#though at least with Georgia it's original

[ingravinoveritas]

I personally think its disgusting of what she posted yet again its all about her and she the reason why micheal keeps trending 4th day oh please he was trending for days before she came in the picture. And for someone who has no career and basically living off her parter who works so hard and been ill with virus the last few days and haven't been able to perform and she post this. Taking the credit for something that has nothing to do with her. He very grateful that she keep him grounded what that suppose to mean ? He was doing better before she came in the picture since he been with her his career have been slowed a little and she probably the reason for it

What do u say ?

Oh, boy. I saw this a little while ago, and all I could think was that the bar is so low at this point--like halfway between the fourth and fifth circles of Hell--and this still somehow falls short.

I know there has been a lot of talk about the t-shirt Anna is wearing (which was a gift from a fan at the stage door of Nye), but for me, the t-shirt is the least concerning part of all this. It's a reference to a quote from Staged (it's the title of a season 1 episode, in fact), and I am sure Michael found it funny. The only problem is that without the context of why it's a joke, it actually just isn't that funny. And it sets the stage for everything else that is happening.

Which brings me to the caption she wrote, which was what primarily caught my attention. The reason Michael is currently trending on Twitter (X, whatever we're calling it) is because of the overwhelmingly positive response to The Assembly, which aired last Friday night. He is receiving a tremendous amount of praise for being on the show, how he spoke to the interviewers, and the respectful and joyous atmosphere that was cultivated on the show. And rather than allude to any of that--not to mention Michael being sick recently, or the trip they went on to Disneyland Paris--Anna made Michael trending on Twitter about her.

That is what stands out to me the most. The idea of "keeping him grounded" that is coming across more like kicking someone when he is already down. That he somehow needs that, and that she would have us believe he is "grateful" to her for, what...comparing him to a loud bird? Repeatedly making fun of his looks and interests without a shred of respect or affection behind it? I'm also confused by the implication (and the irony) that Michael somehow has a large ego that needs to be kept in check when she is the one coming across as self-involved in this Insta story. So, yes. I'm at a bit of loss here.

I just keep thinking of the things she could have said instead. How she could have uplifted Michael, wished him well on returning to the stage tonight after several days' absence, said how she was glad to have spent time with him or taken care of him while he was ill. Just something that would give him a reason to hold his head high. But I guess it might just be easier to convince herself/everyone else that he is smiling if his head is hanging down instead.

I am just glad Michael is out performing again tonight and getting to be on stage and do the thing he truly loves to do. But those are my thoughts, and I'd be glad to hear from my followers about what you think, regardless of whether you agree or disagree...

[mystic-writings]

we’re just fine | daryl dixon

PAIRING — Daryl Dixon x Fem!reader

SUMMARY — after the fall of the prison, you find yourself in alexandria, alone. two months later, your family finds their way back to you. 

WARNINGS — angst, canon-typical violence/situations, pregnancy, fluff 

WORD COUNT — 5,000

NOTES — idk what happened to me all i know is i blacked out and then this was made. enjoy i guess

masterlist | navigation | requests are open!

Despite the pure monotonous routine you’d gotten used to during your two months in Alexandria, you couldn’t say that it wasn’t sometimes extremely boring. Your only saving grace was the mealtimes you had with Aaron and Eric at the end of the day. At least they had the sense and experience outside the walls to be able to carry out a conversation that wasn’t about what food you were eating or how the weather was. 

It was why you hated when they went out on recruitment runs. As their roommate, you felt awkward being in the home by yourself when they left the walls; as though you were intruding. You felt that way in a lot of aspects. An intruder on a perfect life that these people had grown used to in the wake of the apocalypse. A life where their only worry was whether or not Aiden and Nicholas would find the right ingredients for the food they’d planned on cooking during their supply runs. 

But there was nothing to be done aside from making a meal for one, eating alone with only a soft classical music CD to fill the silence, and to wait for the couple to come back home so you would have normal people to talk to. 

You were glad for them and the runs they went on, though. Or they never would’ve found you, and you’d likely be dead in a ditch by now. 

Your hand shook as you gripped the handle of your blade, wide eyes searching the pharmacy for any signs of walkers, or people. Being on the road alone for as long as you had been was making you feel like you’d gone crazy. Maybe you had already. 

Sweeping the small aisles, you found no signs of life. Most of the shelves were already empty, likely having been raided during the early days. Still, you grabbed whatever was available to you, shoving it into your bag before ducking into a corner, knees pressed to your chest as you rooted around for one of the final few cans of food you had left. 

You’d been rationing out what used to be a plentiful supply for a few weeks now. One can of food per day, nothing more. A lot of what you had was thanks to the traffic blockages on the highways and interstates you’d wandered along on your way out of Georgia. What used to be two cans a day for almost three weeks turned into one for the past week and a half, bordering on two. 

The lack of food wasn’t your only issue anymore. With no signs of life from your former group, you had every reason to believe that they were all dead. Logically, you knew they weren’t. You’d seen some of them escape in the firefight, yourself included. But without any real way of tracking them down, they were as good as dead. Not to mention the sudden and constant fatigue that the southern sun seemed to give to you, making traveling more difficult than you had originally planned. 

Even with no end in sight, no real indicator that the man you called your husband was still alive, and no true hope for your future, you still persisted. You found places to sleep for the night, whether in abandoned cars or gas stations off of turnpikes. You found just enough food to supply you for a few more days if you managed to stretch it thin enough, and you kept going. 

Just as you were about to crack open a can of corn, the crunching of glass and shuffling of footsteps alerted you to the body that had just entered the pharmacy. Its footfalls sounded too heavy and spaced out to be anything but a human. 

Gripping onto your knife, you held your breath and gently placed the can on the floor. With your bag still on your shoulders, you kept your body crouched and your ears peeled, moving around the person — no, people — moving around the pharmacy. 

“I’m telling you, we’ve already been here. There’s nothing left to take,” a voice reasoned. 

The footsteps ceased for a moment, and you paused, praying they hadn’t heard you. “I know. Doesn’t hurt to check, though, right? I mean, we can’t exactly go back empty handed. Aiden’ll have something to say about it.”

“But we aren’t out here for supplies,” the other stressed, “we’re out here for people, remember? New members?”

“I know,” their partner chuckled, footsteps resuming as they rounded the last aisle. You ducked between the shelves closest to the door, hoping to just outrun them and not have to fight them. There was a pause, a palpable beat, before he spoke again. “But I think we might not be coming back alone.”

A cold chill ran through your veins at the former’s words. He knew you were in here. He’d seen your can of food, or heard your shuffling around the pharmacy. In an instant, you were at your full height, eyes wide as your fingers clutched your knife tighter and you ran, against your better judgment, toward the pair. The blond was the one closest to you, his back facing your front. With as much energy as you could muster, you hooked your arm over his shoulder, dragging him to your chest as you pressed your knife to his throat. It wasn’t hard enough to do any real damage, but you knew that if you absolutely had to, you’d apply pressure. 

“Who are you?” You spat, hand shaking as it gripped the knife. “What do you want?”

“Woah, woah, calm down. It’s okay. We’re not here to hurt you.” The brunet immediately jumped into negotiation mode, putting his hands in front of him. The position reminded you of Rick, oddly enough, and your heart twinged as you adjusted your grip on the knife. 

“Then what are you here for?” You spat. “Like you said, there’s nothing worth taking here.”

The faintest of whimpers escaped the lips of the man you held hostage, dragging both yours and the brunet’s attention to him. “We’re just—” the blond gulped. “We’re recruiters. We have a camp not too far from here. A safe one. We’re looking for people to join us. People who have— have experience, out here.” 

His words, as stuttery and fearful as they were, confused you. 

“I’m Aaron,” the brunet said, keeping his arms up in surrender as he slowly slid the backpack from his shoulders. “That man you have is my partner, Eric. Everything he’s saying is right, and I can show you. I have pictures and a brochure in my bag, if you’ll let me get it.” 

Hesitantly, you nodded. Even if he had a weapon, most of your body was blocked by his partner — Eric. There was a highly likely chance that he wouldn’t try to harm you while you kept his friend in your grip, however weak it was becoming. 

Slowly, Aaron reached into his bag, pulling out exactly what he said he would. With Eric still in your grip, he showed you pictures of the place he and his friend called home — Alexandria. “Look,” Aaron sighed, stepping back a bit. “You seem like someone we could use. You have experience that we lack. Plus, it seems like you’ve been out here by yourself a while. We have walls, food, running water, and proper shelter. And if you decide to come with us, our leader, Deanna, will interview you. If she allows you in and you don’t like it, you can leave any time you want. We won’t keep you there if you don’t want to be, okay?”

With a shaking nod, you let go of Eric, nudging him toward Aaron, who enveloped the other man in a tight hug. “I— I can leave if I want to, right?”

“Of course, you can. No one will stop you, and that’s a promise.” 

It took a bit of getting used to, but you were glad that Aaron and Eric had found you that day. You’d been skeptical of things in Alexandria for the first few days, but you warmed to the entire situation a lot easier than you thought you would. You supposed it was because of how things were at the prison, but even then you weren’t alone.

Aaron and Eric, while not pushing the topic often, had managed to get to know enough about you and where you came from before they’d found you that they considered you a close friend. 

You’d only told them the briefest of answers. That you were with a large group in Georgia from the beginning, that you’d been with one of them for most of that time — even, at some point, considering yourselves to be married, though the symbol you’d had to show it had been lost months ago — and then another group came along and took everything away from you, simply because they could. 

The safety and privacy that the couple provided was something you were more than grateful for, even if you were sure you wouldn’t be able to have it forever. 

Because while Aaron and Eric, along with the rest of Alexandria, provided a structure and a sense of normalcy for you, you couldn’t shake the grief that fell upon you every time you were alone. 

The thought of Daryl being out there, combing every inch of Georgia for you while you were so far away, was enough to bring you to tears. It was another thing to think about the possibility of his rotting corpse roaming the woods in search of something living to eat. The thought that you’d never see him again, dead or alive. That you’d just push through life — however much longer that would be for you — without him, even though he promised you’d never have to go through something like that. 

The thought of your baby never knowing who their father was, and their father never knowing who they were, either. 

You could go an entire lifetime without ever seeing Daryl again, and the idea of it nearly killed you when he was still around. It hurt a hundred times worse now that it was practically a reality. 

The night passed without word from or the arrival of Aaron and Eric. It was common for them to be gone a while at a time — this particular trip lasting almost a week — but you hated sleeping in the house by yourself now. You were so used to waking up to Eric clattering dishes in the kitchen that waking up midday when they were gone only proved how fatigued you seemed to feel nowadays. 

Waking up to a knock on the door wasn’t unusual as of late, but it was certainly unpleasant. You were, however, grateful for the fact that when you were given a room at Aaron and Eric’s, it was on the first floor. 

Rolling out of bed got harder and harder with each passing week, but you managed it anyway. The knocking persisted, and you sighed as you made your way into the living room, shouting out, “I’m coming!”

The knocking ceased, and you pulled on the fabric of your shirt before answering the door, only to find Jessie. “Oh, hey,”

“Hi, hon,” she smiled, and you felt bad for being upset at her moments before. “Pete sent me over, said you were supposed to see him this morning?” 

“Oh, shit, Jessie I’m so sorry,” you said, brushing some stray hair from your face. “I overslept, normally Aaron—” 

Jessie smiled warmly, reaching out and putting a gentle hand on your arm. “I understand, Y/n, no need to worry. Just get dressed and head over to the infirmary. It’s not like Pete’s in any real rush.” 

“Alright,” you nodded, bidding Jessie goodbye and closing the door as she headed down the porch steps. 

Padding your way through the home, you went back to your room, pulling on some fresh clothes before freshening up in the bathroom. Routines like these were simple, but they kept you sane. You’d had something a little closer to it at the prison, but it was nowhere near as nice as it was in Alexandria. 

After eating a small breakfast, you were out of the house and on your way to the infirmary. The streets were quiet, as always, and the sun was anything but forgiving. People smiled and waved, and you did the same, even if you didn’t know half of the people in this place. Even after being here for two months, it was hard to remember such trivial things about so many people. Plus, putting names to faces was never one of your strong suits. 

Stepping into the infirmary, you were grateful for the burst of air conditioning that fell over your body. Smiling, you greeted Denise and Pete, the former of the two sitting on one of the beds as she pored over the book in her lap. 

“Alright, let’s take a look at you. Sound good?” Pete smiled, and you nodded back. 

While you hauled yourself onto the bed, Pete readied the ultrasound equipment. Pulling back the loose shirt you wore, your eyes glued themselves to the obvious, albeit still small, bump you were sporting. 

“Hey, I’m about four months along now, right?” You asked, eyes darting up to Pete, who confirmed with a nod. “That means you can see the baby’s gender, doesn’t it? I remember hearing that somewhere,” 

Pete chuckled, powering on the machine and taking the gel from its holster. “Most of the time, yes. If you want me to look around for it, I can do that. After I make sure everything’s okay.” 

“I really wanna know,” you said, wincing at the cold gel making contact with your skin. “It’d mean a lot. Then I can go full nesting mode. And so can Aaron and Eric, really.” 

The ultrasound went off without a hitch. According to Pete, your margins were clear, and everything looked healthy with the baby. It was always a relief to hear. There was little room for error with these things now that you had scarcely little supplies to work with. Finding the ultrasound machine early on in the apocalypse was a miracle in itself. 

“Okay…” Pete hummed, the wand moving and pressing over your skin. “The kid’s giving me a hard time with this one. And…” he pressed a few buttons, eyes focused on the screen before him. You watched his features intensely, as though his expression would give the answer away before he could say it. Pete’s eyes broke from the screen as he smiled, lifting the wand. “You’re having a little girl. Congratulations.” 

Your heart swelled, a wide smile overtaking your features as Pete handed you a towel. “A girl,” you whispered, eyes locked onto your belly. 

Before you were able to stop yourself, you were once more reminded of the likelihood that you’d never be able to share this with Daryl. Tears welled along your waterline as you sat up, swiping the scratchy cloth across your belly. Whether Pete noticed or not, he made no indications. You were thankful for it, and for him leaving the room to put the ultrasound equipment away. 

When he came back inside, he pulled Denise from her books and into the kitchen to talk, but you paid no mind to them. They were talking too low for you to listen in, anyway, and you were too busy trying to quell your emotions on the makeshift examination table to want to eavesdrop. 

By the time you were ready to leave, Olivia entered the infirmary, eyes scanning the room before landing on your frame. 

“Y/n, they’re on their way back,” she smiled, and you nodded gratefully. 

“They’re okay?”

The woman nodded. “Eric’s a bit banged up, hurt his leg I think, but otherwise they’re fine. And they brought a group. They should be getting here soon.” 

Exhaling a relieved breath, you slid from the bed, bidding goodbye to Denise and Pete as you followed Olivia onto the street. You walked side by side in silence, mulling over what she’d said. 

“You said they brought a group?” You asked, following Olivia up the steps to the house that held all of your inventory. “How many?”

Olivia huffed, brows cinching. “Deanna said it was a big one. That they had a lot of weapons, been on the road a while.” 

Your eyes widened. “A while as in the entire time, or?”

“Not sure,” Olivia shook her head. “All I know is I gotta get the weapons cart to the gate, if you wanna help?” 

“Sure. Should probably be there to get Eric to the infirmary, anyway,” you decided. 

And, sure enough, Aaron helping a limping, sweating Eric through the gate was the first — and for now, only — glimpses of the new group you would get. Aaron smiled apologetically as he spotted you, tucked out of view from the newcomers. 

“What the hell happened to you?” You said, looking pointedly at Eric, who grimaced as you took his arm from Aaron. 

“Roamers,” he sighed. “It’s broken, I think.” 

“You think?” You asked, eyeing the bruising flesh. “I can tell it’s broken. Come on, let’s get you to Pete.” 

Aaron thanked you as you wrapped an arm around Eric’s waist, helping him up the road and back into the infirmary. 

As Pete worked to wrap Eric’s ankle, you couldn’t help but ask questions about the trip. 

“It was a disaster,” Eric groaned. “There were roamers everywhere. Plus, this group, they’re headstrong. Been out there a while.” 

“How many of them are there?” You asked. “Olivia didn’t tell me.” 

“Fifteen,” Eric hissed, squirming as Pete positioned his ankle properly. 

Your eyes widened, throat going dry. “Jesus,” you huffed. “That many of them and they’re still going?”

“With a baby,” 

“Oh my God,” you gasped. Your mind flashed with images of baby Judith, heart clenching. The fall of the prison meant that you never found out exactly who made it out alive, and you never dared to venture the thought of whether or not she did. “They must be some lucky sons of bitches.” 

Eric laughed. “Not only are they lucky, but they’re tough. And really close. I think, once you get used to them, you’ll like them. They remind me of you when we found you.” 

“So, scrappy, hungry, and tired?” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Eric laughed, and you couldn’t help but do the same. 

“If you need me, I’m four houses down.” Aaron pointed, Rick and Carl following his line of sight. “If I’m not there, Eric or Y/n probably will be.” 

Carl’s eyes snapped back to the brunet, a mixture of confusion and skepticism floating within them. “Y/n?”

Aaron’s brows furrowed at the boy. “Yeah. She’s a friend of ours, came here a few months back. Why?”

“We, uh…” Rick stepped in, a hand scratching at his beard. “We used to know someone named Y/n. that’s all.”

“Oh,” Aaron nodded, stepping away and heading back home, where you and Eric were sitting at the table, sandwiches in hand as you giggled about something he wasn’t aware of. 

Upon his entrance into the kitchen, you stood excitedly and hugged the man. “Glad you’re back okay,” you said, heading back to your chair. “I heard the group you brought was tough.”

“Yeah, they are.” Aaron chuckled, still mulling over the puzzle pieces in his head. “You said you were with a big group before, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

Aaron huffed, glancing at his shoes. “I brought up your name to one of the new members — just a name, nothing else — he said they used to know someone with the same name.” 

Your heart stuttered in your chest, limbs freezing as you were bringing the sandwich to your mouth. Clearing your throat, you forced yourself to put the food back down, looking up at Aaron with shining eyes. “This man, what’d you say his name was?”

“Rick. Rick Grimes.” 

If your heart had been fluttering before, it was banging like a drum in your chest now. Your stomach fluttered, your hand coming to rest on the swell of your belly, hoping to quell the anxiousness. 

“Where are they?” You asked, and Aaron’s mouth only remained agape. “Aaron, where are they?”

“Down the street,” he finally said, voice cracking. “The house on the curb, the one you said you liked.” 

Within moments, your food and friends were abandoned as you practically ran from the home, shooting down the porch steps and down the street. You were thankful that no one was out and about right now, or you were sure they’d think you looked crazy. You didn’t even register a person in your path until you’d already bumped into them. 

“Oh! Y/n, are you alright?” Jessie asked, her hands on your shoulders as her eyes searched your wild ones. 

“‘M fine, Jessie.” You muttered. “I’ve gotta go.”

You gave the woman no time to respond before you were wriggling out of her grip and hurrying down the street. Up more steps, you were greeted by the charming yellow door of the home you’d wished you lived in, knuckles rapping frantically and unyielding on the wood. 

The door finally, after what felt like decades, creaked open. Your heart stopped in your chest as you took in the sight of your husband’s best friend, clean shaven and hair dripping from a recent shower. 

Rick’s eyes flooded with tears as they met your own. In seconds, you were pulling him into your arms, grateful that you weren’t the only survivor of the Governor’s wrath. 

You sobbed into his shoulder, gripping tightly to the clean white shirt he wore. “Rick,” you croaked, “is he—” 

“He’s fine,” Rick whispered, heart breaking when your sobs worsened out of pure relief. “He’s just fine.” 

When you finally found the strength to let go, Rick led you inside. “We thought you were dead,”

“There were times I wished I was,” you said, taking a seat at the edge of the couch. “I was by myself for just over a month. Found some train tracks, lost ‘em, then stuck to interstates, mostly. Got lost in the woods, found a small town, and from there, Aaron and Eric found me. I’ve been here for two months.” 

Rick huffed a laugh, disbelief filling the sound. “Sounds like you had one hell of a trek.”

“I had a car, for a bit.” You shrugged. “Walkers ruined that part. I crashed it into a tree. Stuck to walking after that.” 

“When did you…” Rick glanced down at your swelling belly, forcing a laugh from you. 

Shrugging, you smoothed your hand over your belly. “Four-ish months ago. Didn’t find out until I got here. Been terrified ever since, really. Not knowing if Daryl was out there, if I’d see him again.” 

“You’ll see him soon,” Rick assured you. “He’s talking to Deanna now.”

“And the others?” You asked. “Beth? Judith?”

“Judith is just fine,” Rick said, eyes leaving yours as he sighed. “Beth got caught out in Atlanta. A woman in a hospital killed her.”

Your stomach churned at Rick’s words, guilt crushing your lungs and bile rising in your throat. “Oh, my God,” you whispered, pressing your fingers to your mouth to try and stop yourself from throwing up. 

Rick nodded, resting a hand on your knee. He watched you stand, your arm resting over your belly, beginning to pace the floor before him. 

“I have to… I need to go see the others. Daryl.” And without another word, you were leaving Rick behind in an unfamiliar home, nearly running down the familiar path to where Deanna and her husband lived. 

The group milled about in the small courtyard in front of Deanna’s house, hidden behind the brick walls that fenced it in. Everyone was either sitting or leaning against something, sticking to a tight group, and completely blocking your path to the inside of the home. 

With your mind so set on seeing Daryl, on simply getting close to him again, you failed to register Carol saying your name. Once again, you were pulled from your thoughts only when someone was right in front of you. 

This time, Carol was pulling you into her arms, her grip on your body tight. You hugged her back, despite the sweat and grime that covered her. Soon enough, Glenn, Maggie, Michonne, and Sasha had joined her. You were surrounded by your family, all overwhelmed at your presence, but happy nonetheless. 

When you finally requested to be let go, they obliged, and you finally spotted Judith in the arms of someone you didn’t know. Relief flooded you, seeing the baby healthy and happy as she could be. 

“What happened to you?”

“We thought you were dead!”

“Are you okay?”

“Guys, I’m fine, I promise.” You chuckled through tears. “I’ve been here almost the whole time, and I’m perfectly healthy. The doctor said so this morning.” 

You smiled as Carol’s eyes drifted from your face to your belly, shock overcoming her features, before her smile matched yours. She said nothing, but you were sure everyone else was either figuring it out or partially aware, just based on the interaction alone. 

A loud scoff echoed from the porch door, followed by low, gravelly muttering. Your heart stopped at the familiar voice, before thrumming in your heart like a rapid drumbeat. There, walking with careless ease, picking at his thumbs, was your husband, covered head to toe in layers of dirt and grime. You choked a sob as the group seemed to part around you. 

“Daryl,” you croaked, just loud enough for him to hear it. 

Daryl paused at the top of the steps, his eyes locked onto yours through the hair he’d let grow too long. In a flash, he was down the stairs entirely, rushing to pull you into his arms. You met him in the middle, colliding with his body and bringing you both to the ground. With one hand cupping the back of your head and the other splayed between your shoulder blades, Daryl cradled you close to him, rocking you as you clutched to the leather vest on his back tighter, sobbing in his embrace. 

“I thought ya were dead,” he whispered, fingers digging into your back. “I thought I lost ya,”

A choked sound escaped you as you shook your head. “Never,” you promised. “You could never lose me.” 

“Yer necklace,” Daryl croaked, tucking his face into the side of your head. “I found it, on the tracks in Georgia. Thought ya were gone…” 

“It fell.” You said, words hushed and shaking, as though they were a desperate plea. “Walkers were coming for me, too many for me to take on myself. It snapped off in the fight, I couldn’t go back for it.” 

By the time you felt okay enough to stand on your own, everyone had departed from the courtyard, likely into Deanna’s home. With a vice grip on his arms, Daryl helped you stand. His eyes raked over your face, tear-stricken and flushed with emotion. No matter the state you were in, Daryl could never see you as anything other than utterly beautiful. 

“You’re okay?” You asked, hands gently brushing the hair from his dirt-caked face. “You’re not hurt?” 

Daryl shook his head, leaning into your delicate touch. Hands smoothed over cloth, over skin, dedicating the feeling of your body beneath his touch to memory. He watched your eyes flutter closed as he did so, relishing in the slight pressure of his palms against your skin. They slid down your hips, your waist, and Daryl’s brow furrowed. He’d committed your body to memory long ago — every curve, every bump, every scar. Slowly, and with a hand that was less steady than it had been a moment ago, Daryl’s fingers drifted delicately over your front, eliciting a small gasp when he found what he’d suspected. 

The sound forced your eyes to open, meeting the bright blue of his own, widened in shock. Immediately, your stomach churned and you pulled your bottom lip between your teeth, a habit you’d been unable to shake since high school. 

“Daryl?” Your voice shook. 

“Yer…” he breathed, eyes darting down to where the backs of his fingers rested, the slight swell of your stomach confirming what he’d been about to ask. “When’d you… did you know?”

“No, no…” you whispered gently, shaking your head. “I had no clue when… I didn’t know until I got here. I suspected it on the road, but… no, I didn’t.” 

A shaking breath fell from his lips. “And yer okay? Yer both— both okay?”

“We’re just fine,” you smiled, resting your palm on his cheek. “I promise. Your girls are just fine.” 

Daryl’s breath caught in his throat, a new wave of pure emotion rolling through his body. It seized his muscles, freezing him in place as he struggled for breath and blinked away tears. Girls. He was going to be a dad. He was going to have a daughter. 

“Ya have no idea how much I love ya,” Daryl muttered, his head dipping low, forehead resting on your shoulder. 

“I think I have a clue or two,” you joked, voice as soft as you could make it.

Daryl scoffed, lifting his head and pressing his lips to yours. It was short, shorter than you would’ve liked, but it carried as much love as all the other kisses you’d shared and stolen with the archer over the years. Still, he was here, and he was safe, and so were you. Nothing else mattered except that. 

The horrifying reality you’d thought yourself to be in was nothing but that — a mere thought. For now, you and Daryl were safe. Together. As a family. 

And you knew that, as he slipped the necklace back onto your skin, this time on a leather rope tied tight, there was nothing either of you wouldn’t do to stay that way. 

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[whencyclopedia]

Etowah Mounds

Etowah Mounds (also known as Etowah Indian Mounds) is a National Historic Landmark and archaeological site near Cartersville, Georgia, USA, enclosing the ruins of a prehistoric Native American city whose original name is unknown. The present designation of Etowah means "town" in the language of the Muscogee-Creek Native Americans.

The city was built in three phases between c. 1000 - c. 1550 and the present site encloses three large and three smaller mounds surrounding a central plaza. The three large mounds were the chief’s residence (Mound A), the ceremonial site for religious rituals (Mound B), and the burial site for the nobility (Mound C); the smaller mounds are each attached or nearby the larger. Between the three was a plaza, which served for ceremonies, commerce, and as a ball field.

The city was built and flourished during the period known as the Mississippian culture (c. 1100-1540 CE) when many of the best-known mound sites in North America – such as Cahokia and Moundville – were also constructed. The city seems to have developed from a small village community of the Woodland Period (c. 500 BCE - 1100 CE) whose inhabitants were related to those who built Etowah and the later Creek and Muskogee Native American tribes of the region who lived in and near the site.

The Cherokee Nation arrived in the region from the north in the 15th century CE and settled at Etowah, but they, like many others in the area, had their numbers depleted by European diseases they had no immunity to. The Creek and Cherokee remained on the land, however, until gold was discovered in the region and they were forcibly removed to Oklahoma by order of President Andrew Jackson (served 1829-1837) in the 1830s, a tragic loss of land and heritage to the First Nations through the forced migration that has come to be known as the Trail of Tears.

The mounds were first noted by Americans in 1817 and test-sited in 1883 but no major excavations were begun until 1925 when the famous (or infamous) archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead (l. 1866-1939) arrived at the site. Moorehead’s work on Mound C – the most completely excavated area of the site to date – unearthed a number of significant artifacts which enabled the dating of the site to the Mississippian culture period. Excavations since Moorehead’s have been sporadic, but it is believed, based on what has been found and the general preservation of the site, that Etowah is the most intact of the Mississippian culture mound sites of the southeast built by the ancestors of the Muscogee-Creek Nation.

The Mound Builders & Mississippian Culture

The Mississippian culture is often cited as though it were the beginning of monumental mound-building, but mounds were built thousands of years before in North America. Watson Brake Mounds dates to c. 3500 BCE and Poverty Point to c. 1700-1100 BCE, with the Mississippian culture’s mounds following. The Mississippian culture has become the best known and most closely associated with mound-building, however, owing to the proliferation of mounds prior to that period and the skill of the people of the Adena culture (c. 800 BCE - 1 CE) and the Hopewell culture (c. 100 BCE-500 CE) who perfected mound-building and provided the model for later works such as the famous Mississippian Cahokia Mounds and Moundville.

Many mounds were constructed during the Archaic Period (c. 8000-1000 BCE) and the Woodland Period (c. 500 BCE - 1100 CE), but these differed from the later Mississippian culture sites, such as Etowah, in that those of the Adena were conical while those of the Hopewell were either effigy or flat-topped mounds. The Mississippian culture borrowed from both traditions in the creation of their mounds which were influenced, at least in part, by the religious beliefs spread throughout the region by the Hopewell culture.

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[so-long-soldier28]

Favorite Sociopath

kai parker x reader

summary: damon and bonnie leave you in charge of babysitting kai. you accept willingly as time to get to know him.

tags: characters watching american horror story / ahs references, talking about trauma, past child abuse, childhood trauma, accidental cuddling / cuddling, bonding

word count: ~3.5k

“I’m almost finished, shut up,” Bonnie snaps at the brooding man beside her.

Damon puts his hands up, “jeez.”

“He’s in Georgia. At this location,” she points to the site on the map.

“What’s he doing there?”

“It’s your brother, you tell me.”

“It’s not like I control him!”

“Ah,” a voice interrupts their arguing, “the two of you, still bickering. Just like in the old days of 1994.”

“Shut up, Kai,” Damon orders the younger man. 

“Harsh words! I’m hurt.” He grabs his chest as if he were stabbed.

“You’re fine.”

The siphon clicks his tongue, “so when are we leaving?”

“We? You’re not going anywhere.”

“Oh come on! I helped,” he gestures vaguely, “with the spell.”

“Suggesting a locator spell is not helping. But regardless, your help or lack thereof is not why you’re not coming. You’re dangerous; you can’t be trusted. You’re staying here. Y/N, you’re watching him.”

“What?” Bonnie whips to face Damon before you can even comment. “He cannot be alone with her, he’ll kill her! How do you think Elena will feel when she finds out you let the psychopath murder her cousin?”

“Please, she’ll be fine! She can handle her own.”

“Kai is a psychopath! Whether or not she can handle her own means nothing when you have a psychotic witch against a mere human!”

“Only slightly offended,” you mutter. Then louder, “I’ll be fine, trust me. Kai’s a sociopath, not a psychopath.”

“And that means what exactly? That he’s not capable of killing you?”

“No, I’m just saying… I don’t know… I trust him. Sociopaths at least have the capability to feel emotions, they’re just buried, or reserved for certain people. Psychopaths are the ones that scare me.”

Both are obviously baffled from your statement. Though as soon as Bonnie gets over it, she yells, “you trust him?! Are you crazy?”

Kai borrows your words, “only slightly offended.” It makes you chuckle. “Just a reminder - I’m right here.”

“And?”

“And, Bonnie, no. She’s not crazy. She can think for herself, y’know? And she’s right - I’m not going to hurt her.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then don’t. You’re not the one being told to babysit me.”

“Damon, we cannot leave her with him!” She turns back to the man. 

“Well we’re running out of options. We could go with my original plan and leave these two here, go retrieve Stefan, and return. Or, we could bring them with us. Listen to Kai talk non-stop all the way to Georgia, grab Stefan, squeeze all three in the back of my camaro, and drive all the way back, with Kai still yammering. Does that sound fun to you?”

“Better than letting Y/N die at the jam-covered hands of him.”

You roll your eyes, “Bonnie, I’ll be fine. I promise. You two need to go get Stefan before he attacks someone else, and Georgia’s a long drive. Kai and I will be fine, and if not, there’s plenty of people I can call for help. Not only that, plenty of places I can hide in this massive house.”

“Just not under the bed,” Kai smirks, “I’ll find you there.”

You stifle a laugh as you meet Bonnie’s eyes. 

Kai notices her expression, too, and coughs, “just a joke. Very bad joke.”

“No more jokes.”

Seeing the fire in his friend’s eyes, Damon chooses the next moment to interrupt. “You’re right, Georgia’s a long drive. Kai, no leaving the house. Y/N, watch him carefully. No killing, no threatening, no nothing. Call Rick if you need anything-”

“Ew,” you cut him off.

“Alright. Call, I don’t know, Jeremy then. What’s wrong with Rick?”

“Weird, just weird. Might be the beard. Might be the…”

“Spit it out, Y/N.”

“Nah.”

Bonnie gives you a glare.

“Fine, I’ll call him. But I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Right, Kai?”

“Mhm.”

“See?”

“Whatever. Just be careful.”

◇◇◇◇

Twenty minutes later, they’re finally out the door. 

“Finally!” You collapse on the couch, “peace and quiet!”

Kai takes the chair across from you, then watches as you get comfortable.

“Want to watch something?”

“I am.”

“No, you goof. I mean on the TV,” you roll your eyes playfully at his comment.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know? Let’s see if there’s Netflix on here.”

“What’s a Netflix?”

“You’ll see.”

After a bit of scrolling - the brothers did, in fact, have Netflix downloaded - your eyes light up at one show in particular. 

“Oh this is a fun one.” 

“American Horror Story?”

“Mhm! Murder. Mayhem. It’s a masterpiece.”

“You’re into that sorta thing?”

You look at him, “why? Do I not look like it to you?”

“I don’t know, you just seem so sweet and innocent.”

“Oh, Kai Parker,” you coo at him, “that’s the thing about girls. Even the sweetest ones have a dark streak in there somewhere.” 

His eyes stay focused on you, nearly black and unblinking, but it’s hard to miss the lump in his throat.

“So you want to watch it?”

“You’ve got me intrigued. Now I’ve got to see it.”

You can’t help but giggle in excitement as you press start on the first episode. “They don’t have to be watched in order, but season one is a classic. Wait til you meet the love of my life, Tate Langdon.”

“Who’s Tate?”

“Oh, just my favorite sociopath,” you wink at him. “Aside from you, of course.”

His cheeks flush, but he tries to hide it with a cough. 

“It’s starting. Meet,” you spread your hands out as an introduction, “the twins, that I honestly forgot opened the show. And I don’t know their names.”

Kai chuckles, smiling at you before turning his eyes to the TV.

Only half of your attention is on the show, as the other half watches for the witch’s reactions. You notice a small grin when the twin - Brad? - gets sucked into the basement’s abyss. The expression should scare you, but you find yourself more entertained than anything else. His face changes, however, when Ben’s caught cheating on his wife. Kai’s eyes darken and jaw tenses. The smile returns when Vivian cuts the man’s arm in a fury, making you giggle. 

“He deserved that,” Kai justifies.

“Oh definitely.”

“I don’t know that much about… like, love, and all that, but you should never cheat on someone you love.”

Ignoring the butterflies in your stomach, you smile, “okay, Tate.” 

He cocks his head at you.

“You just nearly quoted him verbatim. Couldn’t help it. You’re right, though.”

You guys continue to watch. 

Eventually, the scene fades into the introduction. You can’t help but stick your tongue out at it, and don’t miss Kai muttering, “ew. That’s a little creepy, all those dolls and jars.” He grimaces.

“Sometimes the intros are scarier than the actual show.”

“How many seasons are there?”

“Four, but I bet there’ll be more.”

“Good. Ten minutes in and I’m hooked.”

“Season 3 is called Coven. But I really want you to meet Tate.”

“Coven? Is it anything like mine?”

“Well, let’s see from what you told me about yours... Shitty leaders - check. Awful parents - check. Stupid traditions - check. Yeah, similar.”

“Wait… you believe me? About my parents?”

“Of course,” you say without hesitation, “I mean, they locked you away for god’s sake. Of course I believe how they treated you. Why it made you snap.” Your tone quiets at the end, afraid to hit a nerve. Kai, however, doesn’t seem bothered by the mention of his crimes. He’s too focused on someone actually believing him; someone listening. 

The two of you stare at each other for a moment before he remembers to respond. “Thank you. For believing me.”

“All the evidence is stacked against your father. And if we’re being honest, dads are usually the cause of trauma, in my personal opinion. I mean, just look at my childhood. Hey, look at Ben Harmon,” you gesture to the TV, “every shitty thing is his fault. Or, maybe I’m projecting. Either way, he sucks.”

Kai laughs.

“Regardless, yes, I believe you, Kai. You’re not alone in your feelings. And like I told Bonnie, I do trust you.”

He’s quiet for a second, “it means a lot.”

You nod.

“Back to the show now?”

“Sure.”

You push the back button a few times to where you guys were before your mini conversation. For a second as it starts to play, you keep your eyes on him. His lips form a small smile. Fingers are still, resting on the armchair. His posture, though…

“Hey, Kai?”

“Hm?”

“Are you comfy?”

“Enough, yeah, why?”

“Come here, sit with me.” You sit up to pat the pillow where your head had just been. “Don’t hurt your neck looking up like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“‘Course. I don’t bite.”

The witch chuckles as you move the pillow for him to sit beside you. He sinks into the couch and gives you a smile that reawakens the butterflies in your stomach. 

“Better?”

“Mhm, thank you.”

“Is it okay if I touch you?”

“What, why?” The question catches him off guard.

“It’s okay to say no, I just wanted to ask in case I lean into you by accident. Don’t want to startle you, or cross a line.”

“No, um, wait. It’s okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, you’re okay.”

Sensing his hesitation, you take slow movements to get back into your comfortable position. Soon, your shoulders touch gently, causing him to flinch a little.

“I’m okay still. I wasn’t… expecting it. I mean, I know you told me, but I wasn’t allowed to… I, uh, I’ve been isolated a lot of my life.” He debated his words carefully before settling on the explanation. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, sweet. It’s not your fault. I’m guessing your father’s responsible for that, too?”

Kai nods slowly. “As a siphon, who didn’t know how to control their power, any form of contact would harm the other person. If I was allowed out of my room, I had to wear gloves, but even then, wasn’t allowed to touch anyone. Then I was in the prison world for eighteen years, alone.”

Hearing another bit of his past makes your heart break. Neither Damon nor Bonnie have told you much about him, except for a few antics from the prison world. They call him dangerous, but haven’t even told you his side of the story. As you learn more about him, everything in you wants to reach out and give him a tight hug, but you refrain from doing that to not startle him. 

He acknowledges your silence, “is this the part where you run?”

You snap out of your thoughts, “no, Kai. No, I’m not going to run. I’m sorry, I was just thinking. How awful of a man to treat his son that way.” Suddenly, you turn your body so you can look him in the eye. “You’re safe with me, Kai. Okay? Ever need to talk, ever need a hug. I’m here.”

“Okay. Um, thank you.”

“So… you okay if I…” you slowly get closer to him until your shoulders are touching again. “This too much?”

“No, you’re okay. Feels nice, actually.”

“Tell me if you need me to move.”

He nods, then pushes play on the remote. 

A deep focus takes over to the both of you as the show continues. At some point, Kai’s hand begins to absentmindedly trail along your arm - a gesture you don’t notice until you feel a chill throughout your body. He feels it too, and immediately retracts his hand.

“It’s okay. I like it.”

Kai doesn’t say anything, but to your delight, puts his hand back on your arm. You stay like that throughout the episode, too relaxed to recognize the heaviness in your eyes as sleep soon consumes your body. 

◇◇◇◇

Sometime later, your eyes flutter open, making you confused. There’s no sound, not even the TV, but it’s a comfortable silence, not one that feels threatening. Slowly, you wake up more fully and are able to better take in your senses. You’re still on the couch, but laying on your back. Your head is on something soft, but not pillow-soft. A hand runs along your arm - just as it was before you fell asleep… Kai. Where’s Kai?

You try to ask for his name, but in your state, all that comes out is a whine.

Nonetheless, he answers. “Hey, are you awake?”

“Kai?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, but when did I fall asleep? Where are you?”

Eventually you’re able to pull your body up so that you’re sitting, not laying, on the couch. 

“I’m right here,” he waves to you as you reposition.

“Did I fall asleep on your lap?” The realization hits you, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to-”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. No worries, I, uh, kinda liked the contact. Like I said, I kinda lacked that for a while.”

“I know, but I would’ve asked first.”

“Technically, you did. And you can’t control being tired, it’s fine. Trust me, I don’t mind being your pillow.”

A blush creeps onto your cheeks.

“In fact, I wouldn’t argue if you wanted to lay back down, because now I’m missing it.”

That’s all the convincing you need to reassume your position in his lap. Though this time, you move your head so you’re looking up at him. “Hey, Kai?”

“Mhm?”

“I’m happy you trust me enough to be this close. I like it, too. And I like being someone you are comfortable around.”

“Me too, Y/N. Oh, and hey, I paused the tv about an hour ago because I wanted to watch it with you but you were asleep. But we’re some way through episode two.”

“I slept that long?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. I’ve been on Twitter, so I haven’t been completely bored.”

“Not Tweeting pictures of me sleeping, right?” You joke with a snort.

He snaps his fingers, “aw, I should’ve! Quick, go back to sleep!”

“Hell no! The whole Twitter-World doesn’t need to see my sleeping face! Bad enough you already did!”

“Awh, what are you talking about? You have a cute sleeping face. Twitter would thank you for being able to see it.”

The blush and the butterflies return with that comment. “I-uh-thanks.”

“I’m serious!”

“I, um, uh… do you want to keep watching, or are you bored?”

“I’m down to keep watching if you are.”

“Okay, press the play button.”

“Oh, wait, wait, wait, before we do - I met Tate!”

“Oh, yes! How’d you like him?”

“He’s fun! Highly relatable all the way down to the music taste. I see why you like him.”

“See?! My friends think I’m crazy for it, but he’s such a good character. And the way he absolutely loves Violet - he’d do anything for her! I mean, yeah, he killed a bunch of kids, but I don’t know, maybe if his mother didn’t fucking abuse him, he wouldn’t have snapped the way he did.”

You see Kai’s jaw set out of the corner of your eye. “Sorry, uh, spoiler alert.”

“It’s okay. Do you really blame his mom for that?”

“I mean, yeah. Yes, he was the one to carry out the crimes, but you can only take so much hurt and abuse before you snap. Emotions fizzle out until there’s just a numb feeling, and then… well, I imagine it’s hard to make rational decisions when you feel that way for so long.” A second later, you realize you’ve been ranting. “I’m sorry, I’ve just really studied his character. Done a lot of research, including research on sociopathy, and the long-term effects of childhood abuse. Helps me understand him, and what he felt, and what caused him to snap. Sorry, I’m ranting again, oh jeez!”

“It’s okay,” Kai swallows hard, “I, uh, feels nice to be understood. For Tate, I mean.”

You stiffen. “Kai?”

“Mhm?”

“Did your parents hurt you?”

“I mean, I was isolated for a long time.”

“I know that, but…” you don’t want to say it. Don’t want to open a wound; don’t want to push him past his limits of comfort. But, you need to know. “Did they hurt you?”

A visible lump forms in his throat. “What counts as that? Cause I mean, some parents just toss their hands in the air. Some others hit with shoes, I’ve heard. Jo’s friend actually mentioned one time that they had a wooden spoon reserved for punishments.” He’s deflecting. You can’t blame him; he’s obviously been through a lot.

He rambles on like this until he meets your eyes. Tears welling, threatening to spill. A trembling lip. You know. He knows you know. 

“Yeah, sometimes, Dad would. Most of the time he’d use magic, probably just to make a point about me being the abomination that can’t do magic.”

“For what reasons? Like, what did he see as a reason to hurt you?”

“Hmm, like if I talked back, or left my room without permission, or spoke to someone outside of the coven, like a sibling’s friend or neighbor. If he were really angry, like if I siphoned a sibling, he’d get more physical. Let’s just say, there’s probably a reason everyone wore long-sleeves with band tees in the nineties. Cover up those bruises with some devil band your parents hate,” cocking his head, he adds, “which then leads to more bruises but for different reasons.” He then pauses to clear his throat. “Eventually, I learned how to siphon the magic he’d throw at me. For three days, I felt so powerful. He’d hit me with a spell, and I could absorb some of it to fire back at him. But while I got a few good licks in, it mostly just made him angrier. He started getting even more physical, and later, would only include magic once I was down and unable to think up a spell.”

“Kai-”

“And then Mom died, and he only got worse. I mean, Mom and I never had a relationship so I wasn’t particularly affected by her passing. He was, though, and he got more violent towards me. I mean, he was now single-handedly raising eight kids - he had to take his anger out on one of them. Who better than the one you already hate? Anyway, life continued. Dad got more secretive, more dangerous.” Kai actually laughs, “I even feared him a little. I didn’t know if I’d ever escape that stupid bedroom, and even if I did, he’d make my life hell. Not only that, but it felt like he was planning something. And what do you know?! He was. Right before Jo and I’s birthday, the stupid fucking coven planned their monthly meeting in our house. Directly under my bedroom. I heard them through the vent, how they weren’t going to let us merge, and how they were going to wait until Liv and Luke were twenty-two instead. I had my suspicions about this - I knew something was off about the way he was acting - but for him to break coven tradition just to prevent me from merging? Fuck him. Coven always came before family with him, but he’d break the rules because he hated me so much.” Fire dances in his eyes, but he calms down a second later. “And that night is when I snapped. Something took over and I did to my family what my Dad probably wishes he did to me the night I was born. When he came back after whatever the hell the coven had left to do, he found Jo. And from that point on, I think you know how it went.”

Some time through his story, you had sat up to face him, leaving you now right in front of him as tears roll off your cheeks. “Kai…” There’s no words for what he’s just told you. Instead, you reach forward and hug him. Your arms wrap around his waist and you bury your face into his chest. Tears continue to fall, soaking his shirt, making you cry harder. A few moments later, you feel his arms on your back and he pulls you close. 

You two stay like that for a couple minutes. It’s nice. 

“I don’t want to pull away, but I want to tell you…” he lets you lift your head to face him again. “It feels good to have told someone. Thank you for listening to me, Y/N.”

“I’m glad you told me. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

He responds by pulling you back into the hug, “so, yeah… pretty relatable, your favorite sociopath.”

“Mmmm, actually, that title belongs to you,” you lean back so he can catch your wink. 

“Honored, Miss Y/N. Should we get back to watching your, ahem, second favorite sociopath?”

“Let’s do it.”

“Pressing playyyy, now,” he drags out the ‘y’. “Oh, and don’t you dare think of letting go.” 

You look at your position. Sitting on his lap, your arms around him, his around you. Your head on his chest, and his fingers tracing your back. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Beautiful semi-detached 1890 Victorian in Savannah, Georgia. 4bds, 4ba, $1.3M and it's already under contract.

The 1st fl. has been modernized, but they left the lovely colored glass windows and original fireplace.

The living room has pocket doors and goes directly into the expanded kitchen that has been remodeled.

It appears that a wall was removed - you can see the crossbeam is supported by a column. They have it blocked by a rolling kitchen island, but there's a great fireplace in here, with some cookery on the mantle.

Even though they expanded, the kitchen is still a little small, but at least it didn't encroach on the fireplace.

Redone bath with a space for the washer/dryer is always a welcome addition.

This fresh and bright bedroom could be the primary, but it's hard to tell.

It's amazing how beautifully plants make a home. Why can't I do this? I'm lucky I'm only down to four that are still thriving. This is a single family home, but it looks like it was originally a 2 family and this is the upstairs living room.

There's a lovely bedroom up here with a fireplace.

A nice bath.

There's another kitchen up here, so it was definitely a 2 family. I don't know, the realty ad says it's a single family, but it looks like this is someone's apt. Even the decorating style is different.

Another lovely bedroom.

I think that the real estate is wrong, this is definitely a 2 family- there's another washer/dryer up here, too.

Actually, there's even a 3rd apt. in the finished attic.

The beams, roof line, and exposed brick are wonderful up here.

Cute little child's play area.

Cute kitchen.

Nice bedroom, too.

The patio's a little crumbly, but there's a lovely pergola and space for some lawn and gardens.

[honoringthor]

Christmas trees 🌲 🎄 history 🍎🍐🥒❤️💚🎄🌹🕷️🕸️

(I’ll be using Xmas and Christmas interchangeably)

It’s a tradition from Central Europe, especially 🇩🇪 Germany. It’s specifically a Protestant tradition. Though St Boniface used a fir tree as a symbol for Christianity after vandalizing Thor’s oak, it wasn’t a Xmas tree.

That said, pre Christians world wide did value evergreens and that didn’t end with Christianity or other religious conversations. Use of conifers synchronized by Christians and continued to be used as protection. As far as we know Actual XMas trees weren’t mentioned until 16th century in 🇱🇻 Latvia. In the Lutheran regions of Central Europe and the Baltics were they were set up in public areas like Cathedrals. The first recorded private use was in Alsace, 🇫🇷 france, then part of Germany. . 🌲

In the 18th century Xmas trees were popular in the cities/towns in the upper Rhineland then spread to the countryside. It stayed there for awhile because Protestant, and Lower Rhine was Catholic. Then Prussian officers thought the tradition was cool and spread it. By the early 19th century nobility in mainland Europe decided Xmas trees were cool and adopted them. German born Queen Charolette of Britain 🇬🇧 introduced it to the country but it didn’t become popular to the non German general public until Queen Victoria. A year after she married princess Albert, zBritsh aristocracy adopted it and it spread from there.

In the North America the trees were introduced by Hessian soldiers, mercenaries from what is now Germany who worked for the English.

Some people have a traditional time they get, set up, like Xmas tree like Advent Sunday, Christmas Eve. They may be taken down Epiphany Eve or Candlemas. My job keeps it up year around and decorates it for whatever holiday is coming up. (I’m not sure how pagans or Wiccans choose when to put up and take down their trees if they use them)

Old school decor for Xmas trees were 🍎 apples, candy canes, pastries that were shaped like ⭐️ stars, ♥️ hearts, and 🌹 flowers. Later glass baubles 🔴🟢🔵(possibly 1st made in Lauscha, Germany) and 🕯️ candles, tinsel, were added. The star on top was supposed to be the star of Bethlehem or the angel, which was supposed to be Gabriel. Now they appear to be used mostly out of habit. (At least in my family)

People in the 1800s would make trees by wrapping cotton batting around a branch.

Most Xmas trees in the US and Georgia(the country) are from tree farms.

Artificial Xmas trees were around since the 1700s, they actually predated natural Xmas trees in the US. The German Morovian Church created in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In Germany in the 19th century they were making artificial trees of feathers, this was a response to deforestation. Aluminum trees were first produced in Chicago in 1958 but most of them were originally made in Manitowac, Wisconsin. They became less popular around the time A Charlie Brown Christmas came out. Most artificial trees now are made of PVC. PVC trees use tin or barium, as a stabilizer but they used to use lead. (My family has a pvc tree we reuse every year, no idea if it’s one of the lead ones) the National Christmas Tree Association has a video game called Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Trees, it’s to promote using natural trees. The world’s largest artificial Xmas tree as of 2017 was in Sri Lanka 🇱🇰 at 72.1 m (236ft 6.58 in) if received a lot of criticism for not being Xmas trees-ish and a waste of money. Which is stupid, most of the criticisms are. It’s since been dismantled.

Christmas trees are not without out controversy, much like everything else. The Soviet Union tried to force Atheism throughout their empire and part of that was banning religious holidays. This included banning Xmas trees. They converted them into new-years trees eventually. Catholics didn’t really approve at first, it’s originally a Protestant tradition and the two Christian sects don’t really get along historically. So when the John Paul II had one set up in the 80s not everyone was on board.

Boston called their spruce tree a holiday tree but changed it back because a bunch people threatened to sue for som reason. I would have kept calling it that out of spite.

🕷️🥒

Chrismon tree is put in knave of churches. It’s a conifer decorated in gold and white ornaments called Christmons. The tradition was started by Lutherans but has been adopted by other Christian sects.

Hanukkah Bush is used by some North American Jewish families and may be considered kind of a joke by some. Most Rabbis discourage its use, pointing out that Xmas trees were Christian symbols and Christians had a habit of murderously persecuting Jews for some reason. Rabbis that don’t mind point out that the trees have been secularized for the most part.

Wiccans and pagans often use Yule trees when celebrating Yule/winter solstice or 12 days of Yule respectively. (I consider my tree a Yule tree)

Poland 🇵🇱 particularly Lesser Poland and Upper Silesia has the Podłaźniczka(different localities may have different names). A decorated branch or ring, usually the top of a conifer. It was hung upside down above the wigilia table. Wigilia, a traditional Christmas eve vigil dinner. 🇸🇮 Slovenia has a similar tradition.

🇬🇪 Georgia (the country) has a version of a Xmas tree called Chichilaki. They trees made of dried hazelnut and walnut branches that are shaved and put together in a conifer tree shape. They are most popular in the Guria and Samegrelo regions. They are burned on Georgian Epiphany on Jan 19. The Soviets tried to ban them.

Sources…

Various articles on Wikipedia (I’ve got to start using better sources)

Christmas tree

(Used other sources but I’m having trouble linking them)

Next will either be the Christmas spider or pickle.

[0perfectimperfections0]

Yo, I know I might be one of many people who ask this but I was wondering. Will get any lore expansion on the Everett family in the book you’re working on? I’m asking because the family has me really intrigued, especially Greyson. I know he’s one heck of a jerk, to say the least, but he’s a rather interesting jerk and I want to know more about him. I especially want to know how on earth he became that way despite his father, Henry, being quite a decent person, at least upon first impressions. I don’t expect any spoilers, though. I know you might want to save that for later. I just confirmation on when we can expect to see more of the Everett’s. Hope to hear from you soon! Keep up the great work!

You're actually the first person to ask about the Everett family. Which isn't surprising to me since I didn't make them a main focus point for the first book. The second book, "Blind Stitch", will give them more screen time like chapter 5 does, but most of the lore for Greyson Everett will be revealed through my Shell-Shock series.

It's just a matter of trying to figure out how to incorporate said lore into the Stitch series, because I really want to.

Greyson Everett is different as far as antagonists go, and I intentionally made it that way. He doesn't necessarily have trauma, he hasn't been abused, he wasn't set to unrealistic expectations, none of that.

Greyson's grandpa used to work at the World Trade Center (twin towers) and died when 9/11 took place. Yes, 9/11 will have an impact on the Stitch series and Shell-Shock, so if any of you are uneasy about that bit, consider this your warning. There won't be flashbacks or anything like that, just a general explanation of why Greyson initiated Henry's idea to start a doll company and why Louis exists.

The reason I don't have Greyson as a victim of trauma or anything like that is because of the way I have him treat Lou. Greyson is obviously abusive to him both physically and psychologically. And the message I'm getting through with that is that generational abuse and trauma have to start somewhere.

Greyson simply has strong political and world views, shaped by his family upbringing and 9/11, that drive him to simply believe that the way he treats Lou is the only proper way.

Not everyone that is abusive needs a tragic backstory, because it has to start somewhere. Some people are just cruel and don't deserve the "I was abused" card, and that's the hidden message I'm writing within the series.

As such, Greyson won't have a redemption arc or anything of that nature.

For background (I don't know how much you noticed in chapter 5 of Blind Stitch) but they live in Georgia. I can't remember the specific city, but the Everett's and the factory are located there.

I also did research on the actual UglyDolls line and that's how I built the rest of my fictional world around the factory. It originally was established February 14th of 2001, just months prior to 9/11.

In my story, Henry is the one that founded the company itself and was making it for the purpose of creating and producing dolls. He made sketches of potential doll designs, and Greyson helped him with most of the work.

Technical stuff aside, the first dolls weren't actually conscientious (alive). The first actual prototype couldn't walk or talk or any of that.

It wasn't until after 9/11 (spoilers so I won't go into detail) that Greyson started a secret operation that Henry didn't know about to create the microchips that would bring the prototypes alive. And this in turn would mean the regular dolls would be sentient as well.

I swear it makes sense once you know the full plan 😂 right now it probably sounds chaotic, and it kinda is. But I've got some sound plot based on my research of programming, AI, and all that stuff.

There are fictional elements to these stories, obviously, but a lot of the specific information I use is actual sound research.

Yes, I spent like 2 hours researching the step-by-step process of how to make a microchip 😂 which is why in my short story "Reunited" is really long. All that information he tells the dolls about their microfibers, microchips taking 4 months to make, all that stuff, that was research.

And the light colours are also accurate, but not specifically for when something is learned. Microchips are made out of silicon, which can be multiple colours, but whichever colour it starts out as affects what colour it ends up being after being exposed to light or thermal annealing.

I still have to do more research on it, but the reason why Lou's eyes are blue ties in with his microchip and the colours that are reflected when the microchip is exposed to light.

https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-22-25-31545&id=306286

The above link is for those of you that want to read through an example of one of the many articles I use to attain this information, but don't feel pressured to 😂

Anyway, I'll stop rambling. I have to go to class anyway.

[fiotrethewey]

2024 post!

Back in the days of LiveJournal, I used to do round-ups of my year, and then that went to Facebook, but as I have Tumblr, I decided to post here as well.

So, this year has been both amazing and stressful, and I thought it good to summarise it all to look back on...

WORK:

Work-wise, I was promoted just before the end of last year to Deputy Manager Cover, which was my role until October. Navigating a new work role was stressful, but at least I survived on a slightly better London Wage.

Unfortunately, that didn't become a permanent job as we hoped. Still, it did get me the respect of my peers and a recognition award at the end of the year, and now an opportunity to work with another team 1 day a week, so there's a lot to be thankful for and to look forward to seeing how that progresses next year.

CREATIVE WORK:

I had a short story 'In The Heart of Lads' published this year, which I wrote in 2018 for "Overdue: Mystery, Adventure, and the World’s Lost Books." It is about four boys who stumble across a missing Wilfred Owen—and a dangerous treasure hunter on their heels as they travel overseas to get it into safe hands. Thank you to everyone at 18thWall Productions!

There were two Big Finish releases this year, Twelfth Doctor Chronicles You Only Die Twice and the Gallifrey Echoes of Eternity Release - The Questing Beast. There's still a lot I can't talk about, but that being said, it's been an honour and privilege to work with Georgia Cook this year on @theholmwoodfoundation, which was our original audio project that not only meant we could work with some fantastic new friends and old friends, but we got to learn production as well as writing and how to successfully hit a very hard Kickstarter target so we could finish Season One, and tell the rest of this story!

Being part of the Independent Podcast Community this year and working with Karim C Kronfli and Sarah Golding has been amazing. Generally, I hope to be a force for good in the space, even though Georgia and I are incredibly new to the world.

MISC:

Here's a list of some of the stuff I did this year:

LOS ANGELES - Back to Gally One (cries in FOMO about not going next year)

I celebrated my birthday in style at Mirror Room at Rosewood London, where I had afternoon tea with Georgia inspired by famous artists!

I went to two Concerts! Hozier and Seth Lakeman!! And, of course, Doctor Who Proms!

I started learning the drums again. (This is parked for now until I can get my own drumkit in a permanent place!)

I saw Hadestown and The Stranger Things Play, and I went to the Globe for the first time, where I watched Anne Odeke's incredible Princess Essex!

I visited the family in Cornwall and went to the Fowey Regatta to watch the fireworks in August.

I've been participating in a TTRG Livestream - Explorers of Elsewhere!

I also visited the Eden Project for the first time since 2008

Three Conventions as Guests - DWAS Capitol Event, Big Finish Day and Whooverville. We also helped with Audio Hub PodFest and attended the Premiere of Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters, celebrating 90 years of Hammer!

TRANSITION:

Lastly, it would be amiss of me to not mention my transition, which at the end of last year saw me announce that I'm a transgender man. Well, this year, I was able to start Hormone Therapy - in my case, applying Testosterone or Testogel every day, which I've now been taking for almost ten months, and it's honestly been such an eye-opener to just how dysphoric it was to present in a feminine way. My new voice, my new hairline, my beard, and how I'm now perceived in public make a massive difference in my confidence and how I go about in the world. So much so that I was asked to talk about it at work, and I got a photo taken for our work newsletter and was on a podcast!

THE FUTURE:

Looking forward to next year, as Georgia and I are imminently moving to Manchester, to be able to survive a bit easier and live together in a little 2 bed flat we've found. We've got more Holmwood to make, and looking forward to a year where we get to make decisions together.

As always, I am incredibly grateful to friends and family for their love and support. I will take this opportunity to express my utter joy about starting to live with the love of my life next year. Every stressful thing has been manageable because my darling @georgiacooked has been there with me. Thank you for everything!

[foofenshmirtz]

My version of the slender forest/ creepypasta universe

Everything in this is fiction, the names and characters said in this universe aren't mine unless said otherwise and nothing is canon. Everything is just my interpretation and purely for entertainment purposes.  Please also forgive any spelling or grammer errors this is all just a summary of my au and not a full written story yet.

In this Au non of the creepypasta characters live in a fancy mansion or anything like that, but most do reside along in similar woods.

 In my interpretation of the woods everything takes place in the Appalachian mountains (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, and all of West Virginia.)

The logic behind this is because of all the paranormal sightings, cult activity, and murders that have happened over the years along these trails and states, and its unrealistic to think that all these creatures and murders would resided in such close proximity of each other, but i do still think they would interact or at least know each other due to the portals and pathways around these woods.  

Much like the similar (and real, yet its speculated if actually haunted) goatman's bridge in Texas, these woods have many portals along the trees which can be used to access different parts of the forest. These portals are often hard to find but have markers that help the creatures and criminals living in the area help navigate the mountains and forests with ease. 

Along many of the trees there are the slender pages that help indicate to residents where these portals are and also try and help scare hikers or any other passersby away from the portals or the deep sections of the woods.  

The proxies in this Au have the job of patrolling the woods, killing and getting rid of anyone unwelcomed, and keeping slendermans pages up near the portals. There are around 11 proxies but there are around 3 different types of proxies. (hollowed, agents and revenants)

The Hollowed are proxies who have almost no conscience and act rather animalistic, attacking anything in sight and act more like zombies than humans. They seem more skinny and tend to look like they are decaying and slowly dying. They often roam the woods looking for victims, and don't seem to care much about anything other than eating. The hollowed can be seen near caves or just around roaming the woods, attacking hikers and feeding on the bodies to stay alive, though most hollowed don't live long. They are the proxies who couldn't handle the mind control and went too insane to keep any of their original personalities, now just being used as an extra layer of protection to keep normal humans away from the portals.

Agents are a lot more human than the hollowed in the sense that they have feelings, interests, and a sense of their past, though most of their passions revolve around being a proxy. These are loyal followers who aren't fully in the head to understand what they are doing is wrong. Agents are loyal dogs who often act animalistic and don't question why, they do as they are told and when they are told to do so. Agents do a lot of stalking and cleaning up, they help keep the forest somewhat clean and decent around the borders so as to not alert authorities. They mostly hide bodies and are the ones who make the signs for the portals and put them up in areas that are needed. These proxies are quick and look mostly human but aren't typically seen during the day.

Revenants are the scariest of the proxies, these are the ones who are harder to kill, are faster than most humans and seem to have faster regeneration nor do they seem to age. These proxies do have feelings, passions, interests, and goals but have a clouded memory and are typically ruthless with their kills. They do what they need to do and they get the job done quickly and oftentimes messily. These proxies are often in charge of everything though are mostly on patrol duty, walking around the forests looking for hikers or anyone who doesn't belong, or making sure none of the portals close or are disturbed. If faced with one of these proxies there is a very low chance you will make it out alive.

[penig]

Concerning Pink Lemonade

So, in the wake of yesterday’s brief lemonade discourse with @prismatic-bell, I started wondering. I began my researches at home, by consulting my late-70s edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. Yes, Betty Crocker is a corporate invention and shill, but her cookbook (at least for that edition ) is very handy for a lot basic things. If a dish is frequently found on American tables, odds are good it’ll have some sort recipe for it, even if it isn’t your favorite version of the dish. And sure enough, “pink” was down as a variation on lemonade, and the lemonade recipe itself is an acceptable one. Alas, to make pink lemonade the instructions are to make basic lemonade and add two tablespoons of grenadine syrup and a drop or two of food coloring! Which is about what you’d expect from commercial lemonade but I think we can all probably agree that it’s a cheat in a private kitchen and not worthy of the name “home cooking.”

So I started considering what I knew, or thought I knew, about pink lemonade, and why I thought so. That it was made from grapefruit I had no doubt - I distinctly remember my mom’s voice telling me that when I hesitated to drink it the first time. But I think the rest of the idea I had about it, though logical and experience-based, is not something anyone ever told me. (I have never actually made the stuff myself; never had that much grapefruit juice on hand.) Because, pink lemonade excepted, if a drink is made from a fruit, water, and sugar, it is fruitade - lemonade, limeade, orangeade. But grapefruitade is not a word and you only have to see or say it to know why. So grapefruitade became pink lemonade - essentially the same recipe, with an appropriate amount of grapefruit juice in place of the lemon juice. If a fruit is added to lemonade it becomes fruit lemonade - strawberry lemonade, raspberry lemonade, etc. Add one more fruit and you’ve got yourself a fruit punch.

This all seems tolerably obvious to me. But prismatic-bell’s evidence demonstrates that, to some people, strawberry lemonade is an alternate term for pink lemonade, not a separate thing.

So I asked my husband what was in pink lemonade and he said: “Well, if it’s real pink lemonade, grapefruit.” Which was highly gratifying but not definitive. He’s from Georgia and my family is all midwestern (though I”m an Air Force Brat and my cuisine, like my accent, is a kind of American Fusion). We are, however, the same age, and I thought it entirely possible that the original pink lemonade had fallen out of fashion and that Kids Today had never known The Real Stuff. So I cranked up the old search engine and went looking for pink lemonade recipes and culinary histories.

Well! Imagine my consternation when I turned up not one single pure grapefruitade recipe, only a lot of variations on fruit lemonade. Cranberry is apparently far the most common, but prismatic-bell’s strawberries, raspberries, pomegranates, and even watermelon appeared. Even more shockingly, one of the legends of its invention (which are lost in the mists of the 19th century circus) is that it was created when a refreshment stand worker threw cinnamon candies into the lemonade. I can believe a lot of things, but I do not believe that.

So now I’m curious. I have no particular hope of a poll made on my blog getting any traction, but I’m going to turn the Shiny New Post Editor back on and make a poll, and plead for it to be reblogged around. I’m typing this in Legacy because I forgot and anyway who’s going to read all this before voting in a poll?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

As a new generation of young people speaks out against attacks on women and children halfway around the world — this time in Gaza — college administrators from Boston to L.A. are racing to call in heavily armored riot cops to shut down protest encampments at campuses they’d sold to applicants as bastions of academic freedom, open expression, and historic demonstrations that had changed the world. They are destroying the American university in order to keep it “safe.” In a week when decades happened, the lowest moments in what became a nationwide assault on college free speech by militarized police veered from shock to tragicomical irony. [...] The most tumultuous week on U.S. college campuses since May 1970 resulted in at least 600 arrests at 15 different schools as of Saturday, with more surely on the way. It’s going to take even longer to tally all the students facing suspension and in some cases expulsion for speaking out on the bloodshed in Gaza, or the now-ruined careers of principled professors who stood between their students and a nightstick. Not to mention the lasting psychological scars for young people who saw their dream college summon cops to arrest them or even fire rubber bullets or canisters of tear gas at them, which would be considered a war crime if used in Ukraine but is apparently OK in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s hometown of Atlanta. The notion of college as the American dream — fostering not just upward economic mobility but a nation of informed citizens taught to think critically — has been steadily dying since the original right-wing backlash against student protest in the 1960s triggered the end of taxpayer support for low tuition, which caused a $1.75 trillion student loan crisis. The maelstrom around the war in the Middle East has given the enemies of higher education — and they are many — a chance to move in for the kill. [...] Their ammunition is the complicated relationship between student protests for Palestinian liberation and against Israel’s current conduct in Gaza, where its more-than-six-month assault has killed at least 33,000 people — the majority of them women and children — and the constant scourge of antisemitism. Even though some advocates lump political criticisms of the state of Israel under an overly broad definition of antisemitism, there’s no question that the despicable harassment and assaults on Jews on or around college campuses have risen since the Oct. 7 start of the war (as they also have for Muslims). A few of the claims linking the worst antisemitism to the student protests have been disingenuous, such as when some journalists cited a nonstudent and well-known antisemite stationed a block from the Columbia University main gate as an example of protester hate speech. At Boston’s Northeastern University, administrators sent in police Saturday who detained 100 students based on a shout of “Kill all the Jews!” that veteran journalists on the scene said came from a Jewish demonstrator waving an Israeli flag, apparently seeking an escalation. But there has also been some instances of antisemitism that are indeed the fault of pro-Palestinian student protesters.

[...]

The biggest driver is right-wing authoritarianism. Red-state governors like Abbott in Texas or Georgia’s Brian Kemp have watched the new hero of U.S. conservatism, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, make crushing his homeland’s once freethinking universities the centerpiece of his strongman governance. Now they are importing the strategy. The Gaza protests have given governors and their fellow travelers on Capitol Hill a golden opportunity to squelch the notion of a liberal education while squeezing out a few more tax-cut dollars for their billionaire donors, and creating a nightly Two Minutes Hate of young people on Fox News that distracts from the 88 felony counts against their presidential candidate. [...] The complexities of never-ending conflict in the Middle East is what allows the cynical Greg Abbotts of America to get away with this. Too many would-be Democratic critics are too wedded to years of deep support for Israel, ignoring that a) the right-wing extremism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies is not your father’s Israel and b) the assault on campus free speech has much deeper implications than the current crisis. Too many college presidents have displayed extreme cowardice, caught in the headlights between Republican bullying and billionaire donors, who likely fear the protesting students might eventually question the brand of capitalism that made them billionaires.

Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer on the violent crackdowns of student protests against Israel's genocidal campaign against Gaza on college campuses orchestrated by police (04.28.2024).

Will Bunch wrote a solid column in the Philadelphia Inquirer about how the recent violent crackdowns on student protests against the Gaza Genocide and Israel Apartheid are a prelude to the fascist hell that America will be under should Donald Trump be elected come November. The violent crackdowns on student protests are also an excuse for right-wing reactionaries to wage war on higher education, academic freedom, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech.

[ingravinoveritas]

Did you see this picture yet? The first thing I realized was Michael's hand on David's back and their lovely smiles.

Hello! Yes, I did certainly see this group picture that was posted this morning, after every other picture had been posted. This is from Georgia's Insta, so for those who haven't seen the original post, here is a screenshot, along with a close-up of Michael and David, so we can see a little better:

It seems that Georgia's hashtag has been causing some confusion due to her use of an idiomatic expression, so for non-native speakers, the word "tits" has multiple meanings--colloquially, it's another word for breasts, but in British slang, a "tit" also refers to someone who is a fool or an idiot. So Georgia is saying here that she has tits, Anna has tits, and Michael and David are a pair of "tits" (idiots), which gives us the number three.

I did notice and enjoy that there is a "beading" theme to this picture, between David's suit and Anna's dress. I actually very much like her dress and how flattering it is, and it's something I would wear myself, although probably in a different color than white. I also love the way David's jacket sparkles, and there is something about him wearing it while standing next to Michael (who looks one box of bleach away from Aziraphale) that makes it have even more of a "the angel and the Starmaker" vibe to it. Because it's them. You know?

That was a large part of the impression I had of this picture, as it were. Of there being two distinct couples here, but perhaps not the couples you'd assume. It actually reminds me a lot of the picture that the four of them took in Lapland last year, which also looked like two gay couples rather than two straight ones. They all seem to look very comfortable in this arrangement as well, in a way that I felt was somewhat absent from a few of the pictures that were posted yesterday.

To your point, though, I did notice Michael's hand on David, and the warmth that radiated out just from that single touch. His hand is also noticeably low on David's waist, which echoes how we've seen Michael with his arm around David in the past, and is a lovely complement to David's hand being near Michael's neck. Michael's hair is also a bit disheveled compared to the red carpet photos, and I love the idea of it being messed up from a snogging session he and David were having in a coat closet before the girls pulled them out for a pic. Actually possible? Maybe, maybe not. But it's still a delicious thought.

Another thing I noticed is that there is something to the way Michael and David draw the eye in this picture. Georgia and AL are posing/smiling in the same exact way they do in every group picture...although unlike the others, this one wasn't a selfie, and so I wonder if that could be why they seem to be giving off a sense of discomfort to the camera. With Michael and David, the feeling is more one of hesitation. The warmth and crackliness and connection is still there, of course, but it's also almost as if they're holding back, somehow. Which doesn't seem very much like them, at least from what we've all see over the years.

It is a nice picture overall, though, which makes it unfortunate that Georgia's caption sort of takes away from the moment a bit. And given that she's been in the habit of adding these types of cutting comments/tags to a lot of her recent posts, it feels less like "British humor" and more like knowingly taking a dig at Michael and David. She could have just as easily posted the group pic without the hashtag, so at least for me, that's what makes her using it feel so deliberate.

So those are my thoughts on the Oliviers group picture. I am glad that we actually did get one of Michael and David, and to know that they did have the chance to interact at the event. I'd love to hear what other folks think as well, so feel free to add your perspective in the comments. Thanks for writing in! x

[circle--of--confusion]

Get to Know Your Mutuals!

I was tagged by @ibikus and @silverofthunder (thank you! Sorry for the wait 😅)

☆♡☆

what's the origin of your username?

it's a photography term for the blurry/out of focus range you get from a camera lens. When i was getting my degree I thought the fact that the term existed was too hilarious so I made it my URL back in 2018 I think. It's stuck but I can't think of anything else to rename my blog so I will forever be a confusing range of glass lenses

OTP(s) + shipname:

I don't really have any. At least nothing that stick out that I keep going back to. (I'm also a mean old self-shipper so, that could be why)

Favorite color

purple 💜😌 (others are black, green, and red if i cant wear purple). When I was in middle school I told people my favorite color was black 😅 (and yes I got weird looks)

Song stuck in my head

Little dark age by MGMT

Half horse half man by OCT

Weirdest habbit/trait

- bite my nails?

- when I count, I have a specific way of organizing the numbers in my head

Hobbies

Knitting! 💜

But also sewing, painting (rare now but i do like it), drawing (not as much lately but I want to do more), writing (new but im vibing with it)

If you work, what's your profession?

I'm an auditor for a small loan company. Mainly we look over renewals and new loans to make sure necessary documents are sent in and that their bank transactions are received. It feels like a lot of knitpicky busy work most of the time so I've begun to get really bored with work 😅

If you could have any job you wish, what would you have?

I don't want to work. I want to magically win 2 billion dollars in the lottery and then fuck off somewhere so I can do my hobbies and maybe learn an instrument.

if I actually had to choose a job and if have solid income with Healthcare benefits I'd work in theater. I love being a part of the stage crew. I did it in high school and it was really fun

Something you're good at

Knitting? I'd like to think im pretty good for having done it for 10 years. (Though I still have a lot to learn)

Something you hate

loud cars or just unwanted, uncontrollable noise

Something you collect

Small glass figures from a glassblowing shop in north Georgia. About 90% of it came from mystery grab bags

hockey pucks (though it's only a few. I want to visit every NHL arena one day and buy one from each arena. Most of what I have are bought online or I found it in a shop (the Nashville and Carolina ones are the only ones that I got at their arena)

enamel pins

Something you forget

To do maintenance on my sewing machines (sorry my vintage beauty. I've been neglecting you)

Your love language

Quality time for sure. Just let me hang out with you! (I've also been thinking more and more that I might like touch too but I could just be touch-starved so idk 😄)

Favorite movies/shows:

Movies: The Martian, Pride and Prejudice (2005), Miracle, National Treasure

Shows: Psych, Whose Line is it Anyway?, Bones, Great British Bake Off, The Repair Shop

Favorite food

I'm a sucker for sweets so ice cream and doughnuts. In the past few years for my birthday, my mom and I go get doughnuts for breakfast.

Also, speaking of. Breakfast foods! The best genre of food

Favorite animal

Cats, bunnies, sheep

What were you like as a child?

Outgoing if I liked you, quiet if I didn't.

Favorite subject in school

Anything to do with the arts (theater, music, art class)

History

Least favorite subject

Math (which is funny because my grandmother, the woman I'm named after, was a math teacher lol)

What's your best character trait

I try to be open-minded.

What's your worst character trait?

I can be a bit quick to anger. Or just easily annoyed if I'm not in the right headspace. Trust me I'm trying to work on it

if you could change any detail of your life right now, what would it be?

A better brain lol. Other than that, a bigger room for all my hobbies

if you could travel in time, who would you like to meet?

You'd think I'd have someone in mind but I'm drawing a blank. I like learning about history but not specific people of the past.

Maybe I'd want to meet my grandmother. She died when my mom was young and i have always been curious about what she was like.

Thanks for tagging me!!!

I'll tag: @copia @ficandkaboodle @visiosatanae

[chartreusejelly]

Am I Born to Die? || Sean MacGuire x f!OC

Fic Summary:

Mildred "Millie" Donahue, once a ranch hand and fiddler reminisces on her short time in the Van Der Linde gang through memories and letters. During early 1899, Millie decides to leave a life of petty crime and a haunted past for a path to salvation.

She finds herself victim to a train robbery led by Dutch Van Der Linde while stowing away to start her new life, but instead joins them in their pursuit for riches. She finds herself infatuated with Arthur Morgan, but her heart takes an unexpected turn for a certain cocky Irishman.

AO3 Link

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3|

Chapter Warnings: mentions of suicide, mentions of domestic abuse, mentions of death by fire, some derogatory language, a mention of nsfw activity (nothing that isn't already in the game) RDR2 spoilers.

Pairings: Sean x f!OC some implications of Arthur x f!OC and Sean x Karen

Characters: (in this chapter) Arthur Morgan, Sean MacGuire, John Marston, Karen Smith

Wordcount: 3,392

Notes: Please note if you have been following from the beginning: I've changed the title due to not liking it. But it's still the same fic! This chapter starts off with a (fictional) journal entry from Arthur some time after his diagnosis and moves into Sean's rescue and party era. Also some fluff near the end.

Thanks for checking out my work! Hope you enjoy it! Feedback is welcome as this is the first time I'm writing these characters and am always looking to improve!

[Arthur’s Journal ] 

Oct ?? 1899

 It’s hard enough to sort my thoughts out as it is, but this is my intention. So I got another journal to try and do just that. I was near the end of my old one and it seemed appropriate to start over, while I still can. I am losing my mind, and I don’t mean that figuratively. 

Times are hard. Everything hurts. My body, my heart, my mind. Sometimes I wish I could end it all. But I’ve caused a lot of pain of my own, so it doesn’t seem right to take the coward’s way out. I don’t know how much time I have left. I cannot undo the wicked things I’ve done on this earth. I cannot even make amends to every person I’ve hurt. Every promise I have broken. 

I’ve been thinking about a lot of people whose lives could have been better off if they hadn’t gotten mixed up with us. There are those we lost, of course. It’s too late for them, I’m afraid. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to see them again soon. There are also people who are still alive that I regrettably won’t be able to help. I’ve done my best to make sure they’ll be alright. But there are so many people I’ve encountered. Some odd, but good people. Each with a story and life of their own. I wish I had time to write each one and tell them how much I appreciated their company, even if it was brief. I suppose that’s why I bought this journal, more than anything. If someone should come across this book, well, at least you’ll know. 

Mildred Donahue comes to mind. Millie, as we called her.  Don’t know where she is today (was headed to West Elizabeth last we spoke), but Lord knows, she made the right choice to leave us when she did. Smart girl. I thought she was too good to be running with the likes of us hoodlums, even though she wasn’t entirely innocent when we met her (Are they ever?). I don’t remember how old she was. Bit older than Sean, but younger than Marston I think. But an old soul, as they say. 

She was originally from somewhere near Georgia, she said. Told me she had worked on a ranch with her crippled Pa for most of her childhood. He was a fiddler from Ireland. Must have taught her, because damn, could she play. Anything from folk songs we all knew to slow, soft music that made you feel sad for things you couldn’t truly understand. 

Millie talked about her poor old dad almost as much as Sean talked about his. Only with Millie, it was not fondly. I couldn’t tell if she loved or hated the man. He basically treated her like a work horse, from what I gather. Beat her often. (She didn’t say so, but I could tell by that temper that came out sometimes. We had that much in common.) Even so, it seemed there was an underlying love and compassion for the man, on account of him being the only companion she had. 

I miss those nights in camp when there was nothing much else to do except sit by the fire and talk. When it was just her and I sometimes, that was when she really opened up. I guess she trusted me more than some of the others for some reason. I learned that she’d lost her Pa in a fire on that ranch when she was about twelve. 

A fire he started himself. They had room and board there in a little cabin, and had been there for years. The dumb S.O.B  passed out and dropped a lit pipe on a whiskey soaked rugged. She said he woke her up and dragged her out, then went back in for their possessions only to never come out. Poor little thing just stood there and watched the place burn with him in it. 

She ended up in an orphanage until she aged out, then joined a traveling band with her fiddle, rather than being sold to a workhouse. When money was tight, they’d hussle people in a card game or bet, or find a saloon where they’d rob the odd drunk. Ironically her Catholic faith and desperate times led her to us. I guess sometimes the only way out of a fire is through.  We found her during a train job on our way to Blackwater, sometime after we picked up Bell. Unlike that useless turd, Millie was a fine addition to our gang. She worked hard and kept busy. Good with leather work and good with a rifle.

She ended up falling hard for Sean. It didn’t make sense to anyone. A girl with a good head on her shoulders falling for an irritating loud mouth. However, he probably grew on her, like he did most of us. His absence hit hard when he was dead and gone. Maybe he charmed her, since talking was the only thing he seemed to be good for. I always figured there was something about him that reminded her of home in an odd sort of way. Besides, taking care of someone was all she knew, and lord knows Sean needed all the help he could get. 

Karen once hinted early on that Millie was sweet on me, but I figured it was nothing more than idle gossip. The way Millie and I were after Sean was gone, well…I’m not sure what to make of it, even today. I grieved that boy harder than I would have imagined, but what I felt wasn’t an ounce of her pain. I felt protective of her, l think. Sean was like my brother. I couldn't protect him the day he got killed. The least I could do was make sure his girl made it out in one piece. 

If it was anything more than that, I probably just imagined it. I never had much love left to give after Eliza and Mary. (That’s another story, and probably one I haven’t enough time or paper for.) I don’t think I could have given Millie what she deserved. But sometimes I think, under better circumstances, I could have taken care of her. There are a lot of things I would do different if I got to do it again. 

……..

Not long after we escaped to Colter, John went and nearly got himself killed again by some wolves. Arthur brought him back to camp, alive but in rough shape. No one wanted to watch another person die from infection when our resources were bare bones. Arthur seemed least concerned, taunting the man, whilst he lay on his deathbed, about his reckless behavior. I came to understand that this was typical of the two, who’s mutual resentment was clear to me from day one. It seemed to be enough to spark John’s stubborn determination and survive just to spite him, which was for the better. We all knew Abigail and little Jack needed him.

Dutch became very focused on formulating a new plan to get more money, since Blackwater was a bust. We knew that with a large price on Dutch’s head after killing that girl on the ferry (which we knew was Micah Bell’s fault), we had to keep a low profile. It wasn’t easy to do when we also needed money. 

When we reached New Hanover, we scouted out a little clearing on a hill called Horseshoe to set up camp. We were glad to get the hell out of the snow and it turned out to be a good spot for us. It overlooked the river crossing, and was about an hour to travel by horse to Valentine, a little pig-shit auction town where we ended up stirring up too much chaos to mention. As seemed to be the case everywhere the Van Der Linde gang went.

Even with the idea that stealing was a horrible sin literally beaten into me, (my Pa had once beat me with his cane and made me pray for two hours over swiping a penny sweet) I couldn’t say I blamed the gang for preferring to obtain funds this way. We could make what would take us two or three months to earn on an honest working wage with one train or coach job, if done right. It didn’t matter to them if it was someone else’s much needed money, though I did think about this sometimes. 

Still wanting to prove myself, I did what I could to help as we got settled in, to earn my keep. It felt like I was starting to lose my morals, like most of them, if they had any to begin with. But Arthur always reassured my fears.  “Trust Dutch, Miss Donahue. He always looks out for us.” He told me. “Besides, the people we take from ain’t usually kind people. They all want us dead.” Truthfully, I knew I could have walked any time, but I didn’t want to let Arthur down. 

The first couple weeks in New Hanover, Dutch was preoccupied with some business with the O’Driscolls after we had taken one of their men as prisoner. The rest of us laid low as much as we could, like we were told. The Englishman, Trelawny took it upon himself to find Sean and he asked me for as many details as I could remember about the bounties who took him. What they were wearing, what horses they were riding. I remembered that one had long dark hair and a deep scar across his cheek. This detail led to Trelawny finding the exact man in the sheriff's office in Blackwater. After some digging he found out who their leader was, and as it turned out, Sean was alive. He was being held with plans to turn him over to a federal prison. 

Dutch sent Arthur, Javier and Charles out to meet Trelawny and within a day or two, they came back with Sean. He was gaunt and looked as though he’d taken more than a few beatings, but he was no less cocky or eager to tell everyone what he’d seen. It turned out those bounties had done a number on him trying to get him to give up our names and location, but they couldn’t get two words out of him, besides “Fuck you”. I have to admit it was a relief to see him alive after how much I had blamed myself for his capture. 

We had a celebration that night. The gang saw it as a victory and probably needed an excuse for a good time after all the misery we had left in Colter. I played my fiddle for them for the first time, while Javier played his guitar, and old Uncle, the banjo. We put on quite the show. I played all the songs I knew from the wedding gigs I had done, and tried my best to play some of the more tasteless songs people requested. It was the most lively I’d seen them. I even had a couple drinks myself and felt a pang of jealousy, when I saw Mary-Beth ask Arthur to dance. No one had ever taught me to dance, or I would have asked him first. As I was watching them, the man of the hour himself, Sean MacGuire, was making his rounds to tell his heroic tale. He sat next to me by the fire. 

“Aint’cha gonna tell me how much you missed me, Miss Donoghue?” 

I scowled at his deliberate mispronunciation of my name. He was never going to let that go, apparently. “I was raised better than to tell a lie, Mr. Macguire.” 

He chuckled heartily, nearly spilling his beer and reached over to give me a slap on the back. “Still got that sharp Irish tongue I see.”  he said and took a gulp of his beer. “An’ thank you, by the way.”

I looked at him in confusion “For what?” 

“The Englishman said you helped him track me down.” Sean explained and I gave an indifferent shrug.  “The men did all the hard work. I just told him what I saw.” As I said this, I tensed, prepared to hear some wisecrack about me not doing more to stop them or come after him. I feared he might blame me for the weeks of hell he’d spent with those bounties. But it seemed from the hit he had taken to the head falling off his horse, he didn’t remember much.

“And I’m damn lucky you did. Probably be wearing stripes and swinging by now if you hadn’t.”  He said nothing more to me that night, but pestered Karen until she dragged him off to John’s tent for some late night ‘fun’. Or so I heard from practically everyone in camp the next day. According to Tilly, Sean and Karen had “history” as she put it, and I didn’t inquire what that meant. 

I didn't think much of it at that time, because although there might have been some kind of mutual respect established that night, Sean was not the man I had my heart set on. At least not then. I was busy thinking of Arthur, wishing he would notice that I’d become smitten for him, but not really going out of my way to make it known. Besides, what would I have done if he did? I had no plans on marrying an outlaw set in his ways. Even if I did think he was something special. 

I figured that Sean and Karen were going to become an item, but as the weeks passed she acted like that night was nothing more than a poor decision, and treated him like a pest despite his persistence in trying to woo her again. It wasn’t long before the gang forgot that they had missed the fool when his big mouth and lazy attitude started to get on their nerves again. If he got to be too much trouble, Hosea or Dutch would put him on guard duty as punishment.

No one liked guard duty. Personally for me, the solitude away from camp wasn’t the worst part, especially when the Horseshoe camp had some nice scenery of the mountains and outstretched shoreline of the Dakota River. It was the fact that it made for a long day when there was no action to be found, and there rarely was.  Sean especially hated it. He couldn’t handle the boredom or lack of attention for so long. Though to make it more bearable, guard duty was broken up so a person only had to stand look out for maybe four or five hours at most. 

Since Sean had been caught dozing off in broad daylight one too many times, Hosea didn’t trust him to do graveyard shift. But he must have said something particularly offensive that day, because he had put him on the earliest shift, starting around four o’clock in the morning until after breakfast time. 

I had a nightmare that night about the fire that killed my Pa. They use to come a lot more frequently. Practically every night those years I lived in St. Margret’s Orphanage. When I left Georgia, they hardly came at all and I took it as a sign that even though I had done some bad things, maybe I was on the right track. But once in a while they crept up, like an unwanted visitor. Always the same..

I was asleep on the top bunk in our cabin. I thought a smelled smoke. Figured our chimney pipe needed cleaning again, and I’d probably have to be the one to do it, but it could wait until morning. Next thing I knew, I heard Pa cursing. He was shaking me. 

“Mildred! Get up! Get up! We’ve gotta get out, now!” He held a wet rag over my face. Confused, I opened my eyes as he lifted me off the bunk. That’s when I saw it. The wall of fire behind my father glowing red as the flames grew larger, consuming everything in it’s path. Our kitchen, our possessions. I thought I was dreaming but the smoke that burned my eyes told me it wasn’t. I coughed even through the rag, and struggled to breathe. 

Pa pushed me towards the door and told me to keep my head down. I tried to stay under the smoke. I couldn’t see a thing in front of me. Then, Pa kicked the door open and dragged me out and I took a deep breath.

“Oh, Christ Almighty. Thank God.” Pa said as he held me tightly. Then to my surprise, he let me go. I reached out as he made a dash for the cabin, trying to stop him. I don’t know what he was going for. Our papers, his fiddle…none of it was worth the risk. I screamed for him to come back.

“Stay there, girl. Stay there, damn it!” He used the stern tone I knew better than to argue against. I watched him hobble on his bad foot towards the cabin. The flames had not fully engulfed it from the outside but I knew it was only a matter of minutes. Without his cane, he couldn’t move fast. 

I was frozen with fear but I screamed for him. The other men on the ranch were up. Someone yelled to get pails and water from the well pump and start a line to put the fire out before it spread to the barn. Others ran to rescue the horses. I ran towards the cabin, but Chet caught me, his burly frame blocking my path.

“Millie, no!” He said holding me back. “You can’t go in there!” He held me firmly in place. He his strong arms wrapped around my small body. He held my head against his chest to keep me from looking at the flames, but his voice was gentle. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry...” he kept saying…

When I felt someone shaking me saying my name, I thought the dream had started over and woke up startled. I looked up at Sean who held his hands up defensively. 

“It’s just me. You were mumblin’ loud enough to wake the dead.” I sat up slowly and looked around. Mary-Beth, who slept by a wagon with Karen a few feet away from me had her pillow pressed over her ear, and realized Sean was right. I saw the gun slung over his shoulder and remembered he was on guard duty. I let out a sigh of and settled back into my shabby bed roll, embarrassed. 

“Must have been a hell of a dream, huh?” Sean said, still crouched down by me. There was sincerity of his tone. He let out a sigh and gazed up for a moment at the clusters of stars above our camp. “I use to have some bad ones, when I was in reformed school. Wasn’t easy to get a decent night’s sleep there.”

I let out a grunt of acknowledgement figuring he was about to tell some pointless story about his past. 

“Ah, well. Anyway... Sorry to wake ya, Miss.” he stood and I lifted my head watching him walk away. 

I tried to settle back to sleep and focus on something other than my dream to will it out of my head. The camp is silent except the occasional pop of our smouldering fire pit, and Uncle’s snoring somewhere in the distance. I was nearly asleep when I feel the weight of something soft on top of me. 

Once again startled, I looked up and saw Sean again, looking down at me. “You looked cold. You can borrow me blanket. Won’t be needing it tonight.”  He smiled softly. I heard a yawn and “G’night.” As he walked away again. I was too stunned by his sudden moment of hospitality to say a word. It seemed frankly out of character. I had really only seen two emotional sides of Sean MacGuire: Overly-confident joy, or mean-spirited anger. I had no idea he was capable of any kind of empathy, like Arthur clearly was and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I liked the clod, but I suppose he didn’t quite annoy me so much after that night.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

While this may look like a lovely, house it's actually a WTH House. You've never seen a reno job like this. Think columns and posts. 2008 build in Marietta, Georgia, this 5bds, 5ba home is priced at $923K (Nope.) The home may have not actually been built in 2008, b/c sometimes, the real estate will give the year that it was completely renovated.

The first thing we notice is that they cut part of the 2nd floor to make a 2-story entrance hall.

You can't convince me that this doesn't look like a funeral home setup.

Here is the first glimpse of the posts. Apparently, they cut out every wall that existed and, without regard for support walls, they just left all the corners and made them into posts. Note the silly little wainscoting.

Ah! I was wondering what those few inches of light above fireplace were. It's what may have been a 2nd fl. bedroom window.

This is insane. 3-pronged posts all over the place. They even cut around the doorways. (Well, at least you can see the original footprint of the house.)

This is the view from the new 2-story entrance.

Upstairs, they cut a few pieces of wall out of the hallway and also made a small balcony on the right.

View from the balcony.

They opened it up to make it open concept. I'm sorry, but open concept isn't a maze of posts. Somehow they get the place to stand up.

I love the wood here in the hall, and that they left the niche. (I'm wondering if that wasn't a dumbwaiter, though.) What I don't like, is the stupid frame they put around the light switch.

Oh, this is cool. After a big meal, step into the hearth and burn those calories.

Don't worry, it's private- they can't see you from the kitchen table b/c it's blocked by a flatscreen on the dining table.

The kitchen is new, of course. This would make a nice bar, rather than a small appliance parking lot.

Here, they're showing off the "beamed/coffered" ceiling they made with beadboard and molding.

The bedrooms are small, but they have nice shutters.

What a great idea, they can steam the clothes.

Just so ya know, the other bedrooms have plain ceilings.

Look at the mini park at the end of the street.

https://www.movoto.com/marietta-ga/309-fairbrook-cir-ne-marietta-ga-30067/pid_d015kdllbh/

[ingydarwp]

This isn’t really a question but I just watched monsieur lazhar and I couldn’t stop thinking about baby Jackie and how I desperately need the Mallory family lore

baby jackie!! she’s so cute in that movie!! :((

mallory family lore is dark and twisty and mysterious, and while i cannot give you any of its future just yet, i can tell you a little bit about them before the apocalypse!!

jay mallory was a georgia-born dude who worked on a construction site and had a thick southern accent. jackie used to tease him about it, which is why tiger makes fun of daryl’s accent on instinct. he was, however, decidedly not a redneck, did not like rednecks, and was insanely protective of his daughters. tiger was his favourite, though he’d rather have died than admitted it.

i think i’ve briefly mentioned this before in EoE(??) but jackie and tiger have different moms — hence why tiger has much sharper features and looks more like jay. jackie’s mom was a drug addict and tiger’s mom was not involved at all in her life and worked in boston, where tiger’s originally from.

jackie was a straight a student. she did track, helped out in the school library and worked on saturdays in the coffee shop down the street. tiger was a problem child in school, got into a fight at least once a week and was severely dyslexic, but nobody noticed bc they were too busy trying to harness her rage.

boots just ate everyone’s boots. tiger used to feed him her dinner under the table whenever it was something gross like stew.