#which is very vague of me to say <3 and i don't intend to say this as a negative thing more a haha

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for "using" a cucumber and putting it back in the fridge?

(🥒👌 to find later)

Please, I know it sounds nuts but hear me out. I feel awful and I need to know just how bad this is. Also, I intentionally left as much as possible vague as I am a minor and I do not want this to get removed for being too explicit. But the story will not make sense if I don't include certain things, please understand.

So I (16M) grew up in and currently still live in the bible belt, with extremely conservative evangelical parents. As a taste of what it's like, we have church 3 times a week, and church camp every summer. We are only allowed to access Netflix through a stupid content filter app and we can only use a restricted smart phone that is regularly checked at random by our parents. We get an hour and a half of computer usage every other day, and the internet on the computer is heavily filtered also. The only reason I have access to Tumblr and am able to post this now is because my best friend's older brother gave me his old android for my birthday a few years ago. His family is much more open minded, and I'm very close with them. I also think they have always felt a little bad for me with my family being the way they are.

I'm also gay. Obviously, my family does not know, and I intend to keep it that way. I won't go too deep into it, but it will suffice to say I struggled a lot when I was younger over this. The good thing is that in the last few years, I've been able to accept myself more and come to terms with what my own feelings about religion and faith really are. I came out to my best friend and his brother a little over a year ago, and they've been very supportive. I have yet to tell any of my other friends.

Recently, I've been trying out alcohol since my friends found a hookup. Something I have discovered is that I tend to get lewd feelings when I drink, which has nearly caused a few embarrassing moments around friends. Coincidentally, I have also been experimenting with... certain things. Being a minor, I obviously can't enter any of the adult stores around me, nor would I feel comfortable asking any of my friends to drive me there if I could. I also can't order anything online because my bank account is connected to my parents, and I don't have a shipping address I'm comfortable using for those items either. So instead, I use household objects that belong to me and can be sanitized easily. You might see where this is going.

Yesterday evening, I came home from best friend's house with a full bottle of wine in my backpack. We and a few other friends had already been sipping on a few beers that afternoon, and I still felt a little buzzed. After my family went to sleep, despite already having a little alcohol in my system, I proceeded to get wasted on this bottle of wine in my room. I don't have the clearest memory of all of this, but at some point, I got hungry and lewd-feeling. Went into the kitchen and, through some kind of thought process I can only imagine now, came back into my room with a cucumber. From the title of the post, you can hazard a guess as to what happened to this cucumber. Once I was done, I drukedly and quickly washed it in the bathroom sink and threw it back into the fridge. I went to sleep.

I started freaking out as soon as I woke up this morning. There were four cucumbers in the fridge, I was pretty positive at least two were going to be used for dinner tonight, and I had no idea which cucumber I did the deed with. To make matters worse, my mom was inviting the pastor of our church and his family over for dinner. I have practically no money currently, no license or vehicle, and no friends with vehicles free to pick up new cucumbers for me (and no reasonable explanation as to why I needed them to spot me for four cucumbers specifically). I also have no believable reason to give for why we shouldn't have cucumbers added in the salad mix. My mom knows I love them, and they haven't gone bad. Can't say I ate them because who the hell eats four raw cucumbers? And she'll interrogate both my brother and I until she gets a satisfying answer if I just throw them out. I didn't know what the hell to do about this and I was close to having a panic attack, so... I took a nap.

Evening came. Guests came over, dinner happened. We had porkchops with macaroni and side salads. Cucumbers were in the salad, and I along with pastor's family and my own, ate it like nothing was wrong. My parents, the pastor and his wife had an engaging conversation about politics, religion, and some mild church gossip after dinner. My little brother continued to read his book, and I had a very awkward and one-sided conversation about Young Sheldon with the pastor's daughter. Then they left. And I went to my room to mentally implode.

To say I'm horrified is a major understatement. I don't think anyone is going to get sick because I scrubbed all of the cucumbers with soap multiple times and cleaned the vegetable drawer with bleach when I woke up this morning. I guess I also don't know that the violated cucumber was one of the ones that was used for dinner tonight, but then it's only a matter of days until we have salad again, or if mom cuts one up for water. I've rattled my brain for any way I could get some new cucumbers without telling anyone the details of the event, but I have nothing. Don't even have the money, anyway. Gave up the last bit of cash I had for the damn wine yesterday, and I have $0.43 in total on my debit card.

Admittedly, there is a very small part of me that doesn't even really care if they have eaten or end up eating the damn thing. I can't stand my family. My parents are invasive, controlling and neurotic, and don't give a shit about how I'm doing in so far as it pertains to god and the church. I'm a little more sympathetic to my brother as he's been stuck in this hell with me, but at 13 he's already begun to regurgitate way more religious dogma than I ever did at his age. And I know for a fact that they would want nothing to do with me if they found out I was gay. They'd probably kick me out on the street and spit on me if I had to guess. But even still, this is only a small part of how I feel. What I did was still so gross, and no amount of animosity I have for them can change how mortifed I am. I do have at least a semblance of a conscience.

So...AITA for all of this? WIBTA if I did nothing about the other two cucumbers? Please help.

[eyrieofsynapses]

why Aurora's art is genius

It's break for me, and I've been meaning to sit down and read the Aurora webcomic (https://comicaurora.com/, @comicaurora on Tumblr) for quite a bit. So I did that over the last few days.

And… y'know. I can't actually say "I should've read this earlier," because otherwise I would've been up at 2:30-3am when I had responsibilities in the morning and I couldn't have properly enjoyed it, but. Holy shit guys THIS COMIC.

I intended to just do a generalized "hello this is all the things I love about this story," and I wrote a paragraph or two about art style. …and then another. And another. And I realized I needed to actually reference things so I would stop being too vague. I was reading the comic on my tablet or phone, because I wanted to stay curled up in my chair, but I type at a big monitor and so I saw more details… aaaaaand it turned into its own giant-ass post.

SO. Enjoy a few thousand words of me nerding out about this insanely cool art style and how fucking gorgeous this comic is? (There are screenshots, I promise it isn't just a wall of text.) In my defense, I just spent two semesters in graphic design classes focusing on the Adobe Suite, so… I get to be a nerd about pretty things…???

All positive feedback btw! No downers here. <3

---

I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the beautiful, simple stylistic method of drawing characters and figures. It is absolutely stunning and effortless and utterly graceful—it is so hard to capture the sheer beauty and fluidity of the human form in such a fashion. Even a simple outline of a character feels dynamic! It's gorgeous!

Though I do have a love-hate relationship with this, because my artistic side looks at that lovely simplicity, goes "I CAN DO THAT!" and then I sit down and go to the paper and realize that no, in fact, I cannot do that yet, because that simplicity is born of a hell of a lot of practice and understanding of bodies and actually is really hard to do. It's a very developed style that only looks simple because the artist knows what they're doing. The human body is hard to pull off, and this comic does so beautifully and makes it look effortless.

Also: line weight line weight line weight. It's especially important in simplified shapes and figures like this, and hoo boy is it used excellently. It's especially apparent the newer the pages get—I love watching that improvement over time—but with simpler figures and lines, you get nice light lines to emphasize both smaller details, like in the draping of clothing and the curls of hair—which, hello, yes—and thicker lines to emphasize bigger and more important details and silhouettes. It's the sort of thing that's essential to most illustrations, but I wanted to make a note of it because it's so vital to this art style.

THE USE OF LAYER BLENDING MODES OH MY GODS. (...uhhh, apologies to the people who don't know what that means, it's a digital art program thing? This article explains it for beginners.)

Bear with me, I just finished my second Photoshop course, I spent months and months working on projects with this shit so I see the genius use of Screen and/or its siblings (of which there are many—if I say "Screen" here, assume I mean the entire umbrella of Screen blending modes and possibly Overlay) and go nuts, but seriously it's so clever and also fucking gorgeous:

Firstly: the use of screened-on sound effect words over an action? A "CRACK" written over a branch and then put on Screen in glowy green so that it's subtle enough that it doesn't disrupt the visual flow, but still sticks out enough to make itself heard? Little "scritches" that are transparent where they're laid on without outlines to emphasize the sound without disrupting the underlying image? FUCK YES. I haven't seen this done literally anywhere else—granted, I haven't read a massive amount of comics, but I've read enough—and it is so clever and I adore it. Examples:

Secondly: The beautiful lighting effects. The curling leaves, all the magic, the various glowing eyes, the fog, the way it's all so vividly colored but doesn't burn your eyeballs out—a balance that's way harder to achieve than you'd think—and the soft glows around them, eeeee it's so pretty so pretty SO PRETTY. Not sure if some of these are Outer/Inner Glow/Shadow layer effects or if it's entirely hand-drawn, but major kudos either way; I can see the beautiful use of blending modes and I SALUTE YOUR GENIUS.

I keep looking at some of this stuff and go "is that a layer effect or is it done by hand?" Because you can make some similar things with the Satin layer effect in Photoshop (I don't know if other programs have this? I'm gonna have to find out since I won't have access to PS for much longer ;-;) that resembles some of the swirly inner bits on some of the lit effects, but I'm not sure if it is that or not. Or you could mask over textures? There's... many ways to do it.

If done by hand: oh my gods the patience, how. If done with layer effects: really clever work that knows how to stop said effects from looking wonky, because ugh those things get temperamental. If done with a layer of texture that's been masked over: very, very good masking work. No matter the method, pretty shimmers and swirly bits inside the bigger pretty swirls!

Next: The way color contrast is used! I will never be over the glowy green-on-black Primordial Life vibes when Alinua gets dropped into that… unconscious space?? with Life, for example, and the sharp contrast of vines and crack and branches and leaves against pitch black is just visually stunning. The way the roots sink into the ground and the three-dimensional sensation of it is particularly badass here:

Friggin. How does this imply depth like that. HOW. IT'S SO FREAKING COOL.

A huge point here is also color language and use! Everybody has their own particular shade, generally matching their eyes, magic, and personality, and I adore how this is used to make it clear who's talking or who's doing an action. That was especially apparent to me with Dainix and Falst in the caves—their colors are both fairly warm, but quite distinct, and I love how this clarifies who's doing what in panels with a lot of action from both of them. There is a particular bit that stuck out to me, so I dug up the panels (see this page and the following one https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-30/):

(Gods it looks even prettier now that I put it against a plain background. Also, appreciation to Falst for managing a bridal-carry midair, damn.)

The way that their colors MERGE here! And the immense attention to detail in doing so—Dainix is higher up than Falst is in the first panel, so Dainix's orange fades into Falst's orange at the base. The next panel has gold up top and orange on bottom; we can't really tell in that panel where each of them are, but that's carried over to the next panel—

—where we now see that Falst's position is raised above Dainix's due to the way he's carrying him. (Points for continuity!) And, of course, we see the little "huffs" flowing from orange to yellow over their heads (where Dainix's head is higher than Falst's) to merge the sound of their breathing, which is absurdly clever because it emphasizes to the viewer how we hear two sets of huffing overlaying each other, not one. Absolutely brilliant.

(A few other notes of appreciation to that panel: beautiful glows around them, the sparks, the jagged silhouette of the spider legs, the lovely colors that have no right to make the area around a spider corpse that pretty, the excellent texturing on the cave walls plus perspective, the way Falst's movements imply Dainix's hefty weight, the natural posing of the characters, their on-point expressions that convey exactly how fuckin terrifying everything is right now, the slight glows to their eyes, and also they're just handsome boys <3)

Next up: Rain!!!! So well done! It's subtle enough that it never ever disrupts the impact of the focal point, but evident enough you can tell! And more importantly: THE MIST OFF THE CHARACTERS. Rain does this irl, it has that little vapor that comes off you and makes that little misty effect that plays with lighting, it's so cool-looking and here it's used to such pretty effect!

One of the panel captions says something about it blurring out all the injuries on the characters but like THAT AIN'T TOO BIG OF A PROBLEM when it gets across the environmental vibes, and also that'd be how it would look in real life too so like… outside viewer's angle is the same as the characters', mostly? my point is: that's the environment!!! that's the vibes, that's the feel! It gets it across and it does so in the most pretty way possible!

And another thing re: rain, the use of it to establish perspective, particularly in panels like this—

—where we can tell we're looking down at Tynan due to the perspective on the rain and where it's pointing. Excellent. (Also, kudos for looking down and emphasizing how Tynan's losing his advantage—lovely use of visual storytelling.)

Additionally, the misting here:

We see it most heavily in the leftmost panel, where it's quite foggy as you would expect in a rainstorm, especially in an environment with a lot of heat, but it's also lightly powdered on in the following two panels and tends to follow light sources, which makes complete sense given how light bounces off particles in the air.

A major point of strength in these too is a thorough understanding of lighting, like rim lighting, the various hues and shades, and an intricate understanding of how light bounces off surfaces even when they're in shadow (we'll see a faint glow in spots where characters are half in shadow, but that's how it would work in real life, because of how light bounces around).

Bringing some of these points together: the fluidity of the lines in magic, and the way simple glowing lines are used to emphasize motion and the magic itself, is deeply clever. I'm basically pulling at random from panels and there's definitely even better examples, but here's one (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-16-33/):

First panel, listed in numbers because these build on each other:

The tension of the lines in Tess's magic here. This works on a couple levels: first, the way she's holding her fists, as if she's pulling a rope taut.

The way there's one primary line, emphasizing the rope feeling, accompanied by smaller ones.

The additional lines starbursting around her hands, to indicate the energy crackling in her hands and how she's doing a good bit more than just holding it. (That combined with the fists suggests some tension to the magic, too.) Also the variations in brightness, a feature you'll find in actual lightning. :D Additional kudos for how the lightning sparks and breaks off the metal of the sword.

A handful of miscellaneous notes on the second panel:

The reflection of the flames in Erin's typically dark blue eyes (which bears a remarkable resemblance to Dainix, incidentally—almost a thematic sort of parallel given Erin's using the same magic Dainix specializes in?)

The flowing of fabric in the wind and associated variation in the lineart

The way Erin's tattoos interact with the fire he's pulling to his hand

The way the rain overlays some of the fainter areas of fire (attention! to! detail! hell yeah!)

I could go on. I won't because this is a lot of writing already.

Third panel gets paragraphs, not bullets:

Erin's giant-ass "FWOOM" of fire there, and the way the outline of the word is puffy-edged and gradated to feel almost three-dimensional, plus once again using Screen or a variation on it so that the stars show up in the background. All this against that stunning plume of fire, which ripples and sparks so gorgeously, and the ending "om" of the onomatopoeia is emphasized incredibly brightly against that, adding to the punch of it and making the plume feel even brighter.

Also, once again, rain helping establish perspective, especially in how it's very angular in the left side of the panel and then slowly becomes more like a point to the right to indicate it's falling directly down on the viewer. Add in the bright, beautiful glow effects, fainter but no less important black lines beneath them to emphasize the sky and smoke and the like, and the stunningly beautiful lighting and gradated glows surrounding Erin plus the lightning jagging up at him from below, and you get one hell of an impactful panel right there. (And there is definitely more in there I could break down, this is just a lot already.)

And in general: The colors in this? Incredible. The blues and purples and oranges and golds compliment so well, and it's all so rich.

Like, seriously, just throughout the whole comic, the use of gradients, blending modes, color balance and hues, all the things, all the things, it makes for the most beautiful effects and glows and such a rich environment. There's a very distinct style to this comic in its simplified backgrounds (which I recognize are done partly because it's way easier and also backgrounds are so time-consuming dear gods but lemme say this) and vivid, smoothly drawn characters; the simplicity lets them come to the front and gives room for those beautiful, richly saturated focal points, letting the stylized designs of the magic and characters shine. The use of distinct silhouettes is insanely good. Honestly, complex backgrounds might run the risk of making everything too visually busy in this case. It's just, augh, so GORGEOUS.

Another bit, take a look at this page (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-15-28/):

It's not quite as evident here as it is in the next page, but this one does some other fun things so I'm grabbing it. Points:

Once again, using different colors to represent different character actions. The "WHAM" of Kendal hitting the ground is caused by Dainix's force, so it's orange (and kudos for doubling the word over to add a shake effect). But we see blue layered underneath, which could be an environmental choice, but might also be because it's Kendal, whose color is blue.

And speaking off, take a look at the right-most panel on top, where Kendal grabs the spear: his motion is, again, illustrated in bright blue, versus the atmospheric screened-on orange lines that point toward him around the whole panel (I'm sure these have a name, I think they might be more of a manga thing though and the only experience I have in manga is reading a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist). Those lines emphasize the weight of the spear being shoved at him, and their color tells us Dainix is responsible for it.

One of my all-time favorite effects in this comic is the way cracks manifest across Dainix's body to represent when he starts to lose control; it is utterly gorgeous and wonderfully thematic. These are more evident in the page before and after this one, but you get a decent idea here. I love the way they glow softly, the way the fire juuuust flickers through at the start and then becomes more evident over time, and the cracks feel so realistic, like his skin is made of pottery. Additional points for how fire begins to creep into his hair.

A small detail that's generally consistent across the comic, but which I want to make note of here because you can see it pretty well: Kendal's eyes glow about the same as the jewel in his sword, mirroring his connection to said sword and calling back to how the jewel became Vash's eye temporarily and thus was once Kendal's eye. You can always see this connection (though there might be some spots where this also changes in a symbolic manner; I went through it quickly on the first time around, so I'll pay more attention when I inevitably reread this), where Kendal's always got that little shine of blue in his eyes the same as the jewel. It's a beautiful visual parallel that encourages the reader to subconsciously link them together, especially since the lines used to illustrate character movements typically mirror their eye color. It's an extension of Kendal.

Did I mention how ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL the colors in this are?

Also, the mythological/legend-type scenes are illustrated in familiar style often used for that type of story, a simple and heavily symbolic two-dimensional cave-painting-like look. They are absolutely beautiful on many levels, employing simple, lovely gradients, slightly rougher and thicker lineart that is nonetheless smoothly beautiful, and working with clear silhouettes (a major strength of this art style, but also a strength in the comic overall). But in particular, I wanted to call attention to a particular thing (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-12-4/):

The flowing symbolic lineart surrounding each character. This is actually quite consistent across characters—see also Life's typical lines and how they curl:

What's particularly interesting here is how these symbols are often similar, but not the same. Vash's lines are always smooth, clean curls, often playing off each other and echoing one another like ripples in a pond. You'd think they'd look too similar to Life's—but they don't. Life's curl like vines, and they remain connected; where one curve might echo another but exist entirely detached from each other in Vash's, Life's lines still remain wound together, because vines are continuous and don't float around. :P

Tahraim's are less continuous, often breaking up with significantly smaller bits and pieces floating around like—of course—sparks, and come to sharper points. These are also constants: we see the vines repeated over and over in Alinua's dreams of Life, and the echoing ripples of Vash are consistent wherever we encounter him. Kendal's dream of the ghost citizens of the city of Vash in the last few chapters is filled with these rippling, echoing patterns, to beautiful effect (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-14/):

They ripple and spiral, often in long, sinuous curves, with smooth elegance. It reminds me a great deal of images of space and sine waves and the like. This establishes a definite feel to these different characters and their magic. And the thing is, that's not something that had to be done—the colors are good at emphasizing who's who. But it was done, and it adds a whole other dimension to the story. Whenever you're in a deity's domain, you know whose it is no matter the color.

Regarding that shape language, I wanted to make another note, too—Vash is sometimes described as chaotic and doing what he likes, which is interesting to me, because smooth, elegant curves and the color blue aren't generally associated with chaos. So while Vash might behave like that on the surface, I'm guessing he's got a lot more going on underneath; he's probably much more intentional in his actions than you'd think at a glance, and he is certainly quite caring with his city. The other thing is that this suits Kendal perfectly. He's a paragon character; he is kind, virtuous, and self-sacrificing, and often we see him aiming to calm others and keep them safe. Blue is such a good color for him. There is… probably more to this, but I'm not deep enough in yet to say.

And here's the thing: I'm only scratching the surface. There is so much more here I'm not covering (color palettes! outfits! character design! environment! the deities! so much more!) and a lot more I can't cover, because I don't have the experience; this is me as a hobbyist artist who happened to take a couple design classes because I wanted to. The art style to this comic is so clever and creative and beautiful, though, I just had to go off about it. <3

...brownie points for getting all the way down here? Have a cookie.

[chaithetics]

Furtive Hands

Pairing: Stewy Hosseini x f (Roy) reader

Word count: 7.3K

Chapter/content warning: 18+ MINORS DNI, established/secret relationship, smut, fingering, P in V intercourse, some fluff, soft but also kind of dom-ish Stewy? Vague-ish mentions of canonical childhood abuse/trauma, and toxic family dynamics, Logan makes a cameo at the start (deserves its own warning), Logan's death and grief mentioned also Roman being a bit of a douche. I think that's it?

(Reader is technically a Roy because that's how the plot/idea worked but I avoided physical descriptions other than reader having AFAB physical characteristics. You're more than welcome to canon this reader as being adopted or half-siblings with the other Roys. I try to avoid giving physical characteristics and am tempted to continue to code all my readers as readers of colour out of spite due to the lack of intersectionality in fics. My reader in A Cinematic Lover has no physical characteristics other than being chronically ill but is Desi coded.)

Author's Note: I didn't proofread all of it, whoops. This is also my first time writing Stewy and I'm not too sure how I feel about this fic. I don't feel super confident in saying that "I captured his voice" etc. But I adore Stewy Hosseini and Arian Moayed and we need more Stewy fics. Please let me know your thoughts! I'd really appreciate the feedback :)

Like being in the Roy family, being the youngest in the clan had its perks and downfalls. You’d been able to get away most of your life with your father’s wrath directed towards your older siblings but at a certain point when they’d reached adulthood before you and it was quickly redirected towards you. You and your older brother Connor were the only ones to stay out of the family business, Connor was technically more involved than you which said a lot to anyone familiar with the family’s affairs. 

Despite being the youngest it would be fair to say you were the most emotionally mature of your siblings (although you could easily admit that’s a very low bar) and the most well-adjusted (again, another relatively low bar). You were a practising clinical psychologist who had of course undergone a bunch of therapy yourself for your childhood trauma. You’d wrapped up a session and were walking a patient out before heading back into your office for your office lunch date when you were interrupted by a booming presence. 

“Dad?” You immediately questioned. “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be here-” 

“I thought I’d stop by. See the new office-”

“I’ve had this office for 3 years.” You interjected. 

Logan quirked an eyebrow at that, he seemed almost amused at your assertive call out. You had been a louder child like Roman but unlike your brother, you became quieter as a teenager. You knew your father had assumed that was because you didn’t have whatever “deficiency” he believed Roman had and that you’d grown out of it. The reality was, that it was a trauma response and you’d learnt that life was easier with him if you were quiet and made your presence as sparse as possible. 

He’d always found playing his games with you particularly interesting due to this, you weren’t as quiet now as you were as a teenager and you weren’t as loud as you were as a child, somewhere in the middle. You could slink off at the few family gatherings you intended to not be questioned or dragged into shop talk. But you still had a known presence and you were the only one of his children who could somewhat confidently cut him off and respond to him with what he’d deem as some sense of calmness. You weren’t as pliant to him as your siblings which made his mind games all the more intriguing to him. 

“Right. Well, it’s a nice enough place.” 

“Thanks.” You bit your lip as you waited for your father to continue, he didn’t show up for no reason. 

You were trying to project a calm facade you were starting to worry for a myriad of reasons. With what was going on with your family this wouldn’t be any pure coincidence. You weren’t the most involved in the family business but you were well aware and received updates from Kendall. But there was also concern over the potential sighting of your lunchtime visitor. 

“Well dear, I need you to do something for me.” You tilted your head and your brow furrowed at his words. 

“Since when do you need favours? Specifically favours from clinical psychologists?” You questioned. 

“It’s to do with your siblings.” Logan spoke flatly as he then sat himself down on one of the armchairs in your waiting room. He was mildly irritated that you hadn’t invited him into your office and that you’d kept that room off limits for him, blocking the doorway to it. 

You scoffed at his words and rolled your eyes, one thing was for sure, whatever this was, it wasn’t good. 

“Continue.” 

Logan’s eyes narrowed at you slightly as he watched you as if it was the first time he was seeing you. He was used to you being uninterested and not the way that Shiv tried to play everything cool with Logan. You were genuinely uninterested, your eyes looked cold.

You had a colder approach with your father in comparison to your siblings, it was healthier and the easiest for you to maintain without being sucked in like they were. It wasn’t a big surprise to anyone that you weren’t impressed with the confrontations that happened in your presence, your siblings had weird concepts and responses of support. But there were the built-in responses as you’d gotten older, Kendall defended and you comforted. 

Logan hadn’t always given you a great deal of attention in those moments but he was familiar with your mannerisms as he’d call them now. But today you seemed annoyed, this wasn’t an emotion that Logan felt like he’d seen from his youngest in almost a lifetime. He  found it to almost be the most interesting he’d ever found you, he mused that you must know or be hiding something. 

“Well, you grew up with Kendall, Roman and Siobhan. You understandably know them well and you have a unique skillset with your area of expertise.” He paused for a moment watching your face as he said that before continuing. 

“And?” 

“You would’ve made observations of their behaviours over the years. Symptoms-behaviours- whatever the fuck you want to call it. You have the power to diagnose.” You looked at him and the cooler facade you normally actively projected with him was starting to fade into one of horror. “I’d like you to write a piece on that, about your siblings. Their credibility, illnesses. A media circuit perhaps as well. You’re a credible and telling source.” 

You stared at your father in silence, you didn’t know what to say to him. This was awful, even for him. 

“So?” He broke the silence, his eyes were deadly serious, and his lips were in a small but twisted smirk. 

“No. No! Just no…That’s absolutely fucked up. No.” You looked around starting to think about how messed up that your father hadn’t just come up with this idea but that he was willing to do it to his children, your older siblings and drag you into this. “No, and if I did that who would then get the chance to write the think piece on you?” You asked sardonically rubbing your brow. 

“Well, I’m sure Shiv could whip up a sequel to her letter on Kendall.” He bit back almost nonchalantly. 

“I shouldn’t be surprised but I just can’t get over the fact that you’d do this, that you’d ask me to do this dad. What you did to Kendall after that Board vote, was sick… And again? To all of them?” You were starting to feel nauseous and weaker around him. 

“Are you talking to Kendall?” He asked in a cold tone. 

“He’s my brother.” You raised an eyebrow at him. 

“And I’m your father.” 

“Unfortunately.” You looked into his eyes and bit your cheek. 

He scoffed at that. He’d come in relatively calm, well calm for him but he was quickly becoming agitated at your lack of cooperation.  

“He’s a lousy excuse for a son and a brother.” 

“Kendall doesn’t interrupt my day of work for a fucked up favour.” You spat out, you weren’t shying away from his gaze even though his presence was getting too much for you. “I think you should leave Dad. I have patients and I need to eat something, I need lunch.” 

“Fine. Don’t give my regards to your fucking brother.” He said as he started to get up, you just leaned against the wall. 

“Hey-” Stewy’s voice crackled against the thick tension between you and your father as he waltzed into the entryway of your waiting room. He paused for a second as his gaze quickly landed on your father and you. You thought you saw a brief flicker of panic in his eyes but he quickly and efficiently plastered over it. 

“And what the fuck are you doing here?” Logan directed at Stewy with a huff and an eye roll. Logan’s concern and suspicion were piqued significantly now as his disappointed gaze flicked over to you. 

“Well sir Roy, your deleterious business plans and board meetings are getting a bit too traumatic, that much I now need to see Dr Roy.” Stewy immediately and confidently jumped in, his playful and pointed lie came across smoothly and convincingly. Logan scoffed at that and started to walk out. 

“Don’t think about trying any of your peacock philandering with my daughter,” Logan said to Stewy as he walked past him. 

“How thoughtful, safe travels sir.” Stewy laughed off Logan’s comment which just seemed to irritate him more. 

“Think about it.” Logan said as he looked back at you as he was in the doorway, you just held his gaze for a moment. 

“I’ll see you at the wedding.” You calmly stated, he narrowed his eyes again at you for a second and then just walked off. 

**********

Stewy wasn’t a patient of yours, he fortunately never had been, that would’ve been a massive ethical violation. He was meeting you at the office for lunch, something that you two often did. It had been vaguely discussed in the past that if somebody ever saw him in your office it could be easy to dismiss it as him being a patient or wanting some kind of psychological consultation relating to work. It was never an excuse that had been needed before today and you were surprised at how quickly Stewy went into that mode and how he simply sold it. 

You were sitting on the sofa in your office with your legs in Stewy’s lap, he had an arm over the back of the sofa and his other hand was gently caressing your legs as you recounted the brief visit from your father before Stewy came. Stewy was playful and a bit chaotic but he was also intelligent and he could be serious and thoughtful, which he often was for you. 

“I should call Kendall before something happens.” You said looking at Stewy and he nodded, continuing his comforting, soft touches on your sprawled-out legs. 

You grabbed your phone and called Kendall, the phone barely rang before it was answered. 

“Yo?”

“Dad came by the office earlier today.” 

“Oh? What did the old fuck want?” Kendall teased.

“He asked me to write a piece on you, Rome and Shiv. To air out everyone’s laundry, basically ‘diagnose’ you all and try to discredit your side of what’s going on. It was so fucked up Ken.” There was a pause for a moment, you heard Kendall sigh and then inhale. You made eye contact with Stewy who was silent and watching you. 

You had a requited soft spot for Kendall. He was your older brother and he was a good one at that. He was fiercely defensive of all his siblings, which he seemed to prioritise over his own trauma and feelings in confrontations with your father. But as the baby of the family and not having the same tongue as your siblings, you suppose you came across as weaker, more vulnerable. You’d concluded a long time ago that this added to the soft spot that Kendall has for you. You also thought subconsciously it was also linked to the fact that you were the most patient and sympathetic sibling he had. 

“What did you say?” Kendall finally asked, his voice was more serious now. 

“I said no, a bazillion times. I told him it was sick and asked him to leave.”

Ken nodded, and then he remembered that you couldn’t see that. 

“That’s pretty fucked up. Not surprising though I guess…”

“Are you with Rome and Shiv?” You asked. 

“Uh-huh, they’re in the uh, they’re inside.” Kendall answered quickly. 

“Can you tell them?” 

“Yeah, sure but-” 

“I’m really sorry Ken but I have another patient soon, I just wanted to tell you as soon as I could in case something happened. I didn’t want to do it over text.” You answered. 

“Okay, I’ll see you at the rehearsal. Thanks as well.” His second sentence was softer. 

“Yeah, of course. See you then.” You then hung up and looked at Stewy. 

“Did he sound okay to you?” You asked Stewy. 

“Sounded pretty okay for Ken.” Stewy responded as he moved his hand away from your legs and to hold your now phone-free hand. You just nodded and Stewy changed the subject to something else for the rest of your lunch hour which you appreciated. 

****** 

You would say you have a complicated but good relationship with your siblings. While you had the same mother as Kendall, Shiv, and Roman, you and Connor were bonded by your outcast status regarding family affairs. You didn’t agree with a lot of the opinions that left Connor’s mouth but he was still a compassionate older brother to you. You often were iced out together at family gatherings as it was all a business opportunity for your father’s attention. 

You were glad that you just had to relay your father’s request to Kendall. Roman was unpredictable and Shiv would’ve assumed that you had sold them out and this was a mind game. An opinion she’d probably make clear to everyone else and in some way to you as well. 

There had always been significant sibling rivalry in the Roy household. But Shiv had always seen you as her competition in particular, you two were the only women and she lived in a man’s world always striving to prove herself out of spite and nature. Even now she still believed your kinder nature was an act to disarm. She never hid the looks of distrust in her eyes.  

You were now home. You still had your apartment and stayed there occasionally but that was more to save face than anything else. Somewhere along the timeline of your relationship, you’d almost practically moved into Stewy’s apartment. The walk-in wardrobe was equally divided, and your favourite teas were in the kitchen. “It’s closer to your office” had been the justification at the time when he’d been encouraging you to stay over more. 

It was surprising that you hadn’t been caught yet with that in mind, part of you would sometimes wonder if your siblings did know but they were saving it but you knew that if they did it would’ve come out to slap you in the face by now. 

When you’d first met Stewy what felt like a million years ago you never would’ve expected something like this to happen. Then when this all happened and started a few years ago it was still, very unexpected. But he knew probably better than what anyone else would ever be able to comprehend what it meant to get seriously involved with a Roy, even one not involved in the family business. He and Kendall had an interesting friendship and history, with Stewy having been mostly good to your brother. But Stewy was always good to you. 

As you let yourself in you kicked off your shoes lost in your thoughts but you quickly noticed Stewy wasn’t back yet. This wasn’t a surprise though, your job meant you got to work more of a typical 9-5. Something you were grateful for, it seemed like life was just one, endless business meeting and opportunity for everyone involved at Waystar. 

You’d made yourself a cup of tea and were now leaning against the bench in the kitchen with it while scrolling on your phone. You had Google alerts set for all of your immediate family and Stewy, surprisingly there didn’t seem to be too much drama online today. 

“Ugh, fuck!” Stewy’s voice boomed and you heard a bang. 

“Shit, Stewy? Are you okay?” You quickly called out as you made your way over to the apartment's entryway. 

“Yeah, just tripped over your shoes again.” Stewy responded with an amused expression as he took his shoes off and moved them along with yours out of the way. 

This wasn’t the first time it had happened and Stewy knew it wouldn’t be the last. 

“I’m sorry.” You said bashfully as you walked over to hug him, pressing a soft, playful kiss to his lips. “I guess, it’s a good thing you love me.” You kissed him again, teasingly nipping on his bottom lip that was in between yours. 

“You’re such a brat baby.” Stewy smirked as his hand wrapped more firmly around your waist and he kissed you back. 

“I thought you loved that?” You teased between kisses as each one became more heated and desperate with lust. Despite Stewy often being caught or easily roped into your family drama he was the best distraction, escape and companion from everything. 

“I do.” Stewy breathed out as he continued to kiss you and was now kissing your jaw. 

“And I love you…” You whimpered out as his lips started to travel down your neck. He now had you pressed against the wall.  

“And what is it that you love exactly baby?” Stewy purred out as he nibbled around your pulse point. He was always such a tease. 

“I love your hair-” You moaned out as you dug your fingers into his soft, gorgeous curls that were always perfect. “Your voice, eyes, those goddamn turtlenecks, your smile, your colossal vocabulary-” 

“Didn’t you say it was farcical the other day?” Stewy said as he stopped kissing you and looked at you. 

“Stewy!” You whined out, you couldn’t feel his lips on you any more but you could still feel him against you but it wasn’t enough. You needed him. His gorgeous dark eyes were blown out with lust but he had his signature playful, mischievous smirk painted across his face as he cruelly teased you. “You’re such a tease.” 

“I thought you loved that.” He quipped back. You rolled your eyes and took the bait.  

“I do, I love how much of a tease you are.” He felt your breath against his neck as you spoke and then pressed a kiss against his neck, breathing him in. He always smelt so good, despite being a bit of a natural peacock it wasn’t showy, it was more subtle but strong enough. You were certain there was sandalwood in his cologne. “I also love how you feel inside of me.” You spoke as your soft lips kissed his handsome jaw, your soft lips a burning contrast against the tickle of his perfectly trimmed beard. 

“Someone’s getting laid tonight.” Stewy got out, pressing his hips against you as you continued kissing along his jaw and neck, tugging his now tousled curls. 

“That was the plan after all Mr. Hosseini.” You smirked against his neck, feeling him continue to harden against you. He let out a soft, melodic moan as you sucked softly on his neck. 

“How does now sound?” 

“Perfect.” You left his neck to kiss him on the lips, you moaned against his mouth as his teeth clashed against yours. 

One of his hands left your waist to quickly unbutton your pants. Once he’d done that, he quickly slipped a hand in, teasing you as he palmed you and then started to tease your bundle of nerves over your underwear. Your arousal had already started to dampen your underwear and it only grew with his attention. You continued to moan against him, as he gingerly traced a pattern.  

“You’re already so wet and I’ve barely touched you.” Stewy teased. “So beautiful and needy.”

Stewy smirked as he felt you press into his hand more, even with the friction of your underwear, you needed more. You wanted him then and there. You kept hungrily kissing him, feeling starved. Stewy snaked a finger under your underwear and rubbed it along your clitoris for a few seconds before dipping it inside of you making you gasp. 

“More, please Stewy.” You begged between kisses, panting as he chuckled. 

“Such a desperate girl with a needy pussy.” Stewy whispered into your ear as he added a second finger in, he picked up the pace a bit he continued to finger you and his thumb moved to rub over your clitoris a few times. His fingers were covered in your slick and you didn’t have any interest in holding back any of your moans. 

You stayed sandwiched between the wall and Stewy, just moving to press your head against his shoulder, the fabric of his blazer muffled some of your moans as he continued to finger you. You looked down and started to undo his belt and pants. 

“What do you think you're doing baby?” Stewy asked in a low voice that was just making the space in between your thighs grow into an even bigger pool of dampness, you were melting against him. 

“I want you.” You tilted your head up so it was still resting against his shoulder but you were now facing his neck more, you started to kiss his neck again, biting it softly and then licking it. “I want you to fuck me Stewy.” 

“Beg.” Stewy breathed out as he let out a little moan as your tongue darted over his pulse point. His fingers were still entering you but not as deep as before and his thumb was painfully slowly, languidly massaging your bundle of nerves. 

“Please Stewy. Fuck me, I need to feel you deep inside of me.” You nipped him softly right near his pulse point and revelled in the groan he let out at that. “Please, I’m begging you Stewy. I need you.” 

“Tell me exactly what you need.” His thumb cruelly left your clitoris for a moment making you gasp out in shock but he added a third finger inside of you, getting to that soft spot that made you melt and his thumb gently returned to your clitoris after a few seconds. 

“I uh, I-I need you. I need you inside of me now Stewy. I need to feel your cock inside of me.” You moaned out. “Nobody has ever and could ever fill me up the way you do. It feels so good, you make me feel so good. Pl-please Stewy. Please.” You mewled out and you couldn’t quite see his face but you knew it would have that beautiful arrogant smirk. 

“I’ll fuck you, baby. I just need you to come for me first, you can do that, right? I can tell your desperate little pussy is already so close.” You nodded desperately, he wasn’t wrong. You were close to unravelling, he could tell from your breathing and how you weren’t just flooding his fingers but also clamping around him. 

“I’m so close, Stew, fuck.” You moaned out, panting against his neck, it tickled him slightly. You bit your lip and moaned against his neck, he could feel the vibration of it and he loved that, that and the sound of your pleasure. You could feel it coming and gasped into his neck again as you came, Stewy could feel it and smiled as his fingering eased to a slower, gentler pace as you came down from your orgasm. 

“How was that?” He smirked as he pressed a kiss to the top of your head. 

“It was- it was…” You paused for a moment as your breathing started to settle, your heart was still pounding from that high though. “Good.” 

“Good? Only good?” He questioned with a tone of mock hurt.

“Just shut up and fuck me now, please Stew.” You bit his neck, just feeling even more needy for him than you did before. 

“I thought you liked my colossal vocabulary and voice?” He teased as he playfully grinded into you “I distinctly remember you saying so a few minutes ago.” 

“You’re so mean Stewy.” You giggled softly, gently pulling on the roots of his curls. 

“Was that just to get me into your pants?” Stewy paused the grinding, his tone acting as if he was hurt and that the insinuation was possibly true. 

“I guess not because that obviously didn’t work very well.” You responded, leaning back against the wall. He raised an eyebrow at you and then looked down at his belt. You rolled your eyes playfully and started to undo his belt, palming him. He was completely hard but you already knew this from when he’d been grinding into you. 

“Bedroom baby.” Stewy moaned out as you pulled his hard cock out and rubbed it with one hand. 

“You can fuck me here, you’ve done it before.” You pouted and he just chuckled as you kept up with your ministrations. 

“You said I was mean, so you’re not getting it here. You can wait the whole ten seconds it takes to walk to the bed. Our bed for me to have my way with you.” Stewy’s voice was low and firm but there was still that natural teasing tone there. 

You walked briskly to the bedroom that you two shared and Stewy followed and chuckled over the eagerness of your gait. As soon as you both were in the clean room, you kissed him hungrily again. He smirked and expertly unbuttoned your blouse as you pushed his blazer off. You kicked your pants and underwear off and he quickly followed suit. 

Stewy pressed you into the bed and you tugged on the turtleneck he was still wearing to bring him closer to you and then started to push it up off him. 

“Do you love my turtleneck baby?” Stewy teased as you did. 

“Absolutely love it.” You breathed out with a smirk. 

As soon as it was off and thrown to the floor, you were kissing each other again as if you couldn’t survive without the other. You were running your hands over Stewy’s back and up his neck to the luscious locks you loved as he quickly undid your bra. You were both now naked and he continued to kiss you as his hands cupped your chest. 

You moaned out as he started to caress you and pinch your nipples. His lips travelled from yours down to your jaw, your throat, he kissed your breasts and teasingly licked along your nipple for a minute as he started to rub your heat with his other hand. 

“Please Stewy.” You begged out in a desperate moan as your eyes were closed in pleasure. 

“Please, fuck you?” He again teases as he starts to line himself up at your entrance. 

“Yes, please that.” 

Stewy stopped his teasing and happily obliged after what felt like an eternity of almost edging. He pressed his head into you and you gasped as he did, gently scratching his shoulders as he did. It wasn’t long till he was bottomed out, he waited a few seconds for you to adjust before he started to slowly thrust inside of you, eliciting the most melodic moans he’d ever heard. 

“You’re so beautiful and tight, I love being inside of you baby.” Stewy cooed out as his pace quickly picked up a deeper and slightly faster rhythm. 

“You feel so good Stewy, so good inside of me.” You mewled out. 

Your words were literal music to his ears and it wasn’t long till he was grunting out as his thrusts became deeper and harder. 

It was so easy to become lost in Stewy. Especially when he was fucking you like this, having his way with you in the bed you shared. How couldn’t you be lost in him when your eyes were open he was all you could see?

His scent was dizzying as it mixed with the sweat he’d built up from snapping his hips into yours, he was all you could feel, on you and in you, his grunts, words and the filthy sounds you were making together were all you could hear. Stewy was intoxicating, overwhelming, a sensory overload in the most spectacular way. 

You were pulling on his hair as you felt him hitting that perfect soft spot deep inside of you. Your bundle of nerves was already sensitive from the teasing and your earlier orgasm and you could feel the warmth of another orgasm building. 

Stewy wasn’t clueless about this, he could feel you clenching around him especially as he reached that sensitive spot of yours and you were flooding him in your arousal. Other than the feeling of being buried deep inside of you, Stewy couldn’t think of anything sweeter than the noises of your moan and whimpers and the sounds of the squelches made of him thrusting into you and being met with your juices. 

Stewy continued to pound into you, his thrusts were faster and needier, and he was getting close himself. He pressed some sloppy kisses to your neck that warmed your insides up even more with desire and love for him. Stewy’s lips travelled back to yours and you opened your mouth inviting him in as your tongues and teeth passionately attacked each other. 

The kiss became deeper and deeper, you wrapped your legs tightly around his waist and felt him groan at that against your lips which in turn made you smirk. You two continued to kiss and he started to rub your clitoris with his thumb, you moaned into his mouth at the sweet pressure and slightly writhed under him. 

“That feels so good Stew.” You panted out as the kiss broke for a second and you both panted as he continued to thrust into you while rubbing a circular pattern on your bundle of nerves getting closer to their peak. 

“You feel so good. I love you.” He panted out between moans, as his eyes rolled back at the feeling of your velvety walls clenching around him. 

“I love you too.” You moaned out, as your legs tightened slightly around him and you scratched his back. “I’m, so, so, so close.” 

“Yeah? I can feel that baby. Oh fuck, I want you to come for me, come on my cock baby.” He encouraged as he continued. Kissing along your pulse point, fully knowing that would drive you closer to your climax. 

You moaned out while scratching his back and pulling on his hair as you unravelled from your orgasm. Stewy smirked against your neck and continued to massage your sensitive bundle of nerves and thrust at the same, perfect speed as you chased your orgasm and rode out that high. 

“Thank you, baby, that was so good. I want you to come, to fill me up.” You panted out as you placed a hand to cup his cheek as his hips continued to snap back into yours. 

“Fuck, I’m pretty close.” 

You dug your nails into his back as he felt you clench around him in the most spectacular way as you orgasmed and post that. He began to chase his own high and you knew he was close as his thrusts spread up and the pace was more sporadic than rhythmic. 

After a couple more minutes of thrusts, Stewy grunted and kissed you more desperately than he had all day and finally chased his own climax and finished inside of you. Before he pulled out the kiss changed to a gentle, affectionate one and you lightly combed your hands through his hair and then ran them along his face and jaw as he kissed you like that. 

Stewy kissed your forehead softly and then pulled out to go towards the ensuite to get a washcloth to clean up the mess you had made together. He was so firm but gentle with you. 

After that, he laid in bed again on his back, you were cuddled into his side, with your head on his warm chest feeling almost half asleep. 

“What do you think of marriage now?” Stewy asked interrupting the peaceful post-sex silence. There was an air of playfulness but his voice was softer, quieter, almost sleepy. 

“Pardon?” You shifted slightly off his chest to get a better look at his face. You were certain you’d heard him correctly but you weren’t sure if maybe you’d fully given into sleep and this was gibberish or a dream. 

“We’ve talked about eloping before.” 

“Yeah, yes we have but-” 

“I wasn’t joking.” Stewy said as he gently held your chin between his index finger and his thumb. His voice was still soft but it was a bit firmer now, more serious than tired or playful. You bit your lip unsure of what to say as he continued to look into your eyes with his beautiful, diluted ones. 

“You know what that would entail Stewy. Your career-” 

“I do and-” 

“Stewy.” You rested your chin on his chest looking at him. He could see that you were tired. 

“So you don’t want to marry me right before your brother and Willa? Maybe a day or two after? Get that IUD out, then pop out a few babies. I’ll even be super fucking generous and get a vasectomy.” His tone was more teasing now and you had a feeling the humour wasn’t completely genuine but partially a cover-up of possible hurt. 

“Sweetie, I love you. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Maybe not talk about this ‘post-coitus’.” You offered him a small smile and combed your fingers through his hair, admiring the dark locks and the stunning strands of silver. 

“Yes ma’am.” Stewy nodded and kissed your forehead. You settled back into his chest and it wasn’t long until you had dozed off in his arms and on the comfortable pillow of his chest with the reassuring sound of his heartbeat. 

********

You’d been the only one of your siblings to stay for Connor’s wedding. Weddings were just business opportunities in the world of the Roys, grief couldn’t exist with the market and leadership decisions. You didn’t like how the wedding or death side of that traumatic day went down or how it was handled but unexpected deaths weren’t meant to be convenient or follow logic. 

You were now in your deceased father’s penthouse at his wake, having spent most of the morning hiding in a corner from as many eyes as possible. You’d really only spoken to Connor and Willa, your other siblings were in a sitting room being as business-focused as possible. 

It had been a little while into the Wake and you were with your siblings when Stewy and the Furnesses came in. Connor and Willa had been the easiest to talk to which wasn’t really anything new. Kendall and you occasionally made little remarks to each other and even you and Shiv exchanged some looks over other people’s comments or well, audacity.

You took Stewy’s handsome face in, he looked well-rested and fresh-eyed despite the fact that he’d been up most of the night with grieving you. He was handsomely dressed and groomed as always. You wanted to be held by him again, to leave and be curled up in a ball with him. Normally you two acted amicably when your paths crossed in the Roy world and public like this. But you were too depressed and exhausted for the usual furtive nature. 

He’d hugged and given his condolences to your sister Shiv and then she’d moved on to Sandi. You looked at Stewy and gave him a small smile, he went to give you a hug and a faux kiss on the cheek as he did for Shiv but you needed more than that, you needed him. You genuinely hugged him and pressed your head against his chest, hearing his heartbeat, a firm, undeniable reminder that he was there was always comforting. You didn’t care that your siblings were nearby, it wasn’t an indecent act. 

Stewy couldn’t and wouldn’t say no to affection from you ever, let alone in your state in this context. He reciprocated the genuine hug and you held onto him for maybe a few seconds longer than you should’ve if you wanted to avoid the suspicion of your siblings. 

You pulled away despite never wanting to do and tilted your head to see that he was looking at you warmly, sympathy written all over his eyes. His hands had moved to softly rest on the sides of your arm, the touch was comforting but could easily be perceived and argued as platonic to an onlooker. He had a small, genuine smile on his face as he looked at you. 

“Hey,” he said softly. 

“Hey.” You responded back quietly. You wanted to kiss him, you were almost tempted to and then Kendall was quickly whisking Stewy away. 

You went back to your corner and eventually, you were joined by Kendall and Roman. You saw that Stewy was making his rounds of small talk and his eyes occasionally wandering, searching for you to see where you were and how you were doing. 

“Have you thought about psychoanalysing yourself?” 

“What?” You questioned exhaustedly as your mind was pulled away from stealing glances at Stewy by Roman’s words. 

“That was a bit too touchy with Ken-doll’s boyfriend.” Roman retorted. “I didn’t realise jumping on your brother’s BFF was one of the five stages of grief.” 

“Excuse me?” You now glared at him. 

“Oh, I guess it must be a new one they added in.  Are you gonna get a model named after yourself? Or are you saving the Roy model for something more fucked up?” 

“I’m not doing this Roman.” You sighed in exasperation and walked off to find a glass of wine but were quickly disturbed again. 

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t actually know about you two,” Kendall smirked as he whispered to you. 

“What the fuck Ken?” You jumped at the fright from Kendall, you were grateful that you were still empty-handed or else you’d have stained your outfit if not all of your surroundings from your brotherly jumpscare. Your reaction just made Kendall’s smirk grow. “You knew? But Stewy never told you.” 

“He didn’t. I figured out a while ago that you two were uh…” He dramatically paused for a moment as if he was thinking of the right word with a teasing smirk. “Copulating.” 

“Ken!” You elbowed him softly to try and get him to quieten down. “Why did you never say anything?” You quietly questioned. 

“Well, it was pretty fucking weird at first. He’s not the worst Harvard finance bro out there.” Kendall said with a playful expression. “He keeps you happy-adjacent right?” 

“Yeah, he does. Thank you.” You gave Kendall a tight-lipped but grateful smile. 

“You know, you don’t have to hide it anymore right?” 

You looked up at Kendall, questioning him with your eyes. You and Stewy’s relationship was complicated and you’d say it was pretty healthy despite the furtive nature, it had been that way for everyone’s personal and professional sake. Kendall’s smirk started to slowly slip as he took in your expression. 

“He’s dead.” Kendall spoke softly as you stared into each other’s eyes, he placed his hand on your arm as his face grew more serious. You eyed Kendall trying to find the right words. Sure your father had been part of it but it was a complicated situation with many pieces. 

“I could live with dad icing me out, cutting that relationship. I made peace with what that is a while ago. But-but, it’s when Roman, Shiv, and you. That’s what really hurts.” 

“That’ll be all that Roman says and well Shiv, she’ll only say anything about it behind your back.” 

“So comforting and reassuring.” You dryly said. 

“I’ll send you the invoice for Kendall Roy’s Therapy.” He teased and you both chuckled dryly at that. 

There wasn’t much else to say to that and you knew Kendall wasn’t ready to talk about the bigger problems yet so you gave your brother a tight hug that he quickly reciprocated. You stayed in each other’s arms for a few moments, it was healing and reassuring in a way. 

You then left to sit on a miraculously empty couch as Kendall went off to talk to Roman and Shiv again about company matters you didn’t want to hear about and that they wouldn’t want to discuss in front of you or Connor anyway. As you sat there, Stewy caught your eyes again and this time he finally came over. He sat next to you on the sofa but left a reasonable, person-sized gap between the two of you. 

“Kendall knows, you know.” You quietly state looking at him tiredly, the events of the last 24 hours and your lack of sleep were quickly catching up with you. 

“Well, I’m in private equity not acting baby.” You scoff at that and smile, sinking a little further into the sofa. 

“Perspicuously not in comedy either, babe.” You say with a smile that grows. You tilt your head to look at his expression, his big beautiful eyes are watching you and there’s the cocky smile plastered on his face that you’re in love with. 

“I’ve learnt it’s best to save the wit for the Roys.” He shoots back with a mischievous gleam in his eye. 

Stewy’s here and he’s being cheeky for your sake. You love that about him, his tongue isn’t biting like your siblings but his humour is a way of showing up. 

“Do you want to go on the balcony for a minute?” You questioned. “I want some fresh air.” 

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He leaned his hand over that empty space of safety between you two to squeeze your hand for a second before you got up and he then followed you. 

He leant against the railing and watched you once you were both out on the much more, pleasantly quiet balcony. 

You laid your head against his chest and wrapped your arms around him, listening to his heart calmly beat as he pressed his chin against the top of your head and exhaled. Stewy’s thumb was tracing reassuring patterns on your arm. He hummed softly for a moment and you could feel the vibration of it on the top of your skull. 

You and Stewy both knew this was a sure way to be caught but neither of you cared in this moment and didn’t care about any of the consequences. They were manageable, they felt minor now and realistically they were. This would shift the family dynamic and having furtive hands with your lover always seemed to you to be in the best interests of Stewy’s career and the dramas between him, Kendall and Waystar. 

You were pretty okay with being out in the open with Stewy and he felt the same way. As the relationship went on, he wanted that more and more. His post-coitus conversation was serious and not a post-orgasm thought. 

“You were serious about eloping before Connor’s wedding weren’t you?” 

“Probably poor taste to say it right now but yes baby, dead serious.” 

You laughed at that and he felt it vibrate against him and it made him smile. He just wanted to bring you a bit of comfort and joy on an awful day like today. 

“I don’t think it’s a bad idea.” 

“Are you saying you want to get eloped?” 

“Well, I was thinking of leaking the story to ATN that Stewy Hosseini is so whipped by the Roys that he gets a vasectomy for one and not the one they’d expect.” You teased, laughing a bit more and he laughed as well. 

“Well, as much as I think we could find you something short to wear as an elopement dress, maybe something fun and scandalous like Sharon Tate’s since you like those old flicks. I don’t think we should leave your dad’s wake to go off and elope, might be the cultural upbringing differences but seems a little rude to me.” Stewy teased, you laughed and kissed him on the lips softly for a moment. 

“How does tomorrow sound?” 

“For an elopement?” “Yeah.” 

“Perfect.” 

[ivyial]

okay time for some delulu gojohime analysis that's a bit of a reach.

so earlier today, i was rewatching a compilation of gojo and utahime's scenes from season 1 and it rang a bell (also, i just want to say, mappa gotta have gojohime shippers on the team cause some of the s2 gjhm elements weren't in the manga). ANYWAY.

so in episode 14 (the beginning of the tokyo-kyoto goodwill event arc), utahime is introduced (and i'm not gonna say that her literal second sentence onscreen ever is inquiring after gojo, but i am going to say that). then gojo comes in with gifts for the kyoto students - some charms from a tribe. this is how the panel goes in the manga:

nothing specific about those charms/souvenirs. gojo also explicitly mentions that they're for the kyoto kids - nothing for the staff.

now here's how it goes in the anime:

unfortunately i don't have the japanese script for this scene or the exact intended meaning, so i'll have to use the english translation :')

in the anime, there are two changes to gojo's dialogue:

the tribal charms are specifically protective. whether they work or not, they were made with the intention of protecting the user in mind

"the kyoto kids" becomes "everyone from kyoto" (including staff, technically)

now assuming that these changes are correct, it makes the scene way more relevant to gojohime.

as we know, gojo thinks utahime is weak. he says it to her multiple times and it's pretty much his go-to insult for her. we also know that gojo is loaded with cash, so spending a few more bucks isn't an issue. and yet... he didn't get her one of those. this is one amazing opportunity for gojo to make fun of utahime, by giving her one of those charms and implying that she needs it because she can't defend herself. but for some reason, he didn't take it.

there are a few ways to interpret that:

gojo is a decent enough guy to not embarrass her in public in front of other people. although, this isn't true, since he does do it in front of other people all the time: see season 2, episode 1, when he calls her weak in front of mei mei and geto. so maybe he just doesn't want to embarrass her in front of her students. again, not exactly true, since he puts her on the spot later in the goodwill event arc:

pretty 'eh' to ask her to give a speech unprepared in front of all of the students, especially since she ends up performing very poorly. maybe he draws the line at calling her weak in front of her students, because he understands that they look up to her.

2. gojo didn't give her a protective charm because despite calling her weak all the time, he doesn't fully believe that and he knows she can defend herself. it is vaguely reminiscent of their recent shared scene in the manga, in which *spoilers for the current arc* utahime's cursed technique is revealed and she acts as an amplifier for gojo's. he definitely trusts her enough to team up with her, just like he did to find the traitor at the kyoto school.

3. utahime doesn't need protection, because he is there. for this interpretation, i'm drawing a parallel between this scene and this post explaining how utahime is metaphorically always under gojo's eye. even without that detail, there's his whole spiel in 2x01 where he dramatically announces "i'm here to save you, utahime". it's worth noting that he pretty much came round to help her out because he knew she was in danger (i think? someone correct me if i'm wrong please).

one thing's for sure though, it's that gojo doesn't truly believe that utahime is too weak to be a sorcerer. is she weaker than him? sure, but that doesn't make her incompetent. and if she needs to be protected, he's more than happy to do it for her.

[lollytea]

i don't know what it is about Hunter's "Cool. Happy to help." that makes me go crazy but it does. it being such a simple and kinda dorky response to Willow's shy but sincere thank you and "You mean a lot to me too." (which also makes me crazy), Zeno's delivery making it have like seven different layers of emotion because he can't help himself apparently, the fact it plays over them holding pinkies and bumping hands, the fact we know he's on the verge of tears while saying it. i am UNWELL

CAN I TALK ABOUT IT??

It is heavily implied that this little moment, while ambiguous, is intended to be a massive shift in their relationship. Like it's veered from them being platonic while nursing mutual crushes into something with deliberate romantic intent from both sides. I don't think they would be comfortable saying they're dating just yet but....they're not not dating, y'know? Like something has undeniably changed in a very permanent way. It's certainly new to them but they're both aware of it. They're both aware that this is something beyond friendship right now.

(I been saying this since the episode leaked, when I only had the scene itself to go off. But considering the crew is finally allowed to share their huntlow art, Zeno is allowed to open his mouth and Dana rted art of them captioned "they're canon now <3" that's as good a confirmation as any. If I remember right, Dana was also pretty tight lipped about explicitly romantic lumity, but was free to post about it after Hooty's Door aired. Yknow. When they officially became an item.)

That scene is literally the two of them establishing this relationship development between each other. The dialogue is kinda vague but bleedingly sincere though the interaction is also aided by nonverbal signals. So like. No wonder Hunter sounds Like That. We are watching him get a girlfriend before our very eyes.

Now I KNOW "You mean a lot to me too." is supposed to be romantic because why else would Hunter be so overwhelmed that he tears up? There is no way in Hell Willow Park never expressed her platonic appreciation for Hunter before. That's her FRIEND!! She wouldn't just not tell him that she cares about him. So this....this is different. She's saying something completely different here and Hunter picks up on it. He may have been a little unsure if he was overthinking it, but it seems like the linked fingers really cement the reality for him. Willow is saying she has feelings for him.

I would give anything, ANYTHING, for Zeno or Dana or Eden or SOMEBODY to explain what the exact voice direction was for "Cool. Happy to help." was because I'm obsessed with it. It's like!!!!! Holy fuck!!!!! He's trying to mentally catch up with what's happening here but his brain hardly works and he's all emotionally mushed up. He's giddy, he's breathless, his stupid little galdorstone is trying to punch a hole through his chest. He wants to burst out laughing because of how absurd this all is. He wants to break down into hysterical tears. He's pretty sure he's gonna explode. Also she's TOUCHING him. Very subtly but he's crippingly aware of it. The feeble body heat seeping from her little finger seems like enough to spread through his whole body. It's burning his face, his ears, the back of his neck.

You can feel Hunter trying to hold himself together with every syllable. The fact that he's like "Cool..." after Willow tells him she loves him like???? ASGDBFJNK. Man would get smooched and be like "Alright. Thanks." Because he wouldn't know what else to say. Like he's clearly trying to play it casual. Like this is all no big deal. Because this is Willow and he wants to be cool. But the way his voice cracks, like he'd probably squeak if he wasn't working so hard to control his tone, the noticeable shakiness, it's all so possessed by an explosive burst of nervous excitement.

It really reminds me of when Luz asked out Amity, she was like "Yes!!" And Luz just awkwardly responded with "Okay..." smiling stupidly, with an obvious vocal tremble because she was ecstatic and terrified at the same time.

"Happy to help," is a lot softer and less uneven, but he's still obviously losing his mind. That's when he bumps his own hand against Willow's. If I'm being honest, I think his mouth went on autopilot by this stage. It just seems like the kind of thing you say when you're completely fucking blanking. He is 99% focused on the fact that they are kinda holding hands right now and trying to gather his bearings, he'll just fucking say whatever.

But MAN. Its so funny. It's so good. Willow expressing her feelings to Hunter and him vocally responding in the lamest way possible, while sending a far more romantic signal with body language. It's SO them.

[katyspersonal]

So, Ymir was full of shit or rather, lost his marbles! I've made some more SOTE progress!

1) So, first I was exploring the various corners I've missed (again, Val's advice since I was despairing to do anything but 'important' points gvghgb) Went in order!

2) I killed the second big red horned bear in this game! And before that, killed two Rune Bears with some success..? Still got hit hard, but I am finally learning to dodge roll properly! Most of it is rolling in, not away x)

It dropped an incantation that is like those dragon head ones.. but like, bear head one gfhhhg And there was another variant of Brave Set nearby (the clothes of bear-hunters)

3) Coincidentally, the very next guy was using this same incantation! It was sending a series of roars that knock the person off! AND he was in the last Mausoleum that I did want to find very much!

AND he also was a Redmane!! They have so many distinct friends of Radahn in this DLC xD

4) The next one was a forge and I was done with running across them orange woods. This is when I finally realized that the big rocky guys needed to be hit while back turned, in the weak spot on their backs, whereas I've been hitting them in the front this whole time... :^)

5) This guy would later become important:

So, they just freeze eventually? It kind of seems like eventual fate of all rock creatures I guess, since they can't age. There are Ancient Dragons in Farum Azula who are just walls now for one

I instantly had a feeling that this would be a good summon seeing how much damage and defence those guys had, and hoooo boy was I right!!

6) OKAY SO I finally did it! @fareehaandspaniards REJOYCE!!! Basically Metyr and Fingers predate Elden Ring/Beast, because it also was a shooting star and Metyr was the first:

I struggled with this boss as you remember, and wasn't even trying to go without summons but just couldn't find the right ones xd THIS guy though staggered her like two times letting me do critical, and lasted ungodly amount of time (until magic attack blasted him since rocks are wear to magic in this game)! But he was SO helpful?

So it was this guy causing ungodly stagger and me stabbing bleed with Mohg's spear jfghyj I also finally realized to NOT, no matter what, get myself caught on the side of her body 🙄 That attack with rapidly moving fingers from her side is NOT survivable nghgf If anyone here makes the same mistake: don't, just always face her.. face, lol

7) Also my idea confirmed! When I first saw this location, all watery and the giant "tubes" going from here to "above", I saw it like the giant fingers so it is some hammerspace version of womb water! Turned out the grace of this place marks location as Finger Birthing Grounds, so yeah!

8) My instant reflex was to go back to Manus Metyr! ...and I got attacked when I had hands full of runes because I forgot to spend them after the boss 🤡 I didn't die, but NEVER forget to level up lol

Jolan first attacked me as an invader, saying we've hurt Ymir so much that he now wished our death, and then Ymir was there as a boss (thankfully a weak one). ?? I was just sitting here like "wait a second, the whole operation was your idea?" because Ymir gave me the map here?

9) So, I started to think about it and recalling what happened before. His last map was captioned "May you join the glimmering stars above" which was sinister, but so was he so I didn't give it an extra thought back then! Now it does seem like he intended for us to not survive that encounter, like same sacrifice thing as with "meeting" Rykard, but there was more

Back when Anna attacked us, I assumed she was sort of enemy. I did tell Jolan about it, but her dialogue was vague:

I interpreted it as Anna getting on the way and Jolan implying that she will or will not kick her ass depending on what Ymir says. But oh boy, seems like I was wrong.. When you kill Anna, the text 'RECUSANT VANQUISHED' appears; the term reserved for Tarnished that hunt other Tarnished! So, knowing that Anna habitually kills people (her own?), and knowing that I was not supposed to kill Metyr despite being sent directly to her, Jolan's reaction to us telling about Anna can be seen as: 'Damn, I started to really like you, but turns out that Ymir wants to sacrifice you (?) and I can't speak against him so pretend that my ally did not try to kill you, okay? :/' but I wasn't aware just HOW right I was!

10) Turned out that Jolan also had the decision split between Iris of Grace (gives Spirit Ashes) and Iris of Occultation (gives her weapon)! Like it was with Queelign! Damn, they made SURE that people either replay this DLC or talk with other players for full lore x) Respect!

11) ALSO turned out that this whole time, there was a secret way to drop atop of the upper section of Rabbath Rise from Shaman Village, where you find a person in the same set sitting in the same fashion as inactive puppets of Seluvis! And it was ANNA, that we could combine with Ashes of Jolan!

frail and WHAT? AND WHAT gdghhgh The text didn't fit, oh my god!!

I asked Val about it, the missing word was 'and pliant'.

12) I also asked him about the 'doll' part, because by all means it should have been 'puppet'! He confirmed that it IS the same term in original because he was confused too and checked earlier: 'doll' here is 傀儡, and is the same used for Puppets in the main game. So, obviously, they were trying to save the letters space! And still failed... XD

13) So, yes, a totally normal thing for Carians to do! Granted, Nox were the ones who started the Puppet dids, but Carians are basically infamous for making Puppets, which Ymir is!

That makes it apparent that Anna attacked us due to him wanting it :^) I assume we were supposed to be food for Metyr, because since he lost his shit over her death he needed her for something. The power to bring Yuri back to life, I suppose.

This made me wonder whether Jolan herself was a puppet? We don't know whether they can still talk and think from the base game, maybe they can! What we do know is that puppets will attach spiritually attach to the master and unquestionably do their bidding (which Jolan does), that they are crafted through blue star shards thus uniting their fates since blue stars control fates of humans (and Ymir and Jolan do affectionately call each other their stars), and that a puppet can be given to someone else despite who made it (since Seluvis can gift his and we now can use Anna).

Jolan is not referred to as a puppet, so maybe her devotion and dependence bordering insanity happened to be her true feelings and not some magic (yet it wasn't the case for Anna, apparently...).. But interesting thing to consider. (LOL I can SEE Ymir simps jumping at me and asking how the heck Jolan's behavior is supposedly magic and not normal reaction gfggnfhhg)

14) Turned out that Ymir's clothes can be altered into... this:

15) I also checked at the Roundtable Hold, for more Metyr lore:

I already read that Greater Will stopped communicating with her, but interesting information! Besides.. the staff to cast sorceries AND incantations sounds SUPER useful! No more switching between seals and staffs xD

The second weapon is simply Metyr's head that mentions there is an eye at the center of it. Yes, I could tell from getting blasted with lasers hfhhjj

16) Also I don't have pictures space left, but if you collect everything like I do, don't forget to check Yuri's grave for a sorcery after Ymir is defeated!

[jellogram]

Evangelicals like to say that we should have the ten commandments taught in schools because it's "the basis for America's laws" but like. in what way. No really, let's dissect this statement. I have time.

You shall have no other gods before Me.

This contradicts the concept of religious freedom, which is enshrined in the constitution's bill of rights. One of the first laws ever made in this country was verbatim against this rule.

2. You shall not make idols.

See above. Also we literally have a whole singing competition about this!

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.

Very simple rule, very not illegal and never has been as far as I can tell.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

This would actually be a nice one. Let's outlaw making minimum wage employees work on Sundays. Let's see if the evangelicals even want that to happen.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

This one's admittedly sort of a law, though not the way evangelicals intend it. Children have no rights and are at the whims of their parents 99% of the time. We'll call this one half credit for the evangelicals, even if the original rule didn't really imply the way its enforced.

6. You shall not murder.

Ding ding ding! That's a real law! However, it was a law before the commandments (see: the Code of Ur-Nammu, written centuries before Exodus)

7. You shall not commit adultery.

We do have laws against this, believe it or not. They used to be more common but nowadays only 17 states still have them and they are rarely enforced. When the law was adopted will vary from state to state, but it's definitely not a vital structural law in the US, which is their claim, so I'm not counting it.

8. You shall not steal.

See number 6.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Half credit on this one. Perjury is a crime, but evangelicals like to expand this commandment to cover all forms of lying and the legal system disagrees.

10. You shall not covet.

Come on now. Coveting is like, a core component of capitalism. The United States was, much like number 1, built on the opposite of this rule.

Final score: .5 + 1 + 1 + .5 = 3

So 30% of the commandments are even vaguely related to laws we have in the US, and that's being generous. Especially when just as many are blatant contradictions.

I think what this means is that evangelicals don't actually like, know anything. The commandments were the first rules they were ever taught as children and they were also taught that the United States is godly and holy, so clearly it must have been drawn from the world's sole source of godliness and holiness, the Bible.

[victorianpining]

The Game is Now

(Well The Game is over a year ago, if you want to be technical about it)

I finally took the time to write up my notes and reactions to the original BBC Sherlock Escape Room Experience! Sorry in advance if things are a little vague at points, we only played through the room once and am mostly running off of iphone notes I wrote 13 months ago. I hope to be able to go back to try out the new Mind of Moriarty room during its run, if this one was anything to go by, it should be a fun time!

My usual disclaimer that while this is a TJLC slanted writeup, I'm just playing The Game for fun at this point, I really am not expecting any of this to lead anywhere. Enjoy your television responsibly, don't idolize television writers, eat your veggies, etc. etc. etc. And spoilers for the room, obviously.

Oh, and huge thank you to @watermotif @betweendoctorsanddetectives and @647763 (and her girlfriend) for playing the room with me! I had a blast suffering with you all <3

The way I'm getting myself to finally actually write this up is by telling myself it's okay if my thoughts are a little informal, especially after this long, so this is going to be written the way I usually structure my outlines in the format of chaotic bullet points. Hopefully it's still readable!

I'm starting my recap of the experience outside of the escape room itself, which was located in what was, for all intents and purposes, a random, abandoned seeming mall in London (it wasn't actually abandoned malls are just like that now)

So imagine you are just walking through what looks exactly like your local, very dead, mall, when there's just this massive wall with dark damask wall paper and the most DFP Sherlock quotes you can conceive of plastered on it. Think "I may be on the side of the angels but don't think for a second I am one of them" "heroes don't exist and if they did I wouldn't be one of them" "I'm a high functioning sociopath" etc. It's already hilarious

You come around the corner from that and there's the gated off "Doyle's Optometrist" office, where you have to page in (I think we had to state our group name, I can't remember exactly how we got in)

Once you're inside the staff helping you are named Stamford. Yes like Mike Stamford. Yes all of them. If you didn't know you were in for psychological torment, you do now

[brief intermission here because some of us arrived early, so they actually let us through to the Mind Palace bar while we waited. It was pretty cool, apart from the guy working there being really pushy about ordering drinks. The bar is Victorian themed with framed pictures from TAB and the biggest one in the room, like by far, was a framed picture of Sherlock and Moriarty's little gun standoff, so you know, that was fun.]

[here we are trying to be normal about it]

[also I went to the bathroom at this point and there was a little sign in the stall which said that the Sherlock theme song was exactly the right length to wash you hands to which was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in my life]

Anyway back to the intended order of the experience, Stamford led us back to the optometrist waiting room where we sat calmly while John Watson's voice read out random advertisements. (The only one of these I wrote down was "the eyes are the legs of the face" because it was so random, but there was a set of them)

Also as you will see in the following picture, the posters in here were Bananas

(In case you can't see it since it's small in dash, the purple one behind Mia says "Doyle's Audiographs: for those who hear but don't listen" very evocative of the "I did tell you but did you listen" motif, 0/10 very infuriating)

Stamford came over at this point and brought us back and gave us the rules, which included no photography so photos end here unfortunately

So we were taken to a projector room where John Watson addressed the players, saying that while it says the office belongs to Doyle, this is actually a front for one of Mycroft's plans (ha ha ha (deadpan)) and that he's coopted John into helping. (hah. do you get it? the author and the narrator? hillarious)

It was so clear that Martin did not want to be there. Like yes John in character also doesn't want to be there but Martin literally looked like he was being held at gunpoint. His eyes were dead. Poor guy.

Stamford led us through another room into the 221B living room! Being in here was surreal. Because there are a few groups lumped together at this point, we had a bit of time to look around the room. Rachel found a book about fetishes on the mantle, which was something.

We took our group picture, they let you pick from a few props. I went for the white queen chess piece for Dracula reasons and got bullied into wearing the deerstalker, which was homophobic.

Also the skull was the Yorick version, and I took a moment to stare into ACD's eyes, out of respect, as one does.

At this point the game proper begins! Sherlock's voice comes on (Ben is not on camera other than one brief exception which we will be coming back to later) and starts prepping us for our mission.

I don't remember the context but I think while telling us to be careful in the flat he told us "don't scrape your knees, or do." which was funny considering "the state of her knees"

Mycroft then addresses the audience (hah) only to be interrupted by Moriarty (hah) hacking the TV (hah hah hah)

The mirror above the fireplace? Also turns into a TV that Moriarty hacks. Ha. Ha ha ha ha.

Moriarty informs us that he has kidnapped Mycroft so the point of the game is to save Mycroft from Moriarty (I was fighting the urge to bash my head against the walls of 221b at this point, like I was expecting M Theory but like Come On you're killing me here)

You may be wondering how exactly Moriarty has kidnapped Mycroft considering he is dead. Great question! You don't get an answer apart from Moriarty saying "remember I am definitely dead" in the most sarcastic voice I have ever heard come out of Andrew Scott's mouth. Full psychological warfare at this point. Having a great time. The usual.

Also at this point, while talking about Mycroft, Moriarty compares him to Sherlock, and he definitely listed off a bunch of things but the part that most stood out was he said verbatim "Mycroft is like Sherlock without the fangirls or sex appeal" so uh. Um. Yeah. M Theory Time!!! All Aboard!!! Choo Choo!!!!

We were taken to the first of our three puzzle rooms: the morgue at St. Bart's. Moriarty is introducing the room and jokingly refers to the brief time he spent dating Molly, lets us know that our goal is to break into the computer system (a development which had me thrilled, you know I love the Moriarty as a Virus angle)

Not one full minute after Moriarty joked about Molly being his cover, Molly voice over talks to John (who by the way has a beard at this point, that I had not mentioned) and goes "nice beard!" Hah. Hah.

To get into the computer we needed to put in a date, I don't remember the context for this puzzle but the answer was 2012, the year of Season 2.

The case in the middle of the room then lights up and you're able to see the corpse. On the computer, a database comes in, and in order to get into the server, we need to fill out a series of questions about the identity of the corpse.

One of the filters is the relationship status of the corpse with three options, single, married m/f, and married m/m. I let out the most exhausted sigh of my entire life and hit married m/m without even looking at the corpse. (we briefly removed it because the room was giving us clues out of order that made us think for a moment that this was wrong, it was not, the corpse is gay, you have to not assume he's straight. Do you get it?) (war and strife on the planet earth)

So the clue for that is that the corpse has the name Stephen tattooed on him (really? of all the names? Stephen????) and you're meant to figure out that he wouldn't get a tattoo of his own name. Or just be so mentally exhausted that you intrinsically know the corpse is going to be gay because of course he is.

If that wasn't enough, the corpse was also a member of the Royal Navy who was left handed. Hi John.

At this point my friends in the room with me pointed me up to the TV in the corner, which was showing random news feed but the ticker tap at the bottom was advertising BBC Dracula, which was fun.

When we were finally getting into the cage the server was in, Moriarty kept ominously chanting "let me in"

Again, don't remember the context, but one of the clues in this room was identifying the heart

We discovered the corpse died of a horrific virus (hah) just as Moriarty hacked into the server thanks to us (once again was genuinely enjoying the code stuff, this is a 10/10 from me, makes fadow better for everyone who has done this silly escape room sdhgakjdsg)

The second room was Mycroft's underground office and our task from Moriarty was to locate where his agents were stationed throughout the world and once again send off his virus. I was giggling.

Flipping around with switches on Mycroft's desk, we found that the mirrors on either side of the room were actually windows! Because of course they were!

Sherlock comes in with a clue at this point and lets us know something to the effect of "Mycroft likes to hide clues in photographs" which was uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... normal.

Those are my only notes for this room and I don't remember literally anything else about it so sorry about that on to....

The final room: The Victorian Operating Theater! Oh boy!!!

Moriarty has been using us to access the genetic code (hah) for a virus (hah) last scene in the Victorian Era (hahahahahahahaa). He literally phrases it as "an old treasure brought into the modern day." Hillarious.

Then the absolute highlight of the experience: there's this giant console thing in the middle of the room that comes to life with all these screens, and on them including Moriarty taunting us and, the absolute 12/10 winner, footage of Sherlock wandering around 221B. This is the only Ben footage you get and not only does it confirm the "Moriarty is always spying on Sherlock" part of M Theory, it's very similar to the wall of monitors I came up with for fadow. Fellow Moriarty fan Mia and I were dying at this as much as we were able to while still trying to solve the room.

Moriarty freed Mycroft but had infected us with the virus (this is why I joke that Moriarty gave me COVID, because I caught it this day and it might as well have been from him)

His plan was to unleash the virus on the world unless we could stop him

This room was more physical puzzles than mental, and we had to cure the brain, the heart, and the lungs respectively. The brain and the heart are obviously big Sherlock meta staples so since then I've been like "why the lungs tho?" My best guess is it has something to do with breathing new life into an old story, but that's just a guess

While we were solving it and making progress Moriarty came on to rant something like "the game was over! You should have known when to give up!" Flames, flames on the side of my face.

When we won, Sherlock insulted us, but Mycroft then came on to compliment our efforts and talents, which was a great way to leave off.

Apparently only 20% of people actually solve the room, and we were in the top 20% of that, all while trying to take in the meta of it all, go League of Furies!!!

Final thoughts: this really was like if watching the show was a thing you could live through in real time. If you've ever wanted to be tormented by Mofftiss in a more visceral way, this room is exactly what you're looking for. Also shoutout to Andrew, who acted his absolute heart out, 15/10 thanks for all the M Theory, it was delicious

Also once again to reiterate, I can't believe James Moriarty gave me COVID, after all I have done for him, rest in pieces except he isn't even dead all the way.

I guess 4 months of not being able to breathe fully was the real lungs meta all along.

Can't wait for the Mind of Moriarty game next though for real, that's gonna be Bonkers, if one of the scenes is a virtual version of the waterfall scene from TAB I think I would combust on the spot

Thanks for reading!!! Sorry this took me forever only to be such a casual writeup in the end, but hopefully this recreation of my mental breakdown in a mall was entertaining.

[highladyluck]

The Finn stole my baby AU

ok FINE you can all have the Eelfinn Stole My Baby in outline form

I've never pinned down the details on this, because I think it would be most interesting as an installment in a larger series and a lot of the details would be determined by the needs of the overall storyline, but this is the vague outline:

1) Fortuona has just found out from Min that her kid's going to be a marath'damane. Because a) SOME IDIOT (maybe Mat, maybe Berelain if they're on speaking terms, there's some other options depending on the scenario) made the mistake of telling her about Sindhol in some way that makes her actually believe in it, b) she's a slut for prophecy and always has been, and c) she wants to explore all her options, she wants to go to Sindhol to get some answers from the Aelfinn. The questions she intends to ask vary by setting but it's something along the lines of how to survive the current situation/protect her marath'damane child/solve the sul'dam problem/ensure stability of the Empire in the westlands/how best to reconquer mainland Seanchan. You know! #FortuonaProblems. Mat eventually agrees to escort her; both to get in, since the only way in right now is the Tower of Ghenji, and to get out.

2) But because they're going in outside of treaty rules and Mat's there, the Eelfinn are the ones waiting for them and they won't let Fortuona go see the Aelfinn (maybe they say that they won't see Mat, but they will see her, if she agrees to be escorted alone. Mat's almost like "oh, over my dead body" but catches himself just in time.) Whatever deal Fortuona makes with the Eelfinn involves something she can use to solve her existing political problems (not sure what this is but it could be something horrible, like a better male a'dam), and something for Mat (maybe a magic replacement eye?). The third item is either something else for her, something else for Mat, or a very thoroughly rules-lawyered escape clause, depending on how confident Mat was/she is about being able to escape with the ashandarai. In exchange, they take her about-to-be-born-child, which she either explicitly names as the price, or is counting on them taking as the price.

3) At least they're not gonna eat the kid; the Eelfinn want a human child who can channel to build them new treaty doors someday, and if the human child is raised by them and therefore on their side, so much the better. They're also thrilled to get another piece of Mat. I figure the Eelfinn would want the savor of Mat and Tuon fighting about this, so while there's a possibility that the world's least hygenic c-section happens before Mat cottons on to what Tuon just bargained away, I think it would be more likely that they don't strike until the price is explicit or Mat has figured it out.

Tuon's like "I understand that you're upset but it's better this way. I came to solve a problem. It's not solved the way I intended, but it's solved and I got you an incredible boon in the bargain. We can always have more children."

Mat's like "Yeah, well, you aren't having them with me! You're a monster for unilaterally trading our child to my eldritch enemies."

She's like "If I'm a monster, so are you. As soon as you found out she would be marath'damane you began setting plans in motion to take her from her destiny. From the empire. From me. Don't think I haven't noticed. At least in this situation, I'm getting something out of it that benefits both of us."

4) I honestly don't entirely know what happens next, but it's bad. Unstoppable force (Mat's desire to rescue women & his love of Tuon) meets immovable object (said woman/Tuon just betrayed him and his innocent child to his worst enemies). Would he just leave Tuon there? (maybe?) Would he try to trade Tuon's life for the baby's? (I like this because I like pain and I think he might be deranged enough in the moment to do it) Would he try to trade his life for the baby's? (maybe, but they wouldn't accept it.) Would he try to kill all the Eelfinn? (yes, and they'd still take the baby.) Like how the fuck do you recover from any of that? And the worst part is you can like… sort of see where Tuon is coming from, if you enjoy women's wrongs? And she really just wanted to meet the Aelfinn and it's Mat's fault that it isn't going as planned?

5) If there's a sequel, it would be the fully grown child showing up in their world with a terrifying knowledge of esoteric ter'angreal construction and thoroughly socialized as a *Finn some improbably short amount of time later. Maybe when Elayne and Mat mount a rescue mission in a few months. Time runs differently in Sindhol if the *Finn need it to.

Bonus: I'm still debating adding a variant of this to the epilogue of The Fox That Makes The Ravens Fly- for one thing, I haven't decided yet if Tuon is pregnant, and if she is, by whom. If I do it'll be Rand who tells her about the Aelfinn & Thom who tells her about the Eelfinn, she'll go in with Thom and someone else (Elayne, I think, in exchange for access to the dice-ring ter'angreal that replicates Mat's luck, also Elayne would love to go on that field trip, although I could see Min being interested for the metaphysics of it all), and the ostensible point is to rescue Moiraine. I think instead of that, she negotiates getting Mat back, at the cost of leaving her baby with them, and resetting the timeline so Mat never died and the canon events where Moiraine gets rescued happen, but she remembers the old timeline. I have no idea if the *Finn actually get to keep her baby, who may or may not be a sparker in this scenario, or for that matter if they get to keep Moiraine, but I bet they'd take the bargain regardless because they invested a lot in Mat & also now Tuon has some weird fucking emotions about the entire life she didn't lead. Also they're the fae, the only thing they like more than bargain eyeballs is bargain babies.

[blorbologist]

head in hands. my little self-indulgent Pokemon AU fic is giving me A Headache. It's set in Kalos (vaguely following the plot of the games except some stuff is revamped bc Fuck You) and I've got three options for the climax.

a) The Pokeball Factory and Master Ball acquisition (fitting for Vex and Percy and comes at the point where they go from rivals to friends, but means I have to edit/axe the foreshadowing about Vex getting *BLANK* and they're only just barely friends)

b) The Team Flare* defeat (means tying the box legend Moment to the evil team which is Satisfying, but I worry that'll go beyond my scope of 'hehe look at them they're Rivals <3' also fuck you Ripley I don't want to write you)

c) After the Pokeball factory, but before Team Flare* defeat (involving the box legend, not based on a canon games moment which Irks me but was my OG plan because it has nods to several C1 moments. feels like it has too many loose ends wrt Team Flare* still running around)

so... help?

(for anyone curious about the WIP, a snippet under the cut ;3)

“It’s a Heavy Ball,” Percival explains. “They are usually produced by artisans in Johto, but I figured there must be a way to replicate the properties of the apricots with more modern methods.” He pauses for breath. “In theory, it should excel at catching larger - well. Heavy Pokémon.” She thinks it's pretty self-explanatory, but the clarification is oddly appreciated. “I made it for you.”

Vex’s mouth feels dry. She reaches out and Percy tips the grey and blue Pokeball into her palm.  It definitely feels heavy, though maybe she’s just lightheaded. “Thank you, darling.”

“You’re welcome.” He doesn’t sound smug, for once.

There’s a moment where they fidget awkwardly, not watching eachother or the battle (Sneasel just screeched something fierce) and only looking at the Heavy Ball. Vex is frantically considering what to do - how do you thank your arrogant rival for a gift? Do you shake hands? Wave and see them on their way? Kiss their cheek? - when Percival coughs in his fist.

“I thought it might help,” he says. “I mean - the shared Flying-type does make you very vulnerable to its weaknesses. A good Steel or Fighting type could help with several.”

The appropriate response, she decides, would be to punch him in his stupid mouth. But she’s holding a gift weighty enough to be considered a blunt force weapon, so Vex settles for seething, “Excuse me?”

He continues to dictate what her team composition should be like: “I’m not saying you have to catch one of those - or even a Rock-type! Not if you don’t want to.” His fingers twitch anxiously for something to do, like maybe tie his noose tighter. “I, ah, might not have even completed the mechanism correctly. Maybe you could… test it out for me? Let me know if it works as intended?”

If she’s throwing the Heavy Ball at anything, it’s his stupid big head.

[markantonys]

Idk if you saw the Josha Collider interview but he kinda hints we might get some Randlayne in s3? Which I am curious about that cause I didn't think they'd have time. Also that the Randfear relationship will continue where it left off and get even more complicated (which is very much their Shadow Rising dynamic)

i'm gobbling up these randlayne crumbs!!

but he keeps it very vague here and i don't think there's anything too surprising in what he says - the fact that the show took the time to signal randlayne in 2x08 definitely implies to me that they plan to follow up on it in SOME way in season 3, and given that daniel was already talking about having filmed some lanaeve scenes way back in june which according to the block filming schedule would probably mean those scenes are somewhere in the first block (eps 1&2), i think we can pretty safely assume that the tanchico & waste travel groups won't split up right away, and that we'll see rand and elayne interacting early in the season.

now, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be making out all over falme or declaring their love for each other already! "a gradual thing which needs to be organic" definitely makes me feel pretty good about my prior randlayne guess, which is that they'll be getting to know each other and building a connection early in s3 and laying that groundwork for romance, but nothing explicitly romantic will happen between them before they split up for their respective journeys. because they wouldn't have included that Moment between them in 2x08 if they didn't intend to build upon it pretty promptly at the start of season 3, so we've got to be seeing SOMETHING more on the randlayne front, but i don't think it will be anything huge. and what josha says here supports both parts of that prediction, i think! his comments on rand's headspace at the start of s3 also make me think it's unlikely rand will be jumping straight into brand-new romance during the first episode block, and since we know tanchico & the waste are both in, i don't think rand would see elayne again until the second half of s3 at the earliest and perhaps not until s4 (in person, anyway; further randlayne development through TAR chats is not outside the realm of possibility!)

and of course, avirand isn't something josha would be hinting at even a tiny bit in interviews since it's way too much of a spoiler, given that the two of them haven't even met yet, so randlayne being the s3 romance he's discussing doesn't mean avirand won't sneak in there and end up happening first! but all this being said, i am always ready for the show to surprise me and prove me totally wrong haha

and he made intriguing comments about randfear too, like you say!

in a couple of today's other interviews he said he wants randfear endgame djkjfg i'd have a shipping war with him about that, but i love how much he's loving digging into this relationship! lanfear positioning herself as ~the only one who understands him~ despite him being surrounded by his friends definitely sets up some toxic shit and i can't wait to see where that goes in s3. i love Mess!!

(..................i'm saying nothing about book!min positioning herself as ~the only one who understands him~. nothing at all!)

wait a moment. literally right here josha says rand is with his friends at the start of season 3, so that pretty much confirms we'll be starting off with the gang all still together!!!!!! (of course, he could mean just that he's with mat & egwene en route to the waste, but given daniel's confirmation of lanaeve scenes, i think at this point we can feel very very confident in seeing the whole gang still together at the start of the season)

[asaka-lucy-dr-rc]

The series is not 100% clear on the matter. But a lot of fans have observed that there's a fair bit of evidence to suggest that Nagito wasn't lying about his illnesses, despite surviving his original prognosis. And that him insisting he was lying afterwards was just his attempt to keep Hajime from getting close to him.

There are multiple pieces of evidence in the various mangas showing his inner thoughts, that point to the stuff about his dead dog and the plane crash being truthful. And if he was being truthful about something as insane as a meteor hitting a plane at the exact moment it was being hijacked, the dementia + lymphoma claim isn't quite so unbelievable.

There's also his behavior throughout the series. People have pointed out that a lot of it is fairly consistent with symptoms of someone with fronto-temporal dementia. His tendency to ramble, impaired empathy, inappropriate social behavior, etc. His pale skin and hair, along with his skinny physique also suggests his body is quite sickly.

Sorry for dragging this out a bit. It's just that when it comes to Nagito's illnesses, a number of fans can treat him very hypocritically. To use Nekomaru for example, he frequently does strenuous physical activities that a person with a heart condition shouldn't be doing. Yet no one accuses him of lying about his illness. Nor do people claim that Toko fakes her split personality, even though Syo isn't a very accurate portrayal of dissociative identity disorder.

Oh, thanks for taking the time to message me! First of all, I want to say that I'm not specifically accusing him of lying, just that it can be interpreted as a lie because the math between the life expectancy he said and the actual time he lived after he was declared sick doesn't add up. I'm not sure about the EN fandom, but I think more people interpret it that way, at least in the JP fandom.

I also do not want to criticize anyone who thinks his illness is true. I was more wondering why there is a difference in interpretation between the JP fandom and the English fandom wiki. The Danganronpa Fandom Wiki says "While it is left ambiguous in the game, his illnesses and backstory as well as his school profile in Danganronpa 3". I don't have the official setting materials of the anime, so I'm not sure, but I did a search in Japanese to see if anyone mentioned anything like Nagito's illness was written in them, but I couldn't find any mention of it. So I just said that the source of that line is vague, but that's all. I mentioned that more people in the JP fandom have the interpretation that his illness was a lie, but of course there are various fanfic made under the assumption that the story of his illness is true! I am a fan who played DR2 almost immediately after it was released in Japan, and if I remember correctly, there was a mixture of both interpretations among those who finished the game at the beginning, and gradually fans accepted the one that the illness was probably a lie, because the life expectancy he talked about and the time when the school trip in NWP started did not match. (I guess a lot of fans just wanted Nagito to live).

Sorry for repeating almost the same sentence, but I know there are people in both the JP and EN fandoms who would interpret it as real, and I'm not trying to determine which is canon at all. In the post I commented on, the OP seemed to be considering which way to interpret it, so I thought telling about the interpretation in the JP fandom might be a kind of clue to the story. I don't want to criticize those who interpret his illness as true.

However, as for the information written on the fandom wiki, I want to know the source! If anyone knows where the information is written, please let me know!

I didn't mention some of the things you wrote, but I hope you understand that's because I don't want to be particularly critical or anything like that. (And since we were originally only talking about Nagito, I don't intend to expand the discussion to other characters.)

Again, thanks for taking the time to message me!

[cringecompanionapologist]

Because I'm Bored: Doctors 1-13 Ordered from "Most Human" to "Most Alien"

So, some incarnations of the Doctor seem more "human" than others. Factoring vibes, aesthetic, social skills, emotional connection to companions, and then just shrugging and picking an order that makes sense, here goes:

Short Version, from most human to most alien: 1, 3, 5, 10, 9, 12, 6, 8, 2, 13, 7, 11, 4

(Very) Long Version:

Here There Be Spoilers for multiple Doctor Who Stories, the most recent of them being from Series 12 (and I'm not sure if the bit I'm talking about counts as a spoiler since it's just a thing that happens in the episode). Also this really got away from me and there are quite a few tangents in there. And because it's so long and it's very late I didn't really edit it, so I hope it's at least mostly coherent.

Most "Human"

Okay, this could be defined in a lot of ways, but based on my own definitions:

One:

The Doctor wasn't originally intended to be an alien, just an eccentric human from the future. So One isn't very "wacky". His cloths are a sort of vaguely Victorian/Edwardian normal. Because of Hartnell's age and health, he usually isn't very high energy. He's curious and mysterious, but if you didn't know from future reveals, you might not think he's a literal space alien.

Three:

This one was almost a tie. Three was the first incarnation to be established as an alien from his first story, and because he was written as an alien, he's more alien than an incarnation mainly written as a human. But, he usually comes across more like an eccentric professor with little regard for rules and regulations.

The UNIT Era setting might be a part of this. You take time travel from a Time Lord and what you've got left his a lord. He's an aristocrat who's fallen on hard times and had to get a job and is grumpy about it.

Five:

Five is one of the more cautious Doctors. He's aware of how his curiosity can get the better of him and sometimes tries to reign it in. He can also pass as human very easily. In Black Orchid, he fits perfectly into the setting, a costume party/cricket match in the 1920s. He is very traditionally British, and the British are almost definitely humans.

Five has more alien companions than most incarnations, which means that the ways in which he's alien don't stand out as much. He's been traveling the universe for centuries and he loves Earth, so he's picked up on a lot of human stuff. Adric and Nyssa are much younger and much more sheltered, so they're the alien fish out of water. Turlough has a bit more experience with humanity, but he hated it and is quite proud of being an alien to these people, actually. So, the Doctor blends into Earth surroundings while his companions either have no idea what's going on or are actively protesting it.

But, Fivey's still a space alien. He's still eccentric, and somewhat socially awkward. He misses social cues and tends to deal with emotions by avoiding them. Adric just died? Sadness is happening? Well, he doesn't know how to process and express that emotion while also comforting two people who are also feeling that emotion. So, he basically tells them to stop grieving and get back to the plot. He still feels emotions, of course, but he tries to ditch them whenever possible.

Ten:

He's often thought of as the most human Doctor. He's got quite an emotional range and can connect with humans very well. But, a thing with Ten isn't that he's the most human, but more that he most wants to be human. The Time Lords are dead because he killed them and humans are his adoptive species. But he can never truly be one of them. That's one of the many tragedies of the Tenth Doctor.

Ten is more overtly quirky than the Doctors listed before him. He talks a mile a minute, he's easily distracted, and he can say some very silly things. He's the guy who gave as "wibbly wobbly timey wimey". He's the first Doctor on this little list to regularly seem too weird to pass for human, though he still can when he's really committed to it.

Nine:

I honestly wasn't sure where to put him. He has a less quirky appearance than most Doctors, with his leather jacket not being out of place in a modern setting.

But, he's still very quirky with an added element of being unstable and more emotionally distant than Ten. He's a bit more cynical about the universe, having just come out of a war.

Honestly, 9 and 10 sort of tie. They're both human and alien to around the same degree in different ways.

Twelve:

Twelve changes a lot throughout his run, so it was hard putting him in one spot. He has the darker edges of Nine, but those soften over time and he becomes your silly professor who was in a band in the 70s.

So, in Series 8, he's a grumpy space grandpa. The first to point out that he's an alien. By Series 10, he's hung out on Earth for a while and lightened about. Strangely, he feels more human when he's being silly than when he's being serious.

There's also the added element of Moffatisms, which aren't exclusive to Moffat, but they are elements of the show that became more prominent around 2010. The Moffat Era had the Doctor as more genuinely socially awkward than before and more likely to view that as a problem. It feels like the bit where the Doctor's an alien but he's spent centuries around humans so he knows the basics at least was sorta lost.

Even though I called this a Moffatism, this trend only became more noticeable after Moffat left. We'll get there when we get there.

Six:

The only reason Six isn't higher on the alien scale is his darker, more violent edge. It doesn't feel very alien. But, Six is probably the most alien-looking Doctor.

Six is great at pissing people off, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. But, even in the TV episodes that usually had weak scripts, you could still see how much he cared.

When I think of the Doctor being socially awkward, I often think of The Mysterious Planet, of all stories. Basically, Peri has a bit of an existential crisis over realizing that she's on a far future Earth and that Earth won't last forever. Six has a little speech about how everything ends at some point. It's not very comforting, but you can tell from his tone that he intended it to be. As a centuries-old time traveller, the fact that everything ends isn't quite that big a deal. You can just go back in time to before the world ended. But Peri, though she's been traveling with the Doctor for a while, is still a regular human from 1984, of a single time and place where time travel doesn't exist. So when something ends, that's it. The Doctor understands that Peri is upset and he wants to comfort her, but he doesn't understand her feelings enough to succeed at it. It's a great little moment from one of the more "meh" stories of the era.

So, there's the Doctor being an alien depicted in a slightly more subtle way, underneath the loud technicolor dream coat.

Eight:

A while ago, I made a post that sorted the Doctors into three loose categories. One of them was called something like Wacky, Zany, Silly, Fun-Time War Criminal. All the Doctors I'll talk about as the most alien are in that category. Eight is the most alien incarnation to not be in that category. Eight is a romantic, heroic type, who also happens to basically be a puppy with the zoomies for whatever parts of the TV Movie he doesn't have amnesia in.

I haven't seen a lot of Eight, so I don't have much else to say. He gets more seriously later on, because of the Time War and several companions dying. There's also a difference between the Eight Doctor Adventure novels and the Big Finish audios. Big Finish is where a lot of the "Eight gets more serious" arc happens. Both series have the overall plot of "the puppy is kicked repeatedly by absolutely everything". The EDA Doctor is traumatized by it and that's another thing that triggers an amnesia arc, but he remains upbeat when he isn't suffering The Horrors. BF Eight grows more cynical over time.

Two:

The Most Human of the Most Alien. He's very silly and very energetic. He plays the recorder and behaves in a way that often feels half-child/half-grandma. He's the template that all the other Wack, Zany, Fun-Time alien Doctors are built from.

So why's he the most human of that category?

Two actually has a unique skill. Though many incarnations of the Doctor can be manipulative, or use their understanding of people to accomplish their goals, Two is the most socially intelligent Doctor. He acts silly because he likes being silly, for the most part. People underestimate him, which can be useful. But, his more serious moments show a side to him that, though he doesn't act like a normal human, he understands humans, as individuals and as a species, very well.

Compare that scene from The Mysterious Planet I mentioned earlier to The Tomb of the Cybermen. Victoria is a knew companion who only became a companion because she'd otherwise have been stranded on Skaro. She's also just become an orphan. The Daleks killed her father. So, though she's trying her best, she's obviously not doing very well. The story stops for a moment and the Doctor talks to Victoria and what he says actually comforts her. While Six couldn't understand Peri's existential crisis, Two can understand grief, losing family, and being forced to leave home. So, he's able to emotionally connect with Victoria in a way Six couldn't with Peri, even though he wanted to.

Two's emotional intelligence gives him a strong human side, or at least a side that can relate to humanity.

Thirteen:

She's quirky. Very, very quirky. She has no attention span and often just does things. Chibnall takes the Moffat Era social awkwardness even further. Thirteen is self-aware and obviously insecure about not relating to her companions socially. She's also one of the more secretive incarnations, so she sometimes just refuses to connect with her companions, but even when she wants to connect with them, it often feels like there's a barrier between them.

Some of this is, at least as I perceive it, the result of consistent writing problems. Basically every writer of this era had difficulty distributing lines between the three companions and making sure everyone had something to do. Unless the plot had stopped for the characters to talk about their feelings, the companions tended to all fall into the stock "what's happening, Doctor?" role. I get the feeling that people who like these characters, and there are people who love these characters, love them for the fleeting moments when they get to be characters, when there's nothing else going on. Yaz stands out when she's talking to the Doctor on the beach, trying to sort out romantic feelings, but not when she's one of three companions in the middle of some Alien Bullshit.

But, you often don't get the "what's happening, Doctor?" Many scenes of exposition involve the Thirteenth Doctor thinking aloud, asking herself questions and answering her own questions, while three other people just stand there and wait to be addressed. Of course the Doctor is going to seem distant from her companions when she's talking to herself most of the time they're around.

Thirteen's social awkwardness actually led to a somewhat infamous moment in Can You Here Me, where Graham talks about having cancer and his fear that it might come back someday...and the Doctor straight up admits to being too socially awkward to know what to say in this situation and there's a complete tonal whiplash from Graham's serious talk about cancer to a "Doctor is socially awkward" joke, as if the seen was getting to heavy and the writer was desperate to change the subject.

A lot of people complained about this and the defense basically amounted to "It's not that the Doctor doesn't care about Graham. She just doesn't always know what to say.". My problem with it isn't that she didn't know what to say, but that she didn't try. Again with The Mysterious Planet. Six was also socially awkward and didn't know what to say to comfort his companion, but he tried. It didn't work, but he tried. And there wasn't a tonal whiplash, since Six not understanding why Peri's upset wasn't being playing as a joke. Thirteen can be socially awkward. She can admit to being socially awkward. But, what you had in that scene with Graham was a poorly timed joke that, because the show tried to lighten the mood, made it feel like Thirteen wasn't taking things seriously. That clearly wasn't the intent, but that's what felt so wrong to so many people.

So, she's about as far from Two as you can get in terms of social skills.

But, the fact that she is so self-aware, insecure in a way that previous incarnations weren't, feels like a very human trait. So despite everything I've had to say, she's still just shy of the top three.

Eleven

Quirky Moffatisms at full force. He is silly, acts like a child, comes with several wacky catchphrases, and sales of bowties in the real world increased about he said they were cool. That was supposed to be weird but the world changed for him.

Eleven is better at connecting to his companions than Thirteen, so I wasn't quite sure which to put first, but Eleven has more in common with the two I haven't gotten to yet. Thirteen didn't really have the confidence to pull of the "angry god" thing that some incarnations, especially in the the new series, sometimes do. She had her lapses in sanity and could be downright cruel during those lapses but it felt more like "the Doctor is having a bad day" than "Do Not Piss Off This Eldritch Horror". When Eleven snapped, it felt like the Wrath of God. No human could really do that.

There's a reason I call this one category of Doctor the Wacky, Zany, Fun-Time War Criminal. They're the silliest Doctors, but also the ones that are the scariest when angry.

Eleven is heavily inspired by Two, but I also tend to see him as combining traits of Seven and Ten. He's high energy and high intensity like Ten.

As for Seven, who was also based on Two, well, there are Eleventh Doctor moments that are basically their own versions of Second and Seventh Doctor moments. Victory of the Daleks has the "Daleks pretend to serve humanity to win their trust so they can take over" lifted from The Power of the Daleks, but while Two was scared of the Daleks, Eleven was enraged. In Two's case, it was because this was his first story. One rarely expressed fear quite this openly, which made it clear that 1. Two is different from One and 2. Daleks are serious business. For Eleven, it was something of a rehash of Nine torturing a Dalek in Dalek. Victory of the Daleks is made up of little moments stolen from better stories.

However, a deliberately similar moment isn't necessarily stolen. Sometimes, it creates another opportunity to compare and contrast. So, let's talk about Seven.

Seven

He's got all the clownish behavior of Two and Eleven, but he comes across as more alien from his tendency to act like a supervillain from time to time. It's all part of the plan and sometimes he screws his friends over along the way. Of course he still cares. Ace is still his Space Daughter. But, sometimes sacrifices have to be made to save the universe...

So, we did a Two vs. Six. vs. Thirteen on the subject of Comforting Companions. Now it's Two vs. Seven. Eleven in Betraying Companions.

Okay, not really. But the companions are made to feel betrayed, whatever the intentions behind it were.

The obvious two to compare are The Curse of Fenric and The God Complex. This is one of the more obvious "new who just does a classic scene" moments. Both stories have a reoccurring theme of faith, which has an effect on the Monster of the Week. The Curse of Fenric has one of the many varieties of Doctor Who Vampire that are repelled by faith. It turns out that the sign of the cross only worked on vampires because it was used by devout Christians. Any sort of faith works. A Soviet soldier repels vampires with a hammer and sickle badge because of his faith in Communism. The Doctor starts listing the names of past companions to repel them because he has faith in his friends.

Jumping over to The God Complex, we have a sort of Minotaur thing that eats faith. There's this weird prison hotel thing where people are shown their worst fears. Everyone has a room with a fear in it. Except for Rory. He's experienced all the Horrors and came back from the dead so many times that he doesn't care anymore. People who have some sort of faith tend to think of that faith when scared for their lives. So, the fear leads to faith, the Minotaur converts that faith into worship of the Minotaur and then it kills people.

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory end up in the prison hotel with a group of other random people. There's a gambler who believes in luck, a conspiracy theorist, a Tivolian, who are a culture of strategic cowardice, and his faith in his oppressors oppressing him, and a sane woman who is a devout Muslim. They all get picked off one by one.

Then we have the companions. Eleven has two with him, but Rory just kind of hangs back for this one. You have Ace and Amy. A names are apparently unlucky.

As companions who jumped at the chance to be companions, Ace and Amy have faith in the Doctor. In The Curse of Fenric, you'd think this would be a good thing, since it keeps the vampires away, but because of Reasons it becomes necessary to turn the faith off to save the universe. In Amy's case, her faith is putting her at risk of getting eaten by a minotaur.

So, the Doctor has to break his companion's faith in him.

But I also mentioned Two, so let's derail things even further to talk about The Evil of the Daleks. It's not as direct of a comparison, but I want to bring it up because the Doctor betrays a companion's trust and challenges his faith in him. In this case, it's Jamie. The Doctor tricks him into taking part in a Dalek experiment to discover the Human Factor, all the things that make humans special, so they can understand the people who keep beating them.

The Evil of the Daleks softens the blow. We see the build-up to the Dalek experiment from the Doctor's perspective. The Daleks demand that Jamie be used in the experiment. The Doctor asks why it has to be him and not some other human. The Daleks say that traveling in time makes Jamie unique. The Doctor asks why they can't just to the experiment on him, and since a later plot point in this serial is dependent on the Doctor NOT being human, I'm going to just say he was lying here. The Doctor's traveled in time too much, apparently.

So, the Doctor did everything he could to keep Jamie out of it, including lying to put his own life on the line. This was an absolute last resort and the Doctor tries to make the most of.

But, Jamie wasn't present for any of this, so all he knows is that the Doctor put his life on the line working with the bad guys.

So, it's not quite the same as the later Faith Breaking stories. The Evil of the Daleks feels more like a misunderstanding.

So we go back to Seven and Eleven. Seven breaks Ace's faith by claiming not to care about her, that he was just using her this whole time, and that he doesn't care if she dies. It's absolutely brutal. With Eleven, it's more about recklessness and incompetence. He failed to protect Amy. He let her down. He put her in danger knowingly, because he likes having companions and he cares more about having their company than about their safety. He keeps talking people into running off with him to see the universe, only for terrible things to happen because it wasn't safe. The Doctor knows it isn't safe, but he just can't stop endangering people's lives. It's more complicated, a deconstruction of the Doctor/Companion dynamic, but it seems like a last minute confession, like the Doctor is breaking down in the face of losing another companion. In the end, he did deliberately say what he needed to to break Amy's faith, but it doesn't seem quite so cold.

Eleven doesn't usually have master plans. He's just willing to get very dark in certain situations. Seven plans ahead, so you can't know just how long he was planning to emotionally destroy the teenager he sort of adopted. That also adds to the brutality. Ace's faith in the Doctor is more like a child's faith in a parent. Eleven was Amy's imaginary friend who turned out to be real, so it's a more abstract faith.

Okay, I've gone on an on and on about so many things. Let's wrap this up.

Four

Four is big and loud. His hair, his eyes, his teeth, his impressively long scarf...You can't not pay attention to him. He looks a bit silly, but he can also be a little intimidating. You have all the quirkiness of the Doctors we already mentioned, but with an added sense of authority. Everywhere he shows up, he just sort of takes over. Two and Seven will just blend into places at times, put Four doesn't need to. He walks in, offers people jelly babies, and starts asking about what's going on. People tell him. It's refuge in audacity. People are too confused to even ask questions and they just start following along.

If you take the idea of a renegade Time Lord: There's a powerful species of aliens and this one went rogue to travel the universe and help people, Four perfectly fits. He's authoritative, like you'd expect a powerful person to be, weird and distant from humans, as you'd expect an alien to be, and chaotic, like you'd expect someone acting in defiance of the ultimate Lawful Neutral Bordering on Evil.

Four is alien in a very specific way that might be the entire show, so yeah, he's the Most Alien Doctor.

This thing's really fucking long I'm sorry...

[noblecorgi]

An ask game for writers to procrastinate working on your WIP(s)

It took me forever to do this because the Tumblr iOS app won't let you copy/paste an entire post, only a paragraph (what the heckle freckle?!)

So thank you @ic3-que3n @thewholelemon @shrekgogurt@youarenevertooold and @aristocratic-otter. I had to actually get my personal laptop out because I don't use Tumblr on my work laptop. That's how much the tags meant to me.

1. 🦈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s):

On The Rocks, the first six chapters of which are out!

2. 🍄Describe your WIP/one of your WIP(s) in the format of “___ + ___ =___”

Rapunzel + Snowbaz = Natasha and the Mage both suck

3. 🌍What tags or warnings will one of your WIP(s) need if you intend to share it?

Northern Irish TrAuMa

4. 🧭An alternative title to one of your WIP(s)?

On The Rocks was almost called Eyes of Claret Red

5. ⚠️Which WIP your most likely to finish or update next?

On The Rocks, or my beta will hurt me.

6. 💾What is your document of your WIP/ a WIP called? (not the stories actual title but what you’ve saved it as)

So when I started On The Rocks it was very very vaguely inspired by The Devil Wears Prada, so I named it the Vampire Wears Prada, but fat fingered it as VWWP, so then it has become a joke with my beta that it is called VWVWVWVVWVWWVVVVVVWWWWP.

Most of the chapters are saved as a key smash of VWP.

7. 🖍Post Any sentence(s) from your WIP.

What the? He didn’t even say what he wanted. She just knew. I’ve seen Gran do this. It’s like posh magic. Like they don’t need to do anything, just wave a posh  hand like a wand and the world reacts. I can’t do it. Don’t have the voice. Or the…I dunno aura.

8. ♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP.

An earlier sketch had Fiona and Nicodemus much more prominently featured. Nicodemus doesn't even show anymore.

9. 🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet?

I grew up in the tail end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and I have a sketch of a Snowbaz in the Troubles story. Simon would (obviously) be from a prominent Republican family, while Baz would be the heir to the most prominent Unionist one (*cough*the Pitches are the Paisleys *cough*). Large bits of it are essentially reworking my dad and his siblings' experiences through the 70s and 80s.

10. 🤡How many WIPS are you actively working on?

I'm actively working on one, and feeling guilty about not working on another. But I have a document of ideas I've had that I add to periodically and sometimes I randomly write a scene from them.

That document has 6-7 in it.

11. 🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now?

The balance between realism in my portrayal of addiction, and actually moving the plot forward without it being too depressing.

12. ❤️Not a question, just a second Kudos to send.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Tagging @monbons @palimpsessed@prettygoododds@ileadacharmedlife @messofthejess @martsonmars

[himbeereule]

hey there- as an autistic person myself, I do appreciate that it is an option, but I am concerned how it is implented; while I also feel people often don't say what they mean, my personal 'awkwardness' stems less from "I can't read their face" and moreso "I do not know what to talk about that will not make them upset with me or otherwise embarrass any of us" and so I tend to mold myself into what I think the other person wants.

(sidebar: I was trained to read faces/body language from a young age, by my dad who was definitely undiagnosed)

I also have some friends who are not autistic, but have social anxiety, and thus are awkward in conversation. I also have some friends and family who appear and identify neurotypically, who just don't grasp smalltalk or serious conversation very well.

including the autistic experience of "can't read expressions" is genuinely commendable, but in this current demo, it is equated both as 1) the Only reason someone could be uncomfortable with social situations and 2) the only option (as I have yet seen) that allows you to claim being autistic, when there are many other facets to it as well

I am not suggesting you remove it, but maybe it would be reasonable for the "awkward at social situations" option to lead to further options reading (for example) "Yes- autistic (not confident reading faces)"/ "Yes- autistic (not confident speaking)"/ "Yes- autistic (both)"/ "Yes- social anxiety"/ "Yes- other"/ "No, go back"

you do not have to publish this, nor is it intended to be read as "you should not be writing"- I am just trying to acknowledge that I kind of felt alienated by the assumption that autistic people like me wouldn't be considered autistic by the game, without sacrificing what is (to me) a very favored part of reading interactive fiction.

in reality, we can all get things wrong. but in fiction, it is nice to be able to believe we are getting it right 9/10 times- or even leaving it a little vague instead of claiming to be all-knowing.

I really like this demo overall, and simply ask that you consider more freedom for folks to see themselves in it- not even all at once, but over time.

Things I like (to try to convey my sincere enjoyment on the rest):

-Sasha telling me his dream (mothra v godzilla right?)

-Yakov/ Yasha is a delight- and very relatable at first meeting!

-incredibly cool selection of weaponry!!

-the little moment with the guard who hands us water when we are choking on bread (very sweet)

-horse customization (I never truly got into the equestrian lifestyle, but some of my earliest memories involve a family friend and her horse. I love being able to recreate him when I can<3)

-the option to be as defensive/peaceful as possible, and the way some people showed sympathy for the army (quite realistic imho)

Hey there-

first off, the autistic route is woefully underdeveloped right now. You basically only get a special set of reactions to Lavrentiy's rudeness and a meltdown after rising from the dead.

However - I won't change the direction it's in right now. The autistic experience(TM) differs for pretty much everyone, and in order to write it comprehensively, I will first continue to model it after my own.

Which means it'll roughly develop from "too clueless to be anxious" over "learning social conventions and thinking you can do it", then "realizing you're messing up all the time actually", and ends in "pretty much capable of 'normal' social interaction but too insecure/anxious due to prior experiences".

Nonverbal is already an option, autistic MC not being able to read faces is forced at the beginning (but MC will get better at it over time), and awkward is implied in the clueless phase and explicit in the last phase.

I may consider making the route more 'modular', with choosing which general symptoms you display at which phase of the game, but a) I don't know if this is really realistically doable and b) right now I definitely don't feel confident writing about autistic experiences that differ from my own.

(I'm very happy someone got the Godzilla/Mothra reference btw ^^)

[the-banana-0verlord]

Hi about my request, I think I explained it wrong, sorry English is not my first language so the grammar confuses me :'), I will summarize it better: headcanons for pomefiore dating a reader whom they met in nrc as a naughty and rebellious person but after graduating, she was discovered by a talent agent, thus becoming an iconic and rebellious model who breaks the beauty schemes known as an "anti-super model" ~ (an example of what I mean is kate moss or cara delevigne uvu) thanks you <3

Thank for the request and don't worry, I understand, english isn't my first language either.

How the Pomefiore boys would react to a rebellious reader becoming a rebellious model after graduation.

Note: Gn reader, F in the chat for the photographer who lost his job because Rook is a lovesick puppy.

💅��💅

Vil Schoenheit

💅Your rebellious demeanor had always irked him. He viewed you the same way he viewed Epel.

💅He was the first to find out you had been hired by a modeling company. It had been a surprise since you had always rejected beauty standards.

💅But he also saw it as an opportunity of collaboration. You were both old NRC students, so you working together would catch a lot of attention, especially considering your newly found popularity.

💅You hesitate on the offer at first, because he embodies the very things you work so hard to pass through. You were convinced after a long monologue from your manager.

💅When he sees you again after all these years, he can't help but to gaze at you, mesmerized. He didn't remember you looked so breath-taking.

💅Let's say he's open for more collabs in the future.

🏹🏹🏹

Rook Hunt

🏹Oh, how beautiful unfiltered fierceness!

🏹Contrary to Vil, he always knew you had in you the potential to become an idol.

🏹He is first to take part in your fanclub.

🏹You came in contact again at an old student reunion. He came at you for an autograph.

🏹You're suspicious, because you don't exactly know him. All you had was a vague souvenir of sharing some classes. But he has a charming side that puts you quite at ease.

🏹After that, you keep contact and quickly become best friends.

🏹Once, you invited him to one of your photoshoots. He kept giving the photographer advice on how to capture your beauty in the best way possible.

🏹Your manager was so impressed he hired him as your new photographer, which couldn't make him happier.

🍎🍎🍎

Epel Felmier

🍎Back at NRC, you were true partners in crime, always causing trouble( making Vil often bust a vein.)

🍎 He's snarky when he learns you've become a model, because you both shared your aversion for the world's beauty standards.

🍎But he stops when he sees how hard you still reject the social ideology of beauty in favor of other qualities.

🍎To reminisce your past friendship, he invites you over for a weekend in his hometown.

🍎You got along as if the years had never past and you were still troublemakers at Night Raven College.

🍎You offer to make some publicity for his shop as a thank you, which was received bitterly at first because he didn't want to use your fame for his own benefit.

🍎But you insist and he finally gives in. He ends up grateful, but intends to repay you you with more trips to his home.

🍎Maybe you could even stay there permanently.

***

I hope you enjoyed!

Have a good day/night!