#and i'm not even doing great professionally but the entire stuff that's been going on with my book has been enough to like

[spaceradars]

why do i feel so weird lately oh my god.

[darkbluekies]

Yandere Silas x male reader bodyguard. Relationship:romantic

You and him grew up together in the mafia, Silas fell in love with you but you only saw him as a friend and he ends up falling in love with a girl and this makes you leave the mafia to go abroad with her to live a normal life.

Silas has contacts all over the world and discovers that you are in a country abroad, he kills the girl and kidnaps you

Be mine (you have no fucking choice)

Yandere!mafia oc x male!bodyguard!reader

Summary: after being friends with Silas for years, you decide that it is time to pack it up and leave, much to Silas’s dismay.

Warnings: criminal stuff, throwing up, getting drunk by force, ropes, cage, mentions of sleeping around, violence, alcohol

Word count: 4.3k

You put your gun into your belt and get out of the warehouse. 

“Hey, where are you going?” Silas asks and grabs your arm. 

“I’m going home”, you say. “This mission doesn’t interest me.”

You try to walk, but Silas hurries in front of you, blocking your way. He almost reminds you of the little, stubborn boy he once was when he does that. 

“Wait”, he says. “You never drive well after a mission. You have too much adrenaline. You and I can leave together. I can drive you to my house.”

“No, Silas, I’m going home.”

Silas doesn’t react to you calling him by his first name. But he never has. You are special. Only one other person in his entire organization can call him by his first name without getting a bullet through their eyes — that person being his second in command. You and his second in command have known Silas longer than anyone else. You’d dare call his second in command your friend too, although on a more professional level. 

You’ve known Silas longer than his second in command has, and you’ve known his little brother, Ares … and you’ve known about his jealousy for a very long time. It started when you one day went home with his brother to play video games after shool. Next day when you entered school, his brother had a black eye and Silas had not left your side for the entire day. 

It only got worse from there, but you never did anything. You tried to talk to him, but it seemed like the years made him even more jealous. He dated girls time and time again, but created a big fuss when you showed the slightest interest in anyone — be that boy or girl. You became the third wheel in SIlas’ multiple relationships.

He did admit to his love for you, just a few years ago, but you couldn’t reciprocate his feelings. It would make everything harder. You were basically working for him as his bodyguard and didn’t want to ruin the friendship you had with him. Losing him as a friend could mean both mental distress … and physical harm. 

“Does this have anything to do with the girl I’m dating?” Silas asks. 

You look baffled. “No? Why would you think that?”

“Because she’s at the house?”

“No, I just want to go home”, you sigh heavily. “Why do I have to explain my every step to you? You’re not my father, come on.”

“Because I’m worried about you.”

“What a great look for you, mister mafia leader. Don't let anyone else see that.” You nod at him to move. “Move out of the way now, I’m tired and I’m hungry. I want to go home and order a fucking pizza.”

“So this has nothing to do with my girlfriend?”

“What's the matter with you? Are you trying to make me jealous or something? I'm not interested in you, you know that.”

You push past him.

A month passes. You have been seriously thinking about leaving the mafia for a long time now, but ever since Silas got himself yet another girlfriend it became clear that you have to leave, if you ever want to get yourself one of your own. As long as you stay with him, he will never let you date anyone — apart from him, of course. 

You’ve decided to move abroad. While packing your bags, you feel tears run down your cheeks. You have known Silas for as long as you can remember. You love to be with him, he is your best friend. Betraying him would mean betraying yourself, and his entire organization. People who betray him gets killed personally by Silas. Neither you or Silas would want that.

However, leaving without anyone noticing would be hard. Silas would know that something was wrong right away and he would use his contacts to find you again. You’d need help with creating false documents … and you knew just the man to help with that. 

You hold the phone to your ear. 

“Hello?” a familiar voice asks. 

“Hi, Ares”, you say. 

“How the fuck did you get my number?”

“I did some digging.”

“Holy fuck, Y/N, you need help.”

You chuckle and hear how Ares chuckles in return. 

“What did you want?” he asks. 

“I need some help.” You look around, feeling like you’re being watched, which wouldn't be very far off. “Can we meet up?”

“Sure. Now?”

“If you can.”

“Yeah, I’m not busy.”

You decide to meet up at a café an hour away from your house, hoping that Silas’s associates wouldn’t recognize you here. You couldn’t believe that you would meet Ares again, you haven't seen him since you were teenagers. He looks the same, just a bit more grown up. 

“My brother finally removed the leash around your neck?” Ares chuckles and hugs you. 

“No, not really”, you sigh. “This is why I need your help. I know that you scam tight about everyone. And I need you to help me create false documents, passport … yeah, you name it.”

Ares smirks.

“Little Y/N is going on vacation, I see”, he says. “Where are you going?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you trying to get away from my brother?”

You nod. Ares seems to think for a moment. 

“Go to Spain”, he says. “Silas is banned from there, he won't be able to get you.”

“Ah, I feel so bad about it, though”, you sigh and run your hands through your hair. “He's my best friend. And boss, technically. If I leave, I betray both my best friend and his organization … and then he has the right to kill me.”

“Wait, you're planning to leave the mafia? For real?”

“I don't want to, but I can't live like this. I want to have my own life. I'm a grown man now, the window for opportunities is closing every year.”

“I'll go with you. I'll protect you.”

“You don't have to, Ares. Look at me, I'm capable of taking care of myself.”

You were Silas’s bodyguard, after all. No weak person gets that position. 

“Yes, I know”, Ares says. “But I can help. And you don't have to be lonely.”

“You are an ass too”, you remind him.

“Better than Silas, though.”

You scoff and roll your eyes.

Ares comes with you to Spain. He has given you false documents with new names and nationalities. You sit together at the airport with your phone in your hand. Your stomach is turning.

“I really should tell him”, you sigh nervously. “I don't want to just leave. I have known him for years. I might betray him work wise, but I can't betray him friend wise. I'm going to call him.”

“I don't think you should”, Ares says. “He has been awful to you, why does he deserve your goodbye?”

You groan and hide your head between your knees. Ares brushes his hand through your hair.

“Come on, sweetie, let it go”, Ares encourages you. “Your new life starts soon. Beach, sun and alcohol, all day long.”

You want to tell him that you don't drink, but decide to leave it be. 

“I have to go to the bathroom”, you excuse yourself and stand up to walk away.

But you don't go to the bathroom stalls. You stand by the large windows at the gate and call Silas.

“Hi, Y/N”, he says.”I haven't heard from you in a little while. I was about to go over to your house and drag you over to mine, because I miss you.”

“I have to talk to you about that”, you say,  hesitantly. “I am not at home, and I probably won't be back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm really sorry that I have gone behind your back, but I am actually leaving … going abroad. And it might be permanent.”

“Have you hit your head?”

“I'm really sorry for betraying you, Silas, you’re my best friend … but frankly, you're always stopping me from getting my own family, while you brag about the women you fuck. I need to get away, at least for a while and get to try to find love. It might not be permanent, but I don't know.”

“Where are you going? You know that you can't leave the country without me knowing. The second any of your credit cards, passport or anything along that way is being used, I'm notified.”

“Well I'm not fucking stupid. I have fixed that.”

Silas scoffs out a mocking laugh.“You don't know how to do that.”

“I had help.”

“From who?” He doesn't sound that cocky anymore.

“Ares.”

Silence. 

“Oh, you can't be fucking serious”, Silas says. 

You can't detect what emotion he's feeling. Perhaps everything all at the same time. Maybe it was a wrong decision to call him before your flight, but the guilt would have eaten you up the entire way there.

“I am”, you answer, trying your best not to let your voice shake. 

“You know what kind of asshole he is, Y/N”, Silas tells you. 

“I have done stuff too, I’m no angel either.” You sigh, shaking your head. “I just called to let you know that I am leaving. I didn’t want you to hear that from anyone else, I wanted you to hear it from me personally. This is a goodbye, Silas — at least for now. Thank you.”

“Y/N-”

You hang up and turn off your phone before returning to Ares who’s sipping on a beer by the gate, where you left him.

When you’re allowed to board the plane, you’re already nauseous. What if it wouldn’t work? What if you changed your mind? You already felt bad. Ares puts his hand on your shoulder while you walk through the middle of the plane, trying to find your seat. Ares takes the aisle seat. 

“Thank you for giving me the window seat”, you chuckle. “I feel like a kid all over again.”

“Well, I can’t let random folks touch you, can I?” Ares responds. “I’m a gentleman after all.”

Ares sits with his phone up the entire flight, working. You know all about his dirty business, how he scams people left to right with his false businesses. 

You fall asleep for a while. Your body has been in a tense position the entire day and finally, you were out of reach. He couldn’t create a storm or shoot down a passenger plane, he wasn’t a God or a military flighter. He is nothing more than a man with a bit too much power for his own liking. And hybris. A whole lot of hybris. Ares turns off his phone to look at you. He smiles slightly. For years, he has tried to take you from Silas. You didn’t want him, but Silas was too selfish to let you be put on the market. He wanted you available at all times, for when the timing was right. Ares stopped trying to reach out to you after a while, knowing that it was pointless, thought that if you wanted to get back in touch with him, you would reach out — and you did. Ares lets his eyes wander over you. He has tried to match your physique, but had no chance against the hours you’ve had to spend at the gym to be able to be Silas’s bodyguard. But under all those muscles, you are nothing but a softie, and that’s why Ares wants you … and Silas too, unfortunately. He always has to compete with his brother over toys they both want.

Silas scoffs angrily and runs his hand through his black hair, and yet he can’t stop himself from laughing. It’s absurd! All of it!

“Why are you laughing, boss?” his second in command asks shortly. “This is nothing to be happy about.”

“I fucking know that?” Silas snaps back. “Do you think I enjoy knowing that my Y/N is on a plane with my psycopathic brother going to fuck knows where?”

“There are not a lot of places he could go to, though. Think about it.”

“I can’t fucking think! Y/N is leaving me!”

“Silas, sit down before you faint, ‘kay?”

Silas, oddly enough, listens and sits down on the couch in his study with his hands gripping the fabric beside him. His second in command stands in front of him with his hands on his hips. 

“Listen”, he says. “Ares would fuck with you, right?”

“Right”, Silas responds. 

“Which countries are you banned from?”

“Spain, England, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland.”

“So, one of those countries.”

“But which?!”

“His favorite. Which one is the warmest?”

“Spain?”

“Bingo.”

Silas’s eyes widens and he breaks out into a shocked smile. Why didn’t he think about this? Ares isn’t smart.

“...how the fuck do I do this?” he realizes. “I can’t just take a plane into Spain without being arrested the second I step off the plane. We will need another way. We could get a boat and sneak in.”

“I’ll see what I can do, boss.”

“Do it quickly, I know my brother and he will take what I want. If he does, I will never forgive myself.”

The reason why Silas has never let you date anyone is because he wants what can only be had one way, your innocence. 

He sighs and walks out of the room where he finds the woman he’s dating standing with her hands together, looking worried. A certain rage takes over him. The sight of her had made you want to leave. He knows very well that it isn’t her fault, but he can’t help but think that it is. Her existence has put you in a position of discomfort, and for that, she has to pay. Silas doesn’t want to look at her, it only makes him nauseous. 

He pulls up his gun from his belt, and without a second thought, he fires off and watches the innocent girl’s limp body hit the floor. But for now, he can’t bring himself to feel bad. 

He has to find you. Ares is only nice as long as you're on his side, if you want to disagree with him, he's going to strip you off everything. You just don't know how horrific Ares could be.

Your first few days in Spain couldn’t be more than idyllic — if it weren’t for the fact that you look over your shoulder wherever you go. You scan the areas for familiar faces of Silas’s gang. 

“Relax, will you?” Ares says and hooks his arm around your shoulders. “Just enjoy the scenery instead.”

“I think I’m going insane”, you mutter. 

“A shot will help with that.”

“I don’t drink, you know that.”

Ares just smiles. You’re on your way back to the house from a restaurant Ares had treated you to. It was obviously a date, but you didn’t know how to tell him that you wanted to take things slow. Ares has never been a patient man … and you aren’t even sure if Ares is the person you want to date currently. Frankly, thanks to Silas, you don’t know what you want to do yet. You’ve only gotten your freedom to do whatever you want a few days ago, and it’s more overwhelming than you expected. 

“Do you want to come to my room?” Ares asks when you get to the front door. “We don’t even have to do anything, we can just watch TV.”

“I start to believe that the only reason you wanted to come with me on this trip was to get me in bed”, you scoff and put the keys in the lock. 

“Not only-”

“Ares, go to the bar and pick up someone there instead.”

“I can’t leave you alone, I told you that I was going on the trip to protect you.”

“And i told you that I didn’t need protection. If you’re horny, go.”

Ares sighs and gives up. “Fine, call me if you need me.”

“I’ll be fine, I’m tired.”

Ares nods and gives your back a tap before walking back the way you came from. You unlock the door, going into the house. In the corner of your eye, you can tell that something is moving. Instantly, you go into attack mode, but freezing when you notice who it is that is standing up from the armchair.

“I feel like a dad catching their underage kid sneaking in after a night out”, the second in command says. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you question. 

The second in command jerks his head. “Fucking guess.”

“Did Silas really send you because he can’t enter the country?” you laugh. “That’s so tragic.”

“Laugh all you want, you’re not the one that have been on a small fucking fishing boat for twelve hours straight!” He collects himself and sighs. “I will give you one chance to come with me voluntarily before I beat your head in.”

You scoff and cross your arms over your chest. “Try me.”

Silas must have equipped his second in command with things he knew that you wouldn’t be able to combat, because in one way or another, you lose consciousness. 

You wake up in a dark, cold room. At once, you try to move your hands to your eyes to rub them clean from drowsiness, but quickly notice how your hands are tied to something behind you. That’s when you realize that you’re stuck in a cage the size of a garden shed, in — what looks like — a cargo hold. Your hands are tied to one of the cage’s bars behind you. Your head is pounding from the hit his second in command had given you. 

“Look at that, he’s finally waking up”, a familiar voice says. 

“So we don’t need the water?” his second in command asks. 

“Let’s keep it.”

Silas walks into the cage, crouching down in front of you. He takes a hold of your chin, directing your head whichever way he wants. 

“You gave him a bump the size of mount everest”, Silas mutters over his shoulder. 

“He’s a trained fighter”, his second in command replies. “I had to do what I had to do, you know?”

“I guess.”

Silas lets go of your pounding head. You groan softly, feeling out of your own body, while still being trapped inside the cage. You start to cough and Silas grabs the bucket of icy water, holding it to your mouth. At first, you gulp it down … and then realize that it was sea water. You throw it up, right back into the bucket. Silas gives the bucket to his second in command, telling him to throw it out.

“That was fucking disgusting”, you grimace and gag. 

“You kind of deserve it.” He fixes your hair that has started to stick onto your forehead. “Why did you do that to me, Y/N?”

“You didn’t let me have my own life. I was living yours, as a side character.”

“You betrayed me.”

You meet his brown — almost black — eyes and feel your heart sink. You have never seen such sadness in his eyes before. 

“I know”, you say and turn down your gaze. “I felt really bad about it. I know the rules, and I won’t make a fuzz about it, but can I beg of you that it won’t be you who kills me? I don’t want that to be our last memory together.”

Silas seems to be taken aback. 

“I’m not going to kill you”, he says. “In fact, no one is.”

“But I betrayed you-”

“I know, but I can’t kill you.”

“You can’t bend the rules, or else you’ll get a mutiny.”

“Who said that I was letting you off the hook?”

You watch how Silas walks out of the cage, picks something up from the floor, and returns with a bottle in his hands. 

“I know that you are strong”, he says, popping the bottle open, “and violent. So, I’m going to keep you calm for the rest of the journey to Portugal. Open your mouth.”

“What is that?” you ask suspiciously, eyeing the bottle wearily. 

“Vodka.”

You shake your head quickly. “That’s so foul-”

“I did not ask for your opinion.”

He puts the opening of the bottle to your lips and you try to turn your head, but Silas forces you to drink. With one hand, he holds the bottle, and with the other he holds your chin to make sure that you can’t turn away. You have no other choice but to swallow the burning liquid. He doesn’t let you stop until half the bottle are gone. You cough and gag, but can’t throw up. 

“You absolute fu—fucking—”, you cough. 

“Calm down, baby boy, it’s just some vodka”, Silas says nonchalantly and takes a sip. “Good for your heart.”

He puts his hand on your heavily raising chest, trying to calm your breathing and feel your racing heart. The alcohol turns your body heat up and you want nothing more than for that bucket of water to come back. 

“My right hand man will be here to make sure that you’re not sober for a single second”, Silas says and stands up. 

“You can’t fucking leave me like this!” you burst out. 

“Then stop me.”

You fight against the ropes and Silas smirks triumphantly before leaving the cargo hold.

The second in command came in every half an hour to give you new sips. You tried to refuse, but with your hands locked behind your back and head spinning with alcohol, there wasn't much you could to to stop him.

You haven't drank anything since you were a young teenager and the rocking motions of the sea wasn't helping you. You refused to throw up again, refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing you in such a state next time they entered.

You hated alcohol even worse now. Fuck Silas. 

After what felt like hours — in your drunken state it could very well have been days, or minutes — you couldn't take it anymore.

“Silas!” you shout and your tone goes to a whining, slurred melody. “Silas!”

You've never felt so helpless.

Silas enters with his second in command tightly behind him. He enters the cage and crouches down in front of your pathetic form.

“What?” he asks, cupping your cheek.

“Please stop”, you beg and sob, but you're not sure if the tears come from the heart or the alcohol. “Please …I will do what you want …”

Silas grabs the back of your sweaty neck and directs your wet face into his shoulder, letting you cry. You can feel that your hands are freed from the ropes.

Silas picks you up, carrying you up to the decks above water. His second in command holds your head so that you won't smash it against one of the sharp corners. 

Silas tucks you into a bed and leaves you to rest. You can see the shining sun outside the round porthole window as you fall asleep. 

He walks out onto the deck of the fishing boat and smirks.

“What?” his second in command asks.

“I'm not single anymore”, Silas chuckles.

“You won again, congratulations. Will you put Y/N into the basement?”

“He can handle that. But most important thing is that he's coming home where he belongs, and there won't be any more childish outbursts.”

“What happened with your brother, by the way?”

“Who cares? I don't want to meet him anyway, so the less I need to deal with him, the better.”

When the fishing boat reaches Portugal, you are dragged to a car and to the airport. You don't say much. Silas disregard for your hate of alcohol and childish behavior has put you off. If it weren't for the fact that you are hus prisoner now, you wouldn't be his friend anymore.

Silas’s private jet stands ready on an empty field. He holds your arm as he pushes you up the stairs. You rip your arm from his hold.

“I can walk by myself, let me go”, you mutter.

Silas sighs. You sit down in a seat opposite Silas and cross your arms.

“You are glaring at me”, Silas says without glancing up from his phone.

“I'm just trying to determine if you have brain cells”, you spit.

“Aren't you a fun lad?”  

“Where is my phone, by the way?”

“Like sharp objects and weapons should be: far away from you.”

“Oh, I see. You're going to treat me like a child.”

“Y/N, I'm not an idiot. I trained you, I know how dangerous you are with weapons. You are even more violent than I am at times.”

“Obviously with good reasons.”

Silas glances up from his phone. You twitch your eyebrows testingly. You might not have your weapons, but your tongue is still sharp. 

Being in a relationship with Silas might be more interesting than you thought, and Silas sure as hell will realize that you're not going down without a fight.

“Your girlfriend, then?” you question. “What does she think?”

“Frankly, she can't think a lot at the moment”, Silas responds, turns off his phone and luts it on the table between you. 

You get the hint immediately. 

“Killing her was unnecessary”, you say.

“Running away from me was unnecessary too”, Silas adds.

“This is going to be a stable relationship.”

“It will be the second you stop with the childish attitude.”

While keeping eye contact, you push his phone off the table. Silas eye twitches as he bends down to get it.

“You're going into the basement when we get home”, he says.

“Can I hit back? Or are you going to have full control and tie me up again? Is that the only way you can win over me? With me being completely helpless?”

“Oh, shut the fuck up before I let you ride on the airplane wing.”

“Sounds good to me.”

You stare at each other, and you refuse to look away first. You're going to make him regret imprisoning you.

[gorgeouslypink]

something that i think people don't understand abt manifesting is that you really need to forget abt the "how"

i want to share something that happened recently at work. as many of you know, im working my dream job that i manifested in the void. the coworkers are great, the pay is amazing, i do like the work im doing and i manifested being really good at it too BUT recently i kind of hit a block mentally. there wasn't really anything i disliked and i couldn't even explain what i felt and why i felt this way.

i talked to some friends but all they could suggest is getting a new job but that wasn't it either.

anyways i know LOA and i can even enter the void. i didn't enter the void for this issue because i didn't know what i wanted so one night, when i was contemplating this entire issue, i decided no more. i just knowingly told myself that i would start loving my job and did SATS for it.

within the next day, a coworker announced she was moving to a different company. and by coworker, i meant a huge boss. this threw our entire company into a frenzy and it was determined that my department was to take on some of her stuff. all of us had our responsibilities moved around and i got some new tasks.

these new tasks are so fun! and i also came into realization as to what was troubling me. i work in data analytics, meaning i look at all my company's data and i analyze trends or anything else people need. i manifested being insanely good at coding and having an easy time with projects so i really like this job but i kinda didn't see any results of my work. i would do all this work and then hand it off to someone and just start doing something else. however, one of my new responsibilities is actually seeing what happens with my data, seeing what people do with it, and I'm now able to directly speak to some people in meetings and such and emphasize my thoughts. when i first manifested everything in the void, it was coming from a girl who was pretty insecure and shy and liked to keep to herself. im still an introvert (ig that never really leaves you) but now im way more confident and ig i really wanted to talk to people and push my ideas more.

not to mention, these new responsibilities opened up a whole new coworker circle for me. don't get me wrong, i love my coworker friends but it's always fun to meet newer people and i met some really nice people who are changing the way i think professionally but are also great people in general.

i also got my equipment upgraded and i never realized how annoying my old equipment was until i experienced the new equipment.

anyways i could go on and on but the point im trying to make is "don't worry about the how." i literally didn't even know why i was feeling down and if you had asked me before if that coworker would be leaving, i would have said no. she's been working there for 20+ years and she always loved her job and had amazing benefits so no one saw this coming, but i did talk to her and she said she always wanted to try a different industry and she finally got the opportunity. not to mention, my department and her department aren't even closely related. ig my department knows a little bit of everyone's stuff because we look at everyone's data but we were totally blindsided when we were first told thar we were the ones that were going to help take over, esp such a high level person's job.

this is a side story but one night, i just really wanted some cookies. ig i was having midnight munchies but the cookies were 25 miles away and there was just no way it was happening. anyways i fell asleep knowing that i was going to get the cookies the next day and i was just thinking of doordash or grabbing them myself but when i woke up, the cookies were on the kitchen table. before everyone starts hating and asking how those cookies appeared out of nowhere, apparently my friend was in the area and thought of me so she grabbed me some as soon as they opened and left it on my kitchen table.

so seriously, stop worrying about the how and what ifs and just go straight to your desire.

[dduane]

Salutations and good wishes to you. I am an Indie Author seeking to go Pro. Some good advice and guidance might help minimise the mountain of my anxiety about doing this. I know you got your start with fanfiction, but did you find a publisher/agent through that door? [lots sneer at these days. Still] How many rejections did you suffer before you found your place in the literary world? Thanks for your time and sorry for bothering you <3

Hi there! And don't sweat it: this is no bother.

I have to apologize in advance, because my own career arc isn't likely to serve as much of a good example. In terms of how I got into this business, I'm a serious outlier.

Quickest and easiest to discuss: my agent and I got together after my first book was already bought and published. (Which back in the day was seen as a good enough way to go forward, and then still entirely possible.) He was recommended to me by one of my editors, as—like me—he was just getting started in the business: a likely-looking newcomer then scouting new talent. We met up and chatted, and it seemed to both of us that we'd be a good fit for each other. After forty-odd years of working together, we still are.

About the fanfic: (Adding a cut here so as not to carpet people's dashes with wall-to-wall text...)

What writing all that fic did for me—from about age sixteen onwards—was give me a whole lot of practice in getting the initial garbage associated with a story written and out of the way. Best to admit it here: we all have plenty of crap writing in us. And yeah, even long-term professional writers do. Whether you're at the beginning of your career or right in the middle of it, this is what "zero drafts" are for. You tell yourself the story, first time out... and routinely at this stage a lot of what proves to be unusable stuff emerges, and can be discarded in rewrite. (Of course crap writing can also emerge without warning in the later stages of a project, but there are many reasons for that, all beyond the scope of this discussion.) And you learn even more from reworking the material after you've gotten rid of the dross.

During the period when I was executing what might have been, oh, half a million words of fanfic—Trek originally, and then LoTR—and while reading a whole lot of everything, as I'd been doing since I was first allowed to go raid the town library by myself at age eight—I learned a fair amount about writing without realizing it. Some of it was simply about writing inside a set of rules. (Which I hadn't been doing previously: between eight and sixteen I was writing original fiction, mostly fairy tales.) Naturally in fanfic you have to obey the laws of whatever universe you're working in... or even if you wind up flouting them consciously, you do have to be conscious of them. But this work also led me to something that I hadn't really spent a lot of time thinking about: the concept that fiction writing as a whole had rules. I realized I'd better find out what those were.

The best stuff I found out during this period was what I picked up by direct example from other writers, whom I'd immediately start imitating and then sort of leave by the wayside when I found others I liked better; at which point I'd start imitating them. (This being a great way to learn and hone new skills, and to start getting a sense of what a writer's "voice" is and can come to mean. I think every writer does this, to some extent: because it's really, really tough to learn how to write without reading. And the more extensively the better.)

I have to emphasize here, BTW, that the fanfic that came out of me as I started slogging up this learning curve was all almost uniformly terrible. All of it, mercifully, along with my earliest original fiction, is gone now: long since burnt, shredded, composted under many layers of time. Trust me, it's just as well. Gah was it awful! Nobody else ever saw the stuff, for which I thank great Thoth every time I think about it. ...What's interesting, too, in its way, was that I didn't even know that what I was doing was fan fiction. I had as yet no contact with any kind of organized fandom, and it would be a long time yet before "online" was invented. I was working in utter isolation, unaware that anybody else might have been doing the same thing. (And it's difficult to describe the sense of astonishment and joy that hit me the first time I went to an SF convention, saw fanzines for the first time, and found out that I was not alone. All unsuspecting, I'd stumbled onto one of my tribes.)

But somewhere along the line, as the years went by—as I finished high school and went to college, and then from there to nursing school, and graduated and started working as a psychiatric nurse, and kept on writing—at some point, as I started writing original fiction again, as well as fanfic, the quality of the output began to improve. The combination of constant practice and voracious reading of better writers outside my chosen genre was slowly having an effect. Trusted friends who saw this later material started saying, "This isn't bad, you should try to get it published!" But since none of these folks were writers, I didn't pay too much attention to their opinions.

I did pay attention, though, when my good friend and mentor David Gerrold said something similar on reading my first novel in 1976. And when that was bought by the first publisher who read it, I had to admit he might have had something there.

This too, though, is unfortunately also a way I'm an outlier: I haven't had a lot of rejection. (Even in my TV work, where rejection is pretty much the rule rather than the exception.) Speaking very generally, just about anyone I've pitched something to in the prose market has bought it—or if they didn't like the idea I came in with, they've immediately said "But would you like to do this instead?" And often enough, what they've offered or suggested has been something that sounded like fun. That's how I wound up doing the Star Trek: Rihannsu books, for example: they were "instead of" a Romulan dictionary. Paramount essentially ringfenced an entire AU-area of Trek and gave it to me to play in, which struck me at the time as amazing. And continues to do so.

Now all this may make me sound almost unfairly lucky. But things do tend, slowly or quickly, to balance out. Over time the universe has made up for its relative kindness at the rejection end of things by making sure I knew plenty about the non-rejection forms of writer-career pain: projects from which I was not rejected but which went terribly wrong (wheels come off a huge deal just before signing, promised actors or directors fail to materialize...), projects where I did the work but didn’t get paid, or where I was brought on board and then got fired/ghosted unreasonably or for no reason at all, or sometimes (mortifyingly) for quite good reason. And let's not forget how, as what could seem a very pointed shot across my bow when my career-vessel was just pulling out of port, half the print run of that very-much-buzzed-about debut novel wound up being pulped in the warehouse because another, far better-established writer's new book needed the pallet space that mine had been taking up. (insert rueful smile here) Believe me, entropy is running, and will catch up with you one way or another. So make yourself as ready for it as you can.

I don't mean to increase your anxiety. Yet that said: you're preparing to enter a business in which, for a freelancer, at least some level of anxiety is more or less part of the basic ground of being. You are going to have to develop ways of dealing with the everyday forms of that to keep it from routinely derailing your work.

I find it helps a little if you can come to consider this as a modern form of Going On An Adventure. Good things will happen; bad things will happen; and all of these will be in service of building your career. Think of yourself as being on a quest.

Your job now becomes the business of suiting up with the best equipment and advice you can find (ideally not from outliers like me). The web is full of useful pages on subjects such as how to query and how to find an agent.

Here are links to some.

Compare these resources one against another to see how their different kinds of advice seem to stack up, and which ones are the most congenial for you.

Then use this data to start drawing your personal roadmap across the terrain. Get as clear as you can in your own mind about what you're trying to get out of being in this business: what kind of writing you want to do and what results you want to produce. Then set out, redrawing your road map as necessary as you keep moving forward through the new terrain.

And I wish you good fortune on the journey! (Because luck, as you can see from the above, can definitely be part of this... but fortune favors the prepared.)

Meanwhile, get out there and have a blast. :)

[copperbadge]

hi, i had a medium to big question. in your post about the adhd self-help book you mentioned people with adhd being conditioned to be nonconfrontational, but i've never once in my entire life connected the two? can you break down the connection for me so that i can once again (this week, even) have my understanding of my own condition blown wide open?

So, you are not the only person to ask about this, but that's on me for being unclear -- I wasn't trying to assert that kids with ADHD are automatically conditioned to be nonconfrontational, I was more trying to be like "Hey not everyone needs lessons in medical self-advocacy but a lot of nonconfrontational people do." And I think there is a higher population of people with neurodivergence who are deeply confrontation-averse, but I don't have like, numbers for that, it's just an assumption based on other knowledge.

It gets complicated; ADHD is a disease based heavily in acting impulsively against your best interests. But yeah I do think people with ADHD are often conditioned to avoid confrontation because of two main factors: rejection-sensitive dysphoria and executive dysfunction.

RSD, which I hate perhaps more than any other symptom or behavior associated with ADHD, automatically kicks our nervous system into high gear in social situations and encodes embarrassing moments in our memory with high-def clarity. Because RSD naturally causes a level of anxiety around socialization, it tends to make us nonconfrontational simply because a) we don't want to be yelled at, b) we don't want to embarrass ourselves by getting emotional about something that may not warrant it, and c) by the time we realize what's happening our body is already on high alert which means we are likely to go into fight-flight-freeze mode.

Me, I freeze, usually, but none of those three options are great for fast thinking during an argument. I used to lose arguments a lot simply because I couldn't think or react as fast as the neurotypical person I was fighting with, so I simply stopped having fights. Notably, I did not have this problem when fighting with my brother, who is also neurodivergent and has many of the same freeze reactions I do.

If people disagree with me, even when I know I'm right I also know I probably won't be able to vocalize it properly, so I back down. Usually it's trivial so it doesn't matter, and I've gotten strategic about how and when I argue about things that do matter; it's also a lot easier to do with strangers or professionals (like doctors) where I don't have to worry about long-term social repercussions. But yeah, our own nervous system tells us "hey maybe don't pick this fight" about every single fight and if we do pick that fight, it treats our opponent as a dangerous predator.

Executive dysfunction's interaction with nonconfrontation is something I have less problem with because while I do have poor executive function, I've spent a lot of time and energy training myself to cover the Important Stuff. I have mild ADHD so I'm capable of this; I'm not trying to say everyone with ADHD is, because lord knows it's exhausting for me and I've been doing it for roughly thirty years. But essentially, I cover where it counts: if someone needs me to do something I do it, I meet deadlines, I pay bills.

So with that disclaimer in place, a very common issue especially for children with undiagnosed ADHD is that they'll be told or asked to do something and simply be unable to begin or complete it, then when they're asked why they didn't do it they can't explain. Even if they try to explain that they simply couldn't, like they were incapable of doing it for reasons they don't understand, that usually doesn't hold water with a lot of parents and teachers.

"I couldn't bring myself to write this essay," is actually something I told myself a few times in college, but it's not something I'd bother trying to tell someone else, because if you think you're neurotypical that sounds very insane. So I'd lie and say I forgot, or I'd take the fail, or I'd simply drop out of the class. Crucially I would not fight with the authority figure who was questioning me about it, because I knew I wouldn't be able to explain myself, and I'd just end up getting in more trouble for longer.

Our culture is structured for neurotypicals, and it's not even structured for all neurotypicals. Behavior that deviates from Approved Neurotypical even when you think you are Approved Neurotypical is highly punishable. So if your options are passivity, even when passivity leads to pain, or confrontation, most people who aren't Approved Neurotypical will opt for passivity once they've had a taste of where confrontation leads. I know I do.

And the thing is, there's nothing actually wrong with that. It's a strategy calculated to minimize pain. Even when I'm firing on all cylinders on a fresh dose of Adderall, I still generally let fights go unless there will be actual real consequences, because it's just not worth it. But knowing we have ADHD and knowing we fall into this pattern, I think it is good to be aware that sometimes letting a fight go is really going to fuck you, and at that point even being bad at it is better than not engaging.

I'm pretty good at calculating those, but it's a lifelong process, knowing which hills to die on when you assume you will automatically die if you ever get above sea level.

[thelaurenshippen]

finally taking the time to read through the SAG agreement summary and oof, I hope they have an AI town hall soon because...well, there are things to discuss!

so, in case folks are curious, here are my immediate takeaways from the deal as a SAG actor, a SAG producer, and person who is not any kind of expert but spends a lot of time being skeptical of contracts I sign. this is a summation/commentary, not a holistic breakdown of every point, nor even an in-depth discussion of the points I do talk about. and it is, of course, in no way legal advice or voting advice.

this post is already maybe the longest post I've ever written on tumblr (lol) and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. to be clear, nothing I'm saying here represents how I'm going to vote, how I think other actors should vote, or my be-all-end-all stance on a particular issue. this is me reading through, flagging what concerns me, and asking myself questions. and I'm here to take your questions too! though of course my expertise is limited.

(what?? something I wrote got annoying long?? in my tumblr? it's more likely, etc. huge write-up after the cut)

the good

self-tape stuff: this is one of the more niche/the thing that the general public will find least interesting, but they've put in a lot of provisions to make sure self-tape auditions have limits (# of pages, no stunts, no nudity, doesn't have to be professionally shot, etc.) which is amazing because these types of auditions have gotten out of control since the pandemic. this feels like a great gain

data transparency: in no world did I think the streamers were ever going to agree to any data sharing with either the wga or sag so even though the data is limited, this still feels huge to me.

folks who sing and dance will be paid for both of those things now, which is great

they've added MLK day and Juneteenth as holidays (about time)

a performer cannot be required to translate their own lines

principal performers are required to be given hair and makeup consultation or reimbursed for obtaining their own services - this seems like a small thing, but it's being put in here pretty much entirely because HMU services have generally been appalling when it comes to textured hair/a variety of skin tones. there's also stuff in here about working to hire more diverse HMU artists

it looks like it's going to be easier/provide a path for folks getting IMDb credits even if they're not credited on screen

miscellany: there's a bunch of gains in wage increases, P&H increases, relocation fees, franchise language etc. that all seem good to me, though my limited knowledge on those subjects prevents me from going in depth on them.

this is not important, but it tickled me, there's a term to replace all instances of "telegraph" in the contract with "email & text" which like...why has it taken us thirty years to do that lol.

the "...hm..."

intimacy coordinators: oof. when I watched the press conference SAG gave, I was fucking thrilled when they said that the new agreement required folks to hire intimacy coordinators for nudity and simulated sex scenes. that was almost reason enough for me to vote for it tbh - not requiring it is the exact reason I voted no on our last contract. however, reading the contract summary now, the exact language is: "Producer must use best efforts to engage an Intimacy Coordinator for scenes involving nudity or simulated sex and will consider in good faith any request by a performer to engage an Intimacy Coordinator for other scenes. Producer shall not retaliate against a performer for requesting an Intimacy Coordinator." this....sucks. "best efforts" and "good faith" are not the same as "required". IMO, an intimacy coordinator is the same thing as having a stunt coordinator or, like, any number of health and safety requirements. OSHA doesn't say you must "in good faith" put your "best effort" to providing fire exits. it's great that performers can request coordinators for any kind of scene, and this is still the strongest language we've ever had in a contract but....c'mon guys.

residuals: look, I can't speak to these new terms in any concrete way. there are increases, there are bonuses for streaming success, there's a whole thing about a fund regarding those successes that I need explained to me more in depth, but overall, it looks like we made some in-roads here. as someone who employs actors under digital distribution contracts that has no residuals (podcasts), I know how genuinely cumbersome the unholy trifecta of "views-success-profit" can be (as in views do not equal success, success does not equal profit, etc.). I also have no sympathy when the majority of companies dealing with that cumbersome trifecta are massive media conglomerates. anyway, long story short, idk if this is good enough, I'm hoping to attend the next info meeting sag has.

the bad

the new hair/makeup provisions are explicitly for principal actors. while I hope it leads to better, more inclusive HMU services all around I haaaate that this implies supporting or background actors (who oftentimes also have to sit in HMU) don't deserve the consideration. (then again, background actors are usually required to do their own HMU/bring their own costumes, but for productions where that's not the case, the same HMU provisions should apply IMO)

as with every contract, there's language that could be stronger, clarity that needs to exist, and important things missing - but this isn't the final contract and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm gonna leave that stuff to the experts.

but, "lauren", you say, "what about all the AI stuff? where does that go?" well, reader, I was planning on including that in the above but it's the hot-button issue right now and I think it's wickedly complicated, so I wanted to break it down separately, after I had a chance to point out all the good-bad-in-between stuff that's not getting talked about.

a note: in my career, I've learned there's two big things to keep in mind when reading a contract you might sign:

what is the worst case interpretation of this language (thank you to my lawyer, prince among men, for teaching me how to do this in practice (that said, anything I say here is not legal advice, he'd also want me to say that lol))

what are you willing to lose/compromise on/what are the limits of your pragmatism? contracts are not about a company giving you everything you want out of the goodness of their heart - it is always a compromise. pragmatism has to be a part of the equation.

so, with that said, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here, and a) try to find the good/the pragmatic and b) catastrophize the worst case scenario. but first, it might be handy to look at this SAG infographic for some basic definitions. let's go.

the AI good

a ton of stuff here requires consent. that is not a small thing, and the consent continues even after your death (whether it was a yes or no; though this can be complicated by your estate/your union)

the language does establish that the consent must be a separate signing from the employment contract, even if its in the contract, which is great (but more on that below - timing matters)

actors often do get paid for use of their digital replicas, though it's different based on the use/type of replica.

the actor must be provided with a "reasonably specific description of the intended use". this language is vaguer than I would like, because it allows producers to decide what "reasonably specific" and "intended" means - there's always going to be some vagueness when it comes to this specific thing, but a good start would be for producers to require not blanket consent, but conditional consent for each significant use of digital replicas.

if the replicas are being used in other mediums, that must also be consented to, thank god.

replicas cannot be used in place of background actor counts on a given day - if I'm understanding this correctly, this means a production can't just have a bunch of fake background actors by themselves, they have to engage real people up to a certain number first (which in this new contract is 25 for TV and 85 for movies). we're already filling in background with digital people or copy-pasting of the same crowd over and over and have been doing so since at least the late 90s, so it's good we're continuing to put up boundaries around that.

the AI "...hm..."

it's unclear (to me) when an actor can be asked to consent. IMO, everything is meaningless if the consent is happening as part of regular contract negotiations. these things have to happen when - and only when - the actor has already been engaged in a role and feels empowered to say no

the use of independently created replicas (replicas pulled from existing footage, not created by the actor) being allowed without consent under first amendment reasoning - this is obviously concerning a lot of people bc first amendment arguments are so broad. that said, there's a pragmatism part of me that understands this is already happening/has been happening for a while and used in ways I think are perfectly fine - I was just watching the new episode of For All Mankind (one of the best TV shows right now!) and it's an alternate history, which meant that in the opening scenes of this season they had some bonkers good deep fakes of Al Gore saying stuff he never said. I think that's okay to do in a fiction show that imagines a different US history! "but Lauren", you might be saying, "Al Gore isn't a member of SAG!" are you sure? are you positive? because I'm pretty certain he is - he was in several episodes of 30 Rock, way more people are in SAG than you think (every NPR reporter for instance), and the two worst presidents we've had in the last 50 years (yes, those ones), are both definitely members of SAG (even if one is dead). now, the other side of this is that public figures like politicians are under a different social contract than actors, and if they wanted to sue, they could, unlike the average SAG actor who might have their image abused. this is why this is in the "hm" column - deep fakes and parody/satire/commentary use of replicas is already here and there's always going to be a 1st amendment argument to make, so we need to figure out how best to limit those and protect the most vulnerable.

alteration: with this language, a project can digitally alter without consent if the script and performance stays "substantially" the same. again, this language is too mealy-mouthed. I don't know that I have a huge problem with a line of dialogue getting replaced with a digital version of that actors voice if, for instance, a word was mispronounced, or wind garbled the sound or whatever - yes, it would eliminate the need for ADR, but if we put some limit on it like..."if there are more than 5 lines in a given episode/movie that require digital alteration in the service of clarity, the actor must be engaged for an ADR session or paid for the digital replacement" then I could see this being workable. I'm also personally okay with things like costumes being digitally altered but, again, we need limitations on that. digital altering cannot replace the art of costuming but, for instance, if a costume needs to be altered to include a hate symbol or something, I think that's fine (example: I have friends who worked at the VFX house for an alternate history TV show that involved a lot of Nazi costuming and set design - a huge part of that VFX house's job was to put swastikas in places, rather than props making nazi flags. I'm okay with that!) but again, these fringe cases do not a compelling arugment make, and this contract language can be interpreted too broadly for my comfort! like everything else in this "hm" category, I need to see the final contract language to decide.

the AI bad

there's a bunch of circumstances in which actors don't get paid for creating their replica/use of it and those circumstances are too broad for my taste.

synthetic performers - this is just awful. no. no, we should not be allowing AI to generate entire actors. just............no. there's some language about the producers having to talk to the union if the synthetic performer is "used in place of a performer who would have been engaged under this Agreement in a human role" but this doesn't apply to non-human characters so....wouldn't that be all roles?? leaving the producers room to be like "this role has to be synthetic, we never would've cast a human!" is bullshit. also, even if we're having AI create a magical talking unicorn whole cloth (which, like, also no, we have artists for this), that unicorn still needs to be voiced by a human person. this whole section is a disaster.

the exceptions to consent for digital alteration are bad-bad. I talked about the potential ADR replacement above and that has a whole host of issues with it that I didn't even get into, but I can see the argument. the rest are very troubling:

there is an exception under "any circumstance when dubbing or use of a double is permitted under the Codified Basic Agreement or Television Agreement" - okay, so does this mean we can replace dubbing artists and stunt performers entirely? this section is about digital alteration, but who's to say alteration couldn't turn an actor broadly miming a fight into an entirely digital, expertly performed fight that usually a stunt double would have done? with AI translation technology, does this mean we're replacing VO artists for dubs entirely? bad!

similarly, "Adjusting lip and/or other facial or body movement and/or the voice of the performer to a foreign language, or for purposes of changes to dialogue or photography necessary for license or sale to a particular market" - Justine Bateman has a great twitter thread on the terrible puppetry potential of this but I want to draw attention to the particular market bit - we all know that selling to china is such a huge part of studios' strategies that they'll remove entire scenes or lines around queer stuff. to me, this clause makes all of that so much easier. I know the argument here is going to be "we can replace swear words and license it for kids!" which.......sure? fine? but, uh, we already have ways to deal with that? and the potential for abuse here is terrifying to me. with all the digital alteration stuff too, there's just so much icky implication for the beauty/body standard to get so much worse.

if a background actor’s digital replica is used in the role of a principal performer, they'll be paid as if they actually performed the days for that role, which, sure, but uhhhh why are we saying it's okay for a digital replica of a background actor to suddenly be a leading role!?!?! I can't think of anything more demoralizing than going to set to act in background (a job I've done! an important job! a fun job a lot of the time! but creatively limited) and then getting a much bigger role (the dream!) and.....not being able to, you know, act that role or be in scenes with other principal actors or do the thing that you've dedicated your life to doing. nightmare stuff.

woof. there's so much more to say but I'm going to leave it there. these are the concerns I'm going to go into SAG's meetings with, and the concerns I'll be considering as I decide how to vote. I know there are things I didn't address and very possibly things I misinterpreted or misrepresented - if you're an actor, I highly recommend a) reading that Justine Bateman thread and b) attending SAG's meetings to ask questions and express your concerns. and I'd love to hear what y'all think! my ask box is open.

[genericpuff]

Hey, found you on reddit long long ago and have since been a follower. I wanted to say thanks for all of your essays, for your advice about comics and creative work in general, and especially for the coherent thoughts on webtoon as a company... seeing you do LR and just BE outspoken about the experience of working on webcomics and being a professional artist, it gives lots of people hoping to go into the industry or do that sort of work (myself included) the courage to stand on our feet. I saw in real time that reddit post you analyzed in your last post, and I've made the (honestly pretty scary) decision to stop publishing my own comic on WT completely and abandon ship for a third party site. Still trying to decide which would be best. It sucks feeling like you're abandoning an entire audience, but the knowledge that your work will remain your own and on your own conditions... that's far more valuable at the end of the day. So thanks for the (accidental) help with that decision, and I'll do my part in spreading the word. I really enjoy lore rekindled, thank you for all your efforts and hope you're having a great day :>

Aw hey! It's always humbling to hear that people find strength in my crazy wordy essays LOL I don't particularly like saying 'you're welcome' with this sorta thing so I guess I'll say, no prob, glad I could help? 😆

I understand all too well that fear of 'abandonment'. I'm currently in the process of moving all of my work off WT as well, notifying my readers, all that fun stuff. I've considered using it just as a mirror site for the sake of trying to get audience members, but honestly, I've been using it as my primary site for nearly a decade with no luck so keeping it on the platform even just as a mirror just feels... I dunno, like I'd just be getting the same results regardless. Especially now with the site going in the direction that it is, and the fact that they're clearly moving towards AI, at best I don't want my work to be bringing in the site any more traffic (even if it's just a drop in the bucket) and at worst I don't want my work to get scraped by AI or some shit down the road LOL I often wonder why I've bothered putting up with Webtoons for so long, when I left Tapas over far less. I think it's just the fear of being a disappointment. But really the only person I should be most concerned of disappointing is myself - and I don't want to continue to disappoint myself by sticking it out with a platform that's getting worse by the day.

Something that's helped me reframe my perspective on the "loss" of Webtoons as a platform is just viewing it less as 'abandoning' and more like 'upgrading'- upgrading the environment in which I host my work, so that it can be in a place that works for my goals and stories rather than against them. It's like the golden rule of dealing with employers, if you're not getting adequate raises or proper treatment, then you leverage your skills and experience into a better position. Nothing is forever, including webcomic platforms. But change doesn't have to be a bad thing, so long as you can use it to your advantage somehow.

Take what you can of your audience with you. Encourage them to try new spaces. Turn the transition into a party, get people so excited for it that they'll feel like they're missing out if they don't hop on! Have confidence, even if you don't have everything figured out yet. The readers that truly love your work and want to read it will follow.

And worst case... send me a link to your comic sometime and I'll do what I can ;) I'll see you on the other side of wherever our work ends up (•̀ᴗ•́)و

[snek-panini]

It is Monday, and Monday is for books. Look at these beautiful things! They took me five months to make. I tried so many new things in the process and I am extremely proud of them. This is a binding of @racketghost's amazing Good Omens fic Strange Moons (Hi. I hope it's ok I tagged you in this. Your fic has been one of my favorites since I found it in 2019.) The story is a series of short fics (and one long one) that really need no introduction from me. They're set throughout the 20th century, and they are beautiful and sensual and moody and you should definitely read them if you haven't already. This is the longest work I've bound so far, but I was fortunate that the word count on the shorter fics added up to almost exactly the length of the final, longest one, making them the perfect choice for a two-volume set. I tried very hard to get them to be an exact match, and they turned out even better than I pictured.

More pics under the cut! Two books means twice the pics, and all the stuff I tried here means it's a very long post, so be warned.

Individual images of the covers. The titles are done in silver htv over brown faux leather, edged in charcoal bookcloth. The graphics are the same on both, except for the title text, and they have the same image of the reaching hands on the back. All the art assets are from rawpixel, I just flipped and rotated some of them to make the back image.

The cover materials were an interesting challenge. I'd worked with both before and wanted to incorporate them both in the design, but after measuring and checking grain direction I found I didn't have enough of either of them to do a full book, or even a half bind. So they're actually made by affixing the faux leather to the book board, then layering strips of book cloth over the top. The corners are actually mitered at a 45-degree angle. Here's a close-up:

It's two long strips of cloth (spine and fore edge, not mitered) with two short strips (top and bottom, mitered) glued over the top. There was so much measuring, omg. I bought a new tool to make sure I got it right. Hilariously, I still didn't have enough leather and had to order another roll anyway. Also hilariously, I got the idea to do this after seeing an image of a leather-bound book made by a professional that appeared to have the same feature, i.e. multiple materials with an inset and mitered corners. Wow, I said, looking at a video thumbnail, I'm going to do that! So I did, even though I didn't watch the video. Much later, after I watched his tutorial, it was clear that the design was from leather dye and tooling, not the thing that I did at all. But I do like the effect, and now I know it's possible I think it'll be great for using up weird offcuts from making other covers.

Look, spines! With TITLES on them! And LITTLE RIDGES! Both firsts for me. I'm a little obsessed with them. The cricut has opened up entirely new worlds, though I suspect the little silver lines might have been easier to do with a foil pen (which I don't have) than they were with a heat press. I did them by making the cricut cut out several "=" symbols that were the same width as the spine. The raised bands are false bands; I made them by layering little pieces of chipboard on the spine stiffener, then molding the book cloth around them when I covered them. I was worried it wouldn't work, since this is usually done with leather and book cloth is apparently way less stretchy, but it worked fine. Probably because it's a small straight design, no curves or fancy bits. I'd layer the chipboard thicker next time so they stand up higher (this is 2 layers, I'd do 3 in future) but I'm delighted by how this turned out. They look so professional.

The endpapers on both books are a constellation print. I had a really hard time trying to find something to go with the typeset, and the only ones I liked were from an etsy seller who kept selling out of them. I got lucky eventually but it was one of many hassles that befell this project. I also made my own end bands using a tutorial from the Renegade Bindery discord. I had some issues and I didn't quite nail them but I think they're pretty good for a first time (ok, second time, the first one was on a practice text block, but my point stands). I had originally intended this to be a split boards binding, my first time trying that, but when I got the boards glued on I found that they were crooked. Really crooked. Completely misaligned. Much swearing followed this discovery. I ended up having to cut the boards free, cutting the mull and tapes in the process. The mull was easily replaced, but the parts of the tapes that are usually glued to the boards were a lost cause. I reused the boards, but flipped them so the edge with the cut tapes inside is at the fore edge so I could have a cleaner hinge. You can see in the last photo that the cover board is a little wider at the fore edge. On the plus side, there are no tapes to wrinkle my pretty endpapers and it combated the small bit of spine swell I had. On the downside, the hinge has less support and the only thing I learned was How Not To Make A Sewn Boards Binding.

I may have gone a little nuts with the images in this typeset. In my defense they look very pretty. In order, that's the title page, table of contents, section break image (same as the back cover, just tiny), chapter header and ender (each chapter has one on its first and last pages, they just look particularly cool when you can get a full page spread like this), and the image on the last page of the book (same as the cover image, almost). The cover image was also supposed to have little rays coming off its moon like this one does, but the lines proved too thin for the cricut and it ate them. I still like how it looks though. The prose in this story is really rich and I was in the mood for opulence when I did it. I have absolutely no regrets.

Here's a feature that's unique to this typeset. One of the chapters in the second volume has three alternating, interwoven timelines. I read them fine on Ao3 but had trouble following them when I formatted it for printing. Usually I'd use the section break image to denote when there's a scene skip but there are literally dozens in this chapter, like 40-60 breaks over the course of 10 or so pages, and it looked very busy with images in it. So I left them out, made the line skips single instead of double like they are elsewhere in the book, and I color-coded the text instead. One timeline is printed in black, one is dark gray, and one is dark blue. And it's a very surreal chapter, with the characters having some very confusing and conflicting emotions, so I feel like reading multicolored text when you're not expecting it (the rest of the book is all normal black and this bit is near the middle) sort of reflects that unbalanced feeling? I hope so anyway, because I love the way it looks so much.

I learned so many things in the course of making these. I'm absolutely doing all of them again. Part of the reason it took so long was that I wanted it to be perfect, or as near as I could get, and I had to take the time to solve all the puzzles it threw at me. But it stretched my creativity and ingenuity and I could not be more in love with the finished product.

[sbbarnes]

Hockey Romances. Why?

So I was taken out of work a couple weeks ago due to ~pregnancy stuff~ (mostly just stress, the baby and I are fine) which has left me with a lot of spare time on my hands. And as one does, I have been filling my time reading lgbtq+ romance novels. Because I can.

In this time, I have fallen headfirst into the hockey romance novel subgenre, and I ask myself, as I have done every time I see these books advertised, why? I am not a sports fan. One time, my husband was watching football (European), and a team in red kits was playing against yellow kits, and I started laughing because "it looks like ketchup is playing against mustard". His expression was great, but he hasn't taken me seriously since.

So why is hockey of all things such a draw for the mlm romance subgenre? Especially given the NHL's apparent fear of rainbow tape? Why do I now know what the word "celly" refers to and what an "enforcer" is? Why why why?

Here are my answers:

Extremely organic way to set up some of the most classic romance tropes. Forced proximity? Being on the same team takes care of that. There was only one bed? Shared hotel rooms during away games. Enemies to lovers? Rival teams.

Lots of potential for drama given that players lead very transient lives in terms of the constant possibility of trades. In mlm love stories, even more so given that the NHL is so blatantly homophobic.

Perfect level of fame. Fame and wealth as a draw for a love interest are kind of staples of the genre, and NHL players are famous, sure, but not all of them, and they aren't as famous as football stars (either kind of football). They are still filthy rich, which makes great wish fulfillment. You can have the sexy penthouse and the anonymity.

I would go on to talk about how different roles on the team lend themselves to different tropes (goalie = tightly controlled dude who needs someone to help him cut loose; enforcer = misunderstood fighter with a heart of gold; coach for all your forbidden love/sleeping with the boss desires) but that would very quickly reveal my utter lack of hockey knowledge, so let's not. Instead, here's a quick reclist.

Rachel Reid's Game Changers series. It's a classic in the genre for a reason and it has everything. Forbidden love? Got that, maybe the definitive example. Redemption arc? Got that. Misunderstood bruiser with a heart of gold? Got that. Age difference? Got that. Also really excellent sex scenes, not gonna lie, and satisfying endings throughout - sometimes a happy end will come a little suddenly for me, but these books really delivered, and the nice thing about how romance series are structured is that you get a little peek at what comes after for the couples in the other books.

2. Him, Us and Epic by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy. This one surprised me, I don't generally go for first person POVs, but I did enjoy this! Coming-of-age story turned coming out story featuring a budding hockey star and his best friend. Lots of fun.

3. Scoring Chances series by Avon Gale. This series is fun in that it doesn't focus on the NHL, it actually focuses on the minor leagues in the southeast of the US, a place almost no one associates with ice hockey. As such, there's a chance to tell different stories about professional athletes who aren't super rich and famous, which I appreciate a lot. TBH the first pairing wasn't entirely my cup of tea, but I'm glad I kept going because I especially enjoyed the later books, which tackle tough topics (including eating disorders, abuse etc., so content warning for that). These are still romance novels though, so rest assured that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. What I especially appreciate is that these books don't have relationship drama, in that the main couples communicate and work together instead of a third act break-up-make-up!

4. Hockey Ever After series by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James. These are just great. Lots of fun to read, lots of cameos from character in later books, just excellent mood all around. Also features my favorite ever trope (secret relationship, sorry, anyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for it I just can't help myself) heavily, which is a win in my book. I especially enjoyed book two, "Scoring Position". Is that because Nico is German and I loved him? Is that because Ryan is my new blorbo? We may never know.

Happy reading and please give me recommendations for more books like these, I'm lowkey obsessed.

[nautilusopus]

Do you have any advice for anyone trying to get into writing?

Not really a motivation thing or anything, just for improvement. Your writing has captivated me, and I felt like it's better to get advice from an author that is reachable than reading a ton of articles online regurgitating the same steps.

Aw, thank you, I'm honoured!

Apologies if this is kind of a mess, I mostly went through stuff I come back to a lot that helps me. Also tumblr seems to have removed the ability to do indented bullets. Fucking great.

In General:

When I'm first starting out writing a story I'm excited about, I usually don't do things in order -- I'll instead pick one scene I can see extremely clearly and am super excited about, one of the things that made me want to write the story to begin with, and then build the entire outline out from there to set it up (what needs to happen to set the scene up exactly how I want it to be? How do I justify that stuff? What would happen afterwards that would add to the scene even more in retrospect?) This not only helps keep the energy going for parts of the story that might not necessarily be fun to plan, but will inherently cause you to start building a story that is either circumstantially or thematically building to something. It can be something as small as a single conversation but it should be the bit that you personally want to see realised most strongly.

On that note, people like when they can see foreshadowing! That's what it's there for! This has been said by other people plenty, but I'll restate it here: the audience potentially being able to piece together your twist after a while is not a failure in writing, it means you put information into a story that allowed them to engage with it and conveyed something that made sense.

I personally sometimes (but not always mostly due to laziness and because I do try to approach shit chronologically so I don't have to double back and do massive rewrites, also due to laziness) like to write big keynote moments of character arcs in full in advance once I have the whole plot more or less laid out. That way, I know what's coming emotionally speaking and can have characters start clearly building up to things, do stuff like plant specific phrases that come back in big ways or are recontextualised later on, and it makes the story feel more cohesive as a whole and helps the scene hit a whole lot harder when you do get to it. Like I said though I'm lazy and I also don't like creating more work for myself if I don't have to, and if by chance the story doesn't shake out the way I thought it would by the time I get to that moment then god is it a pain to rewrite that sort of thing.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Mostly I find it helps keep me focused on where it's going. It's a late stage thing though, I don't start doing this until I'm sure I know how the story will be laid out more or less chapter by chapter, which brings me to:

GO BACK AND CHECK IF YOU HAVE A MIDDLE OF YOUR STORY. ARE YOU SURE? GO BACK AND CHECK AGAIN. This is like the number one pitfall I see basically everywhere across any genre, both with fanfiction and professionally (and in movies always winds up manifesting in reviews as "the movie gets kind of aimless after a while/the third act kinda starts out of nowhere after a really slow part). People have an idea for a strong beginning, the rising action and the big dramatic moment when the stakes are raised, maybe a quiet moment in the middle reflecting on all the tension of the plot and how it's reflecting on the characters, a thing that sets off the end, probably an idea how it ends and how things resolve, et cetera -- and they will forget that at no point did they actually create any connective tissue between their plot development points. Travel! Character beats! The actual events in between big beat A and big beat B, no matter how barebones! Go back and check if you've made any!

As someone that writes a lot of heavily character-driven stuff I'm very biased here, but: in my opinion, if you have good, solid characters, they can carry even the most barebones dogshit story because they are the lenses that the audience is experiencing the world from and through, and whose actions are potentially shaping the course of the story, and of course who the reader is getting attached to. Conversely, even the richest, most lavishly detailed world and story is going to land with a thud if your characters aren't any good and don't have any more to them than making various political developments happen, because at that point you don't have a story with different elements interacting with each other to create events and tension, you have a lore wiki, which is not the same thing as a story. Maybe you could use that for a tabletop RPG, but people aren't necessarily gonna want to read it.

RELATED: JRRT was a linguist and historian first and a writer second. Lore is great and all and can help your world feel like it's a living breathing place, but think about if it's a good detail to include onscreen or not, or if it's just there to "flesh out the world". Stop to consider if this actually has a demonstrable effect on the things happening in front of the reader or not, and if anyone would notice if it were removed outright. Can some things be assumed? What might need to be explained?

Keep an eye on narrative voice versus character voice! If I stripped the dialogue tags from your story, could you still tell who was talking? Does everyone just talk like the narration? Like each other? Like you? Everyone is gonna sound like you at least a tiny bit because you're the one writing it, but at least try to keep an eye on how much you're doing that. It can be pretty boring to just listen to one guy talk the entire time across multiple mouths haha don't look at how long this post is getting shhhhhh

Any story (but especially horror, and especially especially cosmic horror), lives and dies by its suspension of disbelief. The rules don't need to be realistic because it is all made up, and they can be any rules you want, and if you establish them clearly then the audience will buy in as best they can because they want to engage with your story on its own terms (or they SHOULD grumble grumble but that's another discussion and not really something the author can control), but then once you've made them you need to stick to them, or when you do break them it should wind up meaning something.

Suspension of disbelief in horror or fantasy can be trickier, especially when it's something weird and the rules aren't even mechanically sound in their own setting. In that case, the important thing to preserve is emotional stakes the audience can buy into, about how this situation might feel to be in, or if there are any things in real life it might feel similar to. This one's more intuitive than you'd think. Sure, you might not know that the veil of reality is flimsy and all it would take to destroy it all is to get noticed by something much vaster than you could ever imagine; but you probably DO know what it's like to be one missed rent payment from losing everything and realising your safety was really all that never sound. I don't even flinch if someone's head explodes into gore in a movie, but I'll always wince and look away if someone has their fingers crushed or their eye pierced, because even though the violence is lesser I can imagine that happening to me and I don't like it one bit!

Horror can potentially struggle with this pretty badly. Unless you're writing a slasher where the point is to watch some dumb teens bite it, your movie won't actually be scary unless the audience can in some way feel endangered, and they won't be able to do that if what is going on is too disconnected from anything a human could experience. Writers tend to get fixated on making a Really Gross Scary Thing(TM) or Biggest Evilest Threat Evar(TM) and assuming their job is done.

There's no one right or wrong way to do something, but be aware that sometimes things tend to come up in stories a lot for a reason. The tools you have are just tools. Complaining a story has tropes in it is like complaining a tree is made of wood.

That said, if you're thinking of your story entirely in terms of which tropes you want to use, it may be time to take a step back and think about what you actually want to accomplish rather than mushing the same paste into the same holes for the 800th time (more on that later).

Dialogue. If it's something you struggle with, remember that chances are you're a person that knows how to talk, and so you inherently know how to create dialogue. The biggest pitfall I see is people overthinking it trying to "Write Dialogue in this Story" rather than just typing an idea the way they know inherently that it would be typed. If you wanna try and capture a much different voice, spend time listening to people -- and I mean really listening. People double back, correct themselves, trail off, change their train of thoughts in the middle, do more or less of these things when they're in a certain emotional state depending on their personality.

Frankly I'd spend time listening to real people anyway. Spend too much time online and characters wind up sounding like Twitter threads, or worst case scenario you wind up with perfectly articulated ideas and Therapy Speak. A character might not have the vocabulary you, someone who has been online for eighty to ninety years (est) would to convey specific ideas, and not everyone is perfectly self-aware about what they're saying. Someone's probably more likely to say "fuck you I had a bad day" than they are to go "gosh i dislike how much your own success reminds me of how my own mother held me to impossibly high standards so i have very high rejection sensitivity which is why i'm lashing out". Or, again, if someone does talk like that make it mean something. It could be a good example of someone either being insincere and going through keywords to shut someone up, or someone that's very socially awkward giving a rehearsed speech, and those are all potentially interesting ways to then take a story.

(Sidenote because I see this come up sometimes: Hate to single out a single genre here, but anime and by extent video games but mostly anime is a bad place to learn to write dialogue from -- if you're listening to a dub, they had to translate stuff from Japanese and then make it fit lip flaps on a screen, and if you're watching subs, not only were the subs translated but anime trends heavily towards melodrama and Japanese people typically do not speak that way.)

You gotta know the rules before you can break 'em! Read books. Actual books I mean, not just fanfic. Broaden your horizons. When you start breaking rules it will be because it's what you want to do.

Personal nitpicks, some fandom specific and some not. I'm aware some of these are basic but also you never know who might need to hear this stuff so:

Hentai is not a good place to learn about writing actual sex. It's a great place to learn about sex that is following pure porn rules, in which case go nuts and godspeed soldier, but unless you want your scene to come off as either unintentionally rapey or full of nonsensical leaps of moon logic when you're trying to write an otherwise somewhat grounded setting, you should probably read actual books meant for actual adults about fucking, or pull from your own experiences if you're able.

* This isn't advice but I want it known at this point I've seen at least three fanfics clearly written by a middle schooler that's never fucked before and honest-to-god genuinely seems to think some degree of omegaverse is how actual sex works. So that'll be interesting to encounter going forward. If you aren't committing to porn rules (there's that "the rules can be anything you want so long as they're internally consistent" bit again!) do research is my point.

If you started your character creation with their outfit and can tell me their star sign, bust measurements, the four shirts plus jacket plus socks plus shoes they're wearing, the kind of weapon they can summon, eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, height and weight, their agility score versus their magic score, and their favourite ice cream flavour, and yet you have one paragraph about "personality", your focus might not be in the right place and you are making an MMO character. That's fine for something you're going to be staring at the back of for 200 hours but maybe not for someone you're going to need to live inside the head of. Start with personality, and you can tailor all that fun back cover dossier stuff around who that person is and how it would inform the way they dress.

Bad child dialogue is my biggest pet peeve personally and I will immediately put a book down when I encounter it lol. A bigger portion of people are around children than you think and will notice if you've never interacted with a kid before. Children are not cavemen and do not talk like them. The gaps in their vocabulary tend to come from them having a limited amount of it and adapting new phrases into the few existing frameworks they have. This carries over to their psychology, by the way.

Specific to cosmic horror: you can't just make a Gross Thing, your horrors need actual motivations. Nobody cares how big of a squid you can invent, and going "uhhh it's so scary I don't have to bother can't describe it" can only work so many times and is not an excuse to at least not try to describe something. How it makes the characters feel, what the experience is like, whatever. Now, you don't ever have to tell the readers directly what the motivations of your old gods are, but you the writer should come up with some to shape their behaviour so the readers can see the inscrutable ghosts of clear patterned actions that almost make sense yet remain just outside human comprehension oooooooooo. Also readers can generally tell when that's missing and all you have is Large Squid Scary doing random gross shit so it's not an excuse to skimp.

Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. We have pronouns. We have context clues. We have sentence structures that convey what is going on to the reader. We have nouns. If you are going to constantly refer to your character as The Brunette it better be hugely massively goddamn significant that her hair is brown or it's gonna become clear real fast that you just ran out of ways to phrase things and it's gonna take people right out of the story. If the only way you can think of to describe your character in an intense emotional scene is "uhhh this is the one with the brown hair remember I hope you didn't forget" then that's code fucking red. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets. Stop using hair epithets.

And the two biggest bit of advice I can come up with for people trying to improve their craft that I give out every time:

1 Have a point. Have a clearly identified reason in your mind about what you want to accomplish with this story. This will help you get your thoughts in order when you are stuck, it will help you outline the story if you're not sure where you want it to go next, it will help other people troubleshoot with you if you aren't sure how to start solving a problem, it will help you make decisions about what and what not to include to help it feel complete, and it will help motivate you when you start to lose track of why you even started this project. Saying "well it's a Vampire AU and I want to do Hurt/Comfort with an ambiguous ending and a BAMF!Scrongus with Soft!Cromgle" doesn't tell me a damn thing, either as a reader OR as someone potentially trying to help you whip the thing into shape. That's a bit like asking, "How do I write a Cute yet Cool character?" like bitch I don't know it's your story there are a million ways to write this stuff and yes that is a real question I got asked once.

Instead, have an actual, identifiable goal that is personal to you, what you want to write, and what you have to say. That can be anything from "I have a lot of strong opinions about why gender is, across the breadth of experiences possible with human consciousness, a zero sum game that must be internally and deliberately engaged with before one is then able to determine their own relationship to it" to "oh man i love the idea of Mark from Accounts Receivable one day going apeshit and beating Jake from Auditing half to death with an office chair and the fallout that would generate and maybe also someone FINALLY FINALLY asks him for the first time 'hey dude are you okay do you wanna talk'" to "god it'd be so hot if this guy were bent over a pool table drooling onto the velvet and i am going to do everything in my power to facilitate that somehow". Either way, clear mission statement and goal that isn't just telling me what tags you're slapping on the finished product! If you have that kind of clarity of vision it will come across in your piece and resonate with people because it's a complete thought that the work is able to deliberately showcase, instead of just churning out Content™ that fits certain templates that are popular, even if you like said templates. What do you have to say? Why did this idea stick in your brain so hard you had to write it down and tell the world about it? What parts of it especially did you want to convey so badly? Show us!

2 Writing is vulnerability by proxy. Until we get the technology for brain uploading, you are only going to ever be you in your own head with your own thoughts, experiences, biases, and worldviews. If you think you can write something without exposing a lot of really revealing shit about yourself to an audience that notices it, perish that thought now. Quentin Tarantino and HP Lovecraft weren't slick about it and you won't be either. This is neither a bad thing or a good thing, it just is, and whether it affects the work for better or for worse is honestly dependent upon how you engage with that fact. I will say trying to back away from it generally leads to problems (unexamined prejudices showing up in stories, worldviews that it turns out most people don't share going stated simply as fact rather than being supported by the writing around it). It can also lead to a stronger story, though, if you're willing to engage with it. Engaging honestly with what scares you and why, what you find comforting, uplifting, upsetting, et cetera. All of these require vulnerability, and allowing other people to see that, and it's going to happen with or without your consent because you're the one writing the thing, so you may as well make peace with it and lean in. "But what if it's cringe" too late baby most things are cringe and that shouldn't be your focus. You are fighting a losing battle. We are all cringe. But we are free.

Hope this helps. I just know I've left half a sentence fragment in here that I said I'd come back to and then forgot oh god

[dreamingofep]

Strangers in the Crowd pt. 11

(Elvis/Austin!Elvis × reader)

Character/Fandom: Elvis - Elvis (2022)

Request: No, just another one of my delusional fantasies.

Prompt: You and your best friend are on your annual girls trip and go to see Elvis at the International.

Little did you know this would be a show you'll never forget. [Fem!Reader]

TW: Cussing, teasing/ tension, SMUTTT, oral sex,outside sex, daddy kink, spanking, the usual really dirty stuff.

Rating: Explicit/Mature (NSFW, 18+, so minors Do NOT Interact)

Word Count: 4.1K

A/N: Hello everyone! Its summer in Graceland and it hot 😏 if you know what I mean😉 Like I said previously, this fic is coming to its end very soon but I have other stories coming soon to that I’m VERY excited about and cannot wait to tell you more.

I'm so glad you've been liking this story so much! I also mentioned earlier that I’m also posting my fics on Ao3 so you can read my stuff there too if you want!☺️

This has been so much fun to write and hear your reactions! Enjoy! Sorry for any spelling mistakes or overall goofs.

Feel free to message me or comment what you think! 🖤

The Memphis sun baked into your skin today and radiated its warmth through your body. You were soon discovering how hot Memphis can get in the summers and you were not prepared for that by any means. The one nice thing about it was how your skin had a nice glowing tan now, one that matched Elvis’.

The first few weeks living at Graceland was something out of a dream. It felt wonderful to be with Elvis every day and get to know each other on a deeper level. He was so catering and his southern hospitality really shined through to make sure you felt like you were right at home. Anything you wanted, he would get you to make you the happiest while you were staying here. You didn’t have time to pack before you and Elvis got on his plane to go straight to Memphis. To be completely honest, you didn’t want to see anyone try and convince you to stay, and after the events that happened with your parents, you definitely didn’t want to hear it.

Elvis bought you an entire new wardrobe that was completely unnecessary, but was so generous of him to do that for you. You could tell a lot of the outfits were hand-picked by him based on how revealing some of them were.

It was an adjustment living with so many people all the time. The house was constantly buzzing until the later parts of the night, where you can hear the crickets sing and the house finally came to a still.

Night falls, and you decide to go for a swim. Elvis isn’t anywhere to be found so you’ll just go in by yourself. He has been a bit high-strung since he is opening in Vegas once again in a few days. He had been rehearsing in Los Angeles the last few weeks, going back and forth from there, and back to Memphis every few days to try to get the show perfect. This was going to be his third time playing in Vegas and wanted to make sure the show was fresh and exciting still. You assured him that it was going to be great, but he’s too much of a perfectionist to relax until it’s actually done. The added pressure of having it professionally filmed also weighed on him. MGM was filming six shows for this new movie so that meant Elvis has to find new songs for such. You wanted him to relax when he was home but he couldn’t fully enjoy the quiet. He was always picking up a guitar and playing or going to the piano.

This meant he was less attentive to you and your needs. Not that you were being selfish, it was just how it was. You respected that he was so dedicated of an artist that his craft was the most important thing to him. You knew this next show was going to be even better than what you experienced, and that’s saying a lot.

He’d show affection always, but the more close, intimate moments were brief, if at all present.

You didn’t take it personally, you understood, but you wanted him desperately. You wanted to find the right time to get him alone, and have him take you right there, no questions asked.

After rummaging through your drawer to find the right swimsuit, you decide to go with the high-waisted two-piece one with the cherry pattern on it. You grab a towel from the bathroom and go back downstairs to the pool.

You place your towel on one of the reclining sun chairs and dip your toes into the dark aqua pool. It was cool and brought a slight shiver to you, but with the blazing sun beating down on it all day made it feel like the perfect temperature to cool off at night. You quickly jump in and get the instant satisfaction of being able to feel so much more comfortable.

The pool isn’t large by any means, but big enough to do laps and get a nice workout in.

As you do your laps, your mind continues to wander to needing Elvis. You knew he wanted you too by just the look in his eye, but his mind was somewhere else and probably didn’t find it right to give you half of his attention when it came to that sort of stuff.

You take a break from swimming and float on your back, getting to stare at the shining stars twinkling in the sky.

“Well what do we have here,” Elvis teases.

You pop your head up to the sound of his voice and see him standing on the other side of the pool, wearing a pink short sleeve button up with black pants. His eyes have this wild child like glint of mischief when he looks at you.

“Nothing that would interest you,” you tease back. He chuckles softly and walks to the side of the pool you’re on.

“It looks like something I’d like,” he says, crouching down to see you closer. You swim closer to him, hanging onto the ledge of the pool by your fingertips, looking up at him between his legs.

“Why don’t you come in here and find out if it’s something you like,” you jest.

A devious smirk arises from him, “I see just fine right here baby.”

You reach out and pull at his shirt, popping off the first button. He looks down at the pearl pink button fall onto the concrete.

You stare pleadingly at him, the light beaming behind him from the back door fixture, cascading a shadow over him making him look like an angel. His golden tan skin gleaming and his black hair dancing in the breeze. Your hand continues to work his shirt buttons, trying to feel his skin touching yours.

“Come in baby, get those pants off,” you coo.

He lets out a exasperated laugh, “woman you know what I’m wearing under here,” he says smugly.

Yep you do… nothing.

“Are you being shy E? You don’t want to let little Elvis free for a swim?” You say cunningly.

His face flushed and he shakes his head at you in disbelief.

“I swear to God woman…” he trails off.

A devious little idea pops in your head and want to tease him further, make him have to get in here and pay attention to you. Your hands reach around to your back and untie the straps around your rib cage. Once they are free, you lift the top off your neck and throw it at his feet, making a splashing noise when it hits the ground.

“What do you think you’re doing?,” his voice full of concern and slight agitation.

“Nothing, I don’t know what you mean,” You say innocently. You bring you hands out to your side, kicking off the wall of the pool and away from him. Your chest elevates as you swim away and your nipples rise above the water, hardened by the cool water. His eyes grow in shock, checking over his shoulder to the back sliding door and the kitchen windows that no one was looking at the scene you were making.

“Y/n you better put this back on right now. I don’t want anyone seeing you like this,” he says firmly, his voice controlled and unplayful.

You shake your head no at him, swimming further away from him, drawing him to follow you to the other side of the pool. Your hands go back under water and pull your bottoms down, bringing them to the surface and ringing them out before throwing them in Elvis’ direction. His jaw drops and his eyes darken.

“Honey, I’m not playing with you, you better put these back on right now,” he growls. You know you should be carful, you’ve seen how his temper can flare when you don’t listen. But you didn’t care. You wanted his attention and this is how you were going to get it.

“Nope. Not until you get in here with me,” you sayin a snarky tone.

Elvis frustratedly throws your swim suit down on the ground and jumps in the pool after you. You quickly swim to the other side as you see him come up for air, wiping his hair out of his face, searching for you with wild eyes.

“Y/n, come here,” He barks. “You want someone to see you like this?!”

You can’t help but giggle at the rise you’re getting out of him.

“You’re going to have to come get me before I put any clothes back on,” you tease.

Staying in the deep end of the pool, you try to dodge him and swim away from him. Both of you are getting out of breath and your legs are getting tired. You can’t help but laugh at how serious he’s being right now. It’s a rare occasion when Elvis is dead serious and not cracking a joke. But the thought of one of the guys seeing you naked makes his blood boil and his temper flare off.

He catches up with you and pins you to the side of the pool wall, fire blazing wildly in his eyes as he grabs your arms stilling you. You’re in the middle of the pool and your feet don’t touch the ground anymore. He still stands up fine and gives him more leverage to pin you here and control your movements.

“I thought you knew how to listen to me after all this time, but instead you’ve just become more of an insolent little brat hmm?”

You push your hips into him and let out a soft sigh out, liking the much needed attention of his body on yours.

“I don’t know what you mean,” you say innocently.

“Oh, don’t you do that with me. I’m not gonna have that. You want someone to see you naked?” He fumes.

You take a second to look at his face, seeing the clear frustration but nonetheless beautiful and very distracting.

“If I were to say yes… is daddy going to punish me?” You say in a hushed whisper, your hand wandering down underwater to his bulge, squeezing it in your hand and watching him jump.

He looks at you in shock, waiting for you to say anything else.

“Yes, I’ll have to show you who you belong to,” he growls. “No other man gets to see you naked but me,” possessiveness dripping off his tongue. He lets go of you and gets out of the pool.

He stands in front of you, his clothes dripping wet and clung to his body, showcasing his best assets right in front of you. He looks so inviting, so handsome, you want to get on your knees for him right now.

“Get out of the pool,” he commands.

“You want to at least grab my towel,” you say snappy.

He makes a snide chuckle, “Since you don’t care if anyone will see you, thought you wouldn’t need one.” He barks.

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself from smirking, knowing your little game is working.

“No you’re right baby. That was a silly thing to ask for,” you say challengingly.

You wade over to the steps to get out of the pool and step out, brushing back your wet hair out of your face and letting it fall on your back.

The look on his face on priceless, the disbelief that you would actually walk around naked out of the pool so confidently shocks him to the core.

You walk by him, flicking your wet hair in his direction and walking to the lounging chairs where you had left your pool towel. His eyes burn holes into your backside watching you walk away. You nonchalantly pat your body dry, ringing your hair out, and taking a seat on the chair. You stretch your arms out above you and let them dangle off the chair. You hear his footsteps coming toward you and he stops right in front of you.

“You think this is a game?” He questions harshly. “I’m not going to ask again,” he cautioned.

You shake your head no at him, reaching to touch his cock again, feeling him tense up.

“Daddy’s going to have to teach you a lesson,” he growls, grabbing your wrist tightly, pulling your hand away from him.

Your core throbs at his words, needing his undivided attention more than anything.

“I’m going to need a long, in-depth lesson before I fully understand, daddy, and then I’ll listen” your words with an icy edge.

You reach for the towel behind your head and stand up, wrapping it around yourself and tucking in the corner at your breast.

Reaching down for his top button of his pants, you push the button through and slide down his zipper. You reach your hand into his pants and wrap your hand around his shaft, moving it up and down slowly.

“Daddy, please forgive me. I promise I’ll listen,” you coo.

You feel him get hard in your hand and watch as he sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, fighting the urge to succumb to you. The heat radiating off of him felt suffocating and made you want to crumble at his feet even easier than you could imagine.

He spins your body around, making it so his back is facing the back door and windows.

“Get on your knees and show me how sorry you are,” he commands, his fingers tracing the hem of the towel resting on your breasts. He pulls it down off of you, leaving you standing naked in front of you. The darkness of the night didn’t stop his eyes from glimmering with that mischievous glint.

“Mhmm, yes daddy,” you say softly, sinking to your knees at his feet.

He pulls his cock and balls out of his pants and glides his hand over his shaft, stroking it sprightly.

“Open that mouth for me baby,” he quips.

You obey and open your mouth, waiting for his tip to touch your tongue.

He pushes his hips forward, plunging his cock to the back of your throat. You instantly gag, not ready for his long length to be inside you like this. You squeeze onto the back of his thigh with your hands, needing to take some of his length out of you.

His hands reach into your hair, pulling your head back, making you look up at him.

“You’re gonna take this cock like a good girl. Take your punishment for not listening to me,” he growls. You whimper at his instructions, opening your mouth once again for him.

He lets out a pleased groan and puts his cock back inside your mouth, keeping the firm grip he has in your hair.

He fucks your mouth vigorously, making the most vile sounds come out of you and drool spilling from the slides of your mouth.

He changes pace and starts to push your head forward, taking in more of his cock while he keeps his hips still. You flatten your tongue out on the bottom of his shaft and watch as he lets out a breathy moan. You can’t help but smile that you can make such noises come out of him.

You try to suck as much as he would let you, letting out moans as he pulled out of you to let you breathe. Your hand slowly inches for his balls, cupping them softly and massaging them lightly in your hand. He pushes his hips forward as he feels you doing this, having you take his entire length in your mouth. You lick at the base of his cock, hearing his deep groans that fill the otherwise still night. Putting more pressure on his balls, you feel him tense in your mouth.

He groans and moves his hips slower while he’s inside you. You’re almost sure he’s going to cum like this, but he pulls his length out of your mouth and has you just focusing on his head and massaging his balls in your hand.

“Oh fuck mama, yes,” he gasps pulling himself out of you, “use your mouth on my balls now,” he directs as you gasp for air.

You eagerly take his shaft in your hand and start jerking it, placing your mouth near his sac. You give one long lick causing him to gasp. You use your fingertips to push his sac to your mouth, wanting to suck on one of his balls and shower him with attention.

You suck on one and his cock twitches in your hand. You test how much pressure you can put to make him groan the most. You lick and suck on his balls while still slowly jerking him off in your hand. You love the sounds he’s making, sounding like sweet music to your ears.

You had never done this before so it did make you a little nervous, but you would experiment with what he liked. Like the rest of him, his balls were large and heavy making your mouth water for him. He lets out a loud gasp as your tongue swirls around his teste, bringing a new pleasure to him when you have it inside your mouth.

He pulls you away from him, leaving a sucking pop sound with you release his ball from your mouth.

“Fuck mama, you’re killing me,” he says breathlessly. You can’t help but giggle slightly at his reaction to all of it. You could keep going if he would let you but he lets out a frustrated grumble as you look up at him with his cock still in your hand.

He doesn’t like the reaction from you, he doesn’t want to hear you enjoying your punishment for acting out so childishly. “Your punishment isn’t over yet baby. Get up.”

Elvis tucks himself back into his wet slacks and reaches for the towel that’s fallen on the floor to cover you, wrapping his arms around your torso and picking you up. He makes long, quick strides into the cool, air conditioned house, sneaking you down to the basement and into the jungle room.

He placed your body face down over the arm of the couch sitting in the middle of the room, your hands stretched out in front of you holding yourself up.

“You’re such a bad girl, always liking your punishments too much.” He grabs your hair again, pulling your head back and places a hard spank on your ass. The pain of it spreads through you like wildfire making you cry out.

“Elvis!” You say loudly, squirming out of his touch. He stills you putting a firmer grip on your hair and your hip. His hand comes down again and the sound of the spank is the only sound that fills the room. You let out another cry, hearing Elvis make a guttural noise.

“Elvis, Please!” You beg.

His hand comes down again and your eyes fill with water, pleasure seeping through when he gives another spank.

“Ah fuck,” you whimper.

His hands caress the swell of your ass, getting dangerously close to your folds. You feel your wetness pool more, making you want him badly. His fingertips brush your folds and the wetness spilling out of them. You push your hips back into his fingers more, wanting him to plunge them knuckle deep inside you. You hear him start to peel his wet clothes off of himself behind you and throw them to the side.

“Daddy, please,” you cry.

“You just love when daddy gives you attention Hmm?” He asks.

“Mhmmm, yes daddy I’ve missed you,” you groan.

“I know baby, being such a good little slut for me.”

His tip rubs against your folds as he continues to praise you. With a grunt, he plunges his cock inside you, stuffing you to the hilt. Both of you loudly groan and cry for more. You drive your hips back with him, wanting him to take you rough.

“Fuck me daddy,” you gasp, pushing your hips back with his.

Elvis cusses and lets out a pent up groan, making your pussy throb. He keeps one hand on your hip, using it as leverage when he snaps his hips into you, the other slithered down from your hair and wrapped around the front of your neck, keeping a light pressure on it, giving you a delicious tingling sensation.

His thrusts are hitting all the right places and with how sexually needy you’ve been, it’s not going to take very much to make you finish. He knows it too. The sounds you’re making for him tells him how good he’s making you feel and that you can’t take very much.

Suddenly he pulls out of you, leaving you breathless and begging for more.

“Baby, please. Don’t stop,” you pant, looking over your shoulder.

“Have you learned your lesson? Are you going to pull a little stunt like that again?” He questions.

“No daddy, I won’t I promise.” You plead.

He pulls your upper body up and goes to sit on the couch, his long legs spread out and his cock getting lazily tugged on in his hand.

“Then come and ride daddy. I want you to finish like this,” he beckons.

You stare at the man before you and get a chill just looking at him. You nod your head at him in compliance and straddle his frame. You hover over his cock, he lines you up and pushes your hips down onto him, sinking your wet heat all the way down his shaft. He cusses with how tight you feel and you feel the throbbing begin to feel unconsolable.

You glide yourself up again and watch his face this time as you sink back down on him hard. His face forms into pleasure, his eyes looking into yours, then down along your breasts as they begin to bounce as you ride him faster. He groans loudly, sending an electric shock to your core by just the sounds he makes when he’s getting fucked.

Your hands grip tightly in his wet hair as you ride him, not being able to get enough of him.

He leans his head back onto the couch, letting you take most of the control. He still has his hands on your hips, squeezing them tightly.

The coil and heat in your belly feels like it’s going to unravel any second now and he knows it. Your whimpers and moans increase as you swivel your hips back and forth, rubbing your clit on him in the process.

He stills you suddenly, making a shrill cry come out of you. He bores those serious blue eyes into you and bites his lip.

“Do you deserve to cum baby?” He asks.

You gasp and try to move your hips down but he won’t let you until you answer him.

“Yes, daddy, make me cum please. I’ve been a good girl,” you gasp.

He sinks you back down on him and helps you move up and down in his length. His fingers find your bud and rubs it like only he can.

Before you know it, your vision is filled with stars and you scream his name. He groans loudly when he watches you cum all over him, squeezing his cock and gasping for breath.

He finishes deep inside you, his member pulsating quick, thick spurts of his seed. You keep riding him even though your body is becoming exhausted. You don’t really know when the next time you’ll get him like this so you want to selfishly stay on him as long as you can.

Elvis grunts when you continue to grind on him and he sees your pleasure filled face riding him into oblivion.

“Mama, you’re gonna have to slow down you’re killin’ me,” he says gently through gasps.

You try and catch your breath, grabbing into his shoulders and calming yourself down.

“Sorry baby I got excited,” you tease.

“I’m not going anywhere baby. You can get more later if you want it. You don’t have to act out like a little devil to get my attention.” He assures.

You pauses looking away, “I know but you’ve been so busy. I didn’t want to bother you…” you trail off.

The look of realization washes over his face and his eyes grow sorrowful.

“Oh god baby, is that what this was all about? I haven’t been very attentive have I? Oh honey I’m so sorry,” he says pulling you in to embrace.

“It’s okay honey I know you’re under a lot of pressure. I didn’t want to distract.”

He looks at you smugly, “you are my favorite distraction though. Please tell me if you need something you know I’ll do it for you,” he says sweetly.

You nod your head and smile, “okay honey. I will I promise.”

“Good girl. Let’s get you upstairs so I can ruin you some more,” he says devilishly.

“Elvis! You need your rest before opening night. I can’t be the one held responsible for keeping you up all night. I’ll be fine,” you say exasperated.

“We’ll how about this, the show opens in three days, and I promise to get rest and be in top shape for the shows. But,” he pauses and pulls your chest to his, “I’m not going to let you sleep the first night we’re there. I want to ruin that perfect pussy of yours,” he says in a low sensual whisper.

Your heart skips when you hear him talk to you like this, “okay daddy.”

•

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Tagging🩵: @powerofelvis @plasticfantasticlOver @burninlovebutler @neptuneismysister @velvetelvis @ccab @presleyenterprise @elvispresleyxoxo

@prompted-wordsmith @sillybookmarks @dkayfixates @rosepresley @ellie-24 @rktismylife-blog @myradiaz @lookingforrainbows @elvispresleygf @tacozebra051 @thatbanditqueen

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[ironladders]

have you seen the mk cage match movie and if so, what are your thoughts on it

funny you ask this because i JUST watched that movie today, so my thoughts on it are very fresh

overall, cage match is a fun movie and entertaining enough if you have a spare 80ish minutes to watch something. i enjoyed the animation style, plot-wise it's easy to follow, the fight scenes were well-choreographed, the soundtrack was reflective of the 80s vibes they had going on, and all of the voice-acting is great (in my non-professional opinion).

i also really like the designs, they're super nice!

at the same time, because i'm so deep into mortal kombat lore, it's like... really easy for me to nitpick a bunch of stuff about this movie and how it handled some characters + plot elements.

johnny was fine; he's the same as always, so there's not really much new to say about him. i enjoyed how they kept his personality of being a cocky guy but also having a strong sense of good and justice within him, and the backstory they gave him in this film really elevates that. chuck was also a pleasant surprise. i went into this only having seen clips of him that made me assume he was just going to be a wimp the entire time, but watching his development throughout was really fun.

where my main conflict with this film lies is how it handles ashrah and sareena. the latter got the worst of it, imo—the character assassination this film did to sareena is crazy. i get that in 80 minutes you can only cover so much, and that the focus is meant to be on johnny, but i think there's aspects of these characters that could have been dealt with better than they were. i ended cage match unsure of how to feel about its ashrah, and extremely disappointed in its sareena.

(major spoilers under the cut, if you haven't seen cage match yet and want to watch it maybe come back to this after doing that. & obviously don’t let my personal griefs discourage you from watching or sour your opinion on the movie lmao)

kia and jataaka were not bad, to be honest. they've never really had a major role in previous mortal kombat games, and the only times they really showed up before is to do quan chi's bidding and then be defeated. there's not much to them as characters outside of that. if anything, i like that quan chi was not in this movie at all, letting them shine on their own. it sucks that they both die, and in an ideal world they'd get more depth, but them even existing & having cool scenes is a nice contrast to how they got off-screened by ashrah in mk1.

my only real complaint about those two is that they both basically got taken out the same way. kia was run over by a bus (which... seriously? she's a literal demon with all these powers and dies likethat?), and then later on chuck drives his truck into jataaka, sending her flying into the NoHo sign. i dunno, maybe it's meant to be a gag, but i was more annoyed by it than anything.

again, though: my biggest hang-ups are on ashrah and sareena.

cage match's ashrah is a mixed bag, in my opinion. the core of her character is still there: she's a demon that was formerly part of the brotherhood of shadow but left to seek redemption and become human. i also like that it's shown she's working with the white lotus society/forces of light, similar to how she always has in the games. them also having her use her classic spin move was nice to see, and i've already mentioned that i like her design.

my issue is that she doesn't get datusha until the very end of the movie. and when she finally does, the whole thing with datusha purifying her soul is not mentioned At All. datusha's just a random ass sword that glows, and as far as i can tell there's no indication that its lore even exists in this movie.

before she gets datusha, ashrah was just fighting hand-to-hand against everyone, but her absolution has always extremely tied to datusha, which begs the question: if she was working on becoming human, HOW was she supposedly doing that without datusha? in both deception and mk1, ashrah is being led to believe that her kriss is what is helping her cleanse herself of being a demon. that's her entire story. you cannot have ashrah chasing her absolution without datusha, and if you are going to separate them then there needs to be an explanation for how ashrah is purifying herself.

but... there isn't. when it's revealed in the third act that ashrah is a demon, chuck is a little wary and asks her if that's true. ashrah tells him that yes, she is a demon, but she's working on becoming human.

EXPLAIN, ASHRAH. HOW ARE YOU DOING THAT???? TELL US!!

i feel like this is... easily fixable too? ashrah's main involvement in this plot is that she's trying to stop a ritual that'll bring shinnok to earthrealm from happening, and datusha is one of the three key things needed for that ritual. instead of just having her chase after whoever has the scroll with the summoning spell, ashrah could have also had datusha on her and been a target for the brotherhood of shadow. this would give her reason to be working under raiden (like... maybe after escaping she could've sought protection from the white lotus society), made her even more important to the plot, AND kept her lore intact. they don't even need to dive deep into datusha's lore if they wanted to keep this friendly to viewers unfamiliar with mortal kombat, just have her mention that datusha's magic is helping make her more human. that's it.

i dunno, it's just... ashrah in cage match is super fun, she does some cool stuff, but that whole aspect could've been handled better. like she has way less screentime in mortal kombat 1's story mode, and yet at least there they didn't leave out anything important to who ashrah is.

anyways, onto sareena. or, should i say: the oc they gave sareena's name and appearance to.

i don't... understand why she is characterized the way she is in cage match. but it sucks. sareena has existed since 1997, and in all the years she's been around her character has always been good demon. not bad, Good. so that's why i'm really annoyed with how sareena has handled in cage match. you know how i mentioned with ashrah, the core of her character is still there, even if i have my hangups with how cage match executed some things like the lack of datusha?? well, sareena's even worse. she's egregiously out of character and it makes me so mad. i get that these movies all exist in their own universe and things are bound to change, but i don't have to like said changes if it completely messes up the entirety of a character's lore.

in all previous iterations of her, sareena has been a demon that unwillingly served quan chi + shinnok, and was eager to escape them and the netherrealm the first chance she got. any time she has been working for evil, it's when she is being forced into it. never willing. so why the fuck was she actually a bad person in this film??? quan chi is out of the picture, and shinnok only appears after being successfully summoned. in addition, they're in earthrealm the entire time, so nothing from the netherrealm could be influencing sareena's actions. cage match, for some reason, took a look at how she has always been a good person that just struggles with being a demon, and went nah. let's make her evil with no redeeming qualities.

like... her role should have either been kia/jataaka, quan chi, or a random ass oc. all of the complexity and tragedy that makes up sareena's character is nonexistent in cage match, instead being replaced with a one-dimensional villain. her motivations are entirely centered around shinnok and the netherrealm, completely contradicting all of her previous lore. and i know that they can keep the main aspects of these characters intact, as seen with johnny and ashrah.

i'm also annoyed because this movie is the first actual time we see ashrah and sareena interact, and it's when sareena is her worst iteration yet. so their interactions in this film aren't even worth referencing when discussing their relationship because they did a completely overhaul with sareena's lore, in a bad way.

if sareena was actually adapted properly, she would not be willingly doing everything she does in cage match. the real sareena would've jumped in joy at the chance to be stuck in earthrealm, away from shinnok and the netherrealm, and if anything she'd be helping our heroes stop the ritual to bring him to earthrealm. if the film seriously needed her to be leading this cult and be behind everything that happens, that would still suck but the least that could've been done is made it clear that she's somehow being influenced by shinnok/the netherrealm.

ugh it makes me so sad because LOOK AT HER!!!! SHE'S GORGEOUS, THE FLUFFY HAIR IS EVERYTHING!!! BUT PERSONALITY WISE THIS IS THE MOST AWFUL DIRECTION THEY COULD'VE GONE WITH HER!!!!!!

i personally believe what happened is that whoever wrote cage match needed another villain so they looked up netherrealm inhabitants, saw a picture of sareena, and went "done!" while not bothering to actually look into sareena as a character. or maybe not, who knows. either way, this is the bad place for sareena fans lmao.

anyways i think i've aired out all my grievences with this movie. i think if i wasn't a mortal kombat fan and/or didn't know much about these characters, i wouldn't care about this stuff at all and just gone "it was a nice movie!! :)" because objectively it is! and again, i had fun with most of it! however unfortunately i care about these characters very much so when they're done dirty it's just. eugh.

also i feel like there should've been more gore than there was #idk

[guardiangeologist]

Luigi's Uncharacteristically Large and also maybe Haunted House (3DS Edition): A Highly Professional Review

The entire time I've had this blog, I haven't really been sure what to use it for. I've settled on spewing my unscripted thoughts on whatever Game of the Week I've played most recently because, quite frankly, where else are they gonna go? I love my girlfriend, but these words are destined for a wider platform. I must expand my horizons. So here I am, talking about cartoon ghosts and green vacuum-wielding Italian men on the internet.

Now, let me tell you, this green man and his stupid house have been in control of my entire brain like some fucked up Italian Ratatouille for at least 10 years. I was a Luigi's Mansion Kid. What do I mean by that? I mean I roleplayed Luigi's Mansion on the school playground when I was in the 3rd grade. With the other Luigi's Mansion Kids. So it's safe to say I have some experience when it comes to this game. At times, he goes dormant. He waits patiently for another hyperfixation to pass. However, just when I least expect it, he returns from the grave (almost like a ghost?) to stage a military occupation of my frontal lobe to last the next few months.

So, there's my history. I ended up finally picking up the 3DS version of this game just before the eShop shut down (rest in piss) for shits and giggles, and only just got around to playing it this week while laying in bed with a migraine. (maybe not the smartest decision?) I mean, to start with, why was this game released for the 3DS? It came out in October 2018, at which point we were already an entire year post-Switch. I mean, I guess it would be fine, but it's just so obvious that being on the 3DS holds this game back in so many different areas (which I will get to, be patient!) and it's seriously a tragedy it hasn't been ported to Switch yet. Why put together such an amazing remake, and then bottleneck it with lackluster hardware and release it on a nearly out of service console?

In terms of positive changes? LOADS of QoL stuff. I might even go as far as to call this the definitive version of the game in spite of the few drawbacks it does present. Some examples include:

Re-fighting portrait ghosts: NO MORE RESETS!!! (Ok still some resets for speedy spirits because there's no way in hell I'm staying in the blackout for longer than I have to but that's just part of The Experience)

You can go back to the Lab from the Mansion by exiting through the front door. Finally, Luigi has learned how to open doors!

The tougher post-game Hidden Mansion, originally exclusive to the PAL version, has finally been made available to us worthless money-grubbing Americans! (Minus the disorienting flipped rooms, which I found pretty disappointing but some people will probably celebrate.) You can even get platinum ghost portraits from the Hidden Mansion which I have yet to obtain all of because jesus christ it is not easy to defeat a ghost with 150 health in a single attempt.

And now, the ghostly elephant in the room: co-op. I did try it, with my little brother as my Gooigi guinea pig. It's...I mean...honestly, it's not great. If you want to play LM1 with a friend, I can honestly recommend a ROM hack of the GameCube original more than I can recommend Nintendo's official multiplayer, which is pretty lame. For one, nothing is scaled up difficulty-wise to account for the extra player, so most battles in the game become trivial with the addition of a second experienced player (not my little brother.) But secondly, and most importantly:

the LAG.

DEAR GOD THE LAG.

I can testify that our internet is fine. The internet is not the issue, and even if it were, it shouldn't take any more bandwidth to play this game than it takes for two 3DS systems that are within 3 feet of each other and 10 feet from a router to communicate with each other. Yet, the game did not once run at full speed on either screen the entire time we played. Additionally, my brother complained several times that he couldn't even move his character. Luigi's Mansion with two players SHOULD be a chaotic mess, but adding the piddly framerate on top of it makes the game nearly unplayable.

That being said, the co-op is a disappointment, but it was never necessary for the game to be a satisfying package overall, it's better than having nothing. Though, as is typical, the work of fans definitely triumphs over Nintendo's official product in this department.

Oh, and they still didn't fix the oversight which causes you to lose the second gold diamond if you die after collecting it because the game prompts you to save while it's still on the ground... No A-Rank for me, I guess.

Mm, yes, the controls, yeah, those exist. This is one of those spots where I feel this game could have easily benefitted from just being developed for the Switch. Instead of forcing a dual-stick game onto a dying handheld with a single circle pad, maybe we could've, like, released it for the dual-stick console/handheld that was already out and had a perfectly established user base? They tried to substitute the c-stick with the gray alien nipple- or uhh..."circle pad pro"...that comes pre-installed on the New Nintendo 3DS, but it does not work well. The nub just isn't responsive enough to substitute for an entire stick, and if you want it to be a real circle pad, you have to buy an external attachment. Not to mention the nub isn't even available on every 3DS model! So like, yeah, I understand they made an honest attempt to work around the controller issues, but a better workaround would've been to just...not curse this game to irrelevancy by trapping it on a dying console.

All of that said, I spent all week playing this game, so they did something right. Curse my brain worms.

11/10 will buy this game and its sequels again every time Nintendo re-releases them.

[witchhatproductions]

Witch Hat News #5 - In Sickness and in Health

by Tata Calthrop

This is an archived version of our microfiction newsletter! You can read along on our tumblr, or subscribe here.

Hey there! It's been a few months since you last heard from us, hasn't it? How have you been? I'll go first: I've been bad! Let's talk about creativity and mental health.

I don't speak much about my mental health publicly, but let me summarise it for you; I was a very happy teenager who plummeted into clinical depression at about age nineteen and never fully recovered, and it sucks.

That said, the consequence of this is that I've been in therapy for years and read dozens of books about psychology for both patients and professionals, so even if I'm depressed, I'm also wise as all hell.

(I suspect if I weren't depressed, I would probably be completely zen.)

I have an excellent relationship with my creative craft, and my evidence for this is that I am both alive and still actively creating things. A lot of people never learn to manage the balance.

Many of the artists and writers I meet are weighed down heavily by the burden of not being good enough. "I'm an artist, but I get so anxious that I only draw once every few months, and then usually throw it away," my friends will tell me, ashamed. "I'm not good at it."

"I'm not really a writer," say the people I meet on discord. "I have this idea for a story that I've had for years, and I've written down some small things, but not anything I can show anyone – I'm not good enough yet."

On the other end of the scale are the creatives who push themselves through constant burnout, who neglect eating and sleeping in order to create as fast and voraciously as possible. A "successful career" may be built on five hours of sleep a day and constant, haunting guilt about keeping up engagement and output.

I think it's very easy to hide in hard work. You can have terrible self-care and self-awareness and be falling apart in every area, but if you work hard, and succeed, you never need to feel guilty about the other stuff. 

You know who can create constantly, yet never get tired? Artists and writers who can spend hours every day effortlessly making things, while also being entirely present in their own lives? Children.

Human beings are born with the constant urge to be creative. It's pretty well-studied that imaginative play and brain development are directly linked in small children. It's in their nature to engage in make-believe.

Very few four-year-olds freeze in front of a blank piece of paper, because they know how terrible it feels to be bad at drawing and don't know where to begin with the idea they had without failing utterly. That's a particular madness we learn as we grow up.

I'm biased, but I firmly believe that playfulness is what makes us human. What we describe as "intelligence" in other animals is often correlated with their adaptability – their ability to conceptualise and understand things they've never experienced before, and maybe didn't even know were possible.

This, too, correlates with playfulness. Dolphins, crows, octopuses, and great apes – all very different animals – play games. Despite all having taken wildly different evolutionary paths to get there, they have all separately developed play.

To be human is to create. To imagine is to be human. So that's my way of not worrying about my creative output – whether I'm making enough, whether I'm good enough. I do not create art in order to sell it, or to gain praise for making it, although I would welcome it if either of those things started happening to me regularly.

My art does not need to be good, or valuable. It has the same value and function as the paintings I made at preschool when I was four; it is the byproduct of my humanity.

Let go of the idea of being a "good artist". Nobody is a good artist. The only thing any of us is really good at is being human, which tends to get in the way of the other stuff.

"How do I create more, without letting anxiety or laziness get in the way?"

I'm here again, writing my newsletter. How long until another mental health break knocks me flat again, I don't know. But right now, I feel motivated to put words to paper (or words to mailing list, as it were), and I'm going to follow that feeling until it's gone.

My advice to you is to do the same. Joy is a very precious gift; to enjoy creating something is divine. You are human, and that is enough. Put aside your doubts. Create ambitiously, stupidly, passionately, in any way you can, as long as you're having fun; and once you learn to have fun, the trick of learning how to create more and better is a very simple one. 

So, here: Three things that spoke to me about the subject of mental illness, death, and the arts. Let's drink to our good health, eh?

Recommendations

So Sad Today: Personal Essays by Melissa Broder. A series of devastating essays about illness, addiction, dysfunction, and brutal, intimate, visceral emotion. I have few words for this one. I found it indescribably powerful.

Sawbones have an excellent episode about personal mental health stories. This one's much easier to listen to, but it's still quite personal, as these things tend to be. It spoke to me as someone who, at the time, kept a lot of my issues completely secret.  

To The Moon by Freedbird Games: At the dying wish of a old man, two scientists must navigate and rewrite his memories of life. A short, funny video game, with very charming characters and hilarious jokes and – genuinely – one of the most sad and beautiful character dramas I've ever experienced in video game form. 

Your project here. Do you make art of any kind - visual, written, performed? Are you starting a project or recruiting co-creators? We want to hear from you! Email us at contact@witchhatproductions.com.

That's it from me. I'll see you on the flip side, however far away that is. I'm not giving up! And neither should you!

[moxpunk]

So, I mentioned I'd write up a trip-report/retrospective of my experience of getting absolutely buried under pies on Saturday, so here it is! Be warned, it's fucking long.

To start off, my friend Dee was very professional about the whole matter: reassured me that I'd be taken care of, helped lighten the mood a bit, and didn't have any massive expectations for someone they just met for the first time in-person who's never done something like this at such a scale. Our styles and how we carried ourselves couldn't be different though, which was extremely funny to me. Them in this very stylish coat and scarf number, while I'm bumming around in my ripped-up Fender shirt and fishnet-tights - extremely visual-metaphor, I know.

Snagging the supplies was a wild experience. I'm just sorta following along while Dee had a total game-plan in their head, bee-lining it towards the baking section and immediately shoving about 12 boxes of cake batter into the cart. I was surprised to see how little frosting they snagged, but that'll be something for next time. The other supply that dominated our cart was store-brand whipped topping for the pies. I figure we had like about a dozen tubs of that as well by the end. During the grocery-run, I told Dee that whenever someone would make a comment when I'd buy stuff for solo-experiences, I just tell them that I'm running a bake-sale or something. People will take it at face-value, and I don't have to explain that "Yes, I'm buying so much dessert-product because it's a kink of mine". But Dee, this asshole (affectionate), gets asked the question while we're checking out and puts on this bright face saying they're "Moxie's happy helper, she's got so much work to be done on her head" and I'm trying not to corpse right then and there while I'm bagging our supplies. I think my face was crimson when we bounced back to my place.

Speaking of my place, I do not live in a large apartment and my bathroom is even smaller with my shower being a one-person standing-job. Thankfully, this also means that laying down tarp to catch the massive amount of spillage was super easy, and Dee had tons of tarp and tape ready to go. Looked like that one scene in American Psycho with a singular chair in the middle surrounded by clear tarp to catch the mess. Absolutely unhinged shit if you saw it out of context.

Then came making everything! Dee had brought a bunch of pudding-cups as filling for the pies as well as some xanthan gum to thicken things. That xanthan gum stuff is wild, they mixed it with water at first, and it had the texture of drool. Great if you're into that stuff and want a body-safe way to get drenched in it! I had baked half of the crusts earlier when we got back, but I totally spaced on poking holes in the crusts so they ended up kinda jank. Thankfully, the pies were just going to be thrown at me instead of eaten. Ha! This is when my back started getting angry at me, standing a whole bunch and moving around the kitchen. Had to take a number of breaks during this, but Dee told me they have infinite energy for this sort of thing and was fine that the fat girl needed a few breaks. Took maybe an hour in total to go from nothing to a dozen pies and three 3-gallon buckets of cake batter, which was wild. I put some makeup on, Dee got the camera and tripod set up, and it was time for us to start!

The anticipation I felt when I was sitting in that chair was wild. Like, I've absolutely pied myself before and even last year I got pied by another person for the first time from my ex. So, I sorta knew what to expect. But, these pies had that gum mixed in to hold their shape better, so I wasn't entirely certain how it was going to go. Dee told me to get ready and…

SPLAT! The first pie nearly knocked the fucking air out of my lungs. It was fucking cold thanks to the topping been in the fridge-section of the grocery store about only an hour ago! It covered my whole face and stuck to my hair that I had pushed to run down the side of my head, and I nearly called for a yellow light to slow down. For a little there, I felt like I couldn't catch my breath properly before two more pies got sandwiched over my head. Dee, for their part, did the expert thing of smearing and twisting the desserts over my head to just turn it into a mask of goop. This is absolutely the point where I could feel all the weight concentrate in my hair and start to weight my whole damn head down. Looking back at the video for reference, my hair is just this curtain of white goop and pie crust.

A few pies in for good measure, and Dee finally grabbed one of the buckets of batter. The dye we snagged wasn't all that potent, sadly. We wanted a bright pink sludge that mimicked the ancient-ass game-show What Would You Do's "Crowning Glory", but we know next time not to get the gel-dye (and also to buy a hand-mixer!). Because it's part of The Kink, of course I looked directly up into the bucket above just before it cascaded over me. In stark contrast to the other pies being cold as hell, Dee used warm water to mix with the batter, so it was heavenly to have that thick warmth poured over my body. It made all the future pies a lot easier to handle, honestly, by having that mucky barrier of off-pink coating me.

Around this time is when I realized "Oh, right, I have a bunch of hair soaking in all this stuff, might as well work it in!" because I'm a dork for my hair getting the slop-salon treatment. Another few pies splatted over my face while I worked my hair like I was in a shampoo commercial, Dee grabs my arm and smears a big blob of marshmallow fluff up my armpit because the bastard knows I'm a pit-fiend. So, you folks out there that enjoy the idea of lapping dessert out of my pit, please hold onto that mental image nice and tight. The banter between me and Dee started flowing at about this point. They were asking me questions while smearing the batter over my body, and ended up zeroing in on my nipple. I'm a sensitive lady, so when I'm trying to give an answer, it came out as "Oh yeah~!" like I'm some actress in a shitty porn because I was goddamn moaning through it. They didn't let me forget that, repeating it back to me whenever I would say "Yeah" to anything. Asshole (affectionate).

Syrup came next, just some cheap-ass brand and not actual maple syrup, and I smelled like breakfast. I smelled like breakfast for like two days afterwards, even through a thorough shower. I am not complaining at all, this is a benefit to this fetish. Honestly, the syrup was the one thing that I was not expecting to enjoy as much as I did. In my head, it's watery and just kinda boring? But, it being emptied out over mess-coated me and a pie that was stuffed into my face, I'm absolutely adding it to the roster of Quick and Easy Shit to Buy When I'm Horny.

Then came The Barrage. So, in this little obsession Dee and I share, the pie-barrage is usually seen as one of the climaxes of a scene. It's taking what, up to this point, is usually singular pies being added to someone in a sensual way that builds up the mess slowly piece-by-piece. A barrage of pies is the person throwing them going absolutely feral and just wanting to see the target inundated with layer upon layer of pie. That's exactly what happened to me! The first pie hit, totally blinding me, and before I had time to react properly, a second and then a third pie was added to the vaguely human-shaped blob of pie and moaning trans woman. Even managed to muffle anything I was trying to say, which was incredible to someone like me that types out muffled syllables in text roleplay. Honestly, Dee got the best photos of me immediately after the barrage, you… can hardly see who I am, let alone what I am. Absolute peak!

When your head is absolutely coated in thick pie-slop, the world fades away in a real way. You can't see past the layers of dessert, it settles over your head so you can't hear anything but your own breathing, and taste and smell have been absolutely tossed out the window to be replaced by sugarsmell. It's like sensory deprivation, because even your sense of touch fades out since you're rocking at least a layer or two of full-body coverage. It's an incredible experience! It's also only halfway through my session!

To speed things up a bit, more pies and more batter-slime was added to the mess. Since this kink began with Nickelodeon shows for the vast majority of the Millennials that have it, it's a bit of a "tradition" when green slime is involved (in our case, green batter because I'm a Dessert Bitch) to say "I don't know" like in You Can't Do That On Television. Say the trigger-phrase, get a bucket of green dumped over you. Dee even tried to put the bucket over my head, but the three-gallon ones are just a bit too small for that. It's a shame, because if we had the five-gallon buckets, I would have absolutely done a bit of head-dunking where I get on my hands and knees before plunging my whole head into that warm goop. Dee even had some chocolate cake batter as well, which reminded me that Valentine's was only a few days previous. Chocolate-covered goblin, anyone? The irony of my most-recent art piece mirroring what was going to happen to me is absolutely not lost on me.

Eventually, we had run out of supplies, and I got to sit there in the chair just enjoying the mess I was in. My hair was so heavy at that point, and the slop had just sorta congealed into a single texture. It made it incredibly easy to just work and play with, with Dee finally realizing that the reason I keep my hair so goddamn long is for moments like this where I get to wear what felt like ten pounds of sludge from the neck up. As is tradition in these shoots, just because we ran out of supplies doesn't mean the Moxie Messing was over, because Dee had put a bucket between my legs to catch as much excess slop as possible before dumping it all over my head in this thick mashed-up mixed-up wave.

After I had run out of steam having fun with myself, it was time to wrap and get me cleaned off. Wringing out my hair was an experience for the both of us. Neither of us had really realized just how much mass my hair could hold. When I went to pull the mess from my hair, it… just kept going. I filled a damned three-gallon bucket with just the stuff in my hair alone, and even then there was more. I soaked myself in the shower for the better part of a half-hour afterwards, to which my back got very upset at me for standing so long on a slippery surface. When I came out of the shower, Dee had completely cleaned the place. Wrapped up the pool of slop in the tarps and slammed it into a contractor bag for dumping. In my past experiences of being really bad at planning, it was never that easy, so I was thoroughly impressed at the foresight. I helped Dee toss it all into the dumpster near my place, and they bounced on off home in their car soon after!

So, to summarize… Holy shit, I wrote a lot, didn't I? Ha! But, yeah, this was an incredible experience and hands-down the best and most-encompassing slop-session I've ever had to this point. Dee said they absolutely want to do another session before they move again, so I'm excited to have more experiences like this! Hopefully this whole thing helps show people that have no idea why the hell I'm so obsessed with being hit by pies why I enjoy it, and shows people that do understand how incredible it was for me to have this. 2023 was a rough year for me, so kicking off 2024 with a session like this is hopefully the start to a far better year. With that, let's call it a wrap!

Love you all, stay messy. 💖

[mouthpiece-simp]

if you're ok with writing for non managers, CLO/reader headcanons, please?

CLO x Reader Headcanons

First of all, congrats for being brave enough to not be anonymous! Second of all, I'm here to write fanfic, I don't care if she's technically not a manager :)

📚After your first fight with the CLO, you found yourself really wanting to know more about Diane.

📚You decided to schedule an appointment to go see her {you had to book it out months in advance, wow!} through Judy, and you just set the reason as a "consultation." By the way, you only got the appointment because you got Belle to help you pull some strings given their history. How'd you get Belle to help you? You listened to hours of stories about her grandchildren.

📚In the meantime, you fought Diane a few {okay, maybe a lot} more times while waiting for your appointment. She became very familiar with your toony face...

📚When it was time for your appointment, she kinda scoffed when she saw you and asked you why you'd scheduled an appointment to come see her in the first place. You hesitated before making up some nonsense, and she could tell you were lying. So, you admitted that you kinda liked her and wanted to try at least being friends.

📚She thanked you professionally for your honesty but cited that it was common practice for toons and Cogs not to be friendly with each other. You asked her if that was a strict rule, to which she admitted there wasn't...

📚So you once again suggested to try at least being friends. To your surprise, she hesitantly agreed and allowed you to visit her after her shifts {which were almost always 12 hours every day, by the way... yikes! Cogs really did have to work a lot}.

📚After a while of being friends, Diane realizes you've been acting more and more strange lately but she also knows why... it's because you have a crush on her. To her dismay, she found herself returning your feelings.

📚She had an open discussion with you about it and sounded like she was about to say she didn't wanna pursue a relationship with you, but she quickly changed her mind in the moment and asked you out on a date. Even she seemed surprised at what she'd just said.

📚You said yes though, and that's how you started dating!

📚Given the fact that she's like 10 times your size, physical affection is a bit... interesting. Usually she can only hold you in the palm of her hand while your way of showing your affection is hugging whatever part of her you can get your gloves on {usually her wheels or her arms}.

📚You can also ask her to bring you to her face so you can kiss her! She can also try to carefully kiss the top of your head, but she doesn't wanna accidentally bite your entire head or something so she doesn't do it often.

📚Diane is very serious about things, and she has a hard time understanding your toony humor. She's trying, but she's not quite on the right track yet...

📚Speaking of toony things, she surprisingly knows a LOT about the stuff toons do just from studying them so much along with what her Lawbots have told her. Heck, she even knows the rules to lots of toony games and you've even managed to convince her to participate in a few.

📚When you ask her if they were fun, she gives a vague response. But you can tell she had fun.

📚You basically get to free roam Lawbot HQ as long as you're not interfering with anyone's work. Pretty much all the Cogs know about your relationship with the CLO at this point and they don't dare hurt you because they don't want disciplinary actions taken against them. But you'll also get quite the scolding if you hurt THEM so it's kinda M.A.D. but in the corporate world.

📚Diane will probably try to get you to wear corporate attire and convince you that you look great in it. Surprisingly she won't try to actually hire you {she considers toons too much of a risk for lawsuits LOL}, but she does try to kinda "Cog-ify" you a bit. I guess you both rub off on each other.

📚She loves sitting in silence with you. It helps he destress from work.

📚After being defeated by toons, you try to help the CLO both on an emotional and physical level. You try to help repair any Cogs that weren't completely destroyed, and you climb onto her wheels and kinda sit there and chat with her about the pesky toons that just defeated her while she's getting repairs.

📚When she gets defeated while she's overclocked, the repairs she needs are more intense and sometimes you have to give the repair Cogs a lot of room to do what they need, so you just try to focus on helping repair the other Cogs and maybe even the Litigation team. But after her repairs are all done you're there to comfort her.

📚Basically, you're dating a very serious, no nonsense type of Cog and both of you will have some of your mannerisms rub off on each other. Neither you, the toons, or the Cogs know which side you're on anymore either.