#three of the four books I'm still missing are in that picture!

[ms-demeanor]

Do you know of any resources for physical film photo manipulation? Not sure if there's different terms for non-digital stuff, but I'm having a hard time finding anything.

Okay so there are, I'm going to say (casually, informally, and inexpertly - photography experts feel free to correct me or add on to what I've missed), four major types of photo manipulation that are common with non-digital photography. They are: exposure manipulation, compositing, actually photographing weird bullshit, and just straight up painting.

Exposure manipulation gets you things like Ansel Adams "Moonrise." This is what it looks like if it's evenly exposed:

And this is what it looks like with significant modifications to the exposure:

That is. Like. SEVERAL layers of different exposures for the final print. This can be achieved through processes called "dodging" and "burning." "Dodging" is creating a physical mask so that the parts of the negative you want to remain darker are exposed to less light. "Burning" is creating a physical mask so that the areas you the negative you want to be brighter are exposed to more light.

This is a process that is really, really easy to do in photoshop, and really really hard to do in film.

Here is a very comprehensive writeup of how to dodge and burn, and why you might want to.

Compositing is a fancy way of saying "copy/paste". But more so. And with more techniques. Compositing is basically combining two or more images to create one new image. You can do this by making multiple exposures (exposing the negative to light multiple times), splicing film negatives together (physically cutting the negatives and taping pieces to each other), or by combining negatives and prints into a new print. For instance the image below is made up of six different photos, which were composited into a single image by Henry Peach Robinson in 1877.

This is an article written by a photographer who walks you through the process they used to make a composite print in 2020. It involves a lot of planning, cutting, pasting, masking, dodging, and burning. This is a writeup from a photographer who uses a more blunt method of splicing negatives together to create more abstract images.

Actually photographing weird bullshit is what I'm calling "in camera effects." There are all kinds of tricks that you can use while taking a photo to create surreal or magical effects. One that a lot of people know is the speeder in Star Wars:

The floating speeder wasn't achieved through later manipulation of the film, but instead through mirrors hanging in front of the wheels and vaseline smeared on the camera lens to create a blurred effect.

Light painting is perhaps the most commonly used of these kinds of effects:

That's a 6-second exposure, the first three seconds were of the cup and saucer still, then the light was lowered as the cup was lifted and light was swept up when the cup was in place to make it look like it was floating.

The Cottingley Fairy Hoax is one of the best known examples of manipulating photos by just photographing weird bullshit. In 1917, two girls cut pictures of fairies out of a book and took pictures of themselves with the paper fairies propped up in trees, then swore up and down that they actually found fairies.

This seems crude, but hey they couldn't reverse image search the fairies or anything back then. Some of the photos also make good use of forced perspective, which is something that we still use for in-camera manipulations (it was how a lot of Lord of the Rings was filmed in order to make the hobbits look small)

Here's a listicle with a bunch of "hacks" for using your camera and for testing out some types of in-camera effects.

Just Straight Up Painting is what I'm calling photo retouching. It's a bit of an exaggeration to call it "painting" but yeah sometimes it was literally putting paint on negatives or etching away parts of negatives. It's how you end up with photos like this:

Here's an article about retouched photos of Joseph Stalin (maybe the most well known examples of pre-digital photo retouching) and an article about the art of portrait retouching. These examples are relatively subtle, but you can also use these kinds of retouching and airbrush techniques to exaggerate parts of an image or add objects to an image (see the text added to the flag in the article about Stalin).

I can't think of any comprehensive resources offhand, but photographers love to tell you how they pulled of their photos (which is why quite a few of the links above are from photographers discussing process). This is by no means a comprehensive list of non-digital photomanipulation techniques, but hopefully it's enough terminology to get you started on what you're looking for.

[jeanbie]

IF I LAY HERE (WOULD YOU LIE WITH ME?) ★ masterlist.

pairing: eren x reader

genre: best friends-to-lovers-au, actor au, fluff mostly | warnings: fem!reader | wc: 2.6k

note: hey. i still love u guys and i am still pining over aot. will never stop probably. anyway, this was an older fic i wrote but i'm handing it down to eren! title is taken/inspired from chasing cars by snow patrol (my fav song)

⏤ Eren has had enough - it's been four months since he's last seen you, and he's not going to let his fame status keep him from seeing you any longer. He just hopes that you feel the same way when you see him again.

Eren was taking a pretty big risk, he knew that.

It was risky taking any step out of his apartment at any moment; he’d think he was safe until he made it to the end of the road, earphones snug in his ears, and the flash of a camera behind the bushes in the corner of his eye blinds him back to his front door in a twisted shame. 

Granted, he’d expected it to be worse now that he'd booked a plane ticket and made a rather hasty, in-the-moment journey to the airport and on a plane with no layover. Usually when Eren takes a journey overseas, there’s at least one or two fans hiding in the corner of the suites waiting for him, or someone on the plane who’d recognise his face.

For this, he’d suck it up and take a photo. It was better to have good PR and be a little bit pissed off that he’d been discovered, than to have bad PR and to be known as the actor from Attack on Titan who didn’t give a damn about the people who essentially made him and his friends famous.

But Eren thought the risk was worth it this time. The plane touched down in a different country, and from there, it was an hour long train journey to a station he didn’t know anything about to meet a friend of yours he’d only seen in Instagram pictures.

You were at university now, a face he saw on a screen rather than a face he quite literally saw every day months before. It had been four months since Eren had seen his best friend, and fuck anybody who was going to make him wait a second longer before seeing you again.

You were his greatest risk, but it was worth it. You were worth it.

“Fuck, it’s insane to actually be meeting you right now.”

Frank is a good guy, ginger with circle glasses resting on the end of his roundish nose. He led Eren out of the train station, offering to pull his suitcase for him. “I mean, I’m a huge fan.” Followed by a sigh and a quiet, “Who isn’t…?”

Eren smiled at him, squinting in the sun as it hit his eyes in the direction of Frank’s face. “Thanks. I hear a lot about you, too.”

Frank grinned, whipping his head towards Eren. “All sexy and scandalous things, I hope. You know, none of us believed Y/N when she said she knew you. We thought the pictures were Photoshopped, you know how she is.” They both paused by the side of the road waiting to cross, “Shit, she’s gonna freak out when she sees you.”

That was three minutes ago, but Eren's still playing that sentence on a loop in his head. She's gonna freak out when she sees you.

He walks alongside Frank down one of the streets, past a redundant furniture store that quirks his brows. He’s missed it here, and how unbelievably, shockingly awful it all looks when you’re not looking at picturesque photos of it online.

“I thought you’d know that Y/N’s my best friend,” Eren says thoughtfully. He pauses as Frank does as a car zooms past when they’re about to cross. “I mean, people know. The photos got leaked, all of them.”

“Hey, give me a break,” Frank says dramatically. “I only really became a super fan three months ago. I'm more into Levi, you know how it goes. And yeah, I figured it out eventually. Finally, I understood why so many people at this uni wanted photographs with her and to be her best friend…”

Eren frowns. “Is it bad? She doesn’t tell me this stuff on the phone. I mean, they go crazy online when she posts pictures and we interact, but I didn’t…”

Frank shakes his head and grins at Eren as the words die out in his mouth.

“Nah, don’t panic. It’s not that bad. If anything, she might get a kick out of the fame. Trust, there’s always gonna be the girls who hate her because she’s friends with you and that’s like, what, threatening to their fantasy? But she loves you a lot, and a friendship like yours…it’s kinda like family, you know?”

Eren feels his stomach flip, butterflies going haywire. These butterflies are bitter and relentlessly fast, his heart racing that extra bit quicker. He likes the sound of family. He doesn’t like the way Frank implies it, because if Eren is ever going to consider you as family, it won’t be as his sister.

You’ve never been his sister, even when you became part of his family growing up on special occasions, or even just on a daily basis when you came to visit. There were times his family called you their own, but you were never his sister. It was different than that; you both knew it but never dared acknowledge it.

Frank makes small talk until they make it to the student accomodation you currently live at, and because Frank knows basically everybody, a student comes to the gate to let them both in. They’re nice and tall, wearing an Aston Villa shirt that Eren remembers looks a lot like your dad’s back in the day. Might be the same kind, might be a vintage.

He smiles at him, because maybe this guy knows Eren, but then the guy just turns back into the common room and doesn’t come out again. Frank doesn’t live here - he lives in a flat of his own around the corner, but Frank might as well be a resident here. He lets himself in towards the lift and shoots a text to one of your flatmates.

“Apparently she’s in the shower,” Frank says casually. He locks his phone, taps his foot as the lift rises, “Let’s hope she doesn’t stride out completely stark naked as you’re in there.”

He almost blushes, “Ha, yeah.”

He declines to mention the times you two have showered together, the time you went skinny dipping together when you were seventeen. Those were things that might end up getting misunderstood, and those are his memories he’d like to keep a secret. He says nothing, nothing but a thank you when he enters your flat with Frank and takes a different turn to the left whereas Frank goes right, towards the kitchen.

Your room is at the very end, your name on the door in stickers from a set you got from the market, and from inside, he hears the music in the bathroom. The door opens silently and closes with the same volume, and Eren manages to wheel his suitcase to the end of the bed and plonks himself down.

As expected from pixels on the screen, your room looks better in person - white walls and a bed set that’s white and covered with little peonies. Above your desk, Eren recognises all your photos together, new polaroids of you and the friends you’ve made at university who Eren always felt kind of threatened by. He smiles to himself, and rests his head against the wall your bed is attached to. From here, he can see the bathroom door in the mirror on the opposite wall, but he knows you’ll only see his feet when you come out.

Speaking of which; the song playing in the bathroom ends suddenly and the shower water has stopped running. Eren hears the toilet flush and his heart starts to race.

Four months of falling asleep on Facetime and texting when there was no time left in the day, and now, here he is, on your bed, waiting for you to step out and… And, then what?

Maybe you wouldn't even want him here. Maybe you were happier now that Eren was travelling the world with his other friends and film crew while you were still here, in a new city with new friends and a new life. Maybe the memory of Eren was burdensome to you. Worse - maybe he was something you felt you had to remember but didn’t really want to.

Eren's always been scared of the rejection he might receive from you. He might be a dream for fans across the world, but there’s a split second where Eren feels like he might not be good enough for you. He’s the world to other people. But you deserve the whole galaxy, and he’s afraid that’s something that he might not ever be able to give you, even with all the money and the fame.

The bathroom door opens and in two seconds, the light is shut off and he hears you sigh.

“Jesus, Frank, you gotta stop letting yourself in here without telling me,” your voice says. “Good thing I’m semi-decent. Usually I’m not.”

“No fun,” Eren teases, and silence follows. There’s a pause, and Eren cocks his head, his left cheek on his shoulder, waiting for you to click and appear in front of him.

Suddenly, he hears small but quick thuds across the carpet and Eren feels his chest tighten with a nostalgic feeling when you come into view with wide eyes, damp hair and nothing but a bra and those stupid black worn leggings you refuse to throw out.

The grin that reaches Eren's eyes now aches as he laughs at you, at the way you gape at his presence. It takes a moment, a moment of what feels like could be the rejection that Eren absolutely fears, but then you smile so wide that Eren feels it in his stomach.

“Holy shit!” you exclaim loudly, bringing a hand to your mouth as you hurry towards the bed. It dips beneath your knees and Eren rises up to a more comfortable position. “What the fuck!”

He laughs out loud, and when Eren wastes zero time in bringing you into his arms, hugging you tightly.

“Careful, my hair’s all wet,” you squeak.

“Don’t care.”

He really doesn’t. There’s probably going to be a damp spot on his clothes after, but that’s okay. You groan loudly with happiness as you hug him in return as tightly as he is hugging you, your weight on his lap and your arms around his neck.

Eren smiles so wide, sighing with content into your neck. Here, he smells the marshmallow body wash on your skin, the fragrance of your hair that kind of reminds him of Cabbage Patch babies.

“You smell good,” he mutters. You laugh quietly, squirming when his nose sniffs across your neck like one would kiss. “I don’t.”

“You do, you always smell good,” you reply. One sniff, he laughs, “See!”

“Mmm,” he plays along, “the sweet smell of planes and trains and jet lag.”

That makes you laugh, and at the mention of jet lag, Eren realises he could probably fall asleep like this given the chance. He has missed this, missed you, so fucking much. The emotions are overwhelming. 

Eren kisses behind your earlobe, and then just underneath your jaw. That’s new. Eren was always a cheek-kiss kind of best friend, but never this.

You’re not complaining. Your head drops to one side, almost giving him more access to the space free, and he occupies it. Those fucking butterflies; Eren feels sick with nerves as he kisses you, under your chin and across your neck, on that spot on your collarbone you found out tickled after Seven Minutes in Heaven in Year 8.

Maybe your fingernails in his hair are a way of you telling him to stop - it’s something he can think about tonight if he can’t fall asleep, something he doesn’t care to think about when he kisses on your actual jawline, to your cheek and the corner of your mouth, your cupid’s bow.

He moves away with a blush that matches your own, but maybe you can’t see his in the colour of your fairy lights. He plays with the dazed confusion on your face as he moves the hair from across your face to around your ears, smiling and raising his eyebrows.

“Your hair is so fucking wet,” he sniggers boyishly.

“I told you,” you shrug. You shrink, relaxed, “Fuck, why are you here? I mean, I’m literally so happy, but… Are you gonna get in trouble for this?”

“I dunno,” he admits. “Maybe, probably. I mean…the guys know I’m here. Jean drove me to the airport with Armin.”

“That’s not what I mean, though.”

Eren sighs loudly. “Yeah, I know. Frank told me all about the girls.”

“Little fucker. Is he here? I’ll punch him for mentioning it to you. It’s honestly fine. It's only a few. Most are really nice!”

“You’re my best friend for life, it’s important to me that you’re not uncomfortable by--”

“I’m not,” you assure him, hands trapped in his hair. You frown and try to change the subject, “Damn, this got long. Didn’t look long over the phone.”

“I've been growing it out,” Eren replies. “Heard you fancied Keanu Reeves, couldn’t handle the competition.”

“Ha!” you retort. “Simp.”

“For you,” frowns Eren dramatically.

Conversation fizzles comfortably, to the point where you both forget that Eren's underneath you and your legs are wrapped like a koala around his middle.

The fact that this is normality for you both is ignored. You’ve done worse things together. Eren even knows that the bra you’re wearing now is one he bought for you, half as a joke, half not. That could be why Eren feels the way that he does, why the confusion wraps around his body and traps him.

Eren knows that the butterflies in his stomach don’t just appear because you’re his best friend he hasn’t seen in a while. He knows what they mean when they flutter when your name pops up when you’re calling him, when an interviewer tries to catch him out by bringing you up in another interview that you don’t need to be mentioned in.

Eren knows that coming here was worth the confusion, and the nerves, and the fact that this will be a headline when it gets out. EREN YEAGER GOES TO VISIT HIS BEST FRIEND…BUT ARE THEY MORE? Or worse, NETIZENS HAVE PROOF THAT A.O.T EREN IS DATING HIS BEST FRIEND Y/N…

He doesn’t want to hurt you. That’s why he feels scared. For you to be scandalised by an article online that caught him out in his feelings, he knew it wasn’t fair. Eren might be too afraid to say he’s in love, and too afraid to find out if you feel it too, if all those years of confused relations and flirtations meant anything, but he’d risk those feelings and the headlines if it meant being able to spend one more day with you.

Eren's got a week and a half with you. Something’s gotta give within this week. He doesn’t want to go back to filming with more regrets than he came here with, and so for now, he’ll just have to swallow those butterflies back down when they pour out of his mouth.

Right now, he can’t afford to be caught out. It has to be said on his own terms, when the timing is perfect. It has to be perfect, because it’s what you deserve. It has to be perfect, because if it isn’t, then Eren doesn’t think it will be worth it.

Losing you to a headline and a butterfly is out of the question. You hop off him and shrug on a jumper from out of your wardrobe. If you noticed his unease, then you didn’t mention it. He almost wants to cry, wants the confusion to go away for the night so he can enjoy being here.

Fuck.

For now, he thinks as he follows you with an arm around your shoulders out of your bedroom and towards the kitchen to meet the others, he’ll just have to fake it 'til he makes it. Just like always. Put on a face, put on a show, until it all feels worth the spillage. He can’t let the butterflies escape yet.

It has to be perfect, and until then, he’ll just have to be patient, even if it breaks his heart more by pretending.

[sirenologyyy]

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE !

୨ৎ summary : wherein singer!reader books her next role in the ballad of songbirds and snakes after starring in the third highest-grossing movie of all time called avatar: the way of water, and falls for the bad guy... of course

୨ৎ warnings : cussing, that's pretty much it HEHEEHEH

୨ৎ author's note : YA'LL I've never seen laufey as a faceclaim in these before she's gorgeous. Also, your character in atwow is named Magnolia Quaritch, you're in Daisy Jones and The Six as a Jazz singer named Vienna Cartwright and a character in House of The Dragon named Theadosia Baratheon.

yourusername

tagged: @/jamieflatters @/baileybass @/jackchampion

liked by rachelzegler, sukiwaterhouse, hunterschafer, baileybass, jackchampion, livkatecooke and 176,987 others

yourusername the sexy skxawngs are SO back 🤩🙏🔥

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jackchampion DUDEEE YOU SAID YOU WEREN'T GUNNA POST THAT PIC OF ME

⤷ yourusername obviously I lied

user1 NAWW YA'LL ARE SO CUTE

user2 OMGGG your boots are giving

user3 average brother and sister dynamic

user4 HELLO DON'T TELL ME Y/N AND JACK PLAY SIBLINGS IN AVATAR????

⤷ user3 HELP yeah they do they're quaritch's kids and they're stepsiblings, y/n's character is named magnolia she was born on pandora like three or four years before spider was

⤷ user4 they barely look alike HELP

⤷ jackchampion no because we keep saying that too

⤷ yourusername @/slang_711 your response 🎤🎤🎤

user4 naw HAHAAHAHA

rachelzegler YA'LL ARE SO CUTEEE

⤷ yourusername MWAH

jamieflatters what is that picture of me

⤷ yourusername my finger slipped

⤷ jamieflatters this is an injustice

⤷ yourusername mb I'm sorry

⤷ jamieflatters you know you aren't

baileybass no because that day in london was so fun omggg

yourusername especially when it started raining and we all were just running around like headless chickens and we took cover inside that empty ambulance

⤷ jackchampion and then I totally didn't fall getting out

⤷ baileybass lies

⤷ yourusername falsehoods

⤷ jamieflatters these people deserve the truth jackson

user5 UGH y/n's so pretty I wish she was real :/

user1 frl I wish pretty people were real

user6 jack eating dino nuggies and mac and cheese with a coke sends me

⤷yourusername I have a folder on my phone with 18 seperate photos of jack eating the same meal over the course of filming atwow

⤷ jackchampion WHAT???

⤷ yourusername my lil bro 😔

⤷ user6 PUAHAAHAGAHSHS

⤷ jackchampion girl bye I'm literally 6 feet tall

⤷ yourusername nobody asked jack

⤷ jamieflatters yeah jack

ayoedibiri I miss you 😔

⤷ yourusername I miss YOU

user7 MAGNOLIA QUARITCH 🔛🔝

user8 if magnolia quaritch has a million fans I'm one of them, if she has a hundred fans I'm one of them, if she had 0 fans I'm DEAD

hunterschafer looking tew good babes x

⤷ yourusername ure too kind 🫡 🫶

user9 HELPPP BECAUSE JAMIE'S FACE IN THE BEGGINING

⤷ yourusername he tried gochujang for the first time

⤷ jackchampion top 10 worst anime fails

user7 I think you cropped me outta some of these babes 💋

user8 imagine breathing the same air as y/n y/l/n is rn like I cannot imagine 😔

user10 y/n what's ur favorite hot wheels car

user11 come home the kids miss you 😔

user12 can magnolia come and dissect me like that bladder polyp 30 minutes into the movie

yourusername

tagged: @/lionsgate

liked by rachelzegler, hunterschafer, jackchampion, tomblyth, joshandresrivera, oliviarodrigo and 500, 975 others

yourusername show our girl mira sage baird some love, the ballad of songbirds and snakes out now November 17th!

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user1 STOP STOP STOP

user2 THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY SHE'S PLAYING MIRA SAGE

rachelzegler welcome to the rodeo big sis 🎹🎶✨️

⤷ yourusername let's fcking do this thing

user3 im literally screaming crying and throwing up right now OMFG RACHEL JUST CALLED Y/N BIG SIS

user4 STOP BCS I just finished reading tbosas yesterday

user5 OH MY FUCKING GOD MIRA PLAYING THE PIANOOOO

user6 these stills are everything to me

jackchampion SO SO SO PROUD OF YOU 🙌

⤷ yourusername #1 WINGMAN FRL 💯

user7 her first freaking role was literally playing stephen lang's daughter in a james cameron film, then immediately booking the role of serafyna freaking baratheon in house of the dragon, then playing a jazz singer in daisy jones and the six, NOW SHE'S IN THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES???

user8 no one's doing it like her frl

user1 "OUR GIRL MIRA SAGE BAIRD" WHAT IF I START SOBBING

user5 like hello I'm never getting over this tf 😭💔💔💔

user3 Y/N Y/L/N THE WOMAN THAT YOU ARE

tomblyth hey nightingale

⤷ yourusername wsp gent

user9 OH MY FUCKING GOD NO ONE TALK TO ME RIGHT NOWWWWWWW

⤷ user3 DID THEY JUST CALL EACHOTHER BY THEIR NICKNAMES OH LORD

user5 they saw an opportunity and took it

ashleyjliao oh ya'll are not READYYYY

user11 TOM BLYTH AND Y/N Y/L/N NATION RISE

user8 IM LITERALLY SCREAMING RIGHT NOW HOLY SHITTTTTTTT??@@?@?!!?!,#*#(

⤷ user1 someone time this exact moment these two made frickin history tonight

⤷ user6 I'm so glad I stayed up for this holy shit

⤷ user8 it's literally 5:39 am for me rn I literally have to defend a thesis in 3 hours and I am wide awake bouncing around my dorm

⤷ yourusername oh babes get some sleep 😭 (good luck on your thesis btw you're gunna kill it! 💓)

⤷ user8 IM GOING TO BED RN MISS MA'AM 🫡

⤷ user10 replying to user8 NAW GIRL I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE REPLIED TO YOU

⤷ user8 replying to user10 IT CAN ONLY GO DOWNHILL FROM HERE DUDE

user7 I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS MOMENT OMFGDYDHDU

baileybass can't wait 🤍

⤷ yourusername I love you so much bai bai 🫶🏼

user12 oh my FUCK is that the scene where sejanus and mira have that conversation outside the hob???

⤷ user9 OH THERE'S NO WAY

⤷ user13 STOP WE'RE FINALLY GETTING THE "you're everything I could ever have wanted" SCENE

⤷user9 AAAAAAAAA I CAN'T WAIT OH MY GOD?!?!?

⤷ user6 UGHDGDFC MY SEJMIRA HEARTTTTTTT 😭💗

⤷ user3 I apologise for the person I will become once I see Sejanus and Mira at my local theatre

⤷ hunterschafer me neither

⤷ user3 HUNTER'S A SEJMIRA SHIPPER CONFIRMED?????

⤷ user6 hunter I love you

⤷user3 HUNTER SHIPS SEJMIRA YA'LL HEARD IT HERE FIRST 🗣🗣🗣

⤷user12 NO BECAUSE IF WE'RE GETTING THE HOB SCENE THEN THE CLIFF SCENE IS 3 DAYS AFTER...

⤷user13 oh...

⤷ user1 I DON'T THINK I WILL SURVIVE THIS

⤷ user2 yeah and neither does-

⤷ user8 NAWWW STFU @/user2

⤷user12 don't even go there @/user2

⤷user10 GET THE HELL OUT @/user2

⤷ user10 DONT EVEN CONTINUE THAT SENTENCE @/user2

joshandresrivera prepare to have your knocks socked off

⤷yourusername oh they dunno what's COMING

⤷ rachelzegler stop because tell me why I was sobbing even more than you were while you were performing mira sage's song 😭

⤷ yourusername we were inconsolable that day 😭😭😭 i think even Tom was tearing up too

⤷ tomblyth no you're wrong there was a busted pipe above my spot it kept leaking into my eye

⤷yourusername sure honey.

user14 NAWWWW ☝️☝️☝️

user15 someone check up on tom if he's still breathing cuz if y/n fucking y/l/n ever called me honey I'd be GONEEEEEEE

user16 @/tomblyth are u alright pal

⤷ joshandresrivera his eyes were literally irritated when I looked at him during our first initial take

⤷tomblyth nice going josh

⤷ yourusername rachel never let him go

⤷ rachelzegler duly noted

user17 y/n y/l/n as mira sage baird oh someone up there is looking out for me frl

rachelzegler

tagged: @/yourusername

liked by yourusername, tomblyth, joshandresrivera, hunterschafer and 168, 753 others

rachelzegler new york, new york - Frank Ocean

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joshandresrivera alright I see how it is

⤷ rachelzegler it's not you, it's me?

yourusername I'm coming after your entire career Joshua

tomblyth I asked if you wanted to go hang out in new york with me and you told me you were busy?

⤷ yourusername but I was 😁

⤷ rachelzegler get in line blyth

⤷ tomblyth I'm devastated, truly

⤷ yourusername it's not my fault I'm incredibly sought after, I'm sorry Tom

⤷ hunterschafer go tell 'em honey!!!

⤷ yourusername better luck next time @/tomblyth

⤷ tomblyth there's still a next time?

⤷yourusername For you? Always

⤷tomblyth I'm the luckiest man alive, I feel like I'm going to soar out of my flat any minute now, maybe do somersaults in the sky I'm not sure, we'll see.

yourusername liked this comment

user1 not Tom Blyth being down bad

user2 HELLO??? TOM???

user3 why do they sound so flirty wtf...

user4 dosen't Tom have a gf HELPPPP

user5 I don't think it's confirmed

⤷ user4 it better not be cuz why am I kinda eating this up

user6 NO BCS SAME ADFSDGSJSSHZ

lionsgate our favorite sister duo 💕

⤷ yourusername iktr 🙏

⤷ rachelzegler this is a WIN

user7 OH WE NEED THOSE DIGICAM PICS RNNNN

user8 @/yourusername LETS MAKE IT HAPPEN ‼️‼️‼️

user9 Y/N AND RACHEL IN NEW YORK Y/N AND RACHEL IN NEW YORK Y/N AND RACHEL IN NEW YORK

user10 THERE'S NO WAY I WAS 5 MINS AWAY FROM THAT RESTAURANT AND DIDN'T GO THERE 😭😭😭

user11 y/n l/n and rachel zegler my bestfriends

user12 HELP THE TEXT WITH Y/N AND RACHEL IM CREASING

⤷ user11 IKR THIS IS SO UNSERIOUS

⤷ user10 I wonder if she actually got the Lucy Gray barbie

⤷ yourusername everywhere we went it was sold out 😭

⤷ user12 NAHHH QUEEN YOU DESERVE SM BETTER

user3 @/tomblyth you might wanna get onto that

⤷ user5 @/tomblyth GET THIS GIRL HER LUCY GRAY BARBIE

⤷ user4 @/tomblyth YK WHAT TO DO

user14 HAHAHAAYAH NOT YA'LL TAGGING HIMMM 😭😭😭

user15 I know Y/N was mourning for that spilt coffee

⤷ rachelzegler OH YOU BEST BELIEVE SHE WAS DISTRAUGHT

user16 and they were thrifting too UGH I wanna be able to go thrifting with y/n and rachel

⤷ user14 I wonder who got those cowboy boots

⤷yourusername actually we both saw it at the same time but I ended up giving it to Rachel because I'm a wonderful person! (and we totally didn't fight over it inside goodwill!)

rachelzegler 😭😭😭

tomblyth

tagged: @/joshandresrivera @/rachelzegler @/yourusername see more...

liked by yourusername, rachelzegler, joshandresrivera, ashleyjliao, hirokiberrecloth and 268, 836 others

tomblyth HG film dump. We had our flaky croissants, our chewy croissants, but alas, not one croissant on earth could live up to these beautiful people. teebosass coming to theaters near you. ❄️❄️❄️

rachelzegler FIRST!!!

rachelzegler ugh blyth you sap

⤷ tomblyth what can I say

ashleyjliao 🥐🥐🥐

yourusername that cucumber salad did not taste as good as you manipulated me into believing

⤷ tomblyth hey you could use the vitamin K, you're welcome ❤️

⤷ yourusername this is what playing a pre tyrannical president of a dystopian world does to you kids

user1 yes mom 🫡

user1 AWWW THE GROUP PIC OF ALL THE MENTORS 🥹🥹🥹

⤷ user2 I'm abt to sob

user3 so excited OMGGG

user2 YA'LL THE CABIN SCENE I WILL NEVER RECOVER...

user4 sofia crying makes me wanna cry too wtf

user5 the tributes and mentors aww

⤷ user3 I'm having that picture framed and put on a pedestal

user6 Y/N getting her own picture is so cute 🫶

user7 holy shit ur right

⤷ user2 replying to user6 she literally got a single picture all to herself while the others were with someone else on every photo

⤷ user8 CHAT WHAT IS GOING AWNNN

user8 no because y/n having her own picture meanwhile everyone else had to share the spotlight is making me think thoughts...

user9 oh twitter's about to blow up and second now

user10 @/y/nsidehoe on twt 🔥🔥🔥

user11 you were amazing in Billy the Kid!

user12 RACHEL IS SO POOKIEEEE

user13 these photos are so well shot though

user14 the tributes all hugging eachother ugh MY HEART

user15 josh's posture is cracking me tf up 😭

⤷ user10 BWHAHAGSSJAJSSJS

user16 10 MINUTES AGK HOLY SHITTTT

user17 y/n's face though HELP ME

user18 Y/N NATION HOW TF ARE WE FEELING???

user19 I don't even wanna speculate anything atp remember what happened to her and Charles Leclerc?

user17 oh NAWWW they were definitely a thing, did you SEE those yacht pics?

user10 it was a shame they never confirmed it though they were so cute 😔

user20 YALL dosen't tom have a gf???

⤷ user18 nothing's confirmed, pretty sure he said him and the girl were good friends in an article somewhere LMFAO

⤷ user8 omg link

⤷ user13 (2)

⤷ user18 hold on dms

user21 josh and rachel have my heart fssss 🫶

user22 y/n nation boutta start shipping them I'm frl calling it

user23 it'll be gone in a week or so then she'll hop onto the next male lead in her next film

⤷ user22 HAAHAHA SHUDDUPPP

⤷ user23 for promo ✨️

⤷ user24 she's doing smth to these men I swear, spiking their drinks, keeping voodoo dolls of em or sumn

⤷ user23 WAIT STOP AHAHSHSAH

[respectthepetty]

Background Noise in Wandee Goodday

This started because of that "First Kiss: Do you believe in first kiss?" poster Yak ripped in the elevator

And I was going to write something about the importance of clocks in Yak and Dee's relationship

Since they made a deal to fake it for four months, the clocks are always present

And counting down their time together.

But then I also wanted to write about Yak still seeing his necklace on Dee when he imagined Dee kissing Ter during his boxing match.

So instead of writing small separate posts, everything is going here in quick snippets starting with the how Yak's life is all about boxing, all the time.

He has the boxing gloves name plate, and so does Yei

He has nothing but pictures and books of boxers all over his room

His clock has a pair of gloves in the center and his decorations all have boxing gloves, say "eat, sleep, box, repeat," and show a boxer with the statement "I am the best"

The posters over the bed and the pictures on the nightstands are of him and his brother in their boxing gear.

And even the pictures in the house are of boxers, and of course the smiley face boxing gloves.

So I liked that the smiley face gloves tied to the smiley face balloons Yei gave Cher.

I thought about mentioning the signs, but we all see those, so instead I'll focus on shirts, like Dee's shirt is three angels with "Saint Michael" and says to "Say a Prayer and Get Lost in the Flames." Saint Michael is the ultimate protector against wickedness and temptation, yet the shirt says to embrace it. Yak's shirt says "love is giving freedom" and is part of a longer lesson about love not being about possession or control but about love setting people free.

About Last Night is an American romcom about two people who have a one-night stand and fall in love. The original and remake both show the couple's ups and downs with communication as they deal with their shifting feelings.

When Yak goes over for dinner and finds Dee in Ter's apartment, his shirt says "Casual Active Original Wear" yet the only part we ever see throughout the entire sequence of events is "CASUAL"

Normally, Yak's shirts are motivational, like "Success"

And leading up to Yak's fight, his shirts become more motivational like the shirt he wakes Dee up in states that winning is a mental game.

"Good things are coming"

And how even though going uphill is hard and going downhill is easy, the uphill battle is best because the view is better.

But the best shirt is when he excitedly goes to his appointment after his one-night stand with Dee since it says "Heart Melt" and explains that a heart melts when a person begins to have feelings for another person.

Dee also gets sentimental after they listen to the song together on the balcony about loving someone because his shirt says "Relation: Friendship involves a lot of love"

I'm sure the "Favorite" shirt has meaning since he is wearing it as he thinks about missing Yak, but I just want everyone to know that is Monument Valley in the picture which is part of the Navajo Tribal Parks (woot woot!), and I'm proud to see it in a Thai series.

Finally, I would just like to appreciate whoever put Inn and his arms in this "Heavy Metal" shirt.

[kerubimcrepin]

Wakfu OVA - Book 2, Ush [PART 1]

Bonta my beloved...

From these two shots we can see the approximate location of the Crepin-Jurgen residence.

Atcham is, for some reason, the first one at the door. Maybe he's been walking a polite "I don't know those two" distance away from Kerubim and Joris. Idk.

[guy who misses liveblogging Dofus and pointing random things out voice] Here Luis says that it took Joris, Kerubim, and Atcham three months to get the Dofus. I wonder what this means.

DFHGSDFGOASIDKFJSADGKDFHAO;SFHSADJFHAOSUDFHSADJKFHJASDKFHASDJFHASJDFHUSAIDFHASJDKFSDF

Catboy Joris agenda continues to rise.

Two of the silliest things here are an unopened letter that has a chunk of it torn off (unopened for 3 months, mind you), and the lute with two broken strings.

...I really want to see that picture on the wall fully. What does it depict. Hi what does it depict. Hello.!

Judging from the legs, I think it might be Atcham in promiscuous clothes. Literally idk though.

I love you, Luis.

(Random stack of four pillows and a little stool with a bucket and a bowl on it in the corner there. They may or may not have left home midway through cleaning...., or something.)

SFDAJDKSLFJSDHASOUDFHCNSAJDKFHJKASLDFHKJASDFHJAKSDFHKAJSDFASDJFH

They ARE rude, Luis. Kill them! Kill them!

I think Atcham is the only one who is brave enough to say this out loud because Luis has a history of being scared shitless of him.

It is no longer the case after 600 years — he lives here, after all, — but he is still the least likely to get beaten by a floorboard in his sleep for running his mouth.

No comment.

This — the cookies/whatever, and tea in a kettle, — leads me to believe there's a tiny timeskip between them going to the basement, and them getting the map and the Dofus out, and that during said timeskip they had tea and cookies.

Also, I find it so funny that they have three little chairs, and the only one using a chair is Kerubim... to stand taller. While Atcham is literally just sitting on the table.

Very important lore. Truly.

This map is., 200 years out of date. And it was created before the Ogrest's Chaos.. When most of the world wasn't, y'know... flooded.

They're so grandpas... This is so fucking funny I can't.

Also, they couldn't find more than one nail to hold it down, so it seems someone (probably Atcham) just pierced it with a dagger. dfhgjsdfg.

He;s so cute.... i need him to be hit by a car.

Atcham is so glad to have finished this quest... In my opinion, he turns to Joris to say this, because Joris has been worried the entire way back. However, it doesn't help much.

You see, I am insane about this entire exchange. I'm crazy. THIS is why I love the OVAs: they allow us a brief, but very important glimpse into Joris, Kerubim and Atcham's life in Wakfu era.

Joris is weighed down by the morally questionable things he does. Even if it is a "good thing", he isn't proud of it. He's scared they'll hate him, and he's scared that it's a step out of his lane.

However, Kerubim is the one who justifies his and Joris's morally questionable actions. He justifies them through an appeal to the authority of the king, and an appeal to the morality of it.

And he does all of it the second he sees Joris hesitate or be uncomfortable in any way, shape, or form.

He's been doing this for 600 years. This is so unserious.

He just interrupts and disregards everything Joris says, as if Joris is insane for thinking these things... and in a way, he is right — Adamai and Yugo do forgive Joris, who seems to have been agonizing about them being mad at him...

I think Joris overthinks things a lot and starts to panic easily, and Kerubim knows that, and knows how to stop him from doing that.

Besides Kerubim demonstrating that here, he also demonstrates that, really, despite role-playing as their dad, Joris doesn't have the highest authority in this household.

Btw, Kerubim is so very good at chilling when things are actually catastrophically bad, that in my opinion his "this is literally so easy. this is going to be okay. papycha will protect you." may or may not be one of the main contributing factors to Joris doing war crimes in Waven, instead of going insane from panic. Family who war crimes together, stays together.

[cooperbutter88]

I'm seeing some other people share their mlp one piece designs so I wanna share my own here!!

I made the designs pretty simplistic- I wanted them to look like they could be background ponies inside the actual show of mlp. I also tried to make them look as show-accurate as possible!! I'll talk a bit about them under each picture, but you can just scroll through to see them all.

Starting with Luffy!

A purple earth pony! Also, I made it so all devil fruit users gain swirls on their hooves. His cutiemark is a treasure chest with some meat inside, next to his hat. (Don't... Don't think to hard on the implications of meat in the mlp world 😅)

Pegasus Zoro! Three sword style is so much easier with 6 limbs. His cutiemark is a thought bubble of three swords in the shape of a Z (to signify his constant napping) (Zoro will say it's to signify his name)

Nami is an earth pony, simply because if she was a Pegasus then her weather based attacks wouldn't be too impressive... Her cutiemark is a vine with tangerines attached, though if you look closely you see they aren't fruit, they're berri and a compass

Usopp is a unicorn with an extra long horn. I gave him some deep purple eyes that I think goes well with his coat

His cutiemark is mallet and a sling shot meld together.

Sanji is a unicorn with a slight curve of his horn. His eyes are magenta to reference his heart eyes. His cutiemark is a frying pan with four fish cooking, plus a smoke cloud that starts with a curly line that grows into a heart.

(couldn't get it to download with no background... Lame)

Chopper!!! He's a a reindeer that ate the pony pony fruit. He's smaller than the rest still, but when he transforms he either turns into a large stallion or his usual reindeer look. Also gave him some blue accents to go with his nose.

Robin! I gave her cuffed hooves, because I think it goes well with the cowboy aesthetic of Miss All Sunday

The hooves she makes with her devil fruit don't have her the swirls, but they do have the same cuffed look

Her cutiemark is a book, that also appears to look like a poneglyph (pony glyph?)

Super franky! Another unicorn, though he lost his horn in the train crash. He rebuilt it with metal but it doesn't work the same now. His different coloring represents the parts of his body rebuilt as a cyborg.

His cutiemark is a ship in a sea of cola. The top of the ship is also a hammer. The background sun also looks a bit like the sunny! I imagine he was a late bloomer of his mark, getting it after he recovered from the train accident.

Brook who looks honestly pretty creepy like this! I tried to replicate his goofy skeleton look but it's difficult for a pony... Anyways! I made him a Pegasus that can no longer fly (no feathers...)

His cutiemark is embroidered on his pants, a music note that's also his top hat.

...

There's all the strawhats!! If you're a fan of these designs, I actually have them all (+ another character) available as stickers on my Etsy!

They're three inches big and they stick wonderfully, I've had one on my water bottle for the past two months and it hasnt shown any signs of peeling!!

[jo-harrington]

Corroded Coffin Fest - Day 23 - Up and Coming

Summary: Eddie wasn't used to success.

Word Count: 752

Rating: T

Warnings/Themes: Angst? But then happiness? Eddie Munson sad-sackery turned into perseverance and joy.

Check Out the Main Post for @corrodedcoffinfest here! Even if you didn’t start on Day 1, you can still join!

Tagging: @the-unforgivenn at her request.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

Eddie wasn't used to success.

The Munson name meant being unpopular, being picked last. It happened to him for his entire life.

Maybe when his mom was still alive things had been a little different. But he'd been young, and Kindergarteners didn't care what your name was as long as you wanted to play pretend or race cars or hopscotch with them.

He had to grow up once she was gone. But once you were grown there was nothing to protect you from the harsh realities of the world. Of the unfairness of others.

People told him he sucked, that his clothes sucked, his taste in music. The more hits he took, the tougher his skin became, and before long those words didn't hurt him so much. Instead of digging into him and carving out a piece of his happiness though, they dug into the ground below him and created a canyon between him and the others.

But it was hard to build a bridge on your own; so he found others like him--other freaks--to help get across the social void until they could try to find a piece of the world they could make their own.

Or build it themselves if they had to.

And they did.

They built a club for themselves, an identity. Embraced the word freak to mean someone different, someone looking for a place to call their own. They started their band with a plan to get out. To find a place of belonging, to find a future, to find something more.

To find success.

It was elusive. The closer they got to it, the further away it seemed to get. But it's what drove them to keep going. Drove Eddie to keep going. He encouraged them to work harder, to push themselves further, and to never give up.

They moved to Indianapolis. Then to Chicago. They played fests and clubs and opened for bigger bands.

They just. Kept. Going.

But a handful of fans that could sincerely be called friends at this point, and gigs that still didn't fully pay the bills, and t-shirts that they simply could never sell enough...that wasn't success.

Right?

So when someone woke him up early one morning, pounding on his door, he certainly didn't expect it to hit him like a freight train.

Dave flung the newspaper at his head and then grabbed fistfuls of his t-shirt and shook him. All the while screaming "we did it! We did it! We made it Ed!"

Three Up-and-Coming Bands to Keep on Your Radar By Alex McCall

The headline was big.

Front of the entertainment section of the Tribune with a grainy black-and-white picture of him and the guys on stage at some venue. He couldn't quite tell which one, but they'd been booking gigs pretty regularly now so it could have been any of them.

Eddie rubbed the sleep from his eyes and scanned over the page, over the paragraphs about the other bands that he'd vaguely heard of in passing, until he reached the two paragraphs about Corroded Coffin.

This McCall guy sung their praises. About their stage presence and their unique sound. About the small group of fans and praises from local critics Eddie had never heard of. About the four of them and their synchronicity on-stage.

This, that, and the kitchen sink.

It was a see it to believe it moment and Eddie simply could not believe it.

The article even ended with a quote from Eddie himself, one he couldn't remember giving.

"Guitarist Eddie Munson says the band is 'destined for a bigger stage' as he sips a can of Dr. Pepper and I have agree wholeheartedly. Keep Corroded Coffin at the front of your mind because these guys are going places and you don't want to miss your chance to get in on the ground floor.'

It was wild.

It was unbelievable.

"Davey I'm gonna need you to pinch me or something..." he muttered softly.

It was everything he could to not to feel like he was about to die, as his whole life flashed before his eyes. Every time he felt like a failure, every struggle he thought they'd never overcome.

Pain erupted in his arm and he was brought back to reality to find his friend grinning wickedly at him.

"OW!" he screeched "What the fuck! Not that hard!"

Eddie looked down at the newspaper once again, reread the article, and touched the picture reverently.

And that's when he realized...they found their place.

They found their future.

They were on their way.

[honeybeefae]

A Court of Wings & Fire: Chapter Three

Summary//

Eris had control of everything in his life. The war was over, he was planning to take the Autumn throne, and nothing was left to surprise him…until he met you. A mating bond with an Illyrian was like a spit in his face and neither of you could understand why fate had put you together. You both swore off relations to each other, refusing to even be in the same court, but you should have known that fate is not to be tested.

(ITS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING BUT I AM BACK BABY! I really really hope you guys are still reading and excited and love this! I missed writing for you guys and I'm so happy to be back!!)

((This is the dress I had in my mind but if you like something different, that's okay!!)

/ Chapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Four / Chapter Five

Three weeks. It had been three weeks since your world had gone to shit. Three weeks of anger, bitterness, grief, and hundreds of other emotions that could all be summed up with one word. Hatred. 

You hated him, hated the bond, hated everything. It showed in your face, your voice, hell you were half convinced you could taste it. Rhysand had assured you that Eris would have broken the bond but yet you could still feel it deep inside. It was keeping you up at night with worry.

And if that weren’t enough, it seemed like everyone around you treated you as if you were infected with plague. The topic of what happened that night had not been brought up whatsoever but the tension was hanging thick in the air. Sometimes it seemed as if they were avoiding you altogether, specifically Mor, and it made your hatred grow. 

He had ruined your life.

If you knew how to break the bond you would have that night, that moment, but you had no clue. The books in the library didn’t give you any clear answers and you were too afraid of Amren to go to her. You had considered asking Rhys but he was busy with Feyre, Briallyn, and Nesta so you didn’t want to bother him with this more than it already was.

For now, it seemed you just had to grin and bear it. Faking your smiles and conversations while slowly dying inside. 

Training was the only time you felt you could truly let out your frustrations. Your knuckles were red and blistered, muscles sore for how often you were up on the training grounds. Today was no different as you stood before one of the punching bags, dawning only a sports bra and shorts, and beating the hell out of it.

The sun warmed your skin and wings as you threw punch after punch, feeling the eyes of two people on your back that you were sure belonged to Cass and Az. You would’ve thought by now that you wouldn’t have more anger left to give but as you stood there, picturing his face and the way he had stared at you in disgust, it only seemed to increase.

Your mind began to race over the encounter again as you replayed his snarl, the way his mouth twisted down, and his eyes raking over your body like you were the bane of his existence. The bag didn’t even have enough time to reset as you used every muscle in your body to strike it. 

His amber eyes appeared in your mind as you closed your eyes, chest heaving and sweat dripping down your neck. It was like he was watching you now and you swore you could feel something down the bond but you closed it off, curling your fist and raising it to hit the bag once more only to be met with a solid object.

Cassian was looking down at you with sympathy, your fist caught in his much larger hand before he let go. “Before you completely obliterate the rest of the training grounds, I suggest you go ahead and get ready.”

“Ready for what?” You ask out of breath, nodding towards Azriel as he handed you a cup of water. 

“Hewn City. Two hours.” Azriel replied, his arms crossed over his chest. “We have a meeting with Eris.”

Even the sound of his name made you grimace. You stood straighter, lips turned down into a large frown. “Do I have to go?” You asked quietly, already knowing the answer.

They both nodded solemnly, pity in their eyes. You hated it. You didn’t want their pity or to be treated like some broken doll. If anyone would ask you that, they would know. You just desperately wanted things to go back to normal.

“We will be by your side the entire night,” Cassian assured, clapping your shoulder with his hand. “This meeting is going to be attended by everyone. We want to know what his game is, why the bond isn’t broken yet.”

“You and me both.” You said snarky, finishing the rest of your drink before making your way to the doors. They fell in line beside you, their presence comforting. “And he agreed to come?”

“Rhys said that he was ‘very eager’ to see us, and you, again. I have no idea what that could mean but something does not feel right to me.” Azriel noted, holding the door open for you. “I know Eris and what he is capable of. There has to be another reason for this.”

“Well,” You sigh, finding your bedroom door and opening it. “Just make sure there is lots of wine tonight. I don’t think I will be able to get through this without it.”

Cassian grinned and Azriel gave a small smile. “We’ll take you out to Rita’s tonight to make you truly forget about this.” Cass promised, crossing his fingers over his heart. You chuckled and sent them on their way, shutting the door behind you and leaning back on it as you took some deep breaths. 

Dread was heavy in your stomach as you collected your thoughts. What if he was planning something tonight? You knew your friends had assured you that they would be by your side but you still didn’t fully trust that Eris wouldn’t try to kill you the moment they were distracted.

You also knew if you dwelled on the what-ifs you would go mad so you decided to get ready, bathing yourself and making sure you were “Court of Nightmares” potential. Seeing Eris was already going to be hell, you might as well look good to boost your confidence. 

The dresses you had were custom-made for your body and wings, a perk of being in the Rhys’s inner circle, while also being designed with your taste in mind. Tonight’s dress was no different. It was a dark green, almost black, with a halter collar that cut out around your shoulders and also completely backless. 

Small, golden beads made an intricate design around your breasts and neck while the rest of the gown flowed softly down your legs with a slit that ended right at the top of your leg. It was one of your favorites, allowing you plenty of movement. It was also the perfect dress to conceal weapons with as you strapped your dagger sheath around your thigh, tucking your trusty knife inside. 

For a brief moment you pictured Eris standing behind you, his hand on your waist and those damned eyes admiring your outfit with a smirk. You scowled at your reflection before turning away to grab some heels, knowing it was the bond making you envision things you didn’t want. It was pretty good at tricking your brain so you were hopeful tonight would go the way you needed it to.

As you slid on your shoes and went to a different mirror to finish applying your rouge and lipstick, you felt a small tug deep within you. It made you smear the corner of your lip from surprise. 

“Fucking hell.” You grimaced, ignoring it as it tugged a second time. 

Eris seemed to be testing if you would respond but you refused. You would not be giving him any satisfaction for this sadistic dance he seemed to want to draw out. Tonight was to be the end of it.

This story had one chapter, one page, and the happy ending of never seeing each other again.

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

All eyes seemed to be on you when the eight of you strolled into the throne room of the Court of Nightmares. The bond was still a secret as far as you knew but the way they were looking at you made your skin crawl. You passed the tables piled high with food as well as the quartet while keeping your eyes out for a certain redhead, taking your position beside Cassian and Azriel. 

He was nowhere to be seen and while that made you more unsettled, you decided to turn your attention to your High Lord and High Lady as they put on their masks. You bowed with everyone else, though you and your friends were the only people in the room who truly meant the respect that came with it.

You looked up and saw Keir approach the throne, trying not to look at Feyre and addressing Rhysand instead. Mor smirked as Rhysand corrected him, putting him in his place in front of everyone, which made you smile. The bastard truly deserved it.

“Look alive.” Cassian whispered beside you as the feast began, sending you a friendly wink as he went to his post. You nodded and looked at Rhys briefly, feeling safer that his eyes were on you as you made your way around the room.

While you were by yourself you knew your friends were keeping attention on you subtly. It would definitely rouse suspicion if you suddenly had two of Rhysand’s best soldiers guarding you so you had to keep it lowkey.

The crowd naturally parted for you as you headed towards the back, your face stoic. Some of the males stared in awe at a grown female Illyrian with wings, others disgusted. Almost all of the women sneered at you. However, you knew all of them thought themselves better than you.

Their opinions of you did not keep you up at night. You knew how bitter and miserable they were, how the game worked down here, and if you were honest, you pitied them most of the time. They would always be stuck here, playing the same old game for the same old prizes that would only get them a vague understanding of freedom and power.

Eris was still yet to be seen and you felt yourself relax after about an hour. It would seem he either was waiting in one of the rooms or had bailed completely. Either way, it delayed your meeting as Rhys and Feyre dealt with small court troubles that Keir was rambling about. 

Mor and Cassian were discussing something over goblets of wine, the latter’s eyes straying to the oldest Archeron sister several times. To your surprise she also was watching him just as much, her cheeks lightly flushed if they caught each other’s gaze.

Interesting.

You looked for Azriel but he was nowhere in sight, though knowing him, he was probably lurking in the shadows. As you rounded around the table closest to the hallway, your eyes flickering upwards to admire the chandeliers for a brief moment, you felt a large hand wrap around your mouth and an arm around your waist.

They immediately pulled you into the hallway and inside a small room, their grip tight against your skin as you thrashed, kicked, and finally bit down on the hand covering your mouth. 

“Fuck!” Eris hissed in pain, pushing you away from him. “What the hell is wrong with you? Who bites someone?”

He was disheveled from your fight, his shirt wrinkled and hair tousled. However, his face was still the same. It still held all the disdain in the world for you, you could see it in his eyes.

“Someone who is being kidnapped.” You snap back, fixing your dress and standing as tall as you could. “I will slice you into a hundred tiny pieces and feed you to the dogs if you do not let me out of this room.”

“Going straight to threats again are we?” He raised a brow, looking you up and down. “I forget that your kind only communicates in violence and grunts. Shall I draw on the walls so you can understand what I’m saying?”

Before he could revel in his comeback, you had unsheathed your knife and shoved him against the door. The knife was cool against his throat, and your bodies pressed against one another as you stared at him with all the anger and hatred you had been swimming in for the last three weeks.

“I will only warn you once.” You say lowly, gaze locked onto his. “If you say anything against my kind, my people, one more time, I will not hesitate to kill you in every way that I know how. Consequences be damned.”

His pupils were wide as you curled your upper lip, pressing the tip of the blade into his pulse point. “Do you understand?”

There was a beat of silence, of tension, as you both shared the same breath before he held his hands up in surrender and nodded. You held him there for a second longer before stepping back and allowing him to fix his suit. 

“My apologies…”

Eris looked at you expectedly, his hand waving in front of him as he waited for something. When you only stared at him, he rolled his eyes. “Your name.”

“What?”

“What is your name?”

You crossed your arms over your chest, wondering if you should give it to him. He was sure to find out if you didn’t tell him so there shouldn’t be any true harm in it.

“Y/N.” You responded quietly.

“Y/N.” Eris repeated, testing it on his tongue. Your fingertips squeezed the upper muscles of your arms when you heard how he said your name. It made something flutter deep inside you but you drowned it as fast as you could. Damn bond. 

“My apologies, Y/N.” He continued, rolling up the cuffs on his sleeves. “For both the words and the ‘kidnapping’, if that’s what you want to call it.”

“That is what I will call it because that’s what it is.” You snark, frowning. “Would you rather me call killing you ‘expediting your trip to the Mother’?”

He couldn’t stop the genuine smile on his face at how quick-witted you were. “I suppose not.”

“Enough talk. Let me out this instant. My friends are sure to be looking for me.” You stated, going to walk around him until he shot his arm out and blocked your path. His face was dangerously close to yours as you turned your head, having to look slightly upwards in order to meet his eyes. 

“Move. Your. Arm.” You seethe, growing annoyed by how much enjoyment he seemed to be getting out of riling you up. 

“I wanted to talk to you before the meeting.” Eris explained, briefly looking at your wings before back to your face. 

“What could you possibly have to say to me?” You argue, stepping back and away from him. “Because I have nothing to say to you. Nothing except to break the damn bond.”

“And why haven’t you?” He asked, leaning against the doorframe. 

“Do you not think I have tried?” The words shot out of your mouth like poison. “I have no idea what to do or how to do it. Believe me when I say that if I knew how it would have been done the moment it happened.”

Eris hummed and it only infuriated you more. He was treating you like you were dumb, like a child trying to play chess. His arrogance was seeping through every pore of his body.

“And since you do know, why haven’t you?” You question, pointing your finger at his chest. “You don’t want this. I don’t want this. Break it.”

“It is much more complicated than that, Y/N.” He answered with a sigh, gesturing for you to take a seat. However you didn’t trust him, didn’t know if there was someone lurking behind you, so you remained standing. Eris studied you for a second before rolling his eyes and sitting down in the chair closest to him. 

“I’m not going to harm you-”

“I will remain standing, thank you.” You cut him off. “Explain yourself or I am leaving.”

“When a bond is severed, it is traumatic for both parties involved regardless if the bond is wanted or not.” Eris began, gesturing between the two of you. “Not only is it painful emotionally and mentally, but physically as well. We will both be sick, tired, feeling as if we had just been through a war.”

You looked down at your feet, mulling over his words. It didn’t register in your brain that it could be that painful. You thought it was as simple as wishful thinking.

“And I’m not saying this out of concern for your well-being, but for mine.” He added, ignoring your scoff. “If my father sees me like that he will know something has happened, that something is off. He will go snooping and if he finds out I am mated, especially to someone like…”

He trailed off as you narrowed your eyes, daring him to say something. Eris raised his hands up in an innocent gesture again.

“I will not restate my feelings for your…people,” He said the last word painfully, and your fist curled up at your side. “But if you think I do not like you, you have not met my father.”

“So it is for my well-being?” You counter with a smirk, letting your wings open just a tad. “You just said that your father was worse than you when it comes to my kind and if you think he will be hard on me-”

“Do not assume that is what I meant.” He snapped, eyebrows furrowed. “I have no care for what happens to you. I care more about the ant underneath my feet than I do for you or this court. However, even being mated to you will have my father’s anger turned to me.”

Your smirk fell as he stood, irritation growing in his voice. “If he finds out who I am mated to not only will he see me as less than he already does, he will know I have been spending time in the Night Court. It would ruin the entire plan and I will not have it jeopardized because the Mother, for whatever reasons, thinks we would be a good match.”

“So what is it that you are proposing here, Eris?” You question, taking a step closer to him. “To keep the bond? To remain mates and forever?”

“Just until the war is over, until I can take the throne and finally end his tyrant ways once and for all.” He corrected, watching you closely. “So as unfortunate as this situation is, and as much as I hate you, this is what has to be done.”

“And what if I refuse? Why should I care what happens to you at the hands of your father?”

“Because if I am killed, he remains in power. That means his alliance with Briallyn stays. They take over once more and kill everyone you love, and you are left with the guilt and regret for letting your stubbornness get in the way.” Eris ranted, stepping closer to you until you were toe to toe. 

“I hate you.” You cursed through your teeth. “I hate you, I hate this situation, I hate everything about this.”

“And that is fine. I think the only mutual feeling we share is hatred and if we can work together on this one simple task, we can end this in a few short months and forget all about each other.” He assured, his hand flexing in his pocket as your scent wrapped around him. “But, for now, we must endure this together.”

“Why did you want to talk to me alone before the meeting?” You murmured, the proximity getting to your head. “You know I have no secrets with my High Lord.”

“Of course, you don’t. You are all oh so loyal to him.” He chuckled without humor. “I approached you first because if you come at my solution with a level head around the others, it might make them more willing to understand. I knew you would react poorly to my news so I planned accordingly.”

You looked into his amber eyes, the same ones that had been haunting you since the bond snapped, before over his shoulder at the door. Rhysand and the rest of your friends were looking for you by now, already suspecting Eris. This needed to be wrapped up.

“So keep the bond connected until the end of the war, or your father's fall, whichever comes first. You give me your word?” You ask while brushing past him, ignoring the way your skin seemed to burn at the part where your arms touched.

“Yes.” Eris responded swiftly, his gaze giving away nothing. 

As you reached for the door handle you felt his stare on your back, on your wings, and you found yourself slightly turning around and asking, “Is there any way this could go wrong? Could fail? This bond will not strengthen, right?”

He snorted, actually snorted, and shook his head as he looked down at you. Whatever feelings might have just sparked between you from the touch and stares were now washed away with anger as he stared at you with disdain and distaste.

“As long as we steer clear of each other and harbor no romantic or sexual feelings towards each other, it will remain as it is now.” He explained, tugging on the bond which made you involuntarily place a hand over your heart. “That is the most you will be able to feel.”

You nodded, not catching the way he glanced down at your breasts where your hand lay, and opened the door. “Stay as far away from me as you can and you have a deal.”

He hummed and straightened himself out, watching as you left through the door and replying, “That should be easy enough.”

[n7punk]

She-ra (2018) Official Merch

I've made a loooong post about She-ra merch and its weirdness, but I wanted to summarize it in the most comprehensive list of official merch for the 2018 Netflix reboot that I could assemble. I'm sure I've missed some stuff, though, so I'll update this if I find anything. Thanks to everyone who contributed, especially Clare and Tippen.

I did deep dives (with pictures and details) on con exclusive and promotion exclusive merch. Basic info on those is included below the read more of this post.

Everything with [L] at the end of its bulletpoint - or an * inside one - has a photo in the long post. I provided links to official photos/listings when possible, but most of them are defunct.

Pins/Accessories/Clothing (active):

A bunch of jewelry (necklaces, rings, earrings) and enamel pins from Han Cholo (+ one iron-on patch). I've seen resellers claim the chibi pins were exclusive to a convention, but they're up on the website. The long post* has pictures of these if they ever go down, and the actual convention-exclusive ones can be found in the con post.

Amazon print-on-demand clothing (+ tote bags and pop sockets) with a lot of different designs that are hidden on the site but still purchasable, see this post for details, and here's the direct link. Once you find a design you like, you can search its name in the regular search bar (for instance, there's a shirt design called "Power Stripes Catra," for that one you have to search just "Stripes Catra") to see all the kinds of items it comes on, usually a variety of tops/outerwear, maybe a tote, and sometimes pop sockets.

Bioworld also had licensed merch, but some designs are hidden on their store page, so the link shows everything available but includes both the reboot and the 80s original. As of writing, they have one lunchbox, two adult t-shirts, one adult crop top, and two youth shirts for the reboot.

Media (active):

A DVD of just the first three seasons (there's a box sleeve version that includes stickers and it's never clear in listings if this is the only version and they just don't show the sleeve or if they're two separate things). This is still for sale at multiple retailers, but there's no way we're ever getting a full boxset.

There were a couple of books: the Rebel Princess Guide, the Legend of the Fire Princess graphic novel, and then some small "novels." These are still available at multiple retailers, but the novels weren't made by the crew and at least some of these contradict basic facts from season one, so they're less canon than many fanfics despite being licensed.

Everything from this point on is out of production and only available via resale.

Toys/Figures (defunct):

Eight fashion dolls. The line had Adora, Glimmer, Bow, Catra, and She-ra (season one version), Battle Armor She-ra (2-pack with a model of Swift Wind featuring their Battle of Bright Moon looks), and a deluxe She-ra & Shadow Weaver 2-pack (SDCC 2019 exclusive). These dolls were supposed to be Target exclusive, but the rollout was botched and now they're collectors' items. There were also four cancelled dolls that were supposed to be part of the line.

Two Super7 action figures in a Catra & Adora 2-pack with limited articulation. They're rare collector's items too, though this time it's just because they were a limited run. [L]

A plastic toy Sword of Protection and shield sized for children. The sword lit up and said "For the honor of Grayskull!" when you lifted it. The gem was semi-transparent and had a picture of She-ra under it. This was a Target and Amazon exclusive (Mattel & Target are always holding hands 🤝). [L]

Clothes/Dress-up/Accessories (defunct):

Four licensed She-ra costumes (season one version) of varying quality: a Target-exclusive one in limited sizes, one from Disguise in a wider range of sizes, one from Party City (as well as a wig and Sword of Protection prop licensed under Classic Media) for children, and one from Rubie's Costume Company (with a season one Catra costume to match, as well as separate accessory packs and wigs for both characters) that was also available at Party City. [L]

Her Universe used their Netflix license to make three shirts, two jackets, an earring set, and a wallet. Photos in the long post* if these links go down (they are discontinued, after all). Bioworld (remember them?) are actually the producers of the earrings with their name rather than Her Universe's branding being found on the backing card.

Hot Topic made a few shirts (like, three. I don't have the primary link for the third design). [L]

Misc (defunct):

Zaks Design-A-Tumbler, a plastic see-through drink tumbler with a sticker sheet provided so you can place the character graphics inside as desired. Features the key character art seen on most other merch for the Best Friend Squad as well as the sword, the moonstone, Swift Wind for the horse girls, and some random sparkles and hearts to fill space. It was available via Amazon and Walmart.

Comcanroll made a Sword of Protection keychain, also defunct. [L]

Beneath the cut are con exclusives and promotional items that were not for sale (at all, or at least by themselves) but that you can still probably hunt down online. Also... still available apps.

I can't believe this is real but there are two apps. She-Ra Stickers is available on iOS and Android and is exactly what you expect: "stickers" (pngs) to send in texting conversations. She-ra Gems of Etheria (also still available on iOS and Android) is a match 3+ game. It doesn't have micro transactions or ads (since, you know, the whole thing is an ad) so it's actually better than most things on the app store.

@tippenfunkaport also made a post about "digital merch" (backgrounds, printed papercrafts, etc) that Dreamworks posted online.

Promotion Exclusives:

I made a separate post for promo-exclusive merch. Things marked with an [L] still have photos in the long post, but photos are better gathered for all of these things in the promo-exclusive post, so please look at that one if any of these interest you.

Lootcrate/Lootwear made a pair of socks, a notebook, and a tumbler all featuring the season one She-ra silhouette. These were only available as part of their subscription service and not for individual sale. [L]

A Sonic kids meal tie-in that featured: magnets of the characters, funko-esque She-ra and Hordak figures, Swift Wind & Imp "straw buddies," and a small inflatable toy Sword of Protection. [L]

The following is promotional material that was never available to the general public:

A statuette of She-ra sent out to family bloggers to promote season four. Very limited due to the tiny production and being fragile. [L]

An equally rare metal lunchbox was sent out exclusively to influencers to promote season one.

Media press kits included a number of items that made it to the public as con-exclusives (see below for more details): collectors cards, buttons, and a foam tiara.

Stickers plugging the Dreamworks Careers' socials were also produced, likely for recruitment. [L]

Gray zip-up hoodies with a small sword on the front (pocket area placement) and a larger logo on the back were made for the crew and never available outside of Dreamworks.

A shirt featuring a graphic of She-ra riding Swift Wind with the She-ra logo in the corner - distribution & source currently unknown. Looks similar but is distinct from an existing Amazon POD design. Best guess is it was given out at an event (con, reviewer promo, employee event, etc), but I'm putting it here since I have no clue where it was from.

Con exclusives (defunct):

I made a separate post for con-exclusive promo items. Some of these still have photos in the long post, but photos and details about which cons they were available at and such are gathered in the con-exclusive post.

Button pin sets (4 sets, 4 buttons each) were at comic cons. These were possibly also available on Amazon for a time but I can't find confirmation on that beyond a backing card logo that could just mean the backing card itself was produced by Amazon. They aren't for sale now either way.

A foam She-ra crown and flat plastic/foam Sword of Protection, handed out at multiple cons.

She-ra socks designed after her uniform (including a cape on the back) seem to have been given out at cons. Photos are only in the long post* because they aren't good and I ran out of room.

There's a number of official poster designs that were handed out (mostly as mini posters) at cons, but most listings online are reprints.

Collector's cards were handed out at cons, probably SDCC.

Temporary tattoos, stickers, bookmarks, and coloring sheets were handed out at Power-Con (years unknown) and possibly other locations, likely those that sold the Scholastic books. [L]

A plastic shopping bag, made to be a disposable advertisement, exclusive to Anime Expo 2019. This one also don't have a photo in the con exclusive post because it's just one of the poster designs already in there, but there is a (wrinkly) photo in the long post*.

[sailorspica]

reijean v-day 💝⚔️

see vee's prompt graphic for this. i tag anyone in any fandom, i want to hear about your OTP!!

💝 favorite canon scene:

these panels in the 57th scouting expedition right here.

in the anime the only internal monologue we get is from jearmin, which is a big rewatch tell of oh shit! why are reiner's thoughts private (armored hehe). but the ONE time, ONE time we get reiner's thoughts in this arc in the manga... it's about jean. and it's not like he takes over narration like armin did when he encounters annie alone, or like jean does once these three meet up. it's just one stray 💭 of "jean really... is different."

sure, other characters note jean's maturity since joining the corps, but recognition from reiner stands out here as a vote of confidence from marcel!reiner, AND four years later: when he still describes jean as "an irresponsible jerk who only ever thought of himself," even though reiner knows first hand that jean grew so, so much after trost. and it's his fault.

💝 a song that reminds you of them:

i previously posted SASAMI's I Was a Window, but another one that screams reijean to me is Till Death by Japanese Breakfast. briefly, it's about marriage, but she wrote a whole book about the context that this song and her relationship come from, which i highly recommend.

so many images in it are so post-rumbling to me: "get these days to go by like the swaying of a ship," (the studio recording starts with ocean sounds); "sing me to sleep, soothe this insomnia"; "your embrace healing my wounds / teach me to breathe, teach me to move." the beginning of verse 2, "steering on hostile waves of panic, like fighting a wheel that pulls to the right" makes me think of a later jbrekkie song, Slide Tackle, which IS reiner.

💝 favorite official picture/graphic:

back to back on the vol. 32 alliance cover baby!!

💝 favorite fanfic:

i have to say two:

vermin by @oxygenbefore1775: delicious cadet days, delicious fucked up time in reiner POV, delicious, smart tangling with the technological/material/cultural gaps between the walls and the rest of the world. how much of RBA's deep cover is culture shock? the total lack of guile jean has while running roughshod over the land mines in reiner's head with just "bunny." god.

from shiganshina with love by @fromriches-tosin: this is really the one that lured me in. it feels like a locked room, three-hander play, when even being in the wide open air (well, not reiner) is claustrophobic because two characters are intertwined and dug into one another. and as someone who has inhaled shelves' worth of eruri fic and doujinshi, vee's levi is one of my favorites.

💝 favorite fanart:

oh, this and everything by @mikibagels. one thing about reijean that goes so hard is jean's growth spurt, cadet and post-rumbling reijean both have height difference. similar vein, @valmendy illustrating reiner's flirting from never let me go: "i feel like i missed out on my little brother growing up." hello???

💝 why i ship:

i binged the anime so late, just in time for season 4, and when the finale came out i could hardly think of anything other than "we're scouts, we don't know when to quit."

back in my day (i'm turning 27 this month), one dude beating up another in shounen launched a ship, a fleet of ships, and kept it afloat for years, but yams gave us their more obvious, huge interactions in the last... fifteen chapters. but there's so much history between them that screams to be noticed on initial reread and rewatch: the reijearmin (horrendous throuple name) date that was the female titan arc, that jean keeps his cool when the 104th hop on the armored as reibert and ymir try to flee, the whole return to shiganshina, the echo i come back to of "the jean kirchstein i know only thinks of himself."

with jean's OVA, they're the characters whose moms we see the most of besides carla jaeger??? the difference between karina and jean's mother is vast, yet their sons turned out so similar, despite it all. so caring, so haunted by that care. jean takes his leadership in the post-time skip survey corps so seriously, he agonizes over his field leadership in trost, while reiner feels like he killed marcel and bertolt and doomed annie, and in his lowest, lowest moments still manages to protect and worry for falco and gabi.

also, another big why: you people. this is such a cozy pontoon. 😘 happy valentine's day!!!

[bittersweetresilience]

sunny's year half year in review

because i am all about that self celebration 👏

achievements

🏅 joined a fandom 🏅 got married (🌖) 🏅 made friends (🏮🌺🌋🍜🍀🕊️🦌🧬💤🦎🦭☄️✍️🪨🪶🦚💝🎞️🪄🍞) 🏅 learned new things (📸🪡📑) 🏅 sunnyscrambles

creations

an ongoing amélie dissertation in sentitwin soulmate au. next chapter will be posted on new year's day and will feature art from @moonieratty!

félix and amélie webweaves. my favorites that i've made! all literature is from my graham de vanily reading lists.

ladynoir amv. so many episodes in this. my storage space...

multifandom webweave. the first one i made and still very important to me!

i entered a feverish haze after @nemaliwrites's remixes introduced me to a softer world and the result was Feelings.

my favorite fic i wrote this year. mind the trigger warnings.

recommendations

running in the shadow

i cannot describe how much this fic means to me. i left hundreds of messages during my liveread and i wept all through my comment and my reblog and still it's not nearly enough. it's one of my favorite gifts, one of my favorite fics, and one of my favorite works of art i've ever seen. thank you to @wackus-bonkus-maximus for being a role model, an inspiration, and my first fandom friend.

i love you (for senti-mental reasons)

as the head of the as time goes by pr team, i would be remiss not to recommend something from this series! félix in this universe makes me turn into dynamite. second recommendation is betcha on land (they understand). i'm a big fan of @redundant-lava, you see.

i know there's been pain this year (but it's time to let it go)

what's there not to like about @ninadove's sentitwins? her christmas fic blew me away. i love her creative costume designs, her references to classics and video games, and her accompanying fic art. honorable mentions to la nuit, tous les chats sont gris and everything i did (i did for you).

bon voyage

one of the original highlights of my summer. the dream sequence in chapter four blew my mind. the way this fic was planned to end drives me nuts in the best way.

bell the cat

the single most amazing fantasy au i've read. i'm regularly awed by how incredible it is, and awed by @heartfulselkie's writing, art, and person in general. if i learned how to bind books, this would be at the top of my list. i keep saying it because it's true.

thirteen

our monthly dosage of pain, exquisite backstory exploration, and gorgeous @anna-scribbles prose. i'm always a sucker for pre-canon and this is The fic for adrien pre-canon fans. christmas félix will make me explode.

a rose by any other name

i love everything @asukiess makes but shoutout to loveybug au for being such a fun and creative time for the lovesquare fandom. this fic also comes with the loveyvelours art of all time. the other day i started thinking about kuro neko unprompted. autumn is in my brain...

phoenix félix

this isn't a fic, but i'll never miss a chance to scream about art by @luckychatons. phoenix félix is immortalized in my discord profile picture. i'm blessed to receive secret félix doodles and catsona designs on the down low!

moonie

just scroll through their entire art account. everything they make is an eye feast, and they haven't even posted the half of it. my partner and creative inspiration. the moon to my sun. buy them a coffee for always supporting dead girls club.

[fayrinferno]

The (printed) collection

From time to time I get a question like, "do you have this or that book?" So, a few weeks back, I finally took them all out of their hiding place and grabbed some photos. Wish I had used my camera instead of phone, I had to stand on a chair to get it all and yeah, the picture is not the sharpest.

Anyway, I have some other stuff, figures and such, although I admittedly DO focus more on books as an artist/writer/translator. These books are the ones I translate from so I wasn't going for mint conditions, although a few of them are. You can see some of them still packed in the store bags. I included the CDs cause... well, they were next to the books and they do have some printed material as well.

The Shiren Suiki book gets a separate photo cause after taking the photos at home I realized I had left it at work when I scanned it... practically crying as I did cause it was barely opened when I bought it and it's a beautiful book. My Anvils are also very fragile.

I may do a complete list one day but for now, here are the quick descriptions.

ARTBOOKS & FANBOOKS I have pretty much all of the major official books I think, missing maybe 1-2 pieces. The one that may look less familiar is Hiroshi Osaka's personal artbook. I also have four of the relevant Nobuteru Yuuki artbooks. The bottom right one with the orange title is the issue of Newtype Magazine with a feature about Esca.

SMALLER BOOKS (let's pretend that's a category) Here I got all the novels (they are out of their sleeves cause I was working on them), all the filmbooks, Secrets of Escaflowne, Escaflowne Bible, and the Energist Memories manga/doujin collection.

DOUJINSHI I was mostly going for stuff I haven't seen online so I only got a handful. Besides the Shiren Suiki book, there are three Minato Tajima doujins (one of them is racy heh but I'm not hiding that I have it). One of the other doujins may look unfamiliar; it's a compilation book that includes other series (the character on the cover is from DN Angel). People who talk to me on Discord probably recognize the Nanoka doujinshi cover.

CDs AND THE LIKE I don't have all the soundtracks for some reason, probably cause I thought the missing ones wouldn't be hard to get. The PSX game is the special edition with the tarot cards. The LDs that I literally bought just for the covers and inlays. I also have all the audio dramas, some CDs with extras... and a phone card that was for some reason packed in a CD case lol (kidding, it's precious that they would give it that kind of protection). Oh, and there are two movie posters which I guess don't fall under either category.

I have some other stuff that is kinda related to Esca "by association" such as by artist or things that "looked similar" but I didn't include them. Also the figures. I may update this post with those but this is the brunt of it. I will be posting some goodies from these soon!

Same goes for the ongoing translations that I've been doing updates on in this post. Life is too short to delay them for months and years because of perfectionism, or rather, being self conscious about one's imperfect language skills. I am thankful to everyone who has helped me so far, proofreading my translations (coverteyes, pikafwance, sevenstars, and radical-rad1986)... I'm not tagging you guys but know that I'm VERY grateful, also to the other people who are helping me with other projects). I always had fun working together with you but it's no longer sustainable and I likely bit off more than I can chew. So I will get myself out of the way. There are two books that are almost complete as of today so I will just probably go chapter by chapter. I hope to be done with this asap but also December is a busy month for me so I'm not sure how smoothly it will go. Let's hope it does.

[hummingbird-of-light]

In Our Favor

Part 355

McCoy

“Everything alright?” McCoy asked Scotty quietly when he and Robbie had joined the rest of them in the kitchen. Scotty didn’t smile, but he nodded.

“What are we starting with Mum?” Scotty asked.

In just a short time the kitchen began to smell wonderful with the scent of baking cookies.

“I saw that Lenny!” Leah cried out.

“You saw nothing!” McCoy tried to say around the mouthful cookie he had secretly grabbed and taken a bite of. He tried to hide it behind his back.

“Lies,” Leah grinned and shook her head.

“Yeah, well, it was delicious,” he retorted before shoving the other half in his mouth.

“Save some for the rest of us,” Leah said and made a face at her brother.

“Jim’s going to be sad he missed this,” Scotty said as he rolled out some more dough, ignoring the bickering siblings. “But his last message sounded like he was having a good time.”

“Jim on Vulcan,” Robbie shook his head. “I can’t even picture it. Think he’s behaving or is every Vulcan he meets secretly thinking how illogical he is?”

“He’s a good lad,” Francine said. “He’ll behave; he knows how when he needs to. Now, who wants to start on the icing with me?” She looked over at McCoy and he nodded. He appreciated Francine teaching him all she could in the kitchen.

“What good help ye’ve all been,” Francine smiled warmly at the four young people. “Everyone is going to love these, ye’ve done so good!”

The kitchen table was covered with plates of cookies and the scent as they cooled was delightful.

Behind them, the oven buzzed again.

“I thought everything was out,” Leah frowned.

Robbie grinned as he grabbed the oven mitts. “Mum said we needed scones with tea too. You were busy arguing with Leonard.”

“Hey!” McCoy and Leah protested at the same time. The three Scotts laughed.

“Ok,” McCoy conceded, grinning. “That’s true, but she started it.”

Scotty groaned. “Oh give it up Len.”

“We can get these plates over to the sitting room while the tea brews.” Francine gave a shake of her head at McCoy. He moved quickly and grabbed two plates after her.

“I’ll get these ready,” Robbie said as he set down the trays with the scones.

“Oh!”

The queen was in the sitting room reading as McCoy followed Francine in.

“That smells wonderful!” Eleanor exclaimed, setting her book aside and coming over to investigate. “So many types! I won’t know what to try first!”

McCoy set his plates down next to Francine’s and so did Scotty and Leah. Eleanor stepped next to McCoy and slid an arm around him to give him a side hug.

“Leonard; did you grow again?” she asked with a laugh.

McCoy shrugged. “I don’t think so. All my uniforms fit the same.”

“They just grow up so fast, don't they dear?” Francine sympathized.

“Seems like yesterday they were just children still crawling around the floor,” Eleanor said wistfully. “Now look at them; one’s married and the other is engaged.”

“Mother!” two voices protested.

Eleanor just laughed lightly.

Robbie came through the door with a large tray, teapot in the center to keep everything balanced. Francine moved quickly to help him.

“I suppose we should call the men in,” Eleanor said.

“I’ll get them,” McCoy volunteered.

Part 356

Scotty

"It all tastes really delicious. Thanks to Francine, you're becoming real master bakers," said David, praising the various pastries that had been created over the last few hours.

"I can only confirm that. We can only hope that the pastries will last until Christmas. Seeing how much the young folks are enjoying it, it will probably all be eaten up quickly," joked Dr. Boyce and Leonard, who had already eaten quite a few cookies, was immediately offended by these words.

"That's not true at all! We can control ourselves very well," he protested.

"I wonder if you really can, Lenny. I'm not so sure about that."

Leonard rolled his eyes.

"I knew you'd have to use this opportunity to take the piss out of me again, Leah. As if you're any better."

The others just laughed. They were all too familiar with the joking bickering between the royal siblings.

"If necessary, we'll just bake new cookies," Francine interjected placatingly. "The only thing that matters is that everyone is happy and content."

No one could contradict these words.

After they had all sat together for a while and chatted, they all went their separate ways again.

Scotty and Leonard went for a walk together.

Hand in hand, they strolled through the snowy countryside and enjoyed the fresh air.

"What was wrong with Robbie?" Leonard finally asked and Scotty sighed.

"He spoke to Granddad and he has doubts about whether Robbie is really ready to marry Leah."

A strange silence followed and Scotty felt Leonard tense up a little.

"What's wrong? Why aren't ye saying anything?"

Leonard bit his lower lip before finally shrugging his shoulders.

"Well... I can't blame Granddad. To be honest, I've had similar thoughts myself."

That surprised Scotty. He blinked in disbelief.

"Why would that be? What makes ye think that?"

It was obvious that this conversation was making Leonard uncomfortable.

"We both know Robbie well enough. We know what he can be like."

Scotty also became more tense. He stopped and his hand came away from Leonard's.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

[sleepy-jackson]

"I've missed you"

Season 2 of Castlevania Nocturne isn't out yet so idk what they do after Alucard shows up, so this is completely inaccurate but I hope you enjoy nonetheless

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆

"Adrian?" Ezra said quietly, he couldn't believe his eyes

There, standing before him and his friends, watching the other vampires run in fear, was Adrian Tepes, Alucard

"Who's Dracula?" Annette asked Richter

"Are you really Alucard? I thought you were just a myth" Richter said, not hearing Annette

"You must be Richter Belmont, complete with whip" Alucard said. He gave a low hum "And on the break of utter defeat"

Alucard turned slowly "I hope I'm not to late"

If Ezra didn't know better, he could have sworn he was looking at another angel

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They headed back to the cottage with Alucard in toe, Ezra could feel the dhampir's eyes on him the whole walk there, never leaving his figure

After they got there they were discussing what to do

"I have some ancient books we can look through, maybe we can find something in them" Ezra suggested

"Maybe. Where are they?" Richter asked the angel "In my house. Won't take long to get there if I fly" Ezra said, picking up his satchel

"But your wing, they're still injured" Maria said with concern latched in her voice

"It's healed enough for a trip there and back. I'll be careful" Ezra reassured, glancing at his left wing "If I run into any trouble I have what's left of my power and my sword" He gestured to said sword

"I'll accompany you" Alucard said, taking a step towards him. Ezra shook his head "I appreciate the offer Alucard, but I'll be flying there"

Ezra noticed a twitch in his eyes when Adrian was referred to as 'Alucard' by Ezra 'Does he still want me to call by his name? Even after all these years'

"I'll try to be quick" Ezra said as he walk to the front door. Just as he stepped outside Annette called out "Be careful Ezra!"

Ezra looked over his shoulder and saw her worried face. He gave Annette a reassuring smile "I'll be careful Anne, I promise"

With that he took flight, missing the way Annette reached out for him, before putting her hand on her chest

"I'll make sure he's okay" Alucard said walking outside, taking off to follow Ezra

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ezra made it his cabin without any trouble "That was easy" he said as he walked in

After closing the door he immediately went to the book shelf, looking for the right books he needed

After getting at least three books from the book shelf he put them on the table "I probably have more upstairs"

He quickly went upstairs to check for more books, not noticing the figure passing his window

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alucard walked in Ezra's home, looking around as he closed the door quietly

'So this is his home, not to different from the one in the village' he thought as he took in the interior

He walked towards a painting the was above the fireplace, he recognized the woman in the picture very well. It was of Ezra's adopted daughter, Celeste

"I see his still honors you wherever he goes. I can't blame him, you were his first child" Alucard said to the painting

In the painting Celeste's white hair was put in a low bun she always wore as an adult, she was wearing a light pink dress he remembered her making herself 'It was her favorite' Alucard thought with a small smile

He looked at her face, seeing the bright, infectious smile she always, he swears most her descendants had inherited her smile. Her unique, blue eyes, were has bright has her smile. Not many of her descendants had inherited her eyes, but he can count the few who have

He continued to look at the painting till he heard foot steps from the stair way, Alucard turned and saw Ezra walking down stairs with four books in his hands

Ezra noticed him and came to a halt, looking at him with a shocked face "Alucard!? What are you doing here?" Ezra demanded "You're supposed to be at the cottage"

"I had to make sure you were got here safely" Alucard said has he turned to face him "Appreciate the concern but I'm fine" Ezra said as he walked to the table, putting the books down

"I know" Nothing had happened during the trip. Alucard knew that Ezra could handle himself, but he had to get him alone, to talk to him at least "I wanted to talk"

"About what?" Ezra said, he looked Alucard in the eye, but for a second before looking towards the ground

"About how you won't look me in the eye for more then a second" Alucard said, taking a step towards Ezra "About how you stopped addressing me by my name" Another step

"About how you're pretending that you don't know me at all" They were now chest to chest. Alucard put his hands on the table, trapping Ezra between him and the table "Why is that?"

Ezra was silent, aside from his breathing and heartbeat. Alucard missed his heartbeat, he loved hearing it when it was them and the quiet

"I-" Ezra started "I didn't think..you'd want to talk with me" Alucard raised a brow at the angel "I mean there's a crisis going on, why would I stop just to catch up when you'll probably just leave after this is all over?" Ezra said

"Actually I was going to convince you to come back with me" Alucard admitted "I've missed your presence"

Alucard wrapped his arms around Ezra's waist, burying his face in the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent. Alucard missed his scent too, he always smelled like fresh rain

"A-adrian?" Ezra breathed, resting his hands on Alucard's back. The dhampir pulled back enough to look in Ezra's eyes, he missed those heavenly, indigo eyes

Their noses brushed against each other as Alucard said "I've missed you" his voice barley above a whisper

Ezra looked into Alucard gold eyes, the same eyes that still makes his heart beat fast, made him feel something that he didn't know before, but now he does

"I've missed you to Adrian. So much" Ezra barley finished his sentence as Alucard kissed him. Ezra kissed back immediately

The kiss was tender, yet there was a hunger to it. Ezra felt his body grow warm and his stomach began to feel tingly. His heart was beating rapidly in his chest and he felt his knees grow weak. He's never felt like this before, he has been with a few people but they never made him feel the way Alucard did, Ezra loved it

He felt himself growing addicted to it already, he never wanted this to end

Alucard felt his heart pumping in his chest with excitement. He's been dreaming about being like this with the angel, to kiss him, to touch him, to hold him

Alucard felt Ezra move one of his hands from his back into his hair, tangling itself into his silver locks, trying to pull him closer. Alucard griped the back of the angel's shirt, feeling the cotton of his lose shirt

Ezra pulled away after a few moments to catch his breath, loosening his grip on Alucard. His eyes fluttered open to see the other man looking at him, his eyes filled with love and adoration

"I-..wow" Ezra said with a breath, Alucard gave a breathy chuckle "I've been wanting to do that...for so long" Alucard admitted

Ezra rested his four head on his shoulder, closing his eyes. He murmured something that made the dhampir freeze for a moment

"What did you say?" Alucard had to be sure, he had to. Ezra raised his head and looked Alucard in his eyes

"I love you, Adrian Tepes" Ezra said, a loving smile adorned on his face, his eyes showing nothing but love

"I love you too Ezra, so, so much" Alucard said, leaning in for another kiss

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What took you guys so long?" Richter asked as the Angel and the Dhampir walked into the cottage

"Sorry, it took me awhile to find the books and we ran into trouble" Ezra gave an excuse, taking out the books and placing them on the table

"I'm glad you're okay" Maria said. Mizrak gave them a nod before looking through one of the books

Alucard walked over to the stood next to Ezra, whom was talking to Annette and Richter, and picked up a book to look through it, but he couldn't focus on it as he was listening to his Angels voice

Alucard really wasn't paying attention to what he was saying even though he probably should, he just wanted to listen to his voice

'After all these years, we're finally together ' Alucard looked at Ezra 'I won't let you go again, not this time, that's a promise'

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

Just Another Night at Sparky's

(Disclaimer: Ness/WaiterPat and Jack/Cabbie!Cory are not my creations. I gave Jack his name because he wasn't given one in the movie. Now, one of the characters you'll be seeing here technically belongs to me, but I don't really consider him a full fanego.)

(I was already planning to write for Ness and Jack, but after I learned how Mark was originally intended to play the role of that first security guard who died, I decided to adopt that abandoned character. Go here for headcanons and a more thorough explanation.)

(Certain plot-points in this story were inspired by @flawlessstriker and @insane4fandoms! These two are very talented artists, and I'm not sure I would've thought of such clever/funny easter eggs if I hadn't seen some of their own work, so please go check out their blogs and show them some love!)

(Trigger Warnings: food and drink, eating/drinking, implied trauma, mentions of past violence, mentions of blood, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.) 

In Ness’ personal experience, the people who dined at Sparky’s could be divided into three sections on a metaphorical pie chart. 

Twenty-four percent of customers were. . .just a little off. Not like that was necessarily a bad thing, mind you. Working in the restaurant business meant having to interact with lots of people each and every day. At some point, you’d learn to pick up on certain things that were odd in the way you couldn’t quite put your finger on (or, perhaps you just knew deep down that you didn’t want to). 

Ness strolled out of the kitchen and into the seating area, expertly balancing a tray on one hand. He approached a couple of bespectacled young women in one corner of the diner. 

Their visits to Sparky’s were a bit sporadic, but they never failed to claim that one booth in the corner that no-one else ever sat at no matter how crowded the joint was. The backpacks they always hauled along were positioned further up the booth’s seat cushions, half-open and nearly overspilling with various books. 

They always used indoor voices, but he could still pick up bits and pieces of their conversation whenever he was near. 

Tonight was no different:

“—he’ll be hungrier than usual,” murmured the one on the left, who boasted short, wavy hair that had been dyed a dark shade of violet. It complimented her shirt, which read ADOPT A FAMILIAR at the top. Pictures of creepy-looking critters were displayed beneath the message, orange-eyed and outlined by blue against the black fabric. “And he’ll need a live one this time.”

“Ooh,” replied the one on the right, who sported a yellow shirt with the screen-printed likeness of some obscure, spikey-haired cartoon character near the collar. A blonde ponytail spilled out from the back of her ball cap. “Who’s it gonna be? The lady whose eyes were found in that jar last month?”

“Nah, she’ll be in some psych ward. Too far-gone to keep on the playing board, y’know?” A sly grin etched its way across Urban Fantasy Nerd’s features. “I was actually wondering if you’d like to choose. Your guy is making the delivery, after all.”

“Ah, that’s right!” Cartoon-Fan snickered in a way that was just a teensy bit unhinged. “I can already see him slipping on some of the blood."

“Third time’s a charm?” Ness asked as he halted, carefully setting this duo’s Usual on the table. 

(Two milkshakes: one chocolate, the other strawberry. Yeah, it was kind of basic, but he wasn’t too much of a judgemental guy. Besides, Sparky’s shakes were a much safer option than the lilac-colored drinks that chicken shack around the corner had started selling. And Ness didn’t just carry that opinion because of his employment. During one of his typical night-walks, he’d passed an alley just in time to see said purple beverage oozing through said chicken shack’s windows. The strong, sugary smell wafting off it had reminded him of prion disease.)

The girls both paused. Though they smiled up at him and offered quiet “Thank-yous,” as they moved their respective, sticker-covered laptops out of the way, visible confusion mixed itself into their gratitude. 

“For the university’s creative writing contest, I mean,” Ness elaborated. “There were articles in the paper about the last two, and I saw your pictures in the list of winners. Congratulations, by the way.”

“. . .Oh,” Urban Fantasy Nerd answered, exchanging careful glances with her friend. “Yeah. Writing. Let’s go with that.”

“If anyone asks, we were also writing here two months ago,” Cartoon-Fan added with a conspiratory wink. “On Friday, between five-thirty and nine o’clock.” 

Ness chuckled, raising one hand to pull an invisible zipper over his lips. “You’ve got it. Enjoy.”

As he retraced his steps to organize some stuff behind the coffee counter, a little voice in the back of his theater-trained head wondered if the girls’ tones had been joking enough. Unlike many times before, he pushed that voice aside.

On one hand, missing person cases did always seem to pop up on the news channels a few days after the two students stopped by to enjoy milkshakes while typing away and occasionally turning the screens of their laptops toward one another. 

On the other hand. . .well, those cases were always located states and states away, typically near more seaside areas. None of them had been anywhere close to Utah. (Not yet, at least.)

Besides, even if those girls were somehow connected to more sinister things than their coursework, they were still very nice. Good tippers, too. Nowhere near the worst patrons Ness had served in his time.

The strange customers almost always seemed to come in pairs.

Like the duo of twenty-somethings from last week. One sported ginger hair and a She/They button pinned to their  jacket. The soot-stains on said jacket had been very obvious, as were the burn scars on their palms, but she’d still been a delight to make smalltalk with.

The other, a pale young man, had been much more quiet, but still friendly. He’d kept peering through the window at (what was presumably) his or his friend’s car, shakily fidgeting with the headphones around his neck, so it’d taken some time for Ness to realize that his eyes were just as reflective as mirrors.

(For the duration of their stay, the jukebox over by the counter had spat out songs that most certainly weren’t on its index cards. Fine, that might’ve caught Ness a bit off-guard at first, but he still knew to appreciate variety.)

Or the two men who’d come in a few months ago, wearing battered navy-blue bomber jackets and thousand-yard-stares. The one with a dyed-red fauxhawk had screamed and practically leapt out of his skin when Ness came over with menus and his usual greeting, but he’d apologized soon enough. After giving Ness a thorough look-over, that is.

His companion, a similarly dark-eyed man with a larynx that could only be found on seasoned musicians, had muttered, “Don’t mind him. We’ve just. . .had a bit of a rough trip.” His voice hadn’t been unkind, but he’d kept glancing at Ness whenever he thought he wasn’t looking. 

Well, perhaps that particular pair had broken the trend a bit. Because a few hours after they’d paid for their food and left, a lone traveler had come in.

His bloodshot eyes—which Ness could’ve sworn were orange instead of brown—had never stopped bulging, never stopped darting this way and that above his rictus of a smile. When he wasn’t speaking, he’d hum or murmur things with a shakiness that was typically found in rabid dogs.

He’d asked for way more coffee refills than could ever be considered healthy, as well as if Ness had seen anyone fitting the descriptions of Red-Haired-Screamer and Wary-Possible-Musician. Ness, following his instincts, had said no, to which the loner started simply shaking his head and grinning with a mouthful of teeth that looked a smidge too sharp.

Or the scruffy man who'd started coming in for breakfast every other week with his young sister in tow. He was living proof that you could recognize someone without officially knowing them. After all, it was pretty damn easy for Ness to remember almost making eye-contact with him, barely moving out of reach of his flashlight’s beam in time, and then having the seconds feel like hours as he watched him shake his head and mutter to himself about seeing things. 

It wasn’t like that’d been Ness’ first little midnight rendezvous around Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzaria. Just like how that particular man wasn’t the first security guard who’d gotten dangerously close to spotting him during his unofficial, self-driven investigations.

For the record, Ness knew that said investigations weren’t legal—especially not if you counted some of the things he’d. . .borrowed from the old animatronic jamboree restaurant—but he’d made his peace with that.

He hadn’t been sneaking around there to deal drugs or partake in any himself.

He wasn’t exactly chasing the adrenaline that always came with an evening full of ducking around corners and trying to ignore how loud his shoes sounded against linoleum floors when he rushed to find anything he could feasibly hide behind, underneath, or inside of.

He never meant any harm when it came to snooping.

It was just a simple case of having a little too much curiosity.

Thankfully, Security Guard #13 still had yet to show up at Ness’ place with some accompanying cops, so it seemed he didn’t recognize Ness as anything other than a humble waiter. (Or, if he did actually recognize Ness from that night, then he was miraculously chill enough to not bring it up and get him in trouble.)

The very first time they’d paid Sparky’s a visit, it would’ve been impossible to ignore the distinct smell that had been wafting off of Security Guard #13. It’d had a bite to it; like machine oil mixed with something much more. . .organic.

From that bleak look Ness had seen in his eyes, Security Guard #13 was most certainly NOT what anyone could call unbothered, but he was still polite. Plus, Kid Sister was the type who just deserved all the crayons in the world, what with the little masterpieces she’d decorated the paper menus with.

So, yeah. There was a genuine difference between oddball customers and customers that made you lose some of your faith in humanity. 

People who asked for trout to be blended into their yogurt parfait or for their donuts to be topped with slices of pickles that had gathered fuzz from their mysterious journeys at the back of the refrigerator were still easier to handle than people who threw temper tantrums because they didn’t get a refill in under thirty seconds. 

Back to the pie-chart—another forty-six percent of customers were perfectly decent and standard.

Plenty of the locals had a soft spot for this joint; Ness had lost count of all the times he’d been told that the pancakes served here were some of the best on planet Earth. Yeah, praise like that technically wasn’t directed at him, but the cooks were great people to work with, so it still made him happy to relay said praise to them. 

He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t awkward for someone to confusedly ask if they’d already seen him working at the bar on the other side of town. Even so, that once-a-month occurrence always left him amused rather than annoyed. If anything, it attested to that particular customer’s observation skills. 

Sure, he and Sans were identical twins—the fact that their uncle had mixed them up on several different occasions when they were little was still a running joke in the family. But it’d been years since Sans had decided to remedy that via a skeleton face-mask and a dark blue leather jacket, and he’d made a habit to don both aforementioned garments each day ever since then. (Ness was still in partial disbelief that the manager at Grillby’s was cool enough to let Sans wear them over his uniform.)

Just as many of Sans’ customers apparently ended up mistaking him for Ness. Sans got a nice little kick out of that, of course. He hadn’t just been born with a comedic heart—it truly seemed every bone in his body was a funny one. Some people would argue that he just delivered puns upon more puns upon even more puns, but Ness knew his brother better than that. 

After all, Sans had been the one to train him to deal with the last category of customers: the thirty percent of entitled neanderthals who thought treating staff as less than human would somehow magically make their miserable lives more interesting. 

“Food work is all about balance,” Sans had explained sometime after he and Ness had grown tall enough to take plates and cups from a counter without having to stand on their tip-toes. “You’ve gotta be nice and still let people know that you won’t take their crap. If they’re civil, then you’re helpful. But if they’re rude. . .” Sans had paused, a mischievous glint in his eyes, “. . .then you have a little fun.” 

Ness had always been a pretty fast learner. It’d taken a week or so of practice, yeah, but with his twin’s help, he’d developed a tongue sharp enough to rival any butcher knife in the kitchen.

“You use a lot of big words for a waiter,” snorted a wannabe business bigshot with a wrinkled clip-on tie and a way, waaaaaay over-gelled hairdo that spoke volumes of desperation. 

Ness, who’d been explaining the differences between certain ingredients and flavor-enhancing chemicals because Hair Gel’s girlfriend had asked a fair question about the smoothies on the menu, barely batted an eyelid when he came back with, “And you smell a lot like hotdog water for someone who apparently doesn’t work with food.”

“This was the WORST thing I’ve ever put in my mouth!” Exclaimed a woman with an unidentifiable crust caked around the corners of her eyes and an ill-fitting shirt that was advertising some essential oil brand.

“I highly doubt that,” Ness mentioned, raising an eyebrow as he took the plate (which was suspiciously much emptier than when he’d first brought it out) from her table, “but whatever you say. . .”

“Oh! Thank you!” A tiny boy who couldn’t have been older than seven chirped, bouncing in his seat when Ness placed a sundae down in front of him.

Ness had been about to reply, but the boy’s mother—a lady who was trying very hard to look posh (but not succeeding very well due her asymmetrical haircut, as well as all the little green marks around the jewelry she was practically drowning in)—cut him off. 

“You don’t need to thank him, sweetheart,” she’d instructed, reaching across the table to corral her son. “That’s his job.”

That one had, admittedly, forced Ness to take a deep breath and appeal to his higher self for a few seconds.  Despite this, he’d still made sure to look that Karen dead in the eyes when he observed, “I’m not sure what your problem is, ma’am. But it must be hard for you to pronounce.”

(At least the boy didn’t seem to be too influenced; his bright eyes were nothing but apologetic when Ness came back with the check.)

The relative silence was shattered by the jingling call of that little bell suspended over the front entrance. Ness blinked, his train of thought screeching to a halt. He glanced over in the door’s direction, grinning at a familiar sight. 

Another regular; one that Ness got to have actual conversations with on nights like tonight. 

Mason glanced around at all the empty tables, brushing back his nearly shoulder-length raven hair and quickly getting the hint that he could just seat himself.

A golden retriever trotted beside him, connected to a leash in his hand via a pink vest that’d been fastened around her shoulders and belly. It was adorned by black velcro straps that read THERAPY DOG in a bold white font. The forest-green sherpa hoodie Mason always seemed to wear was only about half as fluffy as her fur.

Ness ducked into the kitchen. No more than three seconds had passed before the last cook on duty for tonight—a lanky blonde guy who was perhaps the most unapologetically flamboyant foodie you could ever have the honor of knowing—called, “Order Up! Your buddies’ Usuals, fresh from that babbling kiddie pool of oil.”

Dylan set a triad of dishes onto a waiting platter: the first held a stack of waffles (much like Sparky’s pancakes, their recipe was a secret that his very own grandmother had entrusted him with) and fried chicken tenders. The second supported a small mound of bacon. The third was adorned by a couple club sandwiches with a side of mozzarella sticks.  

“Thanks, man. Right on time,” Ness called back as he hefted the platter up, balancing it on the anterior region of his forearm like he'd been taught so long ago, and traipsed back out. The door swung to and fro behind him as he headed over to Booth Five. 

Though she wasn’t actually in the booth, Checkers was still right by her owner’s side, sitting in a way that could almost remind you of those lion statues guarding the entrance to a Chinese temple. She spotted Ness before Mason did. Her ears perked up, tail starting to wag. Her tongue lapped in and out of her mouth like a party favor as she smiled in that way only dogs could.

Mason, who’d been gazing through the window and fidgeting with his hoodie’s drawstrings, ever-so-slightly flinched as Ness began setting the plates down on the table with a chorus of small clunks. He blinked at the food, as if suddenly remembering the weekly tradition he’d made here.

“How do you always do that?” Mason asked as he turned his head toward Ness, a small smile etching its way across his features. 

“Magic,” Ness answered. “Careful, it’s hot.”

He carried the now empty tray back over to the counter. There, his hands became a blur as he snatched up the coffee pot and produced a trio of mugs. After stirring memorized amounts of cream and sugar into the fresh brew, he returned to the table, setting two of the beverages beside the plates.

Ness hovered, his own cup of smoldering caffeine in hand, and glanced around the restaurant. Aside from Mason and those two writers in the corner (who, as Ness had learned, took generous amounts of time with the shakes they always ordered), Sparky’s was empty tonight. 

With that in mind, Ness dragged a chair away from one of the other tables, positioning it at the end of the booth. Yeah, he could’ve just sat on the opposite side of Mason, but that part of the booth was typically reserved for another one of his friends.

Subtle relief washed over Ness’ knees as he took a seat; he’d been standing and walking pretty much all day.

Mason plucked a strip of bacon from one of the plates, checking to make sure that it was nice and warm without threatening to burn the palette. He then lightly tossed it over to Checkers, who snapped it out of the air almost like a frog catching flies. She lowered her head as the treat crunched between her teeth.

“How’ve things been?” Ness inquired, taking a sip of his coffee. “The theater’s gotten busy, yeah?”

Mason nodded as he took a fork and knife into his hands, cutting a piece off of one of the waffles and dipping it into the complimentary cup of syrup. “Yeah, it really has. Feels like whenever one movie runs its course and is taken off our roster, two more pop up in its place. Especially now that Scream 3 is finally on the market."

“. . .Oh, that’s right! It is!” Ness ever-so-slightly jumped in his seat. After enjoying the first two movies, he’d been meaning to give the latest installment a look. But so far, whether it was Sparky’s being slammed on the more favorable days or Royal Edgar’s Cinema being too crowded for his liking, things had just kept getting in the way.

Acting on instinct, Ness fished a pencil from one of his waist-apron’s pockets. At first, said pencil might not have seemed like anything special. But then you saw Fabio: a priceless treasure shaped like a rubber chicken’s head covering up the eraser. Ness started spinning the pencil between his fingers, causing Fabio to wiggle as though it was alive.

“Have you seen it already? Is it good? I have so many ideas about where the story could pick up from—”

“Hey, hey. Slow down," Mason remarked with some clear exasperation. “I haven't, but I am scheduled to project its last showing sometime next week. . .” He took a bite out of one of the chicken tenders, humming thoughtfully as he chewed. He must’ve seen the glint in Ness’ eyes, because he offered a sly smirk and lowered his voice as he continued.

“Tell you what: I’ll find a way to sneak you into the projection booth. That way, we can check it out together when the day comes.” 

“Really? You’d do that for me?” Ness asked, jokingly clutching his mug in both hands and bringing it close to his heart. 

“Sure. It’s really not too different from the customers smuggling their own snacks past the ticket desk,” Mason shrugged, though his mischievous demeanor briefly turned deadpan. “So long as you don’t play detective the entire time. My boss would rip me a new one if I just paused the movie every five minutes to let you brainstorm and talk.”

Ness scoffed, rolling his eyes. “It wouldn’t be every five minutes.”

Mason raised an eyebrow. “You’re right; it’d probably be every two minutes.” He forked up another bite of the waffles, firmly ignoring the offended waiter noises. 

“Oh, and don’t try to guilt-trip me out of my food, either. I’ve already got one moocher to deal with.” Mason scratched Checkers’ ears, to which she responded via tilting her head to the side, an undeniable trace of smugness in the warmth of her amber eyes.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Ness pronounced, his voice dripping with much more sarcasm than usual, “but fine. I can work with that.” 

“Uh-huh. You’d better,” Mason snorted, reaching over to shake hands with his friend as though the two of them were lawyers who’d just settled on some sleazy business arrangement. 

Mason was a complex person. Everyone had issues, and he was no exception to that. Not like he was at all open about said issues, but once you got to know him, you’d start to see them. (Plus, that just seemed a lot nicer than describing him as a swarm of issues shaped like a man.) He was the type to constantly shift in his seat, to give most people the side-eye, to get lost in his thoughts and grimace at nothing until he snapped himself out of it. 

At least he seemed content working at the theater. Even with the spark of horror that never seemed to leave his eyes, Mason was clearly a creative bastard. Sometimes he’d bring notebooks in and take breaks from his meal to fill their pages with paragraphs or sketches. He really did seem to have the potential for acting, maybe even directing. If his critiques and commentary on the movies he had to watch from the projection booth were anything to go by, then the projects he could possibly work on would be nothing short of awesome. 

He’d actually been one of Freddy’s past security guards. Ironically enough, he and Ness hadn’t met there. Not that Ness minded, since A. if that’d been the case, there probably would’ve been way more confused screaming than there usually was at Sparky’s, and B. considering the fact that Mason’s employment had apparently lasted a whopping one singular night. . . 

Ness still didn’t know the full story, and he could tell pressing Mason for info wouldn’t end well. But with the few snippets Jack had carefully enlightened him with. . .well—

Speak of the devil. 

The front door’s bell only had about half a second to chime yet again, almost drowned out by rapid footsteps.

“You’re late,” Ness jokingly chastised as he caught dark brown skin and black hair in his peripheral vision. He shifted in his chair, moving his legs to make some room under the table as another one of his regular-friends hurried over to claim Booth Five’s empty seat. 

“Yeah, yeah. Sue me,” Jack retorted, instantly propping his elbows on the table to knead at his forehead. It took a few long seconds for him to notice how one of his favorite dishes had apparently been waiting for him. He squinted at the food, then at Ness. “. . .I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to make it tonight?”

“And yet, here you are,” Ness replied, the definition of coy with how his shoulders popped up and down again. 

Jack might’ve wanted to ask more questions, but Mason cut him off. “Look, I don’t get it either. He doesn’t know, but he just knows.”

Jack considered this, then tilted his head to convey the type of acceptance that only came when you couldn’t really question things that probably should be questioned because you already had too many things to focus on. 

“Thanks, dude,” he murmured, nodding to Ness as he plucked one of the mozzarella sticks from his plate.

Ness nodded back, taking a few more gulps of coffee. “No problem.”

Jack paused mid-bite, eyes darting over to the brew that’d been poured for him. He scrutinized it, then raised the mug up and started chugging like a champ. 

The display made Ness glad that he’d taken the time to experiment with coffee so long ago. There was no doubting how he could now calculate exactly how much time it took for coffee to go cold. Yeah, this particular serving had been fresh out of the pot a few minutes ago, but by now it had to be at optimal temperature. Neither scalding nor tepid: just nice and warm. 

After about a moment, Jack pulled the now empty mug away from his face, taking a deep breath as he set it back down on the table.

“Rough day?” Ness inquired, specific parts of his brain starting to tick. 

Something seemed off. 

It wasn’t like he had any room to talk about slight bean juice addictions. And he certainly couldn’t blame Jack for a dependency (especially since he’d even shown some undeniable intrigue at Ness’ argument that coffee was a type of soup). Sure, Jack wasn’t narcoleptic, but when a day-and-night operating cabbie didn’t have access to some perks, things just wouldn’t go well for him or his passengers. 

But whenever Jack popped in for a bite and a chat, it was easy to assume that he’d be heading home and going to bed right after his meal. Right now, however, his demeanor was anything but tired. His shoulders were rigid. His eyes were more or less threatening to pop right out of their sockets. In fact, he almost seemed to be weighing the options of never sleeping again. 

Jack chewed his lip as he glanced in the waiter’s direction. He slowly nodded. “. . .You could say that.”

Ness exchanged glances with Mason, who had obviously seen the signs for himself. As did Checkers, since she quietly maneuvered around Ness’ chair to rest her head on Jack’s lap, peering up at him with an almost human-like air of understanding. Jack didn’t hesitate to pet the shiny fur along the dog’s neck, to which her tail started wagging but she otherwise remained still.

“What happened?” Mason asked, sitting up a little straighter. “If the vibes you’re giving off got her attention, then it must be something serious.”

Jack grimaced, closing his eyes with what seemed to be more force than necessary, taking a few long seconds to rub at their lids. 

“Did you see any rabbit-shaped things out by the dumpster? I think they only come around once a month or so, but I always feel strange if I look at them.” The words glided out of Ness’ mouth and into the air before he could think. 

Self-induced humiliation wrapped its awful, clammy hands around his ribcage as two confused glances were aimed in his direction.

“. . .What?” Jack and Mason blurted in near-perfect unison.

“What?” Ness echoed, blinking as his voice instantaneously grew a smidge louder than before. He rushed to plaster his typical, happy-go-lucky demeanor back onto his face, hoping that pretending he hadn’t spoken at all would convince his friends that he actually hadn’t. 

Not only did his latest sentence sound weird as all hell, but it’d also been downplayed as all hell. Because when Ness had said strange, what he’d really meant was the pounding, churning, pummeling agony that should only ever be present in your stomach after you’ve accidentally swallowed a few dozen live rats that just so happen to be whacked out on cocaine for whatever godforsaken reason. 

And while he wasn’t a perfect angel, Ness would never wish that particular pain on anyone else. So, the fewer people who knew about the floppy-eared cryptids (which Ness could’ve sworn looked like they’d been covered in mucus) that were apparently engrossed in  gang warfare with the local raccoons, the better. 

“Ah, did you get a bad passenger today?” Ness coughed. Jack had to deal with as many entitled idiots as Ness, if not even more. Hell, taking turns venting about that stuff was something they’d initially bonded over.

He peered through the window next to the booth—Jack’s cab was parked close enough to see that there wasn’t anything to indicate an accident. Not a life-threateningly serious one, at least. 

“Not exactly,” Jack replied, following his gaze. Where Ness’ eyes were curious, Jack’s were currently anxious and mistrusting. That was another red flag: Jack may not have treated his taxi like it was his baby, but he still took pretty good care of it. “Just a few more weirdos.” 

Mason hummed, tilting his head. “How weird specifically?” He’d heard plenty of Jack’s tales from the road; as he called on Jack for rides somewhat often, he’d even ended up being part of those tales. 

Jack knitted his brows, fidgeted in place. “You don't want to know."

“. . .Then why did you make it sound so damn vague?” Mason retorted, now dripping with incredulousness. “The less specific details are, then the more they’re gonna nag at someone’s brain.”

“He’s got a point,” Ness agreed, lightly tapping Fabio’s pencil against his mug. 

“Like that’s my fault,” Jack snorted. “Most people wouldn’t believe me if I told them.”

Ness offered an encouraging smile. “Good thing we’re not most people, then.”

Mason nodded. “Damn right. C’mon, Jack; are you really saying something could top the crackhead I had to share the backseat with last month?” 

“Yes, I am,” Jack whisper-shouted through gritted teeth, “because it was a bear!” 

Silence (save for the soft click-clack of keyboards from the corner of the diner, that is).

Jack pursed his lips, looking equal parts exasperated and worried. He sighed yet again, reaching up to press his fingers against his temples.

“. . .What kind of bear was it?” Ness eventually tried. 

Mason, who’d previously been squinting while his mouth opened and closed with no words coming out, turned his head to face Ness with such speed and force that he might’ve actually given himself whiplash. “That’s the first thing you focus on?!”

Ness made a shaky lame gesture. “It’s a fair question! What’re you focusing on?” (He wasn’t wrong. There was a lot of variety among bears, after all. And a bear that lived in the woods and had huge claws and could outeat, outrun, outswim, and probably even outdrink the average person would be a lot more to handle than one of the bears that had attended the latest local Pride parade.) 

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that you,” Mason declared, returning his attention to Jack, “look significantly less mauled than most people who get close to bears! Seriously, how is your face still connected to your skull?!” 

“I didn’t mea—!” Jack was about to go on the defensive, but stopped short. “What, were you expecting me to get ripped to shreds tonight? So damn sorry if I didn’t get the memo!”

“No! Of course not!” Mason contended. “Look, you can’t just say you had a run-in with a bear and leave it at that!”

Jack threw his hands up. “Well, I told you you didn’t want to know!”

“How the hell can we not NEED to know now?” Ness pointed out. Though he was growing just as confused as Mason, he tried to keep his voice even.

Jack gave him an exhausted look before craning his neck to rest his head against the booth’s seat, staring at the ceiling. 

“It was a huge robot,” he finally clarified. “Looked like it’d been at the bottom of a scrap heap for years; I’d guess it was older than my dad. But its eye glowed blue like the machines inside it were still working. It made the car shake—I’m honestly surprised the back tires never gave out. And God damn, the smell. . .rust and blood and mucus, I swear!”

Now it was Mason’s turn to go rigid. A tidal wave of emotion seemed to sweep through his features; first surprise, then recognition, and then dread. He placed a hand on the nearest corner of the table as if to steady himself. 

“It was wearing a black top hat and bowtie, wasn’t it?” He murmured. It sounded much more like a statement than a question, and the way his tone had become so hollow didn’t help.

Jack lowered his head, clearly unsure whether or not to make eye-contact as he nodded. 

“Sounds like the way Freddy was designed. . .” Ness mused without quite meaning to. 

Memories of the huge sign that had been built to loom over the old pizzeria’s front entrance flooded into his head. The blinking lights that bordered the establishment’s title and seemed to chase each other around and around and around. The life-sized cutout of the one and only Freddy Fazbear himself, using one paw to adjust his bowtie and the other to wave, seemingly beckoning customers to wander inside. 

Those memories dissolved as Ness winced and glanced back at Mason, who was now reaching up with a shaking hand to grasp at his hoodie’s collar, tugging it to cover up the top of an old, deep scar that dragged along the skin of his neck. Ness shuffled in his seat, trying not to stare at how quickly the color drained from his friend’s face. 

Checkers was back by Mason’s side in an instant, bracing her paws against the seat as she licked at his face. Mason blinked, a huge shudder rippling through his chest as he hugged his pet.

A few minutes dragged by, feeling like an hour apiece and jeering at the trio as they went.

“So.” Mason finally announced, still keeping his gentle-yet-obviously-desperate hold on Checkers. “Let me get this straight: that. . .that thing got into your cab like it paid rent just a few hours ago?” 

Jack pursed his lips, nodding again. “There was a kid with it, too. A little girl. She didn’t even seem scared at all. The whole ride, she was smiling and hugging the bear’s arm—”

“Wait, you actually drove it somewhere?!” Mason demanded.

Jack sputtered. “What other choice did I have?!”

“I mean, that’s kind of literally his job,” Ness mentioned. 

True, he was grappling with the fact that he and his friends had apparently been transported into some cheap bizzarofiction novel. And yet, somehow, this wasn’t even the craziest story that’d been relayed to him from a customer. He peered down at Fabio as though it was about to start contributing to this conversation. “Where did you take them?”

Jack raised an eyebrow at Ness (which he guessed couldn’t be helped. Ness already had an idea, but it was rude to just assume, wasn’t it?). “Where else? That old pizza joint you’ve been trying to write an encyclopedia on.”

Mason was about to say something else, but stopped short in favor of turning his shock toward Ness.

Ness raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “Look, I know you don’t like that place, but just remember that I don’t question what you do with your free-time.”

“That’s right. And even if you did, you wouldn’t have to, because I don’t spend my free-time poking around the fourth Circle of Hell!” Mason snarked. 

“I won’t lie and say it’s not creepy,” Ness admitted, unable to stop a chill from racing down his spine at the memory of the restaurant’s grimy wall posters, the draft that always seemed to be in the air over there, the disturbingly sour tang of what he’d hoped was just ancient pizza sauce, “but that still seems pretty harsh.”

Mason gawked, fragments of words leaking through his teeth.

“If we’re looking at the bigger picture,” Jack coughed, probably attempting to steer Mason away from a potential stroke, “then nothing really happened tonight. The bear didn’t even make a peep the whole time. I didn’t get hurt, and that girl didn’t get hurt. She even left a handful of change when we got to the restaurant.”

Ness squinted and tilted his head at that. As far as he knew, the rules Jack applied to his cab were pretty lax and basic, but he’d always been firm on never taking money from lone child passengers.

Then again, if the child passenger in question was traveling with a huge robotic animal that apparently had enough sentience to use a taxi in the first place, it was probably best to just go along with whatever happened and leave the sanity-questioning session for later.

Jack fiddled with the zipper on his jacket. “. . .That actually wasn’t even the worst part of tonight’s shift.”

Mason leaned back against the leather seat, looking very much lightheaded. His eyes bulged from their sockets as he furiously motioned for his friend to elaborate. 

Jack hesitated before explaining, “Well, once the girl and the bear were out, I decided to just call it a day. After I got far enough away from the pizzeria, I parked by one of the downtown curbs and switched the car’s sign to Off Duty. I was trying to get a catnap in—”

“It’s a miracle you could even try to sleep after that damn bear basically held you hostage,” Mason interjected.

“—when someone knocked on the window. I told ‘em to read the sign and come find me later, but they opened up the door and got in anyway. So, I was about to kick them out and. . .” Jack trailed off, shaking his shoulders as though a few dozen cockroaches had spontaneously taken up nest in his jacket.  

“And. . .?” Ness echoed, the curiosity-concern cocktail in his mind getting stronger.

“And there was some tiny doll in my passenger seat,” Jack concluded. “Looked creepy as hell.”

Ness hummed in consideration. “Sounds like it could just be a weird prank? The teens in that area are always following strange trends.”

Jack nervously shook his head. “I couldn’t see anyone outside the cab. It only took a few seconds for me to look; there’s no way anyone could move fast enough to hide after they put the doll in.”

“A tiny doll. . ?” Mason’s brow furrowed in thought for a couple seconds, then promptly returned to its collision course for Mars. He leaned over the table. “Did it have bug-eyes and buck teeth? Was it wearing one of those stupid propeller hats and holding a red-and-yellow striped balloon?”

Jack’s face contorted in confusion as he nodded. “. . .That pretty much sums it up.”

Though his expression was still grim, Mason’s fear quickly metamorphosed into some good ol’ fashioned aggravation. “That’s the bastard,” he seethed, knuckles turning white. 

Jack blinked, perplexity slowly overtaking his latest case of heebie-jeebies. “Wait, you’ve seen that thing before?”

“I have, unfortunately.” Mason grimaced. An odd type of adrenaline etched its way across his face. “Is it still in the cab?”

Jack nodded again. “I didn’t want to risk touching it.”The words were barely out of his mouth when Mason rose from the booth and stalked outside through Sparky’s front entrance. Checkers trotted after him, the tiredness of an actual nurse flickering in her eyes.

Ness and Jack basically had frontrow seats to observe their friend approaching Jack’s cab, ripping the passenger-side door open and fishing something out before slamming it closed again.

With that, Mason raced to the edge of the parking lot and proceeded to dropkick what had to be the mysterious balloon-toting doll out of sight.

Despite his shock, part of Ness still felt relieved that Mason hadn’t simply deposited it into the dumpster. Just in case those awful rabbit-looking things happened to be paying a visit tonight. . .

@sammys-magical-au @that-bat @th3w00ds @bee-the-matpat-simp @touyubesposts @crazy-obsessed-enby @i-used-to-wear-the-fedora @holyawesomestitches @s-e-v-e-n-24 @sotogalmo @ciphershadow @deethedustyassdumbass @theechoingmadness @its-a-goddamn-ass-race @zam-witch @box-goat @redd-byrd @icantmakeupagoodname @pleasedontmind-the-emerald @transparentghosty @vegaslvrr @itzqueers-blog @wannabeavocaloidmystery @shivr0ygf @ciara-clycone @not-made-of-actual-rye @m0on-shro0m @imafruitbowl @azure-trash @il0v3mus1cals @v1r-x @kafkaisnotdead @junaslagoon @alicethemenace @ilovenikkisixx @m00nlight-mexican @w0rd3855 @head-without-a-fucking-brain. @unkn0wn-nys @not-made-of-actual-rye @101k-t101 @theonlykala @dividel @riff-is-on-a-fucking-crisis @roselily2006 @max-afton @abe-the-detective-blog @floating-above-sea-level @madhare051

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Discworld: the Cream

Running my fingers over my Discworld collection, I count 45 books. I am including all the standard books, Maurice, the Tiffany Achings, Eric, The Last Hero, all four Sciences, and the Folklore. We are such an evangelical lot, always recommending books to anyone who glances at us, so quick to break out the Chart. My question is, what's the short list? What books are absolutely can't miss?

Let's divide it by five (for no reason) for a tidy nine books.

Nominate Discworld titles you wouldn't want your fandom outsider friend to miss.

Let's get some discussion going! Tag books or reblog with an endorsement/argument. I'm interested to see the consensus.

In no order I would go with Night Watch (as the last one to be read, though), The Last Hero (as the next to last), Small Gods, Hogfather, Going Postal, Monstrous Regiment, Reaper Man. Others push The Truth but that's not a significant book to me. Two of my three favorites (Moving Pictures and Thief of Time) I'm not even including on my list. I've got two slots open. Maybe Hat Full of Sky. I should include a Witches book but I don't know which one; none stand out definitively. Maybe just Weird Sisters. People also really value Fifth Elephant because of its commentary on gender. I haven't read Shepherd's Crown yet because I'm still too sad. I'll get to it. And for the record, Nation is the best Pratchett book.