#I'm looking forward to learning how to code on this thing

[yuzujjn]

APPLE CIDER ◟ LOSER HEESEUNG

𝗔𝗠𝗢𝗨𝗥或 ᪲ 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗂 𝖽𝗈𝗇'𝗍 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗆𝗎𝖼𝗁. 𝗐𝖺𝗂𝗍, 𝗂 𝖽𝗈, 𝖿𝗎𝖼𝗄

【 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 】 𝑙’ loser tutor!heeseung & fem!rea 8OO non idol au fluff oneshot incl. skinship slight jealousy ˊᯅˋ click

다니 ⦂ happy birthday @yeokii ! you are senior citizen now, hope u enjoy this

YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING.

“…so you’ll use this formula for these types of derivations,” he mumbles. “it’s not hard if you follow the pattern. the numerator should always,"

his glasses are slightly askew today, like he put them on too fast, and there's a slight smudge on the right lens. he hasn't noticed, of course. heeseung's too busy explaining derivatives like it's some love language, all soft pencil circles and furrowed brows. his voice is calm, patient, low. it's not fair how attractive he looks in this light—messy hair, rolled-up sleeves, shy eyes that barely meet yours unless you’re not looking.

and that's why you say it.

"you know, i think that one TA from econ is kind of cute."

you drop it casually, like you're not watching him from the corner of your eye, like you're not anticipating the pause he makes—just long enough to give him away.

heeseung doesn’t say anything, not for a second. he just… pauses. his pen halts mid-scratch, and when he lifts his eyes, they flick to yours fast, before quickly darting back down to the notebook like it offended him.

“cute,” he repeats, low and neutral. "hm."

you smile to yourself.

"yeah. he's smart too," you say, tone all sugary as you doodle little stars in the marigns of your worksheet. "you know the guy, right? marcus, i think?"

“i know him,” he says, flat. you’re dying. he’s so obviously pissed off it’s adorable.

and now he’s leaning back a little in his chair, arms crossed like he’s casual, like he doesn’t care at all—except you can tell by the slight clench in his jaw and the sharp little exhale he gives every time you say cute that he’s not casual at all.

you lean forward over the table, chin in hand. “honestly i feel like i learn better from him than anyone else.”

his pencil freezes on the paper. just for a second. and then he looks at you.

that gaze you know way too well, like he’s reading your entire thought process and rewriting it in his brain. “you come to me every tuesday and thursday.”

you smile sweetly. “yeah, but that’s just because your notes are color-coded.”

he doesn’t flinch. doesn’t blink. “you got a 96 on your last exam.”

“maybe i just got lucky or i'm smart,”

heeseung leans forward slightly, arms crossed on the table. his expression is unreadable, but his eyes aren’t leaving yours now. “you think that was luck?”

you’re biting back a grin, twirling your pen. “i don’t know. maybe marcus's method just works better for me.” there’s a pause. like he’s calculating what to say next. like he’s choosing violence.

“you wanna switch tutors?”

“mm, i didn’t say that,” you hum. “just saying, he explains things really clearly. i like how direct he is.”

his jaw clenches. not hard. just enough for you to notice. “i can be direct.”

you raise an eyebrow. “really? because last week you took fifteen minutes to explain conditional probability with a metaphor about dice and divorce.”

his cheeks slightly flush. bingo.

he leans back a little, stretching one arm over the back of his chair, tapping his pencil against the table like he’s thinking hard. but his voice is sharp. “if you wanna test how good i am at explaining, i can throw out the worksheet and do this entire lesson from memory.”

you blink. “oh?”

“right now,” he says. calm. cocky. eyes narrowed, but the corner of his mouth twitches, like he knows he’s challenging you. “you can quiz me. pick any topic. i’ll explain it better than him. because i’m smarter than him.”

you laugh, bright and surprised. “heeseung—”

“i’m not kidding.” his voice drops an octave. “you think he’s impressive? cool. but i promise you—he doesn’t know you like i do. he doesn’t know what parts you get stuck on. how you read questions out loud when you’re unsure. how you underline things twice when you’re confident. how you always forget to label your axes.” he leans in closer, just a little, eyes flicking down to your lips for a split second before meeting your gaze again. “marcus doesn’t sit here twice a week and rewrite notes based on your learning style. i do.”

and you’re quiet for a second. your face feels hot. your stomach’s fluttering. god fuck.

heeseung shifts back, not smug—just sure. “you’re not switching tutors.”

you narrow your eyes at him, but you’re grinning now. “wow. territorial much?”

he shrugs. “not territorial. just confident.”

“mm. so you’re not jealous?”

he snorts softly, finally looking away, and you catch the hint of a smile. “he’s not even that tall.”

“oh my god,” you burst out laughing. “you are jealous!”

he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and mutters, “i could explain hypothesis testing better than that guy in my sleep.”

you smile, watching him as he goes back to your worksheet like he didn't just get jealous. your heart’s beating too fast. he’s so serious, so smart, so him.

you lean in again, voice low, teasing. “well, heeseung, if you wanna prove it... i’m free thursday night.”

heeseung finally meets your eyes again.

and smirks. “then thursday night, you’re mine.”

[alasse-earfalas]

So uh. I have a Raspberry Pi 5 running MX Linux now.

I barely even knew what Linux was before I got the Pi. I haven't touched my Windows machine for the past couple days. I've just been browsing the web and installing crap on my Pi.

And now it's ready to be my primary coding and writing machine. Which means I'm going to be using it even more.

Does this mean I'm officially a nerd now? As if I wasn't already.

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

[ruhua-langblr]

Language Apps Suck, Now What?: A Guide to Actually Becoming "Fluent"

The much requested sequel to my DL post that was promised almost a year ago.

I'm going to address all of the techniques that have helped me in my language learning journeys. Since 95% of these came from the fact that in a past language learning mistake, they are titled as my mistakes (and how I would/did things differently going forward). For those that read to the bottom there is a "best universal resources" list.

Disclaimers:

"Fluency" is hard to define and everyone has their own goals. So for the purpose of this post, "fluency" will be defined as "your personal mastery target of the language".

If you just want to pick up a bit of a language to not sound like a total foreigner on vacation or just exchange a few words in a friend's native language, feel free to ignore what doesn't apply, but maybe something here could help make it a little easier.

This is based on my own personal experience and (some) research.

Mistake 1: Asymmetrical Studying

Assuming you don't just want to do a single activity in a language, or are learning a language like ASL, a language requires 4 parts to be studied: Speaking, Listening, Writing, Reading. While these have overlap, you can't learn speaking from reading, or even learn speaking from just listening. One of my first Chinese teachers told me how he would listen to the textbook dialogues while he was biking to classes and it helped him. I took this information, thought "Yeah that's an idea, but sounds boring" and now regret not taking his advice nearly every day.

I think a lot of us find methods we enjoy to study (mine was reading) and assume that if we just do that method more ™ it will eventually help us in other areas (sometimes it does, but that's only sometimes). Find a method that works for you for each area of study, even better find more than one method since we use these skills in a variety of manners! I can understand a TV program pretty well since I have a lot of context clues and body language to fill in any gaps of understanding, but taking a phone call is much harder—the audio is rougher, there's no body language to read, and since most Chinese programs have hard coded subtitles, no subtitles to fall back on either. If I were to compare the number of hours I spent reading in Chinese to (actively) training my listening? Probably a ratio of 100 to 1. When I started to learn Korean, the first thing I did was find a variety of listening resources for my level.

Fix: Find a variety of study methods that challenge all aspects of the language in different ways.

A variety of methods will help you develop a more well-rounded level of mastery, and probably help you keep from getting bored. Which is important because...

Mistake 2: Inconsistent Studying

If there is one positive to a language app, it is the pressure it puts on keeping a streak. Making studying a part of your everyday routine is the best thing you can do. I benefited a lot from taking a college language course since I had a dedicated time to study and practice Chinese 5 days out of the week (and homework usually filled the other two). Memorization is a huge part of language learning, and stopping and starting is terrible for memorization. When I was in elementary school, we had Spanish maybe a couple times a month. Looking back, it seems like it was the first class to be cut if we needed to catch up on a more important course. Needless to say, I can't even speak Spanish at an elementary level.

However, I'm sure many people reading this don't have the time to do ultra-immersion 4-hour study sessions every day either. Find what days during the week you have time to focus on learning new vocab and grammar, and use the rest of the week to review. This can be done on your commute to school/work, while you do the dishes, or as a part of your morning/evening routine. Making this as realistic as possible will help you actually succeed in making this a habit. (Check this out for how to set realistic study goals)

Fix: Study regularly (ideally daily) by setting realistic goals. Avoid "binge" studying since remembering requires consistent repetition to be most effective.

Mistake 3: Resource Choice

This is really composed of two mistakes, but I have a good example that will cover them both.

First, finding resources that are at or slightly above your level is the most important thing. Easy resources will not challenge you enough and difficult resources will overwhelm you. The ideal is n+1, with n as what you know plus 1 new thing.

Second, getting distracted by fancy, new technology. Newer isn't always better, and there are often advantages that are lost when we've made technological developments. I often found myself wanting to try out new browser extensions or organizational methods and honestly I would've benefitted from just using that time to study. (Also, you're probably reading this because of my DL post so I don't think it has to be said that AI resources suck.)

A good example of this was my time using Clozemaster. I had actually recommended it when I first started using it since I thought the foundation was really solid. However, after long term use, I found that it just wasn't a good fit. The sentences were often too simple or too long and strange for memorization at higher levels or were too difficult at lower levels. I think that taking my textbook's example sentences from dialogues into something like Anki would've been a far better use of my time (and money) as they were already designed to be at that n+1 level.

Fix: "Vet" your resources—make sure they will actually help you. If something is working for you, then keep using it! You don't always have to upgrade to the newest tool/method.

Mistake 3.5: Classrooms and Textbooks

A .5 since it's not my mistake, but an addendum of caution. I think there is a significant part of the language learning community that views textbooks and classroom learning as the worst possible resource. They are "boring", "outdated", and "ineffective" (ironically one of the most interesting modern language learning methods, ALG, is only done in a classroom setting). Classrooms and textbooks bring back memories of being surrounded by mostly uninterested classmates, minimal priority, and a focus on grades rather than personal achievement (imagine the difference between a class of middle schoolers who were forced to choose a foreign language vs. adult learners who self-selected!) People have used these exact methods, or even "cruder" methods, to successfully learn a language. It all comes down to what works best for you. I specifically recommend textbooks for learning grammar and the plentiful number of dialogues and written passages that can function great as graded readers and listening resources. (Also the distinction made between "a youtube lesson on a grammatical principle" which is totally cool, and "a passage in a grammar textbook" is more one of tone and audio/written than efficacy).

Classrooms can be really great for speaking practice since they can be a lot less intimidating speaking to someone who is also learning while receiving corrections. Speech can be awkward to train on your own (not impossible if you're good at just talking aloud to yourself!), and classrooms can work nicely for this. Homework and class schedules also have built in accountability!

Fix: Explore resources available to you and try to think holistically about your approach. CI+Traditional Methods is my go to "Learning Cocktail"

Mistake 4: Yes, Immersion, But...

I realized this relatively quickly while learning Chinese, but immersion at a level much higher than your current level will do very little for you. What is sometimes left out of those "Just watch anime to learn Japanese" discussions is that you first need to have a chance at understanding what is being said. Choosing materials that are much higher than your level will not teach you the language. It doesn't matter how many times someone at HSK 1 hears “他是甘露之惠，我并无此水可还”, they will not get very far. Actual deduction and learning comes from having enough familiar components to be able to make deductions—something different than guessing. An HSK 1 learner, never having heard the word 老虎 will be able to understand "tiger" if someone says “这是我的老虎” while standing next to a tiger. This is not to say you can never try something more difficult—things should be challenging—but if you can't make heads or tails of what's being said, then it's time to find something a bit easier. If mistake 2 is about the type of method, this is about the level. If you wouldn't give a kindergartener The Great Gatsby to learn how to read, why would you watch Full Metal Alchemist to start learning a language?

Side note: Interesting video here on the Comprehensible Input hypothesis and how it relates to neurodivergence.

Fix: Immerse yourself in appropriate content for your level. It's called comprehensible input for a reason.

Mistake 5: On Translation

I work as a translator, so do you really think I'm going to say translation is all bad? Of course not. It's a separate skill that can be added on to the basic skills, but is really only required if you are A. someone who is an intermediary between two languages (say you have to translate for a spouse or family member) or B. It is your job/hobby. In the context of sitting down and learning, it can be harmful. I think my brain often goes to translation too often because that's how I used to learn. Trying to unlearn that is difficult because, well, what do people even mean when they say "don't translate"? They mean when someone says "thank you", you should not go to your primary language and translate "you're welcome" from that. You should train yourself to go to your target language first when you hear the word for "thank you". A very literally translated "thank you" in Chinese "谢谢你" can come off as cold and sarcastic. I don't tell my friends that, I say "谢啦～". Direct translation can take away the difference in culture, grammar, and politeness in a language. If there is a reason you sound awkward while writing and speaking, it's probably because you're imposing your primary language on your target language.

Fix: Try as hard as you can to not work from your primary language into the target language, but to work from the structures, set phrases, and grammar within the target language that you know first.

Mistake 6: The Secret Language Learners Don't Want You To Know...

...is that there is no one easy method. You are not going to learn French while you sleep, or master Korean by doing this one easy trick. Learning a language requires work and dedication, the people that succeed are those that push through the boredom of repetition and failure. The "I learned X in 1 year/month/week/day!" crowd is hiding large asterisks, be it their actual level, the assistance and free time available to them, "well actually I had already studied this for 4 years", or just straight-up lying. Our own journeys in our native tongue were not easy, they required years and years of constant immersion and instruction. While we are now older and wiser people that can make quick connections, we are also burdened with things like "jobs", "house work", "school work", and the digital black hole that is "social media" that take up our time and energy. Everything above is to help make this journey a little bit easier, quicker, and painless, but it will never be magic.

I find that language learning has a lot in common with the fitness community. People will talk about the workout that changed their life and how no other one will do the same—and it really can be the truth that it changed their life and that they feel it is the ultimate way. The real workout that will change your life is the one you're most consistent with, that you enjoy the most. Language learning is just trying to find the brain exercise that you can be the most consistent with.

Fix: Save your energy looking for shortcuts, and do the work, fail, and come back for more. If someone tells you that you can become fluent in a ridiculously short amount of time, they are selling you a fantasy (and likely a product). You get out what you put in.

For those that made it to the end, here are some of my "universal resources":

Refold Method: I don't agree with their actual method 100%, but they've collected a lot of great resources for learning languages. I've found their Chinese and Korean discords to also be really helpful and provided even more resources than what's given in their starter guides.

Language Reactor: Very useful, and have recently added podcasts as a material! The free version is honestly all you need.

Anki: If I do not mention it, the people with 4+ year streaks with a 5K word deck will not let me forget it. It can be used on desktop or on your phone as an app. If you need a replacement for a language learning app, this is one of them. Justin Sung has a lot of great info on how to best utilize Anki (as does Refold). It's not my favorite, but it could be yours!

LingQ: "But I thought you said language apps are bad!" In isolation, yes. Sorry for the clickbait. This one is pretty good, and more interested in immersing you in the language than selling a subscription to allow you to freeze your streak so the number goes up.

Grammar Textbooks: For self-taught learning, these are going to be the best resource since it's focused on the hardest part of the language, and only that. If you're tired of seeing group work activities, look for a textbook that is just on grammar (Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar is my rec for Chinese, and A Guide to Japanese Grammar by Tae Kim is the most common/enthusiastic rec I've heard for Japanese).

Shadowing: Simply repeat what you hear. Matt vs Japan talks about his setup here for optimized shadowing (which you can probably build for a lot cheaper now), but it can also just be you watching a video and pausing to repeat after each sentence or near simultaneously if you're able.

Youtube: Be it "Short Story for Beginners", "How to use X", "250 Essential Phrases", or a GRWM in your target language, Youtube is the best. Sometimes you have to dig to find what works for you, but I imagine there is something for everyone at every level. (Pro tip: People upload textbook audio dialogues often, you don't even have to buy the textbook to be able to learn from it!)

A Friend: Be it a fellow learner, or someone who has already mastered the language, it is easier when you have someone, not only to speak to, but to remind you why you're doing this. I write far more in Chinese because I have friends I can text in Chinese.

Pen and Paper: Study after study, writing on paper continues to be the best method for memorization. Typing or using a pen and tablet still can't compare to traditional methods.

The Replies (Probably): Lots of people were happy to give alternatives for specific languages in the replies of my DL post. The community here is pretty active, so if this post blows up at least 20% of what the last one did, you might be able to find some great stuff in the replies and reblogs.

I wish you all the best~

[awesomefringey]

Hi love

Curious..anything in 2025 ..say a specific event that eased any doubt you may have had about our boys still being together? I hate that I waiver sometimes.. just wondering if you ever do..bit if there was one thing that " brought it all back full circle" what it was? . Love your blog..I'm a newer fan so thanks for your patience 😘

Hi nonnie, thanks so much for the kind words about my blog, even though I’ve been so inactive lately. 🩵 That’s also why I’m probably not the best person to ask this since I haven’t been keeping up closely. Considering they’re both on a hiatus, so am I and I truly don’t expect missing out on much signaling anyway.

Although to me, even before their tours ended, it felt like they stopped with the grand gesture-hints. The usual back and forth with the fandom, the little hat tips to what we discuss, the bouncing off of each other had died down for a while. Maybe because Louis and Harry don’t feel the need anymore? Maybe they’re in a better(?) place, and reassuring fans isn’t their top priority any longer? I don’t know. As a fan, I would love if they brought back those crazy larry coded moments. Those serotonin boosts were always incredible! But as a human being, considering they don’t have to signal to us, I’m also kind of relieved.

Honestly, the most meaningful signs to me were always the songs, the moments where they showed they care about the same things, share a similar mindset or outlook on life or their careers, express the same taste in music, or move in the same circles. Those little receipts will always hold the most value to me, especially the quiet consistency in everything. So, do I worry about their relationship because they’re not “bluegreening” while on vacation? Not at all.

I am looking forward to their next albums in that regards. I’m sure they’ll reflect where they’re at or have been with each other, with themselves. They’ve always been each other’s biggest inspiration anyway.

Are they still together? Have they broken up? Honestly, I don’t know. But I don’t question it anymore you know? I’ve long stopped needing them to reassure me. Letting go of that has made my life in this fandom way more peaceful.

What matters to me is that I know what I hope for. Because in the end, that’s what reflects who I am as a person. What life has taught me. What I learned and know to be true in love and relationships. So I won’t judge anyone who bails on them and finds what they see not satisfying enough to believe they’re still together. But to me… being in an 20 years long relationship myself. Damn! I know what on/off means. I know what “soulmate” labels mean. I know what outside pressure to not disappoint anyone means. I know what doing your own thing, your own growth means. But I also know what it means to figure out where you belong. Where your home is. Where your heart always is and has been.

To me, they love each other. To me, they’re it for each other. Wherever their journey takes them, whatever ups and downs they go through in their relationship, whatever personal growth they need to be the best versions for each other. Their love is something truly special. Always has been. Always will be. Why? Because this is what I know! Relationships aren’t always fairytales, but that’s how they become real.

[milaswriting]

Update. — 3rd October 2024

Well, helloo. If you're following me and reading this then...you must really hate me for my lack of activity on this blog. I apologise for that. Doing a masters degree really kicks my ass, and leaves me with no time to write. But Golden has never been dead or abandoned, it's very much always at the forefront of my mind.

And, for that pure reason, I know it's a story I haven't been 1,000% happy with so the story is going through some major changes. Probably, the first is that it's being rewritten. A (somewhat) new plot written with whole new software—we're making the move to Twine.

My reasoning; I've spent over a year learning the coding which makes me want to rip my hair out. I get to have a lot more ownership over my work, the customisation options are stellar, and you guys will get to read it for free.

The reasons for rewriting has been because I want to fix the cringey writing from when the story's first demo was released. It's mostly from the earlier chapters, but then the thought of plot changes came to me and I wanted to implement those. Realistically, the majority of what's being rewritten is what I had planned for book two—so I'm just bringing that forward. I'll update the synopsis closer to the release of this rewrite.

The changes (which can be subject to change): I'm getting rid of the university idea (though you can still choose careers that are related to those degrees from the options that'll be given) (e.g., if you liked the nursing student option, then your MC can work as a nurse). I'm thinking that the MC will already know about the supernatural world to some extent—there'll still be a lot of suspense and mystery and things to unravel, that was always going to remain. And, in this rewrite, my thought is that the MC and the gang will be working at a multi-agency organisation — called The Everbrook — where the aim is to bridge the gap between humans and supernaturals. To make the world run smoothly, so to speak.

The ROs are the exact same! No changes to that—the only change is that them and the mc will somewhat know of each other already. The genre is the same. MC is still as they are, a Lehsian socialite with a pretty (yet peculiar) birthmark. The parents will have much, much less of a role, but they'll still be mentioned here and there.

This seems like a load of word vomit, but I feel like these changes will improve the story. I'm hoping that it'll make MC less of a spare part in the story, allowing them to have more autonomy in the supernatural universe, especially with their enhanced skillset.

I've done the customisation in terms of the UI layout for Twine already, and it should be mobile friendly too. With that done, I've started writing and I'm a few thousand words in. A lot of what I've written in the ChoiceScript version can still be used, but also getting back into writing a story from scratch is something I'm looking forward to.

I feel like this is a bittersweet thing because yay to a new and better story, but also the time it's going to take to get it out. I'll debate whether to release the whole ten chapters, or do a few chapters at a time, like splitting it up into chunks (releasing three chapters now, and three chapters later on).

Another reason as to why I've taken so long to mention this, other than learning code and the rewrite, is just the whole process of this being a little nerve-wracking. The whole thought of a rewrite of something I've put so much effort into is scary, but it'll be worth it.

I'll accept any questions you've got, and I'll create an FAQ regarding all of this too. But, most importantly, you're in the loop of how this is progressing. I really appreciate everyone's kind words about this story: loving the ros, re-reading it, still sticking by my writing—it means a lot. So, thank you and I hope the future of this story is what you want and more.

PLANS.

Finish introductory scenes.

Finish chapter one.

WORD COUNT.

2.2k (rewrite)

[luveline]

hey! would you mind writing sirius black x reader (ole flame or something) when they meet for the first time since azkaban at a meeting for the order? thank you and happy holidays!

thank u for requesting, hope this is OK! ♡

—you and sirius both get to go home eventually, 2.2k. fem

You were still kids when Sirius… went away. You thought he hurt James and Lily, and it didn't matter that you loved him because he was evil and cruel and he hurt the people he loved most in the world, and then you were outposted thousands of miles eastward, your life a shadow. 

Remus sent you letters. You always answered, even when it hurt, but his last was too much to believe. You told yourself that someone forged his handwriting through a curse or some new gimmick, and then a second arrived with a smaller envelope hidden inside. 

No name written on it. No Dear anything to begin. 

Things are different to what you've been told. Please come home, it said. This penmanship was shaken like a hand out of practice, but something felt familiar in the curves and dots. 

If Remus’ letter (and the second smaller one too) were in fact telling the truth, it means you did something awful, and so, for a while, you don't go. 

Please, the next letter says, again enclosed within a larger explanation from Remus, I'm sorry. I just want to see you again. 

Getting home isn't as simple as he might think. You have to picture the destination very clearly to disapparate, and you have no sustained recollection anymore of the places you used to go. You remember silly things, slices of memories; the four of them laughing in a big green field, the sweet smell of hair oil to your left; the beige walls of a rented flat where you'd lay in bed for hours, sometimes days at a time, before things got too terrible to sleep; a string-lit garden that last summer, hands of poker on a glass table. These places aren't real anymore. You can't go back to them. 

Upon your request, Molly forwards you an address and a secret code. 

Trains, buses, trains again. A long walk through a cold street. Some secret this or that. You arrive in the night and a frowning face ushers you in, past a painting sealed away and up the creaking stairs. You spend hours sitting on the end of a bed coated in dust waiting for the sun to rise, your back stiff with nerves. You could slip out before anyone else knows you're here, it's not as if Moody would give you away. But why did you come, if you were going to run straight back to your outpost? 

You don't want Sirius’ betrayal to be true, of course. It took your breath away imagining what it would mean if he hadn't done what you thought. If it's all lies (as it seems to be), if he's innocent as he and Remus claim, it means you turned your back on him and left him to suffer, and he's still asking you to come home. 

A few people stir for breakfast. Molly, who's voice you remember, and some younger sounding ones that may be her children, or perhaps the newer Order recruits. Then comes Remus’ voice. He sounds different. Less Welsh, more tired. Homely anyways as he passes your door with someone beside him. 

“...any day now,” he's saying, “try not to worry.” 

“I do worry. I've worried about it every day for years.” 

You freeze up. 

The stairs creak, Remus’ voice moving further away. “She doesn't need worrying.” 

Sirius must stay at the top of the stairs for a moment. He sounds close. “I wouldn't know what she needs.” 

“Come have some breakfast.” 

“I'll write her again.” 

“After breakfast.” 

“What if she doesn't come?” 

“After breakfast,” Remus insists. “She can ignore you once we've had toast.” 

“I forgot how funny you are,” Sirius mutters. 

Hearing his voice fills you with doubt. He sounds nothing like he used to, no easy confidence to be heard, just fatigue. 

You look down at your hands. Hearing his voice has a new emotion sprouting, too. When you first learned what had happened to your friends, you felt anger like a knife everywhere you went. How could he do that to them? How could he do it to you, be that person, ruin everything you'd loved and made together? But later, when anger faded and grief ached, you'd missed the Sirius you loved. Shamefully, in longing pangs, you'd toss and turn to dreams where things were different. 

Now there's a chance he might still be that person, and you're hiding from him in his own house. 

“There's someone here,” Molly says as you leave your room, her voice nearly too quiet to hear from the kitchen. “Moody's told me this morning.” 

“What?” Arthur asks. 

“Who?” a younger voice says. 

A small intermission of quiet. “Well, I don't know,” Molly says eventually, though she must have guessed it was you from the letter you sent. “But I'll need another loaf of bread. You'd better go, boys.” 

“Mum,” one whines. 

“Come on now.” 

The stairs whimper as you descend, the bannister sticky with old gloss under your hand. Paisley wallpaper and drapes catch your eye as you pass the overflowing shoe rack. There must be more people here than you'd thought. The coat stand is similarly overloaded. 

You can see into the kitchen as soon as you take the last step down. Molly stands wringing a dish cloth between her hands, two teenage boys at the kitchen table. Remus stands near her right with a cup of tea, and when he sees you, he genuinely smiles. 

“Oh, good,” he says, the scar that bisects his lip pulling as he takes a sip of tea. 

The teenagers turn to see you. “Bread, boys! Arthur, you can go with them," Molly says.

Arthur doesn't complain. You falter in the hallway, quiet as the trio of Weasley's leave the kitchen in their slippers to take a quiet exit from the front door. They smile politely as they go, but the boys whisper as the door shuts behind them. You wonder if they have an inkling of who you are, and then you wonder what you might say now they're gone. 

Molly remains, inquisitive to know that you need privacy but also the security of her company. She was always smart like that.

“Come in, then,” Remus says. 

“I–” You clear your throat. “I'm not sure I should.” 

A startle of silverware against china. 

Remus gives you one of his looks. It has tears threatening to well. Why didn't I fight to see him more? you think. Suddenly years have passed and he's changed, but his reassuring glances remain. It's like he's saying everything is fine, why wouldn't everything be fine? Chin up, dove.

Sirius appears in the doorway. Dark circles beneath grey eyes, his cheeks gaunt with hunger rather than the sleek sharpness he once possessed. He's still pretty, if wounded. It's as though you've found an old photo of him that's been smudged with age. He's stepped out of one of your moulding albums to haunt you. 

“Angel,” he breathes, his hand clasped low on the doorway, “you're here.” 

You look past him to Molly and Remus. There isn't a reality nor dimension where they'd let him stay here if they didn't believe his innocence. Remus explained it all in the letter and still you worried if he might have gotten it wrong, and simply believed what he wanted to believe, but it's not possible. Remus loved James so much, he would've killed Sirius himself if he really thought Sirius was the secret keeper who betrayed them. 

So. It's a relief to be home. 

You stare at him. “You look tired,” you say quietly. 

“I'm fine. I am.” 

He seems alright, considering. You'd even say he was handsome with his hair pushed away from his face, a dark shadow of stubble around his mouth, but he looks exhausted.  

You're expecting him to say what you'd say. How could you ever think I'd do it? 

Sirius was prone to similar bouts of pride, or righteousness, justice, whatever you want to call it, but he doesn't bother with that now. He looks at you as though you're the only person on earth, gaze narrowed but eyes wide, pain between his brows as he asks, “What's wrong?” 

Your hand finches up to your cheek to wipe the sudden tear away. “I thought I'd never see you again.” Your Sirius. 

“Don't be upset,” he pleads. 

“How can I not be? I left you all alone for so long.” 

He laughs roughly. “Sweetheart, what were you supposed to do?” 

“Not just give up.” 

“You thought it was me. That's the only thing you could've done. Either of you,” he says, gesturing backward with his hand. “It was hard… to know who to trust, at the end. It's not your fault.” 

You really were only kids together, not half as in love as James and Lily, but that doesn't mean you weren't mad for each other. He looked after you. You would've had a life, you think. 

“You were just gone,” you say, looking down at the floor between you, eyes tracing lines of wood grain. “Everyone. There was nobody left. And I just let you go.” 

“Do you want to come here?” he asks. You lift your head. His hand is barely in front of him, fingers open, palm up. 

It's like taking a stranger's hand for the first few seconds. You keep them low between you both, unfamiliar to each other. But, you find, as his fingers wrap around yours in that selfish way they used to do, squeezing rather than intertwining to make all of them fit, he remembers you.

You step a little closer, your arm to his chest, and look up at him through your lashes. It would melt him like a candle near a furnace, this look. He'd be smug or seething about something and you'd sidle in to stand between his shoes, unsure of what to say but determined to be there for him. It's the same now.  

“What's wrong?” he asks under his breath. 

“I left you all alone,” you repeat. 

“It wasn't your choice, okay?” He smooths his free hand from your elbow to your upper arm. 

Molly says something to Remus. He chuckles and says something in return. Happier to admit it if it's only for Sirius’ ears, you say, “I'm really sorry, Sirius. I miss you every day.” 

“I miss you too,” he says. 

You push your arms around his waist and hide your face in his chest, feeling for the lines of who he used to be, the dip of his spine in his back or the soft cotton of one of his old t-shirts. You regret hugging him at all, until he puts his arm behind your head, a shaky breath released against your crown. 

I'm scared, he'd said. But I don't want you to be scared, okay? Barely twenty, he smelled of the sticky red powder on the end of matches after a night doing things he couldn't tell you about. You could tell him you loved him, and he you, but you weren't to discuss Order business. We'll be okay. 

But Lily–

Everyone's going to be fine. I promise. 

“You promised,” you say to yourself. Too quiet for him to hear, but he does. 

“I promised you so many things I'm not sure what one you mean,” he says with a disappointed laugh. 

You pull away, taking his face into two hands. “How do you feel?” you ask, ignoring the tremble working up from your wrists. 

“What?” His eyes are dark. 

“How are you? Did they– I mean, are you okay? Are you sick?” 

“Remus has patched me up. And Cordelia, the medwitch, you know her?” 

“I don't know anyone. I've been away.” 

He nods sadly. “Yeah. Well, you look the same.” 

“I don't.” 

“You do! You look the same,” —he almost sounds happy, his lips curling into a smile— “sweetheart. Sweetheart–” He closes his eyes. 

You push his hair behind his ears. “You don't look the same,” you confess, “you have wrinkles, right… here.” You touch the corners of his eyes. 

“You're still beautiful.” 

“Mm. You can't even see me.” 

“I don't need to see you. I knew you would be.” 

You rise up to kiss his cheek gently. “It's like you're back, like– like, I always felt like you were gone. And now you're home again. You are home, aren't you?” 

He covers your hand with one of his. “You're here, so–” 

You laugh together nervously. “Yeah, I'm here.” 

“I have stuff to do to make it right.” 

“Then we'll do it.” 

“Okay,” he says. He swallows a breath, and wraps you in a surprisingly tight hug. “Did you read my letters?” 

I don't want anything from you. Just to see you're okay. 

“I read them. I'm okay. Don't I look okay?” 

“You look perfect. Just like the last time I saw you,” he says. It startles you how suddenly he sounds like he did when you were young, his flirting drawl, voice velveteen. 

“Not like that,” you laugh. 

He pulls you as close as you can be, rough now, his arms solid around you. “I missed that,” he says, rubbing your back. “I forgot how you sound when you laugh.” 

You've led very different lives. “I didn't forget yours.” 

“You wouldn't. You love having things to hold against me.” 

You stroke his hair. “Maybe a little.” 

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The TTPD Deep Dive (Part ?)

It’s no secret that I have a lot of Thoughts about The Tortured Poets Department and it has lived rent-free in my head since it came out earlier this year. I’m absolutely blown away by how underneath the chaos, it’s actually an exceptionally cohesive story and is probably the closest to a concept album Taylor has ever done.

There are so many themes that have stood out to me over the last five months, and there’s one in particular that I think not only drives the entire album, but ties into previous albums to help deepen understanding of it.

This is it, my fangirl magnum opus, my months of posts consolidated into one place. This is also my disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of the album, and my summary of the story it tells, and I don’t pretend to have any special insight or authority. I’m not saying I’m correct at all, do not take any of this as fact, it’s just what it sounds like to me, and these are my silly not-so-little thoughts about it.

(Under a cut because it’s way too long and involves discussion many may not care for or be sick of.)

Come one, come all, it's happening again (I'm thinking too hard about Taylor music)

The overarching theme in TTPD to me is: Grief. If you’re looking at TTPD as a story being told (instead of just as someone’s real life), the inciting incident of TTPD is loss, and the grief from that loss is what drives the narrator’s actions and the fallout, as well as unpacks those complicated feelings and how they apply to the her life in general. By the end of the standard album, it’s also about recovering from that pain, moving on from it and learning from it.

The loss specifically is the loss of the dream of having a family (with one’s partner). One thing that is abundantly clear both on the top line and under the surface in TTPD is how Taylor (as a person and as narrator) longed not only to for marriage but specifically parenthood, and the fear and then realization of losing that chance absolutely wrecked her— which is why the next lover’s (the conman's) wooing worked so well, because it preyed on that yearning. Yet that loss also dovetails into the grief of many things: of youth, of idealism, of relationships, of ideas, even of self, which causes almost a deconstruction of a belief system to piece one’s life back together by the end.

THE CONTEXT

TTPD weaves in the topics of marriage and motherhood both explicitly and in the subtext, in various forms and scenarios. The cheating husband in “Fortnight.” The wedding ring line in “TTPD” the song. “He saw forever so he smashed it up” in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” All of “So Long, London.” Running away with her wild boy in “But Daddy I Love Him,” fantasizing about weddings and joking about babies. The imaginary rings in “Fresh Out The Slammer.” The cheating husband (again) and the friends who smell like weed or “little babies” in “Florida!!!” “You and I go from one kiss to getting married,” “Talking rings and talking cradles,” and “our field of dreams engulfed in fire” in “loml.” (And arguably: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.”) “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short,” in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” They may not sound like much on their own, but they paint a picture about how the topics pervaded her thoughts and her writing, and in many cases express her desires, and her pain.

It’s something that goes back several albums when you pick up on context clues. You get the first hints on Reputation with “New Year’s Day,” and “you and me forevermore.” Then Lover is very forward with it: “Lover” is basically wedding vows, “Paper Rings” is very engagement-coded, “I Think He Knows” is cheeky but low-key “you better put a ring on it,” “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” has wedding/marriage imagery in the last verse. As a self-professed diaristic writer, it’s the type of stuff one presumably doesn’t put out there unless those conversations have already happened, and she was very excited about it at the time it was released.

Then the pandemic happens and folklore comes out, and while there is still happy love there (“invisible string”), there are also the first indications that something has happened to put a halt to whatever future she once dreamed of (“hoax,” “the lakes”) and that she’s trying to reassure herself and him that it can still happen even if she’s scared it might not (“peace”). Notably, as far as I can remember it’s the first time Taylor explicitly brings up the idea of family (with her partner) with “you know that I’d give you my wild, give you a child,” which stood out at the time because it’s so incredibly vulnerable, but it’s even more poignant when you really take in that the whole song is like a confession of her deepest worries, and this is her vowing to give him these things that she holds most sacred if he’ll let her. These are what she cherishes most dearly and wants to return in kind: her youth and commitment (my wild), the family she craves (a child), unconditional support (swing for the fences/sit in the trenches) and understanding/compassion (silence that only comes when two people know each other).

Evermore follows an even darker path, and suddenly the album explores relationships that end and grappling with loss. There are toxic relationships (“tolerate it”), dangerous marriages (“no body, no crime,” “ivy”), failing/broken relationships (“Coney Island,” “champagne problems,” “happiness,” “‘tis the damn season”), as well as grief (“Marjorie,” “evermore”). Even some of the happy songs have uncertainty in them: in “willow” she’s begging for him to take her lead, like she’s still trying to decipher him and ask him to commit; in “cowboy like me,” still a beautiful love song, she’s thinking, “this wasn’t supposed to work and we were supposed to bail on each other but we fell in love instead”; “evermore” is about the depths of severe depression (and more) with the love story being the one saving grace in her darkest hour. And it’s also notable that after all the “fiction” writing, shortly after this album she writes “Renegade” where she’s telling the subject: I’m ready to start the next phase of our life now, why aren’t you? Is it me you don’t want after all? It’s like there’s something telling her that this stall might not just be a stall.

Midnights is a jumble (in a good, but in hindsight, also sad way) with the “sleepless nights” concept, but it seems pretty clear now that the themes and events and relationships she was revisiting tied into a lot of what she was feeling in her present life. I wrote the cliff notes version awhile back, but she’s questioning so much of her life that’s reflected in past events and relationships. Am I actually always the problem? How did we lose sight of each other and what we had? We only seem to work when we block out everyone and everything else. Can we ever go back to when things were good? Why are you neglecting me? I once thought I was going to lose everything but you saved me in the nick of time, can that happen again? I chased my career, but did I give up my chance at having a family in the process? Nobody knows what I really suffer from behind closed doors and I’m all alone.

And so on, which in retrospect now that we have TTPD, is very much what she was grappling with in private while writing and releasing the album. The inspiration behind the songs may have been different events and muses, but regardless of their origins they all end up feeling too familiar, like she's seen this film before (ahem). We’re seeing her view of commitment change too, or rather how she writes about it: she’s not making the outright declarations of it like on Lover, or even the implied ones on folklore, nor is she talking of the dark side of it like evermore. For the most part it’s a return to the early days of some relationships, before things got hard, or the end of them when there was nothing left, and also pushing away the discussion of it altogether by the outside world. “Sweet Nothing” is a sweet slice of life, but even at that, it’s the peace of the home in conflict with the pressure of the outside world. Now that we have “You’re Losing Me,” which was written at the same time as the rest of the album, we can probably deduce that she was going back to the start because something happened that made her doubt the future.

THE SETUP

So much of Midnights directly ties into TTPD, and I said in the post I linked that it’s like Midnights is asking the questions that TTPD answers. But there’s one song in particular on Midnights that sticks out to me as being key in the broadest sense to understanding the state of mind that led to the events of TTPD, and that’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” because the way it expresses grief is reflected in the theme of mourning a life built and the dreams along with it that are never realized in TTPD. There are several instances in TTPD that are basically variations of: “every single thing to come has turned into ashes,” and that’s what makes her snap, and leaves her vulnerable to someone who promises her those things when she’s bereaved at losing them in the first place. (In other words: “the deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling.”) The song tells a story about how that loss of hope colours one’s entire mindset, and in some ways is a bridge to TTPD to understand what such a low point feels like.

I think that that grief, and most importantly losing hope for an imagined future in its wake, is fundamental to understanding TTPD on so many levels: both the decline with one partner that kept her hanging on then led her such a dark path, and why she fell for the conman's apparent bullshitting because it offered an express pass to what she was losing with her partner. And I also feel like it plays a part into the ruminating she’s doing all over Midnights, trying to make sense of where she finds herself when she’s writing the album, which directly leads to “You’re Losing Me.” Loss permeates so many of the stories on Midnights: of lovers, of innocence, of youth, of faith, of control, of life’s work, etc. “BTTWS” is just one of the ways in which it is expressed so fully, capturing that deep depression and subsequent extinction of faith in something that once felt assured and very much wanted. (Which is also mentioned in her writing process in the “Depression” playlist on Apple Music.)

If you understand why that feeling of loss in general across so many parts of life is so important to Midnights, then it illuminates so much about the “narrative” in TTPD too. If on Midnights she’s wrestling with the seeds of grief and loss (on multiple fronts), TTPD is her reckoning with it in its full form. “So Long, London” is the song that is the most explicit about it: How much sad did you think I had in me? How much tragedy? Just how low did you think I’d go before I’d have to go be free? You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. It’s the sequel to “You’re Losing Me.” It’s, the air is thick with loss and indecision, I know my pain is such an imposition, I’m getting tired even for a phoenix, all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, I’ve got nothing left to believe unless you’re choosing me, my heart won’t start anymore, but from the other side of the break.

This is highly speculative, but if you follow the thread about the topic and the relationship as told from Rep through TTPD, in broad strokes it goes: young love with a serious connection (Rep) -> growing up and making life plans (Lover) -> something happens that delays those plans or makes them grind to a halt (folklore) -> serious doubts arise and cause a loss of faith in their future (evermore) -> struggling with the loss of that future and trying to make sense of the problems in a last ditch attempt to save the relationship (Midnights) -> fallout from that grief after the blowup of the relationship (TTPD). Understanding that progression of events (through the music) explains not only the storytelling side of TTPD (e.g. the jump from the partner to the conman) but also how the experiences/muses blend in the music, and how the music that on the surface is about the short-term relationship is really driven by the destruction of the long-term one.

Following the music, it’s IMO implied that Taylor (the narrator) was holding out for marriage and family with her partner, for years, and it seems like it was at one point a shared dream until something happened to pump the brakes, and seemingly on her partner’s end. And extrapolating further, given how the sorrow expressed in former albums bleeds into TTPD, it sounds like a plan that had been concrete in some form before it had fallen apart, and losing something that once felt so tangible is what drives her in her grief to find any kind of respite from the pain. Which is why the situation with the conman becomes so appealing as the one with the partner splinters further and further.

(If everything you’ve once touched is sick with sadness and you don’t want to be sad anymore, what are you left to do?)

THE STORY

So (one part of) the story kind of sounds like this from the standard album: the relationship with her partner as well as his mental health slowly deteriorate and he withdraws emotionally (“London,” “Fresh Out The Slammer”) and physically (again, “London,” and “Guilty As Sin?”) and takes his resentment out on her (“London” and arguably “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” even though I don't want to get into muse speculation here). As she sinks deeper into her own depression as a result, the weight of the failing relationship starts feeling like a cage— or a noose (“London,” “Guilty”), but coming to terms with the loss of their life together and the future they’d dreamed of was killing her (again, “London,” but also “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”).

Enter the conman who she reconnects with at the very point where this is coming to a head (knowing that IRL she reconnected with him around the time Midnights was being worked on) , and if you read between the lines, she confides some deeply personal things to him (“Down Bad” and “hostile takes overs”/“encounters closer and closer,” “Smallest Man” and the entire sleeper cell spy imagery which is one of my favourite things and I could write a whole essay about the meaning of it, “loml” and “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme”). Then after she’s confided these secrets to him, he insinuates himself back into her life (“Guilty,” “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man”) and sells her a dream that HE can give her all these things she hopes for (again, “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man,” “loml,” song “TTPD,” “Broken Heart”).

But the thing is, he only knows these are the things she wants because she’s revealed it to him, and presumably, told him that was what she was losing by staying with her partner. And instead of the normal response of, “that is really sad that your partner is not supporting you and you deserve to be treated better,” to a friend in growing distress, it seems like it was, “well I can give you all those things!!!! Right now!!!! Trust me!!!!” And worked on her until she believed it, and jumped at the chance at a precarious time in her life. And one thing I want to underscore is: Taylor has agency in the situation always, it’s not like she’s been kidnapped and brainwashed. (In fact, she implores on songs like “But Daddy” that SHE is in charge of her own choices, good or bad.) She chose to rekindle the friendship and then relationship, and she chose to eventually leave her long term relationship for another man, and she reiterates on the album that she owns this all. But it’s also: nothing exists in a vacuum, and she makes choices based on emotions and information she has at the time, which is why it gives so much whiplash.

THE ALBUM

When you look at it as, the situation with the conman only happens because of what happened with the partner first and that the appeal of the conman and the fantasy he sells her is a direct reaction to that, it makes the “swirliness” of the music make so much more sense. And for much of it, even many of the “conman” songs on the surface are really “partner” songs underneath.

Fortnight

A suburban gothic allegory about a broken marriage with a distant husband with a wandering eye, which makes the rekindled romance with the neighbor so appealing. She’s miserable caged in her stifling house because she’s been abandoned by her spouse, so the reappearance of this past love reignites the passion that’s dead at home.

TTPD

“So tell me, who else is gonna know me?” “I chose this cyclone with you.” I’m gonna kill myself if you ever leave. Everyone knows we’re crazy. She’s laying it out there that she’s already in a dangerous state of mind, and she’s actively putting herself in more danger by pursuing the conman. “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding,” spells this whole thing out so clearly: whether it’s an actual event (likely) or a metaphor for the promise he makes to her, the reason why it makes her heart explode is because it’s the thing she’s been waiting for forever with no movement, and here this person comes in and slips it on her finger in an instant like it’s nothing. (And eventually, as we’ll come to know, it is absolutely nothing to him.) You mean it could have been this easy this whole time?! (Well, no. Not until a certain other suitor makes his appearance later.) It feels like she’s finally getting everything she wanted in the blink of an eye! How lucky! How convenient! What was that about the get-love-quick scheme you say? (Unsaid: the reason why this feels so urgent is because there’s a sense that time is running out in so many aspects of her life and not just the obvious. Which reappears later on.)

Down Bad

“Did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” sets the scene for this euphoric experience in the moment that starts to feel violating once the dust settles (which is then followed up in “Smallest Man” and the spy mission on her). The bridge spells out how he weaselled his way into her life, preyed upon (intentionally or not) her emotional state, sold her a dream and then vanished, without the benefit of hindsight yet we see later in the album.

The alien abduction metaphor is pretty brilliant, because it shows both how she was desperate to escape the place she found herself in, and how much it screwed her brain to then be left stranded when the affair was over. “[I loved your] hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer,” is so evocative because it details how the situation came to be: his overtures under the guise of friendship blurred lines until he made her an offer that she eventually couldn’t refuse (hostile takeovers) as he infiltrated her life more and more intimately. The sad thing is that the song has parallels to how her relationship with the partner started too in earlier albums, in that they ran away to live in their own bubble (or planet) only for him to metaphorically abandon her as the years went on. (Oven, meet microwave.)

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Being continually emotionally broken down by a person who knows he’s hurting you but still acts the way he does. (The original voice memo version makes this even clearer and it’s rather heartbreaking.) “He saw forever so he smashed it up,” speaks to the loss of a future the person became scared of, and the original lyrics (“he saw forever so he blew it up”) somehow cut even deeper to me because it feels so much more intentional.

Also in the original version, “he was my best friend and that was the worst part,” also speaks not only to the loss of an entire partnership in the wake of this hurt, but also to the feelings of betrayal that the person you trust so deeply has the ability to hurt you in this way too, and how it’s a one-two punch of not only losing the relationship but also your closest confidant. (It’s like the sequel to “Renegade” and the missiles firing to me.) Again, there are shades of both/many situations in the song, pointing to an unfortunate pattern in some ways. The situation in “My Boy” is part of why she was so low, and why the “get love quick scheme” was so appealing later on. And it dovetails nicely into…

So Long, London

The most explicitly “partner” song that puts a coda on “You’re Losing Me,” and is Track 5 because it’s the emotional underpinning of how she got to where she was, and drives the events of the rest of the album. It spells everything out: He withdrew, she tried to fix it for both of them, eventually even that stopped working, he was oblivious to or minimized how badly she was suffering and his (in)actions couldn’t reassure her, he wouldn’t move forward on their future plans and stewed in his own struggles, she was spiralling out of control trying to hang on and ultimately felt like she was going to die if she didn’t leave.

But Daddy I Love Him

Like a direct reaction to “So Long, London” in that she breaks free from the death of one relationship and throws herself with reckless abandon to the next, fuck the haters. How dare you judge me, when the relationship you think I should have stayed in was killing me? (Dutiful daughter all the plans were laid. All you want is gray for me.) Fuck all of you, I’m going to choose whoever I want! (So what if I have a baby with HIM, huh?! I tried doing it the proper way and look where that got me so now we're back to square one) It’s again her imagining how wonderful and freeing this “wild boy” is going to be for her, and how wrong she’ll prove everyone. THIS TIME she definitely got it right. So what if she has to run away! So what if she scandalizes the whole town! They don’t know what she really wants or needs anyway! She’s the only one of her (hee-hee-hee) and she’s the only who gets to decides how this goes. (Because: she longs for control in a situation she’ll eventually realize she has little of it in, which we’ll find out is a recurring theme in her life.)

Fresh Out The Slammer

Also spells out what happened with the partner in the first verse and the pre-choruses, which is what makes the conman so appealing as the imagined jailbreak. The bitter loneliness vs. the sultry passion she builds up in her head as she awaits her release from prison is key to understanding the two sides of the story in the album. There’s this whole outlaw imagery (which is also carried through in “I Can Fix Him”), but it’s contrasted in the end with her and her reunited lover sitting on park swings like children with “imaginary rings” — because “Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake.” What’s at stake is lasting love and the promises that come with it (marriage/family) that are precious and time-sensitive. The imaginary rings are both a nod to the youthful dreams of her and her new/old lover, but also has a double meaning to me because those promises aren’t built on anything together; they're made up, intangible. (They’re no more concrete than the plans that went up in smoke with the partner.) Like with most of the conman situation, it’s all a fantasy in her head that has yet to happen, and as we find out later in the album, reality ends up leaving much to be desired.

Florida!!!

Broadly speaking, it’s running away from your problems and wanting to disappear from your life. (But again: the life she’s disappearing from is the cheating husband she may or may not be feeding to the swamp-- another miserable marriage.) What kind of flies under the radar though is the “I don’t want to exist,” line, which points to her dire state of mind that led her to fleeing to that metaphorical timeshare down in Destin. In many ways about cheating death.

Guilty As Sin

Yes it’s the “masturbation song,” but again the nuance is that she’s left to pleasure herself because her partner has abandoned her emotionally and even physically, i.e. “my boredom’s bone deep.” To be blunt: they aren’t even intimate anymore, so she starts fantasizing about the guy she used to have chemistry with who’s reentered her life and is making moves on her. And realizing that she’s now finding release in another man (albeit imaginary) breaks her even as it reinvigorates her because she finally understands that the relationship she’s in is effectively dead. (“Am I allowed to cry?”)

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

This isn’t about relationships, but about society and its reaction to them in a general sense. But again, she’s left to stew in all this anger and hurt as she’s been abandoned at home, then abandoned by public opinion, and the public attack on her is part of the origin as well as the end of that story. The trauma inflicted upon her detailed in the song is the reason why she felt trapped in the first place, which led to the decisions she’s made and habits she’s leaned on ever since.

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

This is one of the few songs that is the most completely conman-coded, and shows when the delusion finally breaks at the end of the song. She spends the whole song being like, “no really, I alone can make him better! You’ll see! I know he’s gross, but he’s mine! It’ll be fine I swear! You don’t know anything! Uuuuuum hmm wait actually what the fuck—“

Loml

Oof. THE song. Again the surface reading is about the “conman” who comes in and sells her the lie, but the pain is because all the dreams she writes about are HER dreams and implied that they were the dreams she built with her partner that the conman sold back to her. I could do a deeper dive on this but most of the song is applicable to both relationships, which not only shows the “swirliness” of her writing, but also how they both ultimately did the same thing to her in different shades.

The bridge and the last chorus are kind of fundamental to understanding it all, and her ending it with “you’re the loss of my life” is about, among other things, how falling for this trap blew up the life she built and dreamed of for good. (I could talk about this one forever.) “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles” to “Our field of dreams engulfed in fire” is a hell of a line and progression, and again, indicative of what the real driving force behind the whole album is. The shit-talking is because he took her dreams (of marriage and children) and hyped it back up to her tenfold whether in a moment of his own delusion or for more nefarious reasons — much like how the man prior kept promising these things but never followed through, which left her vulnerable to someone who appeared to offer them enthusiastically. The field of dreams isn’t just the one with the conman, it’s the one with the longterm relationship she’d built the dream with in the first place, because the conman’s actions are part of the reason the LTR went up in smoke. (Not the reason for the rift, but the consequence of the final break.) And THAT is why it’s the loss of her life, so completely.

When she says “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” IMO it’s not just the fake future that the conman lures her into, but also (and perhaps mainly) the once-real one she had with her partner and the loss of which that made her susceptible to falling for the con in the first place. There’s honestly so much between the lines in this song that covers every theme and speaks to the grief of seeing the life she imagined slip away, slowly by the first man then annihilated by the second.

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

The juxtaposition of “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short” and “He said he’d love me for all time, but that time was quite short” sums it up to me (and parallels “loml”), because they are two different situations, but they cut her just the same. In the first, “that life” IMO was the life they’d built with the dreams that went along with it and it was too short because he never followed through, and in the second, the “time” was quite short because it was the frenzy of the whirlwind romance that fizzled as quickly as it began. The life that was too short led to the time that was quite short.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

This is definitely THE conman song. The rage, the shame, the violation, it’s all in there. But the key to it is the bridge and the espionage imagery woven through it. A honeypot scheme is when spies target a mark and seduce them to gain their trust and their privileged information for their homeland. So her likening him to a sleeper cell spy who set her up just to mine her deepest secrets and use them against her is a heavy, loaded statement. And implied: that valuable information she unknowingly held were her longings of marriage and family (the aforementioned shit-talking about rings and cradles she never got to have), and more importantly, those dreams preceded him reentering her life and then beginning his mission on her.

The insinuation then is: she confesses these are her deepest wishes which are now seemingly unattainable in her current situation (e.g. with her partner) -> he convinces her HE will give them to her and make the dreams she pines for come true -> she falls for him and blows up her life to make it happen -> he gets what he wants (thrill of the chase/sex/the idea of her/whatever his intent was) -> he abandons her when he gets what he wants, or rather it isn’t what he wants or can handle -> she’s left a) all alone b) with dreams unfulfilled c) with no answers d) feeling used at having her most sacred wishes used against her.

Again, the song is unquestionably about the way the conman absolutely destroyed her, but he was able to do that because there was this thing she wanted more than anything, that was dying in her previous relationship, that he was able to prey upon to seduce her, then discarded her and her dreams as soon as it was inconvenient for him while absolutely hollowing her inside out. (And again: the devastating thing is that this also applies to other relationships she’s written about, in different ways.)

The Alchemy

Not about either the partner or the conman directly, but it (loosely) touches on her finding herself after the whole oven-to-microwave experience and opening herself up to life and love again. #GoodForHer

Clara Bow

This isn’t about the romantic relationships on the surface, but it is about how damaging the entertainment industry and public life are on women, and how women are only valued for their beauty as commodities until they can be discarded and destroyed in the process. Which I think plays into the circumstances that led her to make the decisions that she did years ago, and why she makes the ones she does now. (But also, being valued for physical traits and appeal for the male gaze brings us to…)

The Manuscript

The “original sin” that kicks off all of this. Again, at first light this isn’t about the partner or the conman, but the person it is about is the reason why she has made all the decisions she has ever since in relationships (and that’s Mr. Plaid Shirt Days from “All Too Well”). The realization that her first serious adult relationship is what cemented these patterns, and this view of herself and her worthiness in relationships, is profoundly sad. An older man who valued her for being so mature for her age and implying that the mature activities ahem associated with that were the performance benchmarks in her ability to carry a relationship, only to leave her, was earth shattering. She placed her faith in this person, but then the way he treated her changed her view of love and of herself.

She took his innuendo about “pushing strollers” as a sign of potential commitment, whereas he ultimately meant it as foreplay, and she was too young and naive to know the difference. So not only did she learn from that that this man (and men) didn’t view commitment and family the way she did and that it was something to be toyed with, but she also learned that her value to them among other things was sex. Imagine being an idealistic 20 year old and your boyfriend ten years your senior tells you, “if the sex is anywhere near as good as our dates have been, we’re going to be making babies before you know it,” (e.g. this is relationship is serious) and then he dumps you: does that imply that the sex was not in fact that good? (E.g. that you’re not worthy after all?)

No, obviously from this side of life, it’s because he was a commitment-phobic playboy, even if he did love her, but she couldn’t have known that at 20 and instead internalized that shame. But, it did send her on a path of how she approached sex and love and relationships for over a decade afterwards. And her coming to the realization that that first act of (perhaps unintentional) manipulation is what informed her actions thereafter helped her break the pattern. Her worth to men is not just sex, she has value and her hopes and dreams have value, she doesn’t have to change into a different person to please anyone, because if that is what they want, they won’t ever want her anyway.

It’s been described here on Tumblr by people more eloquent and astute than I as a song that encapsulates the album as this: one did it slow (partner), one did it fast (conman), and one did it first (first love)— and that is haunting. After years of men minimizing her dreams and desires, if not outright using them against her, she’s finally at the point where she can let it all go and move on for good. (There’s a whole other tangent about consent and shame and manipulation, but that’s an entirely different kind of discussion. But it is so devastatingly contrasted with “you said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die.”)

THE SUMMATION

This is just my interpretation of it, but in going through the standard album, it feels pretty clear how cohesive the album is about a story of love and loss and grief, then reckoning with what caused it all in the first place that set a person on this path. It’s a formative experience at a young age that was traumatic and led to certain coping mechanisms and a shaping of one’s self-perception, as well as the reaction to external pressures that try to dictate behaviours and influence how one feels one deserves out of love which makes it harder to know when one absolutely deserves more and better. And leaves one struggling to cope with loss when there isn’t anything else to hold onto. Then in light of one’s life blowing up, learning to find oneself in the aftermath all over again.

On another tangent that is somewhat related to the theme of loss, the way she writes about the two main muses on the standard album also ties into how the situations converged to create absolute carnage on her emotional and mental well-being. With one situation, she’s talking about a concrete life that crumbles under the weight of their struggles; with the other, the entire thing is a fantasy that she builds up in her head, and when it comes to fruition it falls far, far short.

If you look at the “microwave” (conman) relationship, you realize that almost everything she writes about it happens before it actually becomes reality, and it’s mostly her imagining how great it’ll be, but with few exceptions, when she writes about what actually occurred, it doesn’t even come close to living up to her expectations. “Fortnight” is an imagined future where she escapes to Florida and his touch finally starts her stalled engine (ahem). “TTPD” is perhaps the most positive retelling of their time together, but even that implies he was better off stoned and when he sobered up he succumbed to his demons all over again, and more importantly she conveys how she also is in extreme distress, barely concealed by the veneer of being infatuated with him. (E.g. saying to that she’ll kill herself if he ever leaves her — the implication is that she is absolutely serious about it when she “felt seen.”) And that the warning bells are going off in her head, but she feels like this person is the only one she can be with (because they’re equally fucked up and the chaos he brings into her life makes her feel alive when she felt so close to death).

“Down Bad” is the most explicit about being in love, but she’s also left completely confused and disoriented by him disappearing, wondering if any of it was real and the seeds of violation creep into her consciousness (“did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” “Waking up in blood.”). “But Daddy” is her imagining she can tell everyone to fuck off for telling her what to do with her life. “Fresh Out The Slammer” is her fantasizing about this man while feeling trapped in her relationship — but never in the song is she actually reunited with him; she’s using him as the projection of all the things she’ll make right after being wronged by her partner. “Guilty As Sin?” Is very obviously about her fantasizing about sleeping with him, but again it’s such a minefield for her because it hasn’t happened yet; they’ve only just reconnected. “I Can Fix Him” is the only song other than “TTPD” that shows them actually together, and it’s the one where she keeps saying, essentially, “I know he’s gross but I can rehabilitate him into an upstanding person, trust me,” until the mic drop at the end of the song where it finally hits her that no, she can’t, because this is who he is, not the person she’s built him up to be.

“Loml” is when it all comes crashing down, and the song emphasizes everything he did and told her, e.g. that she’s the love of his life, but she doesn’t return the sentiment in the song about their time together. Because now that it’s past tense, she knows it wasn’t actually love. (And says as much in the album epilogue poem.) “Broken Heart” is her reeling in the aftermath, but again, it’s “he said,” not “I loved.” And then there’s “The Smallest Man,” where she eviscerates him: he also pursued an idea of her but didn’t care much for the real her in front of him (who else is gonna know me?), he love bombed her only to hurt her (crushing her dreams), he was constantly stoned (and not just in the funny munchies kind of way), and he wasn’t even a good lover (despite the fantasy she’d created before). That last point is especially striking because she spent albums singing about the importance of and pleasure in (sexual) intimacy in the relationship with her partner (sometimes to both their own detriment) and how it was at times the only way they could connect, but in this case, the idea she hyped up and acted on in her head about this lover never panned out in practice. She spells it out in the epilogue: it wasn’t a love affair, it was a mutual manic phase.

In contrast, there’s a lot more tangible action in the “oven” (partner) parts of the album, showing how hard she tried to make the relationship work in real life instead of just in her head. All of “So Long, London” is her detailing how she tried to break through to him and support him, even when he rejected it and pushed her away, thinking she could carry them both until they ultimately sank, but she did it because she “loved this place for so long.” (The place? Not just the city, but the home and perhaps most importantly, him.) In “Slammer” she stayed with him even as things disintegrated for “one hour of sunshine.” (E.g. holding onto the rarer good times even as they were fewer and further between, hoping things would eventually turn around.) And like in “London,” she held on despite people in her life pleading with her that it was hurting her. (Which is also echoed in “Slammer.”) In “Guilty” her boredom is “bone deep” because the passion that once drove their relationship (and papered over their problems) has finally gone out too, so there’s nothing left to hold onto, leading to her fantasizing about the new suitor, which makes her realize her relationship has passed the point of no return. “Loml” is about the conman on the surface, but the undercurrent of all the things she says about him is that he was co-opting the dreams that she was clinging onto for dear life in the previous relationship, which is why the con is so painful; the field of dreams he sets ablaze isn’t just the fake painting he sold to her, but the original artifact (her life with her partner) too.

All the physical and emotional labour she puts into the relationship with her partner ends up reflected in the fantasizing she does in the one with the conman, which is why it is so confusing in the moment and so lethal when he leaves her without any answers. She wants to get married and start a family with her partner which keeps getting stalled; the conman mock-proposes which makes her think he’s immediately serious (“TTPD,” “loml”). She feels caged by having to hide with her partner and shrink herself; the conman promises he’ll stand by her side publicly and let her shine (“Smallest Man”). She sinks into a deep depression in her loneliness as the relationship with her partner careens off a cliff; the conman convinces her they’re meant for each other in a them-against-the-world way (“Down Bad”). The intimacy (in all senses of the word) in her relationship with her partner fizzles; the conman stokes the fire by sending her secret messages and reigniting passion (“Guilty”). She spent years trying to help her partner to no avail; the conman makes her think she has the power to reform him (“loml”). She feels misunderstood by her partner; the conman acts like he’s the (only) one who truly gets her (“TTPD,” “loml”).

In short: there’s nothing that the conman does or says that isn’t a direct response to what her partner did first, and it’s even worse because the conman knew how much her partner’s actions hurt her and he used that privileged information to paint a picture of what he could give her, but in doing so in some ways aimed at her heart with even deadlier accuracy. (I’ve likened it to him borrowing someone else’s life for his own joyride, until he crashes the rental car and flees the scene.) It’s why in the aftermath, the difference in emotions are so different: she feels nothing but rage and violation towards the conman for getting in her head and using her, whereas her feelings towards her partner are more complicated. There’s anger (at her lost youth and being taken for granted), but there’s also sorrow (at their lost life and future), disappointment (that he never could step up the way he’d promised or she’d needed), even compassion (towards his struggles) and a tiny measure of appreciation (for the good times they did share).

When you look at the bigger picture, the story the album paints is just so painfully normal. You have two people (Taylor and her partner) who once loved each other deeply, and despite warning signs early on telling them they have fundamentally different needs and ways of living their lives they fight like hell to make it work (the epilogue) until those warning signs become grenades that destroy their home (“My Boy,” “London,” “Slammer,” arguably “loml”). Having already been through at least one rough patch/break/breakup that she felt almost destroyed her (harkening back to Midnights on “You’re Losing Me,” “The Great War” and “Hits Different”), the final and fatal downward spiral of the relationship (“YLM,” “London”) and the grief over losing that future sends her into a tailspin, just at the time where a flame from the past (the conman) reenters her life and tells her all the things she’s been longing to hear and feel (“TTPD,” “Down Bad,” “Guilty,” “loml”) and, crucially, missing from the relationship that was once her entire life.

So in her panic, she falls prey to the (empty) promises of the past lover (“loml,” “Smallest Man”) and decides he’s actually what will save her from the free fall, because the alternative (that she will end up in a situation she doesn’t think she can survive) is too painful to bear. When she finally acts on these circumstances (leaves her partner/runs to the conman), she snaps, acting on pure emotion and adrenaline (“But Daddy”), but before she knows it, the new lover abandons her, and she’s left to reckon with the fallout of the episode and process everything that has happened (“Down Bad,” “loml”) — with the conman, with her partner, with the choices made in her adult life personally and professionally which leads her back to the moment she feels set her down that road at the start.

The TL;DR of this unintentionally long essay is that the reason the conman affair was so serious was precisely because it was meant to fulfill the promise of what was her life with her partner. To me, a large part of the story is that she projected that life onto the conman (or he projected her life back to her for his own purposes) because she wasn’t ready to deal with that massive grief and the life raft he offered felt like the only alternative to an even darker end. Whether the conman actually believed what he told her, or he went along with it or encouraged it because it served his purpose, we’ll never know, just like we’ll never know the finer details of what went on (nor should we). But no matter what, the album is just an extreme deep dive into all the ways grief can consume us, and whether it’s a long, drawn-out death or a sudden, inexplicable one, it can turn a person’s life into such a trainwreck that they act in ways unfathomable to even them, let alone the people around them. It can also unleash repressed trauma and mental illness that can crater your sense of self. And when those situations are compounded? It makes for a nearly impossible type of breakdown to unpack. (Which is why you might need a 31 song album to process it.)

[softantlers]

one of the things i'm always going to be bummed about with regard to adult timeline lottie is the way she was turned into this neoliberal wellness guru when we literally could have it ALL. now i understand that there probably isn't even room for this kind of representation in mainstream television bc writers are cowards & also that there's a sort of beauty in what they did put forward but hear me out--

i wanted lottie to have been institutionalized and to have been PISSED about it. i wanted her to have defected from society at large & reached for all the post-capitalism & anarchist social positions she could. i wanted her to have read "family abolition" by me o'brien and deeply fucked with it. i wanted her to be living off the grid in an actual intentional community--not the granola shit we saw--being fucking dirty and tending to the land and living on a commune amassed of not-up-to-code cabins and rigged out RVs. i want lottie INTEGRATED, not just a leader. i want her talking schizophrenics off ledges and helping the local dykes reconcile a breakup. i want lottie deeply invested in understanding how the outside world marginalizes people of color, people with disabilities, queer and trans people, etc. & i want her to be PISSED about it.

when the yellowjackets come, i want it to feel like a true invasion. i want them to feel absolutely dysphoric about their put together made up lives as they look around them. i want them to feel like invaders-- of modernity, of capitalism, even if they don't have the words for it. i want natalie to be calling bullshit, to be hissing at lottie about whether her fucking cronies know she's a rich girl & for lottie to admit--venomous--that she's been disowned and off the grid for years. i want natalie to be so fucking angry about that because here she's been trying her best, in and out of rehab, to live in the real world & here's lottie--who has everything, all the money, all the everything at her disposal--rejecting that world natalie has tried so hard to be apart of. i want them to finally fuck about the fact that lottie was right when she said neither of them have homes.

shit, i want taissa to learn the power of leadership in community & to realize that her ambitions toward being a senator were misled & that real change isn't solely dependent on votes and campaign strategies but how you can actualize better living in your immediate community right now. i want van to talk to some chronically ill dykes and to realize that maybe she doesn't actually have to die alone like she thought she did. i want her to tell tai she's staying.

fuuuuck, i want shauna and lottie to have it out. i want lottie to call shauna's family a fraud & to laugh at how shauna thought she was different & superior for her white picket fence and for shauna to literally be about to beat the shit out of her again, only for lottie to shove her to the ground and hiss that she's not the girl she was back in the fucking woods.

i want misty to learn the power of being in community without transaction & manipulation and i want her to become invested in staying because this is the first time she hasn't had to beg and plead for people to take a genuine interest in her. this is the first time people haven't considered her disposable & not worthy of their attention.

and i want this to be such a fucking insidious thing as all of the yellowjackets become wrapped up in "is this real?" as psychosis looms as a backdrop. could this be real? could all the pain and everything that has kept them so ragged since the wilderness, could this be the solution?

and when it all comes apart and the commune gets disbanded, i want it to feel like rescue. i want them to be kicking and screaming when the authorities force them back into their nuclear families (or total isolation), back into their hustle for money and jobs, back into the expectation of a society that will never understand this kind of trauma. i want them to be devastated that they were saved.

i want them to feel the violence of going back to their lives like a plane crash.

[wings-of-ink]

Checking in - Author Updates - Quick Poll

Hello all! I hope you are all doing well!

I wanted to check-in. I don't have a ton to say on development, just wanted to keep you in the loop on where I am at personally since it tends to affect production speed. I also have a question for you at the bottom.

As I've posted about before, this year has brought about some challenges for me. There aren't a ton of good developments on that front, and my job is being...difficult. The (technical) good news is that I am still employed, but some days I wish I weren't. (I'd much rather be writing IFs, lol.) There is still uncertainty about the future of my job because it is at the mercy of the whims of my government. But what is more pressing currently is that my employer has opted to treat its employees worse (let me tell you, this is a feat because they've never really treated us well), by making our lives and jobs harder. I've made some "worst-case scenario" plans to prepare, so I'm just getting by one day at a time. Oh...and I also have needed to work overtime again, so that's another time suck there. Ugh. In May, I'm taking a couple days of off for me to rest.

In more recent news, I am doing physical therapy...yippy! In recent months I have struggled with my right shoulder. I assumed it was one of those "you're in your late 30s" pains, and I just dealt with it. Don't do that, by the way. I have a very bad habit of just doing with little regard for pain and discomfort. But, it got difficult to hug without pain, and nothing messes with my huggin'. We really don't know what is wrong with my shoulder/arm, but I'm doing virtual (oooh shiny) PT (not the Silent Hill variety) to hopefully correct the issue. If I don't see results, I will need expensive tests and scans. No worries currently, though, I don't think this will slow me down much at all. I can still write and I don't experience any discomfort when I do.

I'm also still working on a coding class, which is self-paced, but I'm sticking to a lesson schedule to make sure I get it done. I would really love to be able to make improvements of my own to GC or even make my own Twine Template someday.

So, in more fun development news, Chapter 6 is growing steadily. And so is Chapter 5, technically. If you missed it, check out this Tumblr ask where I talk a bit about that. The ask and answer contain some slight spoilers for Ch 5 & 6, but nothing too specific.

Chapter 5 is up by a bit over 1500 words, if you're curious, and Chapter 6 is up to over 69k words. I am wrapping up a big moment for Zahn, which might be a bit heavy. After that, there's a more fun moment, which will present a few coding challenges for me, but I'm looking forward to it. *rubs hands together like housefly*

Finally, I have a question for subscribers or those who may want to sub in the future. I find myself wondering what else to post about at times. Especially when I have inordinately busy weeks, I just can't think of things that you may want to see other than peeks at the chapter. I sincerely wish I had more time to add more projects. I have so many ideas kicking around in my head...

So, I was wondering if you were interested in seeing things other than God-Cursed that I have worked on. These would be things that may or may not become much of anything later, so I wasn't sure if there would be much pull to see them (or if it would just be a cruel tease, lol). I have an incomplete IF that I did to help me learn Twine a couple of years ago. I used it to just get acquainted because I am very much a hands-on learner. It's a humorous and simple story (loosely) based on an actual time in my personal life. I have debated about finishing it. I have a couple of others as well where I was playing with a story idea to see how it felt. I also have a complete romance novel which I am slowly editing for publication.

Patreon, Ko-fi links if you want them.

So that's all for me. If anything big happens, I will let you know! ^_^

Take care, everyone!

~Lunan

[emilibro]

Ughhh I'm so sorry to be an ass but I see so much popular art on tumblr and around the internet that really woobifies both Laios and Kabru and their relationship, especially when they're together.... You guys are aware that Laios eats monsters the way people would like. Eat animals, right? He's not crazy or stupid or sadistic or anything. He has a special interest and it's monsters.

Furthermore, his past having himself and his sister be shunned for their interests in the abnormal made him develop a distaste for humanity. Laios has just thought monsters were way cooler since he was a kid, and Falin really looked up for him for his dedication to his interests and personal code of moral ethics. He never loved his sister less for her abilities, he admired her for what made her different. Because he's fucking awesome and they're autistic as hell.... they both went through so damn much. Laios never fit into the military, into his hometown, he barely fit into most groups of adventurers since he met Marcille, chilchuck, and company, and two of the members of that original party didn't care enough to join him. His feeling of worthlessness to his friends in the beginning of the story are enough to make him imagine a whole scenario in between major chapters where he was the one who was eaten.. and he thought nobody except Falin would care enough to save him.

Point being Laios has a much richer character that goes ALONGSIDE his special interest in monsters. Which honestly is more comparable to, like. A fucking biologist. Not a monsterfucker, not a cannibal, none of that shit. Monsterfuckers are cool as a monsterfucker but he's not one.. he's more like a furry man.... And he's not stupid he's just. Autistic. Why are we making autistic characters with a silly side seem stupid? Everyone has dumb moments sure but like.. he's really smart guys... there's a reason he's such a good leader outside of his ability to listen to his party members. Don't fall for the mischaracterization of Laios that his party members originally set for him before major important arcs guys...

And Kabru. Oh my God. Kabru. Kabru is also autistic but for humans, social interactions and culture... he's a nerd for politics and the humanities, and I'll avoid saying much more to avoid spoilers for non-manga readers but you'll see more of that as time passes. But he's not the type to be easily flustered. Laios only gets to him, not even because he's that difficult to read, but because he catches him off guard. He's an interesting critter, bro. And Kabru definitely sees that. It takes time to respect that, but within a period of time he learns to see him as a relatively competent adventurer and places a lot of faith from him. On some level, this guy has learned to understand this very interesting autistic guy who is forward with his feelings that a very autistic Kabru hasn't learned to understand. That's what makes their relationship so cool, man. He's not cold in reality (though people may perceive him that way due to backstory motivations and attitude within the dungeon), but he's a lot more serious than this... c'mon guys.. let's be a little real here please.... at this point I barely like Labru anymore because they've been so like. Babied. Woobified. Whatever the word is man. I'm starting to appreciate their friendship more as a friendship now because I just think the beautiful qualities I saw in their romance have been sort of overlooked or misinterpreted. Nowadays I just think their platonic relationship is beautiful. Sighs.

Farcille is awesome though and these girls are awesome slay

-

Edit: hey guys, I wanna address a couple of things here! For one, this isn't intended to be ship hate. Labru is a perfectly valid ship - rather, I'm just not a fan of how deep the mischaracterization of both characters runs, and how it results in the subsequent babying of their relationship. While it's driven me personally away from the romance a bit, I have no problem with the ship itself. Additionally, Farcille has its own issues with woobification that could use some addressing, I just haven't had to see as much mischaracterization on my feeds. Maybe in a future post I'll address some of my personal peeves with many people's characterization of Farcille, ESPECIALLY Falin.

[al-the-remix]

BuckTommy Positivity Week Day 1/3 : what they love most about each other/meeting the friends and family

Slowly making my way through the @bucktommypositivityweek prompts! I'm not normally a big fan of shovel talks, but I thought Tommy deserved his own moment where his friends show up for him and have his back (and so does his boyfriend).

The bar was pretty much exactly like Buck expected it to be: plastered with an assorted collection of knick-knacks, military plaques, and wall art that Buck will just call inspired–fighting each other for wallspace all the way up to the low T-bar ceiling. The main source of light came from the ionized glow of the neon beer signs and the stained glass fixtures over the billiards tables that looked like they hadn’t been updated since the 70s. Buck was pretty sure he’d spotted at least three fire code violations just walking through the doors–but that wasn’t what tonight was about. 

A small section tucked between the fleet of pool tables and the dart boards had been reserved for their party, and from his spot at the bar Buck had a clear view of where Tommy was leaning against his pool cue, his posture the most relaxed it’s been since they’d hit Grand Junction as he laughed with the group of men gathered around him. 

Buck couldn’t help but smile. The longer they’d driven, the more tense Tommy had become, and Buck had begun to worry that maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all. Now he felt like he could finally breathe; they’d booked it up the 15 and onto the 70 on the way here, and Buck was looking forward to taking their time on the way home, finding the scenic routes and exploring the one road towns and tacky tourist traps they stumbled across. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a week off work that hadn’t been the result of a near-fatal injury. 

“You know you’re the only person he’s ever brought to one of these,” came a voice to his right, one that Buck had only recently become familiar with. 

With great pain, Buck drew his attention away from Tommy to the person settling in at the bar beside him. Dave. He was the only one of the guys here that had been with Tommy since Fort Irwin. He had a wife and two daughters and a boxer named Jones–all information Buck had learned, not from the man himself, but during their three day drive from L.A. to Colorado Springs–which Tommy had used to give Buck a rundown on pretty much everything he knew about his old battalion mates from their rank down to their dental records.

“I’m happy to be here,” Buck said, meaning it. He hadn’t been expecting an invitation, taken completely off guard when Tommy had asked him so casually, as they got ready to head out for work one morning. He’d presented it like it would just be a good excuse for a fun road trip and not what Buck was starting to piece together in his head was actually a monumental gesture. Either way, he’d agreed immediately.

Dave was watching him like he was trying his best to punch through Buck’s skull and peer directly into his brain. Buck had a feeling Dave hadn’t really made up his mind about Buck–yet–and if there was one thing he was going to change by the end of the night it was that.

“Tom said you’re also a firefighter.”

Buck twisted in his chair so they were facing each other. “Yeah, actually I’m at Tommy’s old station, transferred in not long after he left. Kind of funny how things work out, eh?”

“I’ve heard stories,” Dave said in a tone that implied not all of them were good. 

“It’s not like that anymore,” Buck assured. Gerard’s second reign of the 118 had been over for a while now and Buck had been informed by Hen and Chimney that although it had been unbearable, with more eyes on him, Gerard had not been nearly as bad as the first time around. 

“I’ve heard that too.” The corner of Dave’s mouth ticked up. That was the most charitable he’d been thus far. “Tommy has a lot of good things to say about the new crew there, especially you.”

Buck wasn’t above preening a little at that. He knew all about bragging about his partner to anyone that would listen. He was practically a pro at it at this point. If anything he and Tommy had a little competition going on at this point. 

Dave’s eyes flicked over Buck’s shoulder and back. “Listen, I don’t want to overstep here because Tommy will be fuckin’ pissed at me, and I’ll never hear the end of it–but, you seem like a nice guy, and I just want to make sure you know what a big deal this is. These shindigs used to host a few more bodies before Tommy came out. Just don’t hurt him.”

He could hear Tommy’s laugh, the full-bodied, knee-slapping one he only did when you really got him cracking up or he was about three pints in, or both, floating over the din of the bar. Buck could pick that laugh out of any crowd. He could follow it home.

Dave was watching him with a curious expression, and maybe Buck hadn’t totally won him over yet, but he had a feeling they were at least moving in the right direction.

 “I won’t. And I–I won't let him know you gave me the shovel talk if you rat me out either, because he doesn't know this yet and I want him to hear it from me first, but Tommy's one of the most amazing people I've ever met. He's one of the first people I've been with in a long time that makes me feel like I can be myself, unconditionally, and I just hope I make him feel the same way, because I love him.”

“I think it’s safe to say he does.” The corner of Dave’s mouth twitched up in the amused beginning of a smile. “But you should probably let him know that instead of me, just saying.”

Buck rolled his eyes as Dave clapped him cordially on the shoulder. It looked like he wasn’t off the hot seat yet. 

He held out his glass and was pleased when Dave clinked them together. It was progress. 

///

It was 1 am when they finally made it back to their motel, the latest Buck had been out in a good long while. He’d taken the keys from Tommy before they’d even left for the evening and now he was swooping around the cab of the truck to catch his boyfriend as he nearly tumbled out of the passenger side door. 

“Easy there,” Buck said as he tried his best to steady Tommy on his own two feet, a task more difficult than it sounded. 

“I think I lost my keys,” Tommy moaned as Buck grabbed his jacket and locked up. 

“No, see I’ve got them right here.” He jangled them in Tommy’s face and watched him grin before slipping them into his own pocket. “Don’t worry I’ll give them back to you later, here let me help you out.”

He slipped his arm around Tommy’s waist, pulling him a little tighter against his side than was probably necessary.

Tommy’s clutched at his shoulder, melting against him. “You’re so nice to me.” 

“What else would I be?” Buck chuckled as he steered Tommy towards their room. He was just glad that Tommy was a placid, happy drunk–if a little handsy. “Come on big guy, let’s get you to bed.”

It was a struggle to get the door unlocked and Tommy through it with two-hundred odd pounds of boyfriend hanging off him, trying to worm his fingers under Buck’s shirt and breathing hot and damp against the juncture of his neck.  

When they finally stumbled inside Tommy starfished onto the bed, the poor old motel mattress groaning in protest beneath his weight. 

At least he looked like he wasn’t about to try and get up any time soon. 

The soft hum of the window AC unit filled the room, a pleasant contrast to the guitar riffs of the hair bands the bar had played all night. Buck filled up two cups of water, leaving one on his bedside table before settling down on the mattress beside Tommy and nudging him until he sat up. 

“Here, drink this,” he said and helped Tommy tilt the glass up to his mouth without spilling it all over himself. 

Tommy was pawing at him as soon as Evan’s hands were free. “Evan, Evan–” he said, reaching out to grip Buck’s face with both hands, pulling him closer. The special smile Buck was beginning to learn was just for him, creasing his face. “You wanna hear a secret?”

“Of course, anything,” Buck said, letting himself be manhandled and feeling real goopy and affectionate about it. 

“I love you,” Tommy said, with a lot of eye contact and the sort of drunken earnesty that made Buck’s heart just about trip out of his chest. Then Tommy frowned, his gaze going unfocused. “I’m going to be really sad if we break up.”

Buck allowed himself a chuckle at the sudden, unwarranted disappointment in Tommy’s expression. “Me too, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.” 

“Really?” Tommy asked, perking up.

“Really. I love you too, and I’m going to remind you of that tomorrow when you forget all of this in the morning.”

“I won’t forget,” Tommy insisted. 

“Okay, whatever you say, boss.”

Buck went to the bathroom to hit the head and brush his teeth and by the time he returned Tommy had managed to wrestle out of his shoes and his pants, still spread out across the covers in his shirt and socks like a massive toddler. Buck shook his head, ditching his own shirt. Tommy reached out, making grabby hands at him as Buck kicked off his jeans and crawled under the sheets beside him. He was instantly wrapped in an only slightly sticky bear hug. 

He pressed a kiss to the cowlick at the top of Tommy’s head. “You’ve got some pretty great friends.”

With more awareness than Buck expected in his current state, Tommy said: “I hope Dave didn’t bother you too much tonight, I could tell he was giving you the third degree for a bit there.” 

“Dave and I are cool,” Buck assured. “I’m glad you have guys from back then who’ve still got your back.”

Tommy went quiet for a bit after that and Buck was just figuring out how he was going to wiggle out from beneath his boyfriend without waking him to turn off the lights when Tommy muttered, “I’m glad you came with me. I was tired of coming to these by myself.”

“Any time you want, I’ve got your back too you know,” Buck whispered, holding Tommy tight in the cradle of his arms. 

“I know,” Tommy said, and Buck fell asleep to the thump of Tommy’s heartbeat pressed against his own. 

[yumeka-sxf]

Thoughts on Spy x Family CODE: White

My thoughts on CODE: White will likely be different from most people since I knew pretty much the entire plot beforehand. I'm a spoiler fiend when it comes to my hyperfixations like SxF, so I read the novelization of the movie back in January and kept up on all the promotional videos and images that were released. But when it was finally time to see the movie for myself, did that ruin my enjoyment? Not at all. For me, it actually made me enjoy it more because 1) I knew what to expect so I wasn't disappointed, and 2) I found myself looking forward to seeing all the scenes I only read about or saw short clips of.

With that said, yes, I enjoyed the movie so much! If you're a Spy x Family fan, or even just a casual enjoyer of the series, it's a ton of fun. It has all the elements we love about the series: clever humor, sweet family moments, and spy action/drama. And because it's a movie, we get to see all of this with a movie animation budget instead of a TV series budget, which is another plus!

One thing to keep in mind with these original, stand-alone anime films based on series is that they're meant for a more general crowd than just fans of the series. Since theaters attract a wider audience than late-night TV and online manga chapters, movies like this serve as a means to introduce the series to people who may only have a vague idea of what it's about. That's why these movies contain a storyline that can fit mostly anywhere in the series chronology and don't have anything canon-altering.

CODE: White is an interesting mix of plots that, for the most part, blend together well. There's the main plot that continues throughout, which is saving Operation Strix by having Anya learn how to make the meremere for the cooking contest, but then there's the Yor jealousy plot B which is resolved in the first half, but is then replaced by the next "plot B" in the latter half of the movie, which is saving Anya from the military.

A lot of people didn't like the "Yor gets jealous" subplot when it was first revealed before the movie even came out, since it seemed to be a rehash of her being jealous about Fiona. I personally didn't have a problem with this since I don't think it's unreasonable for her to get jealous a second time, especially when she thinks she sees Loid doing something extreme like kissing another woman (as opposed to just talking). But the way it was resolved could have been a bit better in my opinion. The ferris wheel scene in the movie very much mirrored the bar scene from the series, but the reason the latter is so effective is because we get to hear Loid's inner thoughts during it; we know he's going full Twilight-mode and isn't being sincere, and that's why Yor kicks him. But then at the park, he talks to her much more genuinely and they work things out. But in the ferris wheel scene, we don't get to hear his inner thoughts so we don't get any indication as to whether his repeating of the marriage vows, etc, is him being sincere or not. Then she smacks him, they insist they aren't fighting when Anya brings it up, and that's the end of it.

I do like the fact that Anya reads their minds and seems happy with what she "hears" in their heads, but I still think the subplot would have felt more complete if it ended after Yor realized her mistake rather than have Loid do the ambiguous Romeo act again. Or it could have been brought up one more time later in the movie, for example, Yor apologizes for hitting him, he talks to her more sincerely, etc. If you're gonna rehash the bar scene, at least rehash the scene that brought it closure, which is the park bench scene. Again, I'm totally fine with the jealously subplot overall, just thought it could have been wrapped up a bit better.

Other than that, there were just a few little issues I had, like how was Anya able to afford what was probably an expensive liquor? (was she really packing that much dough in her little bag? She went straight from the bedroom out the window so it's not like she "borrowed" any money from Loid). Also seemed weird that she didn't pick up on Yor's infidelity worries until last minute. A few things stretched the line of believability a bit far too, like Loid's ability to make perfect masks so quickly, and Anya just happening to hit her head on the button that conveniently opened all the windows on the bridge. Also something here and there that didn't align with the manga, like Yor not having any reaction to sharing a room with Loid, whereas she has a totally different reaction to this in chapter 94. Maybe a bit more resolution for the fates of the villains too. I guess Luca and Dmitri survived the crash, but what about Snidel? Did Loid actually kill him or just knock him out? And if it's the latter, Snidel seems like the type who would want to get revenge. A quick cameo of what happened to them in the end would have been nice.

Speaking of the villains, normally I wouldn't like the fact that they're pretty one-dimensional and not that interesting, but for a movie like this where most people just want to see the Forgers being themselves in fun and exciting scenarios, taking time away from that to make more developed villains who likely won't be seen again in the franchise, would have not been the best choice, lol.

But even though I had some criticisms of the movie, all of them are minor and not enough to overshadow everything else that was enjoyable about it. Besides all the humor, of which there was plenty, there were so many cute "awww" family moments that perhaps didn't lend anything to the plot, but were still important to establish the characters and their relationships, and thus make us care about what happens to them. Like the scene of Anya, Yor, and Bond playing at the hotel...it could have been skipped without anything seeming out of place, but it reveals so much about the characters without being blatant about it: how Yor wants to please Anya despite being a bit embarrassed at first to take part in her game, and then how Anya's eyes light up with happiness when Yor starts playing with her...for a series like SxF that's character-driven rather than plot-driven, scenes like this are so important and I'm glad the film creators realized this too!

There were also so many cute, subtle scenes as well, like when Loid and Yor smile at each other after chiding Anya, as if they're happy to share this moment of exhausting yet satisfying parenting; when Anya reads Loid's mind after he saves her but doesn't reveal what he's actually thinking yet we can imagine what it is based on her expression; Loid showing feelings of comradery with the restaurant owner because their pasts are so similar; Anya quietly and sadly hugging Bond in the bedroom; and in the ferris wheel after Yor feels so embarrassed about misunderstanding what happened with Loid and the woman but then can't help but smile with motherly love when she sees Anya waving at her...the movie is filled with moments like this that are like little love letters to fans who know the true heart of SxF isn't so much the action and spy drama as it is the family relationships.

And of course, as I mentioned before, the animation of the movie is fantastic! Not just the action scenes, which are great by the way, especially Yor's fight with Type F, but the character expressions as well. Anya's always had the most varied and hilarious faces of all the characters, but the movie goes even harder with her expressions, especially when she has to hold in her stool! Her faces were making me both cringe and laugh at the same time! The animators did such a good job making me feel sorry for her but also laugh at her.

I'm not a fan of potty humor, but I was confident SxF would make it funny, and I was right! The poop god sequence in particular was as equally cringe as it was hilarious!

To conclude, CODE: White is a must-see for anyone who likes or loves Spy x Family. I can't say it's a cinematic masterpiece or anything, but for what it's supposed to be - a fun and enjoyable film for those who like the series, it definitely delivers! Can't wait to see it at least two more times during its showing in the US...and more times in the future!

[rarepairdumpster]

Vacation AU

Pairing: Viktor/Silco (Arcane) Rating: M C/W: Modern AU, Jayce Mention, Everyone in this series deserved an all inclusive vacay, except for Singed

Divorcee Silco going to an all inclusive resort celebrating his enormous divorce settlement and freedom.

Viktor being dragged on a sun holiday by his rich friend, Jayce, because Jayce thinks he needs to loosen out his whole spine and relax for once.

And Viktor is unimpressed and uninterested until he sees divorcee Silco in a sheer white shirt and figure-hugging shorts.

Cuz Viktor sees those toned thighs and strong shoulders and knows Silco takes care of himself.

When Silco glances over at them, feeling their attention lingering, Viktor assumes the man is smirking at Jayce.

'Cause usually no one looks at Viktor when Jayce is around.

Luckily for Viktor, Silco is very much done with large, bumbling, dog-coded men.

Silco approaching Viktor at the hotel bar in the evening, wearing a fresh shirt and dark trousers now.

"I thought your friend would never slip away," Silco comments, eyes glinting. "Are you here for long?"

"The week," Viktor replies, stirring his daiquiri. "I can let Jayce know you were looking for him." He hopes that Silco came to talk to him, but he's been burned too often by getting his hopes up.

Silco looks at him funny, and then chuckles.

"Your friend is of no interest to me." Silco steps closer, close enough for Viktor to feel a hint of heat down his side. "Can I buy you another drink?"

Viktor looks up quickly in surprise and feels his face warm when he sees how close Silco is. "I--" he quickly looks down at the cup of mostly ice in front of him. "I do appear to need a refill"

"Excellent." Silco smiles, soft and faint, before catching the barman's attention. He rattles off his own order and then indicates Viktor, prompting him to make a request for whatever drink he wants.

Viktor asks for another of the same, and thanks the barman before turning back to Silco. 

"I'm Viktor," he says, finally taking a good look at the man.

"Silco," Silco answers, taking a tiny sip of his very expensive whiskey. "I hope I'm not being too forward, but you're incredibly beautiful."

Viktor turns away as his drink arrives, knowing his face has to be as red as his daiquiri. "No, I just...don't hear that very often."

"A shame," Silco says quietly, truly baffled. With those cheekbones, his fluffy hair and honey eyes, and those long legs, Silco had imagined the boy was getting praised for his looks regularly.

"Are you here alone?" Viktor asks, looking up once he feels his face start to cool.

"Yes," Silco answers easily, he let's his hand rest at the back of Viktor's bar stool.  "Though I'm hoping for company. For tonight...and maybe more."

"Now that was forward," Viktor chuckles and takes a drink.

Silco let's out a soft laugh of his own and the sound almost caresses Viktor's ear. "Yes, I suppose it was."

"How long have you been divorced?" Viktor asks, surprising Silco. Viktor shrugs a bit at the wide eyes. "I noticed the tan line on your finger."

"About two months." Silco pushes a hand through his hair. "Is my being divorcee a deterrent? I know some people won't touch those who've been married before. "

Viktor shakes his head. "Not at all. I like that it's been so soon, actually." Viktor smirked. "Being a rebound is my specialty. No reason to get attached."

Silco hums, amused. He doesn't say, unless I give you reason.

The reason it's Viktor's specialty is because he's used to people thinking they can save or fix him, but just get frustrated and angry when they can't.

He's learned to recognize it and get out before it starts to spiral.

Silco doesn't think either of those things, of course.

Viktor doesn't need to be fixed.

"And you?" Silco asks. "What about that overgrown Labrador you're with?"

The comment makes Viktor laugh softly, amused and fond, before he says, eyes crinkling, "I think he's more of a golden retriever."

Silco smirks and rolls his eyes playfully. "I'm more of a cat person anyway."

Viktor shivers. Jayce has often commented that he's like a cat.

Viktor takes a drink and the straw slurps at the last of the liquid.

"If you're still thirsty," Silco offers, leaning close to Viktor's ear, "I'll gladly have some champagne brought to my room."

"I can think of something else I'd prefer," Viktor answers, smirking. "Never was fond of champagne."

"Anything you want, darling," Silco purrs, pulling back just enough to reach up and push his knuckle under Viktor's chin.

Silco and Viktor are gone before Jayce comes back, and he's standing there like ???, but shrugs, because Viktor's probably back in the hotel room.

"Probably got bored and went to rEaD"

Meanwhile, Viktor scrawled across a king sized bed, sucking a big dick with strong hands in his hair.

Hair just completely mussed. 

Lips puffy and swollen and slick with spit.

Eyes blown so wide Silco can barely see the soft ring of gold around the outside of his pupils.

Even with a big dick pushing into his throat, Viktor feels more relaxed now than he has since he got to this stupidly fancy hotel.

Silco intends to let Viktor pull off of him when he is getting close, but Viktor just grows more enthusiastic. When he cums, Viktor cleans every drop and Silco wonders if Viktor was the universe's apologizing for a decade of Vander.

Viktor gives him a dazed little smile after, and is glad for the hands that tug him upwards, dragging him close enough to steal a kiss.

Sprawled on top of Silco, Viktor hums against his lips

Silco lets Viktor grind against him, slotted in the crease of his hips, capturing every gasp and moan that falls from Viktor's lips.

"Yes, darling, just like that..."

Viktor hasn't slipped into sub space with such ease in a long time, often not feeling relaxed enough.

But right now, sprawled on top of Silco, with those strong hands on him, Viktor feels like he could float and float and float.

Silco can't bear to move Viktor, even to clean themselves up. Not when he's laying on Silco like a weighted blanket made just for him. All that Silco does is reach down and pull the duvet over the top of them before stroking Viktor's hair and kissing his head.

It takes a while for Viktor to come down and then he, rather embarrassingly, cries a little. He laughs at himself even as he cries.

Silco nuzzles Viktor's hair softly. "It's okay."

"Most people would get the wrong idea, if someone started crying after sex," Viktor says, smiling, wiping at his face.

"Ah well, with experience comes seeing many things for many different reasons," Silco sighs, trailing his fingers down Viktor's bare back. "Sex is emotional. Having emotions in the time around it is natural."

Viktor tucks his face against him.

"I really enjoyed that," Viktor admits against Silco's skin, his breath tickling the man. "Needed it, maybe."

"Anything I can provide is yours," Silco smiles. "Especially if it includes seeing you like this." He lifts up the duvet a little, peeking at Viktor's naked form atop him.

Viktor flushes and kisses Silco's sternum. He feels...pleased. Like he could keep coming back to this room, this man.

Part 2

Arch + Woods

[lukolabrainrot]

I have a few thoughts on the Spain trip and the timing of Luke’s post the day after A posted the story.

I want to focus on the slide with the two people on the beach. I do not believe that this picture is of two random people on the beach. He could have easily panned the camera to the left or right or even cropped these people out of the picture. I think he was deliberate in leaving those people in the picture because he is laying crumbs for the fans. I think the picture is of him and NC. If you look at her picture with a fan after she returned from Malta, her face is tanned looking like she was on a sunny vacation. I know Malta is sunny but she was there for work and I heard most of that work was in a studio. She did go on a boat tour with JD (rumored) but they were in a covered area of the boat. Is there a possibility that she joined L in Spain for a few days after she completed filming MFT? I also believe the trip was recent and I do not put too much thought into his hair length because they may be changing the style for S4 and it does not need to be as long.

The other theory I have is regarding A’s post on her insta story the day before to make it look she was with him. I think there was some manipulation on the picture to make it look she was there hence the flashing to distract. She may have known about this promotional deal with the hotel from earlier but she was not there. What if L with the aid of N set a trap for her and she fell for it by telling her when he was going to post? He let her have her moment to try to deceive the fandom and then he came in with his post debunking that she was there. Most of his postings seem NC or Bton coded and was set up to make it appear he was there by himself. I believe he was there by himself at some parts but a certain blonde may have joined him for a part of the stay. She guided him on what pictures he should take including that white t-shirt which to me is reminder of the Shameless t-shirt she was wearing.

In closing I think L is learning how to play this SM game from L and I believe they are strategizing on getting him through this rough patch. We probably will not see a confirmation of their relationship until later this year. We possibly could get a hard launch at the Wicked premiere in November which puts some distance between them the chaotic summer.

One more thing regarding L’s like on A’s post and him still following her. I do not believe they are still together and him liking her pictures is probably some sort of deal they have which allows him to gradually distance from her without additional chaos. She has demonstrated that she is as cunning as a fox and is messy. I have noticed a pattern on likes from members of his family on the last 3 post to her grid. The last upload his mother liked the photos but then it was unliked after a few days. His aunt and his friend Carla have also liked the bobble head pose post but then they unliked it. I believe L probably brought them up to speed. She is also vigorously looking for modeling and dance gigs based on who she follows and unfollows.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Hi Anon, I'm intrigued by your theories. I'll respond with a bullet point to each paragraph:

I don't think the couple is of him and N personally. The woman seems wayyyy too tall to be N 😅 Lukey Newts is great at a lot of things, SM and pics are not one of them LOL I think it's just a random couple tbh. N did have a little bit of a sunburn in Malta, so idk if the fan pics really prove she was in Spain with him.

HOWEVER, I flip flop between if either A or N were actually on this trip with him, but I will say this. 1) L was quick to clear up the rumors that were circulating about his post in his stories (which is new behavior for him). He said look, N and I are good. Also, look at all this stuff for one person. NO, A WAS NOT WITH ME. I think whatever SM agreement he and A have includes him letting her know when he is going to post something on his grid or stories. So I think he knew she was going to do her normal SM games, and he wanted to be the one to have the last word. 2) The pics of him in his post-- HE IS LOOKING GOOD. So I do think someone took some of those photos of him (and we know who takes great photos of him 😉). This (and the fact that he just looked glowy and happy) is the only thing that makes me think maybeeeee N did join him for a little bit on the trip. But I do agree that it seems like his post and stories had a lot of nods to N and/or Bridgerton Season 3, and I think he was getting pointers from N regardless if she was there or not. Hmmm, I wonder why that might be? 🤔😂

"I think L is learning how to play this SM game from N and I believe they are strategizing on getting him through this rough patch." I 100% agree with this! I think IF L/N are currently together, we are going to get a confirmation before the Wicked premiere. Mainly because of the fact that the paps are so far up their butts, and the wilding that is happening in some parts of the fandom. I think they would rather control the narrative and squash the wild speculation atp. HOWEVER, who knows?? I really don't have a great prediction on WHEN they will go public. I personally think it will be sooner than later, but I think it's kind of just a wait and see game atp.

I agree with everything in the last paragraph. No notes!

[last-sprout]

Last Sprout Dev Diary - Nov 22, 2024

Hello sprout folks! I'm Valerie, or @oneominousvalbatross, and I've been working on Last Sprout since July, and I'm wildly excited to share some of the things I've been working on with y'all.

Ignore that Twiggs' hat falls off that's natural.

I'm aiming for a Dev Diary once a week on Fridays, and I'm just gonna be giving a brief look into making a game! I'm learning how to do a lot of this stuff live, so I'm sure there'll be a ton of massive rewrites and changes. I have probably a dozen huge systems that are already built that I'm not going to be getting into in this post, since I'm already half a year or so into development, but I'm sure I will find space to include them later!

XP

I spent most of my time figuring out exactly how we wanted to represent XP in the world. We were pretty certain that we wanted XP to exist physically as a substance you picked up, so I started with a system from a previous build.

In that version, we just created a bunch of XP objects and scattered them into the world, then had some code that scooted them around. Of course, that means that we're tracking an individual unity GameObject for every single instance of a point of XP which is, uh, slow.

This is what we call 'suboptimal.'

So obviously we needed to not instantiate an entire transform every time we needed to spawn XP. Even if we re-used objects that would just be prohibitively expensive for an object that really just needs a position.

I'm not going to go over each step in the process, but after experimenting with GPU instancing to just draw a bunch of XP objects at once, eventually I landed on extending Unity's particle system, since it has a lot of the settings I wanted access to.

To make the XP move how I wanted, I wrote a pretty simple process that iterates through all the little blobs and checks how close they are to a designated collector, then uses an exponential decay function (with thanks to Freya Holmér) to make them move towards Twiggs.

I think every game should have an action that can be best summarized by making the noise 'SHWOOOOOP.'

Parrying

Parrying was a good deal simpler, but it still has its issues. Essentially, all a parry needs to be is a hitbox and an animation, with some callbacks to enemies to let them react to the parry. Whenever an attack hitbox intersects with either a Parrybox or a Hurtbox, it checks its tags to see if it's interacting with the appropriate entities, to makes sure enemies aren't hitting or parrying each other constantly. If it passes the test, it calls GetParried() on the intersecting object.

GetParried(), idiot.

For the basic behavior, parrying just interrupts the attack in progress and knocks the enemy back by a set amount, but there's room in the system to add all sorts of neat effects, which I'm sure we'll be taking advantage of in the future. It's been a challenge to juggle the various kinds of hitboxes, but it'll definitely be worth it going forward!

Of course, between all these bits there were a ton of bugfixes and little experiments, but that's a topic for a later dev diary!