#proud of myself for getting this done in what has been a chaotic week and really happy with how this turned out

[americanmoths]

between the lines

“Oh no, we’ve broken up again,” Draco said, picking a Prophet off the top of a stack of papers outside King’s Cross station. On the cover: POTTER AND MALFOY HEADED FOR SPLIT? next to a picture of Draco giving Harry the two-fingered salute at the Quidditch World Cup. “It seems we were overheard getting into a, quote, ‘heated discussion,’ unquote, that has some people speculating that our relationship is, quote, ‘unlikely to make it to the cup finals,’ unquote.”

“You would think at this point they would realize all of our discussions are heated,” Harry said. “When we stop arguing, that’s when they need to be worried.”

Draco’s mouth pulled into a tight line, his I Disagree With You face, one of Harry’s most favorite Draco faces. “A break-up fight would put all of our other fights to shame. I’m starting with setting the ugly curtains in your study on fire.”

“I would let you. I would just apparate away and leave you to deal with the mess.”

“Apparate to where? Ron and Hermione’s?”

“No,” Harry said, even though yes, that’s where he had been thinking of apparating to in this scenario.

“You would apparate to Ron and Hermione’s and I would make enough of a racket outside of their house that Ron would send you outside to, quote, ‘deal with me,’ unquote, and then we would have a huge fight, in public, and The Prophet would run stories about it every day for at least a year.”

“I would stun you from the window the second you started to cause a scene. Then you would wake up in our house—or I guess it would be your house? Or my house? Who would get the house if we broke up?” Draco started to answer, but Harry waved him away. “It doesn’t matter. You would wake up in a house charmed to not let you leave for at least 48 hours. I’ll have taken your wand but made you a cup of tea. There’ll be a note on the table explaining that this is for your own good, since I know you would rather fight then process your emotions and I want you to have the chance to—”

“I’m immediately owling Rita Skeeter to do a tell-all,” Draco said. “The first insight into me and Harry Potter’s relationship? He likes to run away whenever there’s a hint of interpersonal conflict. If you want to keep him from doing something he regrets, you have to make him mad enough to actually confront the problem. That’s why I’m starting with setting the curtains on fire!”

Harry glared at him. “I hate how sweet that is.”

“You said you would make me a cup of tea!” Draco yelled.

The next day’s Prophet cover: CONFIRMED: POTTER AND MALFOY HEADED FOR SPLITSVILLE.

--

for @drarrymicrofic prompt: slander | on ao3

[leithillustration]

This is likely too chaotic to be classed as a Six Sentence Sunday post, but I promise to throw in a few Snow On Ice sentences somewhere!

I've lost track of who has tagged me recently, but I've really appreciated reading some of my lovely moots' life updates. Its a good reminder that we all have highs and lows and when we talk about it we can get a little comfort and reassurance from this lovely community. I'm sorry some of you have been having a rough time. Sending hugs to you all.

I am never concise so my life update (of sorts), pics and sentences are under the cut.

Happy International Dawn Chorus Day! Niche I know, but I used to work for an arts and wildlife organisation and had to get up at 4am once to record the sunrise and the dawn chorus. After getting over the shock of being up and outside so early, it was actually a really lovely thing to celebrate. I've been sleeping terribly recently, so I was awake at 4:30 this morning anyway. Got up and sat in my parents' garden for 10 mins listening to the birds and it felt special, if a little less glorious since the clouds hid the sunrise. Here's a recording of today's dawn chorus in Norfolk, UK:

Forever WIP: Me I had a (very) minor surgery earlier this week to have a small but painful lump taken off my bicep. I've never experienced such a procedure before and it was very interesting being awake in an operating theatre (I had a local anaesthetic) getting to talk to the surgeons while they worked. (I was proud of myself for being so chill, tbh.) Since then I have been resting my achy body and my sluggish brain, forbidden from doing any heavy lifting or exercise, while trying not to stress about all the work I need to get done before running my stall at London Comic Con later this month. I showered yesterday with my arm wrapped in a plastic bag and it felt like a big achievement. (This is like a bizarre practice run for one day having top surgery!)

Some (sort of) sentences Snow On Ice Chapter 3 is taking me foreverrrr, since I'm not used to writing so many characters and it's been a lot for my adhd brain to handle. So to keep my writing from feeling stale, I've been writing some daft text chats between the characters. I'm thinking of posting them as supplements in between the main chapters, to help flesh out some of the relationships the main fic isn't focusing on as much. What do you think? Here's a chat between Simon and Agatha that will take place a little after chapter 3:

Simon: (photo of Tamagotchi the chinchilla) Simon: This is my friend Melody’s chinchilla. I think you’d like her. Simon: The chinchilla, I mean, not Melody. Simon: Though you’d probably like Mel too.  Ags: Holy shit Simon Simon: What? Ags: Who IS that? Simon: …Tamagotchi the chinchilla. I told you..? Ags: No, Simon, who is HOLDING the chinchilla!? Ags: Is that Niamh Brody??? Simon: Oh! Haha Simon: Yeah, that’s Niamh :)  Ags: How the hell do you have a photo of Niamh Brody holding your friend’s hamster!?! Simon: Chinchilla Ags: SIMON!!!

Seeing some of your posts recently, I've wanted to say more on reblogs and offer support in comments, but my brain hasn't been doing words great this week, so please take some positive vibes and fond, no pressure tags instead (:

@youarenevertooold @iamamythologicalcreature @alexalexinii @cattocavo @that-disabled-princess @orange-peony @cutestkilla @rimeswithpurple @larkral @best--dress @scribble-tier @theimpossibledemon @artsyunderstudy @raenestee @thewholelemon @nightimedreamersworld @itriednottothinkaboutit @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @angelsfalling16 @the-beard-of-edward-teach @monbons @katatsumuli @fiend-for-culture @aristocratic-otter @argumentativeantitheticalg @lovelyladzzzz @nausikaaa @blackberrysummerblog

[lanternlit]

smokedanced is now lanternlit

And with this I return, so excited to be writing again! Further changes...

I have moved Castiel and the Thirteenth Doctor here from their previous blogs (waywardfeathered/dochaes). If you were just followed, we were probably mutuals there! Hi! I plan to slowly follow everyone I had ongoing interactions with or asks I planned to reply to, on those blogs. Slowly, because I want to double check people's guidelines pages first. If you follow me back here, I plan to automatically reply to our things on this blog :)

I've rewritten my guidelines. The contents are mostly the same, but a lot has been reworded, and some minor things have been added or deleted, so it'd be awesome if you could give them a read. I guess this is technically optional, since they're mostly the same as before.

A few muses have been dropped. Kenna de Poitiers, Jeremy Bradshaw, Juliet Burke and Tyrion Lannister have been dropped as muses.

New muses have been added. Cas and Thirteen have been moved here from their previous blogs, and I have added Fifteenth Doctor as a muse. Jake, whom I added, um, nearly a year ago... finally has an about page, now, as well. You all get free shots to fire at me about how I had an OC among my muses for a year almost without any kind of an about page.

Some muses' stories have been altered. Namely, Mary Stuart is now a modern AU based muse, and I don't write her in Reign canon at least for the time being. Ella Finnegan has had her story altered, as well, basically the way her psychic abilities work have been changed. The latter will be easy to retcon in any ongoing interactions.

All muses have at least a dossier and a character premise page. This one is something I am proud of myself for, but also fuck, I got so frustrated trying to write the character premise pages that I can see it when I look at them, what with some of them having the most simple sentence structure and all, but I figured... better some information for my characters than none??? Everyone has something, now! Also, no more half the muses only having placeholder images on their pages! PRAISE THE ABSOL... I mean, my self-discipline. Because these past weeks I have just wanted to COME BACK AND WRITE, but I made myself have those tabs for all the characters first.

It is currently nearing 2am so pleaaaaase excuse me if this post is chaotic. Hi dash love you dash.

Lots of muses have been switched between their activity status. Current list goes:

primary muses: cas, hannibal, iris, izzy, jillian, the tardis, thirteen, will

secondary muses: edi, ed, ella, ever, garrus, lucius, mary, tali, ten

tertiary muses: charlie, clara, dean, river

test muses: chloe, eloise, fifteen, hurley, jake

Speaking of, right, Eloise has been released from "I need to rewatch Bridgerton first!" jail, and she's open for interactions sksksksksk

Guys, I don't remember what else I was meant to say.

The blog has had a bit of a makeover. Nobody look at my navigation page, the only thing I edited there so far was the colour scheme, it is outdated. I know me saying not to look is going to make people look but what can I do. Look at my muse directory and guidelines if you want to look at something, you sneaky sneaks.

The interest tracker has been updated. Chloe and Jake have been finally added on it. Cas and Thirteen have also been added on it. Fifteen has- you understand.

The tracker is the same one I've had before, but if you are interested in any of the added muses, please edit your responses. If you haven't done the tracker before, this would also be a very nice time to do it!

Going forward, I am going to go through my unaswered ooc messages and reply to people, I know there are a lot of you who have been on hold with plotting. Thank you so much for your patience. I am also going to start replying to things again, obviously. Now that my muse pages all have at least something on them, I can continue to work on them while my main focus for the blog is generally, well, roleplay. The pages being in such a state of WIP was a huge source of executive dysfunction for me.

I also plan to re-read everyone's guidelines just to make sure neither of us have edited ours so that we don't match anymore, but that'll not be done overnight with all of you.

I hope the url change isn't a huge inconvenience. If you could give this post a like, if you've seen it, that'd be awesome of you, though not at all necessary! I am genuinely very excited to be here again.

[rriavian]

ooooo this ask game has a lot of good ones. How about:

🐌 What is one of your smallest writing goals?

👾 Do you have any "bad" writing habits you want to break?

💥Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're most excited to write? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

🐌 What is one of your smallest writing goals?

My aim is to finish a few smaller projects in the first six months of this year. I’ve got some prompts in my inbox that I’m finishing fics for (all smaller stories) and I'd like to keep to a goal of regularly filling prompts this year.

I’ve also got another Corintheus ficlet I want to finish, and Cursed is a shorter piece. So a rough goal is the get those two out for February and then do the rest in whatever time they need :)

 👾 Do you have any "bad" writing habits you want to break?

I think my bad habits are the other sides of my good habits, if that makes sense? The billions of ideas I’m always having can mean that unless I catch that wave when it happens, it feels like I’ve not done anything with that thought and just stalled instead. My own brain can quickly swamp me, and that can make me then struggle to finish. So I’m trying to pace myself better and be less stressed about ‘right now immediately’.

I also tend to write a little chaotically. Prose out of order, leaving rough sentences/ideas as place holders, but this doesn’t always work for longer projects. It can leave some tricky bits to clean up at the end. I can dip back in and be like aha! I know exactly what this needs, but it can also trip me up and stall me.

I’ve got a relatively flexible style, I’ve taken some different approaches in different fandoms and/or fics. Though Baiting the Trap and its specific tone/style was very much something I’d already practised in another series. Just not as explicit and not quite as poetic (the Corinthian’s POV naturally seems to be very lyrical, though not in the same way as Dream's). 

To keep flexibility I like to shake things up and do something completely new to keep myself from losing an edge and getting lazy. Not that I think I am a lazy writer, but I have ways to make sure I’m taking the same care and thought every time. Prompts from other people really help with this as I love considering new angles and tropes.

When something is hard/new I think we go more carefully, and are forced to be more novel, and I really really like improving my skills by doing that. It’s helped me write some of my favourite work.

💥Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're most excited to write? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

There are two secret Corintheus fics I wrote alongside those for Corintheus week that need a last edit before posting but I’m being very quiet about what they are :) should be a nice surprise! I’m also very proud of my Corintheus ‘divorce au’ that I still need do some work on before I post. I think the one I’m most excited about is probably role reversal au because when finished it’s going to be the longest fic I’ve yet posted that’s not split into a series. It'll also be the longest fic I’ve written in years.

It’s quite ambitious, and will probably have a sequel. I’ve planned the second arc out because I had to split the original fic in two. There’s lots of threads as well as other relationship dynamics and subplots. It’s about Dream and the Corinthian of course, but also very much about how they interact with other characters. Death shows up quite a lot, but I would say that Lucienne and Gault are the other really major characters in the fic.

I’m also branching out into other parings/writing some more gen fics. And, as an honourable mention, what was intended as the last two parts of Baiting the Trap have both been written for over a year and every single day I just want to share where it’s going. Unfortunately there’s at least two more in the middle, which I’m also excited about, but when I get to it I’m going to feel so relieved. 

Oh! And the Corintheus seduction au! Goodness I’m excited about everything aren’t I? Though I guess that sums me up! Thank you so much for your questions I hope you enjoyed my answers :)

[fangirlshrewt97]

D20 - Dungeons and Drag Queens Ep 2 Notes

Oh man, I am so far behind. I will try to finish the other two episodes within the next week if possible. Let’s see. 

---

I love Jujubee placing herself in the middle of the group. No one will come at her first

"But you're the oldest one here trying to die bitch" LOLOL

"But I'm not dead. [...] And since I'm not alive...Bitch!" That is Jujubee's second retraction after accidentally eating the magical seed. Love the table just falling over themselves at these antics. "What did you roll a one?  A one on steath?"

"If you roll a one, we are going to end up with a guppy.: Bob with the incredible quips once again.

"Did she lose her sense of fashion" Brennan just losing it while Monet just looks so done and disappointed.

Alaska's expression whenever she goes into character is top notch, that growling face

"Dinner is served!" "Is she going to fucking eat us...we're rotting?!" LOL

Monet jumping into the explanation before Brennan even asks her to. So excited, so cute.

Gertrude's attack was so cool.

Here we go with Brennan making all his players cry again. This man's storytelling abilities are awe-inspiring

"What the going gets tusk, the tusk gets going." All of these character taglines are so on point.

Awww this uncle is so sweet.

Lol Troyan forgeting the spell letting them take characters across the river is so perfect.

Them rushing to write down the name of the Goddess is also very nice. They are great first time DnD players!

Damn Nyruth is handsome too. The character artists for this season really went all out (But then again, they always do at D20).

Oh my god Jujubee is so chaotic, the others spend half the show just trailing behind trying to clean up their mess. Brennan must love her for it.

"I wanna get wet." Brennan stop! God why does it always make me blush when he just says stuff like that!

Jujubee is so proud of the Monet X Change pun lololol

"I can disguise myself as a flashlight" Lol, I don't know how much jujubee genuinely wants to play, and how much she just wants to cause chaos, but I love her for it.

I kind of wish we had gotten a chane to see Brennan's expression as the Queens are discussing this double crossing plan.

Unbelieve Brennan, oh my god. Just playing on the Paula Abdul bit.

I like the flash cuts to Alaska's reactions to the antics of Bob and Jujubee, where she is just mentally rolling her eyes, like what is happening right now?/are you serious?

Oh my god, "Dispel his Dispel Magic". So convoluted

Holy shit, three ones! Oh no that jack that is going to eat them.

Did Monet just try to trick Brennan the DM abut what dice to use? Lol

"D'Hamia - Snatched and Thirsty" the captions are superb

"I pour your tea in a bucket" Glad to see them all remembering Princess's size lol.

All of them playing out what's the best plan is actually so nice. Like they are really leaning into the RP this season, because for newbies, a ton of combat would be heard. And it's nice seeing the Queens trying to logic out what would be the best moves to do. Even if their dice don't always let them.

"4" "Hundred" Twyla is so chaotic, my god, she always just does the most insane choice. ...I really want her to play with Emily (RIP their poor DM)

Ooooh Troyan's mom is only saving herself...

"She sounds like an alcoholic" Brennan has been wheeze laughing so much this episode, it's delightful

Oof, brutal revelation

"It wasn't like 'Hey girl!'" Brennan's expression is so funny

D'Hamia interactions with Princess are great

"We are going to pimp out our orc friend." Bob is just killing it with the one liners.

---

Oh god this preview is so dramatic lol

---

That was a good episode! I can see the campaign will likely be very light in combat, which makes sense, the Queens are making the RP and character choices that are so entertaining and fun to watch. Excellent season so far.

[journeyss]

Ok I’m starting this journey to the self I want to be physically & mentally. Like in every way I’m going to upgrade .

And the important part of that is me getting my thoughts out, not problem dumping on friends or family, holding my own emotions & ups and downs

It’s important to have a good support system for bad times or crazy time but I have to be honest with myself, I do not have the luxury.

I love the few friends I do have but I have to set boundaries in friendships (which I haven’t before & it bites me in the ass) something’s is just my business only, I don’t want to over share, I use to be so open because I thought if they knew they would handle me like a flower when I need it but that wasn’t the case so yea no over sharing what I’m going through is my business

And I can go to therapy but I honestly have normal average problems, it’s nothing I can’t handle

Wanting success so bad just make me anxious and I think it’s healthy anxiety, it’s nothing wrong with wanting more and wanting better. I just cope and keep it moving

I’ve been “down” for 2…3 years just trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. 1st year down was my art journey , which I’m still on , but I’ve accepted it more like a hobby even though I would love to monetize but it’s more of a coping mechanism when I need to regroup and get my mind right. I just discovered this

2nd year was 9-5 & trying to become a entrepreneur, that lifestyle didn’t work, but I gained a skilled that I can use for the rest of my life. So I win is a win

& this year , year 3 I decided to enter a completely different industry, love the work I do. It really feeds my mind & my wanting to keep learning. Very high stress but it gets better when I find a good work life balance.

I’ve came to terms with not having time for my many hobbies but they’ll always be there for me when it’s time to cope.

I have a little body dysmorphia right now because I want to get my body done. I’ve been “small” most of my 20s & I’ve accepted the fact that I’m just not going to get any bigger or curvier so let’s just put it there. I already eat fairly healthy & im committing to 2 days a week in the gym so now I just need the body lol and my body isn’t bad , I just want morrreee.

Goal #1 skinny bbl

Since I don’t have a a real system or family. I have to always be independent and self reliant. Going to nursing school is my biggest goal but its a journey with in itself but I’m excited. I always thought I was a healer, that’s why attract the people I do lol but my career also have to be meaningful and have impact. I have to feel like I’m doing something really important. & it always have been that way it sucks to say but having a good job has always defined me. Being successful has always defined who I am. Career isn’t life but I will feel really great when my grandma say “my granddaughter is a nurse” or when my future hubby say “my wife is a nurse” I want people to be proud to be connected to me. I just figured out why , I was never proud of anything growing up, the essay they make you write all the time “who is your role model?” I never had one and always made it up, I wasn’t proud of my mom or dad, I honestly wasn’t proud of anybody around me, it was so chaotic. I want the opposite for myself.

Goal #2 apply for nursing school

I would say all my other goals come after these 2 and aren’t as big and can easily be done just have to make the time & make a effort to make the time

I can admit I lost myself a little in covid, being best dressed has always been my favorite thing to do. And I completely let that go AGAIN but I’m rebuilding my closet and I’ll be back to it

Mini goal #1 get fresh & stay cute

Now I need a new car but I’m picky and I want one of my dream cars, Camaro, like I need that , I work so hard I can get that & I want it paid off. After my bbl this is next .

Goal #3 Camaro

They say money can’t buy happiness , but if u do the self reflecting and mental work to become a better person and your last step is a successful career. Money can definitely buy happiness.

Goal # 4 stay gracious

Cheers to reinventing myself , the bigger better me

[lexingtonprincess]

Alrighty y’all, guess who’s back (back again). It’s meeeeeeee!!!!

Okay, should probably get to the point before my professor kills me. (It’s okay, I haven’t met them, yet. But Hiiiii)

Sooooo as we know I’m going to do my blog/research on the different places to visit in Lexington and talk about the accessibility, and affordability etc. I’ve been looking at how I want to present that, because I don’t want it to be too terribly chaotic. At least not as chaotic as THIS… It’s fineeee though!

The goal is to make it accessible as well so people can actually understand what they’re reading and understand the ratings and why that place placed the way it did. As well as giving my own ratings I want to take others into consideration as well and look at previous ratings the place has received. And even ask other people what they thought, as well as getting the opinions of the workers.

I’m debating on how I want to lay it out to make it easier to understand for everyone and even have it be possible to find other ways and through different social medias. And of course there’s going to be a lot of places, so how to keep that all together to where it’s easy to find for everyone. If I’m rating the accessibility I feel like my page should be accessible as well yk?

Canvas has been an option, making a poster type situation and adding it to one of this post with my commentary as well. I feel like the canvas poster option would make it easy to see everything and see it quickly for someone who’s giving it a last second check before planning a trip etc.

So an update should go out soon of how I plan to do that!

Anywayyyy enough about that, bit of a free right that pertains to that but doesn’t at the same time.

I went hiking for the first time today!! I went with an old teacher I used to be a TA (teachers assistant) for, but now we’re best friends! (I love her!)

Anyway, she took me to the George and we hiked a couple trails, I fell once trying to climb a small waterfall barefoot. Should’ve definitely been smarter. Climbed a huge rock bridge with some help, more like a lot of help. But I did it!! More to prove to myself that I could do it than anything, I’m sore after getting a shower but 10/10 would do again and will do again. We’re already talking about planning our next hiking trip!

We also got coffee and a donut before we went then got pizza once we left!

I’m thinking about adding a review of the trails into this and starting a review of just the different things I do as I get time! For a tracking of myself and what I do as well as sharing it, also it’s an easy grade because I love talking about all the crazy sh*t I’ve done and will do In the future. Like the point I didn’t mention I got stuck on the rock bridge cause I was scared and only jumped down because some lady told me not to jump. If it’s not obvious enough yet, I don’t listen very well.

I’m going to hope and pray this reached my word limit and end it here, because I am SORE and I work tomorrow (ewwww).

But thank y’all for tuning into my craziness of today, and thank you to my professor for giving me a good grade on this assignment (hopefully). One of my favorites and I haven’t even met you <33

That’s all for tonight folks, Till next time, see y’all next week!!

PS- I love you, no matter what, and I’m proud of you!!! Never forget that!!!🫶🏻💜

[theintrovertwithadhd]

blah

feeling very, very blah today.

I want to say it's likely because I'm about to get my period and I know that is true, but my mind plays so many tricks on me and I'm just teaching myself now how to train it and not listen to all the thoughts in my head and think that they're all real because they are not.

Work is changing a lot. It went from just me and my co-worker to now a boss and 2 other coworkers on our team and it's definitely been quite an adjustment.

It was just the 2 of us managing the department, so when we got a boss she split both of our roles into 2 roles which I am VERY grateful for and incredibly proud of myself for being a 1 man show for the marketing and communications, however it's been well over a month and I still have yet seen my revised job description. I've brought it up several times, and I ensure to angle it so I am clear on my tasks and can check all the boxes that I'm suppose to be doing now. Every time I ask she'll just say "oh ya..." so what do I even say after that??

The new guy who took over the other half of the role is alright. He's quite creative and incredibly digitally talented. He used to be a freelancer but then got sick of not being able to "turn off" as an entrepreneur, so thats why he wanted to work for someone else.

He keeps complaining about how hes on week 3 and the company still hasn't provided him his work computer, so he has to bring in his $6000 computer everyday - which I really don't see it being that terrible. I mean it's not ideal that after that long we still haven't provided him one and ya it doesn't look great... but then he'll make comments about what we are providing him is a "downgrade" compared to what he is working with and was disappointed we weren't able to provide him with all of his asks. Like dude, you have to remember where you are working here, we aren't a top high level company corporation here - its a yacht club... I don't know why this bothered me so much.

Then this week the new girl who took over the other half of my coworkers job started. Shes young, peppy and very outgoing. Idunno why but I find her kind of annoying. it feels like she tries really hard, I guess because she just started and shes young. What really annoys me is that she seems to get along REALLY well with my favourite coworker Angela (The one where it was just me and her all along).

Also everyone is starting to just love her, especially HR and it's so fucking annoying because I really don't like HR. She trying to make this place into a hotel vibe, and it's not a hotel... it is a yacht club...

They're all just obsessed with her, and I mean thats great, but idunno, I guess i'm jealous? or something about my ego here, because I feel like I used to be her and the entertainer when I worked at my previous corporate job a few years ago. I loved being that outgoing, spunky, fun one who stuck out from the group. But I that's not really me anymore and part of that makes me sad, but on the other hand part of me is grateful that my life isn't that chaotic anymore because those are the stories that I would share at the lunch table at work. So maybe it's a good thing because really all these stories she tells is about her toxic friends or things that happen to her - when I've been through that and learned my stuff.

I'm the type of person who goes to work to get shit done, make a difference, do my job and learn while I go. But this whole setting almost feels like a popularity contest and it's soooo different then what Im used to (with the corporate background). I've read before that 80% of doing well at work is the people liking you, and 20% how well you actually doing your job.

Reminder:

you are learning from this expereince

you are liked by your coworkers

you are also older than her and this is her "young chaotic" time in her life

You have a life outside of work

You've come to a point where you dont' care if people like you, you know your people

[zorlok-if]

Dev Log — Sept 2nd

Hello everyone! 😊

It's been (checks notes) awhile, but I hope that you're all doing well. Quite a lot has happened since my last dev log, much of which really took a toll on my mental health and exacerbated some preexisting stuff. That sent me into a bad, lonely place for a bit but I finally got things back under control and felt like I was setting myself up for success, and then I got Covid. So, for the past five days I've mostly just been napping and sniffling, trying to get through isolation. I don't have a good transition, so... Update!

Zorlok Progress

Current word count for Chapter 1 is over 30,000 words. I wrote maybe 4,000 of those in the past two weeks (that is 100% an educated guess, but I think it's pretty accurate)

Wrote and began coding Dev's introduction along with planning for the second combat sequence in Chapter 1

Got first drafts done for what I'm calling "the chaotic break-in scene"—both variations of it, the "attic" path and the "turtle kid" path

Wrote several codex entries

Got the two new music tracks integrated perfectly. Check them out here: Schoolyard Spy and This Thing Crawling Inside both by Darren Curtis who created all of the music featured in Zorlok (now I just need to choose a combat track)

Figured out how to combine the game files with Tweego thanks to this tutorial

Finished implementing the prologue skip function (just skips the first two scenes, brings you to the summoning scene)

Added a "Limit graphic descriptions" switch to the Settings which (when enabled) makes descriptions of violence, body horror, gore, etc. shorter/less vivid; but that's something I'm considering "in testing" at this point

Next Goals

Finish rewriting the contract scene

Continue working on Chapter 1

Main Posts

This amazing art of EJ and Dev by @enspey

First choice of Chapter 1

Another Dev excerpt (kinda spicy)

This fun post about the Zorlok playlists

A recommended tag and another short story if you've been missing my content

A question about a possible feature

A vague update on my mental health

Other Stuff

Nothing. I'm just trying to do my homework and get over this illness

Oh, I did go a bit feral with the most recent D20 episode over on my main account. If you want to check that out, head over to @gamesbyalbie

That's all I can think of. Thanks as always for reading this and supporting this project (it means the world to me). Hope you have a good weekend!

- Albie 😊

PLAY ZORLOK | CAST | FAQ | NAV | ASK | LOGS

As a side note, I've had a number of people reach out to me to ask about updates/my timeline. To answer most of those questions, there is no timeline for when the next chapter will be released. I appreciate people wanting more Zorlok content (trust me, I do too) but I already write as much as I can and communicate as best as I'm able to (which I've kind of spoken about here). As a reminder, this is a hobby that I do in my free time, the amount of time I can invest is dependent on how much free time I have. Right now, between school and my job, that's very limited; plus, if the last month has taught me anything, it's that shit can happen at anytime and wildly interrupt your plans. My primary goal is always to make something I'm proud of and feel confident releasing. So, I won't be setting timelines or a release date until I know for sure that the chapter will be fully ready by then. As soon as I know when that is, I'll let you know. Again, thank you for your interest, but there's nothing else I can offer you on that topic.

[sugaftrm]

♡ sweet sope ♡

love notes for my mutuals hi everyone, this past week has been full of extra love and wanted to share my appreciation, not just for this joyful community, but for the people who brighten up each day with their presence! 

@blueandtaes - hi my sib, i love you. being in this fandom together is a godsend. through the weeping, the cackling, the impulse purchases, the city adventures and home dance parties, i’m so blessed to be doing it all with you. ​

@zmalik - sabrina shonaaaa you’re one of the first people i followed on this website (i legit think you were the second person after my sister), i dont know why you followed when you did since i was a chaotic mess back then but i am so so thankful that you did! i remember our early convos and i still fantasize about deshi food hangouts in the city, whether that’s yours or mine. you’re the kind of person who in many ways I aspire to be, because you say what’s on your mind without the fluff. I’ve been meaning to ask you why you hate ji changwook btw but I’ve been scared! one day let’s talk about it over chaa nastha? Love you, and sending all my affection to you and ur new kitten!! @yoonglet - hello angel aahana! I feel as though no matter how I try to word how I feel about you, it will always fall short. You are one of the most generous, strong-willed, friendly people I know. Your aura is bright and I am so honored to witness you, even if it’s through this limited window of armytumblr. thank you for believing in me, when I didn’t believe in myself! Your support means everything <3 @artsyjoons - anj! i distinctly remember an early convo we had where we were talking about namjoon doing an srk pose lmfao thank you for understanding what i was rambling about in the tags and initiating a convo with me! every morning i wake up and i see you enriching my feed with your thoughts, your humor, and your captivating energy! please share with me the secret to being so sweet and cool??  @rosebowl - my sweetheart Sharika, when I think about you honestly… I feel anxious and giddy! Because I wonder what luck I must have accidentally stumbled upon to find a desi army friend right here in New York, and that too someone who shares so many of my own values and interests!!?? Sounds like a dream, hope I never wake up! My adoration for you grows every day, please know that I am rooting for you and support you, just how you show up endlessly for all of us! Can’t wait for our future adventures xoxoxo @taefiore - hi my darling raabia! (I hope you’re resting and not stressing when you read this, but if you are stressed I hope this makes you smile) I feel like I have to thank run-on for bringing us together?? I have enjoyed every single one of our conversations and interactions, you’re easily one of the most clever and sweet people on this site! thank you for listening to my dreams, for all your kind/witty commentary on things I post, and for being an all-around incredible person! i know how hard you work and I hope your future is just as bright as you are, love you! @bibillyhillsbaby - lovely helena, are your legs tired? Cus you’re running through my mind oooooh! we’ve said this to each other many times, how fun it is to chat about shows, about our love for these men,™ and more! but have I told you about the times you’ve generated warmth and peace for my soul? your compassion has not gone unnoticed dear friend <3 you’ve made so many of us laugh and smile, lended kind words when we’ve needed them the most. I hope that when you see flowers and trees, you think of all our love blossoming for you!  @kithtaehyung - oh ryen! when you created the ‘still with you’ gfx you officially stole my heart! but then you went and kept it for good when you made the ‘magic shop’ gfx during a challenging time in my life. your empathy and your cheerfulness was a clearing for my foggy mind! you’re a stellar person and i get such a burst of joy when i see you on my feed. if i could handwrite notes for you everyday, i would! <3 @pinkjjoon - sara i can’t remember our first conversation, but i could’ve swore it had something to do with the term “namjaan” lmao! though we’re timezones apart, i am glad the internet brought us together cus i really need more desi army visibility! i appreciate your candidness, your humor, as well as your kind words during hard times. i hope bts gets their act together and holds a concert where you are cus you more than deserve it!  @hazeltae - allison, ive been trying to put to words why i feel so drawn to you and why you always make my day and i think it’s bc you’re a capricorn sun/pisces moon!!! no wonder you have this way of making people feel steady, held while also relating to them on an emotional level! i love talking to you about rj, about yoongi, about totally normal shopping habits <3 thank you for all that you are and for being such a sweetheart!  @gimbapchefs - hello nat!! even though we’re newer mutuals, there’s such a refreshing ease in our conversations that i truly appreciate! i find myself resonating with your thoughts and reactions, and cackling at things you reflect in the tags! i also admire your dedication to your studies, even when you get a little distracted ;) we need more people like you in the field, i’m so excited to see where your journey takes you!  @intronnevermind - hi raf! it’s such a pleasure to be connected here! we haven’t spoken much but your posts and content leave me with a great sense of joy/admiration! i am so impressed by your style and am looking forward to anything you create in the future. thank you for sharing sweet remarks about my amateur content and for being such a lovely part of this community! @ourownwings - wings :) i am so in awe of the creations you provide for the community and all the tender labor that goes into relaying the BU stories here! i can only imagine the time it takes to do that, but you’ve done above and beyond - and i’m so proud of your milestone! i was delighted to chat with your about your life outside tumblr, and wish you all the best in your future endeavors! thank you for being such a sweet, supportive presence in my orbit!  @jintae - padya, it’s likely you’ll see this if/when you return from your hiatus but you should know that i appreciate our exchanges and how excited i was to connect with another nyc bengali army! i hope you are taking care and finding enjoyment during your days <3 i think about your written piece about the impact bts has had on you as well as the publication you created for the community, and am so proud to know that you’ve spearheaded these meaningful spaces for others. i hope our bond can grow over time, universe-willing, and that you get every happiness you absolutely deserve!

to my lovely mutuals who amaze me every time with their creations & their talent, and have given me much laughter/much comfort, i am grateful for you. i have much warmth in my heart for you all and appreciate the conversations we’ve had about life, about bangtan, and anything in between. thank you for being here: @duckjinnie @ayosuuga @yoongisshadow @userjiminie @jinbestboy @mykrokosmos @marvelousbangtan @jimindelune @floraljimin @flowerseokjin @dinamitae @zhujieqiong @thegoddessly @kooseokss @dalbichigom @jinjagi @joonsrack 

[nh20tensin]

Telling the AoT boys you love them for the first time.

⚠️There should be little too no spoilers⚠️

Mostly fluff

Gn reader

None of this is has been proof read

Ft. Levi Ackerman,Connie springer,Armin arlert

Levi Ackerman

We all know that this man is touch-starved so it was hard enough for him to let you even Remotely close in anyway

He would probably deny the fact that he care for you

He wouldn’t know that he loved you till  you said something about it

It was a cleaning day you decided to help Levi and his squad clean (this man forced you to clean)

You didn’t mind I mean as long as you were with him

You knew you loved him for some time,you just didn’t know how to tell him or in fear that he would hate you(who knows why he would) but you only thought about worst case scenarios

“Oí “

“.....”

“Oí”

“....”

“BRAT”

“Huh?”

“What the hell are you doing”

You gave him a confused look

He points down to your feet

You were sweeping with the dust collector facing the opposite way so that no dust is going into the pan

“Oh shit sorry”

“Just pick it up “Levi spoke

The rest of the day went by

It was dinner time you Decided to sit with eren,Armin,jean,and Connie

(The girls where training)

“Yo is she even listen to us “ a buzz-cut boy said

“ probably not” said Jean

Eren threw a small carrot at you

“😐”

“You were zoning out” a blonde boy said

“I’m not really myself right now....I’m going to go to bed”

They all nodded and told you goodnight and bye

On your way to your room you bumped into hange

“AHHH SORRY IM IN A RUSH” they said

“It’s alright are you ok?”

“I’m fin-“

They stoped talking you gave them a confused look

“Why’d you sto-“

They put a finger on over your mouth

5 mins pass the finger hasn’t left

“Sorry i thought I heard something ”

The finger moved

“Thought you where in a rush “you said as you walked hange followed

“Never mind that what’s up with you?”

“Nothing.............How do I tell someone I love them”

(Ofc you would eventually regret asking hange but desperate times call for desperate measures😪)

“oh”

“Oh” 

“OOHHH”

“YOU LOVE LEV-“

You cover their mouth

“Shut up or I will Carve ur eyes out”

Hange nodded

“Will if you really Want my opinion....just don’t make it a big deal”

“Why Not”

“You shouldn’t have to make it special ,anyway if you really do love him and just tell him “

Knowing Levi he would hate it if you made it a big deal so you took the advice and made up your mind

One week passed and you finally thought of the perfect way to tell him

You would make him his favorite tea(you aren’t allowed to make his tea considering you suck at it)

” what did you do” he said in a stern voice

You walk over to his desk and sigh

“ I have something to tell you and besides my tea skills aren’t that bad”

“ last time I drank it I ended up in bed for a week”

“I promise it’s better just trust me” 

He reluctantly put the cup to his mouth and drank

“I love you “you said

He almost sit out his tea he didn’t know what to say or do

How could someone so perfect love someone so....him

“What did you say” he said

You repeated yourself

You climbed in his lap

“I love you Levi Ackerman “

God he loved the way you said his name

He didn’t know what to say but what he did say broke your heart

“Why” he said in a voice below a whisper

“What do you mean why?”

His hand found his way to your waist his face hidden in the crook of your neck

“Why me ?”

You knew he could get insecure but it still hurt

“ Levi I knew from the minute I saw you that I would love you for the rest of my life and I don’t wanna rush you to say back to me because quite frankly I know how hard it is for you but I’m telling you now because this is how I feel you are the one for me no one else do you understand me please say you do”

All memories he thought he forgotten about his mother came flooding back in

And you could’ve sworn you felt a tear but when you looked there was nothing

He looked dead in your eyes and said

“I love you too” in a very soft voices he gave you a rare smile

You brought him in for a very long and meaningful kiss

“Hange Made the tea by the way “

“I know”

Connie springer

 A relationship with this man can be one of two things very fun and chaotic or more serious and loving

Which ever version you happen to be in it won’t matter because it will always be happy

“Hey Connie have you told y/n you love them yet”

He froze up and realized that he never actually told you though he was in love with you he just never thought about telling you because he thought you knew

“What’s it you you horse face”

“Nothing....it’s just The two of you have been dating for six months I’d start to feel a little self-conscious if you asked me”

“Well I didn’t so stop “

Jean and Sasha stay laughing

“CADETS IN LINE” Levi yelled

The next day

“Hey Armin if I hypothetically possibly maybe was in love with someone how would I tell them?”you said while looking at the ground

“ well it really just depends on the person and how far along in the relationship you are with them I can’t really help you how to tell them but I sure can encourage you”

You roll your eyes and sigh

“Thank anyways”

You walk back inside considering you were training outside with Armin(obviously beat him because you’re a bad ass)

You ran into Connie right now I’m going inside you both fell to the ground stared at each other and started laughing like you’ve never laughed before you were mainly laughing because you were nervous as hell to tell him you loved him he was laughing because he loves the smile that was on your face

you both helped each other get back up Connie looked at you and ask

“were you training”

“ depends what answer do you want to hear”

“....”

“....”

“Fine I was “you admit

“ it’s 11 at night”

“ and your point is”

” at the rate you’re going you’re going to end up dead by the time you’re 25”you said sarcastically

“ as if you’d be able to live without me though”

You froze didn’t know what to say or do you just nervously laughed it off and walked away

 he looked at a very confused but I thought you needed space considering you just got done training it was dark out you’re probably tired he thought

It’s around two in the morning you wake up something inside you just burst so you get up out of your room and find your way to Connie‘s room you knock fiercely

“ Open the door Baldy”you say sternly but in the soft voice

“ what are you doing it’s like two in the morning you should go to sleep “he said while opening the door

you force yourself into his room and sit down on his bed

He followed you confused on why you were here but he just stared at you not wanting to say anything basking in your beauty

“ Connie I’m about to say something that I might regret well not regret but do you know where I’m going with us”

“Huh”

“I love you “

his eyes shoot open he thought this has to be a dream right there’s no way that this is real

You pinch his arm so he knows he’s not dreaming

“ say it again”

He couldn’t help but smile so much that he felt like his face was gonna melt

At first he thought he was looking at you in disgusted minutes later it was a face of happiness and he was proud in his own kind away

“I L/N F/N AM IN LOVE WITH YOU CONNIE SPRINGER”

“ I love you too but you know I was supposed to tell you first”

“Oh?”

“ this whole thing with Jean and Sash and our relationship”

“It’s.a long story” 

He brought you in for a tight hug that ended up in a very intense make out session

The both of you woke up in his bed in the morning he looked at him and he woke up

“I love you”

“I love you”

You both said in unison and you ended up laughing you both really did love each other and it was a funny love story . 

Armin arlert

As smart as Armin is he has no idea what to do when it comes to a relationship

True he wants to give you all the love in the world but he’s clueless when it comes to things like that but he will know when he’s in love with you

He will go to Mikasa, Eren,hell even Levi if he will listen

“ listen kid I don’t know what to tell you all right do you love them just tell them I don’t see what’s wrong with it”Levi said while drinking tea

“ but sir it’s not that easy what if they doesn’t feel the same way”Armin spoke

Levi sighs not really knowing what to do

“ The two of you are dating right so of course they feel the same way”

“Damn kids and their commitment issues”he muttered under his breath

Armin saluted him before exiting the room

His mind was in 1000 different places having no idea what to say to you so we did the next best thing any person would

He ignored you

(Asshole)

He didn’t want to ignore you or make you feel bad he’s just caught up in his own brain to actually think about anything

It’s been a week since you guys last talk

“ i’m sure he doesn’t hate you he’s been ignoring us to” eren said

Mikasa nodded

“ it’s been a week did I do something wrong is he mad at me?”

“ even if he was he wouldn’t take it out on all of us at the same time” Mikasa stated

you take a deep breath and sigh

“ The both of us will try and figure out what’s happening OK can’t promise you like the answer though” eren said

“Ok...”

The both of them left the room

Little did you know Armin was listening in the whole conversation he wanted to make it up to you just didn’t know how

” I don’t hate them” armin said

Eren then said “ then why are you ignoring them and us they don’t deserve this”

Eren was pissed off because he knew how much you were hurting

“ seriously Armin there’s no need to lie you’re mad at her just tell them I’m sure they will understand besides you’re also ignoring us did we do anything?” The tall girl spoke

“I love them”

“😮” Mikasa and eren

They spent the rest of the day talking about his feelings and how he should make it up to you or more importantly tell you

“ just follow us it’s not a trap or anything”eren said (this bitch it was FYI)

Mikasa used her scarf to cover up her giggles

“ can I just sleep in peace”

“NO!”

You couldn’t really tell who said it as you saw Armin standing right in front of you

You turn around to see no one‘s behind you those bastards left the room before you could even check

“ look if you’re mad at me I don’t know what I did but I don’t really feel like talking anymore I just want to go to bed please”

“Wait now please I’m sorry i’ve had a lot on my mind I just needed time on my own”

“ and you couldn’t tell me or let me know not even Eren or Mikasa you’ve noticed all week do you know how bad I felt thinking that I did something wrong ”

There was a moment of silence you saw that look in his eyes the one that made you fall madly in love with him you couldn’t be mad at him you loved him and everything you were pissed about steered clear

“ I love you more than I probably should if you were anybody else I’d probably kill you right now”

He looked up from the ground he was staring at

“What “

it didn’t take him long to understand the situation

“I love you too in fact I love you more that’s what I’ve been thinking about all week and how to tell you”

You both ran to each other in a hug tears falling down his eyes making you want to cry as well you really did love each other

The next day

“ i’m guessing you finally told them” Levi said

“ yes Captain thank you for your advice” as he saluted him

“ don’t thank me you’re the one who grew a pair and finally told them”



[deniigi]

hi I have something for y’all called a disaster.

I wrote an Inimitable!Spiderman/Modern Star Wars AU because no one can stop me, not even myself. it is like 47 pages long. I am handing it tenderly to y’all.

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

Title: impossible scenario

Summary: Peter runs into some drunk assholes arguing, calling each other Han and Luke. He lets it roll off him until he can’t anymore and eventually finds himself for the first time on the other side of someone more chaotic than himself.

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

There was an argument happening under a fire escape. Peter knew about it because a concerned dude wearing a fuckin’ Yankees cap had flagged him down with waving arms and told him that someone needed saving, Spiderman. Some tall asshole was kidnapping a young blond dude, the guy  and his too-cool-for-him girlfriend explained. They’d heard the two scuffling.

Peter maybe stared for a beat too long at them because the gal pointed two blocks behind him and said, “That way. I think the blond guy might be drugged. He’s slurrin’ something strong.”

Peter liked her shoes. They looked like Miles’s, but blue.

“Spidey?”

Miles told Peter all the time that he wasn’t cool enough to wear Jordans. MJ and Johnny had agreed. Such sad times.

“Spidey.”

“I got it,” Peter sighed.

The gal tsked.

“Man, you’re too young to be this jaded,” she said.

Peter sighed.

“You’re the third person to say that this week,” he said. “You think I should go back to therapy?”

There was a pause.

“You know that answer, dude,” cool-gal said. “Go save the twink.”

Twink. Got it. Thank you, citizen.

“There are websites for that shit, Spidey.”

Bye now.

“Apps, even.”

Bye, bye.

“BetterHelp or Headspace or somethin’—”

“Two blocks, you said?” Peter asked.

 --

 Two blocks away, there was indeed a man with dark hair trying to lift a violently intoxicated twink up onto the first steps of a fire escape. Peter examined his options. There were many ways to ruin a potential kidnapper’s day. His favorite involved coke and mentos, although he’d received feedback that that was a waste of perfectly good food. Down the list was also the option to walk over and scream bloody murder so that the kidnapper shat themselves and dropped their target.

That was good, but Peter was tired and the thought of mustering up the energy to scream at a noticeable volume made his thighs turn to Jell-o.

That left snark and violence.

Today, he would not choose violence. Only for today.

He strode out of his dark temporary residence between two dumpsters directly towards the tall dude and his mark. The mark was a messy one. Bless his heart, he was unwittingly making himself the most noncompliant victim to have ever victim-ed. Every time the tall guy got him almost vertical, he gave up his corporeal form to become drunk slime and ooze back to the ground with various moaning sound effects.

It would have been funny if not for the kidnapping context.

The fact that Peter had been standing there under the beams of two separate side-building security lights and neither of those two had noticed yet was also objectively funny—or would have been, if Peter had the capacity for processing humor at the moment.

Alas. This was what he got for telling Tony that he’d evolved beyond the need for sleep. He got caffeine-pilled. And there would be no true rest until that shit wore off, exhausted as Peter’s body yearned to be.

“Kid, work with me here,” the tall guy said.

“I can’t, I’ll die,” the shorter one moaned.

“Luke.”

“I’ve done my time—thirty years in AZKA—”

“Keep your voice down, oh my god.”

Peter was just standing here, fellas.

“Luke.”

“Why’s it always me? Why’s it always gotta be me? The hell did I do to piss off the whole galax-galaxy? HA. My bad, my bad. The whole universe?”

God, what a mood.

The tall guy dropped his grip on the smaller one and loomed over his puddle of ooze with poison in his gaze.

“People are going to die, Luke,” he said.

“So what? They’re always dyin’. Everywhere I go, people’re dyin’ and when it’s not them dyin’, you know who is?”

“Kid.”

“ME.”

“So you’re just gonna wallow there, feelin’ sorry for yourself?” the tall dude snapped.

“Sure am,” the puddle of ooze hummed.  

This was not a kidnapping. This was a come-to-Jesus in the back alley of a bar. Peter was not needed here. He turned around on his heel and stopped when he heard a sharp intake of breath.

“Is that?” someone whispered.

“Don’t mind me, pal, just your friendly neighborhood—” he started.

“Look what you did,” Tall and Handsome hissed at Ooze-Man. “Someone went and called Spiderman on us.”

Peter lifted a brow as Ooze-man ripped its chest up from the asphalt and composed itself back into a human shape with fluffy blonde hair and huge wide eyes.

“Omigod, it’s Spiderman,” the guy said. “Wait, no. Gimme a hand. No, not that one, fuck off, nevermind, I don’t need you.”

He drew himself up to standing, only leaning slightly on his buddy there and gave Peter as lopsided smile.

“Hi, there,” he said with a twang that Peter couldn’t place. “Were you lookin’ for someone, handsome?”

Ah, they had reached the time of night when all the drunks needed to tell Peter things he already knew about his ass. He loved this time.

Not to mention that this dude looked eerily like Johnny. Scarily like Johnny. So much like Johnny that Peter almost wanted to take a picture of him to send to Sue so that she could print up some lost and found posters.

“Just lookin’ at you, babe,” he said. “This guy botherin’ you?”

The tall guy blanched and then grabbed at his face in horror. Peter swallowed his laugh.

“He sure is, hon. You got time to rescue me?” Blondie crooned.

“Luke, please. Please.”

“Because I’m in real distress,” ‘Luke’ said with a pout mighty enough to fell Thor.

“You sure seem like it,” Peter said. “C’mere. I’ll walk you home. Leave that tool, he ain’t worth your breath.”

He held out an elbow like proper gentleman and was pleased at the hand that Luke laid over his heart in response.

Peter could imagine Johnny’s face in six different expression of jealous horror at a selfie taken with this look-alike. Each was beautiful in its own special way. As payment for being referred to counseling by the public, he at least deserved to receive at least two of those faces.

“You mean that?” Luke asked him.

“He doesn’t,” his tall companion said.

“I sure do, where do you live? I’ll walk you,” Peter said.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna cry, he’s gonna escort me,” Luke said, all choked up and fanning his eyes lightly.

This tall friend grabbed him before he could escape, though, and pulled him back behind his own body.

“Listen, Spidey, this is a misunderstanding,” he drawled. “I know this idiot—he is technically my idiot— and I’m the one escorting his ass home. Thanks, though. You’re a real menace. Beat it.”

MMMMMMM.

And here Peter had been planning on being jaded and miserable this fine night. How could he now when this dude was ticking every box that made him feel alive?

“What’s your name, dollface?” Peter asked across the short distance.

“None of your business,” Tall Guy answered abruptly.

“Luke,” Luke said around him. “Are you gonna save me?”

“In just a minute,” Peter said, striding forward with a hard roll in his shoulder and deep drop in his knees.

It was amazing how Tall Guy wanted to take some steps back all of the sudden. Peter couldn’t help but let a smirk widen his face as he advanced.

“Okay, hang on now,” Tall Guy said with both palms out in front of him. “You don’t know what this is about, Spidey. You don’t want to get involved with this, trust me. He’s just bein’ dramatic. No need to get testy.”

“You sure do a lot of talkin’ for your friend there,” Peter noted through his grin.

“Yeah, Han,” Luke said.

Ha.

Han. Han and Luke. Ned was gonna be enraptured when Peter told him about this later.

“Luke. Back me up.”

“Why should I?”

“Because,” ‘Han’ finally snapped. “I’m not doin’ this because I want you to suffer, alright? I don’t want nothin’ to do with it either, okay? No one does. But it’s this or—”

“Or everyone else,” Luke finished for him in a strangely toneless voice.

Han sighed.

“It’s always everyone else,” Luke said.

“Not here.”

“Why’s it always everyone el—No, no, here. Why not? We’ve got fucking Spiderman in our midst, how much more surreal can this moment get? No. You listen to me, Han—”

“I’ve been listening to you all damn evening and you know what I’m hearing?”

“—I lost my life for this. I lost my home, my aunt, my uncle, my hand—”

“I’m hearing you making this about you.”

“—everything I ever knew, and I tried to make it right, didn’t I? I made the school. I gathered the kids—”

“And it’s not just about you this time, kid. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, or Leia, or Chewie or—”

“—I lost my kid and the love of my life, and I finally get a second chance at finding them and giving them the goddamn happy ending they deserve, and the next thing I know—”

“Luke, you’re the only one,” Han said.

“I WAS NEVER. THE ONLY. ONE, HAN,” Luke roared out of absolutely nowhere, sober as a saint. “I was never the only one. EVER. Ahsoka. Go find her. She’s everything that I’m not and more. She’s the real—”

“Luke.”

“Stop saying that name. I HATE that name. I would do anything for twenty goddamn seconds where I didn’t have to be him.”

“You don’t mean that,” Han said quietly. His shoulders had rounded out and become black and heavy under the weight of their shadow. Luke’s eyes, however, looked like topaz.

“I mean it,” Luke said.

Oho.

So shit had gotten real tense, real fast, so Peter about to make a decision that was gonna make Shelley so proud of him she would weep when he finally slunk back in through her office door.

He was leaving. He was turning around and taking a wee jog. Maybe turning a corner, having a little jump over a fence, up a wall, to a place as far away from this one as superhumanly possible.

Bye, bye.

“This galaxy needs you, Luke.”

Peter stopped five paces away.

“They need you,” Han repeated. “And I need you.”

Peter slowly looked back to see that Luke’s face had twisted sharply out of the light, towards the alley wall.

“I’m sorry that we met again like this,” Han said quietly. “I’m sorry it’s always you. You don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”

“Shut up,” Luke said.

“But if you don’t do something, then it won’t be just me and you and all these random others sliding back into that cesspit we all barely crawled out of.”

“Stop.”

“You’ll never find him if things go back the way they were.”

“You—you don’t know that. There—maybe—”

“Luke. Listen to me. Please.”

“Maybe there’s a chance—”

“Luke,” Han said reaching out and putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder and clenching it hard enough that Peter should see the bunched fabric, “Do you want Din to live through this shitshow a second time? Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

Peter shivered. The pressure at the base of his neck was building. The Spidey Sense wanted to hiss in his ears like white noise. It pinned him where he was, staring over his shoulder at those two solid shapes, one digging a hand into the flesh of the other.

His stomach turned.

Luke said something that Peter couldn’t hear. Han pulled him toward his own body by the grip he had on his shoulder. At first, Luke seemed to stagger, like he was walking on black ice. He stopped a single step away from Han’s body, still with his face angled severely away. Han said something to him.

There was a long pause, then Luke seemed to fall forward. Han caught him and crushed his head into his shoulder, lowering his own until it was almost touching Luke’s ear. They clung to each other.

Luke was crying.

The Spidey Sense started to crackle and pop in Peter’s ears.

“I gotchu, kid,” Han said in a rasp. “I gotchu. We’re gonna get through it.”

Peter blinked once and finally unlocked the muscles in his neck. He wasn’t meant to witness this. He held out a wrist and fired a line.

  --

It was weird.

It was just weird.

Something wasn’t right. And Peter couldn’t make his stomach not writhe about it.

Luke.

Han.

An offhand mention of like, characters. Character names. They were character names. Leia, Chewie.

Peter had heard of people who lived their lives honestly believing that they had been other people—fake people—in past lives, but like, damn man. Why would you put yourself in a position like that were you were moved to actual tears for some elaborate street-drama?

Maybe it had been a joke? That was the only thing he could think it could be. Maybe the universe had gazed upon his hubris at work and gone ‘ah yes, I know what this young man needs: emotional confusion at midnight on a Thursday. That’ll fix him.’

If that was the case, then yeah. Good job, universe. Good job, larpers. Y’all are equally sick.

But if not—and Peter no longer lived in a world where he could rule out any possibilities—then he had just witnessed—Dude, he’d just witnessed—

He couldn’t even think it. It was beyond him. It was so far beyond him that like he might have a real stroke taking the thought seriously.

There was only one person who could hold that kind of information unscathed.

Only one.

  --

PP: Ned. I need you to listen to me and tell me I’m not crazy.

NL: no promises but go on

PP: I think? I just saw? Luke Skywalker? And Han Solo? In an alley behind Kitty’s?????

NL: fascinating

JS: Say more

PP: who let you in here?

JS: you?

PP: SECURITY

NL: Peter say more

PP: I can’t there’s a nerd in here and it’s vibrating at the wrong decibel. SECURITY???

MJ: yeah?

PP: I’m trying to have a breakdown. Can you remove Matchstick please?

MJ: what kind of breakdown

JS: he thinks he met Luke Skywalker

PP: Security has failed me. God?

NL: Peter can you name three things you can see.

PP: I am not manic. I am in touch with reality. I’m just having anxiety because I just fucking saw two people calling each other Luke and Han fighting behind Kitty’s. Like real fighting.

JS: nicknames?

PP: I—

PP: oh my god nicknames

PP: Johnny I’m so sorry I ever doubted you. never leave my side

JS: 😊

MJ: wow that’s cringe. Imagine naming yourself after SW characters

NL: does kitty do a cosplay night now????

PP: idk it was wild. People thought that ‘Han’ was trying to kidnap ‘Luke’ but when I got over there, Luke started flirting with me and then shit got real and they started arguing over like him hating his name and not wanting to do something and losing everything or some shit

NL: that’s a lot. I’m sure it was nothing, though, peter.

PP: yeah it was. My SS has been going nuts ever since I left. You think they bugged me?

JS: yes I will come search your body imminently

MJ: my job storm, back off

JS: after MJ has finished prelim checks, I will then search your body for you out of the kindness of my heart ❤

NL: that’s weird, the SS doesn’t usually freak out about cosplayers

PP: ikr?

NL: lol imagine if they were serious

MJ: don’t say that

JS: well now we have to lean in. thanks ned

JS: they were definitely real. God they were so real. You hear that Fate? You got us. They’re definitely real.

PP: BUT WHAT IF THEY WERE?

MJ: cue breakdown

NL: that would be so fucking funny. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo trying to save the world from the hellscape of nyc. The rats alone would thwart them.

PP: ned I’m freaking out

NL: oh you mean you’re actually freaking out?

PP: deeply

NL: oh shit sorry. I’ll be over, have you slept yet?

PP: NO

MJ: on it

JS: can I join?

NL: no johnny

MJ: no johnny

PP: 😭

JS: one day our love will build a bridge, peter. In the meantime I am stroking your ear comfortingly from midtown

  --

Need and MJ’s weight pinning him to a mattress brought sleep but not necessarily comfort. They both thought that this was a sick joke someone had played on him that was now destroying his psyche. They thought that the couple pointing him back towards the cosplayers had been in on the joke.

Peter would have agreed with them if it wasn’t for the Spidey Sense. Everything else lined up perfectly.

Ned sighed in the morning and told Peter to go talk to Wade.

 --

 Wade’s hallucinations were, by far, more auditory than visual, but he stayed quiet while Peter talked his ear off over the phone in his locked office. He waited until Peter had run out of words to describe the feeling of impending doom and then huffed a bit of a laugh into the receiver.

“Them Star Wars people are unreal, Pete, you know this,” he said. “Look at Ned.”

Ned was perfect.

“Take off those rosy shades, hon. Now, look again.”

Ned had perhaps memorized the entire scripts of the first three movie and 90% of the spaceship names and the jedi lineages.

“Uh-huh. Keep going.”

Peter didn’t want to.

“We all gotta do shit we don’t want do.”

Fine.

Ned’s goal in life was to go to his wedding in a stormtrooper suit.

“Keep going.”

Every Lego project they’d built together since 13 years-old had been a Star Wars-related one. When Ned had decided to move out of his parents’ place, he’d shed actual tears over MJ and Peter mutually suggesting that he sell some of his memorabilia.

“Will this delightful buffet before our very eyes, what is the likelihood of your two pals being drunk larpers in too deep to quit?” Wade asked.

73%.

“Uh-huh.”

“Thanks, Wade.”

“No problem. Although, now I gotta see this. You said they were behind Kitty’s? You think I can get a stormtrooper costume in 8 hours?”

“They’re not still gonna be there, Wade,” Peter huffed. “It’s 10 am.”

“You ain’t know that. What if Luke Skywalker’s a useless drunk, huh? You ever think of that?”

No.

“What’d he look like?”

Peter groaned.

“He looked like Luke Skywalker,” he said. “Blond hair, blue eyes—sort of like a chipmunk that forgot its stripes.”

“I’m onto you, Skywalker.”

Peter hung up to Wade’s cackle. He slouched low and tapped his pen against his desk. Then against his fingers.

He stared at the edge of his keyboard.

“What’s the weirdest thing you could imagine, Pete?” he asked himself.

 --

 PP: sam

SC: yeah?

PP: do you like star wars?

SC: nah

PP: you’re perfect

PP: do you believe in past lives?

SC: like spiritually or culturally? I know I was a cult-kid for a min there but before that we were Buddhists and like, past lives are part of the package

PP: that’s cool. What do you think of people being reborn as themselves again like, 500000000 years later? From a galaxy far far away?

SC: I don’t think about those people

PP: okay well, hypothetically. Let’s say that you were going to imagine someone who embodied that whole spirit. Who would it be?

SC: Buddha

PP: not buddha

SC: is this a riddle? Is it Jesus?

PP: THOR. Thank you this has been helpful ily bye

  Mr. Stark asked him over a cup of viciously black coffee why Peter was seeking out the demigod of his present nightmares.

That usually meant that he and Thor had disagreed on basic physics principles again. Peter took that also to mean that the demigod was still in the building. Possibly loose.

“He’s with Banner,” Mr. Stark said scathingly.

“Thanks, you’re amazing,” Peter said as he sailed out of the room.

 --

 Thor was sitting on Dr. Banner’s lab table, despite Dr. Banner telling him to get off no fewer than two times in the five minutes that Peter was in there, schmoozing and making pleasantries. He warmed Thor up to the home-run hit by asking him all about past lives and present lives and what the soul was on Asgard. Thor was only too happy to explain a load of nonsense that made Banner roll his eyes and poke at his muscles with a thermometer.

“So, hypothetically speaking,” Peter drawled in a very casual lean, “With the infinite galaxies and universes, etcetera, there could be one where Star Wars people exist. And so hypothetically, they could get reborn into a universe like ours.”

Thor blinked at him.

“You remember the laser swords?” Dr. Banner deadpanned.

Thor lit up.

“I suppose it’s possible,” he told Peter indulgently. “But if that was the case then it would be a long tragedy, no?”

…yes…

Say more, Thor-man.

“Well,” Thor said with a big, happy smile, “The series of events that unfolded in that story seemed to me to be one of triumph and tragedy. With one would come the other—that’s how these stories work, yes?”

…yes.

“So if Master Luke Skywalker and his companions arrived into our space here, then they must experience the same in order to be themselves,” Thor said, bobbing his head in pity. “Perhaps what would look like a new start for such people would result only in terror and disappointment until the same conclusion was reached.”

Peter felt his own grin twitch.

“So it’s not impossible?” he asked.

Both Thor and Banner looked at him quizzically at the same time.

“Peter?” Dr. Banner asked. “Is this coming from somewhere?”

Peter’s grin twitched so violently, it turned into a grimace that even superstrength would not let him maintain.

“Can I borrow one of you?” he asked.

 --

 Wade was not happy to be met outside of Kitty’s in the middle of the day, especially because his stormtrooper outfit, in his words, ‘did no justice for the size of his balls.’

Peter was ignoring that. He dragged Thor past Wade’s righteous anger until he was standing on the place where the other two had stood the night before. Thor stood there gamely.

“There,” Peter said. “Any like, energy signatures?”

Thor glanced around and shrugged.

Wade scowled at him and hounded him off the spot so that he could stand there instead.

“I feel nothing,” he said, devoid of emotion.

“Same,” Thor said.

Damnit.

“Perhaps you are—”

The Spidey Sense smashed through all of Peter’s sense and screamed at him to get to the street.

Get to the street. Get to the street. Get to the—

There.

Across the way. Chipmunk, no stripes.

That was the guy from the day before. He was on the opposite sidewalk smashed in with the crowd, dragging a hand through his hair and laden with a backpack and two separate totes. He was wearing a strange set of clothes—a mash of casual and formal—and seemed to be in a hurry, the type of hurry that involved pushing past folks at a half-jog and not stopping at streetlights.

“Got ‘im,” Peter hissed.

“No shit?” Wade asked over his shoulder.

Thor made a sound of interest.

“I see him, too,” he said. “What incredible energy, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Wh—

Peter whirled on him.

“Don’t you fucking say that,” he warned. “I’m gonna go distract. You two, on my six.”

 --

 Peter broke four traffic laws on his way around the block. He swung himself around a corner and fucked up the collar on his labcoat and counted to four before stepping out right into ‘Luke’s path.

They collided. Luke stumbled back and dropped one of his totes.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Peter blustered. “Are you okay?”

Luke swore and dropped down without answering, collecting the odd ends of metal that had clattered out from his bag and now rolled loose over the pavement. Peter stooped to join, gathering rings and pipes of all sorts of sizes in his hands. Oncoming folks gave them a wide berth.

It took a moment for Luke to realize what Peter was doing, but when he did, his shoulders went stiff as a board.

“DON’T TOUCH THOSE,” he snapped, just as Peter made to pick up a little plastic bag with a wad of tissue inside it.

Peter froze.

“Oh. Sorry,” he said.

This time, Luke finally met his eye.

“Oh, Jesus. No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Luke blustered, “Thank you. I’ll—I’ve got them. Thank you, though. It’s okay.”

He took the metal out of Peter’s hands and stuffed them back into his bag. He snatched the plastic bag before Peter could touch it and put that on top.

“Excuse me,” he said as he stood. “Thanks again.”

And just like that, he hurried off past Peter down the pavement.

Peter watched him go.

“Catch?” Wade asked softly from the corner.

“Negative,” Peter said, reaching into his sleeve and holding up the thin aluminum tube he’d hidden up there by the edge of his shirt-sleeve.

It was shiny and longer than he’d expect for any plumbing project. The inside appeared to be coated with some sort of heavy, non-reactive material, and half of the outside had grooved bands carved into it.

“Someone’s building something,” he said.

“Mid-century sink?” Wade asked, taking the tube.

“Nope,” Peter said.

 --

 NL: That is a lightsaber hilt

NL: where did you get that? It’s like mega accurate. Was it etsy?

PP: I stole it

NL: give it back

PP: I can’t I stole it from Luke Skywalker.

NL: Peter.

NL: we talked about this.

PP: He’s Luke Skywalker. I swear on the grave of my mother

MJ: this is a problem. This is now an intervention.

PP: I will prove it. If he’s Luke Skywalker, then he will do ANYTHING to get this thing back.

NL: and if not?

PP: then I will wait two days before politely tracking down his home address and then I will return it via wall crawling

JS: UM

JS: SORRY

JS: PETER CAN YOU CALL ME?

PP: no

NL: no

MJ: no

JS: are

JS: are you sure??? Because there’s a guy in Reed’s lab right now talking to him and Sue, asking SUPER politely for access to—I shit you not—the crystals we picked up from that space trip the other day???

NL: …

PP: …

MJ: …

PP: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

MJ: fake

NL: no way

PP: WHAT’S HIS NAME, JOHNNY BOY????

JS: I can’t

PP: nope you gotta

JS: I can’t I’m gonna cry I didn’t ask for this

MJ: out with it

NL: please say it’s obi-wan

JS: HHHHHHHHHHH

JS: nope

JS: just a guy named Ben 🙃

PP: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

PP: I told you motherfuckers

JS: right. So like. Awkward. But you uh, know that hilt thing you have?

PP: …is Obi-Wan Kenobi about to beat my ass, Johnny?

 --

 There was something about putting the hilt into the palm of someone more famous than Captain America that made Peter’s knees weak.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker had flirted with him the other night.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker didn’t recognize him as Spiderman.

Nothing helped, really, especially when those big topaz eyes lifted and Peter could see that their rims were red and raw.

“Thanks,” Luke Skywalker—the embodiment of hope itself—said in a soft, defeated rasp.

Every alarm in Peter’s head said to save him. Save him from what? How? Who knew.

Ned and MJ seemed to feel the same way, if the pressure on each of his arms was anything to go by.

“Well, that’s all cleared up, then. Thank you so much for your help; it is deeply appreciated,” a stupidly pleasant gentleman with a perfectly combed beard and lovingly coifed light hair said to the room at large.

Obi-Wan Kenobi—pardon, Ben Kennedi—was far more handsome than any movie could ever dream to make him. What they’d done to him in the 1970s, Peter saw now, was a fucking crime. He watched as this beautiful human being set a warm hand on Luke Skywalker’s—pardon, Luke Naberry’s—shoulder and used it to steer him towards the Baxter Building’s front entrance.

He watched as the two of them, like true Master and Padawan, stepped out onto the landing and opted for the stairs. For one fleeting, unbelievable second, Luke looked back over his shoulder at all of them before taking the next step after his Master.

He was right the other night.

He wasn’t the only jedi. Not anymore.

“So that just happened,” Sue acknowledged for everyone after the door had clicked closed and the sound of footsteps had faded off to nothing.

“I’m going to cry,” Reed announced.

“This is single-handedly the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Ned said.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi walked into our kitchen,” Reed told Sue like she hadn’t been there right next to him.

“The empire is trying to establish itself under our very feet,” Sue said back a little viciously.

“The real empire,” Reed whimpered.

Wait.

No, go back.

“For real?” Peter asked.

Sue and Reed looked back at the rest of them and then exchanged a look.

 --

 Peter was sad now. Depressed and laid out on his side staring back at Valeria’s huge eyes on the floor while Ned and MJ and Johnny asked Reed and Sue two hundred clarifying questions.

Peter didn’t need the specifics. He was thinking back on the conversation that he’d witnessed between Luke and Han Solo—Han Solo who was tall with dark hair and dark eyes and an accent straight out of New Jersey. Solo who had probably been charged with forcing Luke to face the facts in front of all of them because he was the one who Luke trusted most.

But it had shattered them—both of them.

The New Hope had given up everything. He was tired. His heart was torn. He was jaded just like Peter had been that same night. He’d been avoiding the tightrope that Peter had already started crossing, though, probably looking for every possible way to not have to set the first foot on that wobbly line.

He’d walked it before.

Valeria reached out with a chubby, round hand and touched the side of Peter’s face.

“Spiderman,” she said with terrifying understanding, “Someone needs help.”

He wriggled in close enough to bonk heads with her.

“Baby Storm,” he whispered, “I think you’re right.”

  --

MJ thought that Peter needed to leave things alone. She pointed out that he had plenty of problems without getting involved in universe-saving. She gestured to Johnny and volunteered him for the job.

Johnny refused on account of needing to be the prettiest blond in any room. He claimed that if he wasn’t, he had to fight for dominance.

Ned was on the other end of the spectrum. He had 43 reasons why Peter should get involved with things, and 40 of them ended up in the same place which was ‘it would be cool.’

One of Ned’s better reasons, however, involved pointing out that Peter had already stolen half of a lightsaber. He was good and involved now, whether he wanted to be or not. And that was enough for Peter to decide to go on a hunt to give a formal apology.

He recruited Ned to help him locate Luke Skywalker.

That didn’t work.

They tried Luke Naberry.

That didn’t work either.

They ended up going through every possible iteration of every Star Wars name they knew and then filtered out the people who’d been named by exuberant parents and then filtered out anyone who didn’t live in New York and they ended up with fat lot of still nothing.

It was like Luke Skywalker didn’t truly exist in this world.

Until MJ found his Instagram by typing in ‘guys who look weirdly like Luke Skywalker.’

She held the phone aloft in triumph and they all gathered round to gape in awe at her intelligence and research skills.

Luke’s Instagram was nothing but pictures of coffee.

He had one selfie and this selfie was enough to have gotten him onto a BuzzFeed article. In it he was holding—you guessed it—coffee. Iced coffee. One in each hand.

He was shaking them, and one had been labeled with his name—hence the public connection made.

“Someone needs to tell him that coffee is not a food group,” Johnny observed.

“Maybe he works nights,” MJ said.

Ned lifted an eyebrow.

“Maybe this is his job,” he said.

There was a pause.

Some snooping revealed that Luke was an honest to god food website editor. He was a cameraman.

Repeat. Luke Skywalker, cameraman. He filmed all the food hosts for his company’s Youtube channel. He edited videos. He more or less blended into the background of everything, while having his finger prints on damn near everything.

This was a man after Peter’s own soul. They were kindred spirits in hidden identities, content creation, and suffering under a boulder of responsibility too great to cope with.

He had to find him now.

And after they had his Instagram it wasn’t too hard. He seemed to hang out in various parts of the Bronx and Peter just so happened to know some folks out that way.

 --

 Louis told Peter that he would never speak to him again if he found, befriended, and then didn’t share Luke Skywalker (the man, the real man, I’m not fucking with you, Louis). But he also recognized a place on Luke’s instagram that he seemed to be working his way through the menu of. He sent along an address and told Peter not to forget his promises.

Angel asked why he was looking for Johnny Storm in the Bronx.

Peter left Louis to rattle sense into her.

He took a walk on Saturday morning. A long walk. A long train ride, then a walk, then a half hour of squinting, and then, lo and behold, he found a blond guy banging his head into the center of an out door metal table across from a woman with heavy braids trailing down the sides of her neck. She was much older than him and drummed white-painted fingernails across her cheek as she thought.

Peter hid and called Ned and MJ for an ID. He peeked the phone’s camera out enough for them to see the other two and then snatched it back.

Ned was about to flip a table.

“That’s clearly Ahsoka Tano,” he said. “She—the braids, dude. Dead give-away. And she put ribbons in them, like what even is discretion?”

Peter didn’t know that person. He continued not to know this person, even as Ned dragged him through a trainwreck of Star Wars lore.

“So she’s a friend,” he said.

“She’s like a jedi, but not like a jedi, she was a jedi, but then she said ‘fuck the order’ and—”

Great. Peter was approaching.

Ned held his face in his hands. MJ told Peter to report back on his findings. Peter ended the call and inched closer, weaving through the crowd and slipping into the coffee joint to see what nonsense they were selling.

It was nonsense with lots of syrup. He could never say no to syrup.

He watched the two outside while waiting for his order. Luke gesticulated to his friend and she spoke, giving reasonable gestures back. He stopped her and dug out his phone and that little plastic baggy full of fluffy material. He answered his phone. His friend took the little bag and held it up to the light.

She frowned at it.

Luke pushed away from the table and walked away to take his call. Peter’s order was called. He grabbed it and swerved out towards the patio.

“Hello,” he said at the edge of Luke and his friend’s table. “Is this seat taken?”

Luke’s friend stared at him.

“It is,” she said. “Move along, hon, you’re ten years too young.”

Wow.

“For your friend?” Peter tried. “Could I leave my number?”

He had this lady’s attention now. She was looking him up and down, appraising. Peter tried not to flex. He stayed cool. Matt-levels of cool. He smiled winningly.

“Alright, why not?” she said, digging through her bag for a receipt and a pen. Peter beamed as he leaned down to scrawl his number down on the back. He got halfway through before he heard a step stop nearby.

“Look alive, kid,” Luke’s friend said. “Hey, Luke, this guy was just—”

“You again?” Luke said.

Peter lifted his head and brows.

“Hi,” he said. “I just wanted to apologize.”

There was a long silence.

Luke’s friend looked between them and then gave Luke a long, judgmental stare.

“You don’t have to,” Luke said. “Thanks, though. How did you find me here?”

Mmm. Beginner’s luck.

“Here,” Peter said, offering his number on the receipt. “If you ever need someone to talk to who gets it.”

Luke’s friend bit her lip and looked away in secondhand embarrassment. Peter ignored her for now.

“Thanks,” Luke said. “You don’t and you won’t. But you’re very pretty.”

Nice.

“You’d be surprised,” Peter told him. “Gimme a text. I’ll leave y’all alone now. Enjoy your coffee.”

He left. But not before hearing, “but that ass, Luke.”

 --

 Ned told him that there was no way that Luke was ever going to text him and he was disappointed in Peter’s hostage-taking skills.

But he was proved wrong two hours later and, for his crimes, had to admit Peter’s brilliance publicly.

 LS: hi sorry. This is Luke. This morning when you stopped by our table, did you happen to see a little plastic bag on it?

 Why yes. The one in Peter’s pocket right now? That bag?

 PP: hi!! I did, actually. You guys aren’t very subtle 😏

LS: it’s not coke

PP: I’m not judging

LS: no, it’s not coke, I swear. It’s something INFINITELY more important. Did you happen to see if it had fallen on the ground?

PP: ah, no, sorry. I didn’t see it

PP: OH NO

PP: oh my god I’m so sorry, I think I took it with me when I accidentally took your friend’s pen.

LS: I

LS: what’s your name?

PP: Peter ❤

LS: Peter, you have a fucking problem

LS: I’m starting to think that you want something from me. And listen, you’re a handsome guy, but I’m not available and my type isn’t kleptomaniac. What do you want for it?

PP: well you got me

PP: to talk

LS: about what?

PP: mostly about why you look like you’re a wet phonebook in a bad gutter

LS: a phonebook???? What era are you even from????

PP: I could say the same to you, sir.

LS: I

LS: wh

LS: alright touche. The point is that I’m not going to talk to you. I just need that bag back. It’s a life and death situation.

PP: what are they? They aren’t coke crystals.

LS: how would you know?

PP: what are you, a cop?

LS: NO. This is going nowhere. What. Do. You. Want?

PP: To. Talk.

LS: I’m not going to talk to you.

PP: then why did you ask me to rescue you?

 He held his breath.

 LS: I didn’t

PP: you did

LS: I didn’t ask you for shit. This is it. What’s your last name.

PP: Man 😊

LS: Man what

PP: That’s my last name.

LS: Peter Man.

PP: oop, nope, sorry. That’s someone else.

LS: …so I’m calling the police, now. That’s what we’re saying?

PP: depends. Do you still need to be rescued?

 Come on, Skywalker. Come on, remember.

 LS: I never asked you to rescue me.

PP: You did. Think back.

LS: I didn’t

LS: I just made a joke to

LS: WHAT AFAJSDFA DTTH E FUCK

 Peter cackled and let himself fall onto his back.

 PP: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ❤

LS: YOU’RE

PP: Just your friendly neighborhood guy ❤

LS: YOU

LS: you

PP: me

LS: THAT’s how the storms knew you

PP: yep 💋

LS: I don’t even know what to say

PP: it’s okay, you don’t have to say shit. The main thing I wanted you to know was that I hear you. And if you need it, I’ve got you.

LS: You’re literally trying to rescue me??

PP: it’s my job

LS: IT ISN’T. How have you never been arrested? how did you find me? Did you track my phone? Is it some kind of spider thing???

PP: yes

LS: I am legally obligated to kill you with the force now

PP: harder daddy

LS: ADaaSDASFSDFSdd

LS: oh my god Han is going to lose his gourd

LS: I’m sorry I just I can’t believe you of all people stole my damn hilt

PP: I’ve got……………………..sticky fingers

LS: go die

LS: no I didn’t mean that sorry that’s a thing with me and my sister. I mean, okay. You got me. Hero of NYC.

 Peter’s cheeks were starting to hurt.

 PP: I’ll bring them back to you.

LS: Please do, Ben’s about to have a stroke.

PP: you mean obi-wan?

LS: he’s convinced his cat ate them. There’s a staring contest happening. No one has blinked in two minutes and I don’t want to be here for the internal investigation.

PP: where do you live?

 Luke sent an address. Peter held his phone high and walked it into the living room where Ned was bitchily composing an Instagram post. He and MJ looked up at the same time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Peter said. “Luke Skywalker and Co. live in a cemetery.”

 --

 It wasn’t a cemetery. It was a funeral home, but close enough.

Luke was waiting outside on the stoop in a cardigan about four sizes too big for him. It was there probably to protect him from the equally large ragdoll cat in his arms.

Peter smiled. Luke stared at him and then shook his head and went through the screen door. Ned gave Peter a biting look.

“Made friends, I see,” he said.

“We’re doin’ great,” Peter told him, hopping up the stairs. “Look at us, totally—”

“Insidious.”

Peter stopped and turned nervously to see through the screen door where Obi-Wan Kenobi had seized both of the cat’s cheeks. Luke continued to hold it with maximum doneness levels.

“Where have you been?” Obi-Wan asked the cat seriously.

“We have guests,” Luke said. “Take your beast.”

Obi-Wan snatched the cat out of Luke’s arms with contempt all over his face.

“You are a villain of the highest order,” he told it.

“Ben. Guests. Please evacuate. I am hosting negotiations,” Luke said.

“We should have named you ‘Sith.’”

“Ben.”

Peter was not going to laugh at Obi-Wan Kenobi. That was too surreal.

“Come in,” Luke said, returning to hold open the screen. “I hope you’re not allergic. There are two of them.”

T-two?

“The other one is Junior.”

Peter stepped over the threshold and found himself in a room that looked like a human birdhouse. It was full of surfaces that were almost completely empty, as though an enrichment object had once lived there but had been removed as punishment. Luke waved Ned and MJ in and accepted their apologies on Peter’s behalf.

Peter ignored them to lock eyes with a creature more stunning than any he had ever encountered. It sat on the kitchen counter by a single clear jar labelled ‘Not Spice.’ It blinked grumpy green eyes.

“Oh, it’s these people again?”

They all looked behind them to see Obi-Wan peering around a doorframe with the first cat draped over his shoulders.

“Kleptomaniac,” Luke said, pointing at Peter. Peter waved.

“Huh,” Obi-Wan said simply. “I will distract Ahsoka.”

He vanished. Luke grimaced after him.

“Let’s go talk in the back,” he said. “There are no bodies, I promise.”

 --

 The funeral home had a little deck and a yard small even for this far out in Queens. It was crammed full of plants that appeared to be in a competition to bloom. Luke invited them to sit and then left to make coffee.

Coffee, yes, how had Peter forgotten.

He peeked over the side of the deck down where there was a large stone set in the center of the garden.

“A seeing stone,” Ned whispered to him.

“Oh, how did you know?”

They all jumped.

Peter swore that Obi-Wan hadn’t opened that sliding door. How had—what—

Ned was at a loss for words in the face of one of his greatest heroes.

“I—uh. M-movie? I mean, sorry. It was in The Mandalorian, second season, with the—”

“Yet more television,” Obi-Wan said derisively.

They all stared.

“Can you teleport?” MJ asked him.

“I thought you were bothering Ahsoka?” Luke asked, from inside. He squeezed past the man and his cat with three glass mugs in hand. He set them down on the little square table off to the side of the desk railing.

“I was, but then I got curious,” Obi-Wan said. “And I lost Junior.”

Luke stared at him.

“I’m going to lock you in the basement,” he said.

“Try, try, and try again,” Obi-Wan told him, petting his beloved cat’s head.

“Do you even know who Spiderman is, old man?”

“More television.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Peter had to keep a conscious watch on his jaw, lest it fall open in the face of the most handsome, clueless man on the planet. He watched as Obi-Wan, disgusted with all this ‘television’ nonsense skulked back off into the guts of the home. Luke shut the door behind him.

“So,” he said, holding out his hand. “We’re talking. Fork ‘em.”

Ah.

Fair was fair.

Peter produced the plastic bag from his pocket and handed it over. There was a shout somewhere inside followed by someone going ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

“Ben keeps our home ghost free. He terrifies all the wannabee haunters,” Luke said simply. “Thank you for these. I imagine it’s somewhat of a shock to learn that it’s all real.”

It was, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing Peter had encountered by far.

“How long have you lived in New York?” he asked conversationally.

Luke gave him a weird brow.

He seemed smaller than before in that enormous cardigan. Certainly smaller than the movies made him seem. His face was a little thinner too, and his lips seemed to slope into an almost permanent pout.

“About twenty years,” he said. “We were born in California, but Anakin moved us here when we were eight.”

Anakin? Like, Darth Vader, Anakin?

“’Luke, I am your father’—yeah, that guy,” Luke said with a scoff. “Except, you know, he ain’t dead. And he’s the only one who can make Ben remember that tea isn’t a meal, so we keep him around for that and to scream back at Leia.”

Peter was already completely lost to the dynamics of this household. It wasn’t like the books and movies—Ned’s twitching for his phone to take notes was proof enough of that.

“That’s awkward,” MJ said. “So did y’all do like, collective counselling for the past life shit?”

Luke deflated and moaned into his hands.

“It’s not past life shit if your damn name is the same,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

It sounded like it.

Imagine growing up with your apparently-Star War-obsessed father and uncle who’d built a home and a business (presumably) around that shit, only to find out later that they’d done it because it was literally their religion.

What a trip.

“When did you find out?” Peter asked gently.

“Oh, you know. Last week,” Luke said with a bitter grin. “Quit my fulltime job. Dumped my ex. Broke my lease and now here I am. Once again. Back at this place.”

“Do you want a hug?” Ned asked into the awkward silence.

“You’re very sweet,” Luke said. “If I touch another human, I will start crying and never stop.”

Yikes.

Barely holdin’ on by a thread there, buddy? How’s the hyperawareness going?

“Why does it matter, is my question. For you, I mean,” Luke said with a suspicious squint. “You fought a goblin guy, didn’t you? With a hover board?”

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, yeah.

Yeah, Peter sure had done that.

“And like, the bird dude? Didn’t you down a plane?”

Perhaps.

But Luke had blown up the Deathstar, no?

“These things are not equivalent,” Luke said flatly. “I joined a rebel alliance. There were loads of us.”

Mmm. Perhaps so.

“God, how old are you even? You look 22.”

Peter gawked.

“I’m 27,” he said.

Luke did a double-take.

“That’s a lie,” he accused. “Tell the truth or be compelled.”

“By the Force?” Ned asked hopefully.

Luke blinked at him. He pointed at the glass sliding door which revealed Obi-Wan holding Junior the cat above his head by the kitchen sink.

“The Force,” he said.

Ned’s face fell.

“Do we not have the Force, here?” he asked.

Luke flinched.

“Listen,” he said abruptly, “We’re workin’ on it. This isn’t our original galaxy. The rules are all different. The only one who’s managed to make even a spark happen is Obi-Wan so far, but as soon as we find Master Yoda, it’s over. We’ll already have won.”

“You lost Yoda,” MJ mused.

Luke stammered and caught himself.

“We lost a lot of people,” he snapped. “It happens when you shift galaxies. Anyways, that’s what the stone is for.”

MJ glanced back at the stone and then leaned her forearms onto the small table.

“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “You jedi folks all popped up over here by some cosmic accident. You don’t have the Force. Most of you don’t even remember who you are. You lost your most experienced Master, and you’re going to fight the Sith?”

Peter stirred his coffee nervously.

Luke’s eye twitched.

“We don’t need the others,” he said. “We only need the Force. To fight the Sith. Yes.”

MJ frowned deep and held her chin with both hands.

“So you need the thing you for sure don’t have the most,” she said.

Luke opened his mouth, but not before the window by the door snapped open and Obi-Wan leaned out to say, “We always have the Force.”

Luke covered his face in despair.

“I was listening from the kitchen window,” Obi-Wan told him lovingly.

“GO FIND CODY ALREADY,” Luke roared at him.

“I did, he’s right here,” Obi-Wan said soothingly, stroking his angry cat.

“The other Cody.”

“Oh, I am trying, don’t you worry.”

“Ben, so help me God—”

“Force.”

“SO HELP ME FORCE—”

Star Wars had really left out the part about Luke’s explosive temper. Peter winced, but Ned laughed and the sound seemed to have a calming effect on Jedi-on-Jedi crime about to take place in the kitchen. Obi-Wan appeared pleased with this development and emboldened. He wove past Luke out onto the desk and came over, cat and all, to point down to the seeing stone in the middle of the garden.

“Others who feel the Force’s energy will be drawn to it,” he told Ned fondly. “It’s how we got Luke back home.”

“It’s not,” Luke said. “You called me.”

“And so others will also come,” Obi-Wan said with confidence. “The most important thing is that we believe in the Force. And from that, we will find guidance and power and—”

“He means Yoda,” Luke translated. “He’s been putting frogs on it as an offering, even though me, Ahsoka, and Anakin told him that this is a human’s world. A human’s world, Ben. Even if he did eat them, he’s not eating them raw.”

“Don’t be discouraged by Luke’s attitude, he is very stressed,” Obi-Wan told Ned and Ned only affectionately. “I told him not to be, you see there are four of us here already, and the Chosen One is among us.”

“Anakin told you to stop calling him that,” Luke moaned, massaging his temples.

“He was the first to be aware of our present situation,” Obi-Wan said.

“He took a hallucinogen and had a paranoid breakdown,” Luke pleaded. “Ben, please. Go inside. Think of your blood pressure.”

“Perhaps, but it was a useful breakdown, was it not?”

“I am so sorry for him, he’s getting senile,” Luke said to the rest of them.

“Your energy is different,” Obi-Wan informed Peter out of absolutely nowhere. “Are you also Force-sensitive? Were you drawn to the stone?”

Er.

No.

Sorry?

“He’s Spiderman,” Luke said, gesturing pointedly. “Remember Spiderman?”

Obi-Wan did not. Peter suspected, actually, that Obi-Wan still used phonebooks, if he used phones at all, that was.

Luke took a deep breath and let it out.

“Okay, let me just lay it out,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have. You don’t have to get involved with this. We appreciate your help, but what would help us even more is if you stay out of it, alright?”

Yeah, okay. Sure. Peter could respect that.

“Amazing. And don’t tell other people.”

Understood.

“Unless they’re Force-sensitive,” Obi-Wan said. “In which case, ask them how they feel about rocks.”

Luke just stared at him coldly this time.

“You didn’t used to be like this,” he said dangerously.

“No, I used to be stressed,” Obi-Wan told him. “But you and Ani are doing that for me, so I have resolved to be a free spirit. Nice to meet all of you. Have more coffee. I don’t like this one; I will have it out of the house by sundown.”

He left, and possibly for good this time. No one knew what to say in his absence.

“So,” Peter tried, desperate for something to break up the tension. “You said a few days ago that you were looking for someone?”

Luke finally stopped making growling faces towards the sliding door. He lit up like a bulb.

“I am, actually,” he said.

 --

 Luke was looking for a very particular person named ‘Din.’ He described him as ‘six feet tall and covered in armor.’ He asked if they knew of such a person.

Peter had to shove a hand against his mouth in case he made an unwanted connection between this description and Obi-Wan behavior.

“Haven’t,” MJ said. “Who is he?”

“My husband,” Luke said.

Ned choked.

Peter choked.

MJ tilted her head.

“You have a husband?” she asked. “I would have remembered a husband in that series.”

Luke leaned his chin on his palm and gazed sideways over the city. He seemed to sigh.

“I don’t know why he isn’t connected to me in the media created here,” he said. “It’s probably because he’s always been very shy.”

Oh, aw. Peter loved that. The contrast between them was heart-warming.

“We had a son together,” Luke said. “His child. He brought him to me. One of my students, at first.”

Hang on a minute here.

Peter exchanged a glance with Ned. Ned tried very hard to pick a way to approach this sensitively. He landed on asking, “What was his name again?”

“Din,” Luke said. “Din Djarin.”

Ned cringed.

“He was a Mandalorian,” Luke explained. “Very, very, very shy. Like, he would rather chew off his own leg than make small talk with a stranger. I think, before I knew all this, I was still subconsciously looking for him. All my exes are the same type.”

That—

Okay, so like.

Did these people own a TV?

“Do we look like we own a TV?” Luke deadpanned. “No. If Ben senses anything bigger than a datapad happening in this place, he’s driven to madness and breaks it.”

UH?

“He doesn’t actually break it,” Luke sighed. “He just finds a way to make it unusable—putting clothes on it, disconnecting the monitor, that kind of thing. He thinks they waste electricity.”

What a guy. Peter wanted to put him and May in a room and see what conspiracies they could spin together.

“Why do you ask?” Luke asked.

Ned cleared his throat.

“Do you have a, uh, datapad, then?” he asked.

 --

 “DIN. That’s DIN. He’s got his own show. Oh my god, that’s—stay right there. Don’t move.”

Bless this man. Peter wanted to hug him so bad. They’d lost him to the staircase leading up from the second floor to the attic. Peter wondered who he was showing the tablet to.

Maybe Obi-Wan?

“I told you this already,” a voice up there said.

“LOOK AT HIM.”

“You’re killin’ me, smalls. We had this exact conversation last week. Did you forget?”

“You knew where he was.”

“Alright, alright. Downward march.”

Anakin fucking Skywalker came down the stairs with a handful of Luke’s shirt in one hand and the tablet shoved under his other arm. He paused and frowned at the three of them in the kitchen frozen in shock, and then apparently decided that that didn’t matter. He carried on dragging Luke with him towards the kitchen counter. He dropped the tablet onto it and Peter realized that the lower half of his sleeve on that side was empty.

He watched as the guy let go of Luke and chased the not-angry cat off the counter, cursing.

“Alright, this?” he said, tapping on the tablet. “Is the link I put here.” He rapped the same finger on what Peter now saw was a whiteboard covered in rows upon rows of symbols that he’d never seen before.

“Din here? Din here. You see?” Vader told Luke with untold patience.

“I can’t read that,” Luke moaned. “You lied to me.”

“It’s up in the kitchen, Luke.”

“You’re a liar and a cad. Do it in Basic.”

“This is Basic.”

Oh, dear. All that fanfic about Luke meeting Darth Vader and having a breakdown was looking real embarrassed now, wasn’t it?

“If it’s Basic, why can’t I read it?” Luke demanded.

“Because, like I told you last night, the night before, and the night before that,” Vader said painstakingly, “It doesn’t all come back at once. It’s going to take time.”

“We don’t have time,” Luke snapped.

Vader leaned his head back with half-lidded eyes. Luke didn’t look even remotely like his kid, even with him looking all pre-quels-like now.

“We talked about this, too, remember?” Vader asked.

Obviously not. Luke was distressed. He had eyes only for the tablet now.

“No, of course not, silly me,” Vader said. “Why are humans here?”

“Ahsoka went home,” Luke said.

“Thank you, that was not my question.”

“What was your question?”

“Why are non-order humans here?”

“I told you, Ahsoka went—”

“Son, I will kill you if you continue to act like Obi-Wan,” Vader said without missing a beat.

“You can try,” Luke said offhandedly. “But only one of us has two handed grip.”

There was a long stare.

“It’s Obi-Wan,” Vader told him. “Why do we have living guests?”

He gestured back to Peter, Ned, and MJ like they were flies on a set of blinds.

“Oh, because that’s Spiderman and he stole your kyber crystals,” Luke said.

Vader rounded on Peter, and Peter actually felt fear.

Vader blinked once.

“This may as well happen,” he decided somehow placidly. “I’m going back upstairs. Where did your grand-master go?”

“Into the mist,” Luke said. “Can you feel Din?”

“Negative, ghostrider.”

“When the Force chooses you first out of favoritism, can you feel for Din?”

“Ah yes, can I feel for your Force-repellant life partner with all of the Force energy that I do not have? Yes, I sure can.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime, primary monstrosity of my loins.”

UM?

This felt a little hostile for Peter’s tastes. Not that it wasn’t earned. Clearly it was earned. It was just horrifying.

“Guests, you are dismissed,” Vader said in their direction. “Unless you’re drawn to the rock outside, in which case, you may stay. Otherwise, do not darken this doorstep again, or else we will leave you with the other dead in the morgue.”

“Thanks for bringing the crystals,” Luke said from behind him. “And for talking. I do feel better, actually.”

 --

 They left the funeral home. Obi-Wan was outside by the mailbox as though waiting for them. Peter wasn’t sure he had any emotional energy left to approach him with.

“Thank you for speaking to Luke,” he said as the three of them attempted to pass unnoticed. “It’s good for him to talk to others his own age.”

Uh-huh. Good night, sir?

“Good night, Peter, Ned, and Michelle.”

They hadn’t given their names.

They definitely hadn’t given their names.

 --

 Ned wasn’t sleeping for two years. He made this clear with a lot of clapping gestures and then rolled around on the floor, talking about all kinds of shit that Peter couldn’t decipher. MJ watched him and flicked her eyes up to Peter with concern on her forehead.

“That family is cinematically dysfunctional,” she said.

Correct.

“They’re barely their own characters.”

Correct.

“What now?”

Peter wasn’t sure. The best he could think of was to just keep an eye on the situation. Maybe check in every couple of weeks?

“If you say so,” MJ said. “I think you made Ned’s life, by the way. Good job.”

 --

 Peter tried checking in every two weeks. It started because he happened to hear of a tunnel collapsing in Queens nearby the funeral home. He texted Luke to ask if he needed a save and all he got back was a ‘well, not anymore.’

After that, Peter kept a close eye on happenstances occurring around the city. There were more than he bargained for. And when he glanced at Luke’s Instagram after the first week after the tunnel collapse, he noted that two of the nails on the hand Luke held his coffee to the camera with had gone completely black.

That was worrying.

Peter was used to be the danger-prone asshole in his friendgroup. He did not like this role-reversal. MJ asked him sarcastically what the problem was.

He texted Luke again.

 PP: how many nails do you have left bro?

LS: we put a hole in one to release the pressure

PP: that don’t sound great bro.

LS: it’s fine. Oh, but good news

PP: oh?

LS: the most predictable thing ever has happened. The Vader has regained force power

PP: that’s worrying

LS: ? why?

PP: won’t he go dark?

LS: ah, no. He fucked up and raised me and Leia with Ben this time after our mom died. He had his chance to go dark and traded it for 8 consecutive hours of sleep instead.

PP: I truly don’t know what to say

LS: It’s fine we did 12 years of family therapy after the accident so we are no longer on the DSS watchlist

PP: I know less what to say

LS: he won’t find din :/

PP: is that your priority right now?

LS: aren’t you supposed to be spiderman or something? Don’t you have chaotic things to say?

PP: you know normally I do, this is literally out of character for me. but I think you also might be absorbing my chaos.

LS: that’s fair. I have that effect on people. Hey, is your buddy Ned available to chat? He knows more than I can remember about my old life. Can I borrow him?

 That sounded like a horrendous decision.

 PP: yeah let me get you his number.

LS: thanksssss

  --

Ned reported a few days later that his services were needed at the funeral home. He was leaving them all now to befriend Luke Skywalker as was his true destiny.

He came back a few hours later and reported that his services had been helpful and he was pleased to say that Darth Vader was now the official herder of ‘wans’ in the house. This included all Obi-Wans and padawans.

He seemed to be the only guy there who could like, retain information given to him for some reason. He accepted this as his lot in life and went around repeating the same things to the others ad nauseum until they finally stuck for them.

Peter wondered if that was his personal hell.

Ned didn’t think so. He thought the guy was pretty chill about it and had probably been doing it for a while now. He did it more for Ahsoka Tano and Luke than he did for Obi-Wan. Although that was probably because Obi-Wan appeared to be on a hunt that made all non-relevant information given to him slip off his back like water.

 --

 Another two weeks. Another text.

 PP: hey luke, I saw you drowning on the news. You okay?

LS: GOD my ex-workplace keeps calling welfare checks on our house. We’ve had more cops here then flies these last few days.

PP: ex-workplace is one way to refer to your old job. Sounds like they cared about you. What did you do?

LS: preschool teacher.

 Peter was going to lose his shit right here on this bed.

 PP: was that your calling?

LS: that was Luke Naberry’s calling. Luke Skywalker’s calling is to make the lightsaber go vrrrrrrm

PP: you honestly terrify me

LS: thanks han says the same thing. OH. HE FOUND CHEWIE.

PP: no shit??

LS: yeah I told Ned, not you. But yeah. He found him lugging boxes for a bodega. And now they both work at the same bodega. Which like, objectively, is a bad thing because Han was a UN translator.

PP: I’m

PP: sorry

PP: what?

LS: I know he was all respectable and shit. It was awful. I can look at him again without feeling like I’ve failed in every part of my life.

PP: dare I ask what your sister does?

LS: lawyer

PP: not senator?

LS: we’re not old enough to be senators.

PP: every moment becomes more concerning than the next. You fascinate me. This is why they put you in like, all the films.

LS: because I’m sexy yeah

PP: that too

LS: not to you. I’m off-limits bub. I’m married.

PP: how’s that going for you?

LS: Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

PP: I see. So no Din yet?

LS: I will find him if it kills me

PP: that’s so romantic. Hey you should watch that series. They gave him a little green yoda in it. Really cute.

LS: that’s my son you piece of shit

 There was no winning here.

 --

 MJ asked him a few weeks later if he was still keeping up with the Jedi drama since the whole city had recently decided that Peter was a snack.

Obviously he hadn’t.

She told him not to worry, Ned had. She told him to talk to Ned, so he went and talked to Ned with a heatpad in one hand and a coldpack in the other.

Ned patted at him sympathetically and informed him that Luke had reunited with the Force. It was going poorly for him, mostly because the Force wasn’t used to people being in touch with it in these parts of the universe. It kept telling each of the jedi that there was a disturbance and then luring them to each other to fight to the death.

Luke described it as the Force-equivalent of an auto-immune disease.  

They’d taken to gathering in the living room of the funeral home to meditate in a circle, as though to calm the Force’s anxiety while scenting each other for protection.

It had a 40% success rate. Everyone was sleeping in locked rooms for the time being, just in case someone got compelled to do something rash.

Peter asked Ned if he’d finally lost his crown as King Chaos of NYC.

Ned patted him on the knee more firmly than before and said that he could regain his crown by introducing a calming element into the jedi household.

Peter had his pride to defend, so he asked what that element ought to be.

  --

Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, the leader of all Mandalorians, was bound to have a name that looked nothing like the one they had for him. Luke nearly exploded when Peter approached him to asked him (and his taped fingers) more about who Din Djarin was outside the name.

They proceeded with caution, however. So far, Peter and Ned had discovered only dissonance between Luke’s account of his life partner (his ‘heart, stars, sun, and sand’) and the guy on the screen for the tv show. That was to be expected, given that they had met Luke now and learned of his somewhat explosive personality.

But even still, Luke’s description of Din Djarin as ‘kind, compassionate, tender, shy, emotionally stable, dependable, sweet, caring, and hunky’ seemed slightly biased.

Peter just wanted to know how tall this guy was. Hair color. Eye color. Skin color. Blood type. That kind of shit.

Luke said that Din had brown hair, brown eyes, Type Who Knows What blood, and was about six feet tall. He had no idea how much he weighed. He’d never had need for that information. He knew that Din was human, which was probably helpful in a galaxy far, far away. He knew that he spoke Mando’a as his first language, then Basic, then a whopping fifteen others. And he knew that Din was probably looking after their son.

Vader asked Peter over a mug of coffee (also labeled in the funeral home’s cabinet as ‘not spice.’) if Spidersenses could overcome a dearth of information. It took Peter a few moments to realize that he was sympathizing with him.

“You’re not going to find Din,” Vader told Luke. “You need to look for the kid. You’ll find the kid first, you always have.”

Luke took his coffee and poured it down the drain.

Peter decided that he didn’t want to get in between that burgeoning battle. He told Luke to text him if he remembered anything else.

  --

Wade was pissed that Peter had been meeting and ‘cavorting’ with Luke Skywalker without him. He claimed ownership of the Din Djarin mystery in order to cram himself into Luke’s good graces. But quickly, he ran into the same stumbling blocks as Peter.

Din Djarin was six feet tall with brown eyes and brown hair.

That was what they currently had to go on.

Wade would have torn out his hair if he had any, but he stopped himself and accepted the challenge. Peter watched over his shoulder as he chicken-pecked his way into a list of social security numbers held by the NYC State ID issuing department and started methodically filtering names that did not sound like ‘Din.’

He started broad with all ‘D’s and then narrowed it down further and further and further until he was left with a shitload of Daniels.

He stared at the screen before him and vibrated.

Peter massaged his shoulders before he cracked.

It helped. Wade started filtering by height, then by eye color. Then by hair, and only ended up with several hundred people.

He vibrated again, but this time, Peter couldn’t help him.

He sighed. Wade said that there had to be a better way to do this. He got up.

  --

Wade made about four thousand missing posters with the name Din Djarin on them which he recruited the whole team to plaster up around NYC. This was not a request.

Miles asked him why they were doing this for a tv character and had to be let in on the gig.

He lost his shit.

Louis tried to retain his shit.

Angel still didn’t know how the whole jedi thing worked.

Dave hummed and haw’ed and took his time in calling bullshit. Wade asked him to look deep into his eyes and ask if he was entertaining bullshit that fine evening.

Dave changed his opinion and took a stack.

  --

There was no way that shit was supposed to work. There was just no way. A) because Wade had the worst ideas of all mankind and B) because Peter had the worst luck of all mankind. So the two of them together should have destroyed all the prospects of success for that job.

But instead, while they were hatching a new plot involving setting up a sham sociological study for people who responded to Star Wars names, Wade’s phone went off.

He grabbed it and opened the message and lo and behold right there was a note that read,

“I hope you are not a reporting body because this is going to sound certifiably insane, but I think I might be the guy you’re looking for?”

Wade screamed.

Peter scolded him not to get too excited too soon. They had to see the man first.

Wade texted furiously, asking for a picture and got a message back that said, “please do not dox me.”

They got no answer until Wade promised not to dox the guy.

And then they got an image of a man with brown hair and brown eyes with olive skin. His face was remarkably square. The picture wasn’t just him, though, he had in his arms a little boy with a head covered in tight ringlets. His eyes were so dark they were nearly black and he was maybe two years old.

The caption said, “apologies, my son needed to be in the picture.”

Wade cooed and entered Dad Mode to ask how old the baby was and what he liked to do and Peter lost the fathers to that small talk for a while before Wade oh-so-casually asked, “So you feel like you’re from outer space?”

“It sounds strange,” the guy on the other said wrote back, “But I do. Like every day I wake up and look in the mirror and something is wrong. I feel like I’m always forgetting something when I leave the house. I watched the tv show of the guy who’s name was on your fliers and the kid in it reminds me so much of my son. It’s eerie. They make the same sounds. He made the same sounds before we even watched that show.”

Wade whistled.

“I think this is him, Pete,” he said. “He called Baby Yoda a ‘kid’ not a yoda.”

Peter stared. He hadn’t even caught that. That was smart as hell.

“So what now?” he asked.

Wade sniffed.

“Get Skywalker to send you a selfie,” he said.

  --

PP: Luke are you pretty right now?

LS: My face is intact

PP: take a selfie and send it to me

LS: cannot do that. Face is intact is a baseline situation. Let me find an old one. Oh, they all have my ex in them. This is awkward.

PP: it doesn’t matter I can crop it.

LS: no I have to be cute or I’ll perish hold on

PP: are you sure you’re not Johnny Storm?

LS: yes, he’s got loads of muscles. Sent.

 Selfie acquired.

Luke looked very smiley in it. His eyes were blown out from the lighting, but it showed his sloping smile and his low, back-set dimples. Peter sent it to Wade. Wade sent it to his new friend.

They waited.

They waited five minutes.

Then ten.

Then half an hour.

Then nearly two.

And finally, Wade’s phone rang. He picked it up and set it on speaker so that Peter could hear.

“Hello?” Wade said.

There was a long pause.

“Where did you get that picture?” a low, almost smoky voice demanded on the other side.

“A friend,” Wade said sleazily. “You know him? He’s a cute little thing, ain’t he?”

It took the dude on the other side of the line worryingly long to respond.

“What do you want?” he finally asked.

Wade brought his head down in interest.

“What’re you willing do to?” he asked.

They waited. Peter didn’t know what was taking this guy so long to—

“Anything.”

Ah.

Okay. That.

That sounded about right.

Wade cackled.

“You know his name?” he asked.

“I do,” the man said.

“What’s his name then, pal?” Wade asked.

“It’s none of your fucking business.”

Holy shit. Holy shit. Peter clutched the back of the couch. Wade was grinning so hard, Peter could see it through his mask.

“You want him, you need to show me that you know who he is,” Wade said. “I ain’t got ‘im here, but I know where he is. Come on, big boy. Who is he?”

Peter could hear the man take in a deep, shaky breath.

“His name is Luke,” Din fucking Djarin, the Mandalorian himself, said.

  --

Din fucking Djarin’s name at the moment was Danny Jabaran. He stood six feet tall with a medium build and that baby of his in his arms.

He was not afraid of Wade.

He was not afraid of Peter.

The suits didn’t scare him; this man was a space warrior. The leader of the space warriors. Peter was humbled to stand in his presence, old jeans and tattoos and all.

“Vigilantes,” he acknowledged.

“Deadpool,” Wade said, offering a hand. “And this is?”

“Grogu,” Djarin said.

Baby Yoda lifted his big liquid eyes up to Wade and blinked twice. Then he wriggled around and hid in Djarin’s neck. Djarin put a hand on his back and didn’t drop eye contact.

“Tell me everything,” Djarin said.

  --

Ned screamed. Michelle screamed. Peter reminded them that he had neighbors and invited Mr. Mand’alor to sit on the couch for a bit while he called Luke.

Michelle claimed the spot next to Djarin and asked Baby Yoda Grogu for his little hand. He studied her and hid again, making a prolonged sound of distress that Djarin cut off by saying, “Hey. Manners.”

This somehow made baby Grogu turn back to Michelle to stare at her offered hand.

He took it. She shook with him and then took hers away.

Grogu perked up and reached for it again.

“You’re the Mandalorian,” Ned said.  

Djarin looked right at him.

“A Mandalorian,” he corrected.

Ned blinked back tears.

“You’re so cool,” he creaked.

Djarin frowned.

“You...are too?” he tried.

Ned wept into a fist.

Peter left them to call Luke in his bedroom. Luke picked up on the third ring with the start of an ingrained greeting that sounded a whole lot like a customer service recording. He caught himself, though.

“I have someone I’d like you to talk to,” Peter said. “I think you might want to sit down.”

Luke’s unusual quiet on the other side made Peter grin.

“Are you sitting?” he asked.

“I’m sitting.”

“Alright, one moment,” Peter said, walking out into the living room. Djarin had edged far, far away from Ned, as far as he possibly could without being rude. He looked up when Peter came over and sat down on the arm next to him.

“Say hi,” Peter said.

Djarin frowned at him and then the phone.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

Peter waited. Djarin lifted his head over to see the phone’s screen.

“Hello?” he tried.

“Din?”

The Spidey Sense crashed through Peter like a tidal wave.

Djarin had gone completely still.

“Din? Is that you? Can you hear me?”

“Shit,” Djarin said, lifting a hand to cover his eyes. “Goddamnit. Jesus.”

“DIN.”

“Dank Fucking Farrik.”

“Oh my god.”  

Baby Grogu’s face snapped toward the phone with huge eyes. He grabbed at Djarin’s collar, then his jaw and started bouncing a little in his arms.

“Bu?” he asked.

Djarin couldn’t make himself move.

“Grogu?” Luke asked. “Hey, baby, is that you, bubba?”

Grogu grabbed Djarin’s face urgently, so that he couldn’t hide his raw eyes anymore.

He pointed at the phone.

“Yeah, I hear ‘im, kid,” Djarin said.

“MMMMM. Gib.”

“Ah. That’s not ours. We don’t grab. We ask,” Djarin reminded as Grogu pleaded for the phone. Peter snickered and gave it to him. He just held it, staring.

“Do you wanna see him?” Peter asked. “Luke, can we maybe video chat?”

“Y-yeah,” Luke said. “Hold on. Oh god, my face. Uh, hey Din are you still near-sighted, hon?”

Djarin huffed a laugh that turned into a whole-body tremor.

“I got contacts,” he said a little hysterically.

“You got WHAT?” Luke yipped, “Okay, no. No, I gotta. Be still, this heart. Okay let me just take off the butterflies. On moment, Grogu, Daddy’s just gotta dunk his face in the damn sink.”

MJ bounced her eyebrows at Peter as he gently took the phone back from Grogu and tapped on the camera. He offered it back the kid and received a deep gaze of wonder in return. Djarin turned the screen right-side up in his hands.

Luke finally turned his camera on and revealed himself to be very swollen in the jaw with damp hair and a cut very close to the rim of his left eye.

Grogu screeched.

Luke laughed.

“Look at you,” he said, “I’m gonna cry. Oh my god. Where’re your ears, pal?”

Grogu analyzed this reaction for 2 full seconds and then shoved the camera right into his dad’s forehead. Djarin took it from him and liberated himself so that he could see Luke who was clutching at his face, absolutely already sobbing, bless him.

He looked up to see Grogu and instead got Djarin and finally just broke right in half.

Peter swallowed back the growing lump in his throat. His eyes were starting to warm a little.

Djarin found a watery smile in himself.

“I know you’re not cryin’ because of me,” he said gently.

“Where’s your helmet?” Luke sobbed, wiping viciously at his eyes. “People are watching, you harlot.”

“I know,” Djarin said. “I lost it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Luke.”

“This is all my fault. I should’ve—I should’ve—”

“Luke,” Djarin said again, full of warmth, “You died for us.”

Luke shook harder than ever.

“There is no greater sacrifice a warrior can make,” Djarin told him. “I was honored for you to have made it for me and our son. This has always been the Way.”

“This is the Way,” Luke stammered.

“I missed you,” Djarin said. “Where in God’s name have you been?”

“I was a preschool teacher in the Bronx, man, I dunno what happened,” Luke said tipping his face up to force the tears back in.

“In the Bronx? Where?”

“Uh, off Allerton and Lurting?”

Djarin started shaking with laugher.

“I work off Laconia and Mace,” he said.

“You what?”

“We’ve been blocks apart this whole time.”

Awwwwww.

“I’m going to stab myself,” Luke moaned. “I’m going to stab myself in the arm. I was right there and I sold out for my part-time gig barely weeks ago. Oh my god. I’m going to—move, old man, I’m suffering—Wait. Din, did you find your parents?”

Djarin stood up and held the phone out straight.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

  --

Look at all these people hugging each other.

Look at them crying all over. There was a baby in there, wailing because he was so happy to be back in the arms of his other dad.

Aww. AWWWW. Peter was getting emotional again, he was going to see himself out.

“Wait. Peter.”

He looked up to find Luke holding a hand to him.

“Thank you,” he said. “You really are a superhero, you know that?”

Yeah.

Sometimes, he did.

 --

 The city had plenty of problems as it was, yeah, more now with a bunch of jedi running around, linking up with each other and spreading memory like mushroom spores. But it didn’t feel that much different.

What it felt like now was Ned showing Grogu how to hold his hand at the seeing stone in the funeral home’s back yard to make the Force happen while Obi-Wan reported cheerfully that the cat perched on it was still not levitating.

It also felt like watching Luke freak out over text to Ned and Michelle about his ex losing their mind at him dumping them after two years to marry this random mechanic within a week of getting together.

Peter got to see this from new angles, too, one of which was the bottom of the funeral home’s attic stairs, which Anakin Skywalker liked to sit on while his grandkids—both Grogu and Han Solo and Leia Organa (pardon, Leia Naberry)’s son—came over to show him things that he was very well aware of. These were stolen from him by Auntie Ahsoka and her friends who Ned knew and Peter did not.

And there was something warming about how even these folks—people from a galaxy far, far away, occasionally needed a Spiderman.

   --

[notchesandbullets]

BNHA: Saving Her (Ojiro Mashirao x Wolf!Reader) Masterlist

"You're safe now." He murmured into your hair as he held your trembling form, his sturdy tail wrapping around your waist and tightening to let you know that you weren't alone. "I've got you."

You were captured by Quirk Traffickers a long time ago. Abandoned by your parents, you bounced from owner to owner until you finally were presented with an opportunity to escape. Taking it without question, that's when you ran into him.

You're taken in by Aizawa and allowed to stay. Protected by your new family and friends, you're finally allowed to experience life to its fullest.

Contains reluctant Aizawa to soft Dadzawa, annoying brother Shinsou, pure Eri-chan, bakugou's notorious cursing, sweet and innocent fluff between reader-chan and Ojiro. First friend Ojiro to best friend and then lover. Featuring the rest of Class 1-A and them acting like hooligans.

This was supposed to be a 2k word oneshot but look what happened. credits for the anon who wanted a oneshot of ojiro giving reader a gift that spurred on this entirely self-indulgent fanfic xD ive been working on this for a month.

Barely any angst, mostly fluff overload because i couldnt help myself.

Word Count so far: 78k

Part 1 :  Crashing into Ojiro, Room Competition, meeting Class 1-A and Aizawa, who has some bad news for you when you’re discovered. (7k)

Part 2 :  Aizawa’s reluctant dad side kicks in when he sees you’re clearly distressed, fast friends with Midoriya, fluff with the girls of 1-A, Todoroki and Sato. (5.7k)

Part 3 :  Reuniting with Ojiro, protective Sero and Shoji, Aizawa’s temporary guardianship, Koda’s adorable rabbit and naptime. (4.8k)

Part 4 : Surprising them at school, Principal Nezu’s arrangement, Ojiro’s determination when it comes to anything concerning your health and safety. (4.2k)

Part 5 : Mall trip with the girls plus Kaminari, Shoji and Ojiro as you’re all followed by your scruffy homeroom teacher that would much rather sleep than chaperone you all. It’s not exactly what you expected when you’re cornered the second you’re left alone. (5k)

Part 6 : Shopping for clothes, food court and boba experience served with Ashido’s endless shipping and topped off with an incredibly protective Dadzawa. (5.8k)

Part 7 : Returning to Heights Alliance, Bakugou vs you, movie night at the dorms!! (3.8k)

Part 8 :  A kind gesture for Aizawa gone wrong, compensated for with a ton of fluff and shenanigans by the big three. Aizawa also being 100% done with Yamada. (4k)

Part 9 : Playdate with Ojiro’s little sister. You calling Aizawa ‘Dad’ for the first time. (4.3k)

Bonus Chapter : Clinginess (0.9k)

Part 10 : Class 1-A has a habit of spoiling you with presents of all kinds, Ojiro wants his gift for you to be special. His younger sister gives him an idea. (3.8k)

Part 11 : Internship with Hound Dog, Aizawa’s totally not jealous. You and Shinsou get along great, except when you don’t. Kayama and Yamada’s endless teasing of Aizawa who’s turned into a total dad to you both. Heavily inspired by the picture included. (4.7k)

Part 12 : The day for the Provisional Licensing Exam has arrived!! You attend to spectate along with your dad, when he runs into an old colleague of his. Aizawa gets reassured that he’s not a terrible father. Then, an unknown threat turns into an unexpected surprise (feat Todoroki) when a tuff of grey fur shows up. Class 1-A is chaotic and it’s even worse when you’re in the mix. (8.4k)

Part 13 :  After Aizawa gets hurt, you and Shinsou speed over to the hospital to make sure he’s okay and yell at him for worrying you like that. Ojiro tags along to give his support as well as check in on the four of his classmates that were hurt in the yakuza fight. A week later, Aizawa brings you in, hoping that you can connect with the little girl that they rescued and encourage her to eat something. He didn’t expect it to go so well but now he has one more little joy to look after. (6.7k)

Part 14 : Shinsou receives some surprising news, Eri-chan is adorable and Aizawa is 100% a proud dad. When you get back to Heights Alliance, Hagakure and Ashido have got a few tricks up their sleeves to push you and Ojiro together. Contains hints of all the ships: Kaminari x Jirou, Kirishima x Mina, Todoroki x Midoriya, Asui x Tokoyami. And a riveting game of truth or dare is finally enough for you and Ojiro to face the truth of the reason why your hearts beat so fast when you’re around each other. (9.9k)

[transuncletaylor]

Tl;Dr: Taylor is happy with how much healing he's had and feels like the Zukka community really helped out and is just really grateful for all the friends he's made in the community.

I'm having feelings thinking about Zukka and the Zukka fandom, and I'm just 🥺😭❤️ I don't think y'all know how much this fandom and the interactions I've had here has changed my life. (I feel a bit hokey and cringe, but it's so true)

This fandom helped me enjoy a new hobby and continuing to keep practicing and learning when I felt like I wasn't perfect instantly. I was taught growing up if you weren't good right away, it wasn't worth doing or trying because failure and making mistakes wasn't an option.

I looked back on my art this evening with a mix of fondness that wow, I drew all that and kept drawing, a bit of oooph, this is a complete mess, and pride in seeing that growth with continual practice. I like where my art and style are going, even if there are still days where I get frustrated and don't like what I make, but I'm proud that I keep making and keep trying.

The comments and tags y'all have left/added to my posts have been really encouraging and helped keep me going in drawing and I really couldn't have done it without the support. Like my abusive mom voice in my head kept telling me I was terrible at drawing, that I'm never going to get good and kept comparing my art to people who have been drawing for many many years. This hobby has brought me so much happiness and joy and I'm happy to have gotten to share that with y'all.

But Zukka and the fandom also helped me in so many other ways, it set off my gender crisis in 2020 and now I'm a happy transman living my himbo life. I learned that I could have ADHD (still working on an official diagnosis) and that I'm not just a fucking failure of an adult. I learned to be open and vulnerable with people through making friends in the fandom, and made to feel welcome, that I wasn't some loud, annoying, too much weirdo. I was accepted with open arms to be myself (even with my Crocs, fanny packs, and lame ass jokes)

This community helped me be proud of all that I am, all that I was, and my stories both the fun and silly and the trauma and abuse. I've been doing a lot of deep, heavy therapy work the last few months and I'm just so grateful for this space.

And I got to meet my girlfriend in the community and I love her so much. She stole my heart and she can keep it, she's my moonlight and stars. Goodness, I love her.

Before Zukka and fandom, I was this young adult woman, constantly nervous and walking on eggshells. I needed to be perfect, I needed to do everything right and was extremely hard on myself. I folded and listened to toxic friends telling me I was being too loud, that I wasn't doing a good job on keeping up with chores, that I needed to be calmer and docile. And now I'm a chaotic wild young man with feral raccoon energy who doesn't get anxious that there's dishes in my sink for a week or that I flap my hands when I'm happy and that if I make a mistake, that's okay, I learned something new then.

Thank y'all for being here with me on this journey and this healing ❤️❤️❤️ I love y'all and goodness, I'm gonna go cry for a bit all happy.

[meg2md]

Finished 5 weeks of L&D, which included 3 straight weeks of nights. Wow, what a trip. I've delivered over 60 babies, done countless cervical exams, reached about 50% foley bulb success rate depending on the dilation and effacement of the cervix, and gotten my AROM technique down. I've also done one cesarean delivery. I started off being a total idiot and became reasonably competent (at least for an intern) by the end.

Thankfully I had a golden weekend this week - my first in about a month. I just started gyne and it's wild because now I'm starting over in terms of competency. And let me tell you, while hysteroscopy is a minor procedure, it's NOT EASY. I'm so clunky. I've only tried about two but I can't get the scope in and focused.

My partner also came to visit this weekend - he left this morning. Turns out the distance is hard for him. Really hard. Like, almost too hard. So we're giving it another go and hoping for the best, but man, turns out nothing is ever guaranteed. It's pretty depressing because the timing on our relationship is just ass. Everything else about it besides the timing/distance is so, so beautiful. Mind-blowingly beautiful. I had such a good time with him this weekend. He makes my heart feel full and happy; he makes me want to improve myself intellectually, emotionally, and physically; and he has helped me get over some of my old scars. I'm trying really hard not to be too depressed and hopeless about it. There's no sense in moping about an outcome I don't know for sure yet, and also why not enjoy the time that I have, even if it's limited? I really want therapy to help me not only navigate this but also my toxic thought patterns. It's nearly impossible with resident hours, though. I mean, we have protected time... but our protected time feels more like "protected time". Lol.

In the meantime I'm trying to really capture that feeling I had when I broke up with my ex - the feeling of being free, of re-inventing myself, of re-defining who I am and how I interact with the world. It's hard when I feel mildly dependent on and sad about not being with my partner, but honestly, how can I truly be in a healthy relationship with someone else when I can't even be in a healthy relationship with myself? At least my mood has leveled out to a normal level of depressed from the horrible chaotic depressed I was when I started nights.

So here I am once again trying to get my feet on the ground. I feel like I start from scratch a lot, but that's just life, ain't it? I bought ten passes to the rock climbing gym and bought a pull-up bar. I've lost a lot of weight recently: five pounds since starting residency and a total of eight pounds since I broke up with my ex back in January. While it's good to be back at my medical school starting weight, I unfortunately have lost a lot of muscle. My goal is to do a pull-up, so I'm going to need to navigate maintaining (or at least controlling) my weight while building this skill. This is a LONG-STANDING goal of mine, and one of my co-interns is interested in it as well. And a lot of my co-residents are into rock climbing, so that will both help with my pull-up dreams and also help me have a life outside of medicine. I'm also trying to rally some people to do trivia this or next week, and I want to hang out for dinner/drinks after work more frequently. Maybe next weekend I'll go to a park or on a hike during my one day off.

This is my first time moving totally on my own to a completely new city with completely new people. It is actually really exciting, once I sort through the terror and depression. It might be a long, long time before I have this experience again (well, at least four years), and I really want to make the most of it. I want to seize this chance and really thrive, carve out my own life, grow into someone I can be proud of.

"You feel like you've been waiting for someone for so long, but that person was you all along."

[adventureswithmultiplesclerosis]

I took a wee break from tending to myself. As usual, that ended in catastrophe. It’s been a month with maybe one workout and, as of today, two short runs. I’ve been better.

Just working. And working. AND WORKING. Did I mention I am getting married next week? So when I’m not working at work, I’m working at home and preparing for the wedding. Then I’m so exhausted after said work, that I just literally konk out or zone out. Then I wake up at 2am filled with adrenalin because I physically haven’t done anything to burn it off.

So I’m done on this treadmill. I’m sure things are only going to escalate on the busy and chaotic scale over the next few days, but I’m enjoying now. I’m going to do better for now, and hopefully for later. Time to pick myself up.

I start my first round of Kisempta a week after the wedding, so there’s also that sitting on my subconscious in the middle of the night. It will be fine. Just like taking vitamins, right? Except you stab yourself in the leg monthly.

Baby is doing really well but I’ve been working full time the last two weeks, so it’s been tough for both of us. I’ll have a week off for the wedding, so that will be super nice. Hoping just to enjoy this time with family. Still stressful, though.

Proud I got out for a run tonight. Proud I’ve come so far in the last couple of years and how much I’ve grown and my life has changed. Excited for what’s next. Happy for right now.