#ughhh i hate writing down stuff in history

[hollowfacility]

In like a month or so I'm gonna have to go back to school, so my "goal" for this year is to have a complete and organized folder, since last year not having it like that fucked me over multiple times. And also to not have to worry about the teachers checking folders

[olderthannetfic]

Hey, sorry to ask this, but a few days ago I saw a post/discussion about the history of original work on ao3 (i.e. how and when it was allowed). I thought it was in my likes, but it's not, and I thought you had reblogged it recently, but I didn't find it. I was wondering if you have seen this discussion around? Or where I can find more about it? This specific post talked abt how who defended original work on ao3 were not the BNFs, if that helps.

That was me running my mouth in the reblogs of something or other. It’s just the one comment.

But what’s that you say? Some tl;dr about a pet topic? Don’t mind if I do! ;) (To be honest, most of this debate happened years ago, and a lot of the long meta was by me back then too, so…)

Okay, so, the situation with Original Works is actually super interesting and a microcosm of early years OTW wank.

This is going to be even more tl;dr than my usual. To try to summarize very briefly:

There were two big cultural factions. One thought “original” was the opposite of “fan”. That one was in charge of OTW. It was hard to get voices from the other side into the debate because they already felt excluded from OTW.

This divide broke down more or less into Ye Olde Slash Fandom on the “it’s the opposite” side and anime fandom on the “WTF?” side. Americans on one side and a lot of non-US, non-English language fandom on the other.

I. Media Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Early OTW

I went to that first fundraising party that astolat threw in New York City back in… god… 2007? 2008? I wasn’t on the Board or any official position until the committees got started later, but I was around right from the very beginning.

Whether you’re looking at volunteers or at people who commented on astolat’s original post, there were always a variety of fans from a variety of fannish backgrounds. People aren’t absolutely in one camp or another, and fannish interests change over time. If you go dig through Dreamwidth posts to find who was actually participating in this debate at the time, half of them are probably in the other camp now.

If you think like that sounds like a preamble to me making a bunch of offensively sweeping generalizations and divvying fans up into little groups, you’d be right! Haha.

I.a. Ye Olde Media Fandom

There are a lot of camps of people who like fanfic. One of the biggest divisions has been Ye Olde Media Fandom vs. anime fandom. Astolat’s social circle–my LJ social circle–was filled with people with decades of fannish experience and a deep knowledge of the Media Fandom side of things.

Those fandom history treatises that start with K/S zines in Star Trek fandom in the 70s and move on through the mainstream buddy cops like Starsky & Hutch to the more niche, sff buddy cops like Fraser and Ray or Jim and Blair are talking about Media Fandom. I try to always capitalize it because the name is lulzy and bizarre to me unless it’s a proper noun for a specific historical thing. It was coined as a rude term for “mass media” fandom aka dumb people who like, ughhhh, Star Trek, ughhh, instead of books. This is a very ancient slapfight from the type of fandom you find at Worldcon, often called “SF fandom” or plain “fandom”.

(Yes, this leads to mega confusion on the part of some old dudes when they find Fanlore and fail to understand that “fandom” there refers to what these people would call “Media Fandom”. They think only they get the unmarked form. But I digress…)

Media Fandom is a specific flavor of fandom. It’s where the slash zines were. It’s where the fans of live action US TV shows were. It’s the history that acafans have laid out well and that tends to get used to defend the idea of a female subculture writing transgressive and transformative fanfic. On the video side, Media Fandom is where Kandy Fong invented vidding by making Star Trek slideshows.

(Kandy’s still around, BTW. She’s usually at Escapade in L.A. Ask her to tell you about the dancing penises sketch in person. She’s hilarious.)

Astolat and friends had been going to slash cons for years. They founded Vividcon. And Yuletide. That meant that when astolat said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” we all jumped to help. This is a lady who gets things done.

From a Worldcon perspective, or even from an older Media Fandom perspective, this group was comparatively young, hip, and welcoming. Their fandom interests were comparatively broad. Just look at Yuletide!

In fact, yes, let us look at Yuletide… [ominous music]

I.b. Yuletide sucks at anime

From the very first year (2003), Yuletide mods have asked for help with anime fandoms, been confused about anime fandoms, or made bad judgment calls about anime fandoms. They’ve fucked up on Superhero comics and plenty of other things over the years, but anime has been the most consistent (well, and JRPGs, but there’s so much overlap in those fic fandoms).

There was already bad feeling about this. There were years of bad feeling about this.

I.c. Where are the historians?

Academic study of fanficcy things pretty much got started with Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women. Other acafans who are well known to LJ and later Tumblr are people like Francesca Coppa who wrote a very nice summary of the history of Media Fandom. These are not the only academics who exist, these academics themselves have written about many other things, and by now, OTW’s own journal has covered a lot of other territory, but to this day I see complaints on Tumblr that “acafans” only care about K/S and oldschool slash fandom.

There were years of bad feeling about this as well.

I.d. What kind of fan was I?

Now, by the time OTW got started, I’d moseyed over to not only a lot of live action US TV but a lot of old-as-fuck US TV that is squarely in the Media Fandom camp. But once upon a time, I was a weeaboo hanging out with my weeaboo friends in college. I learned Japanese (sort of). I moved to Japan. Livin’ the weeaboo dream!

More importantly, I used to be a member of a lot of anime mailing lists back in the Yahoo Groups days. I didn’t realize what a cultural gap that would cause until the original works issue came up on AO3.

I.e. Anime Fandom, German-language Fandom, Original M/M

Once upon a time–namely in that Yahoo Groups era–there was an archive called Boys in Chains. It was where you found The Good Stuff™. Heavy kink and power exchange galore! It was extremely well known in the parts of fandom I was in, even if you weren’t on the associated mailing list. It contained lots of fic, but it also had lots of original work.

Around that same era, I was on a critique list called Crimson Ink, which was mixed fic and original. The “original slash” and “original yaoi” crowds mixed freely and were in fanfic spaces. Remember, this is like 2003. You’re never going to get your gay fantasy novel published in English in the US. A couple of fangirl presses started around then, but they died an ignominious death after their first print run.

Fanfiction.net used to allow original work before it spun that off into FictionPress. We forget this today, but if you were an early FFN person, the separation wasn’t so great either.

Meanwhile, German-language fandom was hanging out on sites like Animexx.de, a big-ass fic archive that prominently mentions also including original work. I have the impression that Spanish-language fandom was similar too.

Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded in 2005. It was a webzine for original m/m, but it was entirely populated by fanfic fandom types.

In all of those kinds of spaces, there was a lot of “original” work that was kind of slash or BL-ish and seen as fannish if it was posted in the fannish space. These weren’t anime-only spaces. They were multifandom spaces where it was seen as obvious and normal that a couple of huge fandoms like Harry Potter would dominate but that everything else big would naturally be anime.

While fans from every background are everywhere, I found that the concentration of EFL fans living in Continental Europe, South America, and Asia was much higher in this kind of space, even the exclusively English language part of it, than in my US TV fandoms.

II. AO3 Early Adopters

AO3 went into closed beta in 2009. In 2010, it was open to the general public (albeit with the invitation queue it still has). But not everyone was interested yet. Just like fandom is loath to leave the dying, shambling mess of Tumblr, fandom was loath to leave dwindling LJ/DW circles or was happy enough on Fanfiction.net. I used to see a lot of posts like “Why are you guys trying to STEAL fanfic from the original! FFN is enough!”

I literally could not give away the invitations I had. No one wanted them.

So who was on AO3? Obviously enough, it was all of us who built it and our friends. So that means a bunch of oldschool Livejournal slashers coming from fandoms like Due South or Stargate Atlantis.

The queue was open. Anyone could make an account. Everyone was welcome. In theory…

But more and more, there started to be these posts about how “AO3 Hates Anime Fandom” and “FFN is for anime. AO3 is for Western fandoms.” and “If you guys actually wanted anime fandom on there, you’d invite us better and make us more welcome.”

At the time, I found these posts obnoxious. People aren’t purely in one sort of fandom or the other. No one was stopping anime fandom from making accounts. No one was banning anime fandom. If there wasn’t much from old fandoms, that was because old fandoms seldom move.

Things began to change. Trolls on FFN forced the Twilight porn writers out, creating enough fuss and brouhaha to mobilize people who would rather have stayed put. AO3 got big enough that randos found it by accident. Original work started to pop up, posted by people who’d never looked at the rules and had no idea it was not allowed.

III. History of AO3’s Policy

I had argued for allowing “original work” during the initial discussions about the ToS. On one side of this issue was me. On the other, everyone else on the committee.

I was overruled.

Open Door started importing old archives to save them. Boys in Chains was hugely important to fandom history from my point of view. It was slated to be imported… maybe. Except that Boys in Chains is half original. AO3 was happy to grandfather in those stories, but the final archive owner felt, quite rightly, that it would be unfair to tell half of the authors they were welcome in the new space while spitting on the other half.

I was pissed. I had been pissed since being overruled the first time. To me, the fact that it should be allowed was so blatantly obvious that it was hard to even explain why.

(To be honest, this difficulty in explaining why and the even greater difficulty in figuring out the source of that difficulty is what held the discussion back for so long. When every assumption on either side is completely opposite, it’s hard to communicate.)

I felt betrayed. It would be like if you helped build something, and everyone was suddenly like “Well, obviously, we can’t allow m/m. It’s not normal fanfic.”

So we discussed it again and, again, it was me vs. literally everyone else. And still the “AO3 is only for Western slash fandom” bitching rose in volume and more and more people complained of feeling excluded from the new fandom hub. Finally, the committee agreed to open the issue up for public comment and get some more input. I was a fool and neither wrote nor proofread the post. It went out phrasing the question as allowing “non fannish” work or something of that sort.

I was furious. The entire point of the whole debate was that I saw some original work, the original work that belongs on AO3, as inherently fannish. And now this had been presented to the AO3 audience as something completely different. Think pieces were popping up in the journals of everyone I knew about diluting AO3’s mission and how we needed to save AO3 from encroachment. Public opinion was very negative. That’s both because of how the post was phrased and because OTW die hards at the time were mostly from the same fannish background. This tidal wave of negativity meant that there was virtually no chance of changing this poisonous rule. And if the rule didn’t change, the people who wanted the rule change were never going to show up to explain why it mattered.

If you’ve been reading my tumblr, I think you can guess what happened next.

I posted a long post to my Dreamwidth. It was a masterwork of passive aggression. In it, I wrung my hands about how simply tragic it would be if AO3 had to delete all of the original work… like anthropomorfic.

Now, I think anthropomorfic counts as fanfic as much as anything else, but I also knew that it fails most rigorous “based on a canon” type definitions of fic and, more importantly, it’s a favorite Yuletide fandom of many of the people on the side that wanted to ban original work.

That’s a nice fandom of yours. It would be a pity if something happened to it. 

Yup. Passive aggressive blackmail. Go me. Suddenly, there was a lot of awkward backtracking and confused running in circles in various journals. The committee agreed to table the idea for a while but not rule out the idea of allowing original works in the future. We agreed to halt all deletions of original work. If a fan posted it, the Abuse Committee (which I was also head of at the time) would not delete that work even though it was technically against the rules.

Time passed. The people on the negative side got tired. I wanted off that committee and had wanted off for ages, but I was damned if I was going to leave before ramming through this piece of policy. Grudgematch till I die! (Look, I never said I wasn’t a wanker.)

After a while, some other fans came forward with more types of “original work” as evidence that it should be allowed. These were from parts of fandom none of us on the committee knew a damn thing about.

This new evidence combined with the gradual accretion of original stuff on AO3 without the sky falling eventually led us to quietly rule Original Work a valid fandom. There was never even a big announcement post. I slipped a word to the Boys in Chains mod myself.

IV. What Were They So Afraid Of Anyway?

So why were people so resistant? Seems like a dick move, right?

Not exactly.

I mean, I was enraged and waged a one-woman war to change the rules, but the other side wasn’t nuts. The objections were usually the following:

I just don’t get why it would be allowed. It never was in my fannish spaces.

Most of our members don’t want this.

Most of the examples of things that ought to be included are m/m. We are privileging m/m if we allow it, and AO3 already has a m/m-centric reputation that can feel exclusionary to some fans.

AO3 is a young, shaky platform that can barely handle the load and content we already have. If we open to original work, we’ll be opening the floodgates. The volume of posting will be so high, it will drown out the fic we’re actually here to protect.

Protecting stuff that doesn’t need protection because it’s not an IP issue would dilute OTW’s mission.

If we allow it, idiots will try to turn AO3 into advertising space, posting only the first chapter and a link to where you can pay to read the rest.

If we add another category of text before we add fan art, that’s a slap in the face of the fan artists we are already failing.

These arguments all make perfect sense in context.

Obvously, the issue with the first two is that different fannish communities have different norms. I knew that a very large community disagreed with the then current AO3 policy, but since so few of them were around to comment, it seemed like a tiny fringe minority.

The m/m thing is… complex. M/M content with zero IP issues is at risk. It is always at risk in a way that even f/f is not (though f/f is also always at risk). Asking for m/m to be exactly equivalent to f/f or m/f in numbers, tropes, whatever is ignoring the historical realities. In our current moment of queer activism in the West, we treat all types of queerness as part of one community with one set of goals, but once you get to culture and art or even more specific activism, this forced homogenization is neither useful nor healthy.

OTOH, AO3 really did have PR problems related to the perception that we gave m/m fandom the kid glove treatment. That objection wasn’t coming from nowhere.

AO3 was shaky. It was tiny when I first brought up this argument. Hell, it wasn’t even in closed beta the first time we discussed this. Part of what made the quiet rules change possible was AO3 organically getting much bigger and OTW having to buy many more servers for unrelated reasons.

The “floodgates” thing was put to rest by tacitly allowing original work before the rules change. We had a period to study how fans actually behaved, and as I predicted, only a small amount of original work got posted. It was indeed mostly things like original BL-ish stories or original work that had been part of a mixed original/fic fest, exchange, zine, etc. Currently, the “Original Work” fandom on AO3 only has 76,348 works. That’s pretty big compared to individual fandoms but tiny compared to AO3’s current size.

The commercial argument was spurious because commercial spam had been against the rules from the very beginning. OH THE IRONY that nowadays AO3 has all these idiots trying to post the first chapter of their fanfic and then direct you to where you can buy the rest.

AO3 has plenty of fanfic of public domain works. One of the problems with gatekeeping original work is that any way you try to distinguish it (not based on a specific canon, not an IP issue, etc.) will apply to some set of obviously allowable fandoms.

As for fan art… OTW has failed fan artists. They needed protection as much as or even more than fic writers. Just look at Tumblr! If we had succeeded at making DeviantArt but allowing boners, fan art fandom could have been safe all these years. Or when Tumblr inevitably shat the bed, we could have scooped up all those people instead of them scattering to twitter and god knows where.

OTW has failed vidders too, at least in terms of preservation. I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Other major people from like the first Board and shit have discussed this with me offline. Doing some kind of vidding project, possibly outside of OTW is on a lot of our to-do lists. But at least one of OTW’s biggest victories has been that copyright exemption. OTW has demonstrably done really positive things for vidders that other organizations and sites have not. As a vidder, I never expected to see good hosting for the actual video files, and I’m quite content.

But fan artists… yeah. That argument makes sense at least from a place of frustration.

BTW, for the love of god, if you’re a n00b to OTW stuff, please do not reblog this post excitedly telling me that hosting fan art is on OTW’s road map, so yay, good news. Someone always does that, and it’s so irritating. I haven’t been involved in OTW in years, but I used to be, and I know what is on the roadmap. The couple of you who do heavy lifting on sysadmin and coding and policy things are welcome to weigh in as usual. I know none of us like that we can’t host fan art. It’s not what we intended.

Nonetheless, I found this argument to be the perfect being the enemy of the good. If we can save more text now without losing much of anything, we should do it. The fact that we’re fucking up on the fan art front is not a reason to spread the misery around.

V. Is “Original” the Opposite of “Fanfic”?

Okay, so that tl;dr above is why “BNFs” were on one side and “nobodies” were on the other. BNFs from one cultural background founded OTW. BNFs from the other cultural background weren’t even aware that the debate was going on.

But what was the underlying philosophical problem in even having the conversation?

It took me a long time, but I finally worked it out: We had two completely different ways of categorizing writing, and they were so baked into how we phrased questions that everything ended up being unanswerable to the other side. Here is what I came up with:

Schema 1

Fanfic - based on someone else’s IP

Original Work - the opposite

Schema 2

Non-Fannish Work - School essays, stories you are writing to try to sell to a mainstream publisher

Fannish Work Type 1 - based on other people’s characters directly (i.e. fanfic) Type 2 - based on tropes or whatever (“original slash” and the like)

Now, in the current moment when half of Tumblr just got into Chinese webnovels and the m/m ebook industry is thriving in English, original, tropey, BL-ish work is no longer different from “things I am trying to sell”. But this is how the divide was circa 2005 on fannish websites, and it’s the divide that was driving this internal OTW debate.

VI. Let’s Summarize the Camps One More Time

So, again, the debate makes perfect sense if you understand who was involved.

On the mainstream “But that’s not fanfic? I’m confused?” side:

Big US TV fandoms in English

Fandom historians of K/S–>buddy cop slash–>SGA, etc.

Americans

On the other side:

Anime fandom

“Original slash” fandom that had already been chased off of everywhere

People upset that AO3 wasn’t farther on translating the interface and supporting non-English language fandom.

People upset about US-centrism in fandom

Yes, I am very white, very American, and by now very into old buddy cop shows, but this was basically how the breakdown worked. It meant that something that looked like a minor quibble to one side was really, really not.

[koala-otter]

the teacher and the scientist au: worldbuilding

I am writing some original stuff right now, and as a break where I can keep writing, I’m going to explain some of my worldbuilding/choices that I make when it comes to my modern “the teacher and the scientist” AU. The hope is that it will be fun for others to see what goes into a fic, or give people ideas for their own fics!

*a quick note: I am a white Latina! I have no East Asian heritage! I studied for a while in Beijing and speak Mandarin Chinese fluently, so I kind of defer to my experiences there when making worldbuilding choices in fic (because I believe strongly in writing what you know, especially given the damage you might cause by writing what you don’t know), but will also do research online or through friends on other countries and cultures that inspired the four nations in ATLA. But all of this is just to say that while I do put a lot of thought into this stuff, I am by no means the authority on any of it, and I am open to criticism and of course always want to make sure I’m not doing anything harmful with my writing. I promise to listen and adapt if you approach me about literally anything in my fic or in this post.

Ok now let’s get into it!

1. The setting: Ba Sing Se’s Natural History Museum This is based on a combination of the Beijing Museum of Natural History, the American Natural History Museum in New York, and Beijing’s Forbidden City/Gugong. Beijing I think is probably the biggest inspiration for Ba Sing Se with the ring system and centering of the palace (and I mean the Earth King’s palace is pretty directly based off of Tiananmen Square), so it seems like a pretty solid model for a modern Ba Sing Se to me.

2. The field trip I went on so many field trips to the Natural History Museum when I was little, and they were always the absolute most fun of the year. And I feel like we went to the planetarium basically every time? It was kind of fun to recall and try to capture the experience of being a little kid on this trip in this fic

3. The Lower Ring & the Middle Ring I put Zuko and his students as coming from the Lower Ring for a few reasons. Firstly, I couldn’t imagine Katara and Aang living in either the financial district that is the Middle Ring or the ostentatiousness of the Upper Ring. I think if they were in Ba Sing Se they’d work and raise their family in the Lower Ring (I will be getting into their jobs in later installments of this story, so I won’t explain them here!), which means Bumi goes to school in the Lower Ring, which then means Zuko has to work there in order to be his teacher and for this entire concept to work out (and also the reasons explained in the actual fic where he lived there with Iroh and wants to give back). And the museum is in the Middle Ring because I wanted it connected to the university, which canonically is in Ba Sing Se’s Middle Ring.

4. Sokka as an astrophysicist Because Sokka is a smart kid and a huge science nerd, okay??? And Yue and the space sword. It makes sense. Also, because Ba Sing Se = ATLA’s Beijing, I think of Ba Sing Se University as Beida （北大）or Peking University, which is China’s first national university and one of the most, if not the most, selective university in the country (disclaimer: I did not study at Beida!!). But yeah BSSU is the Earth Kingdom’s most illustrious university and one of the best research institutions in the world, and Sokka’s a tenured professor there. My boy’s world-class brilliant.

5. “Teacher Zuko” Ughhh I really struggled with this. Basically, I was taught in learning Chinese to address teachers as “Surname 老师 (lao3shi1),” which is “Surname Teacher.” But! I didn’t want to give Zuko a surname, because that seemed rife with opportunities for missteps (there’s a lot that goes into surnames of literally any country or culture, from geography to family history and occupations, and I didn’t want to co-opt anything that wasn’t mine to use). So I knew the kids would call him by his first name. But “Zuko Teacher” sounded off. And in Chinese, titles like Mr. or Miss or Mrs. go after one’s surname, while in English it’s the opposite, so I figured for this fic it was appropriate to implement the English convention. So! “Teacher Zuko.”

6. Sokka’s appearance Sokka’s one of those hot, young professors that appear only in popular media, or once in a blue moon. He finds out from Katara that white sneakers are an easy way to look in the fashion know while remaining marginally professional for class, and they become a staple of his uniform. I picture him in Stan Smiths. (And of course they’re a little beaten up! It’s Sokka!)

7. The gaang’s ages Okay, so, I can’t find the actual post where this is broken down, but I think canonically it makes sense that Katara and Aang were 22 and 20, respectively, when Bumi was born. I put them in this fic at being maybe a year or two older in this fic, so let’s say 23 and 21, when they have Bumi, in Katara’s second year of med school. So when this fic takes place, as Bumi is six years old, they are 29 and 27, and Sokka and Zuko are then 30 and 31.

oh my god we’re only 700 words into a 4,000-word fic why did I decide to do this to myself

8. Sokka looking at his watch and having a penchant for exact minutes He’s a master scheduler. That’s it. 

9. “My Uncle Mushi lives in Chin City” This was just kind of an opportunity to integrate more from the ATLA universe! Obvi “Mushi” is Iroh’s refugee alias, but whatever another kid can have it, and yeah Chin City is that terrible village with all of those wacky people from “Avatar Day.” So we know the kid’s uncle is wacky. Fat chance of going on a field trip to visit him.

10. Zuko calling Bumi talented There’s that scene in the episode where they go to the Sun Warriors that Zuko calls Aang “a talented kid.” Bumi’s Aang’s son, so I figure by the transitive property Zuko would describe him the same way.

11. Zuko’s scar  I don’t know why but I often forget to mention Zuko’s scar in other fics! Either way, I find kids usually respond to people’s differences better than most adults do. Kids just see things and comment on them, which, yeah, can be rude by societal standards, but I’d imagine it would be very refreshing for Zuko after going much of his life with people trying to avoid either staring at the left side of his face or talking about what happened. Also, I didn’t really want to get into the cause of the scar. Obviously Ozai did it. I don’t have an idea of how. Other fics have done that better. Explaining it within the fic the way Zuko would explain it to his class seemed like a good way to tell the reader, “Hey yeah it’s the same cause as in the show,” but then not have to get into it.

12. Sokka hates intro classes Ughhh no one likes intro classes, and I’d imagine it’s even worse for professors. Prerequisites are often too easy for the kids intending on majoring or too hard and meant to weed out the kids who can’t stick with the department’s program. College is funny.

13. Aang volunteers in Zuko’s class From what I can tell, parental involvement in schools is only getting bigger. And Aang is a great dad and I think he’d take any opportunity to get involved with Bumi’s school.

14. Zuko’s backstory I should probably take the time to explain this! Basically I think of this story existing in a universe where after they moved to Ba Sing Se under circumstances comparable to their being refugees in the show, Iroh and Zuko actually stayed in the city, and Zuko got his education there. And yeah! My boy went to BSSU, too!

15. Stargazing at the South Pole and seeing the moon at the North Pole Oh my god the pure amount of thought that went into this. I worked with the assumption that A:TLA takes place on Earth, and that then the rotations of Earth, and the rotation of the moon, are the same as what we experience now (I’ve thought about this extensively, especially as it pertains to the hemispheres and the seasons, but I don’t want to talk about it here, we simply do not have either the time or space). So the South Pole is essentially the same as our Antarctica/South Pole, except that it is capable of sustaining human life for an extended amount of time, and in theory has greater biodiversity (clearly I have also thought about this extensively, but again, we have neither the time nor the space for my theories). I had to read a NASA report on the phases of the moon as seen from the South Pole! And it turns out you can’t see much of the moon down there, and it is always in crescent form. but yeah, you see a lot of stars (but in the opposite rotation of what we see in the Northern Hemisphere), and I thought that was intriguing, especially given the importance of moon imagery throughout the show. Thus, Sokka’s first seeing the moon in the Northern Water Tribe, which ties in perfectly with his meeting Yue, his first love: “You could say the moon was my first love.” (Which someone pointed out in a comment on Ao3, and it absolutely delighted me that they noticed!)

16. Pipsqueak Just looking for more people from the show to serve as first graders in this fic. Someone commented that they pictured him the same size as he was in canon, and I laughed out loud.

17. Tuyanjing I was trying to think of constellations that look like badger-moles, and I honestly just thought, “Ursa Major. Badger-moles look like giant bears.” And “Tuyanjing” (土眼睛) is my own translation of “earth eye,” which was meant to be a nod to the animals’ connection to Toph and their blindness and earthbending. 

18. All the stars & mentioning the Fire Nation & Water Tribe navigation I was initially going to write something in this scene about ancient constructions, like the pyramids, that were built using the constellations, and then create some elaborate metaphor about them and Zukka. But the only coherent thought I had about it was that it was “Too Much Work.” Instead I realized okay sailors always use the stars for navigation, and the Water Tribes and Fire Nation are the only nations we’ve seen with boats, so let’s go for that, and it works out because if you squint maybe you’ll read something about the stars guiding them to each other. Maybe we’re evoking thoughts of star-crossed lovers. And then we mention the moon again, and Zuko’s really seeing it for the first time, kind of like Sokka did, so hey I don’t know maybe that’s a symbol of something. Maybe.  

And that’s really it I think! Hopefully this was at least entertaining if not entirely informative. I don’t normally write stuff out like this, but it is a good reflection of my thought process while writing most fics. Again, I am open to any kind of communication about the above as well as anything else I’ve posted! And I’d love to hear about any of your own ideas that help you with worldbuilding and writing your own fics :)

[seoultraveller]

No no it’s fine I promise, I understand🥺🥺💕💕 I’m just glad you talk to me so please don’t worry about the time you get back to me🥺

One of the history exams went really well actually !!! So I’m very proud of myself and my hard work definitely paid off this time🥳 other than that, I have no idea how it went on the other ones;(( my teachers haven’t handed the tests back so idk my grade and all y’know... I’m hoping they went well ahhh, especially the maths one :// though the maths exam went unexpectedly well, like too good to be true, so I’m apprehensive of my grade hhhhh

Ahh that’s understandable :// I do hope for your sake that time moves fast so that you can feel more free~ but I’m glad to hear these days has gotten a bit better for you💕

The red hair is definitely missed!! Omg- he has a Leo rising omggg IT EXPLAINS SO MUCHHH!!!! His Leo rising is really showing through with his whole fashion sense though🤪🤪 loving it so much✨ but yeah I think so too, I don’t complain I’m a huge fan of the blond/platinum colors whew !

It’s alright omg🥺 you’re not dumb!!! And I love questions so it’s totally okay! And nobody knows about Sweden so I understand lolll😂 have I told you already I live in Sweden?? I have no idea (but now you know if you didn’t already HSHSH😌)

RIGHT ?? Heat topping ver. would blow everyone’s mind I’m telling you😏

Omg yeah same here unfortunately... I also have that feeling of thinking that I’m over-dramatic with my struggles and that ugh :// mhm yesss!!

The red outfits are living in my mind 24/7😭 THEY WERE AMAZING. I gotta mention the purple outfits too though, especially Seonghwa’s three part suit LIKEEEE-👀 ahh yesh i understand!!

Ughhh your job... so frustrating with all the mixed signals c’mon ;((( glad you’ve been catching up some on ateez content though<3 have a great weekend btw!!

This week hasn’t been that busy in school, thankfully. Most exams are done and teachers have moved a lot of stuff to after the break. So I got to relax a little, only studying for my big maths exam I had yesterday :/ the week before was very very hectic though, and I had so much to do everyday and I didn’t have time to do much else than study unfortunately :(( I’m recharging now and I’m gonna use my free time wisely🥰🥰

Omg same same, I’m frustrated with mnet and this kingdom shit ugh... people are already talking down on ateez and hating to the max sigh:/ so I’m also keeping myself out of it except for voting when necessary and watching their amazing performances🥳 the dance practice was so great !! Not as messy filming and it was easier seeing them dance !! Our great ateez🥺 HHSSH omg ateez could totally pull off a zombie concept though🤣

This got so long sorry! I had a lot so say😂😂

🥺🥺 of course though. Why wouldn’t I talk to you? 😶

Oh!! That’s great I am so happy to hear that! 🤓📚 I am glad that you put in the work and that it seems as if it had actually paid off. It’s a very rewarding feeling. I will be hoping for the best for you on your other exams though. 🙏🏾 I like how you wrote “...too good to be true, so I’m apprehensive...” 😂 That feeling can make you so uneasy and it’s so gut-wrenching if you think you did well and the results are... not-so-good. Don’t worry too much, regardless of the grade. Hopefully there are other things to buffer your overall results. However, I am proud of the work that you put in over time to prepare for your exams. 😉

☺️ Yeah, now especially because we are on Spring Break. I have a total week of pure rest, relaxation, and time for myself.

He most definitely is and, his fashion sense is an enormous indicator to his eye-catching styles. Now, can you believe it though? We have pretty much 4 out of the 8 members rising signs. Since Seonghwa confirmed his on his live last night, he’s a Cancer Rising. On top of that fact, there is a visible star in the middle of his (circular) chart. Are you into astrology? I don’t want to annoy you talking about it. I am not well-versed in it, but I like talking about it. Lame, I know. But back to Hongjoong, yeah~ he can rock pretty much any style. He’s so cool. 😎

Honestly, I have my moments where my ignorance on certain topics start to seep through. If I ever upset you or make you uncomfortable with what I write or say, just let me know. I read that you live in Sweden in an ‘About Me’ tagged post or something like that. Truthfully, I don’t know much about Sweden. 😅 But, thank you for solidifying that fact!! ☺️☺️

OMG!!! 😱 The purple velvet was EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!! 💔😍☺️🤪🥰💋 Seonghwa was looking extra fine~~~ !!! Like who allowed him?!?!/! Who gave this man permission????? I mean, I’m not mad about it but... my heart. ❤��

Yes, yes. Rest and relax. You deserve it!! I have the same exact frustrations as you and I’ll do my part in supporting them, and that dance practice truly was amazing!! 😍 They can!! And you know what?! They already did with their ‘Pirate King’ and ‘Wonderland’ (kind of) performances. Can ‘Black Cat Nero’ count as well, or nah~ they weren’t all exactly zombies... to be fair.

My weekend is off to a great start by the way!! Thanks!! How has things been so far for you this weekend? No~ don’t apologize for the long messages. I enjoy reading and responding to them. I am actually quite sorry that my response was so short.

[norahjakobs]

Earth 33: Outlaws - Playdate

Batman believes Robin could use more friends, he isn't really close with anyone at school and Gotham lacks anyone his age in the hero game. Luckily fellow hero Blue Devil also has a fairly friendless sidekick and could use some help with something down in LA. But when the two sidekicks get back from their adventure they find the adults missing and another kid, hijinks ensue.

This took forever to write, it also got a lot longer than it was suppose to but i guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Also no beta reading, we die like men.

Also heads up a character mentions being nauseous twice but no one throws up

The idea that he didn’t have enough friends was frankly, offensive. He hung around other students at free period, and sure none of them ever invited him over nor did he invite them over to the manor, even though he was sure Alfred would be thrilled to keep an eye on them and clean up afterwards if it meant he didn’t just hang around the manor alone for a little while. Okay he had to admit that maybe his school connections weren’t the closest but there were the other batfamily members! Like Dick who did make time for their phone calls and was there for him, not physically though since he was with the teen titans, well there was also Barbara and her… Okay honestly they weren’t the closest.

Ughhh dammit he was kinda lonely, wasn't he? He looked out the window of the batjet trying to figure out if he forgot anyone and could make a truthful argument that he wasn’t lonely, not even because he didn’t want to meet a fellow sidekick, he was actually pretty excited about that part, and getting to go somewhere sunny thanks to Blue Devil and his sidekick Kid Devil basing out of LA. He just didn’t want Bruce to worry about him, and he knew there was already a million other things he worried about, that was just part of the deal of taking a kid from crime alley in, and Jason knew there wasn’t anywhere he could ship the baggage off to, it just had to stay by the door to be unpacked slowly, like it was fine china.

He had to wonder what a sidekick with probably a far less messed up history, and such a sunny place to work out of, because face it, working out of gloomy Gotham would have an impact on anyone, would be like? Hopefully not too much more reckless, he already had that covered in spades he had been told, and it would really suck if Batman and Blue Devil had to rescue them from the clutches of Polka-Dot Man. He would never be able to live it down, even just thinking of the idea had his cheeks go pink from embarrassment, he quickly glanced at Bruce who thankfully was focused on landing the jet. The last thing he needed was to explain he was worried about fighting Polka-Dot Man, what kind of sidekick worried about that? Him apparently.

The loading area behind a 4.5 star hotel seemed like a strange meeting place, but apparently Bruce and Blue Devil were meeting with Zatanna to talk about a case and she was staying in the hotel, so it just worked out best. Blue Devil looked just like he did on the old movie poster Jason had lifted off of the side of a movie theater, kinda badass but also down to earth in a way that was hard to place. Kid Devil who was rocking back and forth on his heels, looked like a complete dork, the little horns and tail were just too much in his opinion.

“They’re here!” Kid Devil pointed at them as they approached.

Blue Devil who had been facing the other way turned around and stepped over to Batman and shook his hand, “Glad you could come by,”

Batman raised an eyebrow, and lightheartedly asked “Why wouldn’t i?”

Blue Devil let out a chuckle and answered, “You bats aren’t really know for coming to sunny California,”

They continued to chat meanwhile Kid Devil basically ran over to Robin and extended his hand in an almost exaggerated manner, a big grin on his face “I’m Ed- Kid Devil, nice to meet you!”

Robin looked at him for a moment before shaking his hand “Robin, nice to meet you too. Gotta ask, are you always so... Excited or is it just when meeting Batman and Robin behind a hotel?”

He put his finger to his mouth thinking for a moment before answering, “Yeah pretty sure i’m just always this upbeat!”

They two could hear Blue Devil chuckle in the background and then turn back to Batman and begin explaining something, probably why his sidekick was so energetic.

Kid Devil turned back to Robin, “I’m really looking forward to kicking butt with you! There aren’t a lot of kids my age around here that fight crime,” he mumbled under his breath “And blue doesn’t let me help with his stuff often.”

Robin raised an eyebrow, “Why doesn’t he?”

Kid Devil’s grin faltered into a still somewhat happy looking neutral expression, Robin had to wonder if the guy was capable of frowning, he started rubbing his arm and his eyes lingered off to the side, “He thinks it’s dangerous or something, but the worst injury I've gotten was after crashing my bike on the front door of the workshop, and that was completely out of costume.”

Robin had to wonder if Kid Devil realized why that was his worst injury was because Blue Devil kept him away from the dangerous missions, but wasn’t going to bring it up. Nothing kills the mood for a hang out (as he insisted it was not a playdate like how Batman said it was) like telling the other kid maybe the adult is right. “That sucks, Batman lets me jump around on the roofs of buildings, and trust me, it's not as easy as it looks.”

Kid Devil giggled, “Do ever worry about falling?”

“Ehhh, I used to, but this-” He pulled out the grappling hook, “-helps with that fear a lot, besides I'm way better at parkour than I was when I started.”

“Could you show me how to do parkour? I mean this thing-” he grabbed a weird looking trident that was left on the curb on the loading dock, “-can fly so practically I don’t need to know, but it would be really really cool!”

Robin smiled at him, “Yeah sure, I'll show you a few tricks while we’re looking for Polka-Dot Man,”

He rubbed the side of his face, “That’s not gonna be a lot of time, because maybe this is just me trying to find Polka-Dot Man sounds like trying to find an orange in a empty parking lot.”

Robin chuckled, “We can take the scenic route back here once we’re done with him.”

“Awesome!” Kid Devil did a fist pump.

Man, here Jason was thinking Dick was energetic, and for Gotham city, he was. But LA was a lot less grim, maybe cause of the sun or the sea. Or the shine of Hollywood, Jason honestly wasn’t sure.

Batman and Blue Devil walked over to the two, having finished their chat. Blue Devil put his hands on his hips, “Well we’re heading to Zatanna’s room, you two have fun and be careful, once you’re done come up to room 503.”

“If you run into any trouble, Robin remember you have a communicator on you, we’re only a call away.” Batman added.

“We’ll be fine,” Robin rolled his eyes under his mask and waved the idea that there’d be any trouble away, “It’s only Polka-Dot Man, if we can’t deal with him i think we would have been out of the biz a while ago.”

Blue Devil sighed for some reason Robin couldn’t figure out. Eh, probably no reason, people sigh sometimes. He then turned to Batman, “Well I'm going round front, guessing you aren’t going to be using the elevator with me?”

Batman shook his head and walked off, probably in the direction of the window for the room.

“Can he not use doors?”

Robin shook his head, “No, he can. He just prefers the window, I mean have you ever heard of a bat flying in through a door?”

“No… But he’s not a bat, he’s a man.”

“A Batman.”

“Wait is he a vampire? He has been squinting a lot, and sticking to the shadows!” Kid Devil had the face of Newton when he realized why the apple hit him.

Robin frantically shook his head “No! He’s just a night owl,”

“Have you ever seen him eat?”

“Yeah, not a lot but that’s cause he doesn’t eat at the dinner table.”

“Where does he eat?” Kid Devil raised an eyebrow.

“We should get moving, we have a criminal to catch,” He was trying to change the topic from if his adopted dad was a vampire and onto the thing they were meant to be doing. Like the kid that diverted a conversation from the fact their parents's a teacher by suggesting they do chores together.

“Oh yeah right!” He mounted the trident like how a five year old mounts those toy horse stick things. “Hop on!”

Robin was apprehensive to ‘hop on’ like Kid Devil suggested. The thing looked barely safe for one person, let alone two. “Uh, are you sure it can carry both of us?”

“Yup! Tell me you aren’t scared or something?” Kid Devil teased.

“No way,” He climbed on.

And the moment they were off the ground he was screaming, he was fine in the jet but he wasn’t having the wind whip in his fac- Eww a bug just smacked in his face. How the frick did Kid Devil do this so calmly???

“Wooo!”

“AHHHHH!”

Kid Devil turned his head to face Robin with a look of concern, “Are you okay?”

Robin frantically shook his head, he felt nauseous, oh lord he wanted down. He looked down and oh god that was a mistake, he was fine when there was something to hook on to if he fell but they were nowhere near downtown LA. “I’m gonna throw up,” He managed to say in between the screaming.

“Okay okay we’re going down.”

The moment they were on the group Robin got off the flying trident from hell and gave the sidewalk a kiss, “Sweet sweet ground i’m never leaving you again!”

Kid Devil crouched down and patted him on the back, “Be glad we’re in a good part of town, if we were in Skid Row you would have probably just gotten some sort of disease.”

Robin sat down to catch his breath, “No need to tell me that, I lived in the Gotham equivalent before Bats took me in.”

Kid Devils eyes were wide with surprise, “Really?”

He nodded, “Yeah, can’t say it was fun or that it’s something fun to talk about..” He hated talking about it with anyone frankly, they all tried to be understanding and empathize but the only person he felt actually understood was Leslie Thompkins.

“Alright let’s change the topic! So where does Batman eat?” Kid Devil offer Robin a hand up, a hand Robin took.

He groaned and answered, “A cave…”

“He’s totally a vampire.”

The two continued to debate the topic as they tracked down Polka-Dot Man, took out his, like, three goons, and then punched him in the face and dragged his butt over to the police station. And then even continued as they entered the hotel, waited for the elevator since some other kid had just closed it as they had got into the entrance, went up and waited for someone to answer the door after Robin had knocked.

There was a strange lack of any response. Like there was no one in the room.

“Do you think we should knock again?”

Robin shrugged, and then Kid Devil proceeded to knock on the door continuously.

After a moment it was opened. Not by any of the adults they had been expecting but some kid with messy, slightly curly black hair and a rabbit themed t-shirt and a blankly confused expression. “Uhhhhh”

“Ummm”

“Who are you?” Robin asked trying to take a peek behind the boy as he waited for a response.

“Zach,” He paused and then presumably realized that was not identifiable at all, “I’m Zatanna's cousin.”

“Where is Blue Devil and the others?” Kid Devil wasn’t being rude and trying to get around Zach, but instead just acted like a normal person in a conversation.

Zach shrugged, “Uhh, no clue. I’m kinda hoping you two could help clear that up?”

He finally moved out of the door frame letting the other two get a good look at the hotel room. It was high class, had one of those tubs with the jets in them and a bathrobe left on the steps to it. But it also smelled of… those gunpowder poppers you could throw on the ground to make a sound and fire and there were scorch marks on the floor. There were no signs of a fight or struggle but the other things left behind didn’t paint the most optimistic picture.

Robin turned to Zach while Kid Devil just gawked at the room and checked under the beds. “Did you see or hear anything Zach?”

Zach covered his mouth as he thought for a moment, “I was down in the dining room, Zee told me she didn’t want me at her meeting cause there’d be important people and…. Oh my gosh she was meeting with Batman wasn’t she?!”

Robin nodded, “Uh yeah she was, but that’s not the most relevant thing at the moment, you can bother her about it once we know where she and the others are.”

“That’s just so cool.. Man I've got the coolest cousin ever! Anyways i was down in the dining room eating when I heard some very muffled yells, so i came up here to investigate and well you know the rest.”

Robin tried to remain calm. None of that was very helpful. Not at all. But there must be a way to contact them. He then remembered he had his communicator on him, duh this was gonna be so easy. Almost nothing on earth could block it’s signal. He pulled it out and started a call with Batman. Only to see static on the screen and hear white noise out of the speakers. He frowned at it and banged it against his hand, hopeing that it would fix the problem, but no dice.

“Crap.”

Kid Devil got his head out from under the bed, “What now?”

“Batman is somewhere really bad, i can’t get in contact with him.” He waved around the communicator to make sure Kid Devil saw it.

He could see both Kid Devil’s and that Zach kids hopes dashed in one sentence. They had probably, along with him, been hoping that this would something really easy to clear up and they could just go raid the vending machine while waiting for the adults to get back. But instead they kinda needed to figure out where they had gone, three kids, one of whom seemed like a civilian wasn’t much backup but they were the only three that would notice this for a while.

Zach started to pace, a frazzled, almost panicked expression on his face. Meanwhile Kid Devil sat down on the platform area the jacuzzi was in, seemingly trying to think of what to do. Robin just leaned on the wall, going through what plans Batman had made for situations like this.

If he were in Gotham he was suppose to be contacting Alfred, The Commissioner, or Barbara at the moment. But he wasn’t so he mentally moved on to the next plan. If in Metropolis- no that didn’t help either, he was in LA, was there a LA plan? Thinking about it for a moment, really trying to scrub through all the paranoid planning Bruce did, nope. There was nothing for LA. So it was time to fall back on to the specialized situations plans, the one most relevant seemed like it’d be the magic one…. But the plan there was to contact Zatanna and follow her lead and she was one of the missing people.

“What the heck do we do?!” Zach pulled at his hair, not hard enough for any to come out.

Kid Devil shrugged, not that Zach noticed that as he turned to Robin pointing his finger, “You! You’re the sidekick to freaking Batman! What do we do?!” Clearly this guy wasn’t used to stressful situations.

Robin raised his hands trying to calm the fellow kid. “We.. Uhh…. Say do either of you two know any magic users?” He had to hope they could at least list one, for crying out loud Zach was Zatanna’s cousin, surely he’d know at least one. Hopefully one that’d be helpful, he didn’t want to get stuck calling the talking monkey.

Kid Devil shook his head. Unsurprisingly being the sidekick to a guy that was just stuck in a suit in the middle of LA wasn’t prime meeting magic people circumstances. “No one i know, Zach, buddy what about you?” Kid Devil was maybe too friendly for his own good, they had know Zach for a total of what? Five minutes and he was already calling him buddy, and not even in the tone that people use when the person isn’t actually their buddy.

He rubbed the nape of his neck as he answered. “Uhh, i do know Zee’s ex….. I even have his phone number,”

Robin grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him in the face, “Perfect. What is his number?”

Zach took a moment to rattle off the number as Robin put in each number in the hotel landline left on the desk of the room. It was almost going to stop ringing by the time the person on the other end picked up.

“Who on ‘earth is ‘this? And how’d ‘ya get this number?” He spoke with a strong scouse accent, and in an annoyed tone.

“Robin, Zatanna’s younger cousin gave me the number.” He stated it matter of factly, hiding the nerves that were twisting in him as each minute passed, what if something awful had happened. What if they were all overreacting and the three would be back once this call was done. Either idea terrified him, just for completely different reasons.

“Ah the Bat’s sidekick, now why ‘in hell are ‘ya calling me? And also why ‘ya ‘round Zach, the kid doesn’t get out much.”

Robin played with the cord as he explained, “Well you see… Uh, Batman was meeting up with Zatanna and Blue Devil in Zatanna’s hotel room while me and Kid Devil were off with each other, we came back and they were gone, and there’s scorch marks on the floor and smells like someone threw down some gunpowder poppers on the floor. Uh as for Zach he was getting babysat so was in the hotel.”

“Hmm,” He paused for a moment before seemly rifling through some papers, what they had on them Robin could only guess, “Ah shit, the smell you're describing is brimstone, one of ‘the telltale signs ‘of a demon. Where’d ‘ya say this hotel room was again?”

He hadn't even asked in the first place but Robin didn’t mention that as he detailed both the address and the room number.

“Alright, ‘hold tight i’ll be ‘there in a few,” The phone clicked off, he just hung up.

Kid Devil looked like he was about to burst with anticipation, “So what’d he say?!”

“He said he’ll be here soon, i’m not exactly sure how he plans on getting here so quick but he said to just hold tight.”

Zach shrugged, “Well if he’s magic like how he says he is he’ll just.. Like appear or something.”

Kid Devil raised an eyebrow, “Wait, ‘like how he says he is’?”

Zach shrugged, again. He was not very sure of much was he? “I mean i’ve never seen him do magic,”

Robin blinked a couple times, “Wait….. Do you not know about.. Ya know?” Anyone with some knowledge about the magic community, including Jason who only overheard stuff, knew that Zatanna’s most notable ex was John Constantine, and that he was magic as fuck. Not that anyone would say the second thing in front of him, they thought he hadn't heard even worse than that.

Zach shook his head, “What are you talking about…?”

Kid Devil piped up, “Your cousin actually has magic and so does her ex.”

Zach took a moment to process it, “I knew it! There is no way you could fit so much stuff in a hat otherwise, plus those sparkles she can make seemed way too shiny, and-” he continued to list things to himself that now made a lot more sense, it seemed like he was more convincing himself he should have figured it out sooner than that he was listing reasons he already figured it out.

Kid Devil came over and stood next to Robin. Both of them watching Zach pace and continue on to no one in particular. Kid Devil turned to Robin, “So we just sit here and wait?”

Robin turned to him and nodded. “Yup, sit and wait.”

“It kinda makes me feel useless, I feel like we should be looking for clues, putting them all together, bursting in last moment and rescuing our mentors plus Zach’s cuz, and instead we’re what? Waiting for another adult to show up and probably take the problem right out of our hands?”

“I feel you, but i mean we don’t know anything about magic. And that seems to be the problem, I've got no idea what magical causes there are for a brimstone smell and I don't know where to start with this! Like agreed it’d be awesome if we could burst in and help! But I don't think today can be one of those days, I don't think whatever this is is something we’re ready to deal with. Plus I don't think we should leave Zach over there alone in case something dangerous is around.” It sucked to have to be the mature one but he was used to it, he used to give advice to some of the other street kids and now he was Batman’s sidekick, other young heroes would listen to him.

Kid Devil sighed, “I get that, still feel kinda useless.”

Robin patted him on the shoulder, “Honestly, same, I'm Robin and i feel like i can’t do anything.”

“Misery loves company they say, i guess that also rings true for other bad emotions.”

“From my experience i can confirm.”

The background chatter of Zach talking to himself suddenly stopped as he turned to the other two boys. “Are you two even hearing what i’m saying?”

“Ehh i think we both started tuning it out when you got to the part about sparkles, sorry.” Robin didn’t even think the guy had been expecting the both of them to listen to any of that.

Kid Devil shook his head with a guilty look on his face.

Zach waved his hands dismissively, “It’s fine, i think i got on a tangent there didn’t i?”

Kid Devil and Robin nodded at the same time. “Yeah you did,” Robin confirmed.

“I just start talking then i can’t stop till i’m done what i’m saying, it didn’t annoy you two did it?” He rubbed his arms as his eyes wandered to the floor.

Kid Devil immediately answered. “No! I actually get that sometimes too, though usually when i’m talking about movies or movie making.”

The was a small smile on Zach’s face. “Heh, I didn't think anyone else did that.”

So they loitered around the hotel room for 15 minutes, most of which were spent watching Kid Devil trying to find a good movie on the TV and sharing fun facts about a couple of the ones they didn’t pick off the TV guide. Then the sound of knuckles against the wooden door could be heard over the action flick the three had settled on.

Robin went to the door and checked through the peephole before opening it, “Hey does your cousins ex looks like a private investigator in need of better pay?”

“Yeah that would be him alright.”

He opened the door to only be hit with the smell of strong booze and smokes, the smell seemed like it cling on to this man like a toddler to a parent in the supermarket. He held himself with confidence though, his hands in his pockets and an expression that bordered on unhappy but didn’t tip toe over the line.

“So what do ‘ya guys already know?” He went to reach for a smoke but everyone shot him a look and he seemed to then remember both that he couldn’t smoke in a hotel and that the room was full of kids.

“Zach heard some noises, and basically all the stuff you can figure out by looking around the room. Also there is nothing under the bed.”

John approached the bed where Zach was sitting on the edge of. “So what’d you ‘hear, Zach?”

“Well i was down in the dining room so i-”

John cut him off. “You ‘were in the dining room?”

Zach nodded.

“The one down four floors?”

Zach nodded again.

“Alright there’s no way ‘ya would have heard much of ‘anything from down there unless Zee used some magic to try and tell ‘ya something, continue on.”

“Like I was saying I was down in the dining hall eating some brownies when i heard very muffled shouting, it sounded like two men and Zee. I got up here as fast as I could but no one was here when I got the door open…”

“Alright, and could you make out ‘any of the words ‘anyone was saying?”

Zach thought hard for a moment before answering. “I think I heard something about Wrath?”

John mulled the word over, “Wrath, wrath, hmm there’s gotta be someth- Ah! I ‘know i think ‘ya heard Rath.”

“Yeah that was it! You have to admit it does sound a lot like Wrath…”

“Who’s Rath?” Kid Devil asked.

John shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he began to explain. “He’s a demon. ‘One of the demons ‘three, three demon brothers that cause a lot ‘o problems for people. Two of ‘em already are banished to hell, ‘hopefully for good. But Rath, the bugger is still on the loose. Not for much longer if me ‘and Zee got anything to say about it, though.” He started to march out of the room.

Kid Devil half raised his hand, “What do we do since you’re leaving?”

John paused his march for a moment and shrugged, “Keep ‘yourselves busy ‘and stay in the hotel.” He then exited through the door before anyone could ask for any more specific rules.

Kid Devil turned to Zach, “Is he always so…. You know.”

Zach nodded. “Yeah just about, he was a little nicer and put together when I was younger but he’s let himself go.”

Robin interrupted the two of them. “Hey guys, tell me, what just happened.” A mischievous smile was barely being contained as he asked.

“John just left us alone and told us to stay in the hotel?”

The grin crept onto his face. “Exactly, we my friends, have been left with no supervision in a hotel. And guess what i’ve got?”

Both Zach and Kid Devil looked upon him like he was some sort of great leader, paving a new path as they realized what he just said was true. They did just get left with no supervision. “What?” The both asked.

Robin rifled through his belt, where oh where was it? There it was! He pulled out, the batcredit card and held it up ala an item in the legend of zelda.

Zach burst out laughing meanwhile Kid Devil looked confused, “Why on earth do you have that? Why does Batman have one of those?”

Robin shrugged, “Sometimes we have to pay for stuff, and it’d really ruin the whole secret identity thing to whip out a checkbook and write down his name on it or pull out his other credit card with his name clear to see. Plus i can use this without anyone raising an eyebrow! At least if I'm in costume, I don't think I'd get away with it in my civilian identity.”

Zach continued to laugh in the background while Kid Devil replied. “Huh, that actually makes a lot of sense, still pretty silly.”

“Agreed.” He knew all the practical reasons behind it but pulling out a credit card with a bat slapped on it to make it bat themed so it’d match everything else did feel ridiculous.

“Say, you haven’t actually told me your name, can i ask what it is?”

“Nope, sorry. Bat’s is really strict on that, hell Nightwing couldn’t tell the teen titans for the longest time what his name was and in fact the only reason they know is cause he broke the rules and told them.” He did wish he could tell Kid Devil, trying to be friends with someone but not being able to tell them his name felt weird.

He looked disappointed for a moment before moving on. “Eh i get it. I’m Eddie by the way!” The name seemed to suit him, he just kinda gave off ‘Eddie’ vibes, though the idea that certain people seemed like a certain name would fit them was kinda ridiculous. By that logic he probably go by the name Hunter or Jaxon.

Zach raised an eyebrow. “Did you forget I'm standing right here?”

Eddie shook his head, “Nope! It’s just we’re a little more lax about idenites here, if someone really wanted they could do some googling about Blue Devil and probably end up with my address and what school i go to. Besides there are a lot of Eddie’s in LA, if you aren’t looking into Blue Devil you aren’t going to find me with only that information. Also i trust you’ll be keeping all of this to yourself, right?”

Robin raised an eyebrow and his mouth dropped a little, “It’s that easy to find out who you are?”

“Blue Devil isn’t exactly hiding in the shadows. Heck he was front page when the suit got stuck to him!”

Zach stared off for a moment, seeming to be in a little shock. “Yeah i won’t mention this, i mean i don’t really even know who i’d tell. My parents probably just go ‘that’s nice Zach, now go away’ and my friends would think i was lying.”

“Really?” Those seemed like some pretty shitty friends and dismissive parents to him. But it wasn’t like he was the expert on either, he barely had any friends and his parents were, gone too soon to be much of anything, dependent on him, or actually interested in him and what he was doing.

“Probably, i mean i don’t know for sure and i’m not going to test it.”

Robin thought about it for a moment. Batman would be so mad if he ever found out, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him and it wasn’t like either of these two would tell anyone. “You guys can call me Jason, just don’t do it front of Batman. If he found out i told you two he might rethink his golden rule.”

Eddie giggled, “Alright, I'll make sure not to do that Jason.”

“Also don’t say it in front of anyone else for that matter.” He did have to be careful, there were a lot of Jason’s in Gotham city, including the highly public Jason Todd adopted son of billionaire Bruce Wayne, came from the streets. If anyone thought there might be connection that could spell so much trouble. Hell he realized he just handed over the tools to figure it out to Eddie since he already mentioned he grew up on the streets. It would take a leap of logic but it could happen.

“So basically it stays in this room and this room alone?” Zach said.

“Yup.”

Zach started pacing rubbing his hands together, “So back on the topic that we’ve been left without supervision, what do you two think we should do?”

“It might be fun to ride on the cleaning cart…. Let’s just make sure it’s not one in use, i don’t want to make the cleaners day even shitter than it already probably is.” Only after he was done his sentence did he realized he said shit in front of the other two. He had been trying to not swear in front of people but he grew up in crime alley, he had heard much stronger language almost everyday.

Eddie took a pause before speaking, “Yeah that’d be a lot of fun!”

“Then what are we waiting for?!”

The three headed out of the hotel room back into the hallway. The first cleaning cart they came across was in front of a room with the door left ajar, clearly in use. After a bit of sighing and Jason pulling Zach away from the cart they found another one. No cleaner in sight or clues that they’d be back anytime soon. They pushed it away from where they found it and took it down to the third floor at the end of the hall, no one would catch them there.

“So who goes where?” Zach asked staring at it.

“Zach you get to sit on the surface of it, Eddie you stand on the little edge on the front end and hold on for dear life, and i’ll stand on the back bit that sticks out and push.”

“Alright!”

They all got in their specified locations and Jason started to use his foot to push the cart, at first it was going slow. Though given how excited all of them looked, they might as well been nascar drivers. Then a little faster, Eddie gripped on to the cart a lot tighter and Jason followed suit, he didn’t really want to fall off.

“Faster!” Zach demanded, a grin on his face.

Eddie and Jason exchanged a look, on the one hand, neither of them wanted to get hurt and crashing into the door to the stairwell would hurt a lot. But on the other hand, it’d be really fun. But before either of them could decide if the reward outweighed the risks they could hear what was but a faint whisper, “Retsaf.”

The cart was now really picking up speed. Jason pulled his foot from the ground quickly as this thing did not need anymore speed than it already had. They were now barreling down the hallway, headed straight for the door to the stairwell. And worse yet Jason just remember that it's a push door, not a pull one.

“Weee!” At least Eddie was still having fun.

“Woo!” Zach also seemed to not yet realize the very present danger they were in.

“We’re headed straight for the stairs!” Jason panickedly yelled.

Their yells of glee quickly turned to screams of fear as they crashed through the door, skidded on the edge of the stairs, Eddie jumped off and landed on the landing for the third floor and then the cart went straight into the wall before the cart finally landed on it’s side, the wheels still spinning.

Jason could only see the roof above him as his senses processed what just happened and subsequently wanted to throw up. He felt a blunt pain where he had landed, nothing too bad but just enough to be unpleasant. Note to self, don’t ever do that again. He could hear Zach groaning a couple feet away from him, that was good as it meant he didn’t hit his head hard.

They both then could hear Eddie shout down at them, “Are you two okay!”

Jason weakly held a thumb up and shouted back, “I think!”

He could hear Zach pull himself off the ground and using the wall to support himself as he got up. “Speak for yourself, i’m not exactly used to getting banged around like that.”

Jason closed his eyes and just let himself focus on breathing for a moment. He could hear someone was using the stairs and frankly he had no idea if they were going up or down. Though judging by how light the steps were and the fact that Eddie nor Zach were talking it was one of them.

“Want a hand up?” Eddie asked. Jason opened one of his eyes to see Eddie crouching over him, a hand extended.

“Sure.” Jason got up with Eddie’s help.

“Let’s head back to the room.” Robin suggested.

“Yeah before anyone gets to the scene of our crime.” Zach dryly added.

The three rushed back up to Zatanna’s room. It was as empty as they had left it. All three of them had about the same idea as each other as they all rushed on to the soft bed. Much nicer to lie on than the scratchy carpet the stairwell had.

Jason still felt a dull pain in his torso where he had crashed against the handlebar of the cart. His costume didn’t let him easily check it but he was pretty sure a bruise had formed. “Hey does the mini fridge have anything really cold in it? I think i got bruised from that.”

Zach got up and checked, and then turned back to the bed and shook his head. “Not on hand, unless you want some barely cold vodka that Zee put in here before I had to leave the room, but I can order some room service and ask for an ice bucket.”

“Please do that.”

Once the room service arrived Zach got the bucket from them out in the hall so they wouldn’t notice how torn up the hotel room itself was. He then came back in and set the bucket down on the desk as he went and grabbed three towels from the bathroom, he set those down on the ground then dumped the ice on them and spread it out evenly between the three, he then bundled the towel and twisted the end till it wouldn’t just come apart if you let it go for half a second. He handed one over to Jason who immediately stuck it on top on where his bruise was, then one to Eddie who rubbed it over where he had got some scrapes, and kept one for himself that he was just keeping in his hands.

They sat like that and chatted for about five minutes before Zach started eyeing the bucket.

“What are you thinking?” Jason asked, his hair dangling off the bed with the rest of his head.

“I just remembered a cool trick i saw down in the dining room…”

Eddie who was lying belly first like how you’d see a sleepover in a girls magazine, looked interested. “Ooo, what sort of trick?”

“You get some strong alcohol, and you set it on fire.” The way he said it made it sound really cool, though it was a deceptively simple trick. “You know I could probably show you two if you guys wanted.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure that it’d be safe?”

“I’ll do it in the metal bucket and i’ll even do it on the edge of the jacuzzi so if it gets out of control we can just push it in there!”

“Okay..” He was a little apprehensive about the idea but as long as they did it safely. And besides it’d be fun to see.

Zach grabbed the bucket, then the vodka out of the fridge and poured it in. He then looked around for a moment for something to set it on fire with. Jason tossed him a lighter with an extendable metal bit where the fire came out. He extended it and lit it and brought it to the vodka and…

It lit in blue flames! Eddie enthusiastically clapped and Jason had to admit he was impressed. Zach took a small bow “Ta dah!”

“That is so cool! How long will it stay on fire?”

Zach looked like he had a sudden realization, the look you get when a person realizes that they did leave the stove on. “Uhh, i’m not sure. The people in the bar would just blow it out but i don’t think we can do that…”

Jason sat up on the bed to get a better look and also so blood would stop rushing to his head. “Alright let’s figure this out, we’ve got a bucket full of vodka that’s on fire… A thin spread of the right kind of alcohol will stay burning for only a minute or so but you poured the whole bottle in so-”

“Why do you know how long alcohol burns?” Zach asked

“Some idiot thought it was a good idea to throw a molotov cocktail at a police car and completely missed and got the sidewalk instead.”

“You know, stuff like that makes me glad i don’t live in Gotham.”

“Hey! Gotham is the best, it’s just got a couple neighborhoods where you gotta watch out a little.” Jason had his own problems with the city but he was a Gotham boy through and through, born and raised.

“Still i think i like New York better.”

“Anyways i think the fire should burn out in about… 8 minutes..” He wasn’t a hundred percent sure his math was right but he was pretty sure.

“Great..” From the way it sounded Zach did not think it was, “Great” but wasn’t going to raise any complaints.

“So while we wait for that to burn out could we do something remotely safe?” Eddie asked.

Jason crossed his arms. “Like what?”

“Hmm, I don't know. Maybe make a blanket fort?”

“If we’re going to do that we’ll need more blankets.” Zach pointed out.

“I think I can do that.” A devilish grin spread across his face.

Jason went alone, the other two were getting chairs, rope, and tape. While he was heading to the cleaning room. The lock on the door wasn’t much to contend with, especially since he got given real lock picks, not like the crappy ones he got used to on the street. He grabbed a couple of the clean ones, and avoided the ones that still needed cleaning.

They all met back up and started construction, Zach was in charge of direction as he had the most practice out of the three of them, meanwhile Eddie was in charge of getting the blankets where they were supposed to be, and Jason was put to tying all of it down and making sure it stayed together since he was the best knot tier out of them.

Once they were done Zach made some microwave popcorn while Eddie and Jason got comfortable. Eddie didn’t really seem to have much of an idea of personal space but Jason couldn’t say it bothered him that much.

Zach crouched down to climb in with the bag of popcorn, “Hey move over a little, you two are hogging all the space!”

Jason shuffled over to the side letting Zach slip into the majestic blanket fort they had made. Eddie grabbed some of the popcorn and stuffed it into his mouth.

They had just started chatting when they could hear the door open and the sound of several exhausted adults mummering at each other about demons and whether or not it was too nice to just seal them in hell. Then they suddenly stopped for a reason the three kids, frozen from surprise could see.

“Why the hell is there an ice bucket on fire next to the jacuzzi?!” Zatanna loudly asked.

“I was going to ask where they got all those blankets from.” Blue Devil added.

“Are you three why there’s a cleaning cart crashed in the stairwell?” Batman asked.

John stayed uncomfortably quiet.

Meanwhile the three of them looked at each other, slight terror in each of their eyes. Then they all clambered over each other and out of the blanket fort.

Zach began the explanation. “I wanted to show these two a trick I saw down in the dining room, and I guess it hasn’t burnt out yet.” He shrugged.

“As for the blankets we got them from the cleaning room, well robin did, me and Zach were getting the other stuff together!” Eddie cheerfully added

“We made sure it wasn’t a cart that was being used, besides we can pay for any damages done and leave a generous tip while we’re at it.” Jason tried to finish.

“How did it happen though?” Batman asked.

“Zach wanted to go faster, and we didn’t realize the door was a push one till it was way too late…”

Batman covered his face with his hand and shook his head disapprovingly. Though Jason could imagine there was a small smile on his face under his hand.

Zatanna slowly turned to John, giving him the sink eye. “John.”

“‘Yeah?”

“Why’d you leave these three unsupervised?”

“Well ‘lov, it’s not like ‘I've got babysitters in LA ‘already plugged into ‘my phone.”

“You could have call Mikey! And don’t tell me you don’t have his number, i know you sometimes ask him to send you pictures of me.”

“Look I didn't ‘think of it!”

The two continued on while Batman and Blue Devil awkwardly tried to give them their distance and the ice bucket finally burnt out in the background.

Eddie turned to Jason. “This has been a whole load of fun!”

Jason smiled at him, “Yeah it has.”

“Hey how about i give you my address and we can send each other letters!”

“Why not just exchange our phone numbers?”

“I mean we can do that too! It’s just fun to use out of date stuff, my aunt still uses vinyl cause of that reason.”

“Alright sure.”

They exchanged both their numbers and mailing addresses, and in doing that they both knew that it would definitely let the other one figure out who they were, but neither were all that worried about it. Jason was sure Eddie wouldn’t tell anyone.

Soon enough Robin and Batman had to leave and go back to Gotham. Though Robin got himself dropped off in the city instead of going straight to the cave, he needed to go get some stamps.

[dreamingbrownie]

Tagging games #5

I’ve been tagged by @fandom-glazed and wanted to do this anyway, so here we go! Tagging anyone who wants to do this ^__^ 1. what’s your favorite way to dress? Black all the way. I’m a fancy goth on the inside and trying (but most likely failing) on the outside. 2. If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be? Not to be so voulnerable to the people that mean a lot to me would be nice. Not getting attached so fucking fast. 3. What movie/game/etc. helps you calm down? I tend to love movies reducing me to a sobbing mess, so that doesn’t count as calming me down, does it? As for a series, I’m all for Merlin BBC at the moment which I watch unfrequently with @fandom-glazed on Netflix and usually laugh my ass off at Arthur and Merlin’s antics. :D 4. What does your room smell like? Dust, nailpolish, some tea and the slightly burnt smell of my old heaters. 5. Do you like to organize? Hell fucking no. I’m an ADD person, nope, I don’t. 6. What kind of music would you listen to if you could only choose one? German rock / gothic rock. Unheilig, Staubkind, Blutengel, Lord of the Lost, Letzte Instanz, that kind of thing. Not that either of those bands would ring a bell with most of tumblr users, I assume. 7. What song is your aesthetic? Oh man, making me choose there is mean. Ghost Love Score by Nightwish, Stand my ground by Within Temptation, Morgana by Lord of the Lost. Hard and heavy. 8. What color do you think goes best with your personality? Crimson like my hair right now, probably. 9. Do you believe in auras? Nope. 10. What do you wish you hated, but actually like? Ballet. To wish for having been introduced to how to ruin your body in the most beautiful way as a child is kind of unhealthy. 11. Vague about your crush(es) Valentin Winter / van Porcelain. That man. Go to his tumblr @valentinvanporcelaine and dare ask me again why I’m addicted to his aesthetics. 12. Is there someone you have mixed feelings towards? Yep. Not talking about specific people in my personal life here tho.  13. Talk about an AU or story you came up with Oh boy, here we go. If you get me started on my vampire novels, we’ll be here all day and I won’t even be half way finished. I adore my own characters to a decree that might be weird, I ship some of them and the main gay pair Count Louis and his life long best friend and personal vassal Chris, later Knight of Alderton, to death and writing anything with those two idiots in love soothes me so much. The main trilogy (A shimmer of Red, Black and Silver respectively) is huge (as in 200k for the first, 140k for the second and 110k as of yet for the unfinished third) but not finished yet, I’m almost there and would have been a year ago if I’d just get my arse out of the Fantastic Beasts Fandom and saunter off to writing my own stuff again. Unfortunately, Albus and Gellert own my ass at the moment and I’m overflowing with plotbunnies that won’t go away on their own. I know my mind. I need to write them all down before I get any peace at all. Lol. 14. Do you like makeup? No, not really, I like sharp-winged-eyeliner though. 15. Do you prefer space or the ocean? Ocean all the way. Space is fascinating and I’m a massive nerd for SpaceX because their projects are so promising for the future of mankind, but standing at the shore, being able to breathe properly again (asthma kid here, hi) and cry from sheer relief of hearing the waves crash against the cliff or roll onto the beach again is my life blood. I’ll have that next week again. Fucking finally. The sea soothes me so, so much and I suffer from constant longing for distance. We have a very fitting word for the feeling in German. Fernweh. Roughly translated to “I want to get far away from here so much it hurts.” Yeah, that’s the German language right there for you. 16. If you could pick any planet besides earth, where would you live? Pandora, probably. You know, three meters tall blue humanoids, a captivating nature, trees large enough to be a bother for the planet’s rotation, probably? Yeah. I’d like that very much. 17. What form of government do you like the most? (capitalism, socialism, etc.) I’m quite content with the German system of Social economy. Pure capitalism, socialism and communism are shit, don’t work in the long run and should just be abolished altogether. 18. What animal would you keep as a pet, if you could? Give me a black cat, please 19. What do you think our purpose is in the universe? To find our place between the stars, become a multi planetary species and to develop a way that’s not as destructive to the planet we inhabit. There’s a beautiful sentence that sums it all up in Interstellar from Cooper: “We might have been born on earth, but we don’t have to die here.” 20. Do you believe in god(s)? Nope. Atheist all the way. Before anyone misunderstands me, though: believe whatever you want to, I don’t judge people for their religion, it’s just so not my tea. 21. Is there a song you can’t handle listening to, even though you like it? Yep. Chasing cars by Snow Patrol. 22. What ex do you miss the most, if you have one? Mean question. I only have an ex-girlfriend and sometimes I miss her gentleness and how instantly she saw right through me, but she replaced me, we’ve been done for a bit more than five years now and I’m over her. :) 23. Do you like soft, fluffy blankets or rough/smooth blankets? Soft, fluffy blankets all the way. 24. What is your favorite thing to learn about? History. What do you think I’d study that for? :D 25. What country’s history do you find the most interesting? Man, that’s a mean one again. I’m pretty solid on English history, but I don’t know the first thing about Asian history altogether because german schools don’t teach that and we’ve got a different subject for Asian culture in university so it’s not included in my must-do-schedule too, but I’d like to learn more about it soon. 26. What do you think about genderbent ____ (insert someone here) Nope, noping right out, nopedinopenope, not my tea. At all. 27. What breakup was the hardest, if you had one? The one I had was... bad. Not talking about that here any further tho. 28. Do you have someone where you can’t decide if you like them romantically or just as a friend? A couple of weeks ago, my answer would have been yes, but I’ve got that all sorted out now. Not dwelling on it, though. It doesn’t matter. 29. What do you think about tumblr discourse? Ughhh. Exhausting most of the time. I loved the metas in the Sherlock fandom before it all fell apart and I like Fantastic Beasts metas, but people get so emotional so fast that normal discussions are all but impossible here. 30. What instrument do you wish you could master? Piano. Still salty that I’ve been forced to stop that as a child. 31. How easy is it for you to be honest? Very. I’m a very honest person and I’m shite at lying. 32. Do you have any strange interests? Fandoms, probably? xD I find fossils infinetely fascinating, anything conserning dragons (that sounds strange in context, I’m well aware that they don’t exist) and the way stars are born in large nebulas is something poetic to me. 33. Do you have any strange fears? Strange? I dunno, I’ve just about ran out of the kitched screaming at the top of my lungs when a fucking spider dropped ON MY HEAD yesterday evening, you tell me if that’s strange. Drowning would suck a lot, I guess. Anything that makes you suffocate. Nope. 34. What food do you binge on when you’re lazy? Toast with something on it. I did that in exam week last week, not because I’m lazy but because I just did not have the time or the nerves for cooking. 35. When you get angry, how do you show it? I go all quiet and drill my posture to absolute perfection until it hurts. You’ll notice when I’m mad. Seldom happens, though, I’m hard to offend. 36. Do you have any impulsive movements? (twitches, ticks, flapping, etc.) Picking fingers. Bad habit that I’m trying to get rid of. 37. What do you listen to music on? YouTube and Spotify on the PC, used my phone a massive lot for that during the summer too but now with all the layers of jackets and coats and such it’s a bit hard to stuff my large phone anywhere. 38. Are you left brained or right brained? Uhhhh what? I’m right handed, but I don’t think I have any tendencies otherwise. 39. Earbuds or headphones? Earbuds. 40. Do you like light blankets or heavy blankets? Light blankets for around the flat, heavy in bed. I’d like to be able to breathe.

[samthewrestlingfan]

Bad At Love: Kenny Omega

Hi there, Lovebugs!

Here is a new lil Kenny fic! This is my first time writing Kenny, so please be gentle <3

Let me know if you like it! I enjoyed writing this one :)

Next this to come out will be the next chapter of BELIEVER. (No I haven’t forgotten about it!)

btw this is hella long and im sorry.

Characters: Kenny Omega/OC

Warnings: Alcohol, angst, MILD smut, fluff.

(gif credit: @toosweetme)

I took a swig of my beer, before I practically slammed it down on the table.

You’ve got this, Ella. If he shows up, just ignore him.

I felt a nudge on my side, snapping me out of my daze. “You doin’ okay?” Marty asked.

I nodded at him quickly, returning my attention to my alcohol. I heard an audible sigh come from him, “If you keep acting like this, you’re only going to draw attention to yourself, and how uncomfortable you are.”

“I’m not uncomfortable, Marty. I’m just…” I droned off, not bothering to continue my sentence. Marty excused himself leaving me with my drink and the Bucks on opposite ends of the table.

Truth be told I wasn’t anything; mostly because I wasn’t allowing myself to feel anything. My plan was to enjoy my night out with my friends, and not let Kenny Omega and his inability to think with anything but his dick ruin that for me.

“Els! Come grab a shot with me?” Matt offered.

I perked up at his behest, “Definitely.”

Matt ordered quite literally a whole tray of sake shots, and as we waited for them, I began to loosen up.

Matt cleared his throat suddenly, “Look, I know this probably isn’t my place, but you’re my friend, hell one of my best friends, and Kenny is too. I just don’t want to have the two of you lose a great friendship over this…”

I nodded as he spoke. He was right, I knew what I was getting when I fell for Kenny. I just never expected things to turn so sour so quickly.

Kenny and I had never see each other as more than friends. Ever. At least I didn’t, then one night it just clicked.

…and by clicked, I mean we fucked.

***

“Please let me help you…” Kenny chuckled.

I hiccuped, “Listen you, go back to the party, I’m f-fine!” I laughed, practically falling face first into the side of the elevator.

I was drunk as a skunk and everyone knew it.

“Ella, I swear to God you are the most stubborn person I’ve ever known.” Kenny said grabbing my arm to stabilize me.

I leaned into him and laid my head on his strong shoulder, “Yeah but you love me for it.” I inhaled his scent, he smelled like man and sex and ecstasy. Again, I’m pretty sure this is the alcohol talking.

He kissed my forehead, as the elevator reached my floor. “Let’s go drunky.”

***

I pushed open my hotel room door, Kenny following swiftly behind me.

“Alright Beautiful, Let’s get you in bed.” Kenny held my waist, guiding me into the dimly lit hotel room.

I groaned to myself, “Ughhh, I don’t wanna be alone.” I flopped myself on the edge of the bed, bending down, unstrapping my heels.

Kenny walked toward the bathroom, “You know you contradict yourself a lot? A second ago you told me to go back to the party.” I heard the bathroom door click closed and decided to hurry up and change for bed.

The room was spinning as I undressed, barely able to make out what I was ripping off from where. I was stood in the middle of the room,  and my black thong and matching bra, searching for my pajamas.

“Oh…right.” I mumbled to myself, remembering they were in the bathroom.

I stumbled through the room, and knocked on the door leaning against the frame, “Ken, I need my pjs.”

He swung open the door, “Fuck you’re–” I watched his eyes scan me up and down, “Whoa.”

I snuck by him, grabbing my clothes off the vanity. “What?” I asked.

Kenny cleared his throat, “Ella the tequila may have stolen my filter,  but you look,” He bit his bottom lip, “Incredible.”

My face burned at his compliment, and from my current state of intoxication. “Ken you’ve seen me in my gear, this isn’t that different is it?.” I spun around, giving him a nice view of my round behind, teasing him a bit.

He ran his hand over his face, “Oh-ho-ho, you have no idea…”

I climbed onto the bed, Kenny following quickly after me. I rested on the edge of the bed, my knees dug into the mattress to keep me from wobbling.

I reached out for Kenny and grabbed both sides of his lapel, pulling him into me slowly.

“Still want me to stay?” He asked almost hopeful, placing his hands on my hips.

I paused for a moment, allowing my eyes to connect with his. I saw a hunger in them, one that made a throbbing erupt from between my legs.

“I do.” I breathed.

Kenny brought his face close to mine. “Is this okay?” He asked.

I nodded. He brushed his lips against mine, and ran his rough fingertips up and down my sides. “Is that okay?”

I swallowed hard, “Yes.”

Without hesitation, Kenny kissed me. Hard. His hands searching for every curve my body had…

***

And the rest is history.

Except for the past few weeks, Kenny hadn’t spoken to me outside of work. He stopped calling, stopped texting…everything just stopped and he was gone. Kenny was never just gone, he always woke up with me, our limbs tangled together. He would kiss me good morning, then ask if I wanted to grab breakfast.

“Ella? Did you hear me?” Matt asked, eyebrows raised.

I looked to him quickly, “Hm? Oh yeah. Thanks, Matt.” I said. Truth be told, I stopped listening. I’m sure he was just telling me what everyone was telling me. At this point, I was sick of hear it.

I downed another shot, before excusing myself. “Matt, I’m just gonna run to the bathroom.”

His eyes widened. “But Ella didn’t you–”

“Matt,” I interrupted. “I’m fine.” I gently rubbed his shoulder before turning to walk–or stumble my way. The bar was dim, and smelled like an odd combo of memories and mistakes.

As I turned the corner I stumbled and slammed into the wall.

“Fuck…” I said as I hit the ground.

I heard a gruff laugh, “Nice mouth.” I looked up to see a strong hand held out for me.

God has a sick sense of humor. I thought to myself, realizing Matt must have been trying to warn me.

“You just gonna hang out on the floor all night?” Kenny said sarcastically.

I begrudgingly held my hand out, allowing him to help me up. I rose to my feet, crossing my arms in front of me.

“Thanks.” I spat.

Kenny smiled softly, brushing a stay piece of hair out of my face. “No problem, Els.”

I continued toward the bathroom, a billion thoughts running through my head. Does he hate me now? Was I not good enough for him? Has he moved on to someone else? Someone better than me?

“That’s it.” I grit my teeth together, and stomped back towards Kenny.

“Hey!” I shouted at him as he walked away. His head turned towards me, stopping mid step.

“You. Me. Outside…now.” I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and yanked him towards the door.

He walked with no hesitation. Outside onto the dirty street, and down the small side road next to the bar, he finally stopped to perch against the brick siding.

Kenny’s eyes bore holes into mine. There he was. Right in front of me, and I had every opportunity to say everything I was feeling.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

…and I choked.

“What?” He asked offended.

“What nothing!” I yelled. “You’ve completely ignored me for the past few weeks. You can barely be in my presence for more than two  minutes without finding a reason to leave!” I was screaming at the top of my lungs, and it felt damn good.

I took a deep breath, “You made me feel like shit, Ken. You made me feel used. Was that your plan? Get your dick wet, then ignore me for the rest of your life?”

Kenny took a step towards me. “Are you done?”

I scoffed, “Unbelievable! I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think Kenny Omega could ever give two fucks about me.”

“Don’t say that…you know I care about you.” He said, hurt painting his words.

“No you don’t. You cared about having someone you could fuck on a moments notice, well jokes on me huh.” I flipped him off, walking away swiftly but he pulled me back.

“Oh no, you don’t get to scream at me like a psycho then just walk away.” He held me still so I couldn’t leave. I snatched my arms back and crossed them in front of me.

“What could you possibly have to say to me to–” Kenny put a finger to my lips. “Ella, please, as much as I love your voice, just…shh.”

Kenny stepped back and brushed his hair back. “I haven’t been with anyone else.”

My eyes flashed to him. “What?” I asked.

“You. The last time we we’re together, you we’re the last person I was with.” He said confidently.

I rolled my eyes, “What does that matter Ken?”

“I don’t know. I’m just offended that you think so fucking little of me.”  He rested his hands on his hips. My head was so foggy from the booze that I couldn’t tell what emotion he put behind that sentence.

“You haven’t exactly given me a reason to think otherwise.” I said, slurring my words despite my best efforts.

“Really? So I guess the years of friendship before any of this happened were pointless?” It was Kenny’s turn to get loud now. I guess I kinda deserve it.

A chill ran up my spine, the cold air registering with my flush body causing me to shiver. Kenny noticed, and stopped his pacing to walk toward me.

He let out a small laugh, before removing his jacket and placing it over my shoulders. “See? I’m not this heartless monster you made me out to be.”

This is the Kenny I knew. Sweet, and kind and always taking care of everyone. “Thank you.” I smiled softly.

“Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t want to hurt you?” He mumbled suddenly.

“What?” I questioned.

He cleared his throat. “Ella I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t know how to do the whole one girl thing.”

I scoffed, “Did I ever ask you for that?”

“No, but it’s what you deserve.” He spoke.

“Kenny, I knew what I was getting when we started whatever we were doing.” And that was true. I needed someone and so did he. We were more than comfortable with one another and it seemed to be enough, until my dumbass caught feelings.

“I was sick to my fucking stomach thinking about you with someone else. I couldn’t sleep without you next to me. I don’t know when I became such a fucking softy.” He laughed.

I placed a hand on his cheek. “Why did you just up and disappear then?” I said.

He sighed. “I needed to know if what I was feeling was something or if we had just gotten too comfortable with each other.”

I looked up to his eyes, “Well?” I asked.

He paused before he spoke, obviously trying to word what he wanted to say, “I fell for you, Els. I fell hard. I know I’ve been dick and I’m sorry. If you’d give me the time, I promise I’ll spend as long as you’d like making it up to you.”

My heart skipped a beat as he spoke. I didn’t know what to do beside stretch up and kiss him.

…and that’s exactly what I did.

I tangled my hands in his hair, our mouths getting familiar with one another again. Kenny pulled back and rested his forehead on mine. “I’ve missed that, Els.”

“Me too.” I said.

He stood up, offering me his hand. “C'mon. Let’s go celebrate with our nosey friends.” Kenny said gesturing to Nick and Matt’s faces in the window.

I took his hands and gripped it tight, “Can I buy my girl a drink?” He asked as he held the door.

My stomach churned at his offer. “Not a chance, Babe.”

[stillgeekingout]

hello hello, here with a very late update of the ultimate aaron milverton crossover fic! It’s kind of a short one, but the next part I started writing didn’t have a good stopping spot so here ya go, enjoy and I promise next month I will try to be back on my regular schedule (as if people besides me keep track)

previous:  1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here, 7 here, 8 here, 9 here, 10 here, 11 here

------

The whole “one date, no commitment” thing had been Zoe’s idea. She reminded herself of that all the way back to DC, and throughout the days following. And every time she did, she wanted to give herself a good smack in the forehead.

“I knew it was a bad idea. I can’t stop thinking about her. Why did I say that? Why did I even hang out with her again, knowing I wouldn’t be able to see her anymore?”

“Hmm? Oh, um, I don’t know,” said Violet, looking up from her phone. Yes, against all odds, she and Violet Hunter had somehow struck up a friendship. That first lunch had turned into a weekly lunch, which turned into a dinner party so that Zoe could meet Violet’s spouses, Eliza and John, which turned into all of them becoming friends. It was nice to have some local (human) friends who weren’t from work, even if they were eccentric.

Violet was a terrible listener in some ways (Zoe suspected she was often not actually listening), but she never interrupted or judged. So when Zoe returned from her Thanksgiving trip, Violet was the one she wanted to talk to-- and what better time than their weekly lunch?

“I texted her once when I got back, just to say I made it back, and she responded to that, but we haven’t talked since,” Zoe said. “I don’t know what to do-- should I try to keep talking to her? Or is it time to let it go?”

“Yeah, that’s tough,” Violet said. Which was a very typical noncommittal Violet answer. “Hey, what’s her last name? Have you stalked her yet?”

“Noooo,” Zoe said. “That’ll make it worse. And I don’t actually know it.”

“It’s ok, I can find her. I think you told me enough.” Zoe knew that Violet was friends with some kind of detective person, but she tried not to ask too many questions. With Violet, it was usually easier not knowing.

“Don’t tell me whatever you find out,” Zoe said. “I don’t want to know if she, I don’t know, starred in some community theatre musical or something. That’ll just make me like her more.”

“What if it’s bad? Would you want to know if she was a serial killer or something?”

“She’s definitely not a serial killer.”

“You never know,” Violet said seriously.

Zoe laughed. This coming from the girl who still swore that Blair and Alex were aliens, and who once asked Zoe if she had a secret crime lord twin sister.

Violet shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“I just wish she lived here,” Zoe said. “Then I could just find out that stuff about her myself, and it wouldn’t matter if it made me like her more, because I could date her.” She sighed, taking a bite of her sandwich. “Distance is the worst.”

------

“Distance is the worst,” Aaron whined, flopping his arms and head down on the table. Rachel stifled a laugh. He was so dramatic. “It’s bad enough that my best friend is in San Francisco and I never get to see her. I finally get the perfect boyfriend and he’s long distance too. How is it possible for me to miss him this much? It’s barely been a week!”

Rachel waited until she was turned away from Aaron to roll her eyes. He had showed up at the froyo store, insisting that they hang out. But since she was working, he just camped out until they closed and hung out while Rachel cleaned up. He had offered to help, but she didn’t really have anything for him to do, so he sat at a table lamenting while she wiped the counters.

Dramatic as he was, she had been incredibly grateful to see him when he walked in. She hadn’t been entirely convinced that the previous week wasn’t all just an elaborate dream, so seeing living proof walk in the door and greet her enthusiastically was a welcome relief.

“I know, I know,” she said, trying to sound sympathetic. She wasn’t entirely callous to his plight-- it did suck that Aaron and Chad had gone through all that to be together, only to be ripped apart again less than a day later. “His family is loaded though, right? I’m sure he’ll be back to visit soon.”

“Yeah,” said Aaron. “But I miss him now.”

“I know,” Rachel said again. “And you’re right. Distance is the worst.”

She couldn’t help thinking of Zoe. (She hadn’t stopped thinking of Zoe.) It was strange, but she couldn’t help but be a little bit grateful for the separation. As much as she liked Zoe, she really didn’t feel like she should jump into a relationship. She suspected that’s what Zoe would’ve wanted if she’d been local,and Rachel just wasn’t prepared for that. She was making a lot of progress re: dead friends, dead/murderous unrequited love, but not so much that she was ready to be that vulnerable with another person. And there was something else tugging at the back of her mind too, something that had bothered her ever since Zoe had told her about her history with Blair.

So she hadn’t texted Zoe since coming home, even though she’d wanted to. It felt too cruel, leading Zoe on when she knew it just wasn’t the right time. Everything was so complicated-- she missed Zoe, but was grateful she was gone. She wanted to talk to her, but couldn’t. She wished they could see each other again, but wasn’t sure she could handle it. She looked back at Aaron, still moping at his table, and almost wished for the simplicity of his heartache. At least he and Chad were on the same page.

“Hey, so I’m almost finished here, do you want to hang out? We could get dinner or something,” Rachel said. She may not be able to fix either of their issues in the romantic department, but at least they could be on each other’s team. “I think we could both use a local friend, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Aaron said, sitting up. “I would love that.”

------

During dinner, she got a text from Zoe.

Hey, just thinking about you. Hope being back at work isn’t too boring!

“Ughhh,” Rachel said, interrupting a story Aaron was telling about some of his old SACU B4B friends. He stopped talking and looked at her expectantly. “Sorry, I’m sorry, go on. I just got a text that I don’t want to deal with. What were you saying?”

“What text? Do you want to talk about it?”

Did she want to talk about it with him? She definitely wanted to talk about it with someone, and beyond her therapist, she didn’t have many options. And Aaron was one of the first people she felt comfortable talking to since The Shit Show of 2017.

“It’s kind of complicated,” she said.

“I can handle complicated,” he said, picking up a french fry. “Hit me with it.”

“Okay, so, this past weekend after our road trip, I kind of… went on a date with Zoe.”

“What? Congratulations, that’s awesome dude!” Aaron said. “You guys would be really cute together.” We would, thought Rachel, in a world where anything made sense.

“Well, she lives in DC though. And I just… came out of a bad situation, and I’m not sure if I’m ready for something new.” That seemed like the best phrasing. It wasn’t technically a lie.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “It took me a while to recover from my ex-girlfriend.”

“The detective girl, right?” She vaguely remembered Aaron telling her about it in the back of Zoe’s car.

“Yeah, that’s her,” Aaron said. “Sherlock.” He took a sip of water.

“Her name is Sherlock?”

“I know.”

“I don’t even have an ex-girlfriend to blame,” Rachel said. “An ex best friend who I was in love with, mostly.”

“That’s the worst.” Easy for you to say, Rachel thought. It worked out for you. But then she remembered Aaron wondering if Chad would even like him back. Just because it had gone well in the end didn’t mean he didn’t understand her feelings. (She was fairly certain he wouldn’t understand her whole situation-- although, he did say he thought his ex had something to do with his cousin’s murder. So maybe he would.)

“Yeah, it was pretty bad,” she said.

“So what happened?”

“Um, she died.” She looked down at her food, pushing it around with her fork.

“Dude, that’s awful, I’m sorry.”

“Turns out she wasn’t a great person,” she amended, as if that made it better. “Or at least, she did some things that weren’t great. But I still loved her. Does that make me a bad person too?”

“I don’t think so,” Aaron said. “I don’t think it’s bad to want to look past someone’s flaws.”

“Look past them or ignore them? Sometimes I wonder which I’m doing.”

“Well like, take my ex,” Aaron said. “She did a bad thing to me and it messed me up but I don’t necessarily think she’s a bad person. I just don’t want to see her anymore.”

“I want to believe the best in people,” said Rachel. “Even now, I can’t really hate her. It would be so much easier if I could just hate her.” She sighed. “A lot of other people hated her.”

Aaron shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing the best in people. I’m the same way. And like, not to get religious on you, but it’s what Blair would want us to do.”

Rachel had just taken a sip of her drink, which was a mistake, because it took all her restraint not to snort it out. Based on what Zoe had told her, Blair didn’t give an ounce of a crap what the B4B followers were doing with their time. But she didn’t want to ruin something that made Aaron happy, so she managed to turn her laugh into a small smile and a nod.

“Do you think you’d want to date Zoe if you hadn’t just gone through that?” Aaron asked after a minute. Damn, she was hoping he would change the subject.

“Does it matter?” she asked. “I did go through it.”

“Well yeah,” he said, “but if you think you’d want to be with her under different circumstances, maybe you should give it a shot. Maybe it’ll be the thing to help you move on. I wasn’t thrilled about joining B4B, but I did it, and look how that worked out for me.”

“I mean, I don’t know, I barely know her. And the distance thing.”

“I got to know Chad through email,” he said. “And even though we’re long distance, I’d rather be with him than not, you know? I’m just saying, maybe don’t sabotage yourself. It might not go anywhere, but it wouldn’t hurt to respond to the text.”

“Very wise,” she joked.

“Eh, I learned everything from my friend Kate. She was always saying stuff like that about Chad, and she ended up being right. I say you should go for it.”

Rachel didn’t say anything. There was something else bothering her, but she didn’t know how to explain it to Aaron.

“But if you want to be friends without the romance, I think you need to tell her that,” Aaron went on. “It’s totally fine, and I bet she’ll still want to be your friend, but I think she deserves to know. I know what it’s like to agonize over whether someone likes you, and it sucks.”

“Oh, believe me, me too,” Rachel said. He was right. She owed it to Zoe not to lead her on-- but she couldn’t make up her own mind about whether she was interested in something different than friendship. “I just don’t know… even if I did want to be with her… I don’t know if I deserve her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” And there it was again, the thing that had been bothering her since the night on the beach. “I don’t think she’s the kind of person who ‘looks past it’ when people do bad things. I think she’s the kind of person who demands that they do better. She actually helps people, I just… I don’t know. I make everything worse.”

“You do not make everything worse!” Aaron said.

“I’m not so sure.” Zoe had stood up to Blair, a powerful goddess who could’ve killed her, and probably saved countless lives. Rachel hadn’t even been able to stand up to her best friend, and people died because of it. Would she have been able to save any of them, if she had confronted Hamlet instead of enabling her and making excuses?

“I don’t know if I’m the one to ask about being too forgiving,” Aaron said. “I think I’m more like you there. But I definitely don’t think it’s a question of deserving her. She obviously thinks you’re worth talking to or she wouldn’t be trying to stay in contact.”

“Yeah, but what happens when she learns more about me and realizes I’m not what she thinks I am?”

“You make it sound like you’ve been lying to her.”

Rachel thought about how she almost told Zoe about her past and couldn’t do it. “Maybe by omission?”

“I think there’s only one way to find out if things are going to work out, and that’s to talk to her,” Aaron said.

“Yeah, maybe I will later,” she said, ready to drop it. She paused to take a bite of her now-getting-cold food. “But hey, finish that story, I want to know what happened with the SACU food drive.”

He looked at her like he knew exactly what she was doing, but thankfully, he didn’t push it. He launched back into his B4B story, not bringing Zoe up again for the rest of dinner.

------

That night when she got home, she spent several minutes staring at Zoe’s text. Then, before she could chicken out, she wrote, Work is ok. I hung out with Aaron today, that was fun.

Oh yeah? How is he?

The response came almost immediately. She felt guilty knowing Zoe had probably been waiting all evening for her to reply.

DYING without chad, lol

Aw poor guy

Rachel didn’t know what else to say, so she didn’t respond. Maybe she could just leave it there. You’re too good for me, she thought. You don’t want to get involved with my mess. But Aaron’s words came into her head: “There’s only one way to find out if things are going to work out.”

She picked her phone back up and started typing a response.

[celestialallstars]

Episode #2: “also I’m lying about being vegan” - Bryce

So the vote off was okay. I was slightly worried it was going to be Alyssa.

For the challenge I sat out. I hate sitting out. It makes me feel nervous because I can know if they are trying their hardest or not. I hope we can win because i dont want to go to tribal. The good thing is that I think I may be social good in my tribe.

I've done more reflecting and like I think I need to just count on a good swap. While I do enjoy this tribe I have to be prepared for worst case scenario. I do think perhap I jumped the gun a little with the alliance stuff on my tribe though I at least trust a few people around here. Kori and Bryce are cool yet it is interesting seeing perspectives from Stephen and Jared, the latter of which has admitted to feeling weary about the other. Still I find that Cyrena is my blindspot. I talk to Rhys, Alyssa, Mo, and Jack here and there but I am thinking about trying to get deeper connections. Hmm we will see!!

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

I'm just running Loris' chance of finding an idol lol so far despite talking up a storm we have succeeded in having the same idol hunts lol communication is our strong suit.

I really hope we win, if we lose and I did the worst... I’m gonna be devastated... I’m hopeful we can pull through. Also real quick my dumbass took the time to write chrysanthemum for a flower category.

KARTHIK GOT BOOTED I REPEAT KOMNATA TOOK A HIT AND HE DRAGGED ANNA!! SHES A KRADHAKA!! (if thats a slur im so sorry i do not know NNNN). anyway. category is IS my comp but I SURELY FLOPPED!! BYEE!! i got 58 last season i got 99 like bokay lol

anyway this isnt my actual confession for the round but WHEN ALYSSA CALLED ME AND TOLD ME TO NOT TRYHARD COMPS IT REALLY HIT DIFFERENTLY HUH!! IVE BEEN FLOPPING

also i feel like my tribe hates me oh well they can eat my pussy n call me the winner :p

Im so nervous. I dont want to go to tribal. Im really scared. Kinda.

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

This really sucks. Dont think i would have helped. It just sucks we have to vote someone off now. Im kinda nervous.

SO! My alliance searching has gotten off to a very strange start. I started by approaching Jared, someone who I've spent a lot of time talking to and seems like he'd be very useful to my game in the long run. I wanted to make a 4-person alliance with him, Mitch, and Kori. He didn't want to pull Kori in though, because he's apparently close with Bryce. So, whatever, I'm not gonna complain, three person alliance is still decent.

Almost immediately after I finish settling that deal, KORI comes to me saying he'd like to make an alliance. The initial idea he proposes is with Me/Him/Bryce/Rhys/Mitch. This is fine too! Being a part of more than 1 alliance sounds like it could be a good time assuming we don't go to too many tribal councils. SO I said yes.

Of course, I wanted to avoid this whole situation blowing up, so I go to talk to Mitch about it so he knows what's up and hopefully keep him from thinking I'm a two-timing mfer. He's okay with the idea but wants to stay loyal to our alliance with Jared. Fine. Totally fine. A little dicey if we have to vote more than 1 person out, but it should keep people from talking about getting rid of me for the time being.

This is where shit gets BAD.

Kori talks to Rhys and Bryce about this group, and apparently RHYS told him he'd prefer to have Jared instead of Mitch. What the FUCK RHYS? I ALREADY TOLD MITCH! LMFAO

Jared wants to tell Mitch about it, which is uh... fine. BECAUSE HE ALREADY KNOWS BECAUSE OF ME AHHHHHHHHHHH!

If Maynor is voted out everyone on the tribe is gonna know about this alliance I'm shook. I wanna get Rhys out a little bit now. He has enough sway over Kori to get him to change his mind on this hours later. But how the FUCK am I gonna pull that off if there's only 6 of us? Whatever, that's down the road. Hopefully we'll win the immunity challenge and not have to worry about this.

SO I’m really freaking out about how bad I did on the tribal what the fuck! But whatever I can work my way out of this, I think I’ve connected well socially to the other tribe members and they’ve all done so well maybe I’ll be carried thorough but I’m incredibly worried GAH

So I've got my alliance of 5 together, and timing could not have been better because we unfortunately lost the challenge... which sucks this'll be my first premerge tribal in Celestial history.

I'm praying that I've got the baseline connections that I needed to get a Maynor Boot out of this tribal since the idea of a winnergeddon is pretty depressing.

I've got the vote reveal that I found too which is pretty cool but also fundamentally not something I know how to use in any productive manner to help my game. Just a fun thing I can do during the season provided I make it to merge to make it do the most it can.

I'm honestly pretty nervous, I've been trying to be lowerkey in the way things have gone down. I'm hoping that I've at least made the social connections and contributed enough to the tribe that they want to keep me, and nothing meta like Kori's a winner is gonna kill me immediately.

IM SO SAD UGHHh like not to be ott but i hate my tribe so much KJHFASDKJFHA  like how come they cant do good at any challenge its literally just naming some categories u could use google how do u not do much just GOOGLE KJAFHSDJ like AND ITS SO ANNOYING i dont wanna be 2nd boot thats so ugly and its like ppl dont give me a chance. mitch literally just doesnt respond to me like how do i play around that and yet he cant even go this round bc stephen loves him and so does jared like idk how hes just so frustrating i want him OUT. and ppl thrown out maynors name and yaa hes inactive and doesnt talk to me but still i know he doesnt hate me like mitch does and will actually reply to me when i msg him. jared my king but he FLOPPED THIS CHALLENGE JKASDFHKASHDFKJ but i forgive we all have bad days. also im lying about being vegan yaa

Phew! I was far too nervous for this challenge. I was feeling sick and all and had lost all hope but to see we kept immunity by a few points makes me feel good about our chances! Hoping none of the people I talk to on Tuatha go but I have to prepare for one of them to go sadly.

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

Honestly I kinda hope it is Maynor who goes only because I talk to him the least. It sucks but I have to try and keep as connected as possible. Kori and Bryce are givens but Steph and Jared are like priority! Rhys and Mitch I am gucci with a little bit so it leaves Maynor...we'll see though!

WE’RE SAFE BEEEEEEEEECH IM SO HAPPY.

I would of been fine with coming in second but when I saw we came in first I got so excited. We were rewarded with a bunch of animals and I picked the alpacas in which I got nothing, but oh well. I hope I can manage to stay safe from now on.

Okay, day 6. Not sure what I said in my last confessional. So sorry for repeats?

So, me and Bryce are potatoes and love each other and cemented the Supddies duo. So right now he is my closest ally. Since this challenge started I've been worried about loosing, so I've been trying to a grasp on this tribe. So far, it *seems* everyone is good with me. However would they tell me otherwise, probably not.

So I want to push an alliance to keep me and Bryce safe. So I approach Jared and say we should make one and he agreed , but we didn't quite make one. Anyway fast forward like 2 hours, Kori approaches me saying he wants an alliance between Bryce, Mitch, Stephen, Himself and myself. I say sure whatever, cause this is survivors and I'm not turning nothing down. I express concern for Mitch though as he leaves both me & Bryce on read alot?! So he changes him out with Jarred. Which is awesome.

So currently, we are going to tribal. I'm in an alliance of 5, and within that 5 I feel like I'm in a unofficial 3 of me Bryce and Jarred. So that leaves Maynor and Mitch up for tribal. Some reason people like Mitch? guess hes not leaving them on read huh. So people want Maynor out. I'd prefer Mitch, but there isn't any point in pushing a vote this round as Im still in a strong place.

so here is my customary "must have a conf in before the round is over" conf. idk not a lot has seemed to have happened since my last one. Karthik left which was obvious and then it made sense why bodhi was being shady cause he couldn't fucking vote LOL. ugh the memories <3. and it wasn't even MY vote from marmoreal it was justin's from wakea LOL.

jack, alyssa and i are a tight 3 it seems like. we are sharing idol clues and just generally having a merry old time. Mo and I are also getting along really well, we are definitely vibing and i don't want him to go any time soon. Tobi i already new previously so there is a relationship there already, but i'm trying to overcome that and i want to start talking game with him soon. Bodhi, to me, is still a bit of an enigma. I still don't really know him that well, which is weird cause we've talked a bit. idk, when he do speak there isn't a lot of substance and its just slightly off putting. i also know him and alyssa have spoken a bit cause he told her about the doors on the middle branch so im watching on that.

the rest of the cast i seem to be getting along well with. I'm definitely putting less time into talking to them because previous org experiences tell me that tribe first, then OW. Rhys, Chloe and Michael i all love. Zach and bryce too, but i know there is a friend group in them and tobi so i would like one of them gone before a merge situation for sure. I find kori kinda annoying, you can definitely tell he's doing the rounds talking to everyone. Chris and Mitch i still don't really know either.

Idk maybe i'm not taking this as seriously as i should but like as i said coming into this, i've already proved myself in S4, so i don't need to go mad this game trying to prove myself. i'm taking a more laid back approach, which might come to bite me in the ass so who knows what it will do to me looking ahead.

So I have a plan to possibly use Chloe's not wanting an alliance to my advantage should we swap with majority...essentially I sell to people how I wanted to work with other people and start an alliance with, say, Zach and Loris. Though when Chloe was asked, she rejected it. As a result, this cause a rift to form in that it left mistrusts and sides to form and then Wallace, no united tribe! Only downside is this being one world so somebody can go to Chloe and tell her this....what to do what to do

IM SO AHHHH WOOH JARED FINDING IDOL SO HAPPY im so sad tho bc like he wont votemitch so maynors going i just know this is a bad idea but w/e at least having jared have the idol gives me a little more confidence

So in regards to this idol messiness, I've talked with Stephen, Kori, Jared Zach, Loris, and all. While some did make it weird, the last two I've been talking the most as far as info and it has been rad because we talk about things that others tell us. But last night Loris and I told each other where we can go before to avoid us going to the same places again. WELL this morning I told him where I went and found nothing. He told me that he'd go to mid branch and do Mitch because he never played his idol and I'm like ok makes sense. Now he avoided the question when I asked if he had anything but was talking just fine before it so now I'm like oh okay...is this an idol finder? I guess I'll see but if it is then good for him I guess LOL still I have a suspicion but maybe I am overreaching

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I just realized Loris in fact did send a message about his response to the idol so I guess I'm a fool...but it was still missing exactly where he went so I wont let him off that easy!

lol nvm! Chloe said it was too early for an alliance so that flopped. so that scares me bc I feel like chloe has the power to be close with everyone to the point where even if anyone tried to get her out people wouldn’t want to do it... yikes.... I’m slightly excited for a swap? I’ve barely spoken to jack kori and alyssa and me and maynor haven’t messaged each other once NSMDMDMFMFFMFM... but on the other hand I’m close with bodhi , Jared, Bryce and probably other ppl I’m forgetting so I mean the chances of me being utterly fucked aren’t that high...

I dont know if im paranoid or what. But im having a bad feeling. I feel like I may be a target but if people are saying voting for someone who is ‘inactive’. If thats the reason i may be target then its a lie cuz ive been talking to my whole tribe. Im really nervous mostly because dont wanna let the hosts down for picking me to come back.

My sheer power won us immunity and I will not accept any other description. 86 fucking points yall i was NOT going back to tribal again. Alyssa Matt and I are collabbing on an idol search for the bridge but someone is apparently beating us to it? I'm kinda confused but also don't try to worry about idols that much. I feel like I'm in a good spot in this tribe between my trio and Bodhi, but he is admittedly hard to read lately. Mo is very sweet I'd love for him to stick around and Tobi has kinda dipped a little bit. All in all glad i'm immune for once, final 19 baby!!

Rhys has told me that the target is Mitch tonight. Im still kinda scared that itll be me but Jared also confirmed the Mitch vote. Unless they are both playing me hard (i hope not) then Mitch is suppose to be leaving. Going to try and talk to Bryce, Stephen, and Kori and hopefully its true. Dont want to leave this early.

So me and Jared chatted and thought hey let's make a chat for friends and just use it as such! I honestly would love it but also it's like beneficial for me if it can be an alliance. Three Kings is already nice but we needs some protection and even if it's just Loris and Jared, something is better than nothing!

SOOOO we are going to tribal! Before i get started on that, I want to talk about my relationships. I really like Jared and I tell him pretty much everything. He is my number 1 as of now. Stephen is my number 2, but he also tells me everything. Stephen decides to form an alliance between us 3, not knowing that Jared and I are closer than he is to either one of us. Jared and I made it to the end of the bridge only for someone else to beat us to it. How AGITATING. Me, being the social god that I am, got crucial information from Stephen that Kori wanted to create an alliance with me bryce himself and stephen so I should watch my DMS. Funny thing is, Kori never contacted me ONCE about an alliance; even when I saw him online throughout the day. Turns out, Jared REPLACED me in the alliance and now its a 5 person alliance with everyone except me n maynor (love that for us!!!). This got me thinking, RN maynor is the easy boot because of his activity, but what if we blindside the Kori/Bryce duo. Then I realized I don't have time today to cause chaos in the vote, so I'm gonna just let Maynor bite the bullet and hope we never return to tribal council. If we do, the vote will likely tie 3-3 the first go around and then maybe rocks? It'll be interesting for sure. Stephen and Jared both have been telling me everything in this alliance Kori created, so I am pretty sure they are both more loyal to the alliance with me. I'm kind of hoping we swap soon? I've been building solid relationships with Drew, Michael, Bodhi, Tobi, Mo, and others.

In a miraculous turn of events, I sat out of the challenge and my tribe is still immune! They tried hard to lose though.

Maynor is probably leaving, I'm sad but I haven't told him. If he hasn't been putting in the effort to connect with his tribe enough and they're calling him inactive, I'm not gonna be able to fix that in two hours, and if it gets out that I told him, it's only gonna fuck me up down the road. We're hosting a season really soon anyway that probably would have started casting while this season is going. I'll take a little distance from that to find my footing here.

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https://www.npr.org/2019/09/11/758080813/come-from-away-tiny-desk-concert

Also watch this. Hosts now, everyone else when confs come out

Ok karthik went. This is boring. Hope Kori and Jared are safe. Crazy stuff is probably happening this round but do I care? Maybe. I haven’t decided. As long as I’m safe I’m just here for the social game until merge.

Then it’ll be Big Move Bodhi >:).

I’m immune again tonight yeeehaw. I fully thought I’d fucked it and I got the lowest score on the challenge but also I was sick so I’m gonna blame it on that. This new feeling of being immune in celestial is kinda the best feeling so I’m a happy chloe rn and I love my tribe and I love this cast and I love one world and everything is good and nice

So i'm just. so. relieved. that we didnt have to go to tribal after last one... i think that vote has been the earliest vote i've ever received in an org... all bc of his nasty annoying bitter ass... not over previous beef which is super minor and I SHOULD BE THE ONE WHO'S BITTER OVER IT... but i wasn't and he was and he went from a winner to first boot so he can suck it. i just realized i haven't guessed for idols for the last 3 openings... love being in pst where i'm confused all the time... but anyway i heard from jared that maynor is leaving and he's one of the few people in the cast of whom i have zero connections with so i'm not too pressed about it tbh... even though i've heard he's super sweet but we haven't talked yet... i think... i'm honestly like a little terrified if we go to tribal again because i really don't feel like i have much pull in my tribe even though i've been trying hard socially its just been so flat... idek what more to do bc i already got a vote last tribal and if we go again i have no idea what's gonna happen UGH I HATE THIS!!! im so nervous all the time and i feel like im on the outs so i hope i can survive till swap so i can get something solid going on... this tribe is too straight for me

One hr left and still so nervous. People stopped talking a while ago. Im hoping it stays on Mitch. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. why I’m PAN-icking. Just need to trust the bonds i made with my tribe.

Okay I really think I'm making a comeback! I've kicked my socializing into another level after being so MIA. So far I've done well in the challenges which makes me an asset to the tribe. And I've been trying to talk with EVERYONE. I get a long really well with Zach, Michael, and Chloe on my tribe. And I love Drew but I know he always tries to make a 4 man alliance and he hasn't mentioned one to me so I think I may not be part of his plans, we'll see. On the other tribes I get on well with Matt and Jack and Tobi, I love those boys. I'm hoping to maybe make an alliance with everyone I mentioned, but I have to play it safe for now. Can't come in too hot.

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Maynor is voted out 6-1.