#wow it's been almost 4 years on T

[famewolf]

about to have my last doctor appointment for the foreseeable future. losing the health insurance I have had for three years with my job.

[pinkslaystation]

His name is Ghost.

Toxic!Ghost and ...not you

You're friend wants you to meet a special someone, and he happens to be closer to you than you think. Literally. Word Count: 4.3k

"Yeah he's great, you should come meet him! Although I dunno, he said he wanted to keep 'us' a secret..."

You look up from your laptop at your best friend Michaela, who has blabbering about her new fling for an hour now. You hum in acknowledgment, but come on ... you're not really listening.

"And he has a sick motorcycle, but he's never let me on it..." She drones on.

"Uh huh."

"And he said I would look prettier with longer hair! Which I think means he finds me already a little pretty...?"

"Wow, I agree..."

"And- YO ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?"

You shut your laptop and focus wholly on her. "Mickey I love you, but this is the eighth guy you've loved this year. Whose to say this is gonna work out?"

Mickey sulks into your bed as you lecture her, finally being able to pour out your emotions.

"The last guy, who you planned a wedding for, you ended up dumping 'cos he reminded you of wet ketchup." You complain, moving your hands around over-dramatically. "And the dick before that, couldn't even pronounce your name correctly-"

"To be fair, Mickey is quite a hard name-" She butts in.

"It's a fucking Disney character, for Christs sake, who the fucks Missy? Listen, Mick, I'm happy for you, but you keep on dating douches, and then a month later, you come back crying to me about it. This isn't good for you or for me, you know how busy I am on this thesis."

Mickey's face contorts to a look of displeasure and betrayal, her eyes squinting as if she's trying to restraint the tears that look like they're about to burst in a moment.

She looks away before recollecting her thoughts, "I- I just thought you'd be happy for me-"

"I am Mickey! I really am! But it's like you search up 'world's most toxic asshat' and decide to bone the dude. They never treat you well Mick...come on, even a blind guy can see that..."

Your friend looks down, playing with the hem of her jumper, as if she's carefully considering your words, but you know her enough to know that she doesn't care for her advice. 4 weeks from now, and shes going to be sitting on your bed bawling her eyes out over another prick.

"You really are the worst, you know that?" She mumbles almost inaudibly, before getting up and heading towards the door of your dingy flat. You call out her name, telling her to come back, but give it a month, she'll come back trying over a different person.

It's a dark stormy Friday night, not even a week since your last contact with her, and there's already a brash pattern of knocks bombarding at your door. You look up from your laptop, almost a quarter into your thesis.

I swear if it's my fucking landlord again... You think as you grab a bat to protect yourself with, Mickey always complains about how dangerous your neighbourhood is.

You sigh out of relief when you peer through the peephole, it's Michaela...but she looks hysterical.

"Mickey...hey listen, I didn't mean what I said..." You start when you open the door to her furrowed eyebrows and hiccuped sobs.

"H- He- He keeps ghosting me-" She tries.

"Mickey, what's going on, who-"

She digs her face into the nook of your right shoulder, and your sharp nose detected the slight smell of booze, "Saw him at the grocery store, b-but he ignored me."

"Michaela honey, sit down. Okay what's going on." You bring her to your bed.

And so she tells you all about it. About the new guy that she's been seeing for 2 weeks now, how she met him at a new bar opening in your area, about how he sweet talked her into buying her a few drinks, and how he drove her home like a real gentleman. Your face scrunches when she accidentally spills about the part how rough he pounded her in her bedroom, with both her wrists tightly gripped and bound by one of his large callous hands, as he bent her over her desk.

The skillful way in which he dug his hips into her ass, 'thrusting into her like God told him to' as she put it. You mumble a little blasphemous when you hear that part.

A few more, 'Oh the dick was so good, I can't, I'm obsessed' and 'He fucked me like my future husband would', and she finally stops, her train of tears coming to a halt and she blankly stares at your ceiling, laying on your bed.

You nod dimly, not knowing whether to use the pep talk that you'd used for the last guy.

"What's this guy's name again?" You question her.

She shrugs, without energy, and the idea of injecting with a tranquiliser faintly disappears from your mind.

You look at her with amusement. "What do you mean-" you shrug, mocking her actions, "Does he have an ugly name like the other guy...what was...oh, Lester?"

Mickey snorts, looking up at you, "Lester didn't know how to eat me out, like he did."

"You don't need to bring up every sexual detail, Mick..."

"Sorry virgin..." She huffs.

You cringe at her, "Okay, so what's his name, it can't be as bad as Lester." She doesn't respond, her eyes tearing up again, "Um, okay, Imma say some names, tell me if I get it. James, John, Joseph, Jeremy, Jeremia-"

"Why are they all J names?" She mutters.

"Uh hello, you barged into my flat at 11 P.M. and you're drunk, considering how toxic this guy is, it's gotta be a J name. Jerome, Jude, Javon, Julius, Jason-"

"G." She stops you.

"G? Jason with a G...what the...Gason? Yeah, girl, if his name was that ugly, I'd be crying just as hard at you-"

"NO UH." She shouts so loudly, dragging her words, that even the gust of wind stops in fright. "His name starts with G...I think it does at least. He wouldn't tell me his real name...just a nickname."

You nod, as if in agreement, but you stop yourself because you've never been in a similar situation. As much as you love Michaela, you despise almost everything she does.

Like how in 2nd year of university, she missed an exam just so she could go on a date with a guy she was seeing. And she wonders why she had to retake that module over the summer.

There was also the time at your 20th birthday dinner, where she uninvitingly decided to bring her fling for the month, and no, you couldn't the food given the amount of time they decided to share saliva right in front of you.

"Wow Mick, your standards be dropping like this economy." You kid, although some part of you really questions how much truth lied behind that, "So, hit me. Who's this guy you've been seeing. Tell me about him."

"You for real?" She smiles sweetly at you, and for a second, every bone of hate towards her actions wash away. At the end of the day, she still is your best friend, and you should support her decision no matter what. That's what friends do, no?

"Yeah. I'm sorry. What's his name...or nickname? What do you call him?" You hold her hands, rubbing above her thumbs.

She sniffs a bit, but her smile doesn't falter, and her cheek blushes at the mere thought of him.

"His name is Ghost."

It's official. This was the worst guy Mickey has dated.

You've made a list of all people she's been with, ranking them with how well they'd treated her.

Okay so, Derek was a pass, he cheated on her with the Philosophy professor...literally worst degree ever. What kinda dumb career can you even go into with that.

Then there's Jonah, reaaaal bad boy, but he screamed like a girl and was way too deep into feminism. Pass, how do you manage to mansplain feminism??

Marc, aspiring footballer. You know what, smash, he was fine, I'll give her that. But then he left to play for Spain and never texted back... But he had dimples, so I'd forgive him.

Oh how did I forget Oliver. Auditioned to be a k-pop idol but lied about being Korean the entire time...pass for sure.

GAAH! There all so trash!

And yet there's another member on this list. Nameless, faceless 'Ghost'.

"What does he look like?" You begin your interrogation.

"Dunno." Mickey shrugs.

"How old is he?"

"Dunno."

"...Career?"

"Dunno."

"Dunno as in you don't know, or dunno as in this freak's unemployed?" You rub your temples in frustration.

Mickey sighs seeing how annoyed you are, she begged and dragged you out of your flat into the bright lights and atmosphere of a cafe.

"I think he's loaded, he-"

You sigh, "You said that about the last guy, and that was just because you couldn't see the minus sign on his online banking app."

"Can you not get annoyed at me for a second? This is my potential husband for all I know." She says exasperatingly.

"Ah yes! Your husband is a nameless, faceless, jobless knobhead who you've had sex with once, talked to...ONCE. Remind me why you're so hooked on this guy? Here's a challenge, don't mention his dick."

An elderly lady sitting on the table besides you two, grumbles and leaves after hearing that.

"...Can I have a sip of your frappe?"

"Oh would you look at that! Princess Mickey DOES know how to ask a question! You couldn't just, I don't know....ASK for his name? Don't act like this was the hardest thing you've done, remember when you considered proposing TO A MAN-"

"The only hard thing about Ghost...was his penis."

The cafe goes silent when she blurts that out.

You sigh for what felt like the 100th time that hour, and you lean in to whisper to Mickey, "Mick, it's been just over a week since you've last seen him- whose to say you'll see him again?"

She rests her head in her hands, clenching her eyes shut at the thought. "I thought I'd run into him again, I don't know...Am I stupid for wanting him so bad?"

Yes, yes you are. You want to say. But you bite your tongue.

"nOoOoO, oF cOuRsE nOt, gah, why'd you say tha- yes. Yes, you are." So much for trying, "You don't even remember what he looks like, are you sure we're not stuck looking for a character out of one of your sex dreams?"

Mickey leans in so close to you, that you can smell the coffee breath.

"I know I was drunk, but I swear, I woke up and there was hickeys all over my neck-"

"But you said he was wearing a mask-" You're interrupting her and you can tell it irritates her, with her eyebrow twitching.

"Yes, but I don't remember-"

"What colour was the mask?"

"Uh, black."

"Was it a surgical mask or a balaclava?"

"Um, a baklava."

"Bitch, that's a pastry dish."

"I CAN'T! I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!" Mickey screams, standing up so abruptly, everyone in the cafe stops and turns.

You gasp, purposely loud so everyone can hear, "Are you breaking up with me...because I'm homeless?" All of the cafe goers murmur to each other at the scene in front of them.

"We were at your flat an hour ago, you fool- come on we're going." Mickey hisses, dragging you out the cafe, uncomfortably smiling at all the people that looked at you with sympathy, "No, don't feel bad, apparently a thesis is more to important than my future husband."

The walk home was pleasant, with Mickey hooking her arms around of yours, onlookers may have assumed that you two were a couple. But overall, it was nice being in her presence without the mention of any men.

"Hey look, the room next to yours is vacant. Maybe I should move in!" Mickey points out, when both of you have made it down the stairs of your building.

"I don't want you that often, jeez." You joke.

And for a while, your days do seem to be getting better.

It's been a month since your little cafe date, and you're still stuck at home grovelling through your tedious thesis.

The good news is, you're about 3 quarters in, the bad news is, your new neighbour has no apparent spatial awareness, having blasted his rock music through the floor. Unlucky for you, there's only 3 apartments on the floor of your building: you, Mr Feldman (who you're sure is deaf considering he hasn't made any complaint from the noise) and you're new neighbour, whom you've never met but already hate.

"TURN DOWN YOUR MUSIC DUMBASS." You bang on the door of your neighbour.

Yet no one opens the door and apologises.

In the evening, the noises get worse. Instead of rock, it's a combination of Weeknd songs and the loud female moans and bed shaking next door. Once you'd heard voices that had belonged to 2 women, so you deduced that you lived next to a sex-crazed lesbian.

"Mr Feldman, how are you okay with it?!" You complain. You've had enough of the noise, especially the headboard banging since it seems your neighbours bedroom is just a wall away from yours.

"Okay with what, sweetheart?" The elderly gentleman croaks out, standing at his doorstep.

"The noise! You don't hear the loud ass music?" You groan, having being repeating yourself for a 2nd time.

"Yes, the music is ass, but it isn't loud." Mr Feldman says, his finger tapping at his chin, comically pondering with his jurassic-age brain.

You roll your eyes, walking away and towards your own room, "How- I feel forgetting how old you truly are...."

"I heard that."

"I really doubt you did." You shut the door on him.

This is a real issue, not like the ones Mickey has with men, you can't focus on your thesis, this could seriously jeopardise your education.

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: have u talked to ur landlord

ᵇʳᵒˢᶦᶜᵏˡᵉˢ: duh i unleashed my inner karen, but he isnt doing anything cos this dick offered to pay almost double the rent for his flat

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: damn he loaded

ᵇʳᵒˢᶦᶜᵏˡᵉˢ: yet he cant afford earphones apparently

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: why dont u get him some

ᵇʳᵒˢᶦᶜᵏˡᵉˢ: wat

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: as a joke

ᵇʳᵒˢᶦᶜᵏˡᵉˢ: hm thats funny mickey

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: thanks who am i talking to again

So you did just that, you placed a pair of pink wired earphones in his mailbox... which happened to be right next to yours. And you waited.

And waited.

And a week later, and no response.

Your neighbour definitely doesn't know that he has a mailbox does he? A week since you're little prank, and yet you can still hear the music through the walls so loud, you think you've developed tinnitus. The throbbing in your ears is so painful, sometimes you feel phantom drips of blood running down your ear.

"Asshole doesn't even turn down the music. Come on, play some Beyonce at least."

Mickey snickers, she's on your bed texting other people.

"You're not even listening, are you?" You throw a pillow at her playfully to get her attention.

"Babe, it's 1 in the afternoon and I can't hear any music now, let's not start the day like this. Say, there's a lil get together in that bar down the road, you there?" She says, but you're not even sure she's talking to you as she hadn't looked up to you since saying that.

You crack your neck from exhaustion, "Nah I'll pass, need to finish a draft of my thesis and sen-"

"Blah blah blah, all I hear are excuses, thesis this thesis that." She rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, well you would have failed high school and university if not for me. So you paying with cash or card?" You boast.

Mickey gets up, dusting herself, "Listen I gotta dash, but I better see you there- it starts at 11."

"Woah, wait, which bar, who's going, what's the dress code- Okay you're gone."

And for a first time in a while, you're stuck in your room alone, without the loud obnoxious music and without anyone constantly whining at you. Peace and silence-

Hold on, what's that?

You press your ear against your bedroom wall, which is funny considering you usually complain about the noise. It's not music, it's more sultry and sexual. Deep and gruff moans escaping someone, and this time it's actually enjoyable to listen to. Nothing like those pornstar like squeals you were used to, no. This was more raw.

The way his voice broke at certain points combined with the lazy irregular slick noises, which you imagined to be his dick slipping through his tight, cocooned fist.

"Fuck, mhm."

That voice.

If this was the voice of your neighbour, you would have never complained about the commotion. Was this why Mr Feldman has no issue with the noise? Was he blessed with the intimidating whimpers next door?

You press further, ignoring the growing wetness pooling at your underwear. You could tell he started thrusting faster, his voice increasing in volume just a little bit.

You could tell he's close.

But some part of you wanted to deny him of this pleasure.

So instead of touching yourself with your neighbour, you're standing right in front of his door, banging against the door frame with all the might you can muster, you fear you might break it down.

The door opens.

And you're face to face with your neighbour.

And a minute the warmth between your legs actually makes sense. Because you're neighbour isn't a sex crazed lesbian...you're neighbour is a-

"Sex God,"

"Excuse me?" His voice is deeper when he's talking.

"... I said, oh God. Can you keep the music down?" You reroute your words, drinking in the appearance of this beast in front of you.

He's tall, maybe a few inches taller than 6 foot, with short dusty blonde hair, and a prominent scar running through his thin but well moisturised lips. And his jawline, wow, the Gods above must have spent eons perfecting his jaw structure-

"'m sorry. But uh, hey thanks for the earphones." He pulls out one of the hot pink earbud from his ear.

You blush, he had seen his gift, "Uh huh, how'd you know it's from me?"

"Y' think old man Feldman's gonna buy a bloke hello kitty earphones?" He kids.

"Maybe, it's 2024. Live and let live. Don't be shocked if you see Feldman walking around in a skirt." And you're surprised he laughs your joke, admiring the crease lines by his mouth when he smiles, almost forgetting that you had an imagine in your head that he was the worst possible neighbour alive...

"Cute." He comments, looking down at you.

"Me...? Or are you visualising Feldman....." You drag your words, until he laughs again, leaning onto his door frame and just then you understand why Mickey would chase guys the way she does.

"No, please, he's not my type. I lean towards um...cute, short neighbours."

"You're literally just describing Feldman, dude,"

"That's on me," he smiles widely at you, "If I had known it was you banging on my door, I'd 'ave opened it a while back." He flirts.

You blink at him, no ones ever flirted with you. What would Mickey do? No, she'd just snog him this very moment. I mean, what's stopping you?

"If I'd known you were my neighbour, I'd be banging you a while back. Wait."

There's a pause in the conversation and you're too scared to correct yourself. "I-"

But he cuts you off, letting out the loudest laughs at that you'd ever heard, almost as if he was cursed not to laugh and it had finally been broken. The type where he hand gently grabs your shoulder and you could almost feel the vibrations from his broad chest.

What a sight.

"You know what I meant." You giggle, wait, when did you start giggling?

His laugh ends in a fit of small coughs, "Didn't catch your name, dove."

You introduce yourself, opting not to sticking your hand out like you're in a job interview.

But he does it for you, placing one large callous hand in front of you, for you to shake.

"Simon." He says as he kisses the back of your hand.

You thought when you met Simon, that you two had bonded, like he was about to ask you out bonded, but alas you were wrong.

You laid in bed the rest of the day, intending to complete a draft for your thesis, yet instead you found yourself on Sims creating a family for you and your beloved Simon. And a short nap later, you wait up to over 20 notifications from your friend.

4 missed calls from ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: yoooo wru??? its 11:30

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: HOEEEE WAKE UP

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: fuck ur thesis come hereee im drunk

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: BABE THE GHOST GUY IS HERE NO JOKE

5 missed calls from ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: you better be dead

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: oml he saw me

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: black baklava btw

2 missed calls from ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: hehehehe im going back to his place

ᴹᶦᶜᵏᵉʸᴹᵒᵘˢᵉᶜˡᵘᵇʰᵒᵘˢᵉ: if i die yk where im at yh

Oh shit. It's past midnight, you try calling Mickey but her phone goes straight to voicemail, curse her and her DND.

You start looking for your keys, there's no way you're attending the party, you're just going to pick her up from whomever's place she's at and take her home.

"Mhm, doll, jus' like that."

You pause in your step. Mickey's safe right? A quick listen wont hurt anyone.

"'lil deeper pretty girl, yeah, like that."

Some part of you wishes it was porn Simon was watching, and that God was playing a cruel joke on you, introducing you to the prettiest guy you've seen, and now suddenly you're stuck hearing him fuck someone else? Yeah, you've heard it before but...this time it made you feel uneasy.

This time you knew who was behind the voice, you knew who was moaning. And forgive me, but you thought you had a connection, no? That talk earlier today...did it mean nothing?

And when did he suddenly become so vocal? What was so special about this girl than the others?

You stand still, with your ear pressed so tightly against the wall, you've probably left a mark against it. And his moans never stop.

And hers start. For a second you feel like you recognise the female voice, but through the slurs and hand-covered whimpers (you presume), you can't figure out if it was familiar to you or not.

You flinch when the head boards banging, and you feel yourself throwing every romantic thought you've had of this man when you hear his degrading tone towards her.

"C’mon, make yourself cum on my cock, dove."

You gulp hearing him use the nickname he gave you on someone else.

30 minutes of torture.

You stood against that wall, with your ear so firmly pressed, someone might have thought it was glued on. The only sounds you were focused on was his whimpers and you caught the way his voice broke when he spoke, and your infrequent breathes.

When the noises stopped, you stepped back in embarrassment. You felt so shameful practically peering into a man's sex life. How disgusting are you truly?

You reach into your pockets, feeling for your keys and your phone, suddenly remembering Mickey's whereabouts.

ᵇʳᵒˢᶦᶜᵏˡᵉˢ: just woke up

You lied. You couldn't ever tell someone of today.

ᵇʳᵒˢᶦᶜᵏˡᵉˢ: omw wru

You open your door, feeling the abrupt urge to surround yourself within nature after doing something so distasteful. And if it couldn't get any worse...

Simon's door opens.

One part of you wants to turn and see which lucky girl had the opportunity to getting plowed by him, and yet the other part knew you'd immediately crumble at the thought of it not being you.

"Oh my god! That's why this place looks so familiar....!"

You widen your eyes, your breathe getting caught once again.

"Mickey...?" You whisper, not even turning your head to look at the horror next door.

"Yes, it's me silly. Come here, want you to meet someon- oh can't walk, fuck." She giggles, barely conscious.

You turn your head towards her slowly, like a movie character.

It's Mickey in the flesh, wearing jeans and a black tube top that had been worn so sloppily, you were almost scared you were going to get flashed. She smiles innocently at you were half lidded eyes.

"Oh...I-"

A figure walks out, dressed in a blue-gray 3/4 sweater and a hood, and you swear you feel yourself sinking into the ground. Could this get any worse.

And your wishes were answered. Mickey turns back to press a vulgar, almost cringe-worthy kiss against his clothed jaw, and you shift your eyes down... to see his dark jeans... and the zip undone. You turn your head around, almost debating to ignore the couple and lock yourself into your bedroom until death overcomes you. Your darting eyes rest on his face, begging for him to say something to remove the awkwardness.

Yet, something about Simon was different...

His eyes bore deeply into your soul as if trying to read you, his once kind face contorted into a look of pure disgust, like he were looking into the eyes of a killer. This didn't look like the man you talked to this morning...

His eyes drag down over your crooked frame, a raised eyebrow twitching almost in mock sympathy. To make it worse, he had his arms crossed so tightly around him, he looked like the human epitome of a 'side eye'.

You pray to God it's the effects of alcohol. Or maybe you're the drunk one! Maybe you're sleeping and this is all just a dream, or nightmare...

You put your hands on the doorknob, wanting to resign yourself from this situation when your eyes drift back to Mickey, who seems to have taken the liberty of speaking.

"I want you meet the guy I was talking to you about. His name is Ghost."

First of all, thank you all for 6200 likes and 300 followers?!!!! THE BEST <3 Also, my writing schedule is so poor, I'll try to update as much as possible!! tags -> @lilliumrorum , @kxtz3 , @poohkie90, @rainlovesyou12 , @restrictionsapply-blog , @lunamoonbby , @nigthmar3moon , @thychuvaluswife , @itsnourm , @bubusi11, @chessecakelover , @owkittie, @cheomain , @corvusmorte , @k4es , @mandythemint , @copiasratscheese , @yyiikes , @funkyysho3es, @delta98-idk , @spankmydepression , @yourfavbabigirl

[fianllyclean]

Hey, bestie!

Maria, @taylorsmygirl13 and I both collectively feel like vomitting because we can’t believe that the tour is:

A. ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

B. IT IS ?! SO SOON?!

We have missed you so so so so so much. I think that everyone can collectively agree that when we left our final show on the rep tour that we didn’t think we would go the number of days it has been since we would next see each other. Almost 5 years, one pandemic, 2 degrees, 5 birthdays, 4 records, a bunch of happy times, a bunch of sad times, moving cross country, and new friends later, here we are about to embark on this new journey of tour!!!! I’m collectively just here to say how freaking much I am so thankful to be able to have tickets to the 2 shows that I was able to get. But most importantly that Maria and I are actually living a dream that we talked about for almost a decade. Being at opening Night! We are hecking excited to let all these emotions of the last 5 years out together and share this night with you, T. Maria and I became besties (I mean look at our prom pics in 2016 Lol, because of you.) She has taught me so much and led me toward some of my greatest accomplishments while always encouraging me to constantly keep pushing. I genuinely can’t wait for you to experience her radiant happiness that she emits into any room that she walks into, because every human deserves it. When you realize that she has been there on your side since 2006, at the age of 8 and is now 25. Wow what a journey and special relationship that is. She’s been there for every release day; midnight music video release, traveling hours for tour, spreading your message with her tiny students, and thanks to you, grown into the most successful and beautiful lady I know.

So excited to see you opening weekend at the Glendale shows!!!!

Glendale Night #1: Section C, Row 13, Seat 1.

Glendale Night #2: Section 129, Row 30, Seat 9.

Thank you for giving us a reason to see the desert 🏜️ 🌵, we wouldn’t go the middle of no where for no one else :)

We are so so so so so mega excited to see you and I want nothing more but for you and Maria to squeeze each other and share all these years of memories in conversation.

P.S. Tell Mer and Liv to not worry, I’m bringing Temptations for them and a special “nice to meet you” gift for Benji. 🐱🐈

WE CANT WAIT TO SEE YOU FRIDAY ☘️🇮🇪AND SATURDAY🪩🤠

@taylorswift @taylornation

[racergirl-112]

Push Me Over - Chapter 4: So It Goes...

18++++++***** MDNI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WARNINGS: SMUT. Mentions of death. P n V, unprotected (wrap it up folks). Oral receiving, fingering. but really this is the chapter you've been waiting for. 😘🥵🥵 *** I wrote this chapter to the song So it Goes by Taylor Swift**

(not my picture. Photo cred: Pinterest)

Dani got home a little later. She spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about Hugh and the super hot kiss they shared. The words he said to her, making her mind race. He had asked her to maybe get coffee and maybe if they did that and she got to know him, it would help get him out of her mind. She decided she was going to ask him that day. 

After the grueling day of filming they had, Dani saw Hugh walking back to his trailer and decided it was now or never. 

“Hugh,” she called out. He turned around, a smile crossing his face. 

“What’s up darlin’?” he asked. 

“Would you like to get coffee with me?” 

“When?” he asked. 

“Now? Or whenever you’re done?” she replied. 

“Let me get changed.” 

“Cool, I’ll be in my trailer.” 

As she waited for Hugh in her trailer, scrolling her phone, her heart began to race. It was going to be just the two of them. It’s fine. You’re just co-stars, maybe potential friends. Get him out of your system, he’s old enough to be your father. She was lost in her overthinking when there was a knock on her trailer door. 

“Come in,” she said, as the door began to swing open. Hugh walked in, wearing his signature tight black t-shirt and jeans. Goddammit he’s fine. 

“Hi darlin’. Are you ready?” he asked. Dani nodded. They began to walk over to where their cars were parked. “Want me to drive?” 

“That’s fine,” she answered. A smile crossed his face as he opened the passenger door for her. She had a surprised look on her face when he got in the car. 

“What’s the look for?” he asked with a laugh. 

“I’ve never had a guy do that for me before and I’m from the South,” she replied. Hugh started up the car as they took off. 

“Well, sounds like you haven’t been around real gentlemen.” The comment took Dani aback, but it made her smile as they looked for a coffee shop. 

A little while later, they found a perfect little coffee shop out of the way as they sat there together. 

“Other than you being extremely feisty and can fucking sing, tell me more about yourself,” Hugh started. Dani looked taken aback, but she was ready. She took a sip of her latte and began talking. 

“Well, I’m originally from Georgia. My real name is Danielle Olivia James-Levy, but because of the Levy acting family, I chose to go by Danielle James, my mother’s maiden name. I went to school for Business, thinking I wasn’t going to go into the family business, but fell in love with theater when I was there and got a dual major.” 

“Wow, beautiful and smart. I knew you acted, but I didn’t know you did theater. Is that where the singing comes from?,” Hugh asked, taking a sip of his coffee. 

“Yeah, it’s something I don’t get to do a whole lot of. I would do small shows in between acting gigs, while working a real job, until something happened. The singing thing on the other hand, that’s something I’ve done since I was kid. I’d walk around singing, enough for everyone to tell me to shut up once in a while.” She looked over at Hugh who couldn’t take his eyes off of her. “So, enough about me. How about you?” 

He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. “Well, there isn’t too much about me that you can’t find online. Well, other than what I mentioned to you the other day.” 

“I’m sorry you’re going through that. Do you want to talk about it?” Dani asked. Hugh’s eyes got soft, almost like sadness came through them. 

“We don’t have to sweetheart,” he started. 

“You listened to me and I promised you I’d listen,” a warm smile crossed her face. 

“Well, my ex-wife and I had been married for almost 27 years. We met back on a TV show in Australia. She was older and I thought she was out of my league, but it worked out. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to have biological children of our own, but we adopted two wonderful kids. Now that the kids are older and have their own lives, I guess during Covid, we were spending so much time together, it felt more like a friendship than a marriage and got worse during the writer’s strike. We did everything we could to save it, but we both felt like the relationship had run its course. It just feels weird.” 

“Like you’ve been in the relationship so long, you don’t know where to go next. I mean I’ve had my share of relationships, but nothing of that caliber. I commend you for making a relationship work in Hollywood, especially when you’re as big a star as you are.You just don’t see that anymore.” “That’s very sweet,” he answered. “I’m curious about something you didn’t mention. Shawn is your Uncle, how’s the relation work?” 

Dani took a long sip of her latte before beginning. “Well, My dad was Shawn’s older brother, but passed away in a car accident when I was 25. It was something we asked to keep out of the public and the reason I shelved my dreams for a while. My mom still lives in Georgia with her new husband, finally happy again.” She looked over at him and he had a surprised look on his face.

His hand reached across the table, grabbing hers. “I’m sorry about you dad, sweetheart. I lost mine in 2020, his eyes meeting hers. The more she was around this man, she was finding it harder to not want to be with him. Fuck the age difference. 

“Thank you. I’m sorry about your dad too,” she replied as he squeezed her hand. She kept looking over at him, not being able to take her eyes off of the gorgeous man in front of her and it looked like he was on the same page. “I guess it's getting late.” 

He nodded as they left the cafe and got into his car. He opened her door for her as he took off. He turned on some music and So it Goes… by Taylor Swift began to drift through the radio. She glanced over at Hugh driving and felt her heart racing, not knowing what was going to happen next. He caught her stare as his hand reached over and found her leg. They stopped at a red light as Dani went for it. 

“Hugh,” she breathed, coming over the center console and kissing him. He reciprocated, but then the light changed. “I’m sorry…,” she started. Before she could get the words out, he pulled the car over in a dark alley as he came over the center console and kissed her. Their lips and tongues in a hot tangled mess. Dani reached for anything she could, to be closer to this man. He pulled back and cupped her face. 

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop myself and I won’t unless you want me to,” he started. 

“Your place or mine?” Dani breathed. Hugh drove to his flat immediately. 

They all but kicked down the door to his flat as they stayed intertwined. The second the door shut behind them, Hugh picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. Her legs wrapped around his waist, as his hands cupped her ass, their kissing, feverish. 

As they fell on the bed, he braced himself above her, getting lost in her green eyes. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. She nodded her head as she sat up and yanked her shirt over her head followed by her bra and threw them on the floor. He followed suit and his shirt ended up in the pile on the floor. He went for the waistband of her leggings, slowly pulling them down with her panties. “Fuck,” he groaned, taking in the naked woman in his bed. 

“Pants off, Jackman,” she ordered, a smirk on her face. 

“Yes ma’am,” he replied, undoing his belt, and kicking off his pants and boxers, crawling over her. 

Dani propped herself up on her elbows and looked at the man in front of her. He may be 55 years old, but he was built like a fucking god. From the way his muscles bulged to the way his v-line was sculpted. Then she caught sight of the happy trail of hair that led to his perfect dick. God he was huge. 

He began kissing her lips before moving to her neck, making her arch into him. He liked her reaction as he continued down her body, to her breasts as he circled each peak with his tongue, while never breaking eye contact. 

“Fuck,” she moaned. He added to her pleasure as she felt the pad of his finger on her clit. 

“Sweetheart, so wet for me,” he groaned, moving down her body and to her pussy. His tongue began soft strokes, before he plugged right in. She cried out at that feeling as she grabbed for his hair as he pulled her down to the end of the bed to devour her even more. The feeling of his facial hair added to the pleasure. 

This man has experience. 

“I can’t…,” she cried out, letting her orgasm go. 

“God, you taste so good sweetheart,” he replied, wiping her juices from his beard and moving back over her. He stilled above her for a moment, realizing something. “Princess, I wasn’t planning on sex tonight, so I’m not prepared.” 

“I���m on birth control, Hugh. I need you too much to stop now,” Dani answered, pulling him down to her as their lips locked and she tasted herself on him. His long fingers found her soaking core as he began pumping just enough to get her honey on him as he stroked it down his cock. He grabbed ahold of himself as he teased her with his tip at her entrance. 

“You ready sweetheart?” he asked. Dani nodded as he began to push himself inside. He stilled for a moment at how tight she was and that if he began to move, he might just bust. 

“Move, please,” she begged. His hips began to move slowly, savoring every moment with Dani. The hold this woman had on him in a short amount of time was baffling, but god, did he feel something with her. Her lips on his, her nails digging into his back, the way she molded to him. 

Dani’s hip movements began to meet his own and he felt like he might be a goner. He grabbed her hands with his, interlacing their fingers, pressing them into the mattress sending them both spirling and fast. “God sweetheart, you are fucking perfect,” he said, kissing her. 

Her heart began to race again as electricity shot through her body at his words and his movements as she clenched down on him and hard. He wanted to be as close to her as possible as his forehead touched hers as he knew he was done for. 

“Fuck,” he groaned, as he chased his own release, white-hot ropes, coating her insides. He finished as he stayed locked on her, both panting and sweaty. The connection between the two of them, intensifying. He pulled out as their releases flooded out of Dani, turning Hugh on even more. He got out of bed to his bathroom to clean up and brought her back a towel. 

“Sorry, the old man hasn’t done this in a while, so I wasn’t prepared,” he said with a laugh, getting back in bed. 

“You’re fine,” she replied. 

“Come here,” he said, offering his arm. Dani moved over and cuddled into him as he kissed her forehead. “Did the old man do ok?” he asked. 

“More than ok. You were fucking phenominal,” she replied, drawing circles on his chest and feeling across his toned abs. “Can I tell you something?” He raised an eyebrow at her question. 

“Sure, sweetheart.” 

“First of all, stop calling yourself old man. Second, I may have known what you looked like from your movies, but until I saw you at dinner, I never knew how attracted I was to you. I went home that night and the night after you came to my trailer and got myself off to the thoughts of you.”

Hugh began stroking her hair. “Well, sweetheart, that’s definitely not what I thought you were going to say, but since the night of the dinner, I can’t be in a room and not think about the bad things I want to do to you.” 

“So, it sounds like we’re on the same page,” she answered, putting her head on his chest. 

“Yes sweetheart, it does,” he answered. Hugh interlaced their hands, wrapping his arms tighter around her, knowing that with Dani he felt a new chapter of happiness. 

[sicksadgames]

As the Sun Forever Sets - Terror in the time of the Telegraph

It’s nuts I’ve been working on this game for over 4 years at this point. As the Sun Forever Sets is for sure my biggest and most capital G Game. It even has a publisher and everything. It’s also my first game! Wow! It's been tough, though. We'll get into it!

Britain, 1899

As the Sun Forever Sets is a survival horror sandbox based on the War of the Worlds, utilises the Forged in the Dark ruleset, and is about ordinary people surviving a Martian invasion of Victorian era Britain. We play to find out how they rise to meet the storm of destruction, the ways in which it shapes them, and if they survive to see a new world emerge, or die amidst the rubble of the old.

In the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign, the British Empire stretches across a quarter of the globe, and under the guise of genteel progress and civilisation, it commits theft and murder on a global scale. Britain itself is on the verge of the modern era, the Second Industrial Revolution pushing people into the cities to drive the factories and forges owned by the greedy industrialist class. But beyond the common causes of humanity and unbeknownst to the men who impose their rule over it, vast wheels have begun their inexorable turning. Across 40 million miles of void, the Martian invasion hurtles Earthward. Screaming across the stars, instruments of annihilation unlike anything believed possible lie ready for assembly, alongside the Martians themselves. They are truly inscrutable beings, but their intent is as clear as it is terrible – they will suck the literal and figurative blood from the Earth, and nothing less than the complete and utter subjugation of humanity will be enough.

If this sounds cool to you... well, you gotta wait, it’s not done yet. Sorry! But you can come and hang out in the Sick Sad Games discord, where I post excerpts and occasionally organise playtests.

The Hard Times of (Old) England

Be warned, this is a long one - over 4000 words (if you don't have a Tumblr account, you won't get to the end before it starts bugging you to register one, so go read this on Medium instead.) It turns out when you work on a game for a long time, you have a lot to say about it. Strap in, grab your gin and laudanum, and let’s destroy an evil empire just by existing.

Thanks to the wonderful @hendrik-ten-napel for taking a look over my disorganised thoughts.

(Potential) Spoilers for: The Bear, The War of the Worlds, The Last of Us, Children of Men, Threads, When the Wind Blows, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, The Thing.

Roleplay in the Pre-Post-Apocalypse

TTRPGs love a good post apocalypse. It's understandable - gas up and ride glorious on the legally distinct fury road, run a commune of like minded weirdos in the ashes of the old world, go digging through retro-futuristic ruins to find retro-futuristic treasures. Who wouldn't want to do any of these? But As the Sun Forever Sets is about an apocalypse as it begins, not after it’s over. 

There's a lot of crossover, of course. There’s a focus on similar things - disaster and spectacle, relationships and trust, scavenging and survival. But the bonus of the world not yet being over, is that we get to roleplay out dealing with that terrible, inexorable reality.

HG Wells wrote a book about blowing up all the places he used to live, and it's a banger. I was surprised to find there wasn't a TTRPG based on the War of the Worlds, being the tantalisingly public domain ur-alien invasion story it is. As the Sun Forever Sets is very explicitly an adaption of it, to the point that before I came up with the name it almost got released as The War of the Worlds: The Roleplaying Game (lol). I'm glad I didn't, doing my own thing has meant both me and the people playing are way more free to fuck around without the expectation that it must adhere to a canon.

The book is good, strikingly modern feeling in parts, and obviously massively influential - so much science fiction can be traced back to our nameless Narrators tormentuous trek across the south of England. But Wells’ prose is typical Victorian - overly wordy and florid (any book that contains the word “ejaculating” meaning “to shout” might be difficult for readers who aren’t used to the style), so when it comes to recommending an actual adaptation, there’s only one true king. Whenever I bring up Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds, the usual reaction from anyone outside of the UK is to say "... they made a what?"

My mom was very keen to get me into musicals, but nothing really stuck until she tried this, the secret best War of the Worlds adaption (sorry Steven Spielberg, but you were doomed from the start.) It's the bombast and drama you'd expect from a disaster film, the horror and pathos of Wells’ classic, all expressed through vivid narration and sick nasty prog rock - wailing guitar and crunchy 70's synths operating at full effect. It's not completely faithful to the book, it doesn't matter. It’s the best.

Ah yes, the film bro's favourite mid 2000's film. Did you see that sick oner? That’s six minutes without a cut, that means the film’s good right? Children of Men is a slow burn apocalypse, dressed up like a world that’s already ended. Plenty has been written about all the little ways the film is prescient about the state of the UK - the slow belly-crawl into facism and nationalist fervour, the particularly British decay and class divide exacerbated by the desperate times, even the willful ignorance and the explicit sense that everyone’s just given up, it’s all here.

All that thematic stuff seems like it’d be really relevant to As the Sun Forever Sets, right?

Unfortunately, we are in fact here to talk about the long takes. The unbroken moment-to-moment action scenes evoke The War of the Worlds to a tee. Theo navigates danger with the same fraught tactical tension as War of the World's Narrator - dashing between doorways, groping for an axe handle in the darkness, desperately trying to start a car as assailants sprint towards him. What’s the best way out of this situation? How do I get from here to where I need to be? He lives his life in rolling, fleeting 5 second intervals, because he’s forgotten what it means to think in the long term - about the future, and what it might hold.

I was always fascinated and terrified by the idea of nuclear war. I guess it comes from watching a lot of 90’s disaster movies, but those are often ultimately fun romps where the day gets saved at the end, or at least the main characters find themselves alive and well at the end of the saga of destruction. Instead, As the Sun Forever Sets asks you to reflect on the horror and sadness present at the end of the world. Things are going to change forever, and change is always hard.

There’s not many clips of Threads and When the Wind Blows online, so it’s a little hard to demonstrate their particular nuclear inflected pitch black darkness. They’re grim - Grave of the Fireflies grim - differing in focus but united in their horrible impact.

When the Wind Blows is a story of an elderly couple living in rural England when the bombs drop, based on the comic by Raymond Briggs. Yes, The Snowman’s Raymond Briggs made a film about 2 lovely grandparents dying of acute radiation poisoning. Jim and Hilda are completely unprepared for what’s to come, their only reference is the Blitz - terrible in its own way, but not a patch on the scale of death they’re about to experience.

They survive the blast and wait for the good old British Government to arrive to save them, as it did in the 40’s. Slowly liquifying in the nuclear fallout, they hold onto each other and keep their spirits up, eventually making the decision to clamber into the paper sacks they mistakenly believed might protect them from the blast. Clutching their medical cards and birth certificates (for the ambulance, sure to be along any minute now), Jim mumbles painfully through a final prayer that morphs into a misremembered Charge of the Light Brigade, and they slip into a perpetual slumber together.

The most tragic part is Jim and Hilda’s unshakeable faith that their government is there for them - ready to catch them when they fall - borne out of Britain’s post WW2 renewal but absent in the 1980’s of the film’s plot, and the Britain of today. It’s a masterful film, shockingly sad, but the shock is the point.

Instead of aiming for your heart, Threads aims for the head. It’s a drama that aims to be as accurate as possible to government research into what a nuclear war might look like, plainly and forensically setting it out without any thought of softening these hard facts for its audience. Rather than focusing on a personal story, Threads flits around several groups of characters - minor government figures and ordinary families. Like Jim and Hilda, they too are woefully unprepared for the end of the world, and those in charge know there’s no way the UK could ever be ready for such a thing.

As mundane life is quietly intruded upon by news updates detailing far off geopolitics and the subsequent escalation that leads to war, the tension rises subtly then suddenly, like a spacecraft on the launchpad. People we’ve seen pottering about their normal lives are maimed and evaporated in the subsequent shocking nuclear exchange, whilst stark statistics flash on the screen - the hundreds of thousands instantly killed, how long the millions more fatally irradiated have left to live, the woefully inadequate tonnage of stockpiled food to feed those who survive. Each zero hits like a gutpunch.

And when you think the film must nearly be over, it keeps going. 1 week later. 1 year later. Threads grinds to an excruciating halt 13 years after the bombs fall, after year upon year of failed harvests from a destroyed earth barely able to support a population level equivalent to medieval Britain. At one point, mute children watch a warped and scratchy VHS of classic kids educational programme Words and Pictures on a TV powered by a steam generator.

The friendly presenter spells out the word “cat” through the thick veil of static, accompanied by a picture of one - an animal the children watching will likely never see. As they watch with blank, emotionless faces, the image of the cat fades to one of its skeletal form. “A cat’s skeleton” the presenter enthusiastically intones. The unrelenting bleakness might feel like a punishment, but Threads doesn’t mean it to be. This is just what would happen, after all.

Love in the time of the Heat-ray

In fact, someone in a Reddit thread said As the Sun Forever Sets “wasn’t just endless misery” and I’m glad that comes across. I wanted there to be moments of tenderness, quiet joy, anger, frustration, love and loss to punctuate the action and the horror.

People are messy and complicated even at the best of times. Under pressure, this is amplified a thousandfold - a little crush becomes a whirlwind romance, small disagreements become full blown fights, and not fully understanding someone might transform them into an enemy in your head.

The little town Bill conspires to be left alone in ends up comparatively untouched by the horrors going on elsewhere, as untouched as anywhere can be in The Last of Us. He hated the world anyways - so he isolates himself as he prepares for it to end, and it makes sense that his life only really begins as the show does. When Frank arrives, Bill is forced not to just engage with the broader world outside of his little enclave, but in the act of truly living in it.

There’s no prepper’s guide to romance. A human heart can’t be field stripped for maintenance. By choosing to exist as a vulnerable, emotional being, Bill opens himself up to a different kind of apocalypse. Frank becomes the flowering vines that slowly crack the flat concrete wall of a world that Bill created, and when those vines die, the wall can only crumble. It’s so fraught and lovely, delicately yet absolutely gut wrenching. At least their apocalypse was one they decided to have together.

“I’m old. I’m satisfied. And you… were my purpose.” - "Long Long Time”, The Last of Us

While several of my TTRPG writing friends were gushing about how great The Bear is, Em Acosta, author of the wonderfully inspirational Exile pointed out something super interesting - a lot of the show is about how you deal with people you’ve found yourself stuck with. No matter how much they piss you off, or whatever they do wrong, there’s something that means you can’t ever let them truly exit your life. They’re there, like it or not, until the bitter end.

Turns out this is very similar to how As the Sun Forever Sets handles Player Character relationships. In both it and The Bear, nothing’s ever truly resolved between characters - every relationship is like a cooking pot perpetually simmering. You might’ve apologised, made a truce, or just ignored your issues for so long that they seem to disappear, but no matter what, you’ve got to keep your eye on that pot.

Because suddenly a crisis will hit, and someone says something, or a diceroll comes up bad and all of a sudden the pot boils over and things are once again fucked. You storm out, start screaming, throw a fork. Even in the worst case scenario where a Character leaves because they’re absolutely sick of the rest of the group, they might show up at the end of the game for one last scene. Who knows how you’ll all feel at the end - nothing is ever truly fixed, and only the dead are truly broken. 

“I quit, chef, is what’s going on. You are an excellent chef. You are also a piece of shit. This isn’t on me. Goodbye." - “The Review”, The Bear

I’ve talked about The Thing a little before, John Carpenters sweaty, paranoid antarctic masterpiece. Along with the incredible effects and the (mostly) restrained use of action and bombast, the thing that makes... The Thing work is that the staff of the stricken research base lack any and all emotional intelligence.

It’s sort of the ultimate reverse Dudes Rock movie. Nobody knows anything about each other, so when their bodies and minds are colonised by the titular chameleon from outer space, they’re just another stranger to the rest of the crew. I’d ask you a question only you would know the answer to, but uh.. I don’t know anything about you. Whoops!

Over the course of the film, the whole operation falls apart as they try their best to work together to deal with the alien interloper, but their complete lack of ability to trust or relate to each other - present even before the crisis they find themselves in - is their ultimate downfall.

That final excellent shot of MacReady and Childs sat in the snow at the end of the film as their compound burns around them is the subject of a lot of unnecessary theorycrafting youtube videos, which kind of misses the point. Each suspects the other, but ultimately it doesn’t matter if one of them’s a Thing. One stranger is the same as another. Why bother getting to know each other now?

“Well...What do we do?” “Why don't we just... wait here for a little while? See what happens.” - Childs and Macready, The Thing

Science Fiction Revenge Fantasy

I’m not a historian, but the parallels between 1899 and now are pretty plain to see. Increasing class disparity, a lack of political will to help those in need, rampant cronyism and profiteering. As long as you’re in the place for it, roleplaying in a fictionalised version of the past to air out the issues of the present can be super fun and cathartic. You’re not expected to get a degree in British history to make it work, either.

The title is a play on the phrase “The Sun Never Set on the British Empire”, and it’s plainly stated in the book that Britains Empire acted as a mechanism of genocidal oppression, and that the Martians are here to end it - intentionally or not. It’s appealing as a premise on the face of it, but it goes a little deeper. Memories of Empire echo across time in Britain like the ringing of a malevolent bell, a cause celebre for braying Tories and fascistic right wing cunts (two very close circles in the venn diagram.)

We used to be a great country before this woke nonsense. Things were better back in the old days. The DEI contingent is trying to destroy our noble past. Yada yada yada, fuck offff. I’m sure someone somewhere will accuse me of “wokewashing” the past for including explicitly trans and queer characters as part of the book, along with the historical facts around how we fit into the oppressive Victorian conception of sex and gender. Unfortunately for them, we’ve always been here.

To be a little pretentious about it, every game of As the Sun Forever Sets reaches back into the past and cuts the myth of a glorious and benevolent Empire, and the good old days enjoyed within it off at the neck, purely in the act of beginning one. That sparks a little joy for me. Destroying a racists dream is fun, even if it’s only in the abstract.

A horror game about the most literalist Victorian industrialist imaginable hearing the phrase “Eat the rich” and getting right on that. I’ve not played Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs despite fond (??) memories of playing The Dark Descent in a room full of jumpy friends, and seeing Dear Esther played live on stage, with a live orchestra and narrator - an exquisite way to experience that game.

The mechanical chops of Frictional Games mixed with the narrative verve of The Chinese Room, how could this game be anything less than incredible?

After The Dark Descent I fell off’ve the “scary guy chases you around” genre of game until Alien: Isolation revitalised it, and the reviews of A Machine for Pigs were mixed - kind of boring, middling gameplay, too dark - so I never went back. I was planning on writing a little about its vibe - dark, gothic Victoriana that rhymes nicely with As the Sun Forever Sets - but after a bit of research, Mandus’ quest for his missing sons strikes an unexpectedly resonant and terrible chord.

The writing and voice acting is phenomenal, Mandus’ split consciousness - the self you play and the other half of him that’s seen the horrors of the forthcoming 20th Century and is compelled to act, imbued into the myopic machine he built - is extremely compelling. He feels compassion for the poor and wants to save them, but they fill him with fear and disgust. He knows the industrialist class is killing the world, but feels a deep shame in the fact that he counts himself amongst them. So his machine grinds the rich into meat for the poor, who it distorts into grotesque pig homunculi and forces them to operate the machine’s inscrutable workings.

It’s Mandus’ twisted way of saving the world - kill the rich for their crimes, enslave the poor for their own good, all hail the new machine/god/manager of the 20th century. It’s a neat reflection of the way modern politicians contort themselves to the whims of big business and AI snake oil salesmen to avoid doing the simple and obvious things that’d better the world. It’s a nightmarish refutation of Victorian Liberalism, that only the upper class know how to fix the problems of the lower class. It’s brilliant, and we should play it. 

"Do you hear me Mandus? This is what you planned! This world is a machine! A Machine for Pigs! Fit only for the slaughtering of pigs! Whores, beggars, orphans, filthy degenerates. Pigs all. But I will purify the streets, cleanse this city, set the great industry free. I will clean the world, make it pure." - The Machine, A Machine for Pigs

Song of the Year, of the Century

Not long after I came out as trans, I was asked what (in an ideal world) would make transition easier. I replied - never having to leave the house. One day I'd shut the front door as a man and another day, months or years later, I'd open it again as a woman, neatly sidestepping the terror of being perceived in a notoriously transphobic Britain.

In 2020 I shut that door and didn't open it for 4 months. At work, I remember calling the nearby shelter to donate our excess hand sanitizer and toilet roll, figuring out at the last second how support workers could take calls from their already isolated clients via their mobile phones, and fixating on the steady stream of scared coworkers leaving early. Tearfully, I felt the urge to hug those that remained as we locked up, before we remembered we probably shouldn't.

I've never been more aware of the minutia of moving through a space on the way home - How many people had their hands on this handrail? Have I touched my mouth or eyes without realising? Is anyone in the office already sick? Or on this train? How many more people are going to die? - My heart was in my chest, I heard the blood whoosh through my head to the beat of my steps on the pavement. At home, I realised my boyfriend had to go into work the next day. After he went to sleep, terrified he might die, I cried.

"I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this mysterious death—as swift as the passage of light—would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder, and strike me down." - "The Heat Ray", The War of the Worlds

Writing As the Sun Forever Sets was my way of coping with the disconnect with the world I felt, the fear of both Covid and the rising transphobia kept me inside even as the lockdowns eased. That feeling of throbbing death creeping at the window took a long time to wrestle under control, and getting deeply obsessed with a big project became part of that process. It seems incredibly maudlin to make a TTRPG dealing with darkness and death during a pandemic that killed (and continues to kill) millions of people, but I suppose I’m kind of a maudlin person.

“I haven't written a song in a month, So I'm playing the same chords again. I know I need to get lost in the moment, But I get lost before it begins. Fingers stretching out into space. Reaching as a thought slips away.”

It also burnt me the fuck out. After years of constant work and testing (beginning long before Evil Hat picked up the game), I ran out of steam. I spent the months after Evil Hat’s public playtest ended not really able to write anything ATSFS related at all. The game kind of froze - I knew what I wanted to change or fix or add, but the moment the google doc opened I couldn’t make myself start typing. It was incredibly frustrating to have the switch flip from endless obsessive writing to constant nothing, and I don’t think I truly recognised the burnout I was feeling until recently. It turns out spending years staying up past midnight writing is bad, who know!

A lot of Forged in the Dark games don’t get finished (or more accurately, get stuck in perpetual development), something that the excellent and dearly missed +1 Forward podcast recognised in their episode collecting their thoughts on the FITD games they looked at back in 2021. I think that’s because, at least to me, writing a Forged in the Dark game is like trying to hold a plate of spaghetti without the plate. It’s deceptively simple at its heart, but the system squirms when you poke at it - write one thing and it affects 3 other things. Tug one piece of pasta out and you lose a meatball without realising it.

When I listened to that episode, I took it as a challenge. Part of me now wonders if it was a curse. I'm being hyperbolic, of course. But a little part of me did think it might be better to give the game up.

That’s not going to be As the Sun Forever Sets' fate, thankfully. Evil Hat has been there to support me when I’ve felt guilty about shifting another deadline or replying to a check-in email with another late “Not much progress this month, sorry!” The frozen writers block is thawing, and I’m so tantalisingly close to finishing the final text. This blog is part of that process, another chip in the icy dam.

The wheels of dread Martian terror turn once again, and it feels good. Part of that is down to not beating myself up about a lack of progress. The more important part came when I realised I felt able to return to the world again - living in it, not hiding from it. Staying connected to it, even when there's times I'm not able to inhabit it physically. Covid, Britains particular brand of transphobic brainworms, and the shadow of Empire all continue to exist, and so do I - a weird maudlin transsexual woman - in spite of them all.

“The day seemed, by contrast with my recent confinement, dazzlingly bright, the sky a glowing blue. A gentle breeze kept the red weed that covered every scrap of unoccupied ground gently swaying. And oh! the sweetness of the air!” - “The Stillness”, The War of the Worlds

You made it!

Thanks for sticking with my messy thoughts. If what I talked about here sounds cool to you, please stop by the Discord, we'd love to have you. Look forward to seeing As the Sun Forever Sets come to a crowdfunding platform of Evil Hat's choice (I assume backerkit) at some point in the future ♥.

[technicolorfamiliar]

Well, it took me a year, but I watched a billion 50+ Conrad Veidt films. Some good, some great, some so bad that I hope I never have to see them again.

This post is a stand in for the entire second half of this filmic journey -- I'll link the original 5 posts that make up the first part below. But instead of reposting all of my reviews for all of these titles (the original posts for these are on Pillowfort), I'll just share some highlights below the cut.

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5

Bleaker and darker than I expected, but that makes sense if it's based on a WWI memoir. What happened to Martha was legitimately awful and hard to watch. Stilted performances aside, I would have also liked a whole separate movie about the lesbian spy aunt. But Commandant Oberaertz... [redacted]. He's so hot, despite the character being absolutely awful and creepy and intimidating. I actually said "wow" out loud about his body shape in that costume. That jacket is fitted within a millimeter of its life. How many other films did Connie use this lower register in? Not many, right? It's too much, TOO MUCH. I think this movie took ten years off my life.

I Was a Spy, 1933

Dir. Victor Saville

⭐3/5

Watched Feb 18, Snowgrouse's masterpost

Connie's performance in this is more sympathetic than it has any right to be. The movie very easily could have been sensationalist garbage, and I'm so glad it was handled with relative care and humanity. I liked his whole vibe, I am not immune to party boy Rasputin's charms; "he's got the kavorca, the lure of the animal!" He looks like he stinks, which in this case may not necessarily be a bad thing. I don't even know what to make of all the cooing and baby talk he does with Alexei, or for that matter Drunk!Rasputin dancing and climbing over furniture to get at his ladies. I wish we got to see more scenes with Rasputin and the royal family, how those relationships formed and affected matters of state. We only really get to know about any of that through dialogue among other court officials. And so the emotional turn at the ending was unexpected. The way he cried out after being shot, I've never heard a sound like that come from a human being. Needless to say I did not feel great when the movie ended, but I liked it way more than I thought I would.

Rasputin, Dämon der Frauen, 1932

Dir. Adolf Trotz

⭐3/5

Watched Mar 23, Archive.org

Almost all the performances in this are pretty excellent. The stripped back, realistic style with handheld, newsreel camerawork really suits these actors and the story. Apparently this is a remake of an English film which is based on a play, and it definitely feels like a play. I'm fascinated by this little movie, it's basically an anti-war film about British soldiers in WWI produced in Germany in the early 30s… how did this even get made?? Messages about the horrors of war aside, the homoerotic undertones (overtones?) alone make this a truly unique piece of storytelling for the time and place it was filmed. And those under/overtones are treated pretty respectfully, none of these men are the butt of a joke, how they are with one another is handled with a naturalism that isn't really seen again until maybe the 1950s. And Connie. The range. Can we talk about Stanhope? He's a gruff, messy drunk, a traumatized, hollowed out husk of a man. When Osbourne says something like "you'll be alright when this is over," NO HE WOULDN'T, HE'D BE WORSE. His relationship with Raleigh is interesting too, clearly they were more than casual friends. I didn't believe for a second that the tension between Stanhope and Raleigh was about the sister/fiancée, it's weak, weak I tell you. It's one of Connie's most underrated performances.

Die andere Seite, 1931

Dir. Heinz Paul

⭐3.75/5

Watched Apr 27, Snowgrouse's masterpost

Everyone in this movie looks like a Rankin Bass stop motion character. The ending was abrupt as fuck, Werner Krauss' Jack the Ripper got a lot less screen time and I wonder if they just tacked that onto the end after they realized they spent too much time on Emil Jannings' and Connie's characters. There's a lot of fondling going on in this movie, there's the guy with the bread in the first part, then Connie going all glassy-eyed caressing his globes. Ivan the Terrible is a certified DIVA in that diaphanous, white robe, even with the hard middle part and scraggly beard. What is he doing with his tongue the whole time, though?? Love that he crashes some random girl's wedding, lets her father get murdered by assassins, kidnaps her AND her husband, and brings them both home to his sex dungeon. Connie is doing the most -- the eyes, the gestures, all the greatest hits from his silent film acting tool box, he's whipping them out for this role.

Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks), 1924

Dir. Paul Leni, Leo Birinski

⭐2/5

Watched May 29, Archive.org

I didn't like this movie, I just wanted an excuse to post this screenshot. But it actually is a very silly little movie, with what must have been an enormous budget for costumes and sets, and it has some cute physical comedy. Sadly, Connie's in too little of the film to save it from being obnoxious. I did like the Czar's body double who just wanted to work on his needlepoint, and the Court Spanker who was clearly really into his job. And of course Metternich, that sly dog, that velvet-clad scamp. Between the all the foxy, gap-toothed grinning he does and the way he's going to town on that dialogue, he is as always a pleasure to watch. The English version is on Youtube somewhere, so I may go through that and pick out the time stamps for Connie's scenes because I don't think I could sit through this whole movie again, especially not that stupid fucking "Wien und der Wein" song, jesus christ.

Der Kongress tanzt, 1931

Dir. Erik Charell

⭐2/5

Watched Jun 23, Snowgrouse's masterpost

Apparently this movie was considered a flop, and Connie wasn't super happy with this role and others around this time. I think I must have had that info in the back of my mind somewhere going into this movie, because my expectations were pretty low. So, as usual, I actually wound up liking it more than I thought I would. It's a lot sillier than it has any right to be, but yeah it's ultimately a piece of fluff compared to some of the other heavy-hitting films on this list. I love when Connie has a comedic foil like the Marius character, but it could have been a lot better if the dialogue was snappier and the timing tighter. And Connie's character promises to be this bad bitch at the top of the movie, but all we get is one quick, poorly choreographed sword fight and a whole bunch of nothing after that. There's all this build up, I mean, the character is nicknamed The Black Death, and the movie never really lets the character live up to the name. It's a missed opportunity for sure. That said, the Puffy Shirt with the open collar "ensconced in velvet" (to risk yet more Seinfeld references), jaunty hat, knee-high boots with spurs look is really doing it for me. And THERE ARE PUPPIES. Perhaps the most delightful thing that has ever happened in cinematic history. I couldn’t believe it. Connie picked up the first puppy and said, "You big boy, you!" and I hate him, like full Madeline Kahn Mrs. White "flames… on the side of my face." I hate him so much.

Under the Red Robe, 1937

Dir. Victor Seastrom

⭐2.5/5

Watched Jul 17, Youtube

[jell0buss-37]

Why not? (Peter B. Parker x reader) pt. 2

God he is just so-

This is a slightly longer and better part! I hope you guys like this one, more fluff (platonic)

Warnings: None, slight angst if you squint

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

You can't believe how stupid Peter is sometimes.

Well, not stupid, exactly. Just stubborn. Stubborn and stupid. Two good words to describe him, especially now. Maybe you're really just panicking though, right? These are perfectly normal responses to have when your friend has been missing for what, an entire week now?

Now, sure, the guy makes it a habit to seemingly disappear from time to time, but he NEVER went without at least telling you first. You can't help how worried you are right now for him. The only reason you were so worried was because the last time he'd just left and told nobody, he had spiraled into a deep depressive state. Having just been dumped after a 3 year relationship, MJ saying that they're just better as friends, it really got to him.

His heart crushed, his inflamed ego stomped out, and his pride broken. He was a glass man, who had been mishandled and shattered. It had taken so long to pick up those pieces, bit by bit placing them together again, back into the man you cared so deeply for.

He had vowed since to tell you whenever he decided to just vanish like that again, the pained and scared look in your eyes somehow hurting him more than MJ ever had.

You had become quick friends in the workplace, not quite crossing the threshold of a bond outside of work. That is, until one of the first of many fights that Peter had to put up with. It was a rainy night, and he had had enough of the nagging of Harry in his ear, telling him he needs to get his act together eventually for MJ, who was almost impossible to please. It seemed that Harry was always quick to defend her, no matter how miniscule the fights may have been. He shakes his head, walking with his hood up into the bodega on the corner.

He opens the door, finding a familiar face to be more comforting than he'd ever admit at the time, you. You stood there, browsing through the different candy selections, wearing a pair of jeans and a loose oversized t-shirt, a pair of converse on your feet. A complete contrast to your normal work attire, he almost wouldn't have recognized you if not for the familiar glint in your eyes, that seemed to brighten at the sight of him.

"Pete! Wow, how's it going? Odd seeing you out in the wild." You tease with a smile. He feels a sudden weight off of his shoulders, his previous mood somehow leaving him just from a smile. He chuckled, walking over. "Hey, and you have room to talk. I didn't think you knew what jeans were." He nods to your comfy appearance. He liked it better, you looked… at peace.

You roll your eyes a bit, going back to looking at the candy. "I just prefer to be taken seriously at work is all. Anyway, what are you up to?" You ask, picking up a box of (favorite candy), looking up at him. You raise an eyebrow when you notice his shoulders visibly slump a bit.

"Woah, what's up man? Shoot." A phrase you two used a lot at work whenever you're working on a story together, and one of you had an idea, one of you always said shoot. It was a good way of acknowledging and accepting each other and the help that you had to offer. He laughed at this, shaking his head. It seemed he wasn't in a good place to talk about it. So you decided to go to a different place instead then.

"Alright… well, I was about to go bowling, maybe get a drink and a bite to eat. And you know, I'd HATE to bowl alone…" you trail off, hoping he'd pick up what you're laying out before him. He did, thankfully. "You know, I once won a trophy for being a bowling state champion." He grins, hooding his eyes. "Really?" You smile. "Nah. But let's go help me practice anyway." He begins walking, holding the door open for you. You set down your candy, deciding against buying it, and roll your eyes at him again.

You had of course, tied at bowling, you not expecting him to actually be good. You still joke about going easy on him while you're both eating burgers at what appeared to be both of your guys' favorite burger places. Talking about anything and everything, more so now that you're outside of work. You'd been sitting patiently listening to him finally explain his whole situation with MJ and Harry.

"And she tells me that all I do is work, and I get too tired to even talk anymore. Well, you'd be tired too if you had to do the things I have to do all the time!" He grumbles, biting into his burger. You nod along, picking a fry from his plate, having finished yours already. "You're right-" "Thank you!!" He cuts you off, taking a sip of his root beer. "Let me finish, Goofy." You smirk, "You do work a lot, almost as much as me. Hell, who knows how late you have to stay out to get those exclusive interviews with Spiderman and whatnot." You speak while pulling a straw out of your milkshake, licking it off. An action Peter stares at blankly, but ignores once you keep talking. "But didn't you say that you used to be practically in love with her in high school? Hell, you're not even gonna be going to college anymore like you'd originally planned with her. You've been working quite a lot lately, true, but don't you think she's more worried?" You point a fry at him, popping it into your mouth.

He seems to think about for a second, pondering. "You have a point." He agrees, realizing what you're getting at. "I always do." You smile smugly, winking. He finishes his burger, and you guys pay for your food. The walk back feels nice, like you both had just gotten a good breakthrough on a story, almost. Except this seemed more personal, comfier. You joke back and forth, the topic of a certain hero coming up.

"You know, you should introduce me to Spiderman sometime. He's kinda cute." The words make him freeze for a moment, but you're still walking. He catches up quickly. "WOAH, what- huh, I, uh. Woah. You think?" He pesters, making you laugh, nodding. "Are you kidding? He's a HERO. Plus, reading the interviews with him is one of my favorite parts of my days. He seems like such a good character in general. Naturally, he's just my type. And those tights-" He chokes on his own spit, sputtering at your words. He suddenly felt very warm, flattered extremely.

You smile at him, laughing as he gathered his senses. "Oh really, huh? You like the costume? You don't think it's corny?" He questions, extremely interested in your response. "Corny? More like it makes me Horny, dear God that ass-" "AHAHAHA WOW OKAY!! MOVING ON." He is entirely red now, his heart thumping so loudly in his ears now. And all you do is laugh hysterically, enjoying this response.

"Awe, what's wrong? Don't like me talking about your best friend like that?" You tease, smiling at the redness of his ears. "N-no, I mean, uh-" he coughs, regaining his composure. "It's just th-that… He'd like to hear that, every now and then. I-I mean, I guess." He smiles, almost proudly. You smile with him. "Well good. Something tells me he needs to hear it. Welp, anywho-" you step onto a step leading up to an apartment building. "This is me. I had a good time to night, I really needed it. I'm sure you did too." You smile at him.

The statement makes him realize, yeah, he did need that. Before he knows it, he's engulfing you in a quick side hug, almost awkward, but still comforting. His body warping your own from his size, you never truly noticed until now how large he is in comparison to you. "Yeah… I did. Anyway, see ya tomorrow, Stink." He flashes a smile at you before walking away.

You watch him as he goes, feeling something tugging at your chest. You look away quickly, shaking it off.

You felt it a lot, you'd come to find. Any time you guys hung out, anytime there was another fight, and it of course grew the more you were with him. It was always a feeling you welcomed, rather than shied away from or shut out. Call it being oblivious, or call it being hopeful. You never really wanted to pinpoint it. The only time you'd felt yourself question it was about 3 weeks after their breakup about 2 years after that night. You had been checking up on him, and he was still sulking in bed. You were rubbing his back, telling jokes and trying to cheer him up, telling him about different things from work that you know would cheer him up, and something finally, finally, had chipped into that sad and pathetic look in his eyes, and he had finally smiled. Leaning his head on your shoulder, mumbling a thank you, constant apologies spilling from his lips. You had always shushed him when he got like this, but the weight of him on you, that warmth of his body, had caused something to flutter within your chest. It was then you started acknowledging, started allowing that feeling to take a hold of you. You didn't think it would consume you entirely, and you didn't really care then. All you cared about was that he had smiled

[charmwasjess]

Twenty Fanfic Writer Questions Okay, this is embarrassing, because I got tagged in this like two weeks ago when I was in time zone stupor, copied the prompts out, and then forgot, and I think it was @stellanslashgeode who tagged me - if not, I will cry with embarrassment so don't tell me if I'm wrong.

And :'D I don't remember either who was tagged when it was going around, so here's some no pressure tags (and hop in if you want to play and I didn't tag you!) - @bolithesenate @calcedon79 @purple-ant @reconstructwriter

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 

10!! :D Which is totally amazing to me. Where did they come from?! Who made them?!

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 

Oh god, almost 300k… I don’t have any explanation. 

3. What fandoms do you write for? 

Just Star Wars! I can only handle one frenzied obsession at a time.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Sitting in the Dark, Five Days to Murder Sifo-Dyas, The Thunder Answered Back, Milk Run, and hey, aww, wow, Jedi Nights?! 

I’m a little surprised any of my Sifo-Dyas/Dooku stuff beat out anything else, it’s such a little tiny ship!

5. Do you respond to comments? 

I do, it's my favorite part. I get a tremendous amount of inspiration and energy from engaging with people who take the time to talk to me about my work. And friends, too! I have been in my fandom since I was like 11 or 12. I’ve made lifelong friends out of my comment sections.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? 

I'm a sucker for a happy ending so a lot of them end on an upbeat note, but I can’t imagine The Thunder Answered Back ending on anything other than a mixed note. I'm not gonna be able to undo Order 66, you know? It’s a salvage job, not a fix it. If Jocasta gets through the fic without killing Dooku, we will call it a happy ending.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? 

My corny Five Days to Kill Sifo-Dyas probably has the most classical happy ending for the saga but my favorite is the one in Sitting in the Dark - Qui-Gon waking up on the couch with Rael asleep next to him, and listening to Dooku and Jocasta and Sifo-Dyas wash up after the party. That little kid feeling of being safe and sleepy with your adult family happy and laughing softly nearby. 

8. Do you get hate on fics? 

Ohhhh, if I had a dollar for every time one of my friends made some joke about me writing Count Dooku porn! But I don't care about that, if they actually read my shit, their pervert asses would become terribly addicted to it. They’d be begging at my door. “More old man yaoi! PLEASE!” (This is a joke, my local friends have been very nice about my return to fic writing and the teasing is loving.)

Weirdly, the nastiest hate comment on a fic I’ve ever gotten was in the Before era, when I was writing fic on my old teen account. It was on a young Knight-age Dooku/Jocasta one shot. It was a simple, very vanilla romantic moment with a T rating at best so I don't really get why the person was so worked up about it? I think they just couldn't get around Dooku and Jocasta (OLD PEOPLE?!?) written as young and attractive. For years, I was horribly embarrassed about the fic, like it must really actually truly suck to have someone spend so much time writing such an extensive hate comment. I must have really fucked up. 

I went back and reread it recently and realized: oh, no, it's a regular fic, they were just a fucking loser.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? 

The…sex kind!!

But yes, I do! Mostly Sifo-Dyas/Dooku these days, but also Jocasta/Dooku and once or twice the holy Trinity of the three. 

I was REALLY shy about posting it at first and I still kind of can’t believe I did, but it was absurdly good for me as a person. Great for my religious purity culture baggage, my teenage years as a closeted queer person, just a really freeing experience. 

And it’s hot. And you get to think about Dooku saying or thinking the word “erection,” which is worth it just for that. 

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? 

Nah, I’m boring.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

Nope, but I have been lucky enough to help with the English in bringing several of Purple Ant’s remarkable works over from Russian. 

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? 

Yep! In the Before time, I cowrote a lot, although I don’t think I posted much. One stands out: I remember this big rambling self-insert (we called them Mary Sues back then) I did with my bestie where we were transported to Star Wars world and we had to… I don’t exactly remember, but I think Obi-Wan falling in love with one or both of us was a big part? I went back and deleted it years later because it was so cringe. But that’s silly too - we were like twelve, of course it was silly and cringe! 

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? 

I tend to be pretty fucking stupid about Syku. 

It’s just. Two people who manage to collectively destroy their own universes together. They’re so connected in such strange, powerful, frightening ways, they know all of each other’s secrets, they were there on the worst days of each other’s lives, and will go on to be each other’s worst day of their life. And the way, even as they change, they can’t get away from each other, even though they both really try, it’s like they’re stuck in two orbits that have to cross. 

And then you read the dumb book, and see that they’re just stupid funny and cute together, idiots who finish each other’s sentences and call each other little nicknames… augh, the bizarre sweetness of it?! It kills me. It’s the narrative doom, but also the weird, enduring love that has Dooku giving Sifo-Dyas a Jedi funeral or trying so earnestly to tell Obi-Wan his crazy version of events with his death, or how Sifo-Dyas goes running back to him for the Clone thing after he already knows so much about how Dooku factors into the end game... 

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? 

I will definitely finish The Thunder Answered Back but I kind of doubt I’ll get to the two years worth of content and every individual character’s endgame storyline I envisioned out of it. I'll stick with Dooku, Jocasta, Scout, and Asajj.

16. What are your writing strengths? 

….this is embarrassing, but I tend to think I’m occasionally really funny. 

Even though my fics are really serious and I haven’t written any crack, I really try to put in moments of humor, depending on my POV character’s dialogue or internal monologue. I think my best humor comes about when I can get Dooku and Sifo-Dyas in A Situation, slinging shit back and forth. Those two just take off. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses? 

I overwrite. My fics would be a lot more successful if I tightened up and left more on the cutting room floor. I get over attached to small moments of character at the expense of the plot (and let's be honest, word count.) 

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? 

Hmm, does sign language count? That has been really fun in Rabbit Heart. A huge chunk of the fic happens in sign language. 

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Star Wars!

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? 

It’s got to be Milk Run, by a long shot. I’m really proud of that fic, but it was just such a blast to write. It was so fucking fun. And there’s all these little moments or tiny funny things I’ve left myself in it that are probably only funny to me, but they’re so funny to me. 

….Like, so, at one point in the fic, Sifo-Dyas is pissed at Dooku because he can tell he and Jocasta have been sleeping together, again, and this always happens, and he always has to clean this mess and play mediator when it inevitably implodes (and also maybe he is in love with Dooku a little bit?). So he’s furious about it, but pretending not to be, and so he bitchily tells Dooku the name of his ship is The Haru-Spicy, as in, a cooking pun, instead of the real name, The Haruspicy. And then Dooku spends the entire rest of the fic just wildly mispronouncing the name of the ship in his own POV chapters and to other characters? 

I love to imagine him saying it, all declarative, “The Haru-Spicy!” And everyone just stares like “do we correct him… or…?” Sifo-Dyas quietly soothing himself, chuckling over this small pettiness. Cracks me up.

[ephemeral--dreams]

Something Interesting. (4)

Dottore/Reader

Rating: T

Word count: 1112

Warnings: Dottore is his own warning, reader also starting to be deranged wow 

Notes: (Dottore voice) I can make you worse, but also better

( part 3 )

☆ ☾ ☆ ──────────────────

It's on a rare occasion when Dottore runs his tests on anyone else, because it is far more convenient to do it with you. When he does, it's usually a traitor, or someone who needs to be punished. Committing any sort of betrayal against the Fatui is a grave offense, after all. And Dottore's probably the worst one to deal out consequences. You know better than most exactly what he's capable of. 

Honestly, if it was someone innocent, even you would feel some sympathy. But considering that it's not, watching as he makes them scream and cry doesn't affect you all that much. You're more interested in him than the person he's working on. It's interesting, how detached he seems when he gets his hands on anyone but you. It reminds you of how he'd once been, back when you'd first come here. Clinical, chilly, cruel. Even like this you feel drawn to him. 

You like watching him as much as he likes watching you, it seems. 

It's not until a couple years in that you take a more active role in any of it. That you drift closer instead of staying back, that you assist him with his tools and parts and vials and whatever he's using on his victim. 

…Victim. It's an interesting word. You're often in this same position on the table, but you don't think of yourself that way.

It's a matter of context, you suppose.

Sometimes they think they can reason with you more than they can with Dottore. It's almost funny. As if you'd possibly let someone free from Dottore's clutches. No one ends up in this lab anymore unless they deserve to be here. Thus they deserve whatever happens to them. You have little love left for humanity and no interest in the pleadings of traitors. They won't find help from you.

No, you're more than content to stand by and take in Dottore from a perspective you rarely see him in. 

"You're a mess," You tell him, fingers wiping away the blood on the exposed part of his face. Not another thought is spared to the body dead lying next to you. 

"Perhaps. Yet you don't seem to mind," He smiles, lingering for a moment before shifting away. "I must clean up here. You're free to leave."

"...I'll stay until you're done."

"Do as you will."

☆

"Come on an errand with me."

It is an interesting request. You don't exactly… Leave the palace. Not that you couldn't. But what purpose do you have out there? Anything you want or need is provided here. If it wasn't here, Dottore would get it for you. He himself often spends most of his time in the lab, too. He utilizes his segments for the majority of things that require outside contact or resources, so it comes as even more of a surprise for him to ask this.

You weren't opposed to it, though. If he wanted you to accompany him…

"If you insist."

So you dig out your little-used coat, and allow him to drag you along as he goes about his business. And the next time he went out. And the next. 

There was always something bracing about the cold. Even though you'd grown up in Snezhnaya, it was so terribly icy here that there was no getting used to it, especially when you almost never left the heated interior of the palace. 

Long story short, it is a shock to your system. You would think having a pyro vision would make you run warm enough to fend off the chill, but that isn't the case.

Today's outing is a particularly long one. He's stopped at a few different places and had conversations you only half-listen in to. It doesn't matter if you pay attention, he'll probably discuss (ramble about) the details of it all later. What's important is that you're freezing. You wonder when he'll be done. 

Two hands reach out to cup your cheeks. You startle out of your thoughts, looking up at the culprit. He's doing that thing again, where he's careful and attentive in a way that has nothing to do with research. You still don't understand it. "Hm. I don't wish to deal with you dying from hypothermia today…"

You want to say that it doesn't matter, that you've already died from that very thing more than once, what's another time? But you're entirely too caught up in the intensity of his full attention on you.

"Y-you don't need to worry about that. I'm perfectly fine," If nothing else, your face is certainly heating up under his touch. Which doesn't escape his notice.

"If say we should test out alternative methods of warming you up, but we don't have time for that. Let us take a quick break indoors."

…You'd call that flirting if you didn't think it was just Dottore being Dottore.

☆

The cafe you enter is mostly empty. You take a table in the corner and let Dottore take care of things. Your hands wrap around the cup of tea. It's strikingly similar to…

"There seems to be something on your mind."

"...Mm. It just reminds me of when we met," What happened before the event, rather. All the awful things that led you to him. You don't think about it often anymore, but sitting here across from him like this… 

"Yes, what about it? In a reminiscent mood?" You can feel his gaze focused on you, despite his mask covering it. Dottore is more than perceptive enough to pick up on your moods by now. The only question is whether he intends to pry. "Tell me what the issue is."

Of course he's going to pry. Why wouldn't he? He wants to know everything. Always. "I shouldn't have to tell you I went through a lot out here. You know that much."

There's a long moment of pause between you. You sip your tea. This is not the sort of conversation the two of you have. You run from the past, and he focuses on the future. That's how it has always been. It is a topic that has never been broached, and his lack of response leaves you feeling unsettled.

Finally—

"I'm aware. It is irrelevant. None of that has any importance now that you're with me," He settles your concerns as easily as that, waving them away as if they no longer matter. And he is right. They don't. Nothing is the way it used to be, and it never will be again. You shouldn't waste time thinking about it. Being under his care should remove any problems you once had. Hasn't he proven that?

"...Maybe you're right."

"I'm always right. You should know that at this point, dear."

You kill off whatever is left of your most unpleasant thoughts, and instead allow yourself to be swept back into Dottore's pace. 

[jeysbvck]

i've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night (but now i see daylight).

a/n: hello im back on my adrian bullshit. its crazy how almost a year ago i got back into posting my fanfic thanks to adrian, and now almost a year later, adrian has pulled me (albeit maybe temporarily) out of my writers block! PLEASE REBLOG

summary: 4 times you & Adrian almost kiss, & the 1 time you do.

warnings: tooth-rotting fluff, teenage angst, best friends to lovers, new years kiss, mention of threesomes, vague mention of canon? any mistakes are all mine, ive tried to proof-read three times!

word count: 8.4k

14.

"Seriously? You haven't had your first kiss yet?!"

You rolled your eyes and threw a pillow at Adrian, who occupied the bean bag opposite you. "Shut up, it's not like you've had your first kiss either!"

Adrian threw the pillow back at you and smirked. "Actually, I have had my first kiss." He replied, smugly. You scoffed and raised your eyebrow.

"You do know that your pillow with Princess Leias face taped to it doesn't count, right?"

"Ha, ha. I know you're trying to embarrass me, and it won't work." Adrian said, then he mumbled, "I know it doesn't count."

"So who was this kiss with then, loverboy?" You asked, with a smirk. You were confident he was lying, but you weren't sure why he'd be lying. Adrian had been your best friend since you were seven, he had no reason to feel embarrassed around you, and there wasn't anything you didn't know about each other. Until now, apparently.

"Ashley Carter." Adrian shrugged.

"Seriously? Ashley Carter? Obsessed with horses, always wears those weird t-shirts with the horse puns on them?"

"So what! She's pretty, and she thinks I'm cool."

Your body began to burn, your cheeks especially, and you turned away, crossing your arms over your chest. "I think you're cool." You said, huffing slightly. You saw Adrian grin smugly out the corner of your eye and you sighed. "What?"

"Kinda sounds like you're jealous. Did you want to kiss me? Oh my God, did you want to kiss Ashley?!"

Your whole body felt like it was on fire as the embarrassment overwhelmed you. You certainly didn't want to kiss Ashley Carter, so were you jealous that everyone seemed to be having their first kisses, or were you jealous that you weren't Adrian's? You frowned at the thought and shook it off, you definitely weren't feeling that.

"Are you alright? When you're quiet like this, and have that look in your eyes, it usually means you're not alright." Adrian observed, and you nodded. "I didn't mean to upset you, if I even have. I was just teasing you."

You smiled slightly, you always forgot just how much Adrian picked up on. He may not read social cues and situations all too well, but he always knew when something was wrong; you still hadn't figured out how to hide it from him, no matter how much you'd tried over the years. "I'm fine, Adrian. Why didn't you tell me about your first kiss? We tell each other everything."

It was Adrian's turn to sigh, and he shrugged as he tried to sink deeper into the bean bag. "I don't know, you hadn't told me about yours, so I didn't think this was something we were gonna talk about."

"Of course it is, Adrian! This is prime best friend talk! Who else are you gonna talk about it with, parents?!" You replied, earning a chuckle from Adrian, which made you smile. "Besides, I didn't tell you because I haven't had it yet."

"Duh! I know that now, stupid." Adrian retorted, earning another pillow to the face from you. "I just assumed you'd had your first kiss; I'm very surprised by it."

"Wow, you're surprised that the girl whose only friend is the kid who ate glue hasn't been kissed yet?" You raised your eyebrow and Adrian sat up straighter.

"Hey, it was one time, and I was young and stupid back then."

"You were eleven!" You exclaimed.

"That's younger than fourteen!" Adrian exclaimed back, and you fell into a fit of laughter.

"You're an idiot." You laughed, and Adrian grinned triumphantly. "Yeah, but you love me anyway." He replied.

You rolled your eyes affectionately as a comfortable silence fell between you both, with only the sounds of the radio softly filling the air in the treehouse.

"You know...if you wanted...I could be your first kiss." Adrian said. Your eyebrows knitted together, it almost sounded like he said-

"I'm just saying, we're best friends, who else better to have a first kiss with?"

You let out a nervous chuckle, before raising your eyebrow. "Adrian Chase, do you want to kiss me?" You laughed.

"Why is that funny? Like I just said, who else is better for your first kiss? At least you know I'm not gonna run off and laugh about it afterwards behind your back!"

"Oh my God, does that happen?" You squeaked and Adrian nodded, his eyes wide.

"It happened to Matthew Barton. He kissed Millie Sawyer under the bleachers during PE, and by lunchtime, everyone knew he was a terrible kisser and they were all laughing at him."

You sunk further into your bean bag, hoping it would somehow swallow you up, but to no avail. "God, maybe you're right. Maybe this is the best way to just...get it over with."

"That's the spirit!" Adrian encouraged.

"But aren't you supposed to do it with someone you like?"

Adrian's expression fell into his sad, puppy dog face- that he perfected two weeks before his eighth birthday- and pouted at you.

"I like you, don't you like me?"

"For God's sake Adrian, like like!"

"Well, we love each other, right? We say it all the time. So...technically, that's stronger than like like!"

Adrian was making a lot of good points, and honestly, it wasn't like you hadn't thought about what it would be like to kiss Adrian before, but you never thought it would actually happen. You didn't even know if you wanted it to happen. You'd heard all your cousins stories about how awful their first kisses were, even your mom and dad had their horror stories; so wouldn't it be a cute story to have, that your best friend was your first kiss?

"Alright fine, let's do this." You said, and Adrian made a gleeful sound. He scrambled up off the blue bag bag and grabbed your hands, pulling you off your purple one with all his strength. You were suddenly very aware of how sweaty your palms were, and you hoped Adrian didn't notice, or at least didn't mention it. Thankfully, he didn't, he was too busy rambling on about something that you couldn't hear over the sound of your heart pounding in your ears as it begged to be released from its cage.

Adrian pulled his hands from yours, only to put them on your cheeks, like your face was in a vice. Your eyes widened as Adrian leaned in slowly, oh this was really about to happen, you were about to kiss Adrian, and were you feeling...butterflies? As you closed your eyes, anticipating his lips on yours, your heart got faster, it was happening, you were about to have your first kiss...

"GUYS? ARE YOU UP HERE?"

You shrieked and pulled out of Adrian's grip, sending yourself colliding into the small table behind you, sending soda and chips flying everywhere, which ended up on you, who ended up in a heap on the floor.

Your moms head peered up through the hatch on the floor. "Dinners read- oh hon, what happened this time? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Mom. We'll be right down." You replied. Your mom looked at you, then at Adrian, who was trying his hardest to keep his laughter at bay. She shook her head, then disappeared back through the hatch.

Adrian took two large steps towards you and offered you his hand, but you rejected it, and pushed yourself off the floor, brushing the chips off your clothes. Adrian picked some out of your hair, before he grinned. He opened his mouth, but you clamped your hand over it before he could speak.

"We will never talk about this again." You warned, and he nodded, his eyes sparkled with amusement. You removed your hand and headed down the hatch.

"I mean it, Adrian, not a word."

16.

"Honey, I'm home!!" You heard Adrian shout as he climbed up the ladder. You wiped the tears from your eyes, but stayed curled up on the pull out couch that had replaced the bean bags last year. "Hey, I got your text, oh, you're crying. What's wrong?"

"Aaron broke up with me." You told him. "He was using me to make Megan jealous, and it worked, so they got back together."

Adrian sat down on the floor next to the couch and stroked the back of your hair. "Well, at least Megan was jealous of you, right?" You turned your head and glared at Adrian, who blinked behind his glasses. "What?"

"My boyfriend used me and then dumped me, and you think I should be happy because Megan was jealous, which means his horrible plan worked?!"

"Whoa, okay, no, that's not what I meant!" Adrian protested, bringing his hands up in mock surrender. "But, come on, you and Aaron were never gonna last."

"Wow, please, keep going, you're doing an amazing job." You said.

"Really?"

"Yeah, if your goal is to make me want to throw myself from this treehouse."

"Oh, you're being sarcastic." Adrian realised, and groaned as you covered your face with a pillow. "Again, I just meant that Aaron is a fucking dim-witted meathead who doesn't understand anything that doesn't include throwing or kicking a ball."

"But he's so handsome!" You groaned, before you started laughing. "You're right, why didn't I realise it wasn't real? Why would Aaron want me?"

Adrian pulled the pillow from your face and frowned at you. "Aaron Tully doesn't deserve you. You're smart, and funny, and pretty, sometimes a little mean, but in a fun way, and you took me under your wing, even after I cut your hair."

You laughed at the memory. Seven year old Adrian was sat behind you during reading hour. You don't remember feeling him cut your hair, but you do remember him tapping on your shoulder and handing you a fistful of your ponytail. You started crying, wailing even, and Adrian was sent to the naughty corner. The teacher calmed you down with some extra milk and cookies, and when you were feeling better, you took the cookie you had stuffed in your pocket to Adrian. "You're an idiot." You told him, and he grinned as he took the cookie from you.

"Who just cuts someone's hair instead of talking to them like a normal person?" You asked and Adrian shrugged.

"It worked didn't it?"

"So far." You replied, with a teasing smile.

"Okay, move up. We're watching a film." Adrian said, as he turned to grab the laptop from the table behind him. You sat up and swung your legs round so Adrian could sit next to you.

Half an hour into the movie, and you were pretty sure you were going to die of boredom. Adrian had chosen some action film, and your eyelids were heavy, drooping every so often before you jerked yourself awake, or Adrian made a noise at the film. You couldn't help yourself though, and soon your head was on Adrian's shoulder. He felt stiff, like he wouldn't, or couldn't, move, but his eyes stayed glued to the film. Were you pushing a boundary? You had both slept in the same bed hundreds of times, even shared the same sleeping bag on camping trips, was this different somehow? You lifted your head up slightly, to ease Adrian up, ignoring the rejected feeling in your chest.

"You, uh, don't have to move." Adrian told you, his voice a little louder than a whisper and you looked up at him through your eyelashes. He looked nervous, his eyes still fixed on the laptop screen, but you could tell he wasn't paying attention to the film.

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable." You replied, matching his tone. You weren't sure what was happening, but something in the air had shifted, as had Adrian. He was now staring at you, with a look in his eyes that you couldn't quite place. It was then you started to notice just how handsome Adrian was getting. He had always been cute, but he was now handsome, and you pouted; how long until other people realize too, or even worse, Adrian himself realizes he doesn't need you anymore?

"You are the only person who you could never, ever make me feel uncomfortable." Adrian replied. "I don't know what I'd do without you, I think I'd last less than a day!"

You giggled and shook your head, "You're an idiot." You said, and Adrian grinned. Neither of you had realized how close you had gotten, so close that you could feel Adrian's breath on your cheek. "Adrian, what are we doing?" You asked.

"I don't know, should we stop?"

"I don't know." You said. The truth was, you didn't want to stop. After you almost kissed when you were fourteen, you had both stayed true to not talking about it, but you hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. For two years, you had been confused about your feelings for Adrian, you didn't know if you had a crush on him, or if it was just a weird teenage feeling. You'd been feeling a lot of things recently.

"I think I'm going to kiss you now." Adrian whispered, and your stomach exploded with the bubbly, butterfly feeling.

"Okay." You whispered. You closed your eyes and held your breath, and Adrian leaned forward ever so slightly...

You both jumped as your phone vibrated loudly against the wood floor. Adrian toppled off the couch as you reached over and grabbed the phone to answer it.

"Hello?" You answered, completely out of breath, your heart racing.

"Are you home? I forgot my keys." Your dad asked.

"I'm coming dad." You replied, practically throwing yourself down the treehouse hatch without looking at Adrian.

"Thanks, love. Did I interrupt you?" Your dad asked, once you opened the door and let him in.

"No, don't worry." You replied, before muttering under your breath " I think you stopped me from making a mistake."

18.

You had no idea how this party got out of hand. You had only invited a handful of people, yet you had a house full of people, most who you didn't know. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, apart from you; being the hostess wasn't like you were thought it would be, instead of drinking and having fun with your friends, you were running round making sure nothing was broken, or being stolen. Not to mention, you hadn't seen Adrian all night, which was completely bumming you out.

After the hundredth time of shouting at a random joke for almost breaking your mom's favorite vase, you had hit your breaking point. You grabbed a plastic bag from under the sink, filled it with snacks, then snatched a bottle of vodka from the island -one that you definitely didn't supply for the party- and headed to your sanctuary; the treehouse.

You hadn't been up there in a while, you'd been busy with your part time job at the library and figuring out what to do with your life. Your parents weren't exactly thrilled that you'd chosen not to attend college just yet, but at least they were being supportive. They'd even heavily suggested that you throw a party, that it would make you feel better, give you a chance to let your hair down. You didn't know why you thought it was a good idea, maybe it was because you were sick of missing Adrian, and it seemed like an easy way to get drunk.

You opened the treehouse hatch, rolled the bottle of vodka across the wooden floor, threw the bag of snacks in the same direction and hauled yourself up. When you turned around, you were surprised to see Adrian, sitting on the couch. It had been a while since you'd seen each other, and when you did, it was awkward. You couldn't speak for why Adrian was being distant, but you had been confused about your feelings for Adrian for a few years, and since the situation with Aaron, it had only become more so. Every time you saw him, your chest tightened and nausea hit. You were eighteen, how were you still dealing with these stupid schoolgirl crush feelings?

"Hey stranger." You finally said. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Yeah, sorry, it got a little crowded down there." Adrian replied, and you nodded as you pursed your lips. "Okay, what's wrong?" Adrian asked.

"Nothing, nothing." You insisted. "I just, didnt think you came, you know, I looked everywhere for you."

"Well, you found me." Adrian said. He was acting weird, he was averting his eyes, looking everywhere but at you. Everything felt like it was going wrong; you didnt know what you were going to do with your life, you couldn't throw a party right, and now your best friend of eleven years wouldn't even look at you.

You rolled your eyes and made your way across the treehouse, kicking the vodka over to the mattress on the floor. You threw yourself down and cracked open the bottle, welcoming the burning the vodka left in your throat. You offered Adrian the bottle silently, which he accepted, making a face after taking a large sip.

"Did you hear about Rebecca Marsh?" Adrian asked, passing the bottle back to you. You shook your head as you took another drink. Adrian got a glint in his eyes and he crawled off the couch and over to you on the mattress. "She got kicked out of Harvard!"

"Fuck off, no!" You squealed, and Adrian nodded furiously as he took the bottle from you. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, something about a party that got out of control, drugs and the police were involved!"

"Oh, wow." You shook your head. "You know, you're supposed to dress up for a Halloween party."

"Who says?" Adrian asked, passing the half empty bottle of vodka back to you.

"Come on, you used to love dressing up for Halloween!"

"Yeah, when it was just you and me, and not a bunch of people I don't know who will judge me! Besides, your costume isn't exactly a game-changer is it?" Adrian laughed. "You look real good as a witch though."

You smiled slyly as you tucked your hair behind your ear. You weren't sure if it was the vodka, or your confusing feelings, but you were pretty sure Adrian was flirting with you. You took another drink from the bottle instead of replying, mainly because you weren't sure what you should say. Adrian didn't notice though, he just kept talking.

"You look real good in anything though. Maybe if I had told you more we'd still be close." Adrian mused, and you frowned. You put the bottle down and grabbed Adrians face, smushing his cheeks together as you stared into his wide drunk eyes with your own.

"Adrian, you are not the reason we haven't been spending time together. I've just been stressed, and confused and I thought-"

"Confused about what?" Adrian asked, his speech muffled slightly. You let go of his face and stood up as you took another sip of the drink, avoiding his gaze, and his question. "Hey, talk to me!" Adrian insisted. He grabbed your arm and pulled you back to face him.

You groaned loudly and rolled your head, cracking your neck as you did so. "It's nothing, okay! I just missed you, and I was beginning to think, after everything these past few years that-" You stopped and looked at Adrian, worry etched across his face as he waited for you to finish. "-I thought I was losing my best friend." At least you told him half the truth.

Adrian's eyebrows knitted together and he took your hands in his. "What? You think it's gonna be that easy to get rid of me? These past few years have been...weird, but that's just stupid teenager stuff, right? We'll always be okay." Adrian promised.

"Wow, when did you get so wise?" You chuckled.

"I guess all those years being around you rubbed off on me." Adrian said, and you rolled your eyes. "Oh, wait, hold still."

You did as you were told, and when Adrian lifted his finger to your cheek, your breath hitched in your throat and your eyes fluttered closed. He gently grazed his finger just under your eye, & when you opened them, he had an eyelash on his fingertip.

"Make a wish." He whispered. You blew the eyelash away, and Adrian placed his hand on your cheek

"Adrian...we're drunk." You warned.

"So? You don't wanna do this?" He whispered.

"I just don't think we should. It's not the right time." You replied.

"It never is, so why not now?" Adrian's finger traced your cheekbone, and you inhaled through your nose. Fuck it, you were both drunk, but it was clear you both wanted this.

Suddenly, the hatch door opened. "Are you fucking kidding me?!" You shouted, turning to the hatch, eyes wide as Melissa waved from the hatch.

"Hi, sorry to interrupt but....the police are kicking everyone out. You better come down." Melissa informed you, before waving and disappearing. You smiled apologetically at Adrian, before following Melissa. You felt deflated, like the world was against you and Adrian, that you were cursed.

21.

"Call Adrian. Call Adrian! Ugh, stupid phone!" You said to yourself. You had been on one your first -and last for a while- night out for your twenty-first, and of course you'd left your keys at home. Which would've been fine, if your parents hadn't locked the front door before going to bed. It was three am, and there was no way in hell you were waking them up by banging on the front door, demanding to be let in. You sat under the tree, and opened up Adrian's texts, before deciding to send him a voice note.

"Heyyyy, Adrian, bestie. So, I just got home, and I'm locked out of my house. I think I'm going to have to sleep in the treehouse, but there's a....thirty...no, eighty percent chance that I'm going to fall off the ladder and die. On my twenty-first birthday. Figures, right. I don't know why you didn't come tonight, but I wish you had, I wanted to spend my birthday with you, especially since I'm...you know, that thing we're not discussing for some reason. Anyway, hope this does wake you."

You hit send, then stood up, kicked off your heels, and climbed up the ladder, slowly. It took you ten minutes to get up the ladder, and once you were in the treehouse, you flung yourself onto the floor. "Oh my God, I didn't die!" You said gleefully to yourself. You crawled across the floor to the mattress, and got under the very fluffy blanket on top of it.

You couldn't believe Adrian hadn't turned up tonight. You wanted to be mad at him, to shout at him and make him feel guilty for missing your big milestone, but you just couldn't. It was hard to be mad at your best friend, when you knew you were leaving town. It wasn't for long, a few months, at least, but it was a good worming opportunity, and those didn't come round often when you weren't in college. You and Adrian hadn't spoken about it, apart from when you initially told him. He'd acted supportive, he'd told you to go for it, that he was proud of you, and he gave you a hug; a hug that felt like he didn't want to let go. But then, nothing. He didn't bring it up, and neither did you, although you really wanted to. You wanted to tell him that nothing was going to change, that he'd always be your best friend, but you couldn't bring yourself to bring it up.

"Okay, I'm guessing your up here, because your shoes and bag are on the grass down there."

You pulled the blanket from over your head and grinned as Adrian peered over the hatch. "What are you doing here? It's three am!" You asked, and Adrian held his phone up.

"You sent me this very drunk voice note about how you were about to possibly die while climbing into here."

"I did? Huh, I don't remember that. Weird." You shrugged and lay back down on the mattress. "Hey, come join me. We won't be able to do this for much longer."

"Don't remind me." Adrian muttered as he joined you under the blanket. You lay on your side and stared at Adrian as he settled under the blanket. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm just looking at you Adrian."

"No, you're looking at me like you looked at Orlando Bloom when we watched Pirates of the Caribbean." Adrian replied. "Why?"

"I'm not meaning to!" You said, a little too loudly. "I'm just- when did you get so pretty?"

Adrian just stared ahead, and you in your drunk state weren't sure if you'd actually said that out loud. You hadn't meant to, but you also didn't regret it, and you would absolutely repeat it if he asked you to. Besides, you were drunk and leaving in three days, if Adrian didnt want to see you again, he didn’t have to. Even if it would break you.

"You're drunk." Adrian finally said, and you scoffed.

"Two things can be true, Adrian. You're my best friend, if I can't tell you that you're pretty, who can?"

"You're right. I've never been called pretty before." Adrian said, a hint of red spreading across his cheeks. You beamed, and you pinched his cheek softly.

"Well, you're the prettiest." You told him. "Can I ask you something?"

Adrian turned his body to match your position, "Shoot."

"Why didn't you come tonight?" You didn't want to ruin the mood, but it had been eating at you all night, it was a reason you got as drunk as you had. Adrian took a deep breath, staring intensely at you.

"I had to work." He said. You let out one single laugh, and rolled your eyes. "What? I did!"

"That's such a weak excuse Adrian. You've been avoiding me for ages now, I just thought it would be different tonight, considering it's a pretty big birthday!"

"I'm not, I mean- I just- ugh!" Adrian turned to face the ceiling and put his hands over his head. "I'm trying to get used to not being with you!"

"Oh." Your heart sank and a lump started to form in your throat. "We're still gonna talk everyday!"

"You say that now, but will we? Everything's changing too fast, and I don't like it."

You pulled Adrian's hands from his face and turned his head to you. With your hand on his cheek, you shook your head. "If you think I can go a single day without talking to you, you're an idiot. I need you, Adrian. I've only ever needed you."

Adrian's breath hitched in his throat, and he ran his tongue over his lips nervously. I'm gonna do it, you thought, it's now or never.

You leaned forward ever so slightly, your hand still on Adrian's face. He watched with huge, wide eyes as you came closer, his eyes frantically darting to your lips and back up. At the last second though, he turned away. "Don't."

You pulled your hand from his cheek and stood up, embarrassment and rejection had sobered you up completely. "I'm sorry, I thought you-"

"No, I do!" Adrian exclaimed, scrambling off the mattress.

"Yeah, it seems like it." You scoffed. "Look it's fine, let's just forget about it, okay? I've been drinking, it brought some stuff up, I misread, well, everything. It's whatever."

"It's not whatever!" Adrian groaned, throwing his arms up. "Of course I've thought about it, I have for years! But you're drunk, and I'm not, and it's just not the right time!"

"So when is then? Because it wasn't tonight, and it wasn't three years ago, so when is?!"

"Then maybe there isn't a right time. Maybe we missed it."

You had always thought that Aaron Tully had broken your heart at aged 16, but that was nothing compared to how you felt right now. "What are you saying?"

"That maybe we missed our chance." Adrian confirmed. "Maybe we were doomed from the start."

"Right, yeah." You tried to swallow lump in your throat, but it just got bigger, and you turned away Adrian, refusing to let him see your eyes filling up. "I should go." Adrian said softly, and you nodded your head.

Adrian threw himself against your back and wrapped his arms around you. "I'll come see you before you leave, okay?" You nodded again, not able to trust your voice. Only when you heard the hatch close did you let the tears escape as you crumbled to the floor.

25.

You were talking with your aunts when you saw him from across the room, and your heart almost exploded. After three years of not seeing him, he was a sight to behold. He hadn't changed, not really, he was still the Adrian you grew up with, but there was something different about him; you just couldn't put your finger on it. Your aunts pulled you back into the conversation, but you weren't paying much attention. You interjected with little mumbles and murmurs of acknowledgement here and there, but you couldn't take your eyes off Adrian as you watched him greet your parents. Then your eyes met, and you waved slightly. Adrian grinned, and you swear it brightened up the room. You reciprocated the smile, and got back to the conversation just in time, as one of your aunts began to ask about your job.

You made it to eleven before you could no longer deal with your relatives. You loved them very much- and when your parents told you they were throwing a New Years party, you jumped at the chance to come home and see everyone- but if one more person asked you about your relationship status, you'd drink yourself to death. So after another depressing conversation about how scarily close to 30 you were and how scarily single you were, you slipped out into the back garden and climbed up the ladder to your old favourite space.

It had been years since you'd been up here, even when you were spending weekends at home, you avoided the treehouse like the plague, you wouldn't even look at it. It reminded you of Adrian, and although you called each other and texted all the time, it hadn't felt the same since your twenty-first birthday. You pushed at the hatch and hauled yourself up, and as you turned around, you almost fell back down the hole in fright.

"Fuck! Adrian, you scared me!" You yelled, and Adrian jumped up.

"I'm so sorry! You know how I am with parties, and I thought I'd see how this place was holding up without me." Adrian said. He ran his finger over the coffee table and held up his dusty finger. "Looks great."

"It has been a while since it's been used." You said. "Dad had the idea to tear it down, but I wouldn't let him." You replied. "That's not the only thing that's been a while."

"What are you- Ohhhh, us! I mean- just that it's been a while since we've been face to face."

"Yeah," You chuckled. It was awkward, and you absolutely hated it. How had it come to this? You were once inseperable, a package deal, and now you could barely be in the same room together. It didn't help that he looked so good. His glasses now framed his face, and they didn't hide his stupidly beautiful eyes. "Hey, you want a drink?" Adrian asked, and when you wavered, he tilted his head and frowned. "Oh come on, it's New Year, have a drink!"

You smiled and took the bottle of beer from Adrian, and you noticed that his once stick-thin arms were now huge. You gulped and licked your lips and turned away from Adrian before heading to the window. Was it hot in here? Adrian followed and sat next to you, tilting the bottle towards you. You clinked the two bottles together before taking a drink, and you sighed. "So, how have you been?"

"Good, yeah. I'm still working at Fennel Fields, and I've even got a side job too."

"A side job? Doing what?"

"Oh, just stuff. Remember Christopher Smith?"

"Guts friend? The racist guy who calls himself Peacemaker? Isn't he locked up?"

"He is. But we became friends before he left. We used to hang out and everything." Adrian said, and you frowned.

"Why are you hanging out with him? Adrian, he was such a dick to you, and to everyone else in school! What could you possibly be doing with him?"

"He's changed, mostly." Adrian insisted, and he ignored when you rolled your eyes and scoffed. "Well, anything else new?" You asked.

"Not really. I've had some threesomes here and there, but-"

You chose the wrong time to take a drink, and you spluttered as you choked. Adrian began to slap your back, and you batted his hand away. "You've had threesomes?! With who?!"

"Me, Chris and who-"

"Nope, no, stop! I don't wanna know!" You shouted, covering your ears with your hands. "Oh God, I need something stronger than beer right now."

You could feel the jealousy bubbling up inside you, and you needed to push it down, quick. The thought of Adrian...you didn't want to think about it anymore, but it was all you could think about. Between that revelation, the way he looked and the feelings you were battling to keep at bay, your mind was melting with inappropriate thoughts.

"You alright?" Adrian asked, and you nodded.

"I'm just, uh- I'm just thinking about my ex." You replied, quickly. When Adrian groaned, you scoffed. "What's your problem?"

"I just don't want to hear about your sexual conquests." Adrian said, and you turned to him, your mouth agape.

"Oh, so you get to drop that you've had multiple threesomes since we last saw each other, but I mention one date and you cringe?!"

"I didn't cringe! I just-"

"You just what, Adrian? What could possibly-"

"I don't wanna think about you with other people!" Adrian yelled over you.

You opened your mouth to respond, but closed it instead. You smirked slightly and shook your head, before you looked around the grimy treehouse. Nothing had changed in here, apart from a few bits of furniture that had been changed, yet you and Adrian were different people now; in some ways at least. "Remember when we had a sleepover for Halloween, and stole all the candy for the trick-or-treaters?" You asked Adrian, who laughed loudly.

"Of course! Your mom was so mad at us!"

"Yeah, so were our stomachs!"

"The floor was never the same either." Adrian added.

"Okay, what's your favourite treehouse memory?" You asked. Adrian hummed as he pondered your question, and you took a sip of beer as you watched him. You couldn't stop the corner of your lip from turning up when you noticed he still scrunched his nose when he spoke; the way the corner of his eyes crinkled; the way he bit his lip when he was concentrating.

"Oh I know!" Adrian exclaimed, a sparkle in his eye, and you leaned forward with anticipation, your elbows rested on your knees. "When I was almost your first kiss, but your mom interrupted us, and you fell over!"

"Well, mines about to be when I throw you out this window!" You gasped and laughed. As Adrian smirked at you, you attempted to geab his arm, but he grabbed your wrist and pulled you towards him, resulting in you being on top of Adrian as he lay on the floor.

The atmosphere in the treehouse went from being light-hearted and fun, to serious and heart-racing. You bit your lip as Adrian looked up at you. You couldn't remember the last time you'd been this close, if you'd ever been, but you were afraid of moving, of saying or doing the wrong thing and ruining whatever this moment was.

"My real favourite memory," Adrian said, softly, almost like he was choosing his words carefully, "was when you made us watch that Heath Ledger rom-com."

"Wait a minute, your favourite memory, out of every single memory we've made in this place, is when I forced you to watch Ten Things I Hate About You?!"

Adrian shrugged and smiled shyly, a small blush forming on his cheeks as he stared up at you, with those adorable, wide eyes of his. "We were sharing a blanket and a bowl of popcorn on the mattress, and just as I realized you hadn't slapped my arm or tell me a fact about the scene in about seven minutes, I felt your head drop to my shoulder. I turned to look at you and you were asleep, it was adorable," Adrian paused, then added, "and the first time I realized I might be in love with you."

You sat up, forgetting you were on top of Adrian, and you stared at him, your arms crossed. "That…that was when we were seventeen. What- you- what? Why didn't you say anything?"

You sat up, forgetting you were on top of Adrian, and you stared at him, your arms crossed. "That…that was when we were seventeen. What- you- what? Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you were my best friend! I didn't know if I was just confusing my feelings, or if I was what I was feeling was real, and our friendship was more important than whatever I was feeling."

"So, why now?" You questioned, dropping your arms and posture from the defensive position you'd found yourself in, and as Adrian sat up, you found yourself completely on his lap.

"When I saw you tonight, I realized we'd spent too much time apart. I was up here thinking about you, building up the courage to come and speak to you. God, do you know how much I miss you? The phone calls and texts just aren't enough for me. I didn't tell you what was going on before because I was scared, and I didn't wanna lose you, and I told you I didn't think it was the right time. Turns out, I lost you anyway. I know too much has changed, but my feelings never did."

You didn't want to say anything, there were no words that could ever convey how you were feeling right now. Adrian's eyes were full of fear, he could barely look at you. There was only one thing you wanted to do, and you were going to do it. There was only one thing, one person who could stop you; you just hoped he wouldn't. You put your hand on his cheek and guided him to look at you.

"Adrian," you whispered, "this is the right time."

Adrian didn't waste a single second. He grabbed you by the hips and pulled you closer to him, and you held his face in your hands. As your lips finally touched, fireworks began to go off outside, illuminating you both as you melted into one another. Everything finally felt right, after eleven years and five attempts, the universe finally allowing you both the one thing you'd wanted for as long as you could remember.

"We finally found the right time." Adrian mumbled into your lips, and you grinned as he pulled away and rested his forehead against yours. "Happy New Year, babe."

You pouted for another kiss which Adrian happily granted. "Happy New Year, Adrian."

[4townie]

Road to 4☆TOWN

part 1…part 10…part 20…part 30

Z narrowed his eyes when he opened the door. “You.”

“Hey, bff.” Taeyoung pulled the lollipop out of his mouth. “How’s your sister been treating you?”

“Why are you asking about my—OOF!” Z was interrupted by Olivia head butting him. “LIVVY!”

“Wow, you’re right. I got a real charge out of that.” Olivia smiled brightly. “And to think I’ve been sticking to embarrassing him in front of his boyfriend all these years.”

“Now that is an art you’ve mastered that I haven’t.” Taeyoung said as he stepped inside. “Perhaps you can teach me your ways.” He slung an arm around her shoulder.

Olivia blushed and she started giggling. “T-That would be amazingly cool.”

“Ugh, I can’t stand seeing you two together.” Z rolled his eyes. “What do you get out of being so chaotic anyway?”

“It’s so satisfying.” Olivia answered as she very carefully started holding Taeyoung’s hand. “Who would I even be if I wasn’t bugging you or Lijah all the time?”

“Besides, you know me.” Taeyoung subconsciously shook Olivia’s hand off of his and moved his arm away from her. “Chaos is my love language.”

“It’s your what?” Olivia’s eyes widened.

“Oh by the way.” Taeyoung pulled a box of Pocky out of his sweater pocket. “For you and that adorable boyfriend of yours.” He winked.

“Ewww, you think I’m gonna kiss him when he’s sick?” Z took the Pocky with a look of disgust.

“I AM NOT SICK!” T yelled as loud as he could with a hoarse voice and a stuffy nose. “It’s allergy season and the pollen count is high today.” He narrowed his eyes. “You can give me all the tea and soup and drugs you want. Pollen has far more power.”

“You want me to go to the store and get you that allergy medicine that always helps?” Taeyoung offered.

“You have an allergy medicine that solves this?” Z raised an eyebrow.

T was quiet for a moment. “I forgot.” He shrugged awkwardly. “Tae-Tae, you would be a lifesaver if you got it for me. I’d owe you every hug and cheek pinch in the world.”

“And you’ll let me put volcanic ash on your face next time I sleep over?” Taeyoung’s eyes brightened.

“Volcanic ash?” Z and Olivia looked at him in confusion.

“He has a lot of Korean skincare products that he brings up every time he wants to tell me my skin is shit.” T waved a hand nonchalantly. “Yes, Tae, you can fix my skin if you save my nose and throat.”

“EEP!” Taeyoung squealed. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

“Wait!” Olivia followed him. “I wanna go, too.”

“Nope.” Z shook his head. “Nuh-uh. No way.”

“Why not?” Taeyoung crossed his arms. “She’s hardly a kid anymore. Do you not trust me?”

“It’s not you I don’t trust.” Z focused his gaze on Olivia.

Olivia groaned. “Aaron—”

“Babe.” T called him. “She can and will tackle you to the ground again if you get in her way right now. Trust me, she’ll be fine.”

Z narrowed his eyes. “Fine, but only because the way you’re handling this makes me wanna use this Pocky.”

T gave him a flirty smirk. “Is that so?”

“Okay, we’re out.” Taeyoung grabbed Olivia’s wrist and pulled her out the door. “Remember we’ll only be gone for twenty minutes so try to be normal by the time we get back.”

T and Z both hummed an absentminded response as they put a Pocky stick between them.

“Ugh, they’re so annoying.” Taeyoung rolled his eyes as he shut the door. “It’s almost as if they don’t know they have two adorable younger siblings watching them.” He smirked evilly. “That’s why they deserve to get tormented.”

“Yeah.” Olivia agreed with a ridiculous grin. “I love how much you love chaos.”

Taeyoung stared at her. “Gee, no one’s ever told me that before. Thanks, Squirt.” He shrugged. “Now let’s get moving cuz I’m very interested in those wedding photos you promised to show me over the phone.”

“I’m so excited to show you.” Olivia wrapped his arm around her shoulder as they started walking down the hall. “It feels like the start of something new.”

Taeyoung chuckled almost condescendingly. “Livvy, we’ve known each other for like three years now.”

[idiotsonlyevent]

wow, naoto's writing is bad! and its not even bad because "they should have been trans" or whatever tf ppl are saying, its bad because its inconsistent both internally as well with persona's canon lore. like, the whole basis of the persona series is that your shadow is part your true self. even though it says things that you don't want to hear or admit to others, it's still YOU. naoto's shadow 'wants to be a man.' naoto's shadow wants gcs. naoto's shadow is trans.

and that's not to say that you can't write a story or an arc about questioning gender. or a gnc woman. or about what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated field. or a child that's forced to grow up too quickly because they're surrounded by - and doing the job of - adults. but to do that, then naoto's social link should have actually explored those things? we hear a lot about how it must be tough to be a woman detective. how the adult police officers don't take naoto seriously. but it's never shown; those issues aren't explored in a meaningful way. we know that they happen in the real world, but we don't get to see naoto react to those things; like the yosuke reacts to the junes part-timers, or the way yukiko reacts to the reporters and kasai-san. so that angle falls flat because those problems aren't acknowledged in naoto's arc.

naoto is openly dysphoric. i'm not saying that makes them trans bc dysphoric cis people exist, but they are repeatedly shown being uncomfortable when other characters bring up their height, the pitch of their voice, and their chest. and you can say that them deciding that they're a woman means that they're not comfortable being seen as a man either - that's fine, nonbinary people exist - but the scale of the discomfort is so completely different that it feels ridiculous and almost in bad faith to say they felt as uncomfortable 'as a man' as they did 'as a woman.'

and honestly, im a little tired of seeing stories where women 'dress up' as men to avoid sexism. i know the people writing these have never actually talked to trans men, but that's not how the world works. we don't come out and suddenly become magically accepted by society. you can be out for years and still be routinely misgendered! and in some cases, if you pass, you're expected to uphold and reinforce sexism - fun! /s. but those stories never show that, do they? i get that they're supposed to be escapist fantasies, and not real life, but persona 4 is a game that has relatively grounded themes and characters. many of us are or know a yosuke, a chie, a yukiko, etc. naoto's writing feels out of place because the themes it's trying to explore are either completely ignored or bastardized so badly that they become nonsensical.

it's also incredibly demeaning and egregious that to romance naoto, you basically force-fem them, when the whole point of their 'platonic' social link is that their gender doesn't matter (until at the very end, where they decide they're 'a woman after all'). this is pretty clearly done to assert the heterosexuality of the protagonist, but it's still really gross. are gnc women w lower voices not allowed to date men now? fellas, is it gay to date a woman?

but actually the most uncomfortable part to me is the rhetoric surrounding naoto's transness. i know this game came out more than a decade ago, but it uses the same negative tropes about transmasculine people that are being peddled by t€rfs and transphoßes today. and it's primarily other women (chie and yukiko) enforcing naoto's gender expression to stamp out any ideas of transmasculinity. naoto can't Actually be trans - she's just a confused little girl! she'll grow out of it and realize how stupid she was to throw away her beauty to be an ugly man! she was a girl all along! its straight out of social contagion nonsense, when their arc could have perfectly meshed w the theme of acceptance if they um. maybe accepted that they can be trans, even without needing to 'change their sex'? they can be a man with a 'woman's body'? they can see themselves however they want? (reminded of that post of a 'western' trans person saying they thought the trans man from one piece was a caricature or something, and the replies were just. japanese trans people saying that the way he's presented is empowering for them bc it's impossible to get hrt/gcs in japan, so they prefer narratives that accept their bodies as they are.)

naoto could have been amazing gnc woman, non-binary, or trans man rep, if atlus stuck to it and explored what any of those things meant to naoto as a character. instead, they fumbled the writing so badly that it becomes impossible to tell what they were trying to say. unless you're trans, then one day, you too can become normal! 

[spurious]

some mcshep fic recs

So ever since I answered that ask from Mer about McShep fic recs, I've been thinking about posting more recs. I have been reading, like, so much fic because there just...is so much fic out there? As I intimated in the answer to that last ask, I am...not used to this amount of fic. The last ship I seriously read and wrote fic for has 58 English-language works on AO3, 17 of which were written by me (and another large handful of which were written for me lmao), so it's, uh, kind of amazing to just be able to read and read and read and read and...still have more?

I've been using my AO3 bookmarks, but sometimes bookmarking is simply not enough and you need to scream at people about the things you have read. So, without further ado...let me scream at you about the things I have read!

-

1) 264 Hours by Lenore | ~6k, rated E

Set after Seige. The battle is over, except in Rodney's mind.

This one is just some nice Rodney emotional pain content; he’s fucked up over the events of the siege and John is trying, in his opaque Sheppardian way, to help, but it takes a perceptive sex worker and a confrontation to really get through to Rodney. I liked where this went but I almost wanted it to be longer and really draw things out? For the Suffering I guess lmao

2) Long Long Road by Telesilla & padawanhilary | (series) ~50k, rated E

While shopping, two college students run into each other. Literally.

This is an AU (that converges to canon eventually), where John and Rodney meet while at Stanford and find a mutual enjoyment of both each other and kinky sex. There are two branching endings, both of which end happily, the sex is really very very hot and good, and overall there's something that I just find extremely...cozy? About this series? I've read it twice now and I just find it nice and comforting and enjoyable.

3) Sheppard’s Law by Speranza | ~35k, rated E

"Weird? You don't know what weird is. Weird is being in a-- with the-- and the crazy alien--" He stopped, incoherent, hands flailing. "And then your best friend is twelve, and you're his piano teacher. That--now, you're talking weird!"

Honestly the idea of me in the year of our lord two thousand twenty three reccing McShep fic written by Speranza is like...asking someone who likes pizza if they've ever tried pepperoni lmao. NEVERTHELESS. I've now read this fic twice. The first time I thought it was good, but for whatever reason it didn't make that big of an impression on me? I have a feeling it's one of the ones I read before we finished the series when I was trying to find stuff that didn't spoil later season events? So anyway I just sort of randomly decided to reread it recently, and it really wowed me on a second go-round. I think the big-ness of it can be hard to wrap your head around, but when you do it's like...you feel both full and hollowed-out by it at the same time, because it's huge but it's also a collection of these snapshots and small moments that make up the whole. Idk it's just...it's good ok, read it if you haven't!

4) Ritual by lamardeuse | ~5k, rated T

The history of a ritual.

Beer 👏 on 👏 the 👏 pier 👏 As a team ritual, as the story of John’s love for Rodney, and as a beautiful coda to the shrine. John's POV in this is so gorgeously done, the way he's convinced himself of what he can and cannot have and is trying to deal with it the best way he can, even when it's immensely painful. I also like how Jennifer's part in things is handled in this, in terms of her reaction to Rodney's profession of love and how it stacks up against...literally everything else that happens in that episode.

5) Dumbstruck by sgamadison & the_cephalopod | ~30k, rated E

His existence, as he remembered it, began eleven days ago. He knew the word day was what to call the cycle between a single span of sunlight and darkness, but he could not remember what groupings of days were called. He didn't think it mattered much.

Due to...shenanigans, John loses his memories and becomes unable to speak. The thing I really love about this is how well Rodney knows John; how even when John can't speak for himself, Rodney clearly has this mental catalogue of Sheppard Expressions and he can deftly read and describe them. It's just...it's nice.

-

Anyway, I'm thinking I might make this a regular thing. I like talking about fics I like!!! Send me an ask or whatever if you have types of recs you want to see? Idk?

[applesap-fics]

FABril day 4 - Chores, part one

1, 2, 3

T, 2357 words, Bruno/Agustín, Bruno & Mirabel.

Mirabel starts living with Bruno for a little while. She’s curious about why he left. Then she finds out a little more.

--

He almost slips off his cane when he sees his niece on the opposite side of the doorway.

It’s not that he’s surprised that she’s here. It’s just that Bruno isn’t quite prepared for how different she looks. The last time they saw each other she was a child. 

It is as if he’s closed the door on her one day and a moment later opened it up again, replacing her with an older version of herself. She looks eerily, and beautifully, like her mother. 

For a moment that image lasts, complete with gray hairs and wrinkles under her eyes and dressed in blue instead of the colorful attire she’s actually wearing. 

Then Bruno clenches his eyes shut and opens them again, and there she stands as she really is: fifteen, bright-eyed and nervous, wearing a hesitant smile on her face like she expects her uncle to change his mind, turn her right around and send her back home. 

“Hey, Mirabel,” he croaks a bit awkwardly. He regains his posture, trying for nonchalant as he leans on his cane. “There you are, huh? Wow, you’re- you’ve gotten so big! I mean- not like that! It’s just…it’s been a while, and you’re all grown.”

Before he knows it, she’s enveloped him in a tight hug.

--

One day Julieta called him up out of the blue and asked him if it wouldn’t be a good idea if Mirabel came to live with him for a little while, at least for the summer. 

In her fashion she was polite, slightly accusatory like their mother, and thus easily refusable. 

“And what does Ma think of me taking care of Mirabel?” He asked her, knowing fully well his mother doesn’t speak of him and likely avoided the combined topic of “Bruno” and “responsibility” alltogether. The other end of the line stayed silent. “That’s what I thought.” 

“You’re both stubborn, you know? It’s the both of you.”

He left years ago for a good reason. The idea to ask him to…to take care of someone, of Mirabel, seems an absurd initiative. From his capricious mental health to living situation to sending Mirabel off to go live with her estranged uncle, there’s too much to take into consideration.

But Julieta’s, his, and his mother’s conviction didn’t matter.

One week after he hung up on Julieta, he received a long letter from Agustín. About how his daughter isn’t quite finding her way at home and how he wonders if maybe the city won’t treat her and her wild imagination better than the stifling reclusiveness of their village, just like it had for Bruno. That sending Mirabel away isn’t done out of any malice or foreboding. If Bruno would please reconsider having her, because there’s no one he trusts more to be kind and understanding than him.

The letter is two sides long. The words are gentle, but steadfast, and clearly written against the opinion of the family that Agustín usually follows to avoid conflict. Bruno smells the love he has for his daughter in every brave sentence, and all of them together form an elaborate composition. It’s like music in Casita’s courtyard. It’s familiar and his heart aches.

Bruno read it over and over before he finally sent him a letter of his own.

--

“How was your trip? Too long, right? It’s always way too long for me.” Though this wasn’t the only reason he rarely met up with his sisters.

“Oh, yeah. I wish I could’ve brought my sewing machine, but, yeah…Too heavy. It was either that or my accordion.” She shrugs her shoulders which he now sees carry an instrument bag, not a backpack. 

He gives her his sympathy. Agustín not just mentioned she’s creative, he boasted it, and Bruno believes it immediately when he looks at her embroidered orange jacket and blue skirt filled with little sewing doodles.

It makes Mirabel a bright uncanny spot in Bruno’s humble home. As she walks through his apartment, she takes in every bit of clutter with worried eyes. Even with his bad back, Bruno didn’t think he had gotten that bad with the upkeep of his home, but he’s getting embarrassed now, thinking what she must’ve expected before the trip. Certainly not stacks of telenovela scripts and books covering unaddressed letters he’s never sent.

It’s a far cry from the colorful Casita she’s left behind, which is big enough to house a dozen family members and about as talkative. He always keeps the radio on to fill the silence and to keep his house full of romantic love songs. It helps him write.

Mirabel is still holding on to her duffle bag and keeps the bag over her shoulder as if her stuff will get swallowed up once she puts it down.

“Sorry for the mess,” he says as he gives her a little tour - his apartment, though decent, isn’t all that big, but he has space for her. He gestures to unload her stuff. “I tried cleaning out the office a little - that’s your room!”

“My own room?” She asks peculiarly as he opens the door for her. 

“Of course! What, did you think your cruel tío was gonna let you sleep on the couch?” he asks amusedly.

She shrugs abashedly. “No. I guess? I dunno. I share a room with Antonio, so…I’m not used to it.”

Inside sits the spare cot he’s prepared for her and a desk he’s mostly cleared of his writing and accounting. On the walls he’s hung up drawings to give the room a bit more life. Rats in period clothes, boats on voyages, little doodles he’s made while brainstorming ideas for his stories. He feels silly about them now, realizing she’s not that much of a kid anymore. 

“I hung these up for you. To lighten the place up a little-heh.” He rubs his elbow, unsure. “But you can make your own or take them down if you don’t like them.”

Mirabel smiles. 

“No, Tío. Thank you.”

--

“So, a couple of things,” tío Bruno begins.

They’re eating the sancocho de pollo Mirabel brought from home, which is apparently Bruno’s favorite. He started humming and whistling the moment she pulled out the container. His cane lies forgotten by the front door. He only needed it to breach the distance between his front door and the lobby to let her in. She hadn’t expected he needed one - neither Mamá or tío Bruno (they had a brief conversation on the phone) had mentioned it. 

“Curfew, of course. Ehh, be home before nine if you go out. The errand boy comes here on Mondays with groceries and/or medicine - ask for the receipt and don’t let him hustle you too much. Avoid talking to the handsome boy from the next block over: he’s a loverboy. Joselito I think his name is. I know the city can be very exciting and boys may seem very fun now that you’re at that age, but you’ll get in trouble if you go looking for danger of his kind, trust me!…Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned him at all. Ay, you’re probably thinking of running away with him now!” 

He throws his hands up and clutches his hair.

She stares at him, reeling a bit at his rambling. “Uhh.” 

“Anyway,” he perks up, dramatics forgotten, “there’s a lot of clubs and activities, so there’s always something fun for you to do while you’re here. And you could come to the theater with me! I’m sure you’d love it. It’s small but has a lot of heart.”

“That sounds great.” It was the reason she wanted to come to the city. She wanted to find her place.

He beams. “But don’t let me slow you down from whatcha wanna do, okay? I’m boring anyway and I can’t always go very far.”

This remark reminds her to ask; she thought he was an architect or construction worker or something in that vein, but he told her he quit that profession to take up writing, which landed him a job at one of the local theaters. She wonders if he had to quit that first job because of his injury. 

“So,” she says, stirring against the corn cob, “what actually happened to your back?”

“My back?” His expression turns sullen, his spoon resting in the sancocho. “Oh, something awful.”

He doesn’t elaborate and she immediately regrets asking. “Oh, I’m sorry.” 

He nods gravely.

There’s so much more she wants to ask him, but most of those questions are about the family, which require a kind of perilousness she doesn’t want to drag him into just yet.

“Uhm, so,” she tries. “What’s with all the letters?”

He looks surprised. “You saw those?”

“Yeah, they’re everywhere.” All tucked tight between other manuscripts and his books, but odd and noticeable enough.

He rubs his neck. “Ehh…I don’t wanna talk about it. They just kind of appear.”

“What? What does that mean?” she asks confused, but he again doesn’t elaborate. And after an awkward moment of silence, she gives up, “Okay.” They eat their stew in silence before she tries again. “Papi said that before he even met Mamá, you and he were friends?”

“Oh.” Surprisingly, even this catches him off-guard. He looks up at that, gaze distant for a moment, eyebrows pinched. It takes a second for him to reply, scratching the scruff of his neck. “Oh, sure,” he says and goes back to slurping his soup, not looking up.

“Got any funny stories from back in the day?”

He makes a strangled sound and shrugs, back to eating.

“Oookay. Good talk.”

--

Despite his evasiveness when it comes to family talk, tío Bruno loves to talk. About his interests, his hobbies - of which he has a lot.

It makes her fond somehow, to hear how he also thinks the random pitter-patter sounds that can sometimes be heard outside the building are pixies, just like Abuela and tía Pepa do. “Poor things,” he says, smiling. “The rats like to eat them.” Mirabel has never actually seen one before and doesn’t quite believe in them, but hearing that they persist even in the city makes her think the older generation is onto something. 

Tío Bruno has so many pecularities it’s hard to list them all, from nervous ticks to his superstitions. He burns sage and avoids stepping on cracks. Every morning he does a cleansing ritual alongside taking his anti-epilepsy pills. He keeps an upside-down broom in all the rooms to keep out bad spirits (also handy for sweeping up the salt and sugar he spills a prolific amount of) and he holds his breath when he walks through every doorway, not just the one that leads outside.

He also swoons at music and always seems to have romance on his mind. He does spontaneous dances when he listens to the radio or when he’s playing some cuban bolero on his gramophone, which is such a classic item it makes it seem as though he’s stuck in time, only adding to that romanticism. Bruno loves writing and reading and tells her he can waste days watching reruns of telenovela’s he’s already seen.

“Ah…so much can happen in a life. It’s easy to forget when you’ve got a bad back and never go anywhere. That’s why it’s important to throw in crazy stuff. You gotta remember the love exists between the cracks.”

She’s been curious about him for a long time. It is as though her own life falls into place now, Bruno the missing piece of the puzzle, a branch she was never allowed close to. It’s good to meet the person he really is instead of hearing half-finished stories from her cousins and sisters who knew him only a tiny bit better. A hard line of separation forced by a ten year old wall.

She has a vague understanding of why he left. He lost his way in the family, one way or another. Stir-crazy, tío Félix told her. Thought he was bad for the family, suicidal, and too cooped up in the village. Not to mention volatile. Made the whole house mad. 

“He was…sensitive,” Papá said with a far-off look in his eyes that seemed far too fraught on her dad’s face of all people. 

Selfish reasons, according to Abuela, but from what Mirabel gathers those ‘selfish reasons’ boil down to ‘leaving’, which seems a bit paradoxical. 

“Tío.”

It’s the end of the first night. She’s crawled up on the couch with him, leaning into his shoulder as if they’ve always done this together, drowsy from the telenovela they watched that she wasn’t all that into after a long day. “Why did you leave?”

His shoulders clench up. “Oh, that’s- I wasn’t really…that’s not important.”

“How can it not be important?”

“Okay, I guess it’s important.” 

Once again, as she’s coming to expect of him, he doesn’t elaborate. Or maybe he can’t answer because he’s always so nervous and not used to having his bothersome niece here, asking questions. 

He’s tense even as she leans against him, but he assured her that he’s just like that and that it’s okay to touch him and it doesn’t mean she’s imposing on him or anything. She did feel like she was imposing a little. She’s felt that way the moment her dad said she could go.

“But…I don’t get why you never really came back. I get leaving for a little while - I know Abuela and Isabela drive me crazy sometimes and always make me feel like I’m too awkward and that I’m only getting in their way, and now that I’m here I feel like I can”- She lets out a heavy puff of breath, heart straining -“breathe, finally. But I love them, and I already miss them.”

His mouth opens and closes, looking like he wants to answer, but keeps catching himself before words can spill. His chest heaves unevenly, like he’s getting worked up, and then puffing out his frustration again. But his face reads solemn, not angry at the thought of his family. 

Mirabel already hugs him by the time he finally says something.

“Kid, I miss you guys plenty.”

-tbc

[unicornsaures]

urrrhhhhhvggggg i try not to make vent posts a whole ton but alas, ya girl is not doing so hot

tw// sh😁

guys do not do what i did and like. purposely trigger yourself with your own sh from a year ago because oh my god in. its. i feel so absolutely fake my scars were so much worse last year and now theyre just gone and i thought i was fully recovered its bren a year and. and im still crying over it and i thought i was done crying over it. I thought i was done crying over literal scars and i was. i mean i thought i was exaggerating when i said the closrr i get to the date ill br one year clean its getting worse and. nope! no, no that checks out!!

Its all my fault i got triggered in the first placr too. I knew what i had in my eyes only wnd i knew that checking it would only make me spiral and here i am just. crying over it. its sending me back to last year where its i just its only oj my hod i csnt be doing this again i really csnt be doingthis again ive bren doing so well and then. and i dont want to i really dont but im still tjinking about it and im still telling myself i want to but i dont i never did i always wanted to say ive been 1 year clean but i dont think ill rver even be able to make it to that point if i keeo self sabotaging like this. i mean t barely even counts ive basically just replaced cvtting with eevry other unhealthy coping mechanism under the sun but i should be better than this i shouldnt rven be thinking sbout it i shouldnt even be thinking that i can go back i shoulfny be in this situation at all and if it werent for me i wouldnt even be in this situation in the first placr ebcause i dont know how to keep myself away from tjings that i really need to stay away from

i really shouldnt be caught ip on this but its. i was. i was thinking aboht whag would happen if i would look back on photots earlier and and i knew i wouldnt be okay with it i knew i would snap the moment i did and wow its almost like forced recov only made me feel guilty for it and ohmygod kill me now i should be better than this i should be better than thjs ive had crisis called so many times ive been threatened by my parents for this so many times im worrying eveyrone around me and im only getting worse and everyone has to wastch me spiral but they cant do anything because im jsut too fucking oblivious to my own issues but im just too scared to readh out to anyone because how am i gonna say that i triggered myself without sounding like i planend this i didnt i swear i didnt plan to break down over this i promise i didnt mean for it i didnt want to cry over it i dont want to think abiut it anf i dont want to go back ive been doing sowell i swear im just worrying rveryone i dont want everyone to start checking in on mr in the morning just to make sure im still alive i font want people to messagr me in the middle of the night to make sure im not dead im so sorry ik so sorry

im just as tired as i was last year the only difference is thst im not actively trying to kill myself over it even if i really. wiuld like to thats besides the point the point is im just as weak of a girl as i was last year but last year i could at least hanfle pain now i just fucking snap whenever someone raises their voice or whenever i get. acut i break down and whenever i get hurt it only reminds me of the past 4 years that ive spent doing nothing but putting myself through mental hell and im realizing tbat ill never get begger i cant get better ive bren trying and i just csnt

i cant do it ive tried ive been trying why am i not getting anywhere why am i still stuck on the thought of sh i shouldnt be thinking about it i shouldnt miss it i shouldnt be upset that my scars are faded i shouldnt still have the ideas and images swirling aorund in my head because theyre always there and ill always have these scars and ill always br fucked ip and i wont ever be able to fix it ive had so many people worry and theyre worrying and worrying and i just dont care im such a horrible person i

i shiuldvr stopped for my parents they had to skin check me dsily for almodt a year straight and here i am just fucking itching to go grab something, literally anything just to go back and in so stupid im so stupid i did this to myself and im still being a pussy about it i shouldnt be thinming abiut it i shouldnt be crying over it whats wrong withme

[kithtaehyung]

HLJ told me to send this to you. She's so supportive and I love her immensely 😘😘😘😘😘

I filmed my first ever dance video 🫣 I went to hit the upload button and almost threw up from anxiety, but hey I'm having fun and that's all that matters. Plus I think the Tannies would be proud of me for taking a leap like this even though I've been terrified to put myself out there for years. I also filmed Run BTS to upload on the 1 year anniversary and that turned out cool as hell too. Eeeek here's to me saying fuck it!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cs2VjP0OGIz/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRo2rRgC/?t=2

KATY. HOLD TF ON……. THIS IS UR FIRST DANCE VID?? LIKE EVER?

alright. i am here after watching both the reel and the clock app a billion times.

1) FACEEEE YOU GAVE IT I am telling y’all like i appreciate facial expressions and presence during performances and.. this does not look like your first rodeo🤣 objection, ur honor! we need more evidence to this claim!

2) the production value?? the multiple angles and transitions?? damn how many times did you record! you obviously have huge talent bc filming something multiple times while making it look seamless is 👍👍👍

3) your dancing is so gOOD. powerful moves, switching up the textures, knowing how to accentuate the hits… wow. literally no pressure but i know everyone is gonna wanna see more than one other video from you and I’m just saying i don’t blame them and count me in😂 sitting patiently for run bts😤

4) you’re amazing, you know that? putting yourself out there is a very big step, and i completely agree that bangtan would adore you and think you’re so fcking cool for doing this. hobi would for sure shower you with praise😭😭😭

Gahhhh amazing amazing job and I am so proud!! Thank you HLJ for thinking of me and thank you Katy for sharing your talent with us💕