I spent most of this month making time for myself. I started to really think about why I hated myself, why I didn't want to live, why life felt so lonely, etc. I learned more about me and FELT more about me. This sent me down a very unhappy but very clear path. I'm less afraid than I used to be. I was afraid for hundreds of reasons, but what really hit me, was that I feared my own mind and how I was being perceived. After days, and weeks of overthinking, I learned that I don't care anymore. I'm not afraid and I know that I'm claiming something unhealthy. Something disturbing to most. Something that got me in trouble before. The difference is this time, I don't care and I don't fear myself. I know me, and I wouldn't want THIS for the rest of my life. I am not afraid anymore. I'd rather be authentic and hated including by myself, than to live a lie for the rest of my life. I am not broken, because I wasn't a masterpiece to begin with. I'm a block of stone with a pretty face and no body because the sculptor got scared he'd ruin his art and left it in the dark for years. I refuse to wait any longer. I refuse to let life control me. I REFUSE, TO SIT BACK AND FEEL LIKE SHIT JUST BECAUSE I HAVE ENOUGH MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CONDITIONS TO SCARE MY ENDOCRINOLOGIST. I haven't been on normal medication in over a month and it's made me more aware of how fucked I really am. However, I don't mind who I really am. This looks unrelated but trust me, I have a point. I left because I was afraid to post. I was scared I would say something too "crazy," too unexpected, or post something no one wanted to see. HOWEVER- I didn't make this for ANYONE BUT ME. My posts can be manic, short, repetitive, etc. It's MY DIARY. This is MINE AND NO ONE CAN TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME. I will be posting more often. I will be posting possibly for days in a row filled with chaotic babble. However, it's me and it's real. I am the one in control of my actions and until I die, I will do whatever the fuck I want. It's my life, my blog, my diary. I'm allowed to be selfish and possessive when it's about something I own.

[sparkiekong]

This is the finished story. I may rewrite it next month or something to satisfy my OCD... but for now it's as it stands. I don't know if it's good or great, but it's 14 days of writing 200 words and it felt good to do.

Rest of the story is under a cut. It's EXTREMELY Long post... like longer than you imagine... keep reading at your own long post peril.

Love in The Grey - A short story

There is an old man in the marketplace, who sells maps and on an unrelated note, there has been an increase in missing people. It was my job to find out why. I approached the old man who’s eyes lit up as I contacted his gaze. Raspy voice, taut with age and a life of hardship, “Maps for sale, friend. Whatever you seek, you may find with my maps.”

“I’ll take one, sir.” I said, not really knowing what else to expect. He handed me the map and I laid a gold coin in his leathery hand. “Thanks.”

“You must think about what you are seeking, and the map will show you the way, friend.” He grinned.

“Yeah. Thanks.” I turned to walk away, but a question came to mind and as I spun around I found myself alone on the street. Where did he go I wondered?

Shrugging off the odd disappearance, I looked down at the map in my hand. It felt heavy and cold, unnaturally so. “Think about what I’m seeking eh? Ok…” I said aloud as I ripped off the wax seal thinking about missing people. As I opened the scroll, a flash occurred. My eyes were drawn to the surroundings to find that I was no longer on the street but in a wasteland instead of a small ramshackle town. A lone campfire glittered in the distance, begging me to move forward.

Upon arrival at the campfire, I found another sealed envelope. I wondered who kept the fire going and where was I? Was this the underworld? I looked down at the sealed envelope to see my own name slowly appear across the face of the envelope. Unnerved, I cautiously opened the envelope and read the letter inside.

“You must be wondering where you are by now. It’s not the underworld, but somewhere far worse. You must be vigilant because there are things lurking in the dark and they wish to take that which is most precious to you. Your life. They will tempt you more than anyone has ever tempted you.

 Should you make it to the next fire, more instructions and supplies will be provided.

Good luck.

L.”                  

I put the letter back into the envelope and tucked it away in my shirt pocket. Having no frame of reference for the time of day I could only assume the time by the feeling of my body. I was tired, but my mind couldn’t allow me to rest. I was in a strange world where only moments ago I was in a town looking for lost people. Behind me I hear a voice, soft and sweet. “It’s ok to sit down, friend. There’s no harm in giving up. Sit…”

I spun around grabbing at the sword on my side instinctively, but there was only a small black cat sitting in front of me. “Who said that?”

The cat tilted its head, “I did. There’s no one else here. Are you hindered mentally?”

“Hindered mentally? No, I’m not. It’s just that I’m not used to a cat speaking to me in my mind. What is this place?” I ask.

The cat looked around and a grin curled at the corner of its mouth. “This is nowhere. Are you sure you aren’t tired? The fire is warm and look, there’s warm stew. You could rest. You’ve been so tired for so long…”

Suddenly I felt very tired, and the stew did look and smell delicious. “Perhaps I could sit for a minute…”

“Yes.” The cat hissed. “Sit...”

Somewhere in my fuddled mind, I realized something was very wrong, “No… I won’t sit.” The cat’s head fell low, and a low growl came from its chest. The shadow of the cat began to shake, and a humanoid figure appeared from the shadow. In the cat’s place was a beautiful female, pale as the winter snow and hair black as coal. She makes a slight sound of disappointment, “Pity… it would be far easier to eat you. Now I’ll have to try other tactics… See you soon, lover.” She stepped back into the shadows and disappeared. The stew that had been on the fire was gone and the world was still empty and grey. Looking at my surroundings, I found a trail. “Trails usually lead somewhere,” I thought. I readied my weapons and moved deeper into the Grey. Time moves by slowly in this place that must be somewhere between life and death. My mother called it purgatory, but I never expected to actually see this place. Was she right all along and my lack of faith in anything put me here?

The cat or demon, whatever it chooses as a form, comes to me frequently. Urging me to lay down and give up, but what the cat doesn’t realize is that every time they show up it urges me to do the opposite. They’ve given me a reason to keep going because they are asking me to quit. What will I find at the end of this place? Will I ever return to the real world? Or is this all a fever dream of my own design?

As I sit down for the night, to rest my eyes. The cat returns, “Why do you keep going? What do you think you’ll find here? There’s nothing.”

“Well, that’s wrong, isn’t it… you are here. That is not nothing.” I replied without opening my eyes. I had long since decided that this creature had no ill will toward me, else it would have struck by now.

“I…” It started to speak and then stopped thinking. “I guess I am not nothing, but the others give up and I get to eat, so I have assumed this is my purpose here.” 

“Is that why you’re here?” I ask, “To eat?”

The cat shifts again into a more human looking form, “Well yes. I have nothing else to do here. I’ve walked and seen every corner of this place and found nothing of interest except you and the other lost.”

I reach into my backpack, and I pull out a small bit of rations that I’d been extremely cautious about eating. I broke off a piece of my trail ration and tossed it to her. “Here. Try this.”

She caught it and held it in her hand, “What is this?”

“Food, you said you needed to eat. Eat.”

She looked down at it and bit into the corner with a bit of hesitation, “It’s not good…” She said wrinkling up her nose.

“Well, it’s not supposed to be a five-course meal, but it can sustain you.”

She glared over at me, but just as quickly as she arrived, she melted back into the shadows. I smirked and let myself drift off to rest.

I didn’t see her again for several days, in this place there was no night and day, no sun or moon. Only the grey horizon, me, and the demon. She had not been in cat form since I last spoke with her. She seemed content to stay a few steps behind me.

“You don’t have to walk behind me, you know, I know you’re here. Why not walk beside me and tell me how you came to be in this place. What are you?”

“You would ask me these things knowing full and well, that I am just waiting for you to die?” She asks. “You’re confusing, human.” she said quietly.

“Well, there’s little else to do…and I have no plans on dying here. So, you might as well speak with me.”

She moved to match my pace and at this moment, I am able to finally get a decent look at this creature. She was all soft shadowy features and eyes blue as the deep ocean and skin pale and cool as milk.

“Do you always stare at those who seek your death?” She asked.

“Usually, I never take my eyes off them, but you don’t wish to kill me. You only wish to feed yourself. Here is another piece of my rations.” I broke off another piece and gave it to her. She took it willingly and without hesitation she ate it.

“Feeding me changes nothing when you die. I will still eat you.” she said defiantly.

“Of course.” I said and from this point, we walked the Grey together.

She had revealed more than she desired that moment she chose to walk next to me. It was apparent to me that she'd only given into eating the souls of the dead because she was lonely and there was no other source of food in this place. I worried how long I would be able to feed the two of us on a month of trail bread rations, but I would nonetheless try.

On the next rest I found her staring at me, as if she wanted to ask a question. “Well, it seems as though you have something on your mind, please ask. There’s little else here to entertain us so why not get to know one another.”

“How did you come here?” She asked.

“I bought a treasure map from an old man in a marketplace. You?”

She pulled her knees to her chest, “I don’t remember. I feel like I’ve always been here, but occasionally my mind wanders and I recall trees, green and vibrant sky. The smiling face of a woman whom I think cared for me…”

“Were you always- “

“A monster?” She interrupted.

“No, I was going to say always here, lost in this place?”

She looks into the fire, “I don’t think so. You must rest. Nothing here will harm you while I am here.”

I could feel her sadness, her desire to belong. “Would you want to lay next to me? Two bodies conduct warmth better than one.”

She looked over at me, “Do you require warmth, human? Other than the fire?”

“Sometimes. It’s a fair bit better than sleeping alone on this cold grey ground. You don’t have to. I just thought you might feel better too. You look lonely.”

She looked away from me and I took that as a “no” answer. “Fair enough, you should consider a name. Mine is Alexi.” I rolled facing away from the fire and from her.

A few moments later, I felt her back against mine. She was still sitting up, watching the fire, but she was next to me.

“Are you asleep, Alexi?” This was the first time she spoke my name.

“Not yet. What is it?”

“I don’t have a name anymore. If I did, I'd long since forgotten it. You would desire to name me.” She whispered.

I smiled, “I will think about it.” I felt her lean into my back and for a time, I slept soundly.

She wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was awkward feeling his breathing slow and steady against her back. Why did he trust her? She wondered. She looked into the fire and for a brief moment, she felt peace. She reasoned that it’d be ok to do this once. She couldn’t allow herself to get attached to another meal and he was indeed another meal. There was no other food in this place.

A few hours passed and he began to stir. She immediately moved to the other side of the fire that was now embers. He stood up and stretched. “Did you rest at all?”

“I have no need for rest.” She speaks quietly.

“Alright then. Let’s get moving. I think we’re on the verge of something. The air doesn’t smell so stale in this direction. I think I will name you Emily.”

Her eyes darted towards him and before she could speak, he smiled. “I just like the name. Is it not acceptable to you?”

She shook her head, “No, it’s fine. I will be Emily until your death. Then I will go back to nothing.”

“So sure, that I’m dying, while I’m here trying to live my hardest.” I chuckled.

She nodded. “It’s only a matter of time. 

I chuckled, “Emily you are ever the optimist. I do love that about you. Let’s continue our journey.”

She nodded and walked quietly by my side and at some point we began to enjoy each other’s company I think. It was unspoken, but occasionally she would smile at my jokes about how horrible I’d taste. Or how I’d need some seasoning to be any good.

After a time, she began to not laugh about it anymore, she seemed almost sad and growing sadder with every passing hour.

“Is there a reason you’re no longer enjoying my company? I ask.

“That is the problem. I enjoy your idiot jokes and lying next to you while you sleep. I am hungry and I no longer wish to eat you. I fear that it will make me sadder than starving.” She spoke quietly.

“So, you’ve grown to like my presence?”

“Yes! Do you see the problem now? I cannot eat someone I like. This was your trick all along wasn’t it?” She frowned.

“It wasn’t my intention, but I am surely glad that you no longer wish to eat me. What would you want to do now? I am running low on rations, and I feel as though we’re making progress. I do not know how much longer it will take for us to work our way out of this place.”

“We must find an alternative source of food. I will search when you rest.” She looked at me as a wife might look when she scolds her husband for being out too late.

 “We’ll be ok. Just let me rest a moment.” I yawned. “I am very tired; it’d be good just to rest a bit.”

She looked away from me, breaking eye contact. “You haven’t been feeding yourself have you?” She asks.

I smiled weakly as I lay down, “You seemed like you needed it more and well, I’m not too worried about myself. If someone is in need, I’m going to do my best to help because it’s the right thing to do.”

I closed my eyes, and as she looked down at me tears began to fall from her eyes. She turned away and walked into the grey. For many hours, I suppose I was alone. I wouldn’t have known. I was exhausted from lack of food and water and a lot closer to death than I would ever care to admit.

Just as things were about to go dark forever, she appeared again. “Alexi, I found it. The way out. Hold on, I will carry you.”

She hefted me with far more ease than I really care to admit and when I finally came too, I was lying against a tree near a creek. She had started a fire, and the smell of fresh fish cooking was what woke me.

“Emily?” I sat up, “You’re still here.”

She turned and smiled sadly at me, “Yes. I am. We’ve found a way through the Grey.”

“But why are you so sad? We’re free!” I ask.

“We’re not, well not really. You see… you’ve died, Alexi. This is. I guess what you’d call an afterlife.” She watched his demeanor closely.

“If I’m dead then why are you here? Why didn’t you eat me?”

“Well, you see, the demon with my face did eat you. It feasted on you and moved onto the next warm creature lost in the Grey. I’m a simulacrum of what you desired most. Someone to save, someone to smile at your jokes and someone to lie next to you on your adventures.”

I looked away, trying to come to terms with the way I died. “So, nothing I did for the creature changed its mind?”

“It waited until you were dead before it ate you. In doing so, the Gods granted you a peaceful death and this place as an afterlife and me as a reward for your kindness.” She handed me a piece of fish.

“Still, it is a shame that she’s still alone in there. Is there nothing we can do about it?”

“Well, there is one thing… but you should just stay here with me.” she said quietly. “Eat, you need your strength.”

“What could I do differently?” I asked. “Please tell me. I need to know.”

“You could choose to become a beast like her. You’d become a Grey Wanderer and feed upon the lost souls that find their way into Lilith’s realm. You would forget all that you were as a human and you would never be allowed back to this place.”

“But I’d be with her? With Emily?”

She nodded, “But Alexi, there’s no reason to believe she would remember you.”

“Let me go back. She was just a creature alone and hungry, I want to be with her.” I say.

“You’ll potentially be starving and forgotten and even alone. Alexi, you should stay here.” The simulacrum pleaded.

“It’s all right. She will remember me. I want to be like her. Let me go back.”

The simulacrum’s face twisted into an evil grin, “So be it. Become a beast like that which feasted on your soul. So that you will then feed on the souls of the lost.” I woke up in the Grey again, not really remembering anything but a faint desire to search for someone. “Who was it again?” I say aloud.

“You’re looking for Emily, she was the creature that ate your human form.”

“Oh, right. The one I fed… I want to find her, so she’s not alone.” I remind myself.

“It’s a lost cause friend. She will never remember you and when you die, she will eat you again.” Says a voice from the shadow.

I turn and look in the direction of the shadow, a cat appears from the darkness. “Are you hindered in some way?”

I smiled, “Only in one way.”

“How is that?” the creature asked.

“I missed you Emily, so I came back to be with you. Let us walk together again.”

She smiled, a toothy smile, “I did not expect you to return. I will eat you again.”

I look over at her and smile, “It’s all right, as long as I’m with you… it doesn’t matter. You’ll never be alone or hungry again.

The two walked off into the Grey together.

“You see, love can be warm and loving or harsh and striking. It can hurt and bleed and can also be as soft as a caress and a gentle touch. If you love deeply, you’ll do anything to make the one you love happy.” Lilith smiles, “I was told that love knows no bounds and sees no distinction of any kind… Could you love someone enough to sustain them? Could you love someone enough to tell them not to bow down to worship you, but to stand by your side? This was my one wish and my love failed me.”

[i-eat-your-pancakes-art]

Update on Through Thick and Thin + Pointing Out TF2's Separate Continuities

First of all, my fic project is moving along well, about 1/3 of the art is done. Not what I'm here to discuss, though.

So it finally happened...damn, I kinda thought comic issue #7 would be coming out around springtime. Merry Christmas to us. I won't go into my thoughts on the comic here, but its surprise release made me realize I should make sure my audience is aware of some distinctions between the game versus the numbered comics issues.

The numbered comics are actually unrelated to my story, and I'll explain why that is. This post will be long, but I feel compelled to make some things clear to everyone who's been following me before I publish the story. I'm the type of writer who really wants her audience to understand her thought process. I dove WAAAAY deep into official statements and material to make sure this post is all accurate, as well as to give myself the peace of mind that my fic can be canon-compliant to the game itself, which is all I care about. This also means that I won't be stepping on the toes of people who prefer to focus more on the comics. That’s a relief because I’d been a bit nervous about putting this story out there.

I want you to know that this fic was written with the game itself's continuity in mind, not the continuity of the numbered comics. Issue #7's release doesn't even affect my fic in any way. So why am I making this distinction? Well, there's something important that a lot of people either forget or never heard in the first place. I blame Valve for not marketing this fact better, but whatever.

Here's the deal. In the official comics, it's stated that TF2, the game, is a "dramatization" of the war between RED and BLU. It makes sense why Valve said this. It's why so much that happens in the numbered comics is never mentioned in the actual game + SFM videos and vice versa. The game and the numbered comics aren't canon to each other since there are differences that make them incompatible. They're two valid but separate continuities told in different mediums/formats.

You could say that the game + SFM shorts and those silly one-off update comics are continuity A, with the original , much loser style of worldbuilding, in which RED and BLU fight each other for territorial control all over the world. And that's all there is to it. There is no one epic plotline or ending to this version of the world. The later comics feature continuity B, which take the characters introduced in the game and put them in a new format with a single, long-running story that eventually ends. The split more or less occurs when Gray and the robots are introduced to give a story reason for the RED vs BLU war to "end."

So, what's the difference and why'd they choose to make the later comics their own new distinct continuity? Read on, and I'll go over some key differences between these continuities for those of you who weren't aware, and then I'll talk about where writing fanfiction (like mine) stands in all of this. This will be long, about two pages of a word doc, so I'm putting the rest under a cut.

The game is said to be a "dramatization" of the RED and BLU conflict that's similar to the "gravel wars" as they're called in the comic universe, but with all classes present on both teams for a total of 18 mercs. It's never explained why, but everyone rolls with it as "just how it is." There doesn't need to be an explanation because it works so well already. It's honestly really funny to think that RED and BLU just so happened to hire a bunch of guys that look exactly alike and it’s never explained. I've seen a lot of people write game-universe fics that propose one team are original mercs and the other team are their clones, created just to fight them. But I always thought it'd be funniest with no clones or whatever, just a series of wacky coincidences in which RED and BLU happen to hire 9 pairs of extremely similar people. It's so absurd and impossible that it fits the silliness of the game perfectly, don't you think? This way, things are so even that the fights are endless. It works out perfectly, so don't overthink it! Just have fun with it like I am.

Meanwhile, the numbered comic issues only ever show 9 individuals, no doubles. In this comic storyline, some were RED and some were BLU before merging to fight Gray. It looks like there'd been 5 REDs and 4 BLUs. Since there are absolutely no duplicate mercs in the comic, different from what had been established in the original game continuity, this just can't be the same setting. The “rules” are different. And that’s why the game and numbered comics are weren’t intended to be the same continuity. It bugs me that more people don't know this. Again, I blame Valve for not advertising that better.

And of course the older, non-numbered, one-off silly comics that were released to go along with game updates aren't to be lumped in with the numbered issue comics and what builds up to them with Gray and the Robots. Those have featured members of both teams and are tied to the game itself, which they were created to promote. They’re part of continuity A. The same goes for the Meet the Team videos and Expiration Date. Notably, these feature some mercs (like RED Engie or some of the BLUs) that don't even exist in the continuity B of the numbered comics, so that’s why they aren't connected.

It makes sense why the numbered comic issues had to go the route they did with no doubles because it would've been very confusing to have 18 of them running around in the story, especially if they were all look a-likes. The story is kind of a mess already, imagine twice that mess! The plot would've suffered for it. But it's the reason why those comics aren't meant to be the same setting. It’s clear: all 9 of RED team and all 9 of BLU team are real only in the game itself’s universe which has a much looser set of rules.

I won't lie, I’m only interested in writing for what I see in the game’s universe instead of for the numbered comic issues. There's far fewer things to restrict you and more freedom to make the scenario you want because the game continuity has no ending, just a series of shorts that go along with it. There's plenty of fun stuff to work with in this version of the world but no definite end to the game itself. Just countless fights across countless maps. The comic issues never mention the mercs fighting anywhere besides some of the spots in and around Teufort, NM. Meanwhile, the game takes us to other regions, continents, and even outer space! We don't even know what order the teams could've visited all the maps in or who won which fights where. We’re not supposed to know who wins. That's for the outcome of each individual match to decide! The game versions of the setting and mercs leaves much more creative room to work with.

Here's how I look at it: The numbered comic issues tell one long, winding story. Meanwhile, the game's method of storytelling is just like a really violent cartoon with random, unrelated episodes as told by the shorts and matches ingame. If you have an idea for a story but you've hesitated because it'd clash with the numbered comics' storyline, like I once did, I hope this has encouraged you to look at it another way. Word of God says they’re two separate continuities. Just use the game's version as your setting! There's so much potential there!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now for why I felt the need to blab about all this...I chose to use the game's setting for my fanfic because the numbered comics' plot is far more defined and doesn't leave room for what I wanted to accomplish. RED Engie and BLU Sniper don't exist in the numbered comics, which sucks because you can't write them always being on the same team in that universe. One could use RED Sniper and BLU Engie for it, in fact I know I've seen people do that. For me personally, so much happens in the numbered comics that it would just complicate things too much to try this route. There's a chance that the comic's version of "Mick" and "Dell" strike up a friendship in the midst of all the chaos of the comic but that's too complicated for me to want to touch. (The ending makes that outcome possible, but I would get a headache trying to shoehorn my own story into all of that. I also don’t wanna put up with all the angst in the comics.) I tip my hat to those of you who write your fics in the comics universe. I'll just stick to the game, which I'm actually very happy with because of the freedom it allows. I like this version of "canon" better anyway, but that's just my preference.

It's still unrelated to my fic, but to end this I'll go ahead and shout out that Valve actually threw me one last bone: Engie and Sniper sitting right next to each other once again at the dinner table in the final comic scene. I'll take it. :) They've been shown next to each other enough times to make me wonder if someone at Valve shares my feelings on these two, as well. That's probably me reading too much into it, but hey, it's fun to speculate.

TL;DR my fic with RED Engie and Sniper is meant for the setting of the main game/SFM shorts universe, not the universe of the numbered comics. Remember, they're canonically two separate canons!

I'll probably be adding a shorter version of what I just wrote to the author's notes of the fic once it's published so that everyone who reads it will be aware. Both canons are fictional to us, so we can all choose whichever version of canon we want to focus on in our fan works and discussion. I'm glad I can say that, because it means my fic will be canon-compliant to what I care about most: the game that's had a hold on my heart for the past 14 years. The comics look fantastic and tell a compelling story many years in the making, but they aren't the canon I prefer to focus on. But that's just me.

If you read this whole thing, thank you for sticking with me. It means a lot to know that people still take interest in my work and read my ramblings!

[namor-shuri]

Did you see that recent post about your page? Antis are so funny 😭

I’m crying because after I posted that meme post yesterday, I was scrolling through the Nashuri tag and then saw it 🥴 I literally made a dumb meme joking about Antis saying we need to be locked up, and didn’t realize someone literally said that hours prior. It doesn’t get better than that rofl. What’s sending me was their initial outrage of Nashuri [which babe, have you been living under a rock?], then the assumption that I romantically ship Tenoch & Tish from a quick bio glance, THEN after all of the “horror” and “shock”, they proceed to not block me. You’re telling me you posted screenshots of you blocking my page to ultimately not…..block……me? Righhhhhhhttttttt *rubs temples*

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I literally don’t owe anyone this BUT this is for the folks that are new to my blog/Nashuri fandom/etc:

#1. Hey 💜 This is BOTH a Nashuri [Namor x Shuri] blog AND Tenoch Huerta + Letitia Wright appreciation blog. What does that mean? It means my blog is about anything related to A. Tenoch Huerta + his life/roles etc B. Letitia Wright + her life/roles etc and C. Their adorable dynamic together. It’s a hodgepodge of random stuff. One big ice cream shop where you can pick your flavor of choice. So Nashuri shippers interact with me, Namor fans, Shuri fans , Letitia, Tenoch and so on. You get the idea. I love how open-ended my page is and that’s why I made it that way in the first place. Everyone is welcome here and can walk away with a little bit of something. For being such a miscellaneous page, I would say the only “agenda” I push is Nashuri [it’s in my name]. The rest of my content is up to your own personal interpretation/assumptions. What you think I’m pushing or trying to say is all your take and your take alone, beloved. It has nothing to do with me.

#2. I admit that my mouth has gotten me in a little bit of trouble over the years lol. I was literally that little kid that came back with a report card with straight A’s that had a teacher’s note on the side saying “Talks too much in class”. I think and say shit ALL. THE. TIME rofl Yes, I sprinkle in deep rants and knowledgeable takes on my blog but I made this page to be a menace. I’m only here to be entertained. A majority of my page are jokes and tomfoolery. The complete opposite of “be for real”. How can I be when I’m literally shipping a fictional fish stick and a fictional woman in a cat suit?? 🤣 I’ve spoken about it before but I’m also an artist [my professional work is 1000% unrelated to this page/content lol] so alot of my page is also random graphics and stuff like that too. I love making y’all and myself laugh and it’s been enjoyable af interacting with you, especially the Nashuri fandom. Y’all are straight up comedians and say the funniest shit, which then makes me want to say even more wild shit and then it becomes a snowball effect lol. Thankfully I can tell a majority of you who do follow/interact with me are grown so you’ve picked up by now that most of my blog is A BIT. But unfortunately there’s always going to be a sprinkle of people who are clearly young, new here or just folks that don’t get my sense of humor whatsoever. And whichever category you fall under it’s okay, but babes there are a lot of 18+ jokes/comments on my page so if you are someone that is underage and or gets easily offended, please do yourself a favor and stay clear. I mean that in the nicest way possible.

#3. I wrote this on a reblog to someone’s post recently but I have a large portion of blogs blocked on the tags that I follow on here. Life has been ✨𝒷𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓈𝒻𝓊𝓁✨ ever since and it only takes .2 seconds out of your day to do it. So when I don’t see people utilize the block button, I just know their not being fr and are clearly bored. If you don’t like my content, block/mute me. Simple as that. Because chances are, I’ve probably already blocked you by now. And to the people I haven’t, I either A. enjoy/interact with the content you make or B. don’t care for it but you usually stay out of my lane and I stay out of yours so we just coexist. It’s that black and white. You don’t have to like what someone posts but what isn’t cool is bothering/targeting someone on an app strictly because of that. What are you five? This feels like a lesson we learned in elementary school. It’s not rocket science and it’s never that serious. The world does not revolve around you nor adhere to things only you deem okay. It’s much bigger than that. Get a grip, go drink some water, eat something and make sure to touch some grass today while you’re at it.

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Shout out to that page tho! I literally gained new followers after that, so…..thank you? 😅 What a time to be alive. But for real, ya’ll have been coming out of nowhere to support and it’s been super dope. I really appreciate all the love, especially for being such a new page. I’m looking forward to future shenanigans, continuing the fun and not taking shit too seriously per usual. Live your best life, folks. Don’t let anyone rain on your parade. Life is WAY too short for that.

Ps: To my new followers, check out the post pinned to my page here. It’s a great “intro” into the Nashuri fandom and or actors Tenoch Huerta / Letitia Wright. Some things might be a little old but it’s pretty useful for the most part. My old poll results post gives you a slight idea of me as well. See y’all around ✌🏾💗

[theothersarshi]

I don't want to derail @theshitpostcalligrapher's post, so I'll make my own. Anyway, they were really nice to @theworseshitpostcalligrapher on this post, where the latter rewrote the same three words in a similar style in a reblog. (So it's really nice all around - there's acknowledgement of what's going on, there's approval, there's building up.)

And I wanted to share a story.

Back when I was in primary & middle school (grades 1-8 over here in Romania), I was a very, very earnest kid, a bit naive, but when I loved people or things, I really loved them. Keep that in mind for what happens next.

We had 1 hour of Art class/week all throughout middle school, but our middle school Art teacher Did. Not. Teach. I can't emphasize how much teaching didn't happen. We had to have watercolors/tempera and a paint brush, and he'd tell us things like, "Paint something Olympics-themed" or "Draw something for the local theater festival". Then we'd get grades based on how nice our paintings/drawings were. That was it. That was all.

...I found out things like the human body having proportions only when I was already a student, while talking to my future bff. I found out tempera isn't "watercolors, but in a tube" even later. But never mind that.

My middle school best friend had talent, though. She was naturally Good At Art and she came up with this amazing style (well, amazing to us 12 yos) where she made up big drawings out of tiny pencil doodles - asterisks and spirals were among her favorites, I think. It was not quite like typewriter art, because her doodles didn't overlap, but typewriter art + Pointilism + doodles is the best way I can describe it. The rest of us hadn't even thought about using a pencil.

I was in love. And I could sort of understand how she did it, so I started... copying that. I wanted to try it out for myself, do the thing. I changed the basic doodle shapes, but I kept the general idea. (I would have preferred something realistic and colorful, but I had no idea how to do any of that; see: teaching, not happening)

My colleagues called me a copycat (understandable). My mother called me a copycat (*sigh*). Even my teacher called me a copycat (I'm wondering vaguely if that's why he never taught anything, so we'd never end up copying a style we saw, *le gasp*). One must never, ever do what someone else is doing! ORIGINALITY!!!ONE! Figure it out yourself, in your own way!

Adult!Me thinks our teacher could have used this as a Teachable Moment to talk about why her drawings worked and to point us in the direction of similar artists or whatever. Or maybe he could have realized I wanted to learn something and pointed me in the direction of, I don't know, a book about how to draw, maybe. If he didn't want to teach his class himself. But I digress.

I was left feeling bad and like a complete loser. My best friend at the time mocked me, too, because of course she did. As far as I know, when we got to high school she never drew again (we were no longer friends by then, due to unrelated reasons).

It feels particularly wonderful to me to come across people actively encouraging and helping each other to learn, even if they're walking paths others have walked before. I never learned how to draw, but I did learn how to write stories, and there's a lot of fumbling around and imitating others to see what works and why before you become good. It takes so much practice. It's hard.

And sometimes maybe you just want to do The Thing for yourself, and that's also fine. Who the heck cares if you decide to have your own Van Gogh-style painting of your own bedroom on the wall of your bedroom?

Anyway, it makes me so happy when I see creatives being creative and sharing things with others. It's probably very flattering to be the only one at the lonely top, but when you have a community and you can learn from others, everyone wins more.

[suolainensilakka]

favorite kingdom hearts characters. for science

WELL, gently taps the current pinned post of this blog, that one's a freebie ^__^

Anyway. BOY ranking them all is really hard bc so many characters in the series have permanently set up camp in my head by now and arent particularly inclined to leave any time soon, but if I had to list off just a couple examples that have caused me the most brain damage so far, itd be:

- Terra, hands down my number 1 most specialest guy in the whole world. Instantly became enamored with him from the moment I first set eyes on him and then proceeded to have all of my ribs carefully and meticulously pulled out of my chest one by one throughout the entirety of bbs and the entire rest of the series after that. Its so dire man I literally cannot look at any images of him now without physically having to hold myself back from making a long strangled whine Out Loud With My Mouth every time

- the entire Wayfinder Trio as a collective unit + Vanitas also tbh. Terra's obviously my Primary Favorite but the wayfinders as a whole also make my heart hurt so fucking bad man. My partner and I choose to interpret them all as siblings bc it leads to some exceptionally delicious and painful rs dynamics to explore imo and something abt it just makes The Miseries hit that much harder in ways that have literally had me writhing on the couch with a thousand yard stare rapidly cycling through the five stages of grief on loop. I'm also counting Vanitas as part of the unit bc he's just so closely tied to Ven in my brain that separating them (lol.) feels Wrong (lmao.), and. God. Vanitas might just be one of THE most tragic characters in literally any media I've experienced and I say this without a single hint of irony. The current total wordcount of the rps that I've written abt the wayfinders with my partner so far has probably shot past 50k by now. Why am I hurds

- Kairi. I was originally mostly ambivalent/neutrally intrigued abt her but kept getting increasingly more pissed abt her treatment and constant sidelining by the writing to the point where I got to kh3/mom and something in me snapped entirely, and from that moment onwards I decided to love her entirely out of spite. She instantly shot up to become one of my favorites after that and if I think abt her meta and story potential for longer than five minutes at a time I start frothing at the mouth

- Sora, naturally. I have so so so so many thoughts on this little darling boy that could easily double the wordcount of this ask just by themselves but the most important thing to mention here in lieu of that, for now, is that he's is the One (1) and ONLY child ive ever seen, whether real or fictional, that has made me experience emotions anywhere Close to resembling baby fever. I want to dribble him like a basketball but also gently pinch his cheek affectionately and also spoil him silly like a grandma seeing her beloved grandson again for the first time in months

- Xigbar. This fucko is the one I'm the most mad about ending up liking as much as I do, not because hes a bad character, absolutely far from it I fucking ADORE this terrible bodyhopping little cunt, but because it happened by complete accident after I realized he shares a lot of (surface) similarities with my favorite blorbo from another entirely unrelated franchise and I then got mad about realizing I have a very easily clockable Type (which I've affectionately dubbed the Guys That Suck category. I have more too obv but its the funniest one I have). He's also infuriatingly fun to write. Get me OUT of here

- Xemnas, Terranort and Ansem SoD. Everyone in the Nort Collective counts tbh but those three are the ones I lose sleep over the most, particularly the first two; Xemnas bc he makes me feel an unfathomably deep and haunting sense of grief (brought on by me finishing bbs and then realizing days later the exact way his creation connects to Terra's story and hearing the sound of fucking glass shattering at the back of my head instantly), and Terranort bc I'm fucking terrified of him and he also makes me want to eat gravel whenever I think abt him in context with him interacting with the rest of the wayfinders. He's also really fun to write and this fact Upsets Me. Ansem's listed bc you can never go wrong with the ol reliable mad scientist. The rest of the norts I would probably also be a lot more insane over once I actually get off my damn ass and start picking through the mobile games but that's an endeavor for Future Salty (i am very excited and terrified)

- the Lingering Will. I'm counting it as a separate entity from Terra and the rest of the Terra Collective on a technicality bc (LOUD TELEVISION STATIC AS I GESTURE FRANTICALLY AND FURIOUSLY @ THE JUMBLED BALL OF YARN LABELED "my thoughts on the physical and psychological effects of being a guy who got his soul and entire being shattered into like five million distinct pieces for over 10 Whole Entire Years" THAT I HAVE NOT EXPLAINED THE ENTIRETY OF TO A SINGLE OTHER SOUL ON EARTH) but. Eah. This fucking haunted hunk of metal has been eating holes through my brain tissue ever since I first saw the kh2 secret superboss and I'm distraught over it every single day of my life. This thing is like a weird bug to me. Do you understand. (tearign up) Do you get me. Do I have to pull out the Lingering Will/The Hollow Knight venn diagram

And as for the other fuckos haunting my cranium on the daily I can only mention a couple other honorary picks that honestly could also very well have made it to the main list if not for the fact that this post is already long enough as it is, and these following characters are therefore mostly delegated to Sleeper Agent Blorbos who I don't think about QUITE as often as the ones listed above but whenever I Do I get just as distraught and ailed over them. Anyway, shoutout to the entire Seasalt Trio, Demyx, Riku, Repliku, Naminé and Saïx and probably many others I'm forgetting rn bc it is currently 2 am and I'm running on approximately 5-6 hours of sleep and a prayer 👍 god bless and amen

[like-a-dragon-residence]

Hi yea. Its Alley. I'm here to ramble about a book but swear this post will actually be about Yakuza in the end so stick with me.

Reading a book and it's this brief moment just a few exchanged lines between these two characters but I just know how deeper it goes for the one and the significance of what he said.

Basically, the one character took in a kid and it's been a rough time not only suddenly finding himself thrust into parenthood but also the care of a kid traumatized by the same events he also experienced and so unhealthily wants to bottle away. A friend asked him how the kid was and he very joyfully replied "She slept though the night last night. All by herself" which this isn't stated but like its a big deal for a kid adjusting to a lot of life changes thanks to bad things happening around her. The nightly fight both kid and adoptive dad fight is a battle of the age between her not able to fall asleep and nightmares, ect. For her to sleep though the night? That's a big win! And then the friend sorta just throws at him "yeah but don't all nine-year-olds do that?" and okay moment is gone.

So onto Yakuza now. Both canon and fandom kinda brush past somethings even with the want to see more parent Kiryu and more young Haruka. But I just realized myself thanks to that other unrelated random thing that oh yeah yikes there is a lot of unspoken stuff going on especially in that early time of them together. Kids even in the best of circumstances have nightmares. We all do. But for someone who's seen so much death and danger? And a young age? Yeah, no kid had issues for sure. Haruka definitely had nightmares. But to what extent? How bad were they? How frequent were they? Did she wake Kiryu ever on accident or on purpose? How did he deal with all this? Was there more than just the nightmares? For reference it's not just nightmares that someone can experience in that situation it's trouble falling asleep or going off to your room on your own as a form of seperation anxiety, trouble staying asleep, sleepwalking or talking, screaming without memory of a bad dream, even bed wetting. And these are just night responses.

The nightly battle was certainly real for them. It's just as much a part of Kiryu and Haruka's story as it is for the characters in that book. So all this rambling to say I pictured Kiryu in that scene. Just tired yet still well-rested face beaming as he exclaims she slept through the night... And no one in the room but him understands why it's such a big deal for a nine-year-old to sleep through the night. But it is. It's a huge deal.

[onyxisnotuniqueenough]

am i really the only one getting this icky feeling in my chest when i read thirstposts about celebrities. like i can understand it until it gets sexual and stalker-y and so so obsessed. digging into private family member's instagram, searching up marriage certificates, posting practically naked models or a pic of like a lone mitten or something and tagging it "outfits to put this celebrity in", talking constantly about their body -- 100x times more than the actual show you're a fan of, writing/encouraging followers to read smut for CHILD/TEEN actors, using ai to put celebrities' faces on nsfw content, etc.

LIKE HUH!! WHAT!! HOW IS THIS ALLOWED AND *ENCOURAGED* FAN BEHAVIOR!! AND WHY ARE NORMALIZING IT TO THE POINT WHERE PEOPLE WHO'D NEVER DO THAT *START* DOING THAT!! OUT OF FEAR OF NOT BEING GOOD ENOUGH OF A FAN OF THE MEDIA!!!!

I myself literally used to force myself to pick someone from shows or bands to like romantically or to be attracted to. i'd look for the most attractive one out of the options i had and just read fanfic for them. even if I didn't have any attraction to the character whatsoever

it took me a while to realize that i don't like andrew garfield, charlie cox, chris evans, joe keery or their characters ROMANTICALLY i just related to them or was jealous of their love interest's ability to charm anyone they wanted, even these kind and conventionally attractive guys that i could never "pull". (the only genuine (i think) celebrity/fictional crush i've ever had in the last 4 or 5 years is jess mariano from gilmore girls)

i think the rest of the characters/celebrities that i had actual crushes throughout my life on are so so few i could count them on my hand. and even when I did like someone, fanfiction did nothing for me (for unrelated personal reasons) and i still forced myself to read them. i forced myself to search things up about them remember facts about them, etc, all because the people i saw online were so obsessed that i felt left out not knowing much

I could write a whole thesis on celebrities, being a fan, religion, dictators, kings and political figures and what it means to be human, and i probably will, but for now let me just say this

CELEBRITIES EAT, SHIT, PRAY, DANCE, TRIP, STUTTER, SWEAT, AND SLEEP JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. FICTIONAL CHARACTERS ARE NOT REAL. STOP ENCOURAGING UNHEALTHY AND CONCERNING OBSESSION WITH PEOPLE YOU *DON'T* AND WILL *NEVER KNOW* !!!!!! LIVE YOUR LIVES INSTEAD OF BUILDING/SCHEDULING YOUR LIFE AROUND STRANGERS!!!!!!! AND DON'T FORCE YOURSELF TO DO ANYTHING THAT ISN'T HEALTHY/ENJOYABLE FOR YOU BECAUSE OF YOUR FOMO!!!!!!!!!

[goldsrc-hl1]

All the stuff about Tifa is right, Miles was an ass with that comment. Post Volume 3 all the main girls except Ruby are 18 so they're not children.

But the rest of this... holy shit...

"Also not to stun your pee brain, but writing racism as "If we want respect and equality then we have to forgive our bigot overlords and defend them with not even a thank you." Is stupid, that be like me telling you that if you want minorities forgiveness, go fight cops, or me going to england and saying that. Blake tells unrelated faunus to fight armed dudes and the writers are stupid. And the overall issue is HBomberguy was right! In his review he stated that he was afraid that a certain group of people would look at how the faunus act and go "yeah that's how They are" uncharitable takes exist."

RWBY quite literally does not have this message. It openly states that it does not have a method for achieving equality.

Blake: Humans didn't do this. We did this: Faunus. We did this to ourselves. We are just as capable of hate and violence as the humans, but I don't think any of us would jump at the chance to point that out. So why are we letting Adam do it for us?! By doing nothing and staying silent, we let others speak and act in our place. And if we're not proud of the choices they make, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. This is the message that Adam Taurus will bring to the world if no one stops him. But we can stop him! You have to understand that all of you are looking for simple answers to a very complicated problem. And I can't give that to you. I don't know how to make hate go away, I don't. But I know that this kind of violence is not the solution. I understand that to ask you to leave your homes and protect Haven Academy is asking you to put your lives at risk. But that's what's at stake. So I'm going, and I'll stand by myself if I have to.

It is NOT at all framed as a solution to racism. It may help sway some Mistrali citizens, but it's not gonna end racism in Mistral. The bigger message here is that the Faunus are letting Adam Taurus speak for them, and since he is a walking Faunus caricature, people who previously did not hate the Faunus are growing to hate them. That has to be stopped, and Blake has the chance to do so. So she does, and she successfully reclaims the White Fang along with her father. It's open ended on how her father manages the new White Fang, so we'll have to wait and see how that turns out.

"Oh how about bumblbee? With Yang literally saying she viewed Blake as an object and wanted her around for her solely? You know fuck what Blake wants! Blaming Blake for running in fear when WF ruin a nation and Adam states he'll kill everyone she loves and he knows exactly where her parents are? Perish the thought, that sounds like something a scared child would exactly do! But Yang goes "No despite us not officially dating yet I'm owed her time and presence.""

Good fucking lord.

Yang has genuine abandonment issues. When she needed help the most, the one person she has confided in about her abandonment issues did just that - abandoned her. Yang doesn't understand why Blake did such a thing, and she's distraught, angry, and most of all, sad, about Blake abandoning her.

Once Weiss explains why she thinks Blake left, Yang comes around and realizes Blake did so because she wanted to protect her, and the first time Blake shows up, Yang is totally fine with her.

It's hard to tell what you mean by any of this but I think you're shaming her for being mad at Blake for abandoning her in which case... seriously? Yang has abandonment issues and confided in Blake that her mother abandoned her. She sacrificed her literal fucking arm for Blake. And Blake ran. I'd be pretty pissed as well.

Have you no empathy?

Yang, not even once, said she viewed Blake as an object or that she wanted her around for her solely. Literally where are you getting that from. She says, direct quote:

Yang: No one blamed her for anything! If she had just talked to us, she would've known that! How could I be there for her if she doesn't let me? What if I needed her here for me?

Nowhere does she say she needs Blake for her solely. That's a strawman, which is a logical fallacy.

I can't even begin to guess where you got the idea that Yang said she thinks Blake is an object so I don't know how to counter it other than telling you that you're dead fucking wrong lol.

"Yang's shitty, and it takes how long for them to get together? They don't even wait until adam cold before Yang claims her, after abusing her mentally when Blake tells her Adam likes to make you feel small and she brushes her off and is like "stop talking to me." Then they kiss what? THIS year? 2023? In volume 3 sun's winking at her and she's blushing and smiling and calling him a dork and they're hanging out, and I'm sitting here going "Do some of that for yang? All they did was share a dance, have her flirt with her or wink, something." And what she compliments her hair once? Granted I stopped after 7/8 so I bet the best LGBT rep happ- This just in, I'm getting word from my friends in the LGBT community who watched rwby saying that it's dogshit.

Yang isn't shitty at all. Already explained.

Yang doesn't brush her off after Blake tells her about Adam, she brushes her off after Blake says she'll protect Yang. Yang doesn't like being protected, it makes her feel lesser. This is also amplified by the Apathy living underneath Brunswick Farms.

IDK if you even watched the show cause they do that for Yang and Blake as well. Yang and Blake go out dancing in V7, constantly work together, compliment each other (and blush at said compliments), hell, there's even a scene of Yang slyly looking at Blake's ass lmfao. There's a fuckton of stuff with them.

Your friend is wrong.

"Having tons of LBGT characters doesn't matter if you write them like trash I guess, btw the first kiss happened in volume 9 in 2023 and rwby started in 015 and again sun flirts, winks etc and they show alot of chemistry with each other."

It's a slow burn. There's chemistry with Sun and Blake, that relationship doesn't work out, and after v6 there's chemistry between Yang and Blake.

"Yang gets mad, demands blake be there when EVERYONE else is going back home too! Trauma dumps on her after using a laser pointer on her when Blake admits that she's tired of dealing with racism."

This is another strawman and one dead lie. Yang did not demand that Blake be there. Believe it or not, traumatized people usually need help, and when she needed help the most, Blake left.

Yang: No one blamed her for anything! If she had just talked to us, she would've known that! How could I be there for her if she doesn't let me? What if I needed her here for me?

This is not a demand.

Blake's problem was not racism, it was that she was worried about Roman Torchwick and the White Fang.

"Like instead of talking to her, Yang treats her like an animal an laughs it off then trauma dumps about her mom on her while blake is already highly stressed. Doesn't even solve the problem btw. All the LGBT characters thus far (besides Jaune's sister and her girlfriend, they can stay, sadly they're trapped in a shitty show) are horribly written for no reason."

Literally one of the big parts of the problem was that Blake wasn't talking to them and was pushing them all away to try and stop Torchwick and the White Fang. She has to force Blake to listen in order to help her. The trauma dumping was done in order to help her. The problem was that she was overworking herself to the point of self destructive behavior, and after their talk, the problem IS solved.

I gotta ask if you even watched this show.

Laser pointer bit is done to get Blake to actually confront Yang so she can help her. Blake needed help, was refusing help, so Yang has to go out of her way to help her.

They are not horribly written.

"Or the second Rep LGBT character Illia! A woman who took her crush and was gonna- *Looks at paper* Send her to her abuser while also blaming her for dating someone and not knowing her romantic feelings."

Ilia is pretty clearly no longer interested in Blake.

Miles stuff is good. I don't care for defending the writers of the show, only the writing itself.

So I didn't hyjack this poor person's post over [here.]

I thought making my own post would be the most logical conclusion. So it takes alot in my opinion to bury your head in the ground and pretend like you smart when you're so overly stupid.

Here's a discussion I had with a person where alot of alarming and stupid things were said on his part. @/crimsonxe

Well go through small sections, that's a lie, you know I'm long winded.

Here's a section where he states that writing about killing, maiming, and calling minorities bad isn't nearly as bad. I mentioned Miles calling Tifa a prostitute as well and I don't think he's getting it.

Manner of dress:

The problem isn't getting over it or not, the issue with calling remake Tifa a prosisitue is that she dresses more modest than the rwby cast, he has children with short skirts, no pants under and boob windows in frozen tundra. If he thinks THIS is provocative,

then him okaying THESE

designs on children is something he's mentally aware of! also weiss spends most of her time in that outfit in a frozen wasteland and then COMPLAINS about being cold!

Get over it? More like Have enough common sense not to post stuff like that. A wise man once said "just because you think of a tweet doesn't mean you have to hit send." (Also he says it's not fanservicey, need I remind everyone they sell a ruby body pillow, Yang always had her tits out and then as time goes on they start losing more and more clothing. Not fanservice my ass!)

Grown man argument for sexualizing teen girls.

"They don't go overboard." Here's a picture of a woman wearing chainmail on her bare skin in the desert, there's a difference between puritanical and horny silly designs after them saying shit like "we won't do the stupid stuff anime does" and then having the whole cast of female characters with their tits and ass out.

Also not to stun your pee brain, but writing racism as "If we want respect and equality then we have to forgive our bigot overlords and defend them with not even a thank you." Is stupid, that be like me telling you that if you want minorities forgiveness, go fight cops, or me going to england and saying that. Blake tells unrelated faunus to fight armed dudes and the writers are stupid. And the overall issue is HBomberguy was right! In his review he stated that he was afraid that a certain group of people would look at how the faunus act and go "yeah that's how They are" uncharitable takes exist.

And he was right a bunch of RWBY stans who were racist before vanishing literally came around going "boy did miles and kerry get you guys pegged, you're all exactly like this!" During the 98% most peaceful protesting age, well unless your a cop who wants to shoot out someone's eyes.

The LGBT pair (s)?

Yeah like the cardboard cutout guys miles pouted about when he didn't get credit for putting out there after people in the LGBT community asked when were the LGBT characters gonna appear.

The first Gay rep in the show was two unrelated characters we'd never see again after saying "characters" just don't promise things then lie forehead!

Or the second Rep LGBT character Illia! A woman who took her crush and was gonna- *Looks at paper* Send her to her abuser while also blaming her for dating someone and not knowing her romantic feelings.

"I guess you were too busy looking at Adam to notice me."

Yeah great first cardboard then a woman willing to kill off her her crushes family and blames her crush for not knowing she had a crush on her!

Oh how about bumblbee? With Yang literally saying she viewed Blake as an object and wanted her around for her solely? You know fuck what Blake wants! Blaming Blake for running in fear when WF ruin a nation and Adam states he'll kill everyone she loves and he knows exactly where her parents are? Perish the thought, that sounds like something a scared child would exactly do! But Yang goes "No despite us not officially dating yet I'm owed her time and presence.

Yang's shitty, and it takes how long for them to get together? They don't even wait until adam cold before Yang claims her, after abusing her mentally when Blake tells her Adam likes to make you feel small and she brushes her off and is like "stop talking to me." Then they kiss what? THIS year? 2023? In volume 3 sun's winking at her and she's blushing and smiling and calling him a dork and they're hanging out, and I'm sitting here going "Do some of that for yang? All they did was share a dance, have her flirt with her or wink, something." And what she compliments her hair once? Granted I stopped after 7/8 so I bet the best LGBT rep happ- This just in, I'm getting word from my friends in the LGBT community who watched rwby saying that it's dogshit.

Having tons of LBGT characters doesn't matter if you write them like trash I guess, btw the first kiss happened in volume 9 in 2023 and rwby started in 015 and again sun flirts, winks etc and they show alot of chemistry with each other.

Yang gets mad, demands blake be there when EVERYONE else is going back home too! Trauma dumps on her after using a laser pointer on her when Blake admits that she's tired of dealing with racism.

Like instead of talking to her, Yang treats her like an animal an laughs it off then trauma dumps about her mom on her while blake is already highly stressed. Doesn't even solve the problem btw. All the LGBT characters thus far (besides Jaune's sister and her girlfriend, they can stay, sadly they're trapped in a shitty show) are horribly written for no reason.

A second writer should look at these before they hit the screen.

Racism

He talks about a south park reference which I ignored cause it's so random?

racist dog whistling.

"Mika burton spun things a certain way." Nah there's tweets w of people admitting they fucked up and the achievement hunters go online , they bring her on a podcast and pretend to cry so people can feel bad for them. And good for her she doesn't forgive them. So spinning around? How about a source? Source can't be that you made it the fuck up cause that's not a source it's a sentence wasting everyone's time.

Also "Mile's isn't white." Aw man what am I gonna tell mile's white parent? Sorry some dude on the internet said your son can't be half white, sorry me I can't be half black, or Hawaiian, Sorry Miles because you look more black your Hispanic traits don't matter for the sake of the argument. What kinda of Juvenile , stupid statement IS this? He can't be white because you say so? But he calls himself white in many tweets and literally in the statement of writing racism in RWBY.

Also nice try, moving the goalpost means you can't lose. "I'm not defending him, now watch as I waste time defending him instead of finding a source against Mika's claims cause I'm bullshitting." I mean Mika doesn't even have a reason to lie, RT employees all admitted they heard and did nothing, Torian a black animator and editor also stated he had race issues with RT and Pat boivan from Castle super beast and pat stares at made a black joke that Miles and select few members laughed at in terms of them having no black or brown people working there. And they ignore woolie when it comes to sponsored stuff, he literally says this on multiple episodes of his show, and THAT's Worrying!

Point is if Miles himself is racist, weather he's white, Hispanic, black etc he still displayed racist behavior multiple times too many. He had a chance to say something to his employees, he didn't bother, he got nervous and waked off. He had the chance when he put BLM after the lashings he got and do something with that, change the company for the better etc, but he didn't he put it there as a band-aid and took it off when he thought people weren't looking.

I keep beating this dead horse because people like you don't seem to do research at all! Because in the face of it it's easier to lie, play dumb (pffft 'play') and make excuses for them instead of holding them accountable.

I didn't want to see RT burn down for a while, but they keep pulling a blizzard, and all these, tweets, articles, statements that miles or the others say or do that's stupid, harmful, racist, shitty keep popping up! At this point it be better as a lesson not to be shitty humans for RT to quietly burn, no special treatment, I'm holding them to the same standard I do for David cage, for activation Blizzard and many other triple A companies. If you don't wanna go down in flames, maybe don't do reprehensible things that keep burning bridges for you. Simple, don't be stupid forhead!

The real mornic stuff was listening to you try and fail at mental gymnastics and not provide a single source for anything you claimed I should "be in awe" of or switching the goal post. RT.s failing and they stacked the deck against themselves, THAT's why people hate them, statements like they saying that when yang drives down the crossroads to Mistral and people guessing she's going to Ruby only for them to like and say "if you heard the bike go one way." These critics, video's, and articles don't exist for no reason.

Pathetic, utterly pathetic, you boasted a big game , puffed out your chest and then walked straight into a cold clock and got your ass handed to you for several rounds. For someone who boasted about "getting in the ring" No flatter yourself, you weren't even competiton.

[rai-knightshade-art]

"I missed you."

"....I missed you, too."

Prompt #2, Pitch Perfect RarePair Week

This scene now has a Part 2! Check it out here!

Artist thoughts, links to the other prompt days, and a Close Up under the cut, Image ID in the alt text!

*drags myself in out of sheer force of will, collapsing immediately on the floor, holding this post aloft like a hard-won trophy* I did it. I got the drawing for today's prompt done. Here you go.

So, backstory: this is technically related to what will now be three posts later this week (because there's supposed to be a second part of this drawing based on Prompt #7, "I can't say it so I'll sing it", that will now be posted along with my original unrelated idea for #7 on Sunday), all of which are based on a fanfic I've been writing for a couple months now. Said fic (and two of the three posts) is Jeca-centered, but it's based in a little pocket verse that has a LOT more going on in it than just their whole... Thing, and that includes other RarePairs hanging out and generally being adorable in the background. (This includes all of the rarepairs I'm featuring this week, btw.)

Enter Chaubrey, who have their own side story going on that includes at least one gay panic (Aubrey), years of pining (Chloe, literally from their freshman year at Barden onwards), a mutual realization of "holy shit there might be something here, actually!" (Seen above, more on that below), a few months of hesitant flirting and maybe-sorta-kinda dates, and, finally, a reveal of feelings through meaningful glances during a duet featuring the rest of the Bellas (and a subsequent mutual decision to sneak off and talk things through after... Which may or may not lead to smooching in a broom closet somewhere. Maybe. Yes, Fat Amy finds them, and, no, she never lets them hear the end of it, even at their wedding a year later). It's a lot, is what I'm getting at here, that unfortunately goes mostly unsaid in-story due to the POV(s) I'm writing in, but I felt it was important that y'all know about it anyways because they live in my head rent free. Constantly. So.

Now, as for this scene specifically: set roughly 1 and a half years after PP3, Aubrey and Chloe are helping Beca pick out a wedding outfit as the Chief Bridesmaid and Maid of Honor, respectively (a position that Chloe threatened to fight Fat Amy for until Beca, in fear of "the Kraken has been unleashed!", declared that Chloe was Maid of Honor and Fat Amy would officiate, end of story), a month or two after Beca announced her engagement via a group zoom call (and Chloe's excited reaction subsequently provoked a Gay Panic™ in Aubrey as she suddenly had the realization that "I want to see her smile like that for the rest of my life", a Totally Normal and Measured Reaction to have for your best friend of course). Stacie would help but she's trying to wrangle a flower girl dress for little Bella across the country in New York, and Emily is splitting her time between song writing and helping with other logistics ("I've been researching venues, did you know there's actually an old movie theatre here in LA that can be rented out for weddings?" "rEALLY?!?! 😍" "NO." "Come oooonnnn, Becs, you gotta admit that's cool!" "Not. Happening."), So it's down to Chloe and Aubrey to help find the perfect wedding gown suit for Beca, because, and I quote, "Just because I agreed to a wedding does NOT mean I'm gonna be like every other bride on Say Yes to the Dress or whatever, if we're doing this we're doing it my way, and I'm not wearing a poofy overpriced dress that I can only use once, got it?" ("But, Beca, don't you wanna, I dunno, dress up for your husband-to-be? Go the whole nine yards?" "Are you kidding?! Jesse offered to just go up to the courthouse and be done with it, he's still amazed I said yes in the first place. It was only after I reminded him that you pitches would hunt us down and murder us if we got married without you that he agreed to do an actual wedding." "...Damn. You two really are made for each other huh." "You're also correct, there would be nowhere on this planet you could hide from our wrath if you'd eloped. Fat Amy has connections.")

Anyways.

In the midst of the chaos of trying on outfits and assuring the sales associate at each shop (because there are multiple shops visited, by the way) that, yes, she really does want a suit instead of a dress, and no, she won't be persuaded otherwise, and in trying to find matching bridesmaid outfits for the rest of the girls, Chloe and Aubrey find some moments to just... Talk. They haven't been able to talk much since the tour, at least in person, and they've missed that. They've missed each other. (Hence, the prompt!) Herein comes the realization that they're both single (rip Chicago you'll debatably be missed), and the mutual blushes and unusually shy glances start clueing them each in that, huh. It's almost like... She might... Reciprocate??? My feelings??? But they don't quite get to unpack that because there's still suit shopping to do!

But they'll get there, don't worry! We'll get the resolution to this little storyline on Sunday, because what better way to finally confess your feelings than with the same mashup that first truly brought you and your friends together! 😎

In the meantime, I've got bonus posts going up tomorrow and Thursday (because I couldn't come up with anything for either of those prompts, though I did try), then we're back with the last 4 true Prompt Entries™ starting Friday, with two entries for Sunday!

Days I've participated in (and Entries I've posted):

Day 1 (This is me trying): Link

Day 2 (I missed you): You Are Here!

Day 5 (if honesty means telling the truth... Well then the truth is I'm still in love with you): Link

Day 6 (there's no way that it's not going to happen with you looking at me like that): Link

Day 7.1 (I can't say it, so I'll sing it): Link

Day 7.2 (part 2): Link

Plus a relevant bonus Post for this particular scene can be found here!

Close Up: