#a tale of a future yet to be written;; threads | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

soscarlett1twas · 11 months ago

Text

one single thread of gold (tied me to you)

↳ The invisible strings laced into the Sakuverse. ↳ 7.2k words / also available on ao3!

Matias stared at the screen, unable to formulate his thoughts. His fingers hesitated above the keyboard, and for each word he punched out, he purged the sentence before it was even finished.

He had suffered this problem before. It was always the first words, then the rest would flow – but with a mind full of ideas and hands eager to type, it was hard to push himself when all he got was a blank screen staring back at him.

Tension grew in his jaw as his teeth ground together. He pulled his hands back and strategically cracked each knuckle, first the distal joints, then the center, until he was left with were slightly looser hands and a still-blank screen. Each crack drifted up into the atrium's echo.

He refocused on the document, but all he perceived was the cursor, blinking in a staccato rhythm. Matias groaned.

His hand found a pen and clicked it a few times, scanning the open pages of his notebook as a refresher. Outlined on them was a short story about a nightmare he had wanted — not so much tried — to write for ages. He had written and rewritten the “stage directions", so-to-speak, of the story many times, finally settling on this version he was quite happy about. And the imagery he painted in his own head, of the scenes of the man's nightmare, how he could link it to the broader narrative of the man's life, how it would predict his future, it made him excited.

So he sat down to write, hands hovering over the keyboard of a school-issued laptop to start crafting what would surely be something great.

And yet. Yet.

A bar (the only black on his empty page) faded and reappeared again and again as Matias tried to conjure the right vocab, the right atmosphere, the right... something.

His hand moved to cover his face, fingertips pressing down his clenched eyebrows and curving down his face, until his palms holstered his jowls and his sides were warmed from the laptop-heat of his hands. His words were nothing to his imagination.

His hands moved once again to cover his face completely.

He was nothing to his imagination.

And he had tried, for so long, to believe that was okay. What were these stories for if not practice? Surely, once he was older, they would flow naturally. His prose would be enchanting, but not purple; his plots would be grand, but not confusing. He would look back on these old words as the small stepping stones to the majesty he would write eventually.

But why must it be eventually? Why couldn’t it be now?

Matias, who had subconsciously slumped down so far in the chair that his back connected more with the seat than his legs, exhaled and pulled himself back up. With one more look at white screen, he opened a new tab.

Pressing the My Drive bookmark at the top of his screen, he navigated through a swamp of miscellaneous documents, scattered thoughts spread across countless files. But what he was looking for would not be recently opened. He typed in its title in the search bar, bringing up a document untouched for months.

As with all his finished stories, this one was formatted all nicely, unlike the standard Arial he drafted in. He scrolled through it with mild attention and read a couple lines from assorted paragraphs.

This was a tale about two people who, throughout the work, became tentative friends. They did not like each other at first, but came around through their joint love of the stars, though very different in how they viewed them – one for science, one for mythology.

It was not fun to write. It is never fun to write, at least, in the moment. But Matias always found himself looking back on the process with more fondness than the finished product. And this was a work he was particularly fond of. (For as fond as one can be about their own work – that is to say, anything net neutral is ‘positive’, and anything less than is negative.)

The descriptions of the sky did it for him and he yearned to be able to write it again. He wanted to describe the world and its beauty, not a man's nightmare. He wanted back that process where, even if it was difficult at the moment, he was writing. Not stuck in his mind with the imaginary dreamscape of a nightmare, his own self an unfit conduit for the ideas he wanted to share. At least with skies and stars, they were pretty just to read. They created a fantasy that, even if the reader was not imagining what Matias wrote, they were substituting it for their own memories of nightfall.

When he exited the tab, the laptop lid closed with it. He needed to do something other than look at the screen.

Matias stood and stretched, rolling his neck and pushing in the chair to the desk. Just waiting for the right words wouldn’t work and he needed to stretch his legs a bit. Before walking away, he took one last look at his notebook, and closed it softly. Anywhere else, he would’ve had some more precaution, but it was doubtful anyone would steal his things at the library.

So he walked away, leaving any thoughts of the story behind him.

He had set up shop at the back of the building, so he flitted between rows and rows of bookshelves. He wove between CD’s on language learning to the record books, to the young adult and fantasy sections. Assorted mangas greeted him in the aisle he walked into.

He scanned a couple of titles with no intentions to take them out, but he liked to window shop. He’d even pull a couple out and read their back, or, if he was feeling particularly dangerous, flip to a random page and read a couple sentences. Then he’d slip them back in and walk away.

He threaded like this between three bookcases, reading spines which fled his mind the second he glanced away. He made one last turn, and, thoroughly unimpressed by his own attempt at clearing his thoughts, turned back the way he came.

On the way back to his desolate writing, he walked up to a World Atlas. It was large, pages spread across its entire podium and then some, open to a random page on Denmark. Matias had little interest in the country, but he liked maps, and this one was so detailed. He approached the atlas and began to leaf through it.

From French topography to the Indian Ocean to the specifics of Somalia’s economics, Matias skimmed through each section, finding himself smiling at it. It was dumb, he knew – but the world was so very big and so very complex, and that was where he found beauty. What a wonder to be able to see it one day. What he would give to make something like this.

He skimmed his fingers along the thick stack of right-aligned pages, opening up to a random one. It was about Iceland.

A map of the country was offset to the left hand corner, most of the spread being taken up by photos about the northern lights. He had heard of them of course, but he found himself in awe of the colors. Even in a stagnant image he could see them pulsing with different hues, the greens fading to blues to purples.

Oh, the sky. What a beautiful thing it is.

His finger traced the harsher lines of the aurora, where the lights hardened to a sheet of color. The flimsy paper beneath his fingertips folded as he shifted them upwards, but Matias quickly fixed it and kept going: Over and over, wondering it how could exist in this world. And how unfair it was that it is out of his reach.

It would be incredible to see the aurora. It was inspiring even in photo form, and what could it be in person? What basin of inspiration could this be for him? His fingers, just tracing the photo, felt as if they had dipped into a pool of magic, drenching themself in the motivation he needed to write.

And the nightmare came back to him, fully written around his inked skeleton, ready to be shaped.

Still staring at the basin, he –

– pulled his fingers away from the aurora clipping and flipped it, as carefully as he could, and lifted his glue stick. Purple glue coated the underside and he pressed it into the paper of his notebook, besides the Icelandic mountains and waterfalls he had cut out earlier. Once satisfied it was secure, he began to reach out for the magazine he left sprawled open, silhouettes now chopped from its pages.

Beside it, scattered atop of the carpeted floor, were many other magazines. Some were still safe, though many more were torn through and falling apart, their confetti guts sticking to the carpet fuzz. Their own images had been sniped and pasted into the notebook, from stills of people to landscapes.

Really, the subject didn’t matter. If Alex liked the composition, or the filter, or the lightning… well, into his notebook it went.

He hummed as he flipped through the magazine, eyes skimming over landscapes far and wide. Nothing quite did it for him, though he did wonder if he should cut out a particularly pretty iceberg… until the church.

Formed like a sharp bell curve, the structure rose into the clear blue sky, its golden lights projected onto the front, bleeding into each crevice of the jagged building. Three windows glowed at the top, small from the perspective, contrasting the dark, tinted part of the building. A singular rainbow window sat above the entrance door, its hood molding casting a deep purple shadow upwards.

Alex turned to grab his scissors when he spied the building's name, unpronounceable on his English tongue: Hallgrímskirkja. He still tried and snorted when it was butchered.

He began the incision at the base, silently wondering if he should only cut out the church or keep the sky (no, he decided, he needed the sky – it established the blues to contrast the rising yellow light), and began to snip away.

He worked cautiously, creating an arch that reached above the church and back down. Once done, he smiled and placed the scissors on the floor, pulling the clipping free from the page. He moved the magazine away and placed the photo down beside him, flipping to a new two-page spread in it. The church was too big to be added to the current page he was on. Besides, something like this deserved its own spread.

Again, methodically, he lifted his gluestick and spread it in curved motions behind the image, and stamped it into his book, careful to center it correctly. Just to be sure, he closed the book and pressed his palms onto its cover, forcing his body weight down to really stick it in there.

Satisfied, he opened the notebook back to Hallgrímskirkja, eyes scoring the photo and smiled.

He turned back the pages to old spreads. He just liked looking at them, to glimpse at his handiwork of images not his own. But they could be.

Alex was giddy at the thought, to do this for a living one day. Taking photos of the world's beauty, where it was its people or landscapes, or even gold-encrusted perfume bottles. He wanted it all.

He was about to turn back to the magazine when a knock echoed through his door. Before he could answer, his parents walked in.

“Alex?” His father walked into the bedroom, eyes catching on the photo clippings before landing on his son.

“Hey,” he responded, sitting up from his floor.

His mother took a couple steps forward. “What are you doing, Alex?”

Smiling at the chance to talk about photography, he immediately opened back up the Hallgrímskirkja page, eager to show them. He stood and held it out to her, his father coming around his mother’s shoulder to see.

He explained he was looking through photos for inspiration, that one day, he was going to take these photos for magazines. Maybe they could take a trip to Iceland as a family! He was about to offer up the idea when his father said:

“So… you want to be a photographer?”

He nodded.

He missed the glances his parents exchanged as he flipped to the back of the notebook, again holding the spread open for them to see.

Plastered across these pages were Polaroids he had taken with the disposable camera they bought him for a school day-trip. They were nothing much – just some landscapes, a couple candids of his friends, but they were his photos, and he displayed them with the same honor as his inspirations.

But this time, he did not miss the waver in his mothers eyes nor his father’s throat bobbing.

“Oh, these are so pretty hunny… why didn’t you show us these before?”

He didn’t quite have an answer to that. He just… didn’t. Alex’s arms loosened, bringing the open book down from their sights and against his chest, where he folded it, subconsciously hugging it.

“Photography is a great hobby, but a career?” His mother sat on his bed.

Still, he had nothing to say, throat dry. He shrugged. How could she go from praising his work to this in the same breath?

The room fell to awkward silence as Alex refused to meet their sights, still clinging to his notebook, and his parents didn’t speak.

“I came to ask,” his father finally began, “if you wanted to come and play with the neighbor kids. They set up a volleyball net – you like volleyball, right?”

“Yeah.” He first tried it on a beach vacation. It was a lot of fun playing with kids his age, and he liked the neighbors plenty, but he was busy. Before he could say so, though, his father clapped his back.

“Great! I’ll tell them you’ll be there soon,” and walked out of his bedroom, his mother kissed his cheek before leaving as well.

Left alone, he let out a little sigh, and flipped the book in his hands. He looked at its cover, plain compared to its pages, made of woven cloth. He bought it ages ago with his allowance. The same allowance he had shoved in a jar, on top of his nightstand, containing a total on its top. His savings for a camera, because they refused to buy him even a disposable one unless it was on a school to-have list for field trips.

Outside, he could just barely make out the sounds of the kids playing, calling for the first –

– serve spiked down and, after hitting inside the lines, bounced out of bounds. Kayson whooped as his team cheered in his honor, and they all shuffled one spot to the left.

The other team stood stagnant, as they had for the last three serves, unable to score a point and move. It wasn’t traditional volleyball: the game the class was playing was altered to give everyone a chance at each position. When your team scored a point, everyone shifted a position to the left. Kayson bounded from the server to the middle of the back row.

And up to serve was a girl who spent the entire class glancing at the clock, anxious to get out of here. He couldn’t blame her. The teams had been randomly chosen, and she had fallen into a group of tryhards who were thriving on the competition – which is to say, Kayson got real lucky.

She squirmed in the position, smiling only when she caught the glimpse of her friends on the other side of the net, as if to mock herself and say “We know this won’t end well, but how funny will it be when I fail?”

The ball got tossed over the net, ending up closer to Kayson than her. He caught it and walked over, handing it over in a quick toss.

“Alright, Mia.” Kayson crouched his knees and balled his fist, swinging it with clear direction to the hypothetical ball in his other. “Just like we talked about. Get some leverage and,” he thrust his fist up and through the ghostly volleyball, ��swing up. Make sure to keep your hand balled!” He tread back to his spot, walking backwards to nod as she mirrored his actions.

She curled her lip slightly, knees bending as her arm straightened. Kayson watched, still nodding his head as Mia took a couple practice swings.

They barely knew each other. The only class they shared was this one, and Kayson would be hesitant to call them acquaintances, much less friends. But when Mia had messed up her first serve at the beginning of the unit, laughing at herself before anyone else got the chance to, he had called out some advice at the reserve. And that time, it made it over the net.

He hoped his aid held true again.

She took one last swing and thrust her arm back with more certainty, pushing it forward at just the right angle. He watched as it nearly hit the ceiling before arching back down, landing in the center of the back row.

“Oh! Oh!” Mia’s voice grew in excitement as she realized that not only was it a decent serve, it was a good one – and Kayson shouted back a “Let’s go!” in the rising choir of middle schoolers getting into a good game.

The two teams went back for approximately two passes before the bell rang.

Kayson went to grab his backpack, not missing the small wave from Mia when he turned around. He returned the gesture and smiled.

His friends caught up to him, laughing and jostling each other around as they walked out of the gym. Kayson pushed the one away, claiming his was too sweaty, and the boy retorted that Kayson was worse. Which, he was.

“Alright, I’ve got to go…” Kayson said, trailing away from his friends. His next class was halfway across the school and didn’t want to be late. They said their goodbyes and split directions.

The hallways were packed as they were every passing period. Kayson maneuvered between people, often bumping shoulders, his smile fading to neutrality. Everyone around him looked the same, minds somewhere beyond the cramped halls.

With gym – his favorite class today – done with, Kayson adapted to the melancholy which awaited him at his next classes, feeling any leftover adrenaline bleeding out of him. The rest of the day had little interest to him.

Kayson left the main, packed hallway for the smaller math hall. People loitered outside doors, not wanting to go to their classes yet, or walked beside their friends in twos or threes. He could spy a small crowd inside the bathroom as he passed. Turning the corner, the open door of his Algebra class beckoned.

Cool air hit his sweaty skin when Kayson walked in. His desk was close to the back of the room, a choice he made at the start of the year. His bag slinked to the floor as he dropped it and sat on the even colder chair. His legs stuck to the plastic.

While his table was still empty, others had a filled somewhat. The teacher walked up to one and handed her a paper. She flipped it over and flashed it to her friend, with a big A written in red up top.

And Kayson remembered the test from last class.

The little spark still in him died at the realization, being replaced by the pooling dread of known failure. He had studied, and he had felt good while taking it, but he also knew to be realistic. And realistically, he did not know math.

The teacher finished handing off papers to the rest of the table before making her way over to Kayson, smiling softly.

“Good morning, Kayson.” She rifled through her papers.

“Morning,” he muttered.

She pulled a sheet from the middle of the stack and gave it to him, already moving to another table. He barely looked at it. All he needed was the D before flipping it back over, the pen used to mark his paper bleeding through the back.

He groaned as he lowered his head. He was fine with his B average. Hell, he’d even scored a couple A’s in classes this year, but with the way his math grade was going…

When the C came in last quarter on his report card, he hated showing it to his mom, hated the class, hated himself for it. He promised her with one more bad grade, he’d go to tutoring. And here was his ticket to ride.

He rose and walked over to the teacher, skin like suction ripping from the chair. “Can I go to the bathroom?” He muttered as she turned to him. At her nod, he left, passing the TA’s desk who’d surely be his new tormentor after school.

There was still a line, made up of kids who had yet to leave for class. But when the bell rang they began to trickle out, leaving Kayson to tap his foot on the dirty floor, waiting for a stall, also not quite here to actually use the facilities.

He took a deep breath when he finally got to sit on a non-plastic chair, in that suffocatingly cold classroom, instead relatively alone in the middle stall. He took a deep breath as he shut the door, clicking the –

– lock into place, Luca sat, scratching at his eyes.

His breath was already wavering, but with the final swallow of air came his break, and he folded over on the porcelain, knees pressed to soaking lashes.

He had tried. God, Luca had tried so hard. There hadn’t even been a triggering event. But a building wave must eventually fall.

And out it came, pouring from his eyes with the crash of croaking breaths.

Luca’s hands clawed from cupping his mouth to running along his waterline, wiping tears before they even traced his face. Yet still more came, and for all the grief which choked him, for all the loneliness which sparked the display, his only thought was how to make it stop.

Which made it all the worse when he couldn’t. The resounding loneliness just echoed back to him as one breath became too loud, as even in his misery Luca was still consciously fearful of others, and even more aware that there was simply no one around.

His parents were worried, of course. When he brought home the permission slip, excitedly bobbing at the chance to go to New York City with his class, his parents sat him down to talk through it. What to expect, how to stay safe, whether or not he should go… the last point got brought up a lot.

He insisted he’d be fine. After all, his bullies weren’t in classes who’d go on the trip. His parents asked if he’d have any friends with him instead.

Despite him drawing a blank at the question, his parents still let him go. Oh, how he wished they didn’t anymore.

Luca pressed his palms to his eyes.

It hadn’t even been a bully – if it were, at least somebody was thinking about him, talking to him – instead it was complete isolation. Not a single conversation with another kid for the two days they’d spent in the city. When he tried, he was met with some form of swift rejection.

He convinced himself it was fine. He was fine, until he wasn’t, and at dinner it was all too much. He sat with the teachers, glanced over at the table he should be at, and excused himself politely.

Only to end up in the bathroom, the only place he could let the feeling engulf him, ironically praying he was left alone in his sadness as if that wasn’t the cause of it.

No, he didn’t want to be alone. He wanted his mom. He wanted his dad. He wanted the people who loved him. But they were unreachable.

At the thought, another wave of sadness crested over him.

This time he let himself cry.

He did not know how much time had passed, only that he was spent when tears turned to a thin plaster on his skin. He had barely moved from his hunched position and an ache grew in the small of his back.

Luca swallowed the rising weight in his throat and sat up. His eyelashes brushed his face as he shut his eyes tightly, feeling the cool tears on both. His mind started to work again, no longer suffocated with his misery, instead slowly turning with coherent thoughts.

But remain did the feeling of hollowness in his chest, perhaps sculpted out from his sobs – Luca felt it as he breathed, tasting iron on the lip he was biting, eyebrows furrowed. If anyone could see him, the uncharacteristic look of anger would shock them. Or would it? To recognize it’s unrecognizably would be to know him, to know he was not angry, to know he was simply clenching trying not to cry again. But nobody did.

Or perhaps they would be affronted by it not because he was him, but because of what he seemed to be. He was small, frail in stature and always looking if trying to hide away. He was meant to be unseen, not to be unseemly.

For what he hoped to be the final time, Luca rolled toilet paper and dabbed it to his eyes, then promptly threw it into the bowl. He watched it flush.

The door opened with a shove. Luca appreciated it’s coverage, working almost as an entrance to another room inside of a bathroom stall. Perks of crying in a nice restaurant.

He walked over to the sinks and motioned underneath the faucets with his fingertips. He just sat there, letting himself feel the water.

He dabbed it on his eyebags. Like a coal, he could feel himself cooling under the water. Luca massaged it into his skin and dipped his fingers back under for more. This was a familiar ritual to him.

He barely noticed the door opening, though the familiar voice of a teacher brought him to.

“Luca?” He startled.

Mr. Polis, a Biology teacher, stood at the door. Luca never had his class, a fact he was often grateful for – many said he was tough and an even harsher grader. Even as he looked at him, there was a certain edge to his gaze. It was laced with worry.

He made an obnoxious sniff to recall mucus and winced at how it echoed. “Hi, Mr. Polis…” Luca turned his head and walked to dry his hands, suddenly even embarrassed of his ablution.

He stayed turned to the towels as another faucet began. In the mirrors he could see the teacher washing his hands. Curiosity spiked, but he wasn’t going to ask.

“One of your classmates decided to spill their drink on me,” he said, as if reading Luca’s mind. He sighed and waved his hand under another dispenser. When it didn’t work, his exasperation grew to an annoyed hum as he began to walk towards Luca. “Excuse me.”

Luca stepped aside, away from the mirrors as the teacher got his towel. He stared at the crumpled brown paper in his hand. Luca tried to fold it another way so he could blow his nose again, but already so small, it was useless. He’d get another when Mr. Polis left.

Luca still tried to avoid his sights as he walked over to the trash, rubbing his eyes to hide better.

“Have you been enjoying the city so far?”

Luca still didn’t turn to him. “Yeah… it’s been fun.” His voice was rough.

“Good, good.”

The man came beside him and threw his own towel away.

“Would you like a hug?”

It was an awkward question, but it startled Luca enough to make him look at the man. His expression was creased in worry, but a comforting smile played on his lips as his hands opened slightly.

And just like that, he threatened to burst into tears again.

The teacher wrapped his arms around Luca, reminiscent of his father’s comfort, and held him for a short moment. This mean, harsh teacher was the only one who offered him any comfort, a member of the small few who noticed, and then cared, about his emotions.

Luca was inevitably the first to pull away, arms loosing around him at the force. He didn’t want to tear-stain the man’s shirt. It already took a blow this evening.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked.

Luca shook his head, another obnoxious snort echoing in the room.

“That’s alright, just… don’t hide away. The teachers are here if you need us.” The man nodded his head with a thin-lipped expression. “When you’re feeling better, feel free to join us back at the table. I know we said no dessert but… you’re sitting with us. I’ll get you a hot chocolate or something.”

Mr. Polis walked out of the bathroom, leaving Luca alone with his thoughts once more. He swallowed the rising lump in his throat and went back to the sink, dampening another paper to cleanse his eyes.

A teacher. A teacher cared for him, a boy he didn’t even teach.

Something indescribable washed over him, and Luca pulled the towel away. He folded it over, the paper rough under his touch as he pressed it, once more, to his face. He wadded it up. As he walked away, he lightly threw it into the –

– trash can. He winced as the paper slit his fingertip.

He turned his finger to see the damage, but the cut was so thin it wasn’t even visible. With his thumb, he pulled the skin taut, feeling the burn of a paper cut but still, nothing.

Andrew groaned and grabbed his pen, going back to scribbling down notes as the video he neglected to pause shifted focus to the importance of Chilean copper mines in the 1970’s and how they partly incited the American-sponsored coup d'état.

Riveting.

The video was meant to help him study. It had good coverage of American-sponsored insurrections in the Cold War era, the current topic in his history class and the basis for a presentation he was set to give Monday. But even for a man who enjoyed these things, Andrew’s mind couldn’t help but loll. Every sentence sounded muffled. Even his eyes weren’t focused on the graphics. They watched the time instead, on the far right corner of his laptop.

The numbers lay stagnant, Andrew’s mind beginning to wander back to class. Back to the boy.

He rewound the video with a tense hand.

Again he heard the explanations of Chile’s nationalization of the copper mines and jotted down a couple points he thought were important. But when he rested his hand on the notebook page, he moved his finger slightly, and with it came a burgundy smear.

Andrew recoiled, briefly forgetting the paper cut. But the thin line had started to bubble with blood, painting more than the paper red. There was a spot on his pen as well.

He groaned, slamming the space bar to pause the video before getting off his bed. Though, he was also grateful to be without reminder of class for a moment. They had band aids somewhere in the house, he knew, but specifically where was a mystery.

His feet pattered on the upstairs carpet, turning to a hollower sound as the stairwell became wood. Descending into the small foyer he opened the cabinets directly to his right. He was cautious to keep his bloody finger off the furniture. After a few moments of looking, he found no band aids.

He blinked tiredly at the spot where he thought they’d be, throwing his head back in mild exhaust, catching the gaze of the crucifix above the drawers.

Andrew stared at it for a few moments, then hurriedly left the room to continue his search.

He found more miscellaneous cabinets, but as he looked through them, he couldn’t help but feel the divine gaze on him. Somebody – God – was watching him.

He turned around, scanning the empty room as if to find a ghost with him. Nothing was there. He turned back to his search, pulling open another drawer and scanning with new vigor. Andrew wanted to be back up in his room quick.

The feeling had, admittedly, been the thing to distract him earlier. It had been following him all week, though never as strong as it was in this moment. The cross and its waxen martyr could hear the sin in his mind, he was sure of it, as it was filled with… disquieting thoughts.

Andrew tried to shake it from him – the thoughts of class, watching the teacher, eyes drifting down to the boy beside him – but it was no use. He could lie and say he didn’t purposefully look in his direction, but what use would it be when he couldn’t even convince himself?

Everything began to remind him of his failure. Even the damn copper mines.

Andrew let out a huff of bitter laughter. How...

...romantic, he finished, quieter than the minds echo, a thought inside a thought. Something welled inside him. It wasn’t romantic. Nothing about this was ‘romantic’. Romance wasn’t… it wasn’t made up of… how would a relationship like that even work?

Andrew’s mind slowly turned to more intimate ideas. He made a face as he sharply pushed them out. Though the idea that he had thought them (and did so willingly, though he wouldn’t admit it) shocked him. Scared him.

Suddenly jolted from his mind palace of worry, Andrew looked directly at a box of band aids that had been in front of him for God-knows how long.

He blinked once at it. Twice. Then he delicately pulled back the loose flap on top and got a small bandage.

He stared at it, cut long dry and crusted over with blood. It shook. The band aid was shaking.

No, he was shaking, but he wasn’t going to look at himself and admit that.

Andrew placed it back in the box and slowly shut the cabinet. He stared at the dark wood, trying to reground himself in reality.

He turned back to the stairwell. Jesus watched him climb the stairs. His gaze followed him into his room.

He wasn’t. He could be. He could even think of the word. Not because he could remember it, but to let it ring in his head, in his voice?

Andrew swallowed rising bile as he convinced himself to think it, at least. Because was it better to refuse it, or to proudly state it negatively? Was he weaker for letting the guilt (no, not guilt, because he was guilty of naught) consume him, or for thinking of these things to begin with?

He was not ‘into’ men.

He was not gay.

He was not –

– queer name, Dedalus, and I have a queer name too, Athy. My name is the name of a town. Your name is like Latin.

Isaac skimmed over the passage. This section was a nice break from the confusing nature of Joyce’s earlier prose. He could appreciate the dedication to writing as if through a toddler’s perspective, but enjoyment was a different metric. At least these lines were brief and conversational.

Well, Isaac mused, nothing could be as dense as Ulysses, even if by the same author. And even if Isaac had never read that labyrinth of a book, he knew how torturous it was.

So he continued reading about children and their discussion of riddles, even if the one was quite poor at them.

—Can you answer me this one? Why is the county of Kildare like the leg of a fellow’s breeches?

Stephen thought what could be the answer and then said:

—I give it up.

“I wouldn’t say it’s early, but I don’t often get a call from you at this hour.”

Isaac froze, eyes looking at the words on the page but not quite reading them. That was the voice of his grandfather.

Isaac’s brow furrowed. He straightened himself and kept on reading.

—Because there is a thigh in it, he said. Do you see the joke? Athy is the town in the county Kildare and a thigh is the other thigh. “What could be so important, Asriel?”

Isaac didn’t get the joke, yet he kept reading. The book trickled back into dense prose and it failed to capture his attention. Instead, the words of his grandfather seemed to get louder as Isaac unintentionally focused on them.

“The Skoligs? I thought only the Vex had connections to your circle.”

Isaac stared at the paper.

His father… must be a magistrate too… He thought of his own father… while his mother played… when he asked for sixpence…

He read and reread the paragraph, never quite catching what it was saying. It began to frustrate him, the lengths to which is own mind refused to ignore the man in the other room.

“Checks and balances, I understand.” His grandfather’s voice got louder as he turned into the hallway and noticed Isaac in the drawing room. Isaac’s periphery betrayed the old man’s lingering gaze before he kept walking and entered the kitchen, which was still close enough for him to hear. “You’re saying Stockton is a playground for higher forces. What stake do you have in this?”

Silence, again.

He thought of his own father, of how he sang songs while his mother played and of how he always gave him a shilling when he asked for sixpence and he felt sorry for him that he was not a magistrate like the other boys’ fathers.

There. Isaac read the sentence and understood it. Finally. His took a moment to clear his head once more, unwittingly glancing over towards the direction of the voice.

“I didn’t take you to be the sentimental type.”

Isaac waited as the other line was deaf to him, before his sight refocused on the page. No. He didn’t care. His grandfather’s work was nothing to him.

Isaac began to read again, his mind wading through the twisted writing and trying to make sense of it. But the buzz of his grandfather’s gruff voice never failed to waft back to him.

He focused even harder on reading.

Isaac made it halfway down the page before: “Don’t make this my families business. Again.”

Isaac’s sight stopped dead.

Who did he say he was on call with? Asriel? The question betrayed his apathy. A vitriolic expression bled onto his face. Who was he to blame that on someone else? He made it his families business, whatever it was – his work was their downfall. He was their downfall. Who but he could have made it his parent’s problem? Who was Asriel?

The silence was deafening as he waited for any answer, wiggling his ears childishly as if it would help him hear a response.

“Anything involving that woman was my families business,” his grandfather barked. Even Isaac was slightly taken aback. His eyes were glued to the wall, as if to bare through them and face his grandfather entirely.

That woman… Isaac raked his brain for whoever that could be. He came up blank. There was no woman significant enough to his family, that he knew of, to solicit that reaction from his grandfather.

His grandfather rounded the corner and Isaac threw himself back in the direction of the book. He did not try to read the words, but met the paragraph he had long bore at and the shape of two words in particular. Father and mother sat inked before him. Silence enveloped a long moment.

When his grandfather began to speak, Isaac could no longer handle being even near the man.

As he stood, the book folded back together harshly, closing him away from the specters of a family. Isaac began to walk in the opposite direction of his grandfather, towards his room. As he turned into the hallway, the words “wraith” and “leader” hit him.

Isaac quickened his pace, one final name gracing his ear; “Terra,–“

– Warden’s voice ricocheted outside the car, his large figure shoving on a coat as he emerged out of the house. He waited for a second, listening to an inaudible response, before climbing into the drivers seat.

Elias scooted even farther down into his seat, knees propped up higher than his head as his spine curled to an uncomfortable degree. But he was too engrossed in his 3DS to notice – Elias had a Riolu to catch and a gym badge to obtain, he had no time for the meager discomfort in his neck.

Warden turned the car on and, as the engine whirred to life, glanced back at Elias and chuckled. “Enjoying the game?”

Elias barely heard him, staring daggers at the Poké Ball which shook once. Twice. Then a shadowy sprite of Riolu emerged from its wake. Elias groaned and managed to slink even farther down.

“Don’t ignore your dad, Elias.”

He looked up to see his mother’s hair swishing as she put on her seat belt, then turned to face him with furrowed eyebrows and a teasing smile at her lips.

“And sit up,” her voice gaining a sudden starkness as she took in his form.

Elias scrambled to do just that, the commanding tone of his mother’s voice, full of love yet still slightly terrifying imploring him to have perfect posture and a clicked in seat belt within moments. She nodded and turned back around.

When his dad repeated the question, Elias shifted the 3DS back into his lap. “Yeah, I am.”

“Good,” was all his father responded with. As he looked over his seat to pull out of the driveway, he smiled at Elias.

The boy waited for a bit before returning to the game. He didn’t want to risk not hearing someone again and them actually getting annoyed. But as their conversation lulled into something work related, Elias eagerly snatched the system back up and honed his attention to the screen.

And when he finally managed to catch the Pokemon, his grin stretched ear-to-ear.

He navigated to the menu, pressing save and shutting the console with a snapping sound. He often got a headache from playing video games in the car. One already was teasing at the front of his head.

Thankfully, the window glass was cold where he placed his cheek. Roaming Stockton streets passed by in a blur, concrete on concrete on concrete. Elias played a game with the metal fences: He’d find their endpoint, wait for them to pass him, then ‘jump’ to the next with his sight. It kept him entertained in the monochrome, if slightly dizzying.

There was a small park, however, on a street they passed. When his mom told stories of her youth, which was rare, the park had come up – one of her friends began a garden within it to help the community.

He glanced at her. Her eyes were closed, though mouth still moving as she explained something to his dad.

Unintentionally, Elias mimicked her movement. He reclined in the seat and rested his head somewhat lopsidedly, twiddling the game console in his hands, watching as the outside greenery quickly bled back into gray. His friends own came to mind.

Elias closed his eyes to the thought of him showing off his catch. Oh, it was going to be awesome. He couldn’t wait.

#sakuverse #zsakuva #zsakuva matias #zsakuva alex #kayson mayer #zsakuva kayson #luca pearce #zsakuva luca #andrew marston #zsakuva andrew #isaac rhoades #zsakuva isaac #zsakuva elias #jesus that's a lot of tags #for anyone wondering the book Isaac was reading is 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' by James Joyce #divider by cafekitsune

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spaceofentropy · 5 months ago

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For the short story collection square of my 2025 book bingo (once again, thanks @batmanisagatewaydrug for the bingo!), I've read *drum roll please* Some of the Best of Tor.com 2021 which has been in my kindle library since I got it for *checks notes* exactly 0 dollars in… *checks notes again* February 2022. It seemed about time to read it, right? It was a very good read, with more sci-fi and fantasy than real horror, from authors I knew and others I didn't; there were just a couple of stories that didn't do it for me (and one I didn't finish) out of a total of 22, so I'd say it was an excellent bang for my zero bucks!

You'll find me gushing about the stories under the cut!

MASQUERADE SEASON - 'Pemi Aguda A story where the fantastic is a way to explore the kind of familial ties in which you and your uniqueness suddenly become a thing to exploit and drain of life, for your own supposed future benefit. Under its layer of colourful details, it packs a very hurtful emotional punch.

THE LAY OF LILYFINGER - G.V. Anderson Is it more sci-fi or more fantasy? No idea, it doesn't matter. Displacement from home, xenophobia, people dealing with change and with the need to hold on to language and culture as a way to resist the cruelty of the world. It's a story that immediately kicks you into the deeper end of the pool that is its world, without explanations, and is better for it, I think.

THE RED MOTHER - Elizabeth Bear It's hard not to like Auga Hacksilver, by the end of the story. Auga the wordsmith. Auga the cunning. Auga the weaver. Auga the sorcerer. It's a story set somewhere and sometime in the viking era, that uses kenningar to give even more threedimensionality and depth to its plot, where a man looking for his brother finds instead an old acquaintance, an active volcano, and a dragon. The kind of story that makes you go "YES! MORE, PLEASE!"

THE TINDER BOX - Kate Elliott This is a fairy tale. It starts with the narrator being killed by the man she'll use to start a revolution. It starts with a head rolling under a holly three and continues with the words "Teach a callow man to be a soldier and he will learn to use violence to solve his problems." It has witchery, and bad kings, and a magic tinder box. Most of all, it's a story about injustice and revolution. Days like these, I wish the witch were around and setting a new plan in motion.

QUESTIONS ASKED IN THE BELLY OF THE WORLD - A.T. Greenblatt This is one of the stories from this anthology that I think will remain with me forever. There's something in its fungal world, in its two lovers who can't content themselves with the status quo and keep on asking questions, keep on defying the rules of their small, mushroom-built World… It's creepy and scary and at times horrifying, and yet so full of hope and defiance! I would have loved a few hundred pages more of Kenji and Eva's life and World, but at the same time this is the perfect size and shape.

BLACK LEG - Glen Hirshberg A weird story in which nothing happens and yet stuff happens, maybe, sorta. A ghost hunting documentary filmmaker goes to see a guy at work to see if second guy's workplace is, indeed, haunted. Personally, I don't think it works super well in written form, but as a horror short, it would have probably been great. At least it's not boring.

THE WONDERFUL STAG, OR THE COURTSHIP OF RED ELSIE - Kathleen Jennings Another fairy tale, this one bathed in even more blood than The Tinder Box. Quick and angry like mob justice, perfectly creepy in its shortness. Five blood-red stars!

BLOOD IN THE THREAD - Cheri Kamei This one hurts. It's about Sapphic love and abuse, fame and its constrictions, love that maybe is true and maybe it isn't, you'll only know far too late. The legend of the crane wife (and a reflection on it) is weaved into it all and makes the story of the two nameless protagonists even more painful. Delicious!

SAND - Jasmin Kirkbride This is a weird one, a reeeeal weird one. I have a feeling it's a metaphor about trauma, the myriad of things our parents inject into our lives since we're little, and the process of slowly unburdening ourselves until we don't inflict the same amounts of harm on our kids. Or maybe it's just about a world in which, as soon as you're born, your parents put sand in your mouth and you'll have to live with a sandy mouth all your life? Who knows!

NOW WE PAINT WORLDS - Matthew Kressel Whole planets have gone missing and an office worker is sent to talk to a man who might know what happened. It's an interesting story about nihilism and hope which mostly fails to actually address the idea that, since there seems to be nothing around, then humanity is perfectly free to colonize everything in space. Could have been more nuanced, but it's still an enjoyable story about not giving up to nihilism.

#SPRING LOVE, #PICHAL PAIRI - Usman T. Malik A journalist goes to interview a mythological woman with backwards feet. He's the obnoxious narrator. She's giving him more attention than he deserves. And then he wonders about [insert mild foot kink here] and I closed the ebook for the night, and when I returned to it, I skipped to the next story because, yeah, this squicked me so much that it's apparent that foot kink really is not a kink of mine, not even in the mildest form. #SorryNext

LET ALL THE CHILDREN BOOGIE - Sam J. Miller If living in a small town, the constrictions of gender norms and other people's expectations, falling in love with each other, and falling in love with new music, weren't enough for teenagers Fell and Laurie, then there's the weird interference that's popping up during their favourite night radio show. Is it the Russians? An alien? A lost pilot? A time traveller? Something else? There's something incredibly soft and angsty and, once again, hopeful, in this story, and I absolutely love these two kids!

#SELFCARE - Annalee Newitz It's the slightly dystopian future. It's LA. It's influencers and marketing and minimum wage workers. It's the beauty industry. It's impossible things happening at the Skin Seraph beauty store and salon where Edwina works. It's shitty bosses making people angry, and crappy customers, and new friendships, and maybe the fae exist?!? It's a delightful cauldron of things that you'd think shouldn't go together and instead work perfectly! I was grinning maniacally at the end!

THE FAR SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE - noc A pretty predictable plot, but at least it's on a very short story, so there's that. Still not sure how I feel about it overall. Probably at the conjunction of "meh" and "eh!" Still not sure how to pronounce ♦&x, which is one of the characters names. I think I went with "that one" all the time. Not one for the annals, sadly.

A BETTER WAY OF SAYING - Sarah Pinsker This is a wild one! It's 1915. There's a young man who works voicing the lines from silent movies for the members of the public who can't read. He discovers he has the power to forever change lines in the movies if he says them aloud with enough conviction. It goes from there. It's a weird concept with a nice execution. "I briefly knew magic, real magic if small".

BABY TEETH - Daniel Polansky The story about a vampire killing teenaged girls and the man hunting him are the backdrop for a small town boy to discover that he's not a hero, never has been and never will, even if he plays a paladin during D&D with his friends. (Friends who suck, by the way, jesus fuck, someone kick these horrible boys' balls into dust please!) It's a sad story about the sadder realization of your impotence and the difference between life and fiction. I loved that the setting is painfully normal and provincial, even with a hungry vampire to up the stakes (pun not intended).

THE FUTURE LIBRARY - Peng Shepherd Do you want pain? Because we have it spades, here! We have grief, and the horror of our dying world on the brink of ecological collapse, and the fear of discovering you're impotent against the government body that ought to help you, and the injustice of imprisonment, and the anger at a lie being peddled left right and centre. But there's also love, and defiance, and an arborist loving the last forest on earth with all her broken heart. It's a bleak read, but also a good one. I need to find Ingrid and hug her, tight.

APTITUDE - Cooper Shrivastava "One may ascend to godhood in the same way one attains any other competitive position: a series of rigorous standardized exams." And Alena, recycling processor, has registered to one such exam. Her universe is dying and she's on a self-imposed mission: meeting someone from the Board of Cosmogamy and ask why the fuck they did what they did to her universe! She's underprepared, angry at being the diversity candidate, and ready to do everything. Even cheating. Lots of stuff that reads like technobabble, in here, and yet it works. Go, Alena, go!

JUDGE DEE AND THE THREE DEATHS OF COUNT WERDENFELS - Lavie Tidhar A vampire judge is summoned to supervise on the matter of a vampire having just been murdered and who's gonna get his inheritance. He and his dejected thrall will investigate and find that things are waaaaay more convoluted than everyone wants them to be. A fun little story, with the most resigned human ever trudging along for the ride and only caring about where his next meal and lit fireplace will be, really.

L’ESPRIT DE L’ESCALIER - Catherynne M. Valente What if Orpheus never turned back and so managed to bring Eurydice back to the living world? What if she came back wrong? What if you mixed modern world and mythology for it all, with pop star Orpheus and Calliope, his mother, a famous writer, and Apollo as a legend of rock? What about Persephone in a power armor? What if mold and asphodels and cypresses and ash grew and grew and grew around the returned Eurydice? What if the love that moved Hades to return her to life started rotting around her? What if Orpheus was a dick, all things considered? What if what if what if? This is another story that won't leave my mind any time soon. I had already read it on the tor.com website and it was a pleasure to reread it, in all its mouldy, poetic, sad, putrefying glory. Another unforgettable one.

AN EASY JOB - Carrie Vaugh A fast action story set in a sci-fi world, with spaceships, and space stations, and space pirates, and a secret race of cyborgs whose life goal is to travel and exchange the whole of their experiences with their people. And also a story about friendship, lies, jaded people and young idealists clashing; about helping the world be a less shitty place, and the fact sometimes it's hard to reconcile different points of view. I want more of this worldddddd! T^T

SMALL MONSTERS - E. Lily Yu This is the perfect story to close the anthology. On the surface, it's a wild story about a literal monster who can regrow cut off limbs (!), which is so convenient (?) because other monsters love to feed off of its limbs (!!), first and foremost its parent (!!!); and when the small monster manages to escape its horrible situation, it befriends an artistic hermit crab (!!) who hosts anemones that are its art critics (??) and who decorates the small monster's body with see glass and rocks, Spanish gold and whale bones; and they are friends, and the small monster and the hermit crab build an island (!!!!), after they've survived bad things that happen in a set of three, because this is another fairy tale, after all. But if you look just under the surface, it's also a painful, sad story about horrible families that eat you alive, and abusive relationships, and people taking advantage of your kindness, and art (and art criticism), and friends, and changing each other through love, and building stuff with your friends, and hope. So much hope in this monstrous little thing! (Did I cry reading this last story? Hell yeah! I'm still misty eyed as I write this, and it's been 12 hours!)

I shall build another island, the once-small monster said. And another. Until we have made a quietness between the wilds and the deep. Let me help, the clawed creature said, as the not-small, not-a-monster knew it would. I could not do it otherwise.

#2025 book bingo #short story #anthology #sci-fi #fantasy #horror #tor.com

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corvusalas · 1 year ago

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If there was one thing people couldn't claim about Selma it was most certainly being someone who partied a lot. Yet, when the occasion was right the witch was all too happy to join in. "What exactly are we celebrating?" She chuckled. "There's something to celebrate surely. If not we'll have to find something." Selma's hand reached out for the drink in front of her. One sip was enough to confirm that it was even more firewhiskey. "You've always been fun, don't underestimate yourself, Evans." - @resilientevans

" i MAY have had a little too much firewhiskey. " words were slurred as they past from freckled lips, drunken hues glistening as the former gryffindor could barely stand up straight. " but don't you worry, there's still some left for you! " drunk lily was a rarity but for the first time in awhile, she didn't feel so sad. " so you gonna join in on the fun? that's me, lily evans. i'm FUN now. "

#a tale of a future yet to be written;; threads #resilientevans #threads;; lily #lily;; 001

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artemisandhersilverbow · 1 month ago

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OOPS I HAVE MORE

>> I don't think a lick of this will make sense without reading Pt. 1. << But there's also a relatively high chance it simply just doesn't make sense bc I'm half awake with the flu.

Watched the LWYMMD LV for the first time in many, many, many moons — low key it's the best one they've ever done? — and I actually chortled at this spooky familiar typewriter scene (top image above) for the line: "the role you made me play". Somehow this visual combines a typewriter AND screenplay.

Now I'm fairly certain this isn't the only typewriter imagery we get in our trove of MVs or LVs especially bc of TTPD. But I'm fairly certain this is the only other script 👀 we get.

Of course LWYMMD TV is on everyone's radar right now bc of the Handmaid's Tale ep. I didn't intentionally find this — I just remembered there were a few lyric vids from Rep era and haven't seen them in years. Anyway, notable because LWYMMD is the 6th song on the 6th album. Because that could just be straightforward Rep TV egging. But... the math... 6 + 6 = 12. This would take some Cassandra-like abilities to plan tho.

The thing I find v spooky are the words that glitch in The Manuscript LV are "And the actors" and then LWYMMD's lyrics are "The role you made me play." In fact, most of the imagery in this LV repeats itself... but the typewriter scene never shows up again.

This didn't end up being the only eerie visual similarity and I'm sure there are more. Feel free to indulge me if you wanna keep following the golden thread:

So the color scheme is predominantly grey, black, white, with red accents — or the whole scene is red (a spiral snake situation). But there are also very few pops of yellow and notably there are a few full frame yellow "glitches."

Obviously, my eye twitched a bit over the chess pieces because of Blank Space tour/LV visuals and the live chess game Mastermind dance on tour. The queen piece, which says "games" on it, also gets flicked off the board and immediately called the Queen's Sacrifice strategy to mind bc karma is a queen:

In chess, a queen sacrifice occurs when a player voluntarily allows their opponent to capture their queen, even though they could have defended it. This strategic decision is often made to gain a tactical advantage, such as a forced checkmate, a more advantageous position, or more material compensation.

BUT the VAULT KEY THAT HAS "KINGDOM KEYS" WRITTEN ON IT?!?!?? In the Rep era? This vault key being one of the few random yellow objects other than light itself?!

1. The eras stage/vault key game 2. Fearless TV vault key merch 3. Bejeweled MV

Imperfect matches, but again, TS isn't actually a seer. I think... I mean she did say there's only one key to her secret garden and she's got it.

I think she was already thinking quite deeply about the vault, her past + future work, and struggling in 2017... even if her Taylor's Versions idea hadn't manifested quite yet. Just look at the very familiar looking bank vault in LWYMMD MV (1:36).

Anyway, the scene that follows the Kingdom Keys is also familiar looking. In front of a spooky castle silhouette, a yellow crown falls onto ME! (out now) Did Taylor's pennies make them?

We've been getting castle motifs since Fearless (maybe earlier? don't quote me). But I feel like we really ramped up on the castle metaphor during Midnights with the Bejeweled MV, which also makes an appearance in the Karma MV.

At the end of Bejeweled, Taylor ghosts the prince, but gets to keep the Kingdom Keys and castle. We leave her, dressed in her golden princess dress, and smiling/smirking as dragons seem to be burning down the castle.

In Karma MV, you'll be able to spot the "same" castle to the left of Taylor, seemingly the natural end of the yellow brick road for (Friend of) Dorothy Taylor who's skipping in the rubies she gave up... also wearing a lil golden beret.

Now we have so many structure metaphors we've speculated could represent Taylor's body of work - for ex. the Lover House. I think that could still very much apply to her use of castles. It's just the sort of cold, elitist, patriarchal, impenetrable nature of castles - and her smiling as it burns down - that makes me feel like it could better represent her former record label, the industry, or even the contract she signed at 15 for the first 13 years of her career.

She's leaving it worse than she found it for the powers that be, to rubble even, hopefully paving a brighter road ahead for artists like herself. Or is at least getting tf out of Emerald City and following the yellow brick road far, far away. Home, maybe. We all know The Emerald City ends up just being a corrupt farce propped up by machines, gears, cogs, and a heck of a lot of exploitation. Not magic.

Anyway, three last 👀 stills from the LWYMMD video. Folks, we got a clock! A clock in a room that looks suspiciously like TTPD? Idk it gives me the vibe...

So first, when this door opens it smashes the lightbulb - plunging the room into darkness and scattering glass on the floor... which I'm sorry is just gonna remind me of Karma...

But we've also got this clock. We have so many mf-ing clocks at this point. But what have most of the clocks been doing? Pointing to midnight... or 12.

This one might not look like it is, like it's tilted then, but look at the wall in the wider shot. I think it is actually tilted. It also makes sense chronologically because "time" is the last word in the sentence. And my, my, my what a word to pick.

Now you might also point out that the red hand is the minute hand... but it's also the red object here... so it draws the attention? Tbh I'd just go with it personally. BUT whether it's 12 OR it's the minute amount... which would be 0... frankly, that would fascinate me too much...

She's never dodging the mastermind allegations (speaking of a really cool clock LV). To leave so many clues in your last stolen work (an odyssey that would only get worse from there) to be uncovered almost a decade later... I just keep finding Karma/12 everywhere I go.

Anyway, I've just been seeing what "Karma" or even a TS12 means in my head as a possible liberation of her work in a more complete way, but also liberation/freedom on many levels kinda vibe. I think she's been fighting the shackles of the industry/her contract, while communicating it covertly as she could, for longer than we might think... which does not surprise me considering the other subtext I - and my side of a fandom -believes that could apply to as well.

#TS12 #karma #friends of dorothea #lgbetty #the manuscript #the man you script #bejeweled #fortnight mv #look what you made me do #LWYMMD #Reputation #Midnights #TTPD #daylight theory #karma truther

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positivexcellence · 1 year ago

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Walker Boss, Jared Padalecki on Series Finale’s Surprise Cameo, Cordell and Geri’s [Spoiler], More Season 5 Plans

Walker wrapped up its four-season run on Wednesday with the introduction of a surprising but familiar face as Cordell’s new neighbor: James Van Der Beek!

The Dawson’s Creek vet appeared in the show’s final seconds, dressed in all white, with a smile on his face and a gift of soaps for the Walkers. But don’t let his jovial demeanor fool you: Van Der Beek’s character was set to stir up drama on the Davidson property next door as… a cult leader, showrunner Anna Fricke reveals in the following Q&A.

Talking about the casting, star/executive producer Jared Padalecki tells TVLine that Van Der Beek is “a personal friend.”

“He lives here in Austin, and he and his family are friends of me and my family, and so, it was kind of a phone call. I was like, ‘Hey, dude, you want to come do this?'” Padalecki recalls. When he then mentioned Fricke’s name — the showrunner got her start on Dawson’s Creek — Van Der Beek was on board.

“He came over, and just drove from his house and brought one of his daughters, and did it,” Padalecki shares. “We were really excited to explore that storyline.”

Elsewhere in the series finale: Cordell took a leave of absence from the Rangers to spend time with Geri and his kids, and as he readied to hit the road with them, he pocketed a ring box! Despite thinking she botched her interview, Cassie beat out Trey for the lieutenant position. Meanwhile, Liam and Ben decided to move in together, then Liam got a phone call from the governor, asking for his help, after which a black SUV picked him up.

On the kid front, August graduated high school, and Geri made Sadie and Stella a business proposal. Finally, Bonham and Abeline came to an understanding about the event business — she just wants to oversee things, and he suggested they use the boat for events — then the couple took a ride on the water.

“The season was not written, but needless to say, that [James Van Der Beek] cliffhanger was going to pay off as an enormous part, probably the main driving force, of Season 5,” Padalecki says. “Cordell taking a backseat with his Ranger duties and maybe being purposefully naïve to what’s going on next door… There were so many ways we could go, and it was going to be a damn good season of television, but it’s going to have to live in our imaginations.” (Get more of Padalecki’s thoughts on the show’s end and his TV future.)

Below, showrunner Anna Fricke details Van Der Beek’s role and what else was planned for a fifth season, including Cordell and Geri’s potential engagement and Liam’s mysterious new job.

TVLINE | Looking back on the episode, is there anything that you would’ve done differently or changed? Or are you pretty satisfied with the way it ended? Well, it’s probably a two-part answer. We did not know the fate of the show when we wrote the finale. I wrote the finale with Blythe Ann Johnson. We did know, as always, things are uncertain, and so we tried to, as always, write a cliffhanger, write some twists, leave some threads for an upcoming season. We were given the chance, a little bit into either the prep or the filming of the finale, to change anything, just in case, and we did not yet know the fate of the show. So it was sort of like a gamble, and I wrestled with that decision for many days, and talked to the writers, and talked to the producers and to Jared [Padalecki] about what we should do, if anything, and basically, ultimately, we didn’t want to insert a last-minute scene that would sum everything up. It’s 42 minutes of television. We didn’t want to summarize a whole series in one scene, or a few changed lines, or anything like that. So we, ultimately, decided to leave it as it was, which was a tough decision, but I still feel like it’s a good finale. It’s satisfying in many ways. It does not tell the full tale. This show was supposed to go on for 10 years, in my brain, and so, it doesn’t sum up everything, but I didn’t want to rush it, if that makes sense.

TVLINE | You still get a sense of where these characters are going to end up, even though we don’t actually see it. One thing we did get The CW to agree to, which I’m super grateful for, [is] we do have an extended finale by a few minutes, which is a huge deal in terms of scenes, because there were scenes that we had cut that we put back in, which was huge. So we do have that closure, and everyone is in a good place. When I was discussing the finale with our producer/director, Steve Robin, who I adore, we were talking about like, “It’s a good finale, but is it the-lights-off-at-Cheers?” which is, for a certain age group, like the ultimate finale. [Laughs] And it’s not the-lights-off-at-Cheers because I wasn’t prepared for the end. Had I known I had been writing for the end, I would’ve taken the whole fifth season and really written to the end. But I don’t feel like the characters have been robbed.

TVLINE | You set up some really fun cliffhangers for a potential Season 5, especially with the reveal of James Van Der Beek as the Walkers’ new neighbor. How did that come together? That whole process was so exciting. We always wanted to leave some threads for Season 5. We were going to do the cult next door. So he was supposed to be a cult leader. Ever since James Van Der Beek moved to Austin, we’ve been like, “How do we get him into the show? What can we do?” and this just seemed like the perfect thing, and we finally got him for this part. A small-known fact is that we had actually approached him to be Clint West [in] Season 1, which Austin Nichols, ultimately played, and Austin was so excellent in that role. I would not have it any other way. But James had been on that list for a possible villain. We were sort of circling him, like, “Is this possible? Can we get James?” and Jared and James are friends, and Dawson’s Creek was, of course, my first job in this industry. So it was a very beautiful full-circle thing.

TVLINE | Of all the cliffhangers in this episode, that one was the most like, “Oh, darn, I wish I could’ve seen this play out.” I’m not going to lie, part of me wanted to leave people mad. [Laughs] Part of me wanted to have like a big, splashy ending, so then people would be like, “How could you end this?!” No, it was going to be a lot of fun, and to me, personally, I think there was something profound in James Van Der Beek with Jared on this show, sort of like a great throwback to the original WB, and the commentary on the evolution of this network, which I was maybe reading too much into, but I enjoyed it. [Laughs]

TVLINE | What would the dynamic have been like between James’ character and Cordell? Had you thought that far ahead yet? Oh, gosh. I talked to James, and it was so last-minute. He’s a saint. I think it was truly like the day before we were shooting. It was really, really insanely last-minute, so thank God he lives there. He loved the idea of the cult leader, and I think, actually, half those clothes are his own clothes. [Laughs] He was super into it and super into the dynamic he would bring, and he was really into the idea of playing a fun character, an interesting character, a bad character. He was going to be kind of quirky bad, but amusing. He was going to be a really whimsical, amusing character. We were not going to do blood cult, bad, bad, bad cult. We were going to do like kooky cult.

TVLINE | There was a moment, earlier this season, where I thought Luna might be The Jackal, but then I was like, “No, they wouldn’t do that to Cassie.” But then you killed him, which is, I think, even worse. I know, it’s so funny. So many people thought he was The Jackal, which I love. The crew gets the scripts when all the department heads get the script, so they didn’t know, and so there were crew speculations, all season long, about who The Jackal was, and Luna was up there. Some people thought it was Sadie, which was a good one, too. [Laughs] It was devastating to kill him, but it had to be done for drama. I have a joke about all of our best guest stars, like Matt Barr, Austin Nichols, Justin Cortez Johnson, we just kill them all. But it doesn’t mean anything on our show. You can come back as a ghost. It’s fine.

TVLINE | You did give Cassie a bit of a hopeful note there at the end, when she got the promotion, and it leads to this interesting dynamic of she’s now Cordell’s superior. What were you excited to explore with that, if the show had continued? I was really excited to explore exactly that, her being his superior, but it wasn’t going to be a desk job with her. She was going to still be on the streets. But I was excited to see the dynamic of her having to discipline or corral or whatever Walker and Trey, and sort of be in charge of them a bit, and make calls with Captain James. We’ve never seen him have a number two. So that would’ve been really fun. And just seeing her have that dynamic of taking control of a job that Cordell, himself, never wanted, and just seeing her take charge would’ve been really fun.

TVLINE | Geri and Cordell went through their struggles this season, but they ended the finale in a much healthier place. Is it safe to say they were definitely going to get engaged? You know, it’s funny. We had a joke in the writers’ room about the end of the series, and truly, I thought it was going to go 10 years. Walker says to Emily in a flashback, I think, in Season 1, Episode 6, I think he says, “Going to marry Geri and work at the Side Step,” if Emily ever dies. And so that was sort of the end goal, but even when I was given the chance to alter the finale in any way, I didn’t want to get there. It was too fast for a proposal. So I didn’t want to do that right away. The engagement ring box was a very last-minute add. It was truly on the day of filming that scene. We went to the props department and said, “Hey, do you have a box? Can we put it in his pocket?” We shot it as an insert so that we could cut it out if we needed to. We didn’t want to be married to it, literally. I didn’t want marriage to be the end-all, be-all for her. I wanted more for her. So I didn’t want to rush to an engagement for that reason, and it just seemed too fast. I think, ultimately, yes, they end up together. If we’d had a fifth season, we would’ve made a story point out of the engagement, as in, like, he didn’t ask, or he did and it went south, or something happened. We wouldn’t have done that off-screen, for what it’s worth.

TVLINE | When she calls out to him, he says in this meaningful way, “I’m ready,” and it’s obvious he’s talking on another subtextual level. But it sounds like Geri’s not ready, she’s not in the same place. For sure. I was always, like, “Geri’s not ready.” I was always very interested in the character of Geri, of she wants more, and she wants something else. So even if he was ready to propose, I don’t know that she was ready to say yes. That was going to be a whole other thing.

TVLINE | How might have this time away from work have changed Cordell with the leave of absence? That’s interesting. Part of me wonders, in a fifth season, if he ever goes back. Because I never thought, in my mind, that he went to the grave a ranger. I think, at a certain point, he stopped it, because to me, his struggle has always been the work/life balance between family and work, and where is he going to end up? I think that, ultimately, hopefully, he gets more invested in his kids and steps away from that, and from the get-go, he wasn’t gunning to be captain, lieutenant, anything like that. He’s not trying to climb that ladder. So what is it for him? And I don’t know. I think he would’ve gone back for a season to be partnered with Trey on the streets, just doing the daily grind as a ranger. But I don’t know if he would’ve gone too much further beyond that. I think he would’ve maybe gone on to something else.

TVLINE | What can you say about what the governor wanted Liam’s help with? The governor’s daughter was kidnapped. Liam has a very particular set of skills, and the governor wanted Liam’s help. We were going to get Liam back into the halls of the political offices and dealing with that stuff. So it was going to be fun, Liam-doing-high-stakes-government stuff.

TVLINE | One of the other things that you hinted at but was kind of left dangling was the business proposal that Geri made to Sadie and Stella. Any details you can share about that? It was going to be the Side Step expanding and just keeping it in the family, and also, just keeping Saylor [Bell] on the show, because we love Saylor, we love working with her. We could only have so many series regulars, but we really loved working with Saylor. So it was sort of dangling a carrot of if there’s another Side Step, do we open this up? Do we have another storyline with the expanded Side Step? And what that opening is like, and what pursuing Sadie’s music is like at the same time. We just wanted to keep her in the mix.

TVLINE | Have you changed your mind, at all, about Cassie and Trey? [Fricke previously told TVLine there were no romantic feelings between the characters.] [Laughs hysterically] No. I never want them to be together. [Laughs] That’s so funny, Vlada, that you would ask that. Oh, my God, I’m like crying laughing. That was an ongoing argument in the writers’ room.

TVLINE | I remember you mentioning that. So I wondered if maybe somebody had swayed you by the end of the season. No, I did not want them to be together. Here’s the thing: In my mind, if we had gone 10 seasons, in the finale, maybe they would’ve gotten together, yes. Certainly not in this timeline. Ultimately, sure, but no. If we had been on 10 years, and she had gone on to the FBI, and blah, blah, blah, and they revisited each other, sure. But not when they were working in the same office. No, no, no. In Season 5, he was going to have an old Army friend, a female friend, calling. He was getting mysterious phone calls. He was going to have an old Army friend calling him for help that was going to cause some complications for him. So that was going to happen there.

TVLINE | Were there any other Season 5 storylines that you were excited about? I’m sure we had a ton. The cult was going to be fun. August was going to fall in love with — That was our in: August is going to fall in love with the girl next door, get dragged into the cult, have to be extracted. That was going to be fun. The governor stuff, leading to a proposal at the end of Season 5 with Walker and Geri… It would’ve been great.

#walker #jared padalecki #anna fricke

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corvusalas · 1 year ago

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who: @pxint-it-blxck where: st.mungo's

Life at St.Mungo's had almost become normal over the past few months. Here and there a case would stick out but the amount of war-based injuries was going down. There was nothing that could have ever allowed her to remotely feel at ease the way she had before hell broke loose, but it certainly was a step in the right direction.

Selma had been in the middle of sorting her equipment when the knock of one of the medi-assistants announced that one of the few, yet increasing number of appointments she took had arrived. The former Ravenclaw wasted no time, letting them know to send them in without delay before her attention drifted to the chart on her desk.

No matter how she twisted and turned things, there were things she felt like she was missing. Whether it be information or knowledge; one leading to the other. Selma was nothing if not determined, almost burning with a need to help the patient in question live life the way he deserved. Quick flick of the wand and the quill began to take notes on a pad on her desk. That would do for now.

Selma finally turned to face him, feeling in part almost rude for having taken her time before giving the other the attention they deserved. "Mr Black, welcome." The blonde managed a polite smile as she reached for the chart. Whatever little information had been given, it always seemed to make more sense to ask the person in question directly. "We'll move over there in a moment," she paused, pointing toward some of the equipment. "but I do have some questions regarding some things before we get started on that. If you don't mind?"

#threads;; regulus #a tale of a future yet to be written;; threads #pxintitblxck #regulus;; 001

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corvusalas · 1 year ago

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Life had a habit of leading one down dark paths, at times without ever even thinking about it. Selma herself had made a choice and eventually walked away but there were still those she cared for that she hoped could be reasoned with. Sadly, far too many times did that backfire, leading to her finding herself within Knockturn Alley more than once after a more than failed attempt to convince a friend here or there to see reason. There was a life brighter than the darkness they'd chosen. Too many friends had been lost over things.

Selma felt defeated, for the day anyway. Another person to walk away. She'd ever over it, she always did but it was still sad to see. Her eyes scanned the area, spotting someone by the bar. While she was there, she may as well take the time and have a drink. "Force of habit, I suppose." What a blatant lie. How long had it been since the last time she'd set foot within Delirium? "I didn't expect to be here either, if I'm honest." - @ofxalectox

Where: Delirium Bar, Knockturn Alley

When: Around 11pm

Who: Alecto and Open

It was an quiet night for the bar. It wasn't that unusual for a night in January. So it didn't worry Alecto. She supposed if her bar was constantly quiet it would be a worry. But she had no concerns that that would ever happen. She'd taken the little run down bar and make it into a successful business. She might have left school with barely any qualifications, but Alecto was a good business woman. And she'd made the bar successful. And if she was honest, a break from some of the more rowdy nights, was a good thing.

She'd sent one of the bartenders home, and was sat behind the bar herself. She was mostly going through new cocktail ideas, whilst being on hand to serve if needed. She looked up as someone approached the bar, and she smirked a little. "Didn't expect to see you here tonight"

#a tale of a future yet to be written;; threads #threads;; alecto #alecto;; 001 #ofxalectox

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nightghoul381 · 1 year ago

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Dark If ~ Jude Jazza

This a fan translation so it is definitely not 100% accurate. I do not own anything related to Ikemen Villains. Support Cybird by buying their amazing stories!

CW: Mentions of blood

I immediately started researching things in the library. About curses and magic.

The knowledge I gained from books every day was all about things I didn’t know, having been raised in an overprotected castle.

Kate: “Time is not irreversible, and space is not absolute.”

Kate: “Like intricately intertwined threads, the past and the future, and one world and another, can be connected.”

Kate: “…Maybe that’s why I have memories of living both in England and in the world of fairy tales…”

Both existed separately, but now they are intertwined as one.

It’s like twisting two threads together.

When I quickly turned the page, I saw that it was written about a wizard.

Because wizards possess incredible power and are rare in number, they often become the source of contention between countries.

It is not uncommon for one’s life to be targeted by assassins from other countries. This is because if you kill one wizard, you will have a military advantage.

(Because wizards can easily plot to overthrow the country,)

(If they refuse to belong to the national army, they are often imprisoned or killed--)

Kate: “…Oh I see…”

(I can’t believe that the overprotective king and military would tolerate such a situation just because he’s a wizard…)

Anger and shame at not knowing anything welled up.

Jude the Wizard: “What are you doing here night after night?”

Kate: “Mr. Jude…”

As soon as I saw him, I felt a rush of regret for the words I had spoken a few days ago.

Kate: “…I’m sorry for saying it was because of your personality that you were targeted.”

Jude the Wizard: “Ah? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kate: “Just as you said, I’ve come to learn how little I knew.”

Kate: “I want you to listen to my wishes…First, we will be able to talk as equals.”

Jude the Wizard: “….ha.”

Jude let out a dry laugh and hooked his fingertips in my collar again, pulling my face closer to his.

Kate: “…ngh”

Jude the Wizard: “I thought that a princess who had been content to be kept in a box for many years would grow up to be a selfish, spoiled brat.”

Jude the Wizard: “Yeah, you see it too. I’m going to make you so frustrated that you’ll cry.”

Kate: “…What was that?”

He is still sadistic and looks down on me. And yet, for some reason, my heart lifts.

(I’m not saying I’m not happy to have received a bit of recognition, )

(But I’m not…I guess.)

Jude the Wizard: “Well, at least you can try your best.”

Jude pulled his fingers out of his collar and left the library.

(--Come to think of it, I was told I was a slave and even had a collar put on me.)

Yet I was never restricted from doing anything other than leaving the castle.

“I’m safe, so please don’t send any soldiers. There will be unnecessary deaths.”

Ellis had also delivered a letter with that written to the castle.

Since then, they have continued to communicate regularly to me to let me know that they are safe.

(If the curse is due to his grudge—maybe I did something wrong.)

(Why can’t I remember…?)

As if to vent my growing frustration, I immersed myself in researching curses and magic.

As I spend my days like that, before I know it--.

Kate: “Ah, good morning Jude.”

Jude the Wizard: “…You did that on purpose.”

Kate: “…Did what?”

Jude the Wizard: “I’ve got bed hair.”

A hand reached out and roughly combed through the tangled hair.

I lowered my head, trying to disguise the pounding of my heart.

Jude the Wizard: “Pfft, Why’re you blushing so much? You really are a child.”

Far from getting used to this arrogant sadist, I was starting to feel a little attracted to him.

(This is phenomenon where the victim falls in love with the kidnapper.)

(It’s not love…yeah.)

Kate: “Mr. Jude, you didn’t come out of the study again yesterday, did you? Are you sleeping properly?”

Jude the Wizard: “Heh, I just called you a child and you’re worried about me.”

Jude the Wizard: “Let’s wait until you fix your bed head and are able to say hello in the morning, princess.”

Kate: “What…”

A finger flicked my forehead, causing pain.

Jude the Wizard: “You like pain, don’t you?”

His lips curve in a mocking manner, almost catching my eye, and I look away.

Kate: “I really don’t like it…now, will you please lift the curse today.”

Jude the Wizard: “I’ll think about it when I’ve had a good day.”

Kate: “Didn’t you say the same thing yesterday?”

Jude the Wizard: “Ah-ah, yapping and biting me, today is a bad day too.”

Jude laughed at my plea and went out as usual.

Time passes without mercy, without any success in lifting the curse of finding what is missing in this world—.

(Jude…?)

In the middle of one night, I felt that Jude had returned after being out for an unusually long time, and when I peeked out from the library,

Jude’s back was just about to disappear into the study.

There were some spots left on the carpet—.

(Is that…blood?)

A shiver ran down my spine and I ran to the study, unable to sit still.

Kate: “Jude… are you hurt?”

Jude the Wizard: “… I told you not to enter this room without permission, didn’t I?”

Jude the Wizard: “It’s not a big injury, just get out of here.”

Kate: “Even if it’s not a big injury, you don’t leave the injured alone. You help and treat them.”

When I forced myself to walk over to him, I saw a pile of papers and documents piled up on the desk.

Kate: “…What on earth are you researching while holed up in your study every night?”

Kate: “It’s why you went out tonight, isn’t it…?”

Jude the Wizard: “…What would you do if I said yes?”

Kate: “If you keep doing this, your body will shut down.”

Kate: “Risking your life for the sake of a promise… it’s just like you.”

Jude the Wizard: “…What?”

Kate: “—It’s like you’re the one who’s cursed.”

Jude the Wizard: “Hah… you say that.”

A hand wraps around my throat, like a snake coiled around me.

I’m cursed by this man—He holds my life in his hands. This is a reminder of that.

Kate: “ngh…ha….rgh”

The tightness of the collar is loosened and my breathing increases.

Jude the Wizard: “I’ve lived a long life, and I’d love nothing more than to be cursed to death by a stupid promise.”

Jude the Wizard: “Don’t worry about me, take it easy—tomorrow you’re destined to fall into a deep sleep, just as you were cursed to do,”

Jude the Wizard: “You forgot, right?”

Jude the Wizard: “If you don’t want to get your head blown off right now, go back to your room, princess.”

The door closes in front of me with a loud bang.

Yes, I realized my birthday –tomorrow—was fast approaching.

(If this continues, I will fall into a 100-year slumber, as per my curse.)

(I still don’t know anything about why I was cursed by Jude, or what is missing in this world…)

As I was suffering from anxiety and unable to sleep, the sound of glass breaking filled my ears.

(Someone attacked again…?)

I’ve gotten used to the sound by now, but—today I feel especially uneasy.

(I hear more people’s voices and footsteps than usual.)

(Ellis is staying the night away to go shopping in the town at the foot of the mountain—and)

(Jude is injured tonight.)

Kate: “…mm”

I hurriedly jumped out of my bed and headed out into the hallway.

Jude the Wizard: “Tch… Why are you here? Go to sleep.”

Kate: “With this noise? Please don’t be unreasonable…”

Soldier: “Miss Kate!”

(--Are these people from the national army!?)

Kate: “Why… I’ve told my father that I’m okay…!”

Soldier: “The deadline of your curse is already approaching tomorrow.”

Soldier: “He wishes to see your face for a second before then, and I have been ordered to take you home!”

(My father…)

Jude the Wizard: “—I’m sorry, but the princess won’t be going home.”

Jude pushes me behind him with one arm, trying to hide me from the soldiers downstairs.

Kate: “Jude? If you do something like this, you’ll be treated as a traitor and you’ll be targeted even more than you already are…”

Jude the Wizard: “Ha, I don’t need you to worry. Besides, if you go back to the castle now, you’ll die.”

Kate: “Wha…?”

(What do you mean…? The curse that’s triggered by being pricked by a spinning wheel is supposed to cause a person to sleep for 100 years.)

But now, Jude clearly said, ‘I’ll die.’

Kate: “Aside from the curse, are you saying that there’s something that would cause me to die…?”

Jude the Wizard: “…haah. The doctors in the royal castle are really incompetent.”

At that moment, I saw a flaming arrow flying towards Jude--.

Kate: “…watch out…!”

Jude the Wizard: “!?”

Immediately moving to cover him, I lost my balance,

Jude the Wizard: “…Kate!”

--and fell headlong down the stairs.

When I landed—I was in the arms of a soldier sent by my father.

Soldier: “Miss Kate! Are you okay!?”

Kate: “Jude…!?”

When I looked up, a soldier had taken advantage of my falling and pinned Jude down.

Jude the Wizard: “Shit… What are you falling for? Are you stupid?”

Kate: “…ngh, Please! That person is injured… please don’t be rough!”

Soldier: “He will be taken into custody by the national army on charges of abducting and confining the princess.”

Kate: “Wait, please…Listen to me--!”

There was no way my voice would be heard…and we were transported to the royal castle in separate carriages.

(What should I do… Jude was arrested because of me.)

From what I read in the books, I’ve got a good idea of how wizards are treated.

Instead of having the crime overlooked, he will be forced to work to protect the country and attack the enemy.

(Jude still has a promise he wants to fulfill…)

--“Even if I die, I won’t break my promise.”

Kate: “…?”

I thought I heard someone’s voice, and right after that the world around me became distorted.

(Ah…? I think I hit my head earlier--)

I closed my eyes tightly until the dizziness subsided, and when I opened them, I saw--.

An unfamiliar back alley.

Kate: “…what, where…?”

I don’t know why, but the image reflected in the mirror is that of a young girl. She looks to be about ten years old or so.

(Is that…me when I was younger?)

I was wearing a pretty, expensive-looking dress, so it didn’t appear as though I was living in England.

At that moment—I heard the yelling of several adults from across the alley.

Male voice: “Catch him! Catch him alive!”

Male voice: “This… took so much time and effort, but finally--!”

When I looked out of the alley, I saw a boy around the same age as me being chased by adults.

He was covered in scars, but his eyes were burning fiercely as if he hated everything in this world.

The child almost passed in front of the alley where I was--.

Kate: “…Hide—”

Boy: “Wha!?”

I couldn’t help but pull him in.

Hiding behind a wooden box, I hear the heavy footsteps of adults moving away, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Kate: “…It seems like they’re gone. Why were you being chased? Are you hurt--?”

Boy: “…You don’t know who I am. I’m sure I’m wanted all over the country.”

Kate: “Really? How could such a small child…”

Boy: “Small child, you’re about the same age right?”

(Ah…Maybe--)

Kate: “Can you use magic?”

Boy: “—what if I could?”

I could clearly feel his apprehension rising.

It was said “Wizard children are sometimes put on a wanted list in order to keep them around as a valuable asset.”,

I remembered that heartless sentence.

Kate: “I won’t capture you, so don’t worry.”

Boy: “…ha, I doubt that. You look like an aristocrat or a member of the royal family. I can’t trust someone with a lot of money and power.”

Kate: “It’s true! …you were put on the wanted list even though you’re innocent,”

Kate: “It’s absolutely unfair to have your life threatened or your freedom taken away…!”

It reminds me how Jude was attacked almost every day in that castle deep in the mountains.

Before I knew it, the words were pouring out, letting out the frustration that had built up during the days I spent in that castle.

Kate: “Ah… I’m sorry, I just had to say that out loud.”

Boy: “Haha, why are you apologizing to me? No problem, I agree with you.”

Boy: “… your face doesn’t seem like it can tell a lie.”

Boy: “It would make you an evil person to get the bounty through deception, and you don’t seem to have the ability to use your wit—ah?”

Boy: “Hey, show me your face.”

Kate: “Eh? I—”

The boy pulled my face closer to his and looked into my eyes, squinting as if searching for something.

(Cold… but beautiful eyes.)

Boy: “Tsk… Why do people like you end up with such a disease.”

Kate: “Disease…?”

Boy: “You have about ten years left.”

Kate: “Eh, what…!? Does that mean I’ll die in ten years…!?”

Boy: “I won’t let you die, as I owe you my life.”

Boy: “Ten years from now, before you die, I’ll stop time.”

Boy: “I don’t know how many years it will take to find a cure, but I think 100 years will be enough.”

Kate: “Wait…What do you mean?”

Boy: “You’re a dull princess. I’m trying to help you and you’re crying and screaming as thanks.”

Boy: “Even if I die, I won’t break my promise.”

A finger poked me in the forehead.

Boy: “Ten years from now—you’ll prick your finger on a spinning wheel and fall into a 100-year sleep.”

Kate: “W-why do I have to get priced by a spinning wheel…?”

Boy: “Because it looks like that, I don’t know. And you—you seem to like pain.”

A mocking, arrogant smile appeared on his thin lips, and I was taken aback.

Kate: “—You and I, have we met somewhere…?”

--The next thing I knew, I was being rocked by the carriage that I’d been pushed into by the soldiers of the national army.

(Just now… for a dream, it felt extremely vivid.)

I could still clearly feel the touch of his fingertip on my forehead.

“Time is no irreversible, and space is not absolute. Past and future, and other worlds can be connected.”

(The past and present are connected…?)

I was in England, came to this world—and now I made a promise with Jude from the past.

The idea was so farfetched, but the dots were connected and it emerged as the truth.

Kate: “Now, Jude is being held prisoner—The curse, the promise is…”

Kate: “That promise you just made with me…?”

--Flashback—

King: “…You got into a fight with me that night, and you snuck out of the castle. Then, you lost consciousness and collapsed in a back alley.”

--End Flashback—

When I think about it, I can understand why I have no memory of that time.

I met Jude in the back alley because that’s who I am now.

When I came to this world, I made a promise with Jude from the past.

So, before I met Jude from the past, I had no memories of him.

(Still… I didn’t think of the curse as something to be afraid of.)

(Jude didn’t curse me because of a grudge.)

(It was to buy time to find a cure for me.)

In other words, as per the curse, I have to pricked by the spinning wheel.

A sleep to stop death, to fulfill his promise.

Kate: “The spinning wheel…”

Kate: “I have to find the spinning wheel—”

#ikemen villains #ikevil #ikemen villains translation #ikevil translation #jude jazza #ikevil jude #ikevil jude jazza #ikemen villains jude #ikemen villains jude jazza #tw: blood

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transgenderswagcompetitions · 1 year ago

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Okay! So I don't have an official bracket yet, but I finally got every character written down and determined who will be automatically going on to Round 1 and who will have to compete in preliminaries. Everyone automatically moving on to Round 1 had more than 1 submission, while everyone in the preliminaries only had 1 submission.

I will put together an official bracket tomorrow, but here's the list of competitors!

The characters automatically going on to Round 1 are:

Alex Fierro from Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (4 submissions)

Shi Qingxuan from Heaven Official's Blessing (2 submissions)

Cheery Littlebottom from Discworld (2 submissions)

Nimona from Nimona (2 submissions)

Elle Argent from Heartstopper (2 submissions)

Eolo from The Raven Tower (2 submissions)

Anthony J. Crowley from Good Omens (2 submissions)

Kade West from Wayward Children (2 submissions)

Kel Brezon from Machineries of Empire (2 submissions)

The characters that will be competing in the Preliminaries are:

Rafe from Viscera

Rafe from The House of Whispers

Ash from DIE

Ash from Girl Haven

Jerico Soberanis from The Toll

Nadir from The Thirty Names of Night

Holly from The Mellification

Petrichor from Saga

Kazuhito "Kirito" Kirigaya from Sword Art Online

Aster Vanissen from Witch Boy

Sherlock Holmes from Sherlock Holmes

Vess from Invisible Kingdom

Tonkee Innovator Dibars from The Broken Earth Trilogy

Ben Van Brunt from Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow

Shuos Zehun from Machineries of Empire

Villy from Basil and Oregano

Valentine Weis from World Running Down

Howl Pendragon from Howl's Moving Castle

Hero from Something's Not Right

Dominic Seneschal from Terra Ignota

Firestar from Warriors

Enjolras from Les Miserables

Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

Axolotl from Wings of Fire

Isa from Transmuted

Inspector Javert from Les Miserables

Addy from Basil and Oregano

June Egbert from Homestuck

Alto from Your Mind is a Terrible Thing

David from Dark Currents

Monique from The Worm and His Kings

Viola Carroll from A Lady for a Duke

Will Avery from Names for the Dawn

Qven-and-Reet from Translation State

Syd from The Heartbreak Bakery

Claire/Claude from Baker Thief

Cersei Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire

Will Treaty from Ranger's Apprentice

Starflight from Wings of Fire

Yadriel from Cemetery Boys

Zila from Aurora Cycle

Kaladin Stormblessed from The Stormlight Archive

AR/Lil Hal from Homestuck

Zoe from Sleepless Domain

Sera from Angela: Queen of Hel

Max Owen from Magical Boy

Jonathan Harker from Dracula

Diana Wrayburn from The Shadowhunter Chronicles

Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula

Never from Skulduggery Pleasant

Benji/Benjamin from Hell Followed With Us

Brick from Warriors

Sidra from Wayfarers

Sascha Vykos from Vampire: The Masquerade

Penfield from Future Feeling

Sallot Leon from Mask of Shadows

Ieshwi from The Stormlight Archive

Vriska Serket from Homestuck

Orlando from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Spencer Harris from The Passing Playbook

Jane Crocker from Homestuck

Lupe from Four Leaf

Trina Goldberg-Oneka from The Seep

Cassandra Igarashi from The Wicked + The Divine

Aya Burnstein from Dancing in the Devils Auditorium

Lucus from High Class Homos

Merlin from The Left Handed Booksellers of London

Nightheart from Warriors

Sol from Dead Collections

Max from Magical Boy

Artemis Fowl from Artemis Fowl

Teo from The Sunbearer Duology

Wanda from The Sandman

Tal Smithson from Time to Orbit: Unknown

Petey the Cat from Dog Man

Captain Artemisia Blastside from Piratica

Rosa from Threads That Bind

Alter Boi from House of Whispers

Wegg from Be Kind, My Neighbor

Loki from Loki: Agent of Asgard

Scorn from Emergent Properties

Alanna of Trebond from The Song of the Lionness

Marcia Overstrand from Septimus Heap

Sage from Strawberry Seafoam

Jules from The Chromatic Fantasy

Peter Parker from The Amazing Spider-Man

Razia Khan from Stealing Thunder

Dipper Pines from the Gravity Falls comics

Mel from Something's Not Right

Hero Shackleby from American Hippo

Kino from Kino's Journey

The Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere

River Runson from The Melting Queen

Jonathan Morgan from All the White Spaces

Leigh Hunter from Grey Dawn

Xada from LoveBot

Ienaga Kano from Golden Kamuy

Viola/Cesario from Twelfth Night

Silas Bell from The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

Let me know if I accidentally have a character on this list twice! Also let me know if you see anything misspelled or under the wrong book or series. Basically, let me know if I've screwed up lol

Thank you all for your continued patience!

#update #tournament bracket #(ish)#new pinned

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cagedbirds-and-sunsetlies · 2 months ago

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~ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴜɴ ɪɴ ʜɪꜱ ꜱᴍɪʟᴇ, ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪʀᴇ ɪɴ ʜɪꜱ ᴇʏᴇꜱ

— BASIC INFO —

FULL NAME: Aurion

AGE: Ageless, appears early 20s, but his eyes are older than empires.

GENDER: Male, he/him.

SEXUALITY: Panromantic demisexual

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral

— APPEARANCE —

HAIR: Gold like molten dawn, streaked with fading starlight.

EYES: Amber.

SKIN: Warm bronze, faintly glowing—dims when depressed.

MARKINGS: Cracks of light under his skin when injured, "fault lines"

— PERSONALITY —

VIRTUES: Gentle with the broken, fiercely protective.

VICES: Self-sacrificing, avoids attachment, volatile temper.

LIKES: Stargazing, old books, writing, music, thunderstorms.

DISLIKES: Nyx’s children, being called "immortal" (he’s not—just hard to kill).

— POWERS & ABILITIES —

PHOTOKINESIS: Can weaponise sunlight; blinding flashes, scorching rays.

DAWN’S RESURGENCE: Heals rapidly at sunrise, but the pain stays for longer.

GOLDEN WINGS: Manifested only in moments of desperation.

CHRONOSIGHT: Sees fragments of past/future at dawn/dusk.

#aurion speaks — IC dialogue

#sun or lies? — Asks

#aurion’s dawn — Headcanons & lore

#caged writing — RP threads

#of the night — OOC

BACKSTORY, MOD INFORMATION AND DO NOT INTERACT UNDER THE CUT

— BACKSTORY —

Aurion's birth was written in the stars as both blessing and tragedy. His mother, Eos, the Titaness of Dawn, had always been cursed to love mortals who withered like flowers under the sun. But one astronomer—a man who charted her celestial path with devotion—stole her heart so completely that she begged the Fates to spare him for the first time. They refused.

Aurion was conceived in that desperate, golden hour before sunrise, born nine months later as his human father took his last breath beneath the morning sky. His first cry was the colour of gold, his tiny fingers grasping at sunbeams like they could pull his father back from death.

— THE MORTAL YEARS —

Raised in secret among humans, Aurion's childhood was a tale of contradictions. His mortal caretakers (consisting of priests, scholars, and Eos's fleeting mortal lovers) taught him to hide his glow. They called it protection. He called it a cage.

By adolescence, he realized the cruel truth: he was a paradox. Too radiant to belong among humans, yet too mortal to stand among gods. His mother visited rarely—always at dawn, always with tears like morning dew on her cheeks. She would whisper stories of Olympus, of her sisters Selene and Nyx, of the war-scarred world beyond his sheltered existence. But when he begged to see it, she vanished like mist in sunlight.

— THE FIRST DEATH —

At seventeen, Aurion fell in love for the first time. A blacksmith's daughter with calloused hands and a laugh like wind chimes. She wasn't afraid of his light—she called it beautiful.

But beauty burns.

One careless embrace, one moment of unchecked emotion, and his skin flared white-hot. She died in his arms, her last breath curling into the sunrise like smoke. That was the day he learned his second truth: to love him was to bring destruction on yourself.

— THE SOLDIER YEARS —

For centuries after, Aurion wandered battlefields as a ghost of gilded armour and half-remembered prayers. He fought in a hundred wars under a hundred names, always the stranger who arrived at dawn and vanished by dusk.

He was Aelius, the golden spearman who turned the tide at Thermopylae before fading into legend.

He was Heliosan, the mercenary whose arrows burned like miniature suns during the Siege of Troy.

He was Solivann, the silent knight who carried dying soldiers into the light so they wouldn't die alone.

But no matter the name, the ending was the same: eventually, someone would notice he didn't age. Didn't bleed right. Didn't cast a shadow. And he would have to leave.

— THE DIVINE BETRAYAL —

The gods noticed his interference.

Ares cursed him for stealing honorable deaths from his grasp. Apollo mocked him as "Eos's bastard candle." Worst of all, his own mother—when he finally stormed into her celestial palace—could only sigh and say: "You were never meant to linger, my dawnchild. You are a moment. Moments pass."

That night, for the first time, Aurion's light flickered out completely.

— THE SHADOW ERA —

For decades, he wandered as a hollow thing. His glow dimmed to embers, his wings atrophied into scar tissue. He let Nyx's children whisper in his ear, let them convince him that darkness was kinder than dawn.

It was a mortal—always a mortal—who dragged him back. A poet who mistook him for a star fallen to earth and said, "Even extinguished, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

— NOW —

After three millennia of wandering, Aurion has reluctantly settled at Camp Half-Blood. Not because he believes in safe havens—he knows better—but because Chiron caught him on the beach at sunrise and said the five words that undo him every time: "They need someone who understands."

Cabin: Officially unclaimed (Eos has no cabin), but he drifts between the Apollo's Cabin and the Hermes' Cabin.

— WHY HE STAYS —

The Sunset Curse Weakens Here. The magical borders dull his compulsion to wander. For the first time in centuries, he's lasted six months in one place without his bones aching.

The Kids Are Alright (And Terrifying). Demigods don't flinch at his glow. Some even like it. (A Stoll brother tried to bottle his tears to sell as "god-grade glitter." Aurion pretended to be offended. He wasn't.)

He's Weirdly Good at This. Turns out, being an ageless warrior-poet makes you a shockingly effective camp counselor:

Archery Instructor ("Yes, I outshot Apollo once. No, he didn't take it well.")

Sunrise Meditation (Read: napping in the grass while campers trauma-dump beside him)

Mythology Lessons ("That's not how the Trojan War went. I was there.")

— MOD INFORMATION —

NAME: Nix

PRONOUNS: it/its, they/them

AGE: Minor

Content Limits:

No NSFW/18+ content, no graphic self-harm depictions.

— DO NOT INTERACT —

Pro-Israel Advocacy Islamophobia Anti-Semitism Proshippers / Darkshippers / Comshippers MAPs / Pedophiles / Lolicons Zoophiles Transphobia / TERF Ideology Homophobia Racism / White Supremacy Sexism / Misogyny / Anti-Feminism Fascism / Nazism / Alt-Right Ideologies Xenophobia / Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Ableism And just Bigotry of all kinds

#pjo rp blog #pjo rpg #pjo rp #pjo roleplay #pjo roleplay blog #oc rp #rp blog #rp #oc #ocs #roleplay

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corvusalas · 1 year ago

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In all her life, with all its twists and turns, had one ever told Selma she would eventually live in her own cottage it would have seemed all too good to be true. Had one added that she'd be taking in someone like Ludo out of the kindness of her heart, the witch would have laughed in their face. Oh, how the times had changed. A part of her was wondering about adjusting the inside of the cottage once more. Perhaps it was space that was needed in order to allow for things to feel more comfortable. At the very least she could attempt to add the alchemy lab extension she'd been wanting for a while.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the rather intense call of her name. "Merlin." The blonde let the sigh escape as she rushed toward the sound only to be met with Ludo lounging on the sofa, clearly enjoying themself far too much for her liking. "What is it?" The witch dropped the cloth, fumbling as she folded it neatly. "Based on the way that sounded I thought something bad had happened."

Was this the first time? It would have been a lie had Selma ever made claims regarding the frequency of such events. "If you plan on placing that bottle down on the table, use a coaster or I will blast that bottle." She turned toward the kitchen. "Or is this about the fact that you are holding the last bottle?" - @ludcvicb

Ludo had been taken by complete surprise when Rita had kicked them out. The two of them had been through so much together and they were positive that she was going to get over it and forgive their infidelity, but they were wrong. Rita went ahead and posted in the paper that Ludo needed a new place to live, and they knew in that moment that the two of them really were officially over.

That's how Ludo ended up living with Selma. She really did have a heart of gold and helped them out in their time of need, and for that Ludo would be eternally grateful. However, they were quite an unlikely pair and living with a stranger proved to be rather difficult. Especially after being so used to having a fiancee that did almost everything they asked for, it was a difficult transition and they weren't taking to it very well.

Laying down on the sofa, Ludo tilted their head back, allowing the final drops of beer slide out of the bottle and down their throat. It was the last bottle left in the house. "Selmaaaa!" They called, wondering if she was planning on leaving the house anytime soon.

@corvusalas

#ludo;; 001 #a tale of a future yet to be written;; threads #ludcvicb #threads;; ludo #hope this is okay;;#if not please do let me know;;

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tarnishedspark · 1 year ago

Note

🌀Post the fic summary for a fic you haven't written/published yet. It can be hypothetical or something you really plan on releasing...

❄️Share a snippet from a WIP of your choosing.

🌤️Share your favorite piece of dialogue from your WIP.

🌧️Share something angsty from your WIP.

🌈 Share something soft/fluffy from your WIP.

💧Share something romantic/hot from your WIP, or just something sweet if it's gen.

🌩️ Share something funny/cracky from your WIP.

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

🌪️Sum up a WIP with a few fic tropes/Ao3 tags.

All the things? Okay, all the things. ill put in a show more because Long

Unpublished fic summary:

Drift's story is diverted by a visit from multiverse-hopping Cloud Universe Deadlock who shows him his future in the form of the Drift comics, and implies that he'll be killed by the djd if he becomes Drift again. Turns out he kills the DJD instead.

Snippet from a WIP:

enjoy some sparkeater skywarp

Skywarp dropped the empty husk of the vehicon as the glow of a fusion cannon lit up his field of vision and reflected off the energon spread across his hands, plating and slithering tendril lines. "Hey Megs," Skywarp greeted, a note of fear slipping into the familiar greeting, "This isn't what it looks like." He slowly raised his hands in surrender, keeping them in view. The briefest glimmer of confusion touched the disgust on his leader's visage. "You mean to convince me that one of my most valuable officers has not become a creature of lesser bots' nightmares, as you are kneel here drenched in the lifeblood of one of your subordinates, the picture of a creature of tales of yore, having consumed your victim's very spark?" Megatron replied. "Okay maybe it is what it looks like," Skywarp conceded. Megatron's laughter boomed through the small meetingroom space. His fusion cannon powered down. Everyone else behind him shuffled uncomfortably.

Favourite piece of dialogue from WIP:

Somethin from the next chapter of Gladiator Hours . Definitely spoilers.

Ravage sniffed around them some more. "What is that smell? I can hardly get any of your scent past it." "Scented oil." "Oh, la-di-da mister fancy bot." "Oil: was free." "I guess a city bot like you can't go around smelling like actual garbage forever. What would your fellow fancy job bots think?" "Soundwave: gladiator," Soundwave huffed again. The gladiator pits were hardly anyplace fancy, let alone pleasant smelling. "Smell: irrelevant. Better than anyone else without scented oil." Ravage looked up into his visor with a mischievous glint in his optics. "Not content to smell like a warrior, then?" Of course Ravage had heard about that. Why wouldn't his embarrassment have been spread to the furthest corners of the planet, to be known even by those who had been expelled from civilisation.

Something angsty from your WIP

hmmm probably Too spoilersy to take smth from Gladiator Hours again here. Let's pick out a different one... Oh yes, this one is slmost 100% angst. Working title "grounded"

He stopped before the large door. Megatron's quarters had remained empty since their leader's demise. Soundwave doubted anyone had entered. Likely no one even knew they could. Soundwave palmed open the door and engaged the lock behind him. Within, the room was untouched. It could have been any other day he came to spend time with the warlord, were it not for the darked lights and the eerie emptiness. Soundwave climbed up on the berth, a large space that felt cold and exposed, and clutching a large pillow close curled in on himself. His best friend was gone. Laserbeak was far away, living a new life. All he had left were the few remaining frayed threads of the Cause. He didn't know if they were even worth holding onto.

Something soft/fluffy from your WIP:

you have No Idea how hard it was to find a bit I've actually written already, i think i went through every wip. have some cyberverse Soundwave x hot rod, featuring a song by Aerosmith

It was a long transport trip Soundwave was taking him on. At some point Hot Rod fell into recharge, stretched across an entire bank of plush seating. It was the most comfortable he had been in longer than he could remember. When he awoke he found Soundwave sitting opposite him, watching with an intensity that only Soundwave could manage. From Soundwave's speakers, an Earth song was quietly playing. 🎵Don't want to close my eyes, I don't want to fall asleep, 'Cause I'd miss you baby, And I don't want to miss a thing🎵 Hot Rod blinked. 🎵'Cause even when I dream of you, The sweetest dream will never do, I'd still miss you baby, And I don't want to miss a thing🎵 "Aww, you missed me too?" Hot Rod asked, sitting up excitedly. The music cut off with a startled record scratch. "Of course not," Soundwave replied dismissively. A contradictory squawk came from the cockpit. "Perhaps a bit," Soundwave conceded, shuffling his feet nervously. Hot Rod grinned. He didn't know how much he had needed to hear that until he did.

Something romantic/hot or sweet:

okay we're going with this for "hot" because i have spent so long looking for snippets already this will do

Starscream was left with a scene of carnage and limbs. Soundwave moved amongst it all, his data cables extended and their claws ripping savagely at targets Starscream was sure the mech couldn't even see. His broad arms deflected blows and blaster fire alike as he moved and dodged and weaved expertly through the fray. ::Stay down:: Soundwave commed, casting a pointed glance in his direction. Starscream's wings raised indignantly, but he quickly pulled them back down again as blaster fire passed close overhead. The next thing he knew, Soundwave was ontop of him. Deft digits passed across his frame, checking for injuries. While Soundwave had effectively cleared the nearby area, Starscream was anxious not to be caught by surprise again. Raising one arm, he fired one of his rockets into the throng of enemy forces. The Autobots exploded in an eruption of flame and light. Finding only the scorch mark on his wing and a few scrapes and dents from the crash, Soundwave pulled Starscream to his feet. Perhaps it was the thrill of battle, or the buzz of energon in his lines, but Starscream couldn't help notice the rise of charge in his frame as he brushed up against the communications chief. This absolute beast of a mech who handled him with such care. That was something he would have to address later.

Something funny/cracky:

Earthspark post- season 1 Shockwave is just here now too.

"Mrrr,” Shockwave rumbled. A cow lowed in refurn. "Mrro." Shockwave mooed. "Hey Shockwave, what're you doing?" Thrash questioned, watching the scientist skeptical. "I am attempting to decipher these creatures' language." Shockwave replied, listening intently to the sounds the herd made. "You mean we'll be able to tell what Fluffyears is saying? That's so exciting!" Hashtag declared, popping up out of seemingly nowhere, "What are they saying right now? How long until we can learn to speak cow too?" "It may take some time. They do not appear to have a defined sentence structure."

A fic concept:

Star trek: the motion picture crossover with transformers. The planet Voyager went to was Cybertron. Crossover with the rest of star trek. Make Shockwave and Spock meet and make them tell eachother they're being illogical. I don't know what would happen here but I am sure there is fun to be had.

sum up a wip with tropes/ao3 tags:

oh this is the part i am Worst at. Luckily I've started putting these at the top of my documents as I think of them to make it a bit easier when it gets to posting time. I have an earthspark soundwave/swindle wip here with the following listed: developing relationship, annoyance to lovers, Swindle being Swindle

phew that took A While

#ask game #fanfiction writing #transformers

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novantinuum · 2 years ago

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20 Questions For Fic Writers

Tagged by @picnokinesis! Thank you, friend! <3 I love these sorts of things.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

91 works, spread across five fandoms! (listed in #3)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

368,544 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

(In order of most to least recent)

Legend of Zelda (9 works)

Steven Universe (40 works)

Doctor Who (20 works)

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (5 works)

Gravity Falls (17 works)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All Steven Universe fics here, which isn't surprising:

Hollowed Moon (2,953 kudos)

Crack the Paragon (1,711 kudos)

Shattering Atlas (733 kudos)

Contact (625 kudos)

Misalignment (472 kudos)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do my best to respond to comments when I can, although if I get hit with a strong influx of them I often fall behind on this and respond "late." I like my readers knowing that I do take time to read their thoughts, and that they're not just commenting into a void! Also, I've actually made some new fandom connections through engaging with the AO3 comments thread in the past, so they're something I like to encourage.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

So this is a tie between Shattering Atlas and a one-shot I posted in my LoZ Whumptober collection.

Shattering Atlas because... well, it's my Steven Universe: Future Bad Ending corruption fic with zero comfort. However, I do IMPLY an eventual "good ending" in the author's notes, so this is up to audience interpretation whether it TRULY counts as "full out angst."

In my Legend of Zelda Whumptober collection, meanwhile, I have a one-shot that is basically an in-game Bad Ending but permanent, in which Mipha's spirit has to watch Link die horribly to the Blight Ganon in Divine Beast Vah Ruta. That one absolutely has no silver lining, but the angstiest descriptions of it ARE pretty swift and don't linger too long.

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

This question is a little hard to answer because most of my fics are either one-shots or unfinished, and basically ALL of my one-shots have some falling action or catharsis of some sort. I feel like this is more applicable for authors who focus on multi-chapters, so it's not one that meshes well with my fic catalogue.

That being said, if I have to choose ONE fic, then probably my recent post TotK Zelink fic, A Hymm as Sweet as Memory, which actually contains a very impromptu and rushed proposal, and emotional reunion smooches. I feel like that counts as "happy" ahahah.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Eh... no. I haven't really written anything super "controversial" that would garner flames yet.

Yet, though.

(See below.)

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

I do now. Haven't posted it yet, but I have a fic about 75% complete that in fact COULD gain me flame commenters. I don't feel like it will, because I feel like AO3 readers are a bit more chill than folks used to be on Fanfiction dot net, but like. It always Could. It is overtly non-con and is written as an experiment both to explore my own cerebral interest in sex from a very detached asexual perspective, and see how absolutely disgusting a piece of prose I can muster. (Think... slime. Monstrous nasties. Hot, brackish fluid rushing down one's throat. Exploding eyeballs. And... yes, this IS a Gloom Spawn porn fic, what of it?)

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

I've written ONE crossover to date, and it was a fusion of Gravity Falls and Trollhunters, where all the characters existed in the same world and things played out quite differently for both plots as a result. A Tale of Two Trollhunters, it was called. Very niche, but I'm still quite fond of the idea. There's a SHIT ton of notes I have for the crossover that I never got around to writing... I only posted 14K of this work, but I have like... another whole 5K of work that's partially finished, just sitting around.

It's honestly one that I haven't entirely discontinued in my mind- I think it could be fun to return to one day should I ever get the inspiration or whim.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

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

Lol YES, and it's with the person who tagged me. We had like... a series of 13th Doctor one-shots about her first episode we were working on for a while, and then life got away with us. Honestly they're still pretty good IMO.

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

Oh god. Uh... I don't think I can consciously choose a favorite ship, but I CAN choose a favorite ship from each fandom I've been in:

Doctor Who- The Doctor/Clara Oswald, with a particular emphasis on queerplatonic 12/Clara.

Gravity Falls- Stanford Pines/Fiddleford McGucket

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia- The Jim/Toby/Claire trifecta

Steven Universe- Steven/Connie

Legend of Zelda- Zelda/Link (in general, but especially their BotW/TotK incarnations)

My AO3 stats signal that my most posted ships are Connverse and Zelink (3 fics each), but I do feel like spending multiple years writing in-depth Ford/Fiddleford RP, and like easily over 300K words of it, does mean that this ship is especially dear to me even IF it's not represented in my AO3 stats.

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

Sigh... probably Crack the Paragon. I care about that fic very deeply, but I'm so damned blocked on it and so deep into another fandom right now that I certainly can't see myself returning to it within the next five years, unless there's a really epic Steven Universe interest renaissance coming for me and half the internet soon.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Uh... when I write a super crunchy metaphoric sentence, it sure can be a mean ass, crispy banger of a sentence.

I also feel like I'm decent at establishing unique voices for characters in my dialogue when I try at it. I've been told by some that they can easily hear characters speak the lines when they read, so... I will take those compliments to the bank, I guess.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogue passages that feel oddly disjointed from the surrounding prose. I often end up sketching out bits of dialogue before I can think of good ways to link the segments together coherently, and as a result I feel like some of my dialogue-to-prose and back to dialogue segments come off as disjointed and awkward.

Also I abuse the em-dash. Em-dash my beloved. So sue me.

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

I am only proficient in English, so for the meantime this isn't really something I'm interested in or think I could pull off successfully and respectfully.

The single exception here is that I am trying my best at describing a few signs and emphasis markers for the sign language Link uses in many of my fics. I am bending the rules a little because he is using Fantasy Sign Language and not ASL, but I think there'd naturally be a lot of visual overlap with super basic concept gestures, so I've done research for those and am having fun finding creative ways to describe his expressiveness through his hands and facial features instead of through a voice.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Doctor Who! I started posting Doctor Who fanfiction on FF.net in 2011, and never looked back. Although that original account I posted on is now inaccessible to me, sadly.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

I have two.

One is my first fic written for Legend of Zelda... a funky lil second person POV fic called so close, so far... (so familiar...)

I just really enjoyed the writing process of this one, and feel it's one of my most unique works in style. I also think it's probably my most slept on fic of all time lol, like I wish it got more attention than it did for how much I cherish it.

The other is A Memoir of the Marks Unseen, one of the last major projects I finished for Steven Universe. This fic took me about a year and a half to write, real talk. I often get the sense that I HAD to get this one out of my head before I could truly move on from SU as an active fixation. In many ways, it's the culmination of my emotions about my own mental health recovery, all partially projected onto Steven as he goes through a different but still metaphorically relatable experience. I also like... kinda think that my writing peaked here. Lol.

I am tagging only a few people. I am tired. Yeet. Off the top of my head:

@deiliamedlini, @citrusella-flugpucker, @bahbahhh, and uhhh... one more... @michpat6

#jen rambles #tag game

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