#puzzleglum

[callmearcturus]

I have now seen the episode 'Rainbow' of Ted Lasso and. Yep. This is it. This is definitely the best episode. Can't get better than this. Excuse me while I go rewatch it. (Also, I have now convinced my mom to start the show too, and she's enjoying the first episode right now! :D )

I still think "Rainbow" is the best episode of that show. It's just incredible.

[ckret2]

I really vibe with your takes on redemption and justice, so just wanted to say that I love your fic and am eager to see where things go from here for our favorite all seeing triangle :D thank you for writing!!

Thanks, I'm glad!! :)

[feuerscram]

So yesterday (I should really stop to start all my posts with 'so yesterday'), I draw instead of sleeping and I'm not gonna continue it, so I'll show you I guess?

It's still moderately fun, so here we go.

Yes I think I'm funny sometimes.

Please imagine that Hyde is changing Jekyll's voice mail behind his back. Picture this as Jekyll's voice mail. Now picture Lanyon hearing this voice mail and going "wtf?!!".

You're welcome.

(edit: I had completely forgot to say that the idea wasn't mine, but Sage's! It's in this pages note! Sorry, I'll try not to forgot again. Thank Puzzleglum for reminding me!)

(Here I'm just rambling, you don't have to read it, that's not interesting.)

That's my first drawing of Hyde without looking at a reference! And it's bad! Who is surprised? (Not me.)

I was going for some modern au vibe I guess? That's why Hyde looks like some poor mobster or someone trying to look like a mobster. At least that's what I was trying to go for, honestly not sure that it worked ^^'

Why has he still his top hat? Because.

(I don't know if I can really draw him without his top hat at this point. I'm not sure I can draw his top hat correctly either!)

Anyway, have a good day/night while we're waiting for the new page! Who's ready for the start of the new chapter?

("Meeeeee" says no one distantly in the background)

[moongo101]

@puzzleglum

[itstheblob]

CHRISTMAS ART RAFFLE WINNER: @puzzleglum

Thank you for entering!

[bluejayblueskies]

Do elaborate on that first novel-length story you ever wrote, I'm interested! What was so out there about the plot?

(referencing this post)

okay so! for context, some important facts to know about young jay:

i was very into magic, fantasy, and other forms of escapist fiction (and still am!)

i grew up in a small conservative Catholic town, and tbh a lot of this story's plot reflects that because it has some Very Weird Gender Stuff in it

i did not really understand how romance worked but knew that it was usually an integral part of the books i read and therefore it should be an integral part of the books i wrote

i wrote all 71k of it in comic sans (not relevant to the plot, but important for the Vibes™️ i think)

so the plot of this story is, to summarize briefly, 'a species of magical people who predate humans fled to and now live in Antarctica and our main character is someone who is kidnapped by them and finds herself in their world, in the middle of a revolution against the government'

to expand:

there are a species of non-violent humanoid people (let's call them nvhs) with magical powers who predate humans who, when they hit the age of 15, stop aging until they find somebody to reproduce with. (23 yo aroace me is disappointed but unsurprised at this, and i actually think it may be a result of being told as a child that People Get Married And Have Kids And That's Just How Things Are In The World, and me, not understanding this in the slightest, took it to the extreme)

when humanity came about and brought with it war and violence and hatred, he nvhs fled to Antarctica and now live underground (literally underground, in caves). a strange disease swept their population after this, killing only the women. their solution was to go into the human world and find human women who could integrate with the nvhs, and the people in charge of venturing into the human world would never 'mate' [eugh] and thus never age.

their methods for bringing humans back to the nvh settlement were uhhhhh a bit sus (another disappointed shake of the head for 12-yo-me, though i did acknowledge that this one was kinda fucked up). they ended up getting cursed by a very pissed human woman who said that an extraordinarily powerful chosen one would cause their downfall. oh, and apparently, for some reason, the hybrid children of the nvhs and the humans are only biologically male, so it basically creates a society where the only women are human and power-less and the only men are nvhs and have powers. like i said, Very Weird Gender Stuff. in my defense i was twelve.

our main character is kali, who is kidnapped from her home at age 16 and brought to this settlement. she is rescued by a guy named alex who is thousands of years old but stuck in the body of 15-year-old for the aforementioned 'has not yet mated' reasons, and she meets a group of nvhs who think that the kidnapping of humans is wrong and oppose the nvh government. it's eventually revealed that she is the 'chosen one' and she has powers, which were stolen from alex some time ago (uh. surgically removed in a multi-day very painful procedure apparently, which is both more intense than what i expected 12-year-old me to have written and quite on par with what current me enjoys in fiction lol).

alex's goal is to get his powers back, but he can't without killing kali (or so he thinks). eventually, he runs off to go confront the government on his own, and kali and the resistance group make their own (slow) way there to help him. etc. etc., kali gets re-kidnapped by the government, escapes bc they don't know she has powers, gets caught again, alex gets shot and dies in the process, kali brings him back by giving him his powers back (??? how does that work? unclear), and we address the horrible reality of becoming just as bad as your enemy when you look upon the dead bodies of hundreds of people who you have killed for the sake of revolution and go 'how does this make us any better than them?'

oh and of course the two MCs kiss. naturally. love conquers all and all that [derogatory]

there's a bunch of other stuff that happens that really isn't super important, but i guess the out there-ness is really just in the concept of it all? like the lore and the worldbuilding and stuff? like there are So Many specific devices--it's like a weird hybrid between magic-based fantasy and sci-fi, because the nvhs have powers that let them do things, but they also have super advanced tech and have a whole division of essentially 'mad scientists' who engage in some uhhh unethical experimentation and body modification. also the oldest character in the whole thing is 30 and me, 12, was like 'Yes that is the age of a parental person who would have a 16-year-old daughter' lol. also after allllll this nonsense, they decide to go back to the human world, take great pains to finally get back to kali's house, and are. promptly arrested and carted off to jail alkdsghlag.

also the story inexplicably alternates between first person kali's pov and third person limited from the other characters' povs?? for some reason?? idk

anyway, thank you for asking about it! whether you read all that nonsense or not, it was fun for me to drag this doc out of the graveyard where it belongs and cringe at myself (and realize just how far i've come and how much patience my father had to read over the whole thing when i very excitedly showed it to him ten years ago asdlkfjag) 💜

[wordfighter]

hey!! i came from the stream just now!! (i'm Puzzleglum). how about the prompt “are you shivering?” with Emil and Lalli? oh, and goodnight!!

Hey! Sorry it took such time to get to this, I got… distracted.

— 

The adventure was over. Lalli hadfollowed Emil to Sweden like Onni had asked him to. Joining theCleansers weren’t all bad, apart from the stupidity radiating frompretty much everyone in the group. Lalli rolled over to his side,looked at Emil. Emil, who was still in his uniform even though it wasnight and time for them to sleep. Who had his arms wrapped aroundhimself and had pulled his knees up a bit. Who wasn’t in his sleepingbag because he had insisted that he was hot enough. Lalli raised aneyebrow.

”Are you shivering?”

Emil shook his head and wrapped hisarms tighter around himself, curled into a ball for real. Lalli satup, stared at Emil. He was definately shivering.

”You’re lying. Why?”

”Am not.”

”I’m not stupid.”

”Just… let it be, okay.”

Lalli sat up for a few more minutes,kept staring at Emil.

”Where’s your sleeping bag?”

Emil shrugged, rolled over and lookedat Lalli. His eyes were tired and Lalli froze.

”River, probably. The others like tojoke.”

He grabbed Lalli’s arm and tried topull him down. Lalli refused.

”C'mon, work tomorrow. We shouldn’thandle explosives if we’re tired.”

”Why the river?”

Emil shrugged again and let go ofLalli.

”Because I stink”, he rolled over,turned his back to Lalli. ”Sorry you have to share tent with me.”

Lalli laid down, pressed his face intoEmil’s neck, pressed his body against Emil’s and wrapped an armaround him. Definately shivering.

”You don’t stink. I like how yousmell.”

Emil huffed.

”You smell home”, Lalli continued.”And you’re shivering. Come on, we can share my bag.”

”It’s fine, I’m used to it.”

”Stupid.”

Lalli sat up, got out of his sleepingbag and unzipped it. He put it over Emil, laid back down and crawledclose. Emil rolled over on his back and Lalli put his head on Emil’sshoulder.

”We better wake up before theothers”, Emil muttered, ”or they’ll start with you too.”

”What?”

”Nothing. I’m warmer now, thankyou.”

Silence. Lalli listened as Emil’sbreathing got more relaxed, waited until he was almost asleep.

”I won’t let them do anything to youagain.”

Emil hmmed, but didn’t wake up. Lalliclosed his eyes, placed his hand on Emil’s chest. He fell asleepcounting the beats of Emil’s heart under his hand.

[elora413]

Where to find me

Pillowfort: https://www.pillowfort.io/Puzzleglum

Twitter: https://twitter.com/puzzleglum

Discord:  Puzzleglum#7924

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonyMermaid

Good luck, everyone.

[parsley-the-crow]

me when @puzzleglum comments on my ideas and art.

me when a famous blogger in the fandom likes my posts 🙏🏽🙏🏽

[bluejayblueskies]

Hi, I hope I'm not too late to ask some Weird Writer Questions cause they sound fun! Number 24, 19, 13, and 17 (that last one for whisky would be cool but all your WIPS are lovely so pick whichever you want!) hope you have a nice day Jay!!

weird questions for writers!

(you're absolutely not too late--thank you for messaging! i hope you have a nice day as well 🥰)

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

for prep work, i used to (pre-tma and a little bit into the beginning of writing for tma) jump right into multichapter stories with a vague premise and no clue of the actual plot or ending, but i found it's easier to actually complete multichapter stuff if i have an outline and an idea of where i want the story to go, lol who knew? so my prep work now consists of, at minimum, a rough outline of the entire story arc from beginning to end, but usually a chapter-by-chapter outline of major story beats, approximate scenes, etc.. for whisky, i jumped in with a rough story arc and then made the chapter-by-chapter outline around chapter three when i started to get bogged down in 'what scene should i do next?' details. i usually don't do any prep at all for one-shots, since they're typically 1-2 scenes, but for longer ones i may throw together a quick bullet list of where i want the story to go

and i do not like outlining alkdsgjsag. it's probably my least favorite part of the writing process. (i'm currently for example avoiding fixing my whisky outline, which i need to change the last chapter for slightly due to a piece of lore i added contradicting my current ending.) i think it's because outlining requires the most decision-making about my story and the most critical thinking about, 'okay, what do i actually want to say and when do i want to say it.' i'm always much happier when i have the outline because it's so much better to write with one, but the process of making it? detestable lol.

(more below the cut because i got predictably long-winded with this)

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

this answer got very long, so buckle in and bear with me lol:

i started writing very young (perhaps second or first grade?) partly because my father is a copywriter and thus encouraged it and partly because i read so many books as a child. my elementary school had this anthology that you could submit to starting in third grade, and i remember writing short stories for it (that always ended up being too long--turns out i had chronic 'can't shut up' disease even at the tender age of 8).

getting into middle school, i started to write longer things. it's hard for me to remember exact dates, but i know i finished my first novel-length story around ... 7th grade? it is Extremely Bad by virtue of being written by somebody who had only experienced the world for ~12 years, but it's also probably one of the most out-there things i've ever written in terms of plot so i still give it a solid 5/10. (i can elaborate on it if people are interested! an in-depth discussion of it is just a bit beyond the scope of this particular question lol).

(i also wrote several stories that could best be described as uh. RPF between me & my best friends and their middle school crushes. including a whole entire trilogy with novella-length stories. but we're not going to talk about those XD)

i started and did not finish uhhh probably 20-30 other original stories between the years of 2011 - 2017, most of which are also not very good but that taught me a lot about creating characters, worldbuilding, writing styles and SPAG, and other things that helped me develop as a writer. there are a few that i do genuinely want to pick back up someday, but it's hard to get motivated to write original stuff and is much easier to simply write an AU and stick my blorbos in as characters. i think 2017 is the last time i can really truly say i actively worked on original stuff, since i fell into writing mostly fic after i graduated high school.

i wrote fic in high school too--mostly supernatural, sherlock, and doctor who stuff, because i was very much into superwholock--and most of it is still on my ao3. occasionally, people will jumpscare me by commenting on one of my old spn fics because i genuinely forget that people still might read them lol. i started my fic publishing journey on quotev though, and a little bit on wattpad and ff.net, before moving to ao3 in 2015 and never looking back. my stance on my old writing is that even though i've generally moved on with my life and cringe a bit when i look at it, i did write it once upon a time and liked it then, so i won't take it down and/or disown it. i'm sure in 10 years i'll look back on the stuff i wrote now and cringe too. so it goes.

i took a break from writing for ~ 3 years when i went to college, with the exception of the one (1) voltron fic i wrote that i am still quite proud of. (a multichapter fic i finished without making anything remotely close to an outline! wow!). tma will always be so incredibly dear to me because it reignited my desire to write (like. with a blowtorch. i have written over 610k words since summer 2020 when i started listening to tma, which 12-year-old me would have gone nuts over), and so far, i'm still going strong!

i think i have much better writing habits than i had when i was younger. i try to make an effort to do it every day, even when i'm tired or not really feeling it, even if the words are absolute garbage, even if it's nothing related to my current projects, rather than just riding the tide of motivation. i'm hoping that that means i won't be giving it up anytime soon (i certainly have many more plans for malevolent fics in the future including at least one more involved multichapter fic riffing off episode 20 👀) and i'm also hoping that i can jump back into original stuff with a fresh perspective and new ideas. who knows!

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

the subject matter i have the most difficulty with is, funnily enough, romance arcs. i understand point A (characters meet and become friends) and i understand point B (characters are dating) but the stuff that comes in between??? it's a black box for me alskdjga. something happens there, but i (aro) could not tell you what it is. as such, i always feel like any romance arc i attempt in a multichapter fic has terrible pacing, where the characters are falling in love too quickly, deciding to declare their feelings too abruptly, etc.. i'm struggling with this a lot right now in ten thousand flowers in spring, and i'm glad people are leaving positive comments on the most recent chapter because i feel like the romantic pacing is all over the place but i genuinely do not know how to fix it. whisky doesn't suffer from the same issues for some reason. i think because both arthur and john are arospec, so i'm not technically writing a romance? john is very much in romantic love with arthur, but arthur is not--though as in canon, john is Arthur's Person Who He Cares About So Much. idk, i think their canon relationship is so intricate and complicated that i'm just going *shrug* about the whole thing and not worrying about it.

in terms of what's easy, i have a really easy time with fantasy--and, if that's too broad to be considered subject matter, then specifically the worldbuilding involved with fantasy. so i guess that would be fantastical environments? basically, i like a lot that there's no rules other than the ones that i create for myself, so i can do whatever the hell i want and it's correct because that's just how it is in this world! (see, again, ten thousand flowers in spring). of course, i still do research and think about what i want my world to look like, because going 'that's just how it is!' isn't a replacement for that and i don't want to be a lazy writer, but the flexibility is soooo nice. (i, for example, am not looking forward to researching how gangs actually work for whisky and will thus likely just. make some stuff up and hand-wave it away as being 'yeah that's just how the memphis gangs work, don't worry about it,' though i will also make an effort to learn the general structure of stuff.)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

hghhh the forbidden whisky lore 👀 there's a lot i can't say for fear of spoilers, but there is some stuff that probably won't make it into the story that isn't spoilery!

John was born on December 26, 1981 and is as of the most current whisky chapter 41 years old

Arthur was born on April 2, 1986 and is of the most current whisky chapter 37 years old

Arthur began touring around 2004 when he was 18 years old (he was recruited straight out of college/sixth form). However, he didn't begin composing professionally until 2005 and likely didn't get major movie gigs until closer to 2008. He was classically trained on the piano from a young age, though never on a university level, and his compositional and performance style has both popular and classical influences.

Arthur was born in the UK, recruited from the UK, and moved to LA as part of his contract. He met Bella in LA (so in this AU, Bella is American), and Faroe was born on November 13, 2006.

John started his pre-club career in 2002 at age 20, and quit that job and purchased the club around September 2016 at age 34.

Arthur wasn't lying in chapter one when he said that he comes to the club because he likes the wallpaper :) and John was not lying in chapter two when he said the club doesn't have wallpaper :) [this bit will make it into the fic, but i wanted to include it here anyway]

i also have a diagram of john's club that i keep forgetting to include in the end notes:

[ID: A sketched diagram of John's club. It is a square building with a front door on the bottom right side and a door to the basement on the upper right side. Along the left from bottom to top are John's office, the kitchen/food storage area, and the bathrooms. The backstage area lines the entire back wall, and in front of it is the stage, with doors on either side to access the backstage, a grand piano on the stage, and curtains separating the stage from the backstage. There are tables scattered across the main floor, and a wall with archway cutouts separates the main floor from the kitchen and John's office. Along the front wall is the bar, with seating in an L shape that leaves hallway space for John to access his office. The seat closest to John's office is labeled 'Arthur's seat.' A coat closet is in the bottom right corner. /End ID]

is this acoustically sound? don't ask me, i haven't finished that class yet alsdkjgsag. john has acoustic panels in the back to adjust the absorption of the room, i've made it canon XD

in terms of history, i genuinely don't remember where i got the idea for whisky from--i think i was just rotating piano player arthur in my mind one day, went 'hey what about famous arthur?', then went 'well what is john doing?', remembered how much i love small music clubs, and the rest is history. the entire second half of this fic (approx. ch. 8 onward) as well as john's backstory was not part of the initial concept at all, and i very much fleshed it out as i went while writing the first ~3 chapters. i think it's all fully fleshed out now though (excepting the little bit from the last chapter that i have to fix) and i am very excited for chapter 9 in particular :3

there is a scene that i really want to write that won't make it into the main story because it a) will only work from arthur's pov, and i want to keep whisky strictly john's pov, and b) because arthur is a smart dude and even though the scene would be very cool, it would 100% clue arthur in on some crucial things too early on. so alas, it will probably remain as an unrelated oneshot should i choose to write it in the future. (though it's also a scene that works better if the audience doesn't know what's going on either,,,,, but that could spoil them for things too soon as well because you all are also smart cookies, so,,,, much to consider)

aaaand for fun, here's an excerpt from the next chapter:

Buy him flowers, Lilly had said. Right, okay—which fucking ones? Does it matter? John feels like it matters, but he doesn’t have the first clue as to why or what the right choice would be. Is it weird to buy somebody flowers when they’re standing right next to you? That feels like something you get beforehand and then bring as a gift. Should he have planned ahead? Why is his heart beating so fucking loud in his ears?

[moongo101]

MY SONS HURRAAAAY

I wonder what Shinobu possibly could’ve done for him to end up in jail, Mayoi tho? Yeah no that could totally happen in the right circumstances

@puzzleglum if you want 👀

your last saved fictional character is your cell mate in jail

well uh

@untamedcrusader @chaos-triangle @collie-kin

[elora413]

Anyway, if anybody cared to find me, I am way more active on Pillowfort (https://www.pillowfort.io/Puzzleglum) nowadays. I might make a new blog with that same name on tumblr in the future, but not yet. Feel free to talk to me about whatever on Discord (Puzzleglum#7924) too.

[tookishcombeferre]

@puzzleglum Thank you for your tags!

I was starting to write an obnoxious number of little message things and I was like - I should just reblog with more info at this point.

Full disclosure, I’m much more personally familiar with Ireland during this time, and all times during the English occupation of it, because that’s where my ancestors are from. County KERRY Let’s GOOOOOO!

I’m going to be reorganizing from all my crazy ramblings in my whatever you call those things:

To start, Scotland was starting to become the tourist destination for all the rich folks from London/England. Glasgow was basically just seen as London-lite for anyone who could afford to travel to see it. Other rich people were starting to buy up land for homes in (I think the time line I looked at said) the Highlands.

The famine in the 1840s-1850s affected the Highlands specifically. And, there were laws passed in an effort to help. However, landlords tried to skirt them. Mostly because they couldn’t afford them. And, there was some charitable relief given. HOWEVER, the main solution was effectively deportation to the other commonwealth countries at the expense of the people affected by the blight. The wiki article I came across said 1/3 of the Highlands population was sent to either Australia or Canada to make this all easier to manage. So, some Scottish folks got to stay in Scotland, but only a handful could afford to/got to. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Potato_Famine

And, even still, people ended up malnourished and some STILL starved.

Like, I still say things are bad when an article is like - it wasn’t *as bad* as in Ireland and so *fewer* people on the whole starved to death.

How about zero people on the whole starved to death?

BUT, even if Queen Victoria did *technically* managed this famine better than previous famines were managed in Scotland. It does very, very little to change the history of oppression faced by Scotland’s people in comparison to the upper class English. (Scotland’s worst famine was in the 1690s where 5-15% of the population died.)

And, yes, the amount of effort England went to stomp out the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish languages is a lot! It began in the 1600s and continued right onwards. There were laws passed that banned the speech of the Scottish language. I’ve only skimmed this, but it gets at the heart of it nicely from a native Scottish speaker’s perspective. https://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/languages-do-not-die-they-are-persecuted-a-scottish-gaels-perspective-on-language-loss-by-dr-paul-meighan-chiblow/#:~:text=The%20multigenerational%20and%20psychological%20impacts,and%20Sandilands%20(2021)%20elaborate%2C

So, yeah lots of really interesting things to think about in regards to a different side of Jekyll’s identity and what he may have lost.

Were his folks able to send him off, but forced to leave because of the famine?

Does it just suck because your city has been invaded by a bunch of tourists who want to kill your language and your culture?

Who knows? It’s all kind of sad though.

So spoilers for some thoughts I’ve been drawing together based on today’s panels below the cut.

So, I’ve been having LOADS of fun chatting in the form, but I wanted to distill some of the thoughts that have been bouncing like ping pong balls around my head here on my tumblr.

The first thing I want to discuss is how impressed I am with the lodgers who seem to “get” Jekyll to varying degrees. And, I wanted to call attention some of Jekyll’s intersections.

First of all, Jekyll is NOT English! This important! Jekyll is from Glasgow. Now, when his family got there could be really interesting because, much like the infamous potato famine of Ireland, there was a famine in Scotland as well during the late 1840s and early 1850s that was incredibly brutal.

And, while Glasgow was seen as another wondrous and incredible city during the Victorian era, the Scottish people themselves WERE NOT treated with the same kindness or respect as people who spoke with the proper British accents or were part of proper British culture. Much like in Ireland, the Scottish language and culture was almost eradicated in favor of conformity to English custom. This was really beautifully illustrated at one point when I believe Lanyon comments about how Jekyll could “barely be understood.” I get where Lanyon is coming from, I guess, but you’d think bro-bro would be more empathetic given his own sets of intersections? But, I suppose it also shows how well he has been indoctrinated/ had to assimilate into English culture himself.

The Society is comprised of a BUNCH of immigrants who have, actually, been allowed to retain bits and pieces of themselves and their uniqueness. Despite losing himself to conform, Jekyll has never made it a requirement that the lodgers lose themselves in the balance. Instead, he has built the society as a safe haven. Not JUST for science, but for people.

Second, Jekyll is queer. This is like SUPER important. In Victorian society, this would have been fairly taboo despite the fact that it was the worst kept secret that people dabbled in queerness all the time during the Victorian era. Just like in the modern era, some folks compartmentalize their feelings better than others. Jekyll doesn’t. Period. He sees his attractions as bad and something to be kept secret because, at every turn, that’s what other people are doing.

Lanyon gets married to someone of the opposite gender for saftey. Lanyon has learned the art of blending in because Lanyon *has* to! He may not want to, but, for his safety he has to! We as readers see this. We get it. We see Lanyon’s intersections and the complexity of his character. But, Jekyll doesn’t. He’s human! He’s hurting!And, he doesn’t want to show that because he’s worried about losing Lanyon because of what he’s seen Lanyon do to all the other boyfriends before Jekyll. Pain is one heck of a blinder, and Lanyon and Jekyll are both wearing them as they pull the carriage of the Society side by side.

So, Jekyll swallows his hurt towards Lanyon’s arranged marriage too. He swallows the pain of abandonment. Jekyll doesn’t understand that Lanyon sees them as equals. He can’t. He’s not of the same class as Lanyon or anything. Lanyon has bought him everything, has taught him everything. So, Jekyll has no one to confide in because he constantly feels like he has something to prove because he is not good. No one of his sexuality or place of origin could ever be good in high society! Jekyll has had to learn everything! He feels as though he owes Lanyon everything! How can he not!? So, Jekyll has to be perfect for everyone, to deserve anything, because he has no value. No one of his class, his place of origin, or his sexuality has value in the society in which he lives. His country, his people, and his city are a tourist destination for rich people. He’s a toy for rich people. And, Lanyon doesn’t see that or think that at all! However, Jekyll can’t unsee that. Yet, neither of them communicate, and that is the beginning of the end. (I love these two so much. I understand every single choice both of them made and why they make it. I just want them BOTH to be HAPPY!!!! UGHHH!)

All that to say, Jekyll learns to swallow his emotions. He learns to swallow his culture, his music, and his accent. He learns how to bury his sexuality. He even learns how to swallow his over-eager child-like curiosity because no one wants it.

And, the question is, how far do we go before we really do shatter apart?

It’s clear that the lodgers who really seem to get it are the ones who share some of those same intersections.

Miss Ito and Jasper, who have secrets of their own they wouldn’t share with just anyone. The people who know what it’s like to have a “secret hidden person” living inside them for a long, long time as they try to figure out who to tell, who it’s safe to tell, and if it’s not more loving never to tell? (I say this as a transmasc person who at about a month shy of 30 is still navigating coming out in my entirety to my family.)

You see the lodgers who understand what Jekyll has sacrificed in terms of time and how much they’ve all fought him on everything. They see how tired he is. Given that, I have hope for Lanyon getting it completely. I really do. I have hope for him. He’s a bit lovably thick at times, but I have hope for him. He’ll get it, and he’ll be helpful. He’ll feel guilty as hell. But, I have hope for those two lovable doofuses to finally talk and understand each other.

But, you also see the very valid concerns of the people who just cannot understand those mix of identities because they’ve never had to live them. I see where they see Jekyll putting them in danger. I can see that concern. I understand their fears. So, I don’t have much more to say on that. I see their concerns. I do. But, I also have SO much sympathy for Jekyll and for the Lodgers who see what he’s given them because I’ve been Jekyll. I’ve spent 9 years not telling my family who I am in the fullness of myself because I love ‘em too darn much. I tried to bury my trans, queer, and autistic identities for the sake of my work as a school teacher because my district required me to do so, and it nearly drove myself to the brink of a long term meltdown in the process. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for the Jekyll’s of the world because even if the end results SUCK the intention was, mostly, pure.

And, as for Jekyll himself?

I’ve had this thought brewing for WEEKS. We know that, for the most part, Hyde, the Lodgers, and Rachel (to a greater or lesser extent) see Hyde as an entity unto himself. But, when Jekyll said he wanted to “see Hyde suffer?” Was he really talking to himself because he knows that Hyde is really just him, or, at least, a part of him. We know that Jekyll’s self hatred runs deep. And, if anyone knows that Hyde is Jekyll, it’s Jekyll himself. Edited to add: I now can confirm that Jekyll was aware of this fact. He absolutely knew and was punishing himself. Thanks to further dialogue in the forum with the lovely Puzzle. This theory is a confirmed theory. And, I am sad, but vindicated.

If you read all this, thanks! I needed to flush all my thoughts out coherently in order.

[riv3r-rat]

that's... that's me.. wow !!

@mossiethe3rd @mildyannoyingrabbit @puzzleglum @deeeeeeenotawolff @newtser & those that have slipped my mind, hello, you're all wonderful

Get attacked!! ✨🌈 SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING 🌈

!!!DSGHSFGHSD !!!

[the-haiku-bot]

ID was written

by @bluejayblueskies and

thanks again for that!!

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Gift art for the Holiday Gift Exchange in the Dreamlands server! @this-is-such-a-bad-decision here's your gift once more, and glad you love it :D

ID was written by @bluejayblueskies and thanks again for that!!

[ID: Artwork of John Doe, Arthur Lester, and Faroe Lester sleeping together underneath a purple blanket. John is a black-and-yellow figure with a hood, several eyes, and a ragged robe. He is sitting with Arthur and Faroe resting on him and he is holding Arthur's right hand and Faroe's left. Arthur is a pale man with short curly brown hair and a blue dress shirt. He has bags under his closed eyes, and his left arm is curled around Faroe. Faroe is a young girl with long curly brown hair and a pink shirt with lighter pink frill cuffs. She has her eyes closed, and there is a slight smile on her face. The background is pink, and there is a yellow sunflower in the top left corner with yellow sparkles around it. /End ID]