#(hopefully not in a literal sense I don’t fucking want any deaths im also not emotionally equipped for that)

[murdererofthumbs]

Listen, although I do find it pretty exciting to see Kendall entering his Evil Era and actually becoming a killer, I can’t stop thinking about the consequences of him leaking all the shitty mud information they have on Logan. Like yeah, PR-wise that might be a great idea, it might actually solidify his position as a CEO (and he is obviously going to try and fuck up Matsson deal and take over the Waystar - I don’t know why he would want to captain the fucking sinking Titanic, but okay). But on the other hand, all the dirt coming out about Logan will be potentially catastrophic for Roman. Apart from the fact that Kendall is very clearly betraying his brother, literally like 5 seconds after he preached about them being a team; Roman will very likely suffer the most if stuff about Logan being an abusive father comes out.

First, it will flip his whole viewpoint upside down - he is so deep in denial and so trauma-bonded to Logan that he doesn’t even acknowledge his abuse, not even when in happens in real time. He doesn’t want to see his father as a monster and as his abuser, because that would actually require him to accept that he was a victim, that he was this beaten dog that everyone already sees him as (to one degree or another). Not to mention all the lies he tells himself about Logan and him being a good dad will go straight down the drain, and can you imagine what happens when something you believed for 40-or-so years cracks down in front of you? Kendall is about to break his reality.

Another aspect is that exposing Roman’s abuse to the whole world will likely destroy any and all opportunities that Roman ever had when it comes to rising to power (even if I’m unsure how much he actually cares about becoming a CEO). He might get some sympathy points, although I very much doubt that he will ever accept that form of pity from anyone. His image will be forever tainted and solidified as “the abused one” or the “one that was hit by his dad”. Can you imagine Roman’s reaction when that whole shitshow leaks? He does say at some point in the preview that he is finished, and although it might allude to Gerri putting out the whole dick pic situation, it might also very well be that his public image will forever now revolve around how his dad hit and abused him (his dad who was essentially his god in more than one way, who he was, and is trauma bonded to, who he came back to time and time again).

Kendall has a tendency of using his siblings trauma to forward his own position (even when he wanted to one up Logan in episode 2 by bringing up Roman’s and Connor’s trauma) and this is no different. But it’s a very easy way for him to blow up whatever alliance was ever between sibs. So yeah, I think Kendall as a killer is a great thing to watch, but also… well, Roman girl in me is already screaming in the void from the possible pain we might come to watch unravel in real time.

[thenumber-e]

Wifeyyyyy! Tell me about Craig's sports Hobbies? Or Hobbies in general:3

ok feeling shitty rn so this’ll (hopefully) get my mind off of stuff

anyways oh boy there are SO many of these that i have this is gonna get long i think

starting off with sports, i feel like he’d be an active guy. not like gym bro buff craig kinda stuff you see, he’s definitely a lanky beanpole. but i feel like he does a few sports so has a bit of muscle

first off, basketball. i’m a truther for this one, i don’t see it a lot tho. like, i hc him as being pretty tall, and i don’t have much like canon advice to back this up but that and the fact that there’s a basketball in his garage in tsot- but i think it jus fits him tbh. and also because it’s funny, he’s a total fucking loser nerd, but since yk i’ve gotta stick to canon sometimes, he’s technically popular and attractive, he definitely has like a jock alter-ego or smth stupid like that LMAO

he definitely seems like a hockey guy. like- the enforcer is so him. he’d totally wanna beat people up just cus he can. also i think he’d be a really good skater- i think he’s a pretty well balanced person physically. also, i see kyle as doing hockey, and they’re definitely close. i just see them being friends making sense, so now theyll have a sport together. also- because im insane, ike does hockey too and kyle and craig help him practice

i believe i’ve seen this once, but yk. i always see boxer tweek and don’t get me wrong i love that, but i feel like craig would continue doing martial arts afterwards too. like he’s canonically a violent and angry guy, but he’s kinda mellowed out, and i feel like that’s him just holding it back or smth cus he gets in trouble alllll the time. tweek also probably scolds him for it. but i feel like it would be a good way for him to get out any extra emotions, because he is NOT good at expressing those. also, back onto lanky criag, he’s got long limbs, and i feel like that’s good for someone to do martial arts (trust me im projecting) also, that’s also why he has good balance i feel.

alright, done with sports, just normal hobbies.

starting off, he’s 100% a music guy. i see stuff about him preferring podcasts over music, but i see him as a total music guy. in @panicatthecourtx more recent posts, she kinda went over that stuff, but because yk, im the craig ceo i’ll go over it too. i call it dad rock cus thats what my dad listens to, but he definitely listens to nirvana, ac/dc, weezer, that kinda stuff. he’s just a nerd. but i feel like he’d also have music as a way to vent in some sort of way? idk if it makes sense this is just how my brain works, but when he’s stressed, overstimulated, or just down in the dumps he zones out and just listens to music. he’s also just a nerd

space, duh. he could go on and on about that shit for hours. he can make every constellation, am every galaxy, all the nebulas, and basically anything. especially black holes. they fascinate him, he finds them so interesting and yk. is a nerd about em. ik it doesn’t really tie in with space stuff but i’ll put it here, he definitely loves conspiracy theories, especially ones about aliens and stuff. he thinks of his own all the time. especially about other space related things. also, back to conspiracy, death absolutely fascinates him. he just want to know what happens after that.

this is a basic one, but sleeping. he’s the heaviest sleeper ever, literally sleeps 24 fuckin 7

he’ll never admit it, but he kinda likes school. not because he likes sitting around all day or listening to teachers drone on and on, it’s because usually he can talk about things. in classes he enjoys, it’s his favorite thing ever. i also see him as that one kid who literally never studies or pays attention and yet has all A’s in every class.

he’s 100% a reader. he can zone out and not lay attention to anything. he gets lost in books all the time and it’s so nerdy but he loves it. it’s almost like an escape from reality which he likes. he’d never admit it, but he frets stressed pretty easily so he enjoys the way to just be alone in his own world. this also ties in with the music hc- he probably listens to music while reading. he also just zones out a lot in general

this also kinda feeds into music headcanons but he skateboards. he just gives me 90s grunge/kurt cobain vibes and youll never change my mind on this. he thinks he’s so fuckin cool but he’s just some random ass lame kid but he gets away with it cus he’s mildly popular or whatever. but he definitely has a little mini skateboard for stripe

why do these headcanons keep feeding off of each other? i dont know but yk its ok. craig fucking loves mini things. it’s definitely iconic, cus my craig is really tall and has big ass hands. but small things remind him of tweek (my tweek is like 5’8 so compared to him yeah kinda short) but he’s just gay and loves anything and everything that reminds him of tweek

i’ve also realized i don’t need a really detailed description for everything so yeah uhh (don’t mind this it’s my train of thought)

he collects shit he has the most random stuff in his room. random lego pieces he found that he thought were cool, a shit tom of rocks, different leaves, little trinkets, anything space related, stickers, just stupid stuff. those are just the basics, but he has soooo much stuff

he loves making detailed lists and ordering them and stuff

going on hikes he loves hiking he just loves the outdoors tho

stargazing is a must. he loves it and has specific times and places for them

from like a singular scene in like on episode, he plays the fuckin violin cus he’s cool like that yk. because friends, he and wendy practice together- a friend headcanons that she plays the flute, so yk it works.

hanging out with friends is a must. especially clyde they have the bromance ever they’re so lovey dovey best friends

it’s like 2am and i’m getting lazy so here ya go this isn’t even half but alas it’s ok so have fun with my stupid ass spews ty for ur time

[meetmymouth]

ooh I think #7 and #17 from the blurb list would fit very well together! if you want!

THANK YOU LINDS <3<3

prompt list here, send a number!!

#7 If we both want to fit, we’ll have to cuddle

#17 Sleeping in the same bed for the first time

THIS IS 3K IM SORRY I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF SO PLEASE REBLOG LMAOOOOOO!!!!!

"This is my room," comes a gruff voice behind you as you keep looking out the window, taking in the greenery and the beautiful ocean.

See, you knew he would be here.

You knew, because Harry and Mitch were attached at the hip, and you didn't mind. You didn't mind seeing your ex every time you were invited to hang out with MitchandSarah & co, except when said ex decided to be an evil arsehole.

Perhaps, calling him an "ex" was weird, seeing how your time alone only consisted of you both getting high, mostly naked as he whispered the filthiest things in your ear and promised to make you feel good, be the best you've ever had. Other than that, though, he was an insufferable bastard. Since you never hung out with the man without your friends around–getting rat-arsed and high... and the activities that followed aside–, you didn't know if he was always this annoying.

He seemed to be getting along just fine with the others, especially Sarah and the other girls, so you had no problems scratching off the "women hater" off your list. And you can't ever recall him being this insufferable while you both were fucking which was, in his case, miserable. So, it was definitely annoying. You weren't that interested in him to think that he was being mean because he was secretly in love with you. That was a myth, a pathetic myth, wasn't it? No, you wouldn't steep that low. He was just an arse, full stop.

You turn around with an eye-roll, and within seeing his face, you nearly clench your fists like a ten-year-old. "Do you live here?" You ask, hoping the boring expression on your face is also detectable in your tone.

It's certainly not a surprise when Harry scoffs.

"I don't, but I picked this room first. Since, you know," he looks around, and walks further into the room, finally stopping at the feet of the bed. "You were late. As per."

"Oh fuck off. This isn't summer camp. Besides, I don't see any of your shit around. The room was empty when I arrived."

"If you bothered to look inside the wardrobe..."

Seriously, you find yourself thinking, how the fuck did you ever end up with this man. Naked.

There's a commotion downstairs, so you both turn to the door, but much to your dismay, there's no one coming to check up on you and hopefully, save you from Harry Styles' pathetic gob.

You turn towards the window again, eyes squinting briefly at the last bits of sunshine that's glinting from between the branches.

"Well. You shouldn't have left then. You weren't here when I arrived."

Harry shakes his head, and you swear you can see his nostrils flaring if you look carefully. Though, you just watch him with a smug smile on your face as he walks to the wardrobe and pulls open the white doors. True to his word, his clothes are there, perfectly folded, and for a moment you feel a pang of guilt before you look back up at his face and see the furrowed eyebrows.

"See. My clothes. I'm sure Sarah will sort it out for you, find you another room or summat."

"There's only three bedrooms. Can't sleep with a pregnant woman and her boyfriend, can I?"

"What about Rachel and David? Aren't you best friend's with her?"

"Harry, you're ridiculous. Just–" you wipe the sweat off of your forehead, feeling yourself grow hotter and hotter each passing minute. "–just sleep on the sofa. This is my first vacation this year. You go on holidays every week or so. Let us commoners have this."

"Oh, please. Didn't you have a girls weekend getaway or whatever the fuck in Soho Farmhouse two weeks ago?"

You can't help the scoff that leaves your mouth, and a raised eyebrow follows. "How do you know about that?"

"Because," he rolls his eyes, and slams the wardrobe shut. "You post seven hundred stories every day."

"You're a stalker."

"You sleep on the sofa."

You smirk, noticing how he avoided your previous statement.

To be fair, you hated posting on your story. Though, knowing Harry followed you on Instagram made posting on there fun, and seeing his username on the list of who watched your stories pop up at the very top every single time whenever you posted a story almost made you let out a mingy little laugh and rub your hands together, and scream "gotcha!".

"I won't."

"You're getting on my nerves."

"What a coincidence," you ignore the stare he's sending your way and walk towards your carry on, and start taking the contents out one by one, laying everything on the bed.

He watches with a scowl on his face, arms crossed across his chest, and a satisfied smile paints your features as you take out the toiletries bag next.

"Are you seriously unpacking right now?" Harry cranes his neck so he can see better. He looks ridiculous, standing in the middle of the room with arms crossed, but you refrain from saying anything.

In fact, you don't even answer him. Perhaps, you find yourself thinking, it was silly to unpack your underwear first. It wasn't as if you brought super "sexy" shit or lace everything. You can definitely feel his gaze watching your every movement as you take everything out carefully and place them on top of each other. With most of your underwear in hand, you get on one knee in front of the bedside table and open the drawer, placing everything inside and it's surprising how he hasn't claimed the bedside table yet.

"Look," he sighs. "I'll talk to Sarah, maybe you can sleep with her and Mitch–"

"–don't be stupid we're not making them sleep with other people because you can't be a gentleman and sleep on the sofa."

"Oh for fuck's sake," he growls, and you finally look at him, eyebrows raised in hopes of making him feel as stupid as he sounds right now. Unfortunately, though, he continues, "Okay, damn it, I'll sleep on the floor."

Fool.

"Common sense, Harry. Always pick sofa. No matter what."

"Were you born to make my life a living hell?"

"Look," you sit on the bed, and look around. "This is boring me to death. I'm sleeping on the bed. If you shut your gob, you can sleep with me on the bed."

Harry lets out an obnoxious laugh. "Just admit I was here first and you didn't bother checking the–"

"Yes, I didn't and what about it? I'm here now, aren't I? I'm on the bed, babes. Anyway," you get on your feet, and with one last look at him, you start walking towards the door. "I'll see you in a bit. I guess."

You both manage to avoid each other as much as you can throughout the day, and really, it wasn't that hard considering the good company of your friends, good food and good alcohol. You mainly helped Sarah and Rachel in the kitchen as the men lounged on the sun loungers, Mitch handling the grill and David helping you guys with the drinks that came in and out of the house pretty quickly with the way you lot consumed them like water.

You spend the night eating, laughing and drinking, sometimes singing along to whatever song played on David's fancy Bluetooth speaker, and everyone begins ushering inside with full bellies and most of them–except the very pregnant Sarah–with a tipsy smile on their faces.

You leave before Harry though, leaving him smoking his last cigarette by the pool while you run up the stairs and into the room, closing the door behind you. You quickly get rid of the romper and get your favourite pyjamas on, eyes searching for the orange makeup bag so you can take off the remaining makeup before bed. You knew it was silly not to do your night routine, but you still zip the bag closed with a sad expression on your face, not wanting to see your toner and night cream any more than you needed to as you throw it on the floor next to your bags. It's pathetic really, how determined you are to get in the bed before Harry can that you forego your whole routine and stick to some cotton pads. Though, plugging your charger and getting between the cool sheets make you forget all about it as you let out a sigh, and unlock your phone to do your nightly scroll before falling asleep.

As you double tap on a selfie, the door opens, and you hear him scoff, again. You keep scrolling though, and try to sneak a few glances at him as he makes a beeline for the wardrobe, and to your surprise, begins to undress. You try to stay calm, and not to think about how domestic this whole thing seems; being in the same room as him as he gets ready for bed.

Right, getting ready for bed.

You keep your eyes on your phone as his clothes hit the floor one by one, and when you look up briefly, he's got a pair of joggers on, and he's throwing the clothes he had on in the wardrobe.

He turns around, and find your gaze, and he rolls his eyes.

"I knew you'd be in bed, here, as soon as I heard someone running. Forgot you were a literal five-year-old," he mutters under his breath, loud enough so you can still hear him. "I'm not sleeping on the sofa."

"I love how you're basically arguing with yourself."

"Like I said, I'm not sleeping on the sofa. I didn't come all the way to sleep on a bloody sofa."

"Suit yourself. I guess we're sharing. Unless," you lock your phone, and place it on the bedside table. "You want to share," you shrug, adjusting your pillow and sigh at the cool fabric against your hot cheeks.

You can feel him thinking, the wheels turning in his head, and you finally hear the floorboards creek underneath his feet as he walks closer to the bed, and pushes the sheets off of you. The whole thing.

You blink in surprise. "Stop it, dude! What the fuck."

"I'm getting in! Fuck's sake, be quiet."

"You did that just to annoy me."

You're both quiet for a minute, Harry taking his rings off and then comes his socks, and he finally copies you, laying on his back on the bed. He covers the both of you, though you know it's not intentional since he couldn't do it without covering his own body with the duvet, and then he lets out a strangled sigh.

"The bed's too small."

"Are you calling me fat?"

"What?" He turns his face to you, and perhaps it's the first time he's looking at you– really looking.

His brows are furrowed, and lips turned downwards in a pout.

"I'm taking the piss, Harry. I know you're not calling me fat."

"Good," he says, though his voice isn't exactly soft. "I wouldn't."

"Good."

Silence.

It's unbearable.

Despite the hot weather, you feel yourself shiver, and you wish you were the only one in bed so you could do the whole burrito technique with the duvet. Alas... you stay where you are. You both do.

A dog barks in the distance, the high-pitched bark coming through the open window, and you can feel Harry breathing too fast beside you. You want to shout at him, tell him to fuck off and... not breathe too fast, though it sounds a bit too rude even for you, so you stay silent and wait for the dog to pipe the fuck down.

You try to turn on your side, because you could never see yourself fall asleep laying on your back like a vampire, but you almost fall, not anticipating the tiny space you've got going on. It's bad, and you know you're not going to get a good sleep. So, you find yourself contemplating about getting up and sleeping on the sofa because honestly, fuck him.

Harry shuffles next to you, presumably trying to find a good position to sleep in himself, but he lets out a groan and it startles you.

"What's wrong with you!"

"The bed's too fucking small."

"We've established that."

He sniffs, hands clenching the sheets around his body. "I don't sleep on my back. My back hurts."

You don't say anything, hoping for him to just get up and leave, go sleep on the sofa. He doesn't, though. It's another fifteen minutes before you let out another sigh, trying to get comfortable on the bed, and Harry copies you. You both turn on your sides, facing each other and Harry groans when your knee makes contact with his thigh, making you cringe in embarrassment. A quiet sorry leaves your mouth and he shakes his head, then turns the other way, facing the door.

"Fuck," he spits after a minute. "If we both want to fit, we'll have to cuddle."

"Cuddle? Fuck no."

"Just," he turns to you again, but the bed is too small for you both so his knees touch yours. "Just come closer. Either that, or go sleep on the sofa."

"Why don't you–"

"You're so stubborn! Come closer, I won't eat you or fall in love with you. Fuck."

You groan, but oblige for some reason, feeling your heart beginning to beat faster for some ridiculous reason.

It's been a long time, you find yourself trying to convince your heart. It's been a long, long time since you've been this close to a human being. Too long since you've cuddled with someone, so obviously you were going to feel a little excited, and weird. Yes, definitely weird.

You get closer and he lifts up his arm, you both sharing a look before you roll your eyes and place your hand on his wrist, placing it on your hip. He's quiet, eyes searching yours, and the crease between his brows are gone, and you want to laugh, because who knew it only took your skin against his to wipe that stupid grimace off of his face.

"I still think you're annoying," Harry mumbles, clearly sleepy. His hold on your hip becomes tighter as his thumb strokes your skin over the fabric.

"I know. Just shut up and sleep."

[cdroloisms]

haha your snippit abt the dispenser got me thinking.

Dream gets let out of prison and he talks constantly, whatever is on his mind. And he's positive all the time. To a fault where people walk over him. And it doesn't make sense because he was tortured right???? But after an incident they find out it's because he hates the sound of silence and needs constant reminders that other people are there. Also he was punished for any negative emotions in the prison so his default is happy now,,,

hi anon !! this concept makes me SO goddamn sad ,, the idea that he Has to be happy bc anything else would mean punishment im so *punches the walls*

this ,, ficlet is honestly. pretty ooc, not really related to the ask at all, and mostly an excuse for me to cry abt c!dream and c!punz for an excessive amount of time (technically the vote on twitter was supposed to have this as c!sapnap pov, but i just wrote one for him so i went for c!punz instead. mostly bc i wanted to write him LMAO). hopefully someone enjoys it despite *gestures vaguely* all of that mess

tw: trauma, disordered eating, implied torture/abuse, blood, injuries, unhealthy coping mechanisms, emotional distress, thoughts of murder/mercy killing, mentioned animal death, dark content

In the end, it’s all rather anticlimactic, the complete opposite of Dream’s vault and the whole fiasco of adrenaline and theatrics that had made up that day. Quackity ended up having one too many drinks, bragged about the wrong thing to the wrong person - Punz doesn’t know the specifics, only knows that one thing has led to another and suddenly Sapnap was screaming at his ex-fiancé, sword pointed at his chest and tears streaming down his eyes in the middle of the Community House floor, everyone else stood around and watching. A look into Quackity’s office said everything he didn’t - the chests and chests of used and new tools, shiny and sharpened and completely rusted over with blood and everything in between. There’s been a balled up shirt in the wastebasket, completely unsalvageable from how saturated it was with blood, more red than white, and perhaps most chilling of all the calendar, marked with X after X in red pen, going back months and speaking to their utter failure to see what had been happening all but right in front of them.

With Quackity down, Sam caved not too long after, and with his input getting into the prison was no challenge at all. The only thing holding them back were bad memories and the tense, worried edge to Sam’s jaw as he led the small group of them - himself and Sapnap, actually entering the facility, Bad and Puffy waiting outside - carrying them through winding corridor after winding corridor and lava pit after lava pit, until they’d come to stand before a chasm filled with flowing lava, slowly draining before the main cell.

“I- I have to warn you,” Sam had muttered, uncharacteristically hesitant, “it looks…pretty bad,” and Punz would’ve questioned him further, but the lava had fallen far enough to reveal the topmost edge of the cell, so they let Sapnap hound the Warden for information as they directed their full attention on the cell itself and holy shit.

Nothing Sam said could’ve possibly have prepared them for the sight - it was a complete fucking bloodbath, crimson painting the walls and smeared over the floor and splattered over every visible surface like some abstract art experiment gone wrong. The stench of iron and burning flesh and viscera was awful, even over the gap marked by the still-draining lava. Punz strained his eyes; at the very back of the cell, huddled, unmoving, was a similarly bloodstained shape that must’ve been Dream. They remember the crack of Sapnap’s knuckles meeting Sam’s face and breaking his nose, remember themselves chucking a pearl and feeling along Dream’s neck desperately for a pulse - everything beyond that became a swirl of voices and panic and crying that makes their head hurt to think about, so they don’t.

Recovery is…messy. The physical side had been bad enough - pulling Dream out of the cell, barely breathing, limp in his arms and far too light, all Punz could think about was a sheep he’d found a year ago, frail and struggling to breathe, one he’d ended up killing - quick and painless - with a sword through the skull because it seemed kinder than letting it suffer. Watching Dream struggle on the bed, laid up in Bad’s mansion because none of them knew if he’d survive going any further, body resisting the potions they’d slowly forced down his throat after being so over-saturated on them, temperature spiking and heat baking into his skin like the lava from the prison had been imprinted onto his body, Punz feels the same strange mixture of pity and unease, wonders if it’d be a hell of a lot kinder if they just put him out of his fucking misery.

Still, because Dream is a stubborn bastard, against all odds, he ends up surviving - his fever breaks, the potions begin taking effect, and a few tireless, aching days later his eyes flutter open, lucid for the first time in a week. Punz isn’t even in the room when he wakes, only knows that it happens because the too-quiet room suddenly erupts in noise and activity, muffled thumps and sounds of a struggle undercutting Bad’s frantic calls for someone to help, anyone, and they run into the room to find Dream thrashing on the bed, wounds reopened and blood dripping onto the sheets, eyes wild and wide as his head whips from side to side so hard Punz is half-afraid that he’ll straight up break his neck. Somehow, worst of all, not a single scream falls from his lips, nothing but muffled whines squeezing past his mouth, clenched shut, and for a singular, awful second they wonder how long it took before he realized that screaming was useless.

Fortunately enough for them, or unfortunately, it’s not like he can tell the fucking difference anymore, the panic and strain end up with Dream passing out altogether, and they trade uneasy glances with Bad before going to clean off the worst of his wounds. If everything they’re doing feels hopeless, dressing up wounds that’ll be torn open hours later when Dream is awake enough to feel fear but not much else because he’s forgotten what it’s like to not be afraid - well, that’s for them to think and everyone else to pretend not to agree with.

Weeks pass along the same vein - Dream wakes up, panics; they try to calm him down, fails; he falls back into unconsciousness, and they move on and pretend that they’re cleaning up wounds from battle and not from someone that’s literally been tortured for months on end. People stop by, occasionally; Puffy spends more time than not inside the mansion, but hardly ever enters the door into Dream’s room, Sapnap and George drop by occasionally with potion brewing supplies that the rest of them can’t go out to get; once, he’d gone out to the front door to find a chest with an enchanted golden apple, sender nowhere in sight. He knows that the server is busy; Quackity’s admission had brought more than a few secrets to light, and from what they understand, the political fallout has been pretty damn messy. Still, he stays in the mansion, and watches.

He doesn’t exactly know why he stays. They’re not a stellar healer, not beyond what they know to dress their own wounds, and spend most of their time doing odd-and-ends tasks for Bad, who looks more tired than ever. Maybe it’s because he’s seen Dream at his worst more than the rest of them, had been there through his entire fall from grace, watched as his eyes became clouded with anger and madness and a single, desperate hope that he’d chased at the cost of his world and himself. Maybe it’s because they have no ties to the rest of the server - not to Las Nevadas, falling apart under the scrutiny of the eyes that now fall upon it, not Snowchester, caught up in the chaos, not the Badlands, half-dissolved after the fiasco of the Egg and with Sam’s actions having just come to light. Maybe it’s because above everything else, he feels guilty.

They’d thought the prison was the answer. It’d seemed too simple, back in that Vault - a perfect answer, because everyone else was perfectly happy to watch Dream die another time and some part of them had clenched painfully at the thought even thought they knew it was for the best. The prison meant that he’d be alive, if angry, and at some point when he had the time or the nerve or the guts he could go and visit, and they would talk, and Dream would be angry but with time maybe he could even understand.

They hadn’t wanted this. He can’t imagine anyone wanting this.

“Punz?” They don’t jump at the voice at their back, they don’t, but Bad still has a tiny, tight-lipped smile when they turn around anyway, eyes creased in the corners and still not as bright as they’d been before the Egg. Bad looks at him knowingly, setting a bowl of soup into his hands. “For Dream, if you can get him to eat.” He shifts a pointed gaze towards the door. “Maybe you two could talk.”

“About what?” The words come out harsher than they intend, and they take a moment to bite back the mostly self-directed anger that Bad doesn’t deserve to receive the brunt of. “I just-” he waves his hand in the air, trying to articulate the mess that is his relationship with Dream without the words to explain it. “I don’t know, man.”

“You don’t have to talk about everything,” Bad says, calm as always, eyes flicking down to the bowl of soup in his hands. “Just start with the soup.”

Punz sighs. “I’ll try.”

He enters the room in a single, fluid motion, mostly because he knows that if he were to stop at the door then he’d never actually make his way in. Dream flinches back when they enter, eyes going wide and stance going rigid, and the familiarity doesn’t make the sight any easier to bear as they wait, as always, for Dream’s eyes to clear enough for him to realize he’s in the mansion and not stuck in that same obsidian hellhole.

“I brought soup,” they say, finally, when Dream looks up. Dream’s lips twitch up in what he probably means as a smile; between the still-healing gashes on his face and the fear that flashes over his expression, still, it comes out as more of a grimace.

“Thanks.” Dream looks away. “I’ll eat it later.”

Liar, Punz thinks tiredly, moving closer to set the bowl down on the nightstand by the bed. They frown as Dream’s expression goes slack and distanced, again, eyes fixed to stare blankly at the wall once again.

“You should have some now,” he tries, careful to keep his words even. “You need the calories.”

“I’m good,” Dream says, automatic, just shy of sincere. “Thank you.”

“Dream,” they don’t quite succeed at keeping a displeased sigh from falling from their lungs, and bite back a curse at themselves when Dream pulls back with a silent flinch. It’s so goddamn hard, to talk to this version of Dream, both of them feeling around the edges of their relationship like walking on goddamn eggshells. A few months ago, he would’ve straight up called Dream out on his bullshit, get it through his thick skull that the whole ‘I’m fine and don’t need anyone’ act was stupid and completely failing to convince him. Here, they bite back another sigh, look forlornly at the bowl of the soup on the nightstand, sure to go uneaten once again, and force themselves to sound completely neutral when they speak again. “Alright. You’ll have to eat at some point, though.”

“Mmhm,” Dream hums noncommittally, once again staring at the wall. Punz stares at his hands. This is so fucking pointless.

“So,” they say after a few seconds, Bad’s words echoing in their head - they can try to make an effort to talk, sure. It’s just that Dream’s not going to cooperate. “How are you, man?”

The words come out stilted, awkward. He looks up to watch Dream’s expression, as the other man begins to gnaw on the inside of his cheek.

“I’m good,” he says, words deliberately light. “You?”

“Dream…”

“I’m fine.” Dream’s voice sharpens suddenly, breath hitching, before he shakes his head and turns his head away. “I’m fine.”

Punz looks at him incredulously. “Are you serious? Do we need to get into exactly how not-fine you are?” They wave a hand in his direction, jaw clenching when he rears back. “Do ‘fine’ people lose their minds from someone waving at them, now?”

“I-” For a second, Dream glares at him, eyes burning with a familiar, irritated fire that Punz knows all-too-well from having it directed at him a few too many times, before it suddenly dies and Dream is swinging his head back to the bedsheets, hands tightening on the cloth as he stammers. “I- What do you want?”

Punz breathes a soft sigh, regret blooming in the center of their chest. “Sorry,” he mumbles, careful to keep their gestures overly-telegraphed and away from the other man’s face. “I’m just- you’re not okay, man. No one’s expecting you to be okay after...all of that.”

“But why?”

Dream’s voice is small, nearly a sob, and Punz directs wide, alarmed eyes to where he’s hunched in over himself, knees pulled to his chest, hands staring at the sheets pulled over them. “Why?” he says, again, quieter, lip trembling slightly.

“Because you were tortured,” Punz begins, words slow as they watch Dream’s expression, trying to pull out the thoughts behind his averted eyes, “Because the cell was inhumane, and nobody deserves to be treated like that. Because you were hurt very, very badly because of what we did, and none of us are expecting you to be fine right after going through months of trauma.” He pauses. “You know that, right?”

“But I’m out,” Dream says, quiet, disbelieving, instead of answering their question. “I’m out of there. It’s over. It’s- everything’s good,” he whispers, more to himself than to them, hands curling into fists and then uncurling. “I’m- they said I would never get out. And I’m outside, and it’s not- not the cell, and I get real food, and Quackity doesn’t visit anymore,” he shakes his head, eyes squeezing shut as his breath catches in his throat. “I’m happy- I should be happy. Right?”

“Oh Dream,” the other man flinches back, breath quickening, and Punz’s hand stops short from where he’d almost let it fall onto the other’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be happy, man. Not- not after all of that. Not if you’re not ready yet.” Dream’s eyes, wide and wet, rise to look at their own, and they feel more than hear the soft, wounded noise that leaves their lips. “It’s ok to be hurt. It’s ok to be scared. No one’s blaming you, alright? No one’s gonna hurt you anymore.”

This, more than anything, seems to be the breaking point, because Dream collapses forward, hands flying up to pull at his tangled hair before Punz manages to ease them away and into his own hands, watching as he grips onto them until his knuckles go white. His breathing shudders, quiet, even his sobs muffled as to make as little noise as possible, and they murmur meaningless croons and hums as he cries into their chest.

“I wanna- I wanna be okay,” he hiccups, and Punz smooths his hair back behind their hand.

“I know,” he swallows around the lump that has risen in his own throat. “I’m sorry.”

[ethernetchord]

lets talk: popular iwwv criticism

(disclaimer: i know criticism is subjective and thats why im doing this, i wanna look at some common points made against iwwv and dissect them just a little bit in the opposite direction. also none of this is directed at any individual- it’s all based on the general talking points i’ve seen surrounding the book.)

SPOILER WARNING !!

lack of exploration into james and oliver (+ gay characters feel performative)

i’ve seen loads of people say that oliver and james’ relationship felt very performative, a way of including the queer romnce which clearly is very important to the plot but not actually giving it any space in the novel, nor developing it to the same extent which meredith/oliver was.

oliver and meredith had a very strictly physical relationship and while he did love her, he wasn’t in love with her the way he was with james. the juxtaposition in the way that oliver/james is delivered and the way meredith/oliver is delivered is, i believe, far too repetitive to not be intentional. i actually realised upon re-reading how much focus there really is on meredith’s sexuality, even in subtleties in the book. meredith and oliver get more blatant sex scenes, get more physical parts because oliver was (to an extent) using his attraction to meredith to distract himself from his infatuation with james.

we also have to remember that oliver and james didn’t get their real moment of honesty about their relationship till extremely late into the book. i’d honestly see it as more ‘performative’ to then after or in the middle of kind lear throwing in some wild sex scene between the two. it wouldn't have fit.

“why didn’t james and oliver get together earlier then >:(((“ because the slow burn between them, the subtext, the subtle-ness, the yearning, they were all crucial to the decision which oliver made at the end. the fact that they burned so bright for each other but (oliver particularly) were so desperately repressed, that was what made this such a tragic romance. yes its tiring to read stories about queer people being repressed, yes its tiring to see the bury your gays trope. but like oliver says, it goes beyond gender.

if oliver’s second love interest was a girl, and treated this way, we’d be a lot more on board with these tropes- but the fact that james is a man, and this therefor becomes a queer relationship, makes it feel performative. i can’t convince you of anything- but i like to believe that their relationship being treated like this not only makes it so much more “heart wrenching because why! why couldn’t it work out, why couldn’t it be better!” - not because its a queer relationship but because they were soulmates.

alexander wasn’t performative. not in the slightest, rio just didn’t make being gay his entire identity. same goes for colin. just because they’re queer doesn’t mean it needs to be the only thing about them. this isn’t a lgbt novel- characters dont have to be gay just for plot. they can just be gay.

i’ve also seen people complain about not just making oliver bisexual. guys. did you read the book? he was bisexual. he was emotionally and physically attracted to both meredith and james. guys that’s literally what bisexual means.

i'm totally on board with the coming out scenes! and realisation of feelings and all that stuff- but again, not an lgbt centric novel and also- these were things oliver probably did and realised far before this book. remember that its set in 4th year, at an art school. he knew he was fruity ok. not every queer character in every queer book have to have these grandious coming out scenes or realisations. the lack there of doesn’t equal performance.

the ending was rushed and bad

believe what you will, but i don’t think james is dead. there’s a little too much ambiguity in that ending, in the extract he leaves oliver, in the “his body was never found.” so if your main quarrel with the ending is that “bury your gays” situation- please know there’s a chance- and that giving it that chance opens up so much more discussion and reader response.

yes, the ending is sad. but it’s not rushed. “but that is how a tragedy like ours or king lears breaks your heart- by making you believe the ending might still be happy until the very last second.” doing king lear, doing macbeth, doing romeo and juliet, the plays are chosen not only for reader convenience (they’re plays readers will most likely be familiar with) but also because they all, so very deeply, foreshadow a “bad” ending. killing james, makes sense. as much as people don’t want to hear it, from an authorial perspective- from the reader’s perspective and as a human being it makes sense. why do keep arguing that he “should’ve stayed alive for oliver” or that “if he really loved oliver he wouldn’t have done it” - why are we limiting a character’s entire existence down to their love interest. yes, they were best friends, yes they were set up as lovers but that doesn’t mean that that would be enough to keep james around. james was a fragile character- he was always checking with oliver if he had upset him, he was always worried, overthinking, james wasn’t strong minded- and he was suffering. the only person he had left to depend on was in prison, he was plagued with the guilt of causing the death of a classmate and letting oliver take the blame, if he did kill himself, it sure as hell doesn’t have any reason to sound forced.

“its not nearly as good as the secret history!!!!”

to be honest here buds, why the fuck do we keep comparing them so insistently. they are not the same book. iwwv wasn’t trying to be tsh 2.0, yes there are similarities because hey! guess what! books in similar genres tend to do that! always comparing it tsh when they have different motives, different plots and vastly different execution makes no sense. the only reason that they are compared is because tumblrtm dark academics like to group the two together. and yea- makes sense, but stop trying to belittle iwwv because it isn't as grandiose as tsh, because it’s a little more literal, because it’s not as intertextual as tsh. half the people saying iwwv isn’t as good as tsh are practically just subtly going “shakespeare isn’t as complicated as ancient greek huehue” stop forcing the two together and let them be separately appreciated.

the characters were flat/archetypes/etc

sigh. okay.

these characters are actors. this book shows us their transition from themselves entirely into a conjunction of the roles they’ve played and the stereotypes they’ve portrayed.

“we were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”

“for us, everything was a performance”

“imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. it can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”

“far too many times i had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around”

“it’s easier now to be romeo, or macbeth, or brutus, or edmund. someone else.”

are you seeing it now? this focus on their archetypes, this focus on the character they are; the way they see themselves not merely as human but as a walking concoction of every character they have turned into and out of. they depend on their archetypes to give them meaning. rio uses these archetypes to remind us of the submersion of her characters. they weren’t flat, their intentional lack of dimension due to their pasts is what makes them so intricate. furthermore, there's an evident subversion- the tyrant becomes a victim, the hero becomes a villain (they all become villains really), the ingenue becomes corrupted. like mentioned before, i think we forget ourselves easily reading this book but there is a great deal of emphasis on this being their last year- which is so important. the damage has been done and a lot of the issues people have with the content (or lack thereof) in this book has to do with the fact that it’s all things that would have occurred in books focusing on previous years at delletcher.

“it didn't live up to expectation” (also leading on from read tsh to this and being ‘disappointed’)

i cant argue this because its entirely subjective. whatever expectation was created for you, i cannot know that and appropriately respond however- if you liked the secret history and understood the secret history then there's a good chance you also liked and understood this book- even if not to the same extent but you must be able to recognize the authorial approach and its significance. i think a lot of ppl read iwwv (and a lot of “dark academia” texts and films) and hope to be able to romanticize the aesthetic or the concepts and then are disappointed when they are presented with mildly unlikeable and overwhelmingly human characters who aren’t easy to romanticize.

a great majority of these books are criticisms of the very culture you’re trying to romanticize, and the only time you’re willing to admit that is when boasting about the ‘self-awareness’ of the people indulging in them, and then a moment later complain about those same qualities because they don’t serve this idealized expectation.

bad rep for arts/liberal arts/ humanities students as being pretentious/cultish

as a humanities student with a great love for eng lit- all of these things are indeed pretentious and cultish. not all the time and not always and not every person- but it is a common theme. academia is overwhelmingly obsessive and extremely white-washed. people become so fast to believe that they are indulging in finer arts and are therefore a higher standard of person. academia is problematic. and the recent influx of people interested in it is good, very good because hopefully, we’ll be more diverse, more open-minded, more accepting. that's what i hope at least. if you know, as an individual, that you’re not a pretentious academic who places themselves above non-academics then that's wonderful- but there are dangers and negative sides to academia that need to be understood so that we can see to not perpetuating them.

i cant refute all points, mostly because there's a lot of good and well-explained criticism because no book is perfect. and my intentions are not to belittle anyone's opinion. these are merely opposing arguments, food for thought and to be fair- a critical look into why not everything is always going to be what we expect of it and why every ‘problem’ can be assessed.

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. ok but thats also i think i dont get? because without the series or character names, what of any of the promo images or banner or anything else give away it's supposed to be a greek mythology story? they just look like people with weird anatomy who are colored like highlighters. at the very least some iconography should be on them, but there's not? like even percy jackson stuff makes sure to give him a trident and have water flowing around him.

2. rachel made three times where persephone could have made the choice to be with hades willingly and didnt do it each time. first time she was drugged and put into his car, where he phsyically handles her unconscious body and puts her in his bed (ew). second is her working for him, which was hera forcing it. third was her going to the underworld not because she wanted to, but because she was hiding from the law/apollo and he found her. where exactly is her agency in all of this?

3. LO seems like the fast food of webtoons. because there's no room to speculate or theorize, you just read an episode and move on, the bright colors distract that it's a rushed and lazy product over something with high quality and effort, the characters are flat and boring, and the plot has no substance. it's meant to be consumed in a rapid binge, because if not you realize what low-effort and what little you're actually getting from it when you slow down and actually think about it.

4. i mean rachel does have some logic to her fancasting, the problem is it seems the only people of color are either demonized for being hypersexual (aphrodite, eros until he's with psyche) or are literally r//pists who are out to harm her white-fa casted persephone (apollo), so yeah, there is logic there, it's just pointing to rachel being (hopefully unintentionally) racist

5. It pisses me so much that I work over time  (using references and looking at paintings and reading history for ideas for interesting character motifs) so that any of the ancient greek characters I draw look cool and authentically greek, and yet fucking Rachel Smythe, who can't even be bothered to do more than 5 seconds of research to learn that not all ancient greek outfits were shitty, minimalist off white and eggshell, gets to be revered as an artistic revolutionary. It pisses me off so. Fucking. Much. Not just for me, but for everyone else like me who absolutely ADORES greek mythology and wants to draw accurate portrayals of these characters! To whoever is reading this, stop. Stop rn and go read Sleep and His Brother Death (a comic on webtoons), go play Hades (the video game), go read The Song of Achilles (a book by Madeline Miller). Those are beautiful pieces of fiction about Greek mythology that deserve your attention more then Rachel and her shitty pink highlighter self inserts.

And a sidenote, I know that this is kinda like a modern AU for the gods. I am aware. Does not change that fact that anytime any character is drawn in ancient greek fashion it's always the SAME. SHITTY. CHITON. Maybe with a.cape or a scarf, but for the most part? It's just the same stupid, off white chiton.

6. oh, i thought you guys were joking persephone is now stuck with red eyes. is that seriously what look we're stuck with now? does rachel know it looks really ugly?

7. i feel like the lineart less style actually hurts LO in a way. way too often you can look at a panel and it becomes really murky where something starts and ends, and it looks even worse on a phone screen, because on an even smaller screen the images look even more compressed, making it even harder to tell stuff apart. this wouldnt be as bad if the comic took back up its more high contrast look from the begging, but now it's all one flat shade and im not sure why.

8. im really confused over the marketing of LO, tbh. like the ads are all hxp focused, but the series name implies its not about them, but focusing on the 12 olympians, but then the synopsis is general mythology and at the very end randomly mentions its about persephone? but then you read it and nots sure whether its a teen romance, a comedy, a serious drama, and can't stay straight with its messaging and timeline? and persephone is not there for a chunk of time. like whats actually going on?? 😭

9. Chapter 173 is like 50% filler. It gives more questions that answers, and not just from the reporters. Like the reporter stuff was mostly filler, and the Persphone and Hades stuff was like yeah we know dont need to drag this on.

My questions are WHAT ARE THE RED EYES? Is it when she’s mad? Horny? Sad? Happy? I feel like the red eyes just show up whenever RS wants to draw them

Flying? I feel like Persphone has always been flying like it wasn’t a bug moment at all. She flew home when Minthe and Hades kissed. But apperently Demeter didn’t know? I guess I don’t remember her flying in the mortal realm but her flying didn’t seem like a big moment, none of the other characters seemed surprised by it.

“Answer mine first!” When i got to that line I reread some of it just to find where the question was. That line normally matters when you’ve already asked the question not if you haven’t gotten there yet. Like of course Demeter is gonna be worried and ask a million questions.

I know the pomegranate pin is gonna be important but I felt the focus on it was a little too much, like an excuse not to cover more this chapter. Because honestly it felt like 5 minutes of the plot was covered in this chapter. 

10. So uh, whats up with Hades weird ass comments... Like "Persephone you look beautiful and if someone says otherwise they can go play on the highway" ???

Because Persephone looking good during a murder trial is clearly the most important thing here.

Also, Perse's response to the reporter who asked her about her friendship with Hades. I mean, on one hand Persephone is right, her "friendship" (or whatever it is they have going on) is nobodies business but her own - but at the same time, its kinda also the underworld denizens right to know in the sense that their future leadership could be affected so they might want to know whats going on if their getting a new co-ruler / Queen that they will be subjects of. They probably will want to know who Persephone is, should she and Hades get married because it's very likely that when (cause lets be real its a 'when' not 'if' they get married) they do get married that Persephone will inherit half the title.

So, eh?

[propshophannah]

umm i think ppl are over reacting,, az was not being toxic or possesive, he's been pining for elain for 3 years and he now knows she feels the same way for him,, and to the ppl that said that him being turned on was creepy,, wait till we see elains pov bc im pretty sure she was thinking the same. pls it's okay to not like scenes and characters and ships but cmon,, some eluciens are butchering him

Hi Nonnie! I heard that the fandom was getting crazy so I’ve been avoiding looking at posts and stuff. If Az came off creepy it wasn’t because he was turned on. LMFAO. Elain was turned on, too. SHE ALSO INITIATED THE ENTIRE SCENE! We don’t even need her POV to tell us what she wanted either—Maas straight up tells us this in that scene. LOL to everyone who skipped that part and those lines. I mean… it wasn’t even subtext. It was literally written on the page. (I’m writing an analysis of that scene, stay tuned!)

If he came off creepy, it was because he articulated a sense in entitlement—which given the situation wasn’t entirely out of line! Sorry, it just wasn’t. 

And here’s why: We’ve all had moments where we are so fucking mad—and everything around us seemed to be going in everyone else’s favor BUT ours—so we got angry. And vengeful. And we got a little lost in those feelings, some of us drowned in them, and we did things and said things and we came off like a fucking asshole. FACTS.

If some people think that’s never happened to them, then they’re either lying to themselves or not paying attention to themselves. It’s as simple as that, Nonnie. 

We all do dumb, potentially toxic things when we’re mad or upset. That’s the law of the land and not one single person in the fandom, or the world, is above that. Not. One. 

And LETS. BE. REAL. Elain is NOT above reproach for the role she *actively* plays in this cluster fuck. She is just as guilty of stringing Lucien and Az along in that she hasn’t made a decision on whether to accept or reject the mating bond. Or in just saying “Look, Lucy, babe, I don’t like this. It’s stressing me out. Please leave me alone for the next 2.5 years or until I say ‘when’ before you come around again. Thanks!” She doesn’t even need to say it to Lucien. THAT’S THE KICKER. She could tell Feyre. Tell one of the Shadows to tell Feyre or Rhys or Mor and Nesta OR ANYONE with the power to say “Hey, we can’t invite Lucy to Solstice because Elain doesn’t want it.” This is a situation where getting other people to play the bad guy for you, is 100% socially acceptable. 

Hell, LUCIEN could be the one to initiate this. To pick up on what Elain IS NOT THROWING OUT and say, “Hey, Rhys, babe. Thanks for the Solstice invite, but I don’t think Elain appreciates my presence, and I don’t want to make her uncomfortable. How about I send you her gift from me, then I, like, check in every now and then and you can find a way to let her know I’m in town and if you invite me to dinner, I’ll take that as a sign that she’s okay with me being there for dinner and nothing more. No expectations.” It’s not hard. 

(We could argue that Lucien continuing to come around IS JUST AS WEIRD/CREEPY. READ THE ROOM DUDE.)

Now I WILL say that there is an argument to be made that Elain *may* not grasp the gravity of a mating bond because she was born in a different culture. That’s totally fair. BUT she’s had plenty of time to learn what that means having spent so much time around Feyre and Rhys and the others. 

So the idea that Azriel is the only one who deserves to be vilified is nonsensical. 

ALSO, and this is something I will be including in the analysis I’m working on and will hopefully finish tomorrow (I’m going to break that Az POV down so that everyone and their third cousin, twice removed, can understand), is that AZRIEL’S WHOLE SHTICK IS WAITING.  He looooves to wait. Fucking LOVES it. It’s his whole job y’all. It’s weird, and related to his daddy issues when you apply it to females, but it’s his life. He LITERALLY tells us this in ACOSF. Remember at the end when Cassian is complaining about how he HATES spying because he has no patience? 

Az is like “It seems you’ve forgotten how much of spying is waiting for the right moment. People don’t engage in their evil deeds when it’s convenient to you.” 

Cassian explains why he stopped spying because it “...bored him to death. I don’t know how you put up with this all the time.” 

Az says, “It suits me.”

 BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

MF BOOOOOM.

Az likes to play the long game. Not saying it’s healthy, but that suits him. He’s good at waiting. He HAD TO BE. HE WAS LOCKED AWAY FOR YEARS AND HAD TO WAIT FOR THE CHANCE TO SEE HIS MOTHER. And the sun. And his hateful brothers. He doesn’t know any better/how else to be. And there is a lot of trauma and conflicting feelings tangled in this. 

It’s only creepy when you fail to grasp the nuance. But if you stand too close to a painting, you can’t see the whole thing. Back up, people. Back up.

Az has spent his whole life waiting. It’s how he learned to be. And now that his brothers are all happily mated he’s looking back on all his waiting—on his entire life—and he’s having a crisis. Or a crisis is looming. What has his waiting gotten him? Why has his patience not been rewarded? Why not him?

You combine that thinking with anger and you’ve got a recipe for momentary entitlement. For rage so thick and consuming that you want to punch a wall and work yourself to death because at least when you’re working you can compartmentalize and not deal with the reality that YOUR ENTIRE LIFE MODEL hasn’t worked for you. That you got left behind somewhere and it was your fault.

Az is headed for a mid-life crisis or an emotional breakdown—or some big horrific moment where he realizes he can’t keep doing what he’s been doing, that his entire world is built on a foundation that’s crumbling. And if you’ve never ever had that happen to you, then I’m jealous. And I’m happy for you. Because it’s terrifying. Bloody awful fucking terrifying.

[sneakydraws]

Well, here it is - a lengthy explanation of each card in my mdzs major arcana deck and what I meant to convey/what i would have changed in retrospect/what alternatives i considered! It’s a bit messy and my typing style is lazy but hopefully it will be an interesting read to some of you :)

And so you don’t say I didn’t warn you - jiang cheng’s section (11 justice) is absurdly long lmao

0 the fool  I elaborated on this in the post itself but yeah basically jin ling is kind of representative of all the damage and trauma caused by the past, and there’s a kind of danger there of him falling victim to the same vices as the older characters and repeating the same mistakes and perpetuating the cycle of war and misery (the cycle that we already see with how the jin sect became the new wen sect, and later with how jgy became the new wwx) and he has a lot of room to grow! He grows so much over the course of the novel, comes to realise the complexities of the past and gets a harsh life lesson in how nothing is as black and white as it seems. But ill save talking about his progress for the end, for now whats important is that he has room to grow and also a dog. I don’t really have a justification for the sun, i mostly just thought it looked sick? It made its way to the next card as well, where it makes a bit more sense, but then i realised it was a dumb motif to include 1 the magician I still very much like wwx for the role, and that illustration would have probably had him raising a corpse on his left and pointing threateningly to the sun on his right. I considered including the table as well, with some mdzs relevant items replacing the card suits. Anyway, like i said wwx got a few cards to himself already so i went with the alternative wq design, since i think she fits the card as well. Both she and wwx are highly skilled people, extremely driven once they set their mind to something. The card to me symbolises the creative mind as well as a general drive for action, which fits them both - wwx was famously a prolific inventor, and wq came up with a previously unheard of surgery, after all. This card strays pretty far from the rider-waite deck design, largely because i was still figuring out how i wanted to approach this series, but you can still see the influence. 2 the high priestess I was actually going to skip this card at first because I couldn’t think of a fitting character, but once i considered a qings character post death, it all fit pretty well. She was already a highly intuitive person in life, and in sharing her memories with wwx she is, in a way, relaying a kind of secret knowledge. Anyway she’s one of my fav characters so im glad i got a chance to include her. The coffins could be interpreted to be xxc and sl or xxc and xy 3 the empress Theres other mother figures in mdzs who got to be mothers for a longer time, but jyl definitely embodies the positive aspects of this card the best. She’s nurturing, kind, emotionally supportive, she already mothered wwx and jc quite a bit when she was young. Plus i liked that the rw card had both water and flowers, making an easy lotus connection. In retrospect the stars look kind of out of place and i should have replaced them with something more relevant... Also, i should have had her hold a lotus seed pod instead of a flower, haha 4 the emperor Like i said I considered jc for the role but hoching bullied me into admitting that nmj was better… they’re both more of an inverted emperor than an upright one but then again theres hardly any character in mdzs who would fit upright emperor so. Jgs was also considered but he’s even uglier than nmj so i couldn’t bear to draw him 5 the hierophant It was pointed out to me that lqr would have fit this card better and the truth if that statement haunts me to this day. Unfortunately I have no space in my brain for lqr so lxc got the role instead. My main reason was his role during the wen destruction of gusu lan, when he ran away with the contents of the library - this is why there’s bookshelves behind him. The keys, take, from the rider-waite deck, are meant to represent the gusu pendants that allow you to enter 6 the lovers Im sure many people would have chosen wangxian here but I uhh don’t really care abt wangxian personally? And also their love story is so convoluted that jyl and jzx seem idyllic by comparison lol. Also i didnt really have an idea for who to put in the angel’s place for wangxian… mme jin certainly did not get these two together in the end but undeniably she and mme yu did initially give them a chance to fall for each other so. Thats something i guess. Anyway the trees became their sects’ flowers and the mountain became the burial grounds - an omen of their tragic fate, basically 7 the chariot There might have been other characters who fit this card better but i couldn’t really think of another card for lwj and i thought it would be weird to not include him… anyway i don’t really care for current timeline lwj BUT i do like that he was clearly influenced by wwx to walk his own path in life based on his moral convictions rather than follow his sect’s rules blindly. The chariot is to me a card of self control, self determination and focused action, so it seemed fitting. The composition felt kind of empty without the actual chariot so i padded it out with the guqin, the cloud recess in the bg (it doesn’t look great but i tried to replicate the drama design….) and the bunnies which conveniently fit the colour scheme of the sphinxes in the rider-waite design 8 strength Like i said before, my interpretation of this card is more… morally ambiguous than the quote unquote official meaning, so i thought about manipulative or duplicitous characters more than kind characters whose strength is expressed through gentleness (though i did consider jyl briefly for the latter interpretation). As such, i considered both jgy and nhs, but ended up going with jgy largely because i couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put the nie sect’s beast as the lion. 9 the hermit My thoughts immediately went to bssr lol. It may be an overly literal interpretation but whatever, i like it just fine. And i like that i managed to echo the rider-waite silhouette in the mountain and the tree (and even in bssr herself) 10 wheel of fortune God i love the parallels between these 2… this card to me is about how you cant trust your current situation, good or bad, to last forever, and these 2 embody that perfectly imo. Wwx went from son of a well off servant and a powerful cultivator, to street rat orphan, to adopted son of sect leader jiang, to double orphan, to MIA, to terrifying but admired warrior, to terrifying and despised traitor, to dead, to, at the very end, suddenly respected and trusted again. The dishonesty and cheapness of whatever the public’s current opinion of him is is portrayed beautifully as far as im concerned. And jgy of course claws his way up to power only to instantaneously become public enemy number one, to the point that he’s probably blamed for stuff there’s no reason to believe he had a hand in. Wei wuxian’s silent astonishment at how quickly the cultivation world turns against jgy and towards him again is a delicious moment of thematic resonance.  11 justice I settled on this card for jc after he got booted from the emperor seat but i do think it fits, in a somewhat convoluted way. I turned both the sword and the scales into visual representations of the golden core transfer (can you tell im obsessed with it). According to biddy tarot, the justice card is partly about searching for the truth, and the scene where jc finds out about the transfer is of course a big deal. I was also very influenced by the reversed meaning again - which is about being reluctant or unwilling to face or accept the consequences of your actions. I feel on an intuitive level that this fits jc but I’m not sure how well i can explain it - it’s something about how he’s a little too comfortable scapegoating wwx for things that were also, if much less so, influenced by his actions, and also something about the way he keeps wwx at an arm’s length emotionally but still leans on him and accepts his support when he really needs it, and somewhat hypocritically expects wwx to put the needs of him and the jiang sect before the needs of others. And also something about the core exchange is the consequence and proof of wwx’s deep - terrifyingly deep, even - love and care for him, which is something jc doesn’t seem to let himself acknowledge. Maybe even something about how you could argue that the way all of the jiangs acted around wwx - jfm’s favouritism that left him with the feeling of a debt he needs to repay, mme yus insistence that he be a servant more than a brother to jc, prepared to give his life for jc, and jc’s own unwillingness - or inability, he was a child after all - to clearly acknowledge wwx as an equal to himself, enabling wwx’s self sacrificial and protective tendencies - that all of this was what caused wwx’s complete and unquestioning willingness to do whatever it took to protect jc, and therefore paved the way to the golden core transfer. And i don’t mean this to be scapegoating jc - especially considering how young he was when this all went down, it wouldn’t be fair to expect this level of emotional perceptiveness, awareness and maturity of him - but i think adult jc has to grapple with the fact that the chain of cause and effect was not as simple as wwx fucking everyone’s lives up to be a martyr, and that both jc and his parents had a role in that story as well. I don’t even necessarily think this is something that jc only realised in the current timeline - i think it’s something he felt on some level this whole time, and it probably led to a lot of feelings of guilt - but the suibian reveal definitely puts it in sharp focus, and i think he’s now better equipped to handle this introspection than he was as a recently orphaned, traumatised teenager, lol. ANYWAY the window with the fabric is both a nod to the rider-waite design and a reference to the destruction of lanling - i actually did some basic ass research for this, and it seems that in ancient china fabric would indeed be hanged in a window if the normally used paper was damaged. The design of the window, as well as the very idea to use it to imply the reconstruction of lanling, was taken from this great piece of jc angst by my pal moroll1! Oh yeah also the covered window kind of works as a denial of forgiveness for jc because it’s like a halo but covered up... Also I completely forgot to put a blindfold over his eyes which would be perfectttt because blind justice and the core exchange......... ok moving on 12 the hanged man I always have issues with this card because i cant find a satisfactory summary of what it’s really about. Best i can tell it symbolises a need to hit pause, surrender or let go of something… ive also seen it tied to sacrifice? So mo xuanyu doesn’t fit perfectly, but sacrifice is definitely there in a surface level reading kind of way, and the idea that you have to surrender or let go in order to achieve your goal does fit the whole deal of getting revenge but giving up your life in exchange and not being there to see it 13 death This is probably one of my favourite cards, definitely not because I have huge issues with change or anything…. I see this card as signalling the necessity of change or putting an end to something / leaving something in the past in order to start anew? At first i considered putting past wwx, mxy and current wwx here as a kind of transformation and one cycle flowing into the next... But firstly, I’d already used mxy in the very previous card, so putting him in again would feel like overkill, and secondly, the longer I thought about it the less convinced I was that this would even fit with the card’s meaning? Because coming back from the dead doesn’t like... trigger an internal transformation within wwx or anything? Anyway, fun fact: the design I ended up going with was actually originally intended for judgement! I thought I was being very clever with the whole “figure plays an instrument and the dead rise” parallel, but apparently I’d just completely forgotten that the judgement card had a completely different composition... Truly I was boo boo the fool... But yeah anyway at the end of the day I figured the design would kind of work for death as well, with Wen Ning and the theme of transformation, (since in his case coming back as a fierce corpse does actually mark a certain transformation in behaviour) and Wei Wuxian’s protection of the Wen people essentially signifying an attempt to break the cycle of oppression if that makes any sense? Like, wwx is trying to revolutionise the way the world works a bit, if you catch my drift 14 temperance  The centrist card! Again this is probably going off track from the “official” interpretation, but to me this card has a certain “don’t commit fully; do everything in moderation; don’t take either side” flavour to it that i personally find infuriating irl and that i very much assign to lxc. It’s entirely possible that I’m misinterpreting his character because i didn’t really pay him (and the 3zun in general) much mind while reading, but hell, I’m allowed to pick favourites and choose who i want to interpret deeply vs shallowly. Again, i wish id chosen lqr for hierophant because its so annoying for a character i don’t care about to get two cards…. But oh well 15 the devil My alternative idea for this was jgy as the devil and lxc plus nmj as the figures, but since all three had been featured already (multiple times, even!) i figured I’d go with xy instead, especially since he’s among my faves lol. I think the devil signifies something along the lines of unhealthy attachment, obsession or addiction, which isn’t 100% accurate in the case of xxc and a-qing, but if i stretch it a bit to cover toxic relationships in general, and especially manipulation or negative influence, i don’t think it’s half bad. My main struggle here was to choose who amongst the xxc/sl/aq trio to choose for the human figures. 16 the tower Arguably jin zixuans death and the following massacre of nightless city were the final and most direct reason for the siege of burial mounds, and the tiger seal is good shorthand for wwx’s loss of control over his powers, which led to the deaths of jzx and jyl. When reimagining major arcana i like to feature some kind of building in this card (spoilers for a possible future project but in my rose of versailles major arcana set the tower is bastille) and even if it’s not a tower, the image of wwx looming over the gathered crowd from atop a rooftop is so good i couldn’t resist 17 the star Struggled with this one - considered both jin ling and lsz for it, as symbolising a hope for the future, but that was kind of covered by the world so it wouldn’t make sense to include here as well... As usual when I struggle with interpreting a card (as opposed to understanding it but struggling with matching a character to it, like with death or moon) I went to biddy tarot and read all the details about its meaning. What i got was that this card signifies an incoming period of introspection and inner peace following a time of turmoil, as well as a general moving on into a new, better phase of one’s life or finding new meaning and purpose. The figure also suggests someone vulnerable, but possessing a keen sense of intuition as well as a good degree of practicality and common sense. Given all those, I settled for mianmian because IM LOVE HER..... I also kind of see her as a prelude to the “just one person is enough” theme present in tgcf!! And i think her decision to abandon her sect because she saw the toxicity and corruption in it is a very inspiring action - even if it didn’t make a large visible impact, i think the appearance of her and her idyllic family at the very end of the novel - paralleling and mirroring wangxian - implies that at the end of the day, it was a meaningful one 18 the moon Another card i ALWAYS fuxking struggle with - this time less because i can’t grasp its meaning and more because I can never find a character that fits it well. I usually get fixated on the “dreams and subconscious” part, but if i lean more on the “disguise, deceit, anxiety and fear” part, i eventually figured the whole yi city arc wouldn’t be a bad fit. I say the entire arc because it really does encompass all those themes if you include both the past and the present - xue yang’s disguise, his tricks with the villagers, a-qing’s lies and even xxc’s reluctance to talk about his past as well as xue yang pretending to be xxc all fit the disguise and deceit angle, and the general mystery and creepiness of the current timeline yi city work well with the anxiety and fear - the mist, the slow uncovering of the past, even a-qing being revealed to be an ally after scaring the shit out of the protags. I definitely struggled with including all the elements and characters, and even moreso with making them vaguely fit the rider-waite composition, but i think it ended up okay ish. OH and i completely forgot to draw mist swirling around them :( 19 the sun I was considering mianmian’s family for this one, but since I used her for star, I ended up with wwx and his parents instead. Once again I’m reinterpreting the card a bit - normally I think it symbolises incoming times of pure happiness and abundance, as well as a connection with the inner child, but I gave it more of a nostalgic or sentimental twist - wwx looking back at the brief glimpse of his happy childhood. 20 judgement another card that i struggle to interpret a bit... Here i actually used the tgcf tarot zine as a reference! In it judgement is summarised as “rebirth, following duty, absolution” SO i figured that nhs, mxy and wwx all together would fit pretty neatly... wwx achieving (public) absolution through clearing his own name after being reborn, and nhs sort of calling on wwx to expose jgy’s crimes... It’s a bit messy but not bad I think! 21 the world This ties very closely to my read on mdzs as a story - which is that it’s, at the end of the day, largely about cycles, and about how hard it is to break them, but how we gotta keep trying and have hope anyway. Or maybe more precisely, that the people directly involved with and influenced by the trauma of the past might not be able to get over said trauma and that the hope for healing from it will be shouldered by the new generation. Or something like that… Basically what i mean is that jc and wwx and lwj and lxc and nhs and jgy and all these people who were in the thick of the sunshot campaign and the siege are so profoundly affected by it that it genuinely feels by the end of the story like there is little hope for them to ever truly overcome that trauma and build a better future without repeating the same old mistakes - but there is a glimmer of hope in the new generation, specifically in jl and lsz. And it’s a bit paradoxical, because they have also been directly impacted by the past tragedies - lsz having his entire clan wiped out after wwx failed to protect them, jl losing both his parents to wwx’s mistakes - but despite that loss, and despite coming from arguably the two opposing sides of the past conflicts, they are both, in the end, capable of moving past that tragedy, of recognising the complicated nature of those conflicts (jl’s moment of clarity at the end is both heartbreaking and hopeful) and forging friendships between clans in the process. I honestly think that the extra where jl is struggling to assert his authority as sect leader, to treat his subjects well and to cooperate with other sects in a truly amicable way is the single hopeful ending note for the larger themes of the novel - it allows us to imagine that maybe these kids can learn from the mistakes of their elders rather than getting sucked in by resentment at those mistakes, and actually build a brighter future for the cultivation world. And sidenote, this is also why i have a soft spot for jin ling and lan sizhui as a ship... speaking of which their poses were directly referenced from the lovers card ehehe

Looking back, I’d like to add some symbol of jin ling’s trauma so that it mirrors baby wen yuan in the tree stump... maybe his father’s sword? 

[mydearesthrry]

places we won’t walk (chapter one) || peter parker

summary - the doors at midtown seem a little boring, but when you get introduced to someone you seem to remember, what happens when they seem to remember you too?

word count - 2.9k (wow shes gettin better!)

pairings - peter parker x fem!reader

warnings - like mild mention of s*xual assault, angst if you squint really hard, mj being a softy for you, mj being a lowkey bi, peter being stupid as always, y/n calling peter a colonizer.... thats it ok enjoy

a/n: so i know i last updated in october, but as u all saw i have a 25 days of xnas thing going on (PLS I WROTE THE A/N LIKE A MONTH AGO PLUS I FORGOT ABOUT THE XMAS THING DISREGARD) so pwww updates will be slow (as if they werent already omg) but the next chapter will be arriving hopefully, fingers crossed, on xmas eve or xmas! also, are you guys watching the new euphoria episode? also, i’ve stopped using the word ‘stuttering’, as it may be ableist, and i’d never wanna come off as insensitive. anyway lmao, enjoy chapter one, the trials and tribulations of hitting someone in the nuts.

also side note psa: biggest thank you to @blossomparkers for helping me so much w this chapter. i owe it all tooooo u lani yani. thank u for everything !!!!!

series masterlist | regular masterlist | series playlist

(gif not mine!)

when y/n y/m/n stark was in her early years, she was never aware of the impact her father would and did hold over her life, and in turn, the whole world. for the longest time, you’d always assumed that your father wasn’t real, and everything that had been told to you by malicious family members who were jealous over your father’s “successes” had been lies, and you had it believed yourself. no one would even think that you were tony stark’s daughter until it had been mentioned. tony’s snarky attitude had been a character trait that you’d gotten, and you always took pride in your humor and attitude.

the story of your mother and tony had been messy and all over the place. from a drunken hook-up followed by multiple days of morning sickness, to a surprise pregnancy test, the storyline of your parents had been.. well.. interesting to say the least. you never focused on your family’s history, solely based on the fact that you didn’t have two fucks to give about your family history, but you also never knew your father which was-- bizarre. 

when tony had found out about you, he claimed it was a drunken accident, a mistake, and one he made when he was “less responsibly a stark”, which was actually just some fucking bullshit, but he didn’t wanna admit that he hooked up with some random chick at a bar that he thought was hot.

since you had been raised by a mother who was barely there, you had to raise yourself. you were kinda street smart and book smart, and you were always smart when it came to books, because you were the type to want to learn-- unlike others.

when you were in your teen years, you had tabs on you and the media on you 24/7 to make sure you didn’t royally fuck up. the unwanted attention became too much when you started realizing that people didn’t want you for your personality, they wanted you for your title. but this was after you moved from brooklyn. nuvale and peter never saw you as some “movie star”, or some famous person in the media because you weren’t. but when you had grown to learn what your father did, he had forced you to not fuck up to maintain his-- somewhat okay reputation. 

you always wanted that superstar life, as a fantasy of course, but when you got to it, you realized the cliche-y-ness of it all. you’d idolized the famous women in the media-- idolized how they looked like. you realized fairly quick how fucked up the media truly is. you realized how things really aren’t as they seem. its not just the galas that look extravagant, or getting to wear a fancy new gucci outfit every night. it honestly was a whole bunch of other shit you wouldn’t even imagine. it comes with the no privacy thing- people stalking you in public, the death threats, so much shit that wouldn’t happen as common if you were just anonymous.

being an avenger (basically), your dad had natasha teach you the ropes; the basic rules of how to kick someones ass. it was a handbook that the women of the avengers had created, and it had all the rules and regulations of how to spar someone on the team, and basically how to righteously beat someone's ass up. it was never really something you found too important, but as you grew older, you realized that it was very important to know, especially since you were a girl.

despite your harsh remarks and snarky attitude, your father always knew how to hit a sensitive point in you that always managed to break you down. you never quite understood why he would want to make you feel worse about yourself than you already felt, but regardless, you always felt underappreciated by him. being a stark, you were expected to be a genius, get over the top grades, and constantly be able to keep up, but with your luck, you were graced with depression, social anxiety, and a 4.0 gpa. fun, right? 

wrong.

when you were 11, you had made friends with the kids in your apartment halls, and you learned that their names were nuvale jones and peter parker, and you were basically the golden trio. you were hermione, peter was ron, and nuvale was harry. which, now that you look back at it, makes much more sense than any other arrangement. you also had another friend, harry osborn, but once he moved away, there was no way for you to talk to him anymore. he had moved across the country to california, and from then, it was just you, peter, and nuvale. your best friends ha been there for you for what seemed like decades, although you only knew them for about three.

peter was the boy with the rosy cheeks who little 12 year old you would get butterflies in her tummy. or the type of boy to bring you an extra snack if you weren’t able to pack it the night before. he was the type of boy to walk you to the nurses office if you got hit with a dodgeball. he was the type of boy to fall for someone like you. but he didn’t. or so you thought. 

little prebubescent y/n was an awkward girl who thought the world would be on her side when she needed it the most, or that whenever you needed peter or nuva, they would be there. you didn’t think your best friend would stop talking to you after you had moved away. you were too naive to know that peter liked you, and you were too naive to know that he had liked you back, but you wanted to believe what your brain would tell you, so you decided to flush your feelings down the drain and forget about them, which, in hindsight, was a pretty shitty idea. who would’ve known?

your alarm clock blared loudly from beside you, causing you to let out a loud groan in protest. you hit the side of your head angrily, then whining and rubbing the spot which you hit. whines and loud sighs fell from your lips as you rubbed the sleep from your eyes and pulled the covers over your head, knowing what would come next after you would try to snooze your alarm.

“good morning, miss stark, how could i be of service to you this morning?” friday’s voice echoed through your large bedroom. you peaked your eyes and forehead from beneath the covers, your eyes slowly starting to adjust to the light that was pulled through the big blinds which were now open. 

“mmm, fri, just tell happy to get the car ready, ill be ready in a few min- nevermind, tell him to get ready in thirty, im probably gonna fall asleep in the shower.” you croaked, taking your phone from the charger which was on your nightstand. you slipped on your bunny slippers and turned on the heater in your room, the draft filling your room with cold air throughout the night.

-------

once you walked through the large industrial doors of midtown’s cafeteria, everyones voices started to drop into sharp hushed whispers, making you roll your eyes and pull your hood up over your face. you pulled your airpods from your pockets into your ears and tried your best to avoid any and all eye contact with anyone you did end up coming into contact with. you walked over to the food bar where you grabbed a red school tray and plastered on your best smile to the lunch ladies who work oh so hard to make sure you all were fed. as you walked through the line, you could feel the intensified stares on you, making your back erupt in chills. you didn’t like to be watched, and the fact that you were a so-called celebrity didn’t help your cause in any way. 

“hey.” a low voice called from behind you. it was a girl with curly hair with gorgeous light brown skin, and a jawline that would cut you. you were almost astonished by her beauty, but you remembered the facade you had to hold, especially to strangers that you didn’t know.

“hey?” you asked unsurely, wondering if she was with the media or not. which was something that tended to happen quite a bit.

“don’t worry, i’m not with the press. you just seem interesting.” she said in a monotone voice, but still with a strong look of seriousness on her face. you giggled softly when your eyes locked and your faces went totally still, making the girl in front of you laugh as well. she held out her hand in front of you, while also balancing her tray and book in the other hand. you placed yours into hers and shook it, smiling when she told you her name.

“michelle jones.” she smiled, your throat getting a little tight at her last name, and you had to admit that it struck a little chord within you, but you quickly cleared it from your thoughts and introduced yourself as well.

“y/n stark. pleasure to meet you, jones.”

“pleasure to meet you too.”

“so, i get that you’re new here,” she started walking, inviting you to walk along with her. “what- what are you doing here? i mean i get you’re smart and all, but this is a nerd school; you literally could’ve gone anywhere, so, might i ask, why here?”

“hm, interesting question. seriously i don’t know. my dad and i don’t really get along so he makes the decisions and i tell him if i like it or not. which by the way, i’m gonna have to stay near you-- you’re the only one making this bearable for me right now.” you snorted, nudging your elbow to hers. 

“hm, daddy issues. great song, love the artists.” she smirked, making you shoot your head back in loud laughter, gaining some side eyed glances from a few people sitting at the tables around you.

“so, where are we sitting? i usually nev-”

“hey mj!” you were interrupted by a boyish laugh and hoots and hollers coming from a table two tables ahead of you. 

“jesus fucking christ. what? just because i got some and you didn’t doesn’t mean that you have to be that fuckin’ loud about it.” she grumbled, placing her tray down, slinging the backpack on her right shoulder beside her. you looked at her with a nervous but curious glint in your eyes. she gave you a knowing look which said, ‘just go with what i say’, making you nod in understanding.

“woah! holy shit! i m- i mean woah- nice to- nice to meet you!” the boy fumbled over his words, looking at you and michelle in disbelief, shaking his friends shoulder and poking at his cheek.

“nice cut, g. looks nice.” you said to him, giggling as you stuck your straw into the mini juice box.

“o-oh, thanks… g?” he said back to you, observing your looks with a confused expression written on his face making you giggle at his confusion. 

“peter! look! y/n stark is at our table!” he whisper shouted to his friend, making you look at michelle with a smile on your face and playfully rolling your eyes. she looked back at you, rolling her eyes as well, gesturing to her head as if saying ‘idiots’, making you giggle and turn back to them. 

“so, bowl cut dude, what’s your name?” you nodded to him, picking at your salad with the blac spork that was so cordially given to you by mj. 

“n-ned, ned leeds.” he smiled sheepishly.

“and you, colonizer, what’s your name?” you tapped on the table, alerting the boys attention. you could hear michelle and ned hollering and snickering from their seats, but decided to keep your poker face rolling. but i mean, how couldn’t you? the look on his face was absolutely priceless. 

“peter park- wait did you just call me a colonizer?” he cut himself off in his own sentence, looking at his other friends for confirmation, to which they nodded, still cackling at the fact that you had indeed call him a colonizer.

“peter park, hm?” you teased, ignoring the way you hesitated and ignoring the way your chest felt heavy when the name of peter was said.

“n-no thats not my name-” he said, tripping over his words, making you let out a chuckle. 

“i’m messing with you. with what you’ve given me, i could only guess your name is peter parker?” you rested your chin on your hand, engaging in the awkward conversation.

“yeah. thats my name.” he said more confidently, giving you a tight lipped smile.

“nice to meet you, parker.”

“you too, stark, my pleasure.”

----

after the small encounter with your new found friends, you had gone back to your respective classes, which meant that your next class had peter in it. after you had split up, you decided to get there early to avoid any commotion surrounding you.

as the boring class continued, you heard the loud clicking of high heels in the hallways, which had to be one person and one person only.

“stark,” someone shouted from the door which swung open. low and behold, in front of you was the prickly bitch, your principal, mrs cunningham. “come with me, eugene’s parents have requested a meeting with you and your father considering that you had just hit their son in the private areas!” everyone snickered and laughed. finally someone had stood up to flash’s shit. 

“y- you punched flash in the nuts? i thought that was just a rumor?” peter stuttered, looking at you in disbelief.

“yeah, the fuck was i gonna do? let him flirt with me? no. that bitch tried to grab my ass. i’m a stark, i was raised better than that.” you whispered to him, packing your bag as you did so.

“hm, guess you’re right. well, good luck stark.” 

“thanks parker.”

--------

once you arrived in the principals office, you saw what seemed to be his mother in one of the seats decked out in expensive pearls and diamonds. typical.

“little miss over here punched my son in the privates! i will not allow this to happen!” fuck. you thought; another one of those stuck up cunty parents.

“pfft, probably paid to get their son into here.” you muttered under your breath, playing with your protection bracelets incase anything was to ever happen.

“wHAT? mrs cunningham, i will not allow this child to talk about my son this wa-”

“hello! i was called in?” a voice interrupted, one you could only peg as your father.

“ahh! mr stark! you’re finally here!” your hilarious excuse as a principal said cheerfully.

“i am! and i am here to.. come and have a meeting about my daughter's- behavior?” he asked questiongly, already seeing the triumphant and cocky look on your face. he knew you weren’t at fault, and you were gonna lie your pretty ass out of it.

“well, mr stark, we have a student in the nurses room due to the actions of your daughter!” she looked at him menacingly. he shook his head with a smile on his face and walked over to you, grasping your shoulders in his hands.

“well kiddo, wanna explain what and why you did what you did?” he smiled, giving you two taps on your shoulder, already knowing what was next. you two had a pretty good acting schedule when it came to it, when in reality, you despised eachother.

“sure daddy! eugene had been hitting on me for several days now, and even found my private social medias in use to.. how can i say this, use me for my fame? he tried talking to me, very inappropriately on several occasions, and even went as far as to try and grab me in areas in which i find extremely inappropriate, without my consent, might i add, which doesn’t seem okay with me. does it seem exceptional to you, mrs thompson?” you asked, while only keeping your eyes on his mother.

“why, i am so sorry miss stark! his father will be in contact, i did not raise my baby to be this way! im sorry for any inconvenience he may have caused you!” she gasped, raising a hand to her heart. 

“it’s okay, i just request, may this never happen again? i would not like my privacy to be invaded, much less from your son, and can i please ask that he never try to hit on me, nor any girls at this school ever again? i can only imagine how many other girls this may have happened to, mrs thompson.” you sighed, your eyes filling up with fake tears. you reached up to touch your fathers hand, tapping it twice back, knowing that you both had just won.

“never again miss stark, once again, i am so sorry this happened to you.” 

“it’s okay. now mrs cunningham, shall we see our way out?” your father answered for you, looking over at the old white woman who looked like a piece of cheese. she could only nod in awe, giving you the cue to pick up your bags and walk proudly to the door.

“thanks i guess.” you muttered, pulling out your airpods once more, hoping to seal the conversation with your father.

“yeah yeah, no problemo.” he muttered back, avoiding eye contact and stuffing his hands in his  pockets. 

once you reached the door, you remembered that you had left something in your locker, and informed your dad that you’d be going back to get it. he all but nodded and looked back at his shoes before trudging to the car.

once you entered the seemingly halls, much to your surprise, you saw a scrawny teenage boy lifting open a set of lockers, which you didn’t even know was possible, and pulling out a red and blue suit. once you saw who the hands belonged to, your mouth fell agape as you gasped,

“peter?”

[gryphsdeadbones]

hey from one nd person to another the comic where fm gordon says a slur seems kind of in poor taste. ik ur not intentionally making light of it and tht occurring in fm should be criticized but while you dont make it out to be a good thing making jokes about it and calling him a "slurboy" is kind of questionable? it makes it seem more like a plotpoint and angst rather than the creator of fm genuinely fucking up in the past (and having moved on from it)! i think exploring fm coming to terms with being nd is a good idea but this isnt the best way to do it. if you want me to explain my point more lmk if/when u post this and i will! someone already made a post abt it but it was kinda strongly worded and i wanted to approach you more calmly because i genuinely dont want to call you out or start drama or anything ;-;

first off thank you for being civil and patient with me i appreciate this ask a lot- also this got long- im not in a flying rage or anything when i bold or emphasis text, i just needed it also for my own readability and since im not the best at wording- hopefully this hellsite works and my response is under the cut

i would like to know how is it in poor taste when freemind explicitly gets clocked at the very end for saying it. the entire point of the comic was to show that saying the r slur has existed in his source and is bad

im not sure how much more direct i can get, with the disclaimer/warning list growing longer and longer and out there for a huge sign that says “this au can get dark as fuck and these subject matters are treated seriously/not something to mess around with.” Like yes, there are some jokes in the asks and other comics, but that specific comic is not supposed to be “haha thats funny”. it has a serious tone using a rough sketch style bc i was super tired and wanted to vent

was it just the direct reference to it that just made people uncomfortable? because thats 100% understandable, and i made sure i tagged it appropriately (although admittedly, a little bit late since i thought the filter would catch at least the main thing)

i think what some people somehow got from it is “exploring sensitive content = endorsing said content” which! that is not the intent! i absolutely do not want people saying that word! I don’t want people thinking that is any way okay for this character to say

its more of a damned if i do address it, damned if i dont.

if it never comes up, people are gonna assume that ‘oh this character says slurs and is shit, surely the creator or fan-creator MUST be okay with it and woobifies freemind and absolves him of any mistakes’ or something like that. no. this asshole has an arc and i want to do it right. its serious and i think it shouldn’t be shoved under the rug

and people just. dont want to read for context for whatever reason. theyll start watching it and get taken aback by the slur and start blaming me ‘hey you never warned for this’ when very early on i keep mentioning over and over ‘you dont have to watch it if you dont want to! This has slurs and 2000s internet brand humor/style’ You really dont, I’m not forcing you to watch it- Literally all you need to know is either canon half life or hl/vrai. thats it. fm mostly follows hl1 with very slight changes.

so i had to make something that:

1. warns people who arent aware and dont want to go through my asks or about/warning pages (for whatever reason) and just want to see the art

2. also NOT downplay freemind’s canon assholery. listen, i kinda despise writing mean and cruel characters, theyre hard to do, and a lot of people get shit for doing it wrong or people going “character = author”

i’ve also considered leaving the bubbles blank, but then people could fill it with whatever they want, then blame me for being vague. or they’d fill it in with a different kind of slur that freemind has never used, even if he MIGHT be the type to do that. I needed to explicitly mention that it is ableist slur. There are shitty racist and other problematic jokes, but never those kinds of extreme racial slurs to my knowledge.

Although I do see your point that maybe joking about it outside of the serious stuff might not be the best route. The slurboy jokes are getting stale, and I will try a better way to remind people.

The thing that gets to me is that it feels people are more than ready to defend either Ross Scott or Gordon Freeman the fictonal character himself. I don’t??? really care for Ross Scott, so I don’t know if he’s ever brought it up specifically. I’m not really calling him out or cancelling him. Idc for some white man’s feelings, im only bringing the timeframe of That era and reworking it to fit in This current era.

And I hate to break it to people: Gordon Freeman is a blank slate character, you can project whatever the hell you want on him as long as it’s not freakshit illegal garbage. The machinimas (fm, hl/vrai) do have SOME characterization that I want to nail down. It fucking sucks when characters are ooc, and I’m trying not to do that, even if it means sacrificing some comfort. But still mostly staying in my comfort zone if that makes sense

Now about the callout that I do not want to engage with the op directly:

Honestly im very surprised the comic was called out when i just. thought my stuff is relatively tame on exploring the bad shit canon freemind does. ive seen him in fancontent where they really dont hold back and its still played off as ‘kinda funny’ tone.

I really don’t know if people just want any reason to hate me for whatever reason. That’s fine I guess, I can’t please everyone and they dont have to like me.

But like. isn’t it so much easier for the op of that to block me and the post and move on. Why kick up such a fuss. I can see that thinly veiled death threat of a vague. That’s pretty fucked up- Like holy fucking god, you do not have to like my stuff. I’m not holding you at knifepoint to like my stuff. I’ve specifically made two different tags (one general au, one specific au) if anyone wants to blacklist it for their own reasons I do not need to know. I don’t want to know.

You’re allowed to be uncomfortable. You’re allowed to unfollow/blacklist/block.

However you just don’t go ranting about it for something you horribly misinterpreted. If it bothers you so badly, literally just. drop me a message to clarify. thats it. or save yourself the time and block me.

I’ve blocked the op for both our sakes, but if anyone wants to send this post to them, then thats fine. I don’t want anything to do with them.

I don’t want to link the post and blow it up. I just want shit clarified, dropped and we can move the fuck on with our lives. 

If you’re reading this and don’t know what the post is, please don’t bother. I do not want people going after the op with threats, please keep it civil, I’d prefer if you don’t engage with the post at all on my behalf.

Despite this huge wall of text, I do not want this to be a big deal, so please don’t ask me about the details.

_

As for anon, feel free to dm me either on here or. Maybe on discord if you’d still like to suggest or have something more cleared up. I’m still willing to hear any kind of feedback, and i want to thank you again for being reasonable about this

[vxvxan]

𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚒'𝚖 𝚗𝚘 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍  /  welcome aboard, vivian yu, student #34. we are excited to set sail with you !  has anyone told you that you look like park sooyoung? according to our records, you hail from las vegas nevada, usa, prefer she/they, are demigirl, and are here to study communications. we also see you received a spot on the ss university because of your money — we won’t tell anyone. during your first few weeks here, other students said you were  + bright, + cunning, but also - manipulative. it sounds like you spend most of your time at the high sea grill. upon checking your luggage, we noticed you packed your grandfather’s military pocketknife. hopefully your roommates don’t steal it!

hi it’s nia <3 this is my second muse vivian and i apologize soooo much in advance. lmao. their bio and info is below the cut. please like and im me to plot i am so so excited to bring u this angst bitch

vivian grew up in las vegas. they were born to not one, but two politicians. their mother was a state representative and their father was mayor of their town. ever since she was a kid, vivi was forced to spend her free time at donor events, fundraisers, and shuffled around at various events for causes around the city. everyone in town knew vivian by name and face. people sucked up to her: neighbors, teachers, law enforcement, anyone hoping to get ahead by way of her parents’ favor. it gave her a heightened sense of importance that quickly got to her head. 

by the time she was a preteen, vivian believed herself to be above the law and above those around her. by age 14, her father was running for governor and her mother held ambitions of working on a national level in washington dc. an only child with her parents both busy and in the public eye, vivi had absolutely no one to turn to. in her mind, no one would understand her, anyway. once she was 15-16, she was hanging out with an older crowd, skipping school, sneaking out and getting drunk to see if anyone at home would notice  ( they didn’t. )  her folks didn’t take notice of vivi’s bad behavior until her actions began affecting them politically. you couldn’t run a campaign on ‘safe cities’ when your daughter was being brought home by police at night and found lingering around sketchy clubs on the vegas strip. 

trigger warnings in next paragraph: drugs, drug overdose, death

vivian’s mind began to be wired in a really terrible way: the more trouble she got into, the more her parents seemed to notice she existed. maybe they were screaming at her, but they were communicating with her. and that was more than she’d had before. one night at a fundraiser, vivi met a boy who was a fellow politician’s kid. he invited her to a back room with a few other teens where she was introduced to cocaine. unfortunately, vivi became hooked right away. over time, she found comfort with drugs and with this group of teens; the only people who seemed to understand her and care about her. a few months later, she was at a party with this boy and their friends when he overdosed in front of her. his death profoundly affected vivi. she became even more withdrawn, talked to almost no one, and was cruel and cold whenever she did. after nearly being disowned by her parents for the overdose incident, vivi agreed to go to rehab. once she was out, they were sent away to live with their uncle in boston, massachusetts, so vivi couldn’t mess up their politics anymore. she stopped looking for attention from her family and instead wanted nothing to do with them.

( triggers over ) 

in boston, vivi attended public school. quickly she fell into her old ways, getting caught up with a bad crowd, ignoring school and rules, and partying constantly. at school, she met a kind student named harper and was very drawn to her. the girl was so good and everything vivian wasn’t. vivi knew she had absolutely no business getting involved with someone so pure and kindhearted, but she couldn’t help herself. harper was ... different somehow. for the first time, vivian fell in love and felt love. the two dated and vivi really thought she could be a good person with her girlfriend’s influence. however, the school year ended, vivi was shipped off to boarding school by her parents, and she regressed all over again. knowing the path she was on and knowing her girlfriend deserved much better, vivian cheated on her right away and broke things off. ever since then, vivi has cheated on every single person she’s ever dated and maintained fierce independence and selfishness. 

other info:  vivian may look poised and sweet from time to time, but don’t let it fool you. it’s her political upbringing that allows her to put on a faux aura of compassion and authority. vivi is still the same mess they have always been. they will be a bitch form time to time. they take kindness as an insult and as a method for someone to get something from her. it’s not her fault, really. it’s how she was taught. they’re impulsive, stubborn, ruthless, and self-destructive. they are very very intelligent and could do something with their life, if they ever learned to channel her good qualities. vivian just doesn’t know they exist. vivian is bisexual with a strong leaning towards women, but who knows ?  putting her into a box would be impossible. she’s an entp, virgo, chaotic neutral if any of that means anything to you. <3 

if you like this i will im you to plot !!  i’m soooo excited to bring vivi to yall and excited to see if she grows up or changes at all here lol

wanted connections ?? i am so open to anything don’t feel limited by these, but here are so ideas to help us: 

a former best friend who vivi fucked over

someone vivi started getting feelings for and then abandoned

friends with benefits

even better, enemies with benefits

someone vivi cheats on for exams, homework, etc.

someone vivian has a soft spot for but won’t admit 

someone vivi is super protective of  &  will fight over

partners in crime  ( warning u have to be ready to commit real crimes lol ) 

??? idk literally whatever ?? ?

angsty drama

[dasibom]

haven't read it but heard mostly very positive things about a little life, would be interested in why u think it's bad? (if u want ofc)

ofc i love talking abt how much i hate this book. i answered a similar ask on my old blog so i'm just gonna copy paste (with a little editing):

content and trigger warnings for rape, csa, suicide, self harm and abuse. both for the book and this post.

i have so, so many problems with this book. lets start with... the gay stuff. here’s an bit from a goodreads review (link) by Michael Flick, which says it better than i could. the whole review is worth a read, too.

“Some believe that this is “The Great Gay Novel.” That couldn’t be more wrong. There are only two recognizable gay men in this work, JB and Caleb. A creative queen and a violent, probably psychopathic, sadist. All the other “possibilities” are pedophiles (categorically not gay—that’s a sickness, an evil, that has nothing to do with being gay) or so hopelessly confused (and impotent) that you can’t know what they are (JB and Willem). The take on gay men here is antediluvian—a dangerous and discredited brand of heteronormative delusion in which all gay men, no matter the glittering surface of their lives, are fated only to die a lonely, miserable death. Caleb dies an excruciating death (so we’re told) from pancreatic cancer. JB, the witty, flamboyant, unstable, creative queen is merely a plot point. His happiness, told but not shown, at the bitter end doesn’t mean anything more than that. He’s a device to wring one more regret from you, one more sorrow. You can be assured that he, too, will die an ignoble death just beyond this novel’s last page. And you won’t be troubled or offended or titillated by the gay sex (or really any sex) here because there isn’t any: it’s the sex that dare not speak its name. All this is because the author knows absolutely nothing about gay men other than the most superficial stereotypes and doesn’t have the imagination to venture deeper than that. She can’t even imagine that a man (Willem) doesn’t need a woman to quench his sexual needs—he has a solution readily at hand.

other than this, i remember this book having lesbophopic language but i don’t own a copy and i'm not gonna search the internet for that.

basically the whole book is just pure torture porn. so many bad and traumatising things happen to the main character it feels unrealistic and i think the only reason it happens is because the characters life has to be miserable. that's the whole point of the book to me. there is no reason to so graphically include a ton of this stuff in a book other than shock value. some of this graphic stuff includes very extreme descriptions of self harm (mostly cutting but also other stuff), suicide (including possible methods), physical and sexual abuse (part of it when the main character is a child), violence and medical trauma. i’m afraid that there is a real danger to this book teaching people how to hurt themselves (or even stuff like where to hide the tools they do it with) and i can’t imagine what an actively suicidal person might get out of this book. it really, really concerns me. i’m afraid this book teaches people to not get help, to not go to therapy and get help if they’ve been traumatised and/or are struggling with living. i've been traumatised in childhood and i can imagine what someone younger than i am, someone more impressionable, could get out of this book. like seriously some very fucked up ideas, i felt like the whole thing about being traumatised, and the constant self harming and suicide attempts were presented in almost a romanticised way. obviously my opinion here isn't like objective, or something, cause i'm a person trying to recover and deal w childhood trauma, which still affects me every day, in several ways, and realistically, it will never stop affecting me, but the point is that although it was terrible and it fucking sucks, it doesn't mean i will have a life with no quality and will forever be unhappy and unable to cope. and this book so clearly disagrees with it. the fact that the main character is traumatised and that horrible things happened to him as a child feels like a death sentence when it doesn't have to be.

^ lmao a point i also wanted to bring up in this section is that not all of the shit that happens to the main character needed to happen because it's fiction and it's a made up story, like after some point when i was reading it and seriously messed up shit just kept happening and it kept on going i thought like... why? it servers absolutely no purpose after some point. reading a rape scene after rape scene stopped having an affect on me eventually and... that's not very good, is it? like, i'm trying to say, this is fiction, it doesn't need to go that far? at some point, a very early point at that, it was enough to get the message across that hey, what happens to this character is bad and fucked up, it didn't need to go on.

the whole book is also full of people enabling the main character to hurt himself over and over again and do nothing. every character is there to some way hurt the main character and people praise this book for being such a great tale about friendship. it is so pretentious and again, just pure torture porn. the book so clearly seem to think therapy and reaching out to people for help it bullshit!

i’m not saying you can’t write or discuss the themes that are present in this book but i just don’t think this is the way to do it. probably a therapist specialising in trauma should consult with the writer and someone should make sure the description of self harm and suicide will not harm anyone. i think there are guidelines made for that by people working in the field and i just feel like something like that would be of benefit here. like, i don't know, i don't have a solution, i'm just saying this is not it.

also, here is a link to the author literally saying she does not believe in trigger warnings. and i think those would have been extremely beneficial to have at the start of this book and i certainly would not have read it if it was for them. that would have saved me from so much triggering content that i did not want to read and i wish badly that i did not read. it seems clear to me the author does not have any idea how traumatic things can work, or at least that is what i think based on what she says. here is a link to an interview in which she says she does not believe in talk therapy. there, a point about a persons autonomy to end their own life is brought up which is a topic but if that’s what she wants to talk about then it should be done in clear terms and not with the only message “therapy doesn’t work if you’ve suffered enough trauma.” at least that’s how the whole thing seemed to me. like of course a persons own choice to end their life is a discussion i do think is worth having, but... that did not come across in the book.

lastly, here are some links i have saved about this book which i think point out excellent things if anyone wants to read more:

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/a0e1yi/convince_me_a_little_life_is_a_good_book_please/

http://post45.org/2016/06/im-so-sorry-a-little-life-and-the-socialism-of-the-rich/

https://cannonballread.com/2016/07/narfna-a-little-life/

& you're welcome to ask me to clarify something or just discuss, this is a little bit of a mess cause i copy pasted that old answer and edited it a bit to hopefully word things better but like. idk if much of it makes sense

[robinisaghost]

animatic ideas :0 (ramble away, i would love to hear them!!)

mk thank you for enabling me, i will now be yelling

anyway

this is gonna be so obnoxiously long i am so sorry

can you add read more's on asks? eeeekkkk because this got so damn long lmao

mild dsmp spoilers obviously

this is the playlist, by the way

-im sorry boris (wilbur soot)

i think it would work really well with mmm slightly post lmanburg niki. andby slightly i mean. well when she leaves (that is the whole thing of the song gdfjkhgsdf) also side note at like 1 minute 11 on that song theres a discord notification really subtly in the background and it makes me paranoid every time i hear it. anyway god its such a nice song. even for just like. the end of lmanburg. not necesarily paired with a character, just the sense of leaving a place that was so highly populated before it got blown up twice and was like. the main part of the smp. yeah. anyway also the lines "they'll knock down the pubs before helping you...they'll let you jump under trains before helping you" yeah those four lines have big niki vibes but also i think the song could work well with exile tommy or actually even with the finale when tubbo is about to sacrifice himself? mmmmm yeah

-this is home (cavetown)

mmmm got exile tommy vibes innit. a lot of these have exile tommy vibes tbf i just like sad songs and also exile tommy. plus the song has a lot of like. the message is sort of like. changing yourself to appeal to others? like with "ill cut my hair to make you stare" but also the repeated thing of "ill figure out a way to get us out of here" which is clearly the main character of the song trying to help everyone when they are clearly not in a good way themself. yeah thats got big tommy vibes in general tbh but more like. pre finale tommy. i think he got a bit more independant after that.

-soldier poet king (the oh hellos)

ok this is self explanatory and has been done to death already but d a m n its kinda funky. anyway i had thoughts and actually started this but then lost motivation and deleted it all lmaooo. the only proof of its existance is a shitty storyboard in my draw which will hopefully never see the light of day again (unless anyone wants to see it :eyes:) anyway i had the thought of like. sbi? so soldier techno poet wilbur and king tommy. but tbf tommy and techno are kinda interchangeable with that, cos while techno is obviously the better fighter, tommy is used a lot, especially in lmanberg era and also i think he probably will be now that wilburs back

-pyjama pants (cavetown)

ok so i honestly dont remember why this is on the playlist but tbf this could go well with a bunch of characters. thinking like. phil and wilbur? or wil and tommy, or tubbo and ranboo are two that like. i know for a fact that i did not put the song on the playlist specifically for them but god thinking about it now it works so well with them

-boys will be bugs (cavetown)

OH BOY THERES A LOT OF CAVETOWN ON HERE HUH (i feel like that probably says something about me but shhhhhh we dont need to talk about that) ANYWAY

I think this could probably work really well with tommy? because of the whole like. trying really hard to come across as not caring about others, but really being like. very vunerable. but at the same time it could go really well with wilbur for the same reasons. also the song fucks ok cant deny it. to be fair i think it works better with tommy, because he's younger and also he really likes bugs (unless i am mistaken) which is just a cool coincidence but still)

-brother (kodaline)

FUCKKKKKKKKKKK THIS WORKS SO WELL WITH SO MANY CHARACTERS AND IS ALSO ***SO ANGSTY*** WHAT

anyway

i added it because of tommy and tubbo because holy shit, but also it could work very very well with wilbur and tommy, techno and wilbur, probably techno and tommy, and oh my god i just thought of this but this would work so well with phil and techno!!!! but yeah i originally thought tommy and tubbo because i thought it was a funny coincidence with exile tommy waking up underwater, and theres a line that says "if you were drowned at sea, id give you my lungs so you could breathe" and like. just thinking about the compasses especially. me gusta.

-feel better (penelope scott)

fundy. that is all.

no ok this works well with fundy but also probably karl sapnap and quackity, and also very much wilbur, like it works well with both. just mainly fundy idk why its got big fundy vibes tho. very poggers.

-as the world caves in (matt maltese)

ok but like this goes very very well with the explosions of lamberg. either of them. i think probably the first one is better, but i think it goes well with both. probably the first one, because it was way more emotional i think? cos it was the first time that their homes had been destroyed and everything, but also because it was so personal, because wilbur was the one who did it. i think that also it would work well if it was set during the explosion but also focussed on different facets? so like. one bit about wilburs perspective, one bit about tommys, one about phils, one about fundys maybe? idk just a bunch of lmaburg citizens' povs for this. its good. as the world caves in is a song that can be so gender tbh.

-do you hear the people sing? (les mis)

obvious obvious obvious...... but like..... also tbh it goes well with a bunch of things. like, mmmmm wilbur in pogtopia. the butcher army. lmaburg independance war (obviously ghdskj) but yeah. also this song just goes so hard like b r u h

-wolf in sheeps clothing (set it off, william beckett)

SO MANY OF THESE ARE LIKE. PRETTY OBVIOUS IF YOUVE HEARD THE SONG

but yeah. it would go so well with like. well any betrayal basically. so eret, from tommys pov maybe, or about wilbur from nikis pov, or wilbur from anyone pov tbf, or quackity from charlie/purpled/foolish/sams pov, or sam from tommys pov, really it works well with so many people which says a lot about the characters tbh but shhhhhhhhhhhh

-need you here (idkhow)

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

mk mk mk mk FUNDY AND WILBUR THO

like b r u h that works so well with them

also i started this one as well but didnt like it, theres a story board in my draw as well for it because like. oh my god its such a good idea i just am shit at animating and don't have a decent enough program :')

also also

the line "daddy has to go, and that makes me sad, but daddy will always come back, he promised" fuckkkkkk that works so well with like. say for example, idk, when they're celebrating schlatts death and wilbur leaves to press the button? the sheer fucking angst of that is enough to kill any one person istg that is in fact the entire reason why i started the animatic in the first place. just that line. also all the lines sung by the child voice. fuckin angsty as hell. also ust generally a banging song, as is every idkhow song

-green (cavetown)

another cavetown song huh. ok sure.

mk so wilbur and sally and fundy. like. for a start, the imagry of a fish at the start? boom sally.

anyway the lines "you looked so good in green, i hope you're well, and you look so good with him, (schlatt ig?) and I'm proud of you still (wilburrrr and fundyyyy) i miss your perfect teeth, i was too blunt, i hope you feel happy, that's all I want"

FUCKKKK

the whole song is about missing someone you used to love and only hoping the best for them!!!! and wishing that they are happy and safe!!!!!!!!!!! and hoping they still think about you!!!!! but even if they dont its fine because all you want is for them to be happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

-achilles come down (gang of youths)

OK I THOUGHT IT COULDNT GET ANGSTIER

so like. tw suicide but thats what the entire song is about and bing bang boom i just think it works so so so so so so so well with not only exile tommy (who obviously did try to kill himself) but also wilbur in a slightly more metaphorical way? so like. his self destructive habits leading him to a point where he had no choice other than to kill himself and to take his country down with him. and its all about other characters trying to help them and persuade them not to but also near the end there is a second voice trying to persuade them to go along with it, which im thinking like. if its wilbur, either dream or maybe just himself. his own brain persuading him to continue down the path that would inevitably lead to his and his countries destruction. also it works well with schlatt for the same reasons, except he doesnt want to die. maybe (since the song is so goddamn long) like. one verse for tommy one for wilbur and one for schlatt? dead gang poggg but also like. the verses cover fairly different things which work with one character but not so much the others, for example the first verse would be tommy because its mainly about persuading the person to not kill themself (which tommy did himself but shhh) the second for schlatt because its literally about drinking and smoking away your problems, and the third for wilbur since its more of a fight between the "good" and the "bad" sides, which is obviously what wilbur was experiencing. also obviously i have a soft spot for this song because its string instruments and french, basically my favourite combination ever (also i like his voice idfk lmao)

ANYWAY THATS ALL THE SONGS ON THERE SO FAR

i literally thought of another song while i was in the shower today but i dont remember which it was but a n y w a y the playlist will most definitely be getting longer, especially since there are so many more songs that are good for this but i just havent added them yet lmao. anyway ive been writing this for like an hour gsdfjhgdhfsg but still oh my god this was fun to write

[primonizuto]

2. be a bit of cunt in the end middle paul was just pathetic enough to move me at times ( i think it's the addict with daddy issues in me that's to blame for that one) 3. watching miss anna on screen was just me whispering "if i speak oh if I SPEAK" under my breath on repeat for the duration of her scenes and LASTLY - tho i do not consider myself as someone who came out of this one as a primo fucker (the lesbian in me this time, i think)  there's this little moment after he shoots young angelo

and the accountant dude tries to calm him out of shooting little paul and he's doing it he's putting the gun down and then that old man calls him primo and right before he shoots him he does this little head tilt/shrug that's like a mix of "well im doing it now" and "this one i can shoot" and "what did you think was gonna happen old man" there was something about that little gesture, the inevitability of it, that made feel so SEEN.. just the controlled-crazy of him i was like wait thats ME

ok well it seems like tumblr has for real eaten the first part of this but literally love this so much for you anon.... i think the right word for big paul is exactly pathetic tbh like he is just. like. perfectly crafted to be as completely pathetic as possible but like i just hate him and his haircut so much </3

also like. YES. the physicality of primo is so .... ik we are all talking about this but there are so many little things he does and the way he externalises his thoughts sometimes is very deliberate it’s so fascinating, bc i don’t think he’s actually fundamentally that hard to read because you know what he wants and that his wants fuel him and everything he does is in service of getting what he wants, but he has this inevitability to him that somehow makes him unpredictable? like not to toot my own horn but the central thesis of the fic i’m writing rn is trying to make sense of how someone can be unpredictably predictable the way he is – like, you KNOW he’s going to do something, you know there is going to be fallout, but you don’t know what that fallout is going to be exactly, and that’s his unpredictability, which makes him so more dangerous than someone who’s just purely sporadically unpredictable in every sense of the word if that makes any sense lmao

like, in angelo’s death scene which u were talking about, primo knew he was going to go into that place and kill two people, and when leonardo talked him out of killing little paul he just had to adjust the target of his destruction. he still did what he went in there to do, and you could have predicted 2 shots would be fired, but not who exactly would be hit. and that is so fucking scary!!!!! it’s the inevitability (which trust does SO well) paired with unpredictability that makes him so interesting imo

(and not to abruptly shift this convo to the primo/leo truth im repping but this is why i think it’s an interesting relationship from any perspective, bc leonardo “THE ACCOUNTANT DUDE” seems kind of uniquely positioned/able to redirect primo where other people can’t, like their relationship is such a neat push and pull! bc leonardo seems to me to be the only one who really understands that you can’t put a stop to primo once he’s started, all you can do is sort of redirect his path with little pushes and pulls, hopefully so subtly that he doesn’t notice, BUT I ALSO THINK that primo has (or will) grow to rely on those pushes and pulls to keep him going in the absolute right direction, he needs leonardo to steer him a little bit. anyways. im insane and these are my puppets)

[livlepretre]

for the writing ask! 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 30, 31, 32, 44, 48, 51, 53, 54 (any other advice?) - sorry for all the questions. im just really curious, lol

oh geez haha I will endeavor to answer!

8. Favorite trope to write.

obviously enemies to lovers 😈

9. Least favorite trope to write. can I list fluff as a trope 

12. How do you deal with self-doubts?

I hit publish the same way other people do impulsive things like jump off a bridge (I did that too once. woke up with nightmares about it for weeks). When you’re doubting yourself-- and I doubt myself all! the! time!-- the best thing to do is to steel yourself for like 5 seconds, take the leap, and then wait. Most of the time people are incredibly kind and receptive, and whatever plot point was causing the anxiety will either go unnoticed or will be appreciated by someone out there. I feel like so long as the writing comes from a place of honesty and isn’t about sensationalizing or taking advantage of anyone, then it will work out.

13. How do you deal with writers block? I let myself put the work down and don’t stress about it. I have a rule where I only write if I feel like writing. It’s a hobby for me, so if I decide I would rather watch The Office or go for a walk with my husband, I just do what I want instead. A lot of times that’s because I have writer’s block, but writer’s block can’t be pushed. 

If I am determined to write here are some strategies I employ: 

Chances are I’m stuck because I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, or I’m not certain of what a character would do. So I reread the story up until that point, make notes on anything I laid down earlier that is relevant to the part I’m on, and map out character motivations. Hopefully this helps me create a working outline that will push me forward. 

If I’m stuck because of trouble writing the story in a more profound sense, I put the story down and start something new and low stress. In other words, I intentionally start a project where the bar for publication is super low.  For example, both Love Bites and (The Stars Were Brightly Shining) are pretty much first draft stories. I would write the chapter and hit publish same day (most of the time). This gave me something fun to do that was still exercising the writing muscle but also gave me the opportunity for positive feedback and made writing fun again. 

If I can’t write at all, then I turn to reading. I read things that I really like, and I take notes on what I like about the story both from a narrative structure/plot perspective and in terms of the writer’s style and word choice. In theory we’re supposed to read a lot as writers, and writer’s block is a great chance to do so. 

And, eventually, I’ll be cooking or typing up something for work or in the shower and the missing puzzle piece will fall into place. It’s okay if that takes months. I’ve had 4 hiatuses on FE that have lasted 4-6 months each. So long as you want to finish the story, you will. 

14. What’s the most research you ever put into a book? ehhh probably watching seasons 1-2 of The Originals so I could figure out certain plot elements for FE. I do get sucked into research holes every now and then, but as they’re largely useless I try to scramble out of them as quickly as possible. (I say this with fear in my heart for the research I would have to do to write the 1492 time travel story I have in mind) 

15. Where does your inspiration come from?

Poetry, books I read and love, folklore, songs, my unhappy adolescence 

16. Where do you take your motivation from?

Honestly I get A LOT of motivation from everyone who reads and sends me a message. FE is a much bigger and much more arduous project than I anticipated, and the support has been a HUGE help. Also, for my other projects like SWBS, it’s such an inspiration to keep thinking about it and to get back to it whenever someone mentions it to me. I really do thrive on the community aspect of writing. 

Also, it’s turned out that the older I’ve gotten the more disciplined I’ve grown as a writer. I’m 30 now, and there’s a huge difference between my writing habits the last few years and what passed for them when I was 21 and writing After the Fire, But Before the Flood. 

19. First line of a WIP you’re working on.

Three broken ribs, a punctured lung, a broken collarbone, and a concussion, with bruising along her face, from where it connected with the side pillar, and along her throat and chest from the seatbelt. Two dead parents. A low buzz throughout the town: her name on everyone’s lips. - Nights at the Museum

20. Post a snippet of a WIP you’re working on.

Damon looks at her and cants his head to the side and he tells her, voice flip and unreachable as only his can be, “I see you’ve cheated death again.” He makes it sound like it’s him she’s cheated by not finishing the turn. 

She opens her mouth to respond, but what can she say? Death still sits heavy in her lungs. Smoke burns her eyes and blood clogs her nose. She could choke on the smothering weight of it all. On the weight of his expectation in her. His disappointment. 

“I never wanted to be a vampire,” she tells him, finally.

The look Damon gives her strips her bare. Somehow over the past six months she has let him in, and now that he is here, she cannot hide from him. “You never wanted to make a choice with your eyes open.” 

-Innocence 

21. Post the last sentence you wrote in one of your WIP’s.

well this is pretty spoilery for FE, so, reader beware: 

Rebekah has her pinned by an arm around her waist, her back flush to Rebekah’s front, both of them kneeling on the bed, while Rebekah reaches around and slowly fucks her with her hand. - Fairytale Ending

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written.

Right now I am very fond of this: 

Looking up into his face, into his eyes, gone dark and blue as the river back home when the moon was low in the sky, she finally admits the truth she's been hiding from herself for months. The thing she has been most afraid to ever, ever say, even to herself. Her gravest sin, which in this moment, feels like her redemption. "I love you." Saying it out loud is like the moment she drove the knife into her own side. - Fairytale Ending 

31. Hardest character to write.

Damon -- he has a very particular kind of humor and cynicism which I find really difficult to replicate (although I think I’m getting more confident) 

32. Easiest character to write.

Klaus-- literally there is nothing too extreme, it’s so much fun 

44. Best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten. This will make like no sense but it’s from a creative writing class I took in high school, and the feedback was actually given to one of my friend, and I’ve remembered it ever since: “You have to use your avocado knives.” The context was basically he mentioned a pair of avocado knives sitting on a table and they never come up again. It’s the chekhov’s gun idea: when you put something down in the story, you have to actually use it. Everything in the narrative should have meaning if it’s mentioned, and work either functionally, metaphorically, or emotionally. 

48. Favorite genre to write in. Horror. 

51. Describe the aesthetic of your story _______ in 5 sentences or words. I’ll assume this is for FE: 

Gothic horror, where the blood is both in the grass and on the heroine’s hands. 

53. What does writing mean to you? It’s just something that I really, really like. 

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

I shared the bulk of it yesterday so here’s the rest: do what you want and have fun. 

[theasstour]

hey nora! i’m working on a harry fic that’s gonna take place in the 70s. im gonna have my main character, nikki, be a english lit major in college. ik it isn’t that original now because of after, but i think it fits her personality. anyway, i haven’t studied english lit so i’m trying to do some research. since ik you study it, i was wondering if you could help me. like just maybe tell me about some projects, some books you read (or your fav books) and your opinions on them. +

+ it’ll just help me develop my character a bit because i definitely want to make her really educated on the subject and make her knowledge evident in the fic. if you have time to help me, thank you! if not, that’s okay because ik your writing fics as well as doing some things for college.

Hiya baby💖 First off, I NEED to read this I will give you money I will give you my life !!! SAY THE WORD !!! Second, FUCK After! After is literal rubbish and your fic will not be compared to it! I won’t have it! None of that in this neighbourhood😌 Third, I’m gonna answer this best I can and hopefully it’ll help you some! Please don’t hesitate to pop by my messages if you have any other questions on specific books or what modules I did my second and third year! I’m gonna focus on my first year if that’s okay with you so I can go in as much detail as possible for you !!!! 💖 WITHOUT FURTHER ADO !!!

My first year I had eight (8) modules total and for each of those we had two (2) assignments! The main essay was 80% of the last grade and the smaller assignment was 20%! The S1 and S2 indicates which semester I had them!

Introduction to English Studies (S1)

Critical Reading 1 (S1)

Scriptwriting (S1)

Fictional Writing (S1)

Early English Texts and Contexts (S2)

Critical Reading 2 (S2)

Creative Non-Fiction (S2)

Poetry Now! (S2)

In Introduction to English Studies we mostly discussed very well-known texts! It was a basic, “this is how you analyse texts like a scholar, this is how you write an essay, this is what a literary theory is” etc! First text we read was Othello by Shakespeare, which was the play that made me fall in love with him in the first place! Idk what genre or what books you want Nikki to enjoy but if she likes Shakespeare, I think maybe Othello is a good place to start, it just sticks with you in a way. The setting, the relationships, the tragedy, just *chefs kiss*. We had a small 5-minute presentation about it, looking at the play through a literary theory. I chose to focus on Desdemona and feminism. For my essay I wrote about Othello being a sexist play, but then again, if you’ve read or heard about it, that point kind of explains itself otgijeiogj

In Critical Reading 1 + 2 we looked at literary critical theories. And let me fucking tell you, as a literary academic, a critical bloody theory is the worst fucking thing in the world. It’s so limiting and so “you HAVE to think inside the box” when the reason why me and my peers study Literature is cos we want to analyse a piece the way WE want and think is right, not in the way someone else have told us to. It’s interesting for sure, though, but I hate writing an essay through the eyes of a critical theory. To me personally, the concept of “The death of the author” was the most interesting theory, I also thoroughly enjoyed the lectures on sexuality, gender, equality, and feminism, but then again those are subjects I’m very passionate about so ofc lmao! If you want to ask me more questions about critical theories and which were worse etc, pls do pop by!!!!!!

Early English Texts and Contexts was the one I personally struggled most with, but that was cos the texts we wrote were SOOOOO old that it was a struggle to try and understand what was going on most of the time iojoweij! We read books like Oroonoko, The Canterbury Tales, Gulliver’s Travels, etc! When we had discussions in class no one really knew what we were talking about cos people weren’t really sure what we had been reading gojeoigj, most of us just stayed silent and watched our lecturer discuss with one or two students who probably read the summary online lmao.

Idk if that made sense??? But if you have any more questions, don’t even hesitate to pop by my messages!!!!! I’m so so so excited about this and I wanna help in any way I can!!! Anyway ilysm hope this helped some at least pgjweogij