#and while influencer is not much of like a “thing” here there r definitely lots of ppl that claim to be teachers on here that shit on kids

[keline11]

Missa's psychology session

(so much chaos in this stream, I don't like watching it)

(drawing: scammer)

The first one was missa saying that he came back and everything was different. He meet up with roier, and were talking about how the island change while he wasn't there.

Roier: “Do you remember the railroad you were boulding?”

Missa: “Yeah! I know!-”

R: *showing his waystone* “It's no longer of any use.”

M: “YEAH! FOR FUCK’S SAKE ROIER THANK YOU VERY MUCH!! When I finished, someone transported in front of me and was like ‘what are you doing?’"

R: “well, it’s cute/nice-”

M: “Nah, go fuck youself”

R: “I say you keep building it”

M: “You know what? I feel like the fucking broken fork. you know? the crooked fork? that is the only fork, it’s the only one, it's unique and different, different to the other ones BUT IT’S USELESS, IT DOESN’T WORK FOR ANYTHING, THAT’S ME! OK? I AM THE CROOKED FORK!”

This one was when people where chasing him.

Melissa: “What brings you here?”

Missa: “uh, I’m not sure if I should have this session- no, I should talk about my problems”

Me: “No you should do it”

Mi: “yeah, you are right”

Mi: “psicolog- melisso- you- melissa- roier- whatever you want to call yourself-"

Me: “what? what did you say?”

Mi: “Melissa! Melissa!”

Me: “yeah melissa, melissa”

Mi: “many things have happened in my life, I only wanted to build a theme park and invite everyone from the island, but I meet with some people around and they tell me that I was the worst father in the world, and I also saw my son but he was different-”

Mi: “everything has been bad, I wanted to see my son but he was different, he was hanging out with people that are a bad influence for him because they wanted to attack me. They did something to chayanne, they did something to my son”

Me: “Would you say that they changed him?”

Mi: “Definitely, something is wrong with my little child“

Me: “I see”

Then he tells her the bullshit that frvr told him. (I don't remember exactly and I am not seeing that part of the stream, but basically he told him that chayanne was cucurucho, some shit like that.)

Mi “that’s not my son! my son wouldn’t do something like that!”

...

Mi: “there’s something wrong with foolish and tubbo they wanted to attack me, they hurt me, they chased me, and my son was with them, they are a bad influence on my son. My son was an angel, a beautiful little thing that took care of the people.”

..

Me: “So you said that they changed your son and they have been very rude to you, but missa, don't be sad, you have to be with the people who add to you, not those who subtract from you. Then I tell you to talk with your son alone, and tell him how you feel”

Mi: “Melissa, thank you for the therapy”

They start talking in english here.

Richarlyson: “What do you think of bringing chayanne here?”

Mi: “Do you think it is a good idea?”

Me: “I think is a excellent idea, but *speaks in english* you need to speak in english, because you know, chayanne doesn’t speak spanish”

Mi: “I don’t know if I am ready to speak with my son”

Me: “I think it's time, you need to speak to him”

Mi: “I’ll do it then”

Then they invite chayanne to the room like a tv show. (soooo funny)

pipipipipipipi

Me: “Chayanne, your dad is very sad, because you change and your friends treat your father very bad, what do you have to say?”

Chay: “I was sleeping so much waiting for you, I am sad too”

Mi: “no…”

Chay: “I want to be able to speak to you as well”

Me: “Chayanne, you need to know that your dad has sleeping problems, and some times your dad needs to sleep for months”

Mi: “I wasn't sleeping, I was traveling across the world looking for a job, so I can be competent for you father, I was trying to be the best for your father and also for you, and I failed because it took me a lot of time, I didn’t do a good job I know-”

Chay: "But you are already the best for us”

Mi: *crying* “I’ve been trying I swear, it’s so hard being an absent dad, looking at you from the distance”

Chay: “Me too, I’ll try to be better”

Mi: “(but) you are! you are the best! you don’t need to be better you are the best on this island, maybe you are better psychiatrist than melissa-”

Me: “What-?”

Mi: “Shut up this isn't about you”

Chay: “But you don't want to speak to me”

Mi: “(but) I am here, speaking to you right now, I’ve been trying to fix everything I’ve been doing wrong, I am so sorry you are with bad people because of me, I am sorry”

Me: “I think this needs to be solve with a song”

Chay: "sure"

They sing “We are the world”.

Me: “you see, it's fine now, don’t you feel better?”

Mi: “...no”

Chay: "jajajajaja no"

After the session

Chay: *in spanish* “I love you papa”

Mi: “I love you son, forgive me for being absent- sorry for being a bad dad, I was away for too long”

Chay: *in spanish* “I learn a little, ok?"

Mi: “Chayanne you don’t need to learn, I can speak in english with you- chayanne you don’t need to change, I am the problem, I must understand you, I have to be better for you, so I’ll be here everyday- not a promise- I’ll be here, to be a better father for you”

Chay: “But how much better is enough? You are enough for me already”

Mi: “no, I am not, I leave for too long”

Pipipipipipi

Sad ending. )8

[ququoquaw]

its always weird when i see ppl complain about tiktok and a lot of the problems they have with the app is like the exact same stuff u see on here

[jo-harrington]

Standard Operating Procedures 1.05 (Eddie Munson x Store Manager!Reader)

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

Summary: It's a normal Sunday night. You're just going over to have dinner, smoke, and listen to music. It's not a date. What could possibly go wrong?

Previous Part: Standard Operating Procedures 1.04

Warnings/Themes: AU where the Upside Down doesn't terrorize Hawkins. Reader works at the Claire's at StarCourt. Eddie works at TapeWorld. Mutual pining, alcohol and drug use (wine, beer, and weed), R has a minor panic attack while high, fluff, lighthearted smut (petting/groping/dry humping), minor angst, misunderstandings and miscommunication, driving probably a little under the influence, slight anachronism (slapping the bag)

Note: Big note for this one if you've read the most recent installations of SMVerse that I've posted...this is NOT in chronological order. SM and Eddie are not together in this one, we are rewinding back before Closing Time. This chapter and the next one are both a little longer and have been lingering in my head for quite a long time. Almost a year. So without further ado, please enjoy SOP 1.05.

You can find my masterlist here for more featuring our resident Store Manager and all of my other writing.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

---

Sundays were your favorite days, hands down.

They sort of always had been, even before moving to Hawkins. Now, though, you had an extra special reason why they were your favorite.

Sundays meant that you could be yourself after you clocked out. They meant standing in the mirror and wiping away the layers of glitter eyeshadow and scented nail polish off. They meant shedding the overly sparkly jewelry from work and the trendy clothes from the JCPenney or Madigan's Juniors department that were definitely cut for a teenage body.

No matter how young you still were, you just weren't sixteen anymore.

You could finally breathe a little easier.

No more Dress to Impress, no more preppy popular girl, no more customer service voice.

Sundays meant freedom.

Lately, part of that freedom meant walking out of the store, taking the most freeing breath you could, and walking right up to your crush best friend so you could spend those last few dying hours of the weekend together.

Shooting the breeze, laughing, and getting to know one another. Getting to really see one another.

Tonight, though, there was just this cloud hanging over you as you stood in the store's bathroom after hours and shucked off the plaid vest and fashionably unmatched skirt you'd chosen for the day in favor of a t-shirt and comfy stirrup pants.

Summer was over, school was back in session, and you hadn't gotten to see Eddie as much as you normally did.

Which, in the grander scheme of things, a lot of things changed with the new school year starting: a bunch of your associate's schedules changed, a few of them even left town for college, and business started to slow a little during the week for the first time since the store opened.

Still, you missed him.

It felt weird from practically seeing him every day to only seeing him in passing or on the weekends.

What if he didn't want to be friends anymore?

Well, that was just silly. Some remnant of fear about the fickleness of your friends memories in childhood. Besides, the first shift after school started back up, he immediately came running to your store and talked your ear off about the new kids that he forced to join Hellfire.

"God, they're such losers," he reminisced with a sparkle in his eye and a smile on his lips. "They have so much potential. I can't wait for you to meet them."

Tonight though...

Tonight was like any normal night; you were getting together after the mall closed and picking up pizza.

However, instead of any of your usual haunts or shenanigans in and around Hawkins, Eddie insisted you come over to his place. Totally normal.

"And we can smoke," he added as an afterthought.

"You know I don't smoke Eddie," you reminded him. "My grandpa and his crackly lungs? I've taken him to enough doctor's appointments."

"Doesn't stop you from sucking up the air around me when I'm having a cigarette on break. No. I mean smoke. Reefer. Weed. Jesus, don't act ignorant Miss Goody Two Shoes."

"Excuse me," you choked. "How am I Miss Goody Two Shoes?"

"Because," he began with dramatic emphasis. "For all of your stories about garage beers and parties that your work friends dragged you to, you've never mentioned partaking in any sort of illicit substances. You're being obtuse on purpose or you're afraid."

You were caught like a deer in the headlights.

"I...I'm not."

And you weren't; it wasn't fear. It was just...inexperience.

Back home you were always careful, even when you hung around friends from school or work; with your overprotective father and uptight mother and two brothers who wouldn't hesitate to rat you out if they found out you broke some kind of rule? It would be over.

So you never got too wild at parties. Disheveled clothes could be straightened, and you could pretend that swollen lips were just a side effect of getting a little sick. You never drank more beer than whatever made you feel a little floaty if you weren't sleeping over at a friends. And you never smoked weed.

Ok so it was fear, in a way; residual fear. Just not the way Eddie thought.

"Hey, don't worry," Eddie said in the most understanding way he could. "You just tell me and I'll drop it, if you're afraid."

You wanted to tell him, wanted to explain it, but in a moment of reflection and wanting to assuage his worries, defiance got the better of you and you told him that you weren't afraid and it would all be fine.

You were going to be with him; you never needed to be afraid when you were with him.

Now though, staring at yourself in the mirror as you got ready to go and meet Eddie you realized you might have made a mistake.

Hanging out with your crush friend alone at his place? Fine. Sitting close on the couch as you ate pizza and listened to music? Cool. Drinking and smoking together, knowing that you got a little bit chatty when you loosened up a little bit under the influence? Uhm.

What could possibly go wrong?

---

The spread that you and Eddie had created was impressive.

Pizza and a six pack and red vines and...and...and...

Eddie was usually very thorough when it came to providing snacks or planning outings where you could get a nice little treat together. Tonight it was partially your fault.

You'd originally planned just to drive to his place after work and the pizza would be delivered, but he said that when he'd called to place the order at Lou's--large pepperoni and a box of cannoli--they told him that the delivery driver was out. Takeout only.

But then he also forgot to stop at Bradley's for soda.

So you offered to go to Bradley's while he picked up the pizza, and you might have gone overboard.

Soda and a box of wine and peanut m&m's and...and...and...

"And you say that I'm bad," Eddie scoffed as you walked in, arms laden with shopping bags.

"Excuse me, this is the once in a blue moon you let me pay for anything, I'm gonna take advantage of it."

Wayne was still home getting ready for his shift when you got there and he simply shook his head at your bickering with a fond smile, then pilfered a little of everything for his own dinner before leaving you both to it.

Once he was gone, the festivities began.

You were both overzealous, talking a mile a minute over each other about your days as you set up for the night. Eddie divvied out food--creating a plate that reminded you of the Peanuts' Thanksgiving feast, overflowing with multicolored candies and popcorn and pizza slices--as you took care of the drinks.

You were a little smug that you got to teach Eddie something during these little Sunday night not-dates for once.

"Where did you learn this?" he asked skeptically as you ripped into the cardboard box. "What even is Franzia? Sounds fancy."

"It is the least fancy thing you can get," you grinned maniacally and freed the floppy plastic bag full of pink liquid from its confines. "Honestly I should have thrown it in the fridge but it's fine. You can put it with some coke; it'd probably taste better anyway."

He made a face.

"I'll just have a beer."

"Oh my--Eddie! Live a little." You settled the bag on the coffee table and gestured to it. "You don't have to drink it...chug a beer, I don't care...but you need to slap it."

He huffed and shuffled across the carpet on his knees to settle beside you.

"Is this a Claire's thing?" he asked, he looked up at you through his bangs.

"No it's not a--well...no. It doesn't matter! My old store manager, Jen, made us do it whenever we went to parties and hung out at her place. It's fun."

"Why does this feel like a lie?"

You reached out and smacked your hand against the plastic, listened to the liquid slosh inside. He let out a long suffering sigh but gestured for you to go ahead and he settled on the floor as you squealed with glee.

Eddie popped the little tab on the spout and the cheap wine poured freely into his mouth; he maintained eye contact with you the whole time, even as he choked on the unfamiliar taste of the pink zinfandel.

When you'd hung out with Jen and your coworkers and friends, it was just...a silly thing. Now, though, it was just you and Eddie; you stood over him with the bag gently held in your hands over his mouth and his hand rested on your calf as he drank. It was tense and intimate and as you started feeling a little hot under the collar, you wondered if this was a mistake.

Regardless, when he'd had his fill, he shut the spout and raised his hand and slapped the bag so hard it soared out of your grasp and across the living room.

You both burst out laughing as it swished and sloshed with a pronounced glorp on impact with the floor, and Eddie collapsed against your legs as the giddiness got the better of him.

"Ok, that's better than a keg stand." He looked up at you and wiped a hand over his mouth. "Blagh...probably gonna need that coke if I have any more though. Your turn, sweetheart."

Then the tables were turned, but unlike Eddie, you stood toe to toe with him as he held the bag for you.

To avoid the tense eye contact, you kept yours closed as you pulled mouthful after mouthful from the bag. You almost felt a little smug; you'd always been good at this, despite how awful the wine burps were gonna get after. You knew Eddie's competitive nature--always seeing who could finish a blizzard from DQ first and giving himself a brain freeze in the process--so you were hoping to last a little longer, hit the bag a little harder, and get him to concede.

You counted down in your head and finally when you couldn't take the heartburn the wine caused any longer, you shut the spout and released it, ready for victory.

Of course, opening your eyes provided nothing of the sort.

Eddie stood there, inches away from you; his pupils were blown and he was breathing a little heavily and for a split second you thought to ask if he was ok.

Until he leaned a little closer.

Close enough where you could smell the laundry detergent and the general amalgamation of mall scents coming off of him.

Then you noticed that his eyes were locked onto…your lips?

Was he gonna kiss you?

You already thought…well…and in the van the other week? When he licked frosting off your hand? You'd thought...

Except that was the thing, you always thought, you never acted. Too stuck in your head weighing and judging the options and if you could just do something about it. If you could just lean forward a little, you could stop worrying and have your answer right?

And if it wasn't meant to be and things were weird? If he didn't actually mean to try and kiss you? You worked retail; you could bullshit with the best of them if worse came to worse.

Then you'd just pretend that your heart didn't ache from rejection for the duration of your friendship. You were already familiar with disappointment; this would be no different.

Alright, that's it, you weren't gonna chance it anymore. All the worrying you did back at the store was enough. You were just gonna kiss him. Just lean forward; just go. Just go. One, two...two and a half...

Eddie's eyelids fluttered a little bit, and your heart clenched in hope, until he leaned away and cleared his throat.

The wine bag was tossed onto the coffee table and Eddie gestured to the plates he'd prepared.

"So, pizza?"

---

Music was the next event of the night.

And the weed.

Funny how all of your anxiety over smoking flew out the window when you were anxious about something else.

Because you just couldn't get your feelings out of your head after Eddie walked away from a kiss like that.

Was it even going to be a kiss? Or was it just the awkwardness of your positions in that situation? Were you overthinking the overthinking?

On and on those thoughts spiraled.

Until Eddie said he was going to get his stereo to start your comprehensive education of metal.

"We really don't have all night Eddie," you said and threw a balled up napkin at him as he fiddled with his tapes.

"Ok, maybe not fully comprehensive," he held his hands up in surrender. "Nothing sounds better than vinyl and I have all of that at Rick's. And my mom's records. You wanna talk about classics? We've gotta spend a whole weekend there."

He put a tape into the slot and hit play and the room was immediately filled with guitar riffs and singing and shouting; he turned the volume down immediately.

"I've gotta give you the whole history sweetheart," he explained. "So you've gotta hear me too. This song's not so important...I'll turn it up when we get to the good part."

Of course, Eddie's music history lesson...started with him.

"Picture this," he said, arms waving as he walked over to his school things that had been haphazardly thrown in a corner of the room: a wilted canvas backpack, a black binder, and a dented metal lunchbox. "11-year old me, fresh after my mom's funeral and everyone she knew was coming up to us but I refused to talk. Wayne kept making excuse after excuse. But Rick, bless him, said 'gotta make him cry.'"

And on he went as he spilled the contents of the dented lunchbox on the coffee table and began the fine work of rolling a joint.

"Took me to the record store, let me pick out whatever I wanted. Of course I chose Sad Wings of Destiny because the art was cool. Little did I know that would change the course of my life forever."

You didn’t know what to focus on and that made you spiral a little bit further. The words, the music, his lips and his fingers as he followed steps that he seemed to know but didn't feel the need to elaborate on were all very appealing targets; the music and his story was what was important here though and you made the attempt.

He told his story in a way that only Eddie Munson knew how to—arms flailing, minute details, expressions and voices and everything you loved admired about him. He took a moment to swap cassettes and crank up the volume before he fell onto the couch beside you in a mess of cushions and limbs and hair.

"I would say ladies first," he began as he presented the joint to you. He then stuck it between his lips and continued talking around it. "But I'm nothing if not a gentleman and I need to teach you how to do this. It's a little different than cigarettes."

It was a comprehensive lesson and you'd gotten the hang of it quickly, but the proximity did nothing to help calm your nerves; Eddie's knee touching yours, his face and hands so close to yours as he held the joint to your lips, then one hand your shoulder as he soothed the cough that escaped you after your first hit, and finally the way he inhaled along with you as you took another.

Want burned in your lungs along with the smoke, but it didn't leave you when you finally exhaled.

You were very much looking forward to the light and mellow feeling that Eddie promised once the weed hit your system.

"Until then," he grinned and took another hit himself before dropping the smoldering stick into a nearby ashtray. "We just dive into the mind of the great Ronnie James Dio."

You rested back against the cushions and turned your head to really watch him; it was strange just...observing him. You had never done it like this before, close and quiet at this distance. Your time together was always spent with conversation and laughter, your observations and mental notes about him done in little snapshots as he moved through life like a blur.

Now you got to experience the simplicity of his presence in private and the addictive frequency that he emitted.

It was nice.

You watched the way his lashes brushed against his skin as he melted into the sofa beside you and closed his eyes. The way his plush lips pursed and then stretched as he hummed along to the music. You closed your own eyes for a second as he matched the sharpness of the lyrics with his voice, hushed and then shrill, and then hushed again.

And when you opened them back up to watch him some more, he was watching you and practically vibrating.

Your heart skipped a beat...

"Sweetheart," he reached out and touched your wrist. "You ok?"

Wait...he wasn't vibrating.

You were.

Then you noticed that your heart skipped many beats, then the beats suddenly tripled, and then it all slowed again, pounding harder and faster in your chest than you believed to be possible.

Did your chest hurt? Or were you imagining it?

It felt like the few times you ran the mile back in high school, but you hadn't run.

Had you?

Your legs felt like jelly. Your arms too.

So you must have run...but when?

No wait, you were forgetting something. Your chest, your heart, your lungs. You had to focus on them first, you needed them to live.

You tried to fix it all by taking a great gulp of air in--if you felt like you'd just run the mile, surely catching your breath would fix it--but you found that it didn't fix anything. In fact, you seemed to lose even more control of your body. You floundered, breathing heavily over and over, quicker and quicker to try and get a hold of yourself.

And the panic set in, unlike anything you'd ever experienced before in your life.

Your consciousness became untethered from your body and you sank deep within yourself. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Only instead of a rabbit hole, the you that existed in your mind fell away from your eyes and deeper into your skull then out the back of it and into the so-soft cushions of the couch.

But this wasn't sinking, this wasn't melting. This was being buried alive.

You remembered Eddie’s taunting before, about being afraid of smoking. Why hadn’t you told him that you didn’t want to do this? Why hadn’t you told him you were afraid? You were a stubborn idiot and now you’d die here, buried amongst pilling fabric and lost change and lint and a few cheerios that were stuck between the cushions.

You would die here on Eddie's couch...

"Eddie!" you practically sobbed and reached out for him, remembering suddenly that he was there with you. Why wasn't he doing anything to keep you from sinking? "Help!"

"It's ok hey!" He grabbed your hands now and pulled you back from the void, hooked the tether back onto you and saved you from the depths. "It's ok, breathe. No, not like that. Slowly, deep breaths with me. In and hold it and out. Whoooooo."

You focused on the whooshing sound of the air that escaped his lips and you tried to make the same sound yourself. Over and over, slowly as he guided you.

"That's it," he smiled. "Good girl."

You slowly grounded yourself through Eddie, escaping whatever horrible clutches had just grasped at you. You began to feel better, lighter; more centered within yourself but…nicer?

Had that awful feeling been the high? Or was this?

Maybe everyone got caught by a demon when they smoked and then if they escaped they felt a nice light flutter and instead of a heavy beating heart that threatened to burst out of their chests, they felt...silly. Happy. Bubbly.

Like you did whenever you were around Eddie.

Only now it was better, and it was all getting better as he spoke to you and smiled and wiped at the few tears that had escaped your eyes.

Breathe in, breathe out. Good girl.

You kept breathing and staring at his lips.

Breathe in.

Lips.

Breathe out.

Eddie's lips.

Good girl.

You thought about earlier...minutes or hours you couldn't tell for sure...about the way Eddie leaned close to you and almost kissed you. All the worry you'd had about not being able to make a move because you were thinking so much you couldn't act. Here you were now, thinking again. When his lips were right there and you could do something about it.

With one last shaky breath, bubbly infatuation flooded your body; you smiled and said one final farewell to your nervous thoughts, and you surged forward. Your hands shook his away and grabbed at his face, as your lips slid clumsily against his.

Your noses bumped and teeth clacked painfully but it didn't quite matter because the sparks that emanated from your joined lips shot through your limbs and made you both feel tingly and pleasant. At least, you assumed they did for Eddie because he let out a sound that was somewhere in between a giggle and a moan.

But he didn't push you away; in fact, his hands clapped over yours and smushed them further into his cheeks.

He wanted you to kiss him. He wanted to kiss you. He...liked you.

It was a euphoric moment of joy and realization, but your need to put your lips on him outweighed that. So you tried again. Gentler this time.

Eddie followed your lead for a little while as you pulled him towards you; one of his hands found your waist as the other arm rounded your shoulders, and he became your anchor to prevent you from being buried by the sofa again. As thanks for his chivalry, you gifted him with soft caresses, quick pecks, and sharp little nips.

Your fingers developed a mind of their own, and seemed to love his cheekbones and getting tangled in his hair, although they couldn't quite decide which they loved more so back and forth they went.

The rest of you, though--mind and body--just basked in the kissing.

You were good at kissing; you liked kissing. And you liked kissing Eddie, more than you ever thought you would. Kissing under the light, buzzy influence of a beer or two was nice, and it might have been the weed or it could have just been Eddie himself, but this was nicer. Floaty and tingly and transcendent.

The music itself had stopped, but Eddie himself continued to provide the soundtrack to the night. Instead of guitars and vocals and pounding drums, it was a symphony of soft hums and sweet sighs.

Eddie, who often pilfered bites and nibbles off your plate and cited that he was a "growing boy," seemed to prove that his hunger was greater than yours the way he bit and nibbled at you too, appetite growing the longer you kissed. The pace you set no longer fed him the way he wanted and he started to feast a little more; that was a side-effect of being high, right? Hunger. Insatiable hunger?

His mouth pulled away from yours and started to explore your jaw, the column of your neck, the junction between your neck and shoulder. You let yourself get lost in the feeling of his attention, of his lips and hands as he gave and took, of the floaty feeling that settled comfortably in your limbs now, all the nerves of the day forgotten.

Before you knew it, your own hunger grew as well. You wanted him closer, needed more of him now that you had him.

You let yourself drift back along the pillows until you were laying comfortably and pulled Eddie along with you; one hand still lingered in his hair as the other fisted the collar of his shirt and got him right where you needed him to be.

Of course, you couldn't just take without giving as well, and as he settled onto you, your hips bucked up into him. You both moaned--savoring the proximity and delicious friction that his jeans and your leggings provided--and then giggled together as he collapsed on top of you, unprepared for the sudden surge of delight.

His breath fanned across your neck and jaw as he laughed breathlessly, and your hands caressed his head and shoulders fondly as you mirrored him.

He strained his neck a little to look you in the eye; his grin accentuated all the lines in his face, and for a second he struggled to form words. His mouth opened and closed silently and then he licked his lips to compose himself. The next thing you knew, his hand was coming up and squeezing one of your breasts with an exaggerated "honk" as he fell back against the other one and pressed his mouth to the swell over your shirt.

Back into the throes of unadulterated giggles you both went as he continued to honk and kiss and suck at exposed skin.

One of the highlights of the whole night was when he blew a raspberry against your neck; the feeling of goosebumps that erupted along your body and the spittle that sprayed across your skin would be a sensation you would remember and cherish forever.

"No fair," you whined and shifted against him again, both to protest the fact that you currently couldn't return the favor of all the attention he was giving you. Nevertheless, you treated him to the attention that you could, and you bucked your hips up again, only to be met with the feeling of him grinding down onto you.

Giggles began to mingle with desperate pants as he began to shift against you and settled into the cradle of your thighs; he grew harder and ground and rutted against the covered softness of you, faster and sharper, and your body eagerly responded, wanting to be as close to him as you could. As close as either of you could honestly fathom at this point, feeling too good like this to consider that there was more pleasure to be had if time went on and clothes came off.

Sunday nights together were truly gleeful and hedonistic, and tonight was no different. However, instead of snacks and arguments accentuated by the sounds of light-hearted talk and laughter, it was your writhing bodies and mingled breaths that took center stage; the two of you never stopped, only paused for your lips to smack wetly against one another, for your nails to rake through his hair and scratch against his scalp, and for him to grasp at your hips to pull you closer and closer as he drove you higher and higher.

"Eddie, I'm--" you broke away from him and keened, and he responded with a husky "uh-huh" and pressed his forehead against yours. Both of your eyes closed as you felt the pleasure building between the two of you, as he moaned and your toes curled...

As keys jingled in the lock of the front door of the trailer.

...and suddenly it was like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over the both of you and you froze, all thought of completion forgotten.

Your eyes shot open and you stared into Eddie's panic-filled, pleasure-blown pupils. He shifted sharply and then paused, almost like a glitch, and then he was off you, across to the other side of the couch in the blink of an eye. You watched, dumbstruck, as he panted heavily to control his breathing, and he held his head in shaking hands.

"No, no," he muttered. "Shit. Shit."

You reacted quickly as the door started to squeak open--throwing your legs over the edge of the sofa to sit upright as your hands clumsily fixed your disheveled clothes--and Wayne walked in. You took the extra second as he grumbled at the threshold and fiddled with his keys to look at Eddie, hoping for some kind of...secret conspiratorial smile or...or heated gaze...just something but he refused to look at you.

Suddenly, all of the good feelings that had flooded you since the moment that Eddie had chased your panic away...they vanished. The sweet giggles and shared pleasure were gone; even the love bites you were sure Eddie had left behind stung instead of blissfully buzzed.

And in their place, an acute clarity of what the two of you had just done.

"You wouldn't believe the mess I walked into tonight," Wayne chuckled with disbelief as he finally shut the door.

No kidding Wayne, you thought bitterly.

"Some of the machines were down when I got there and it took a few hours to figure out the problem. Some rusted old part..." On and on he chattered as you spiraled, stuck in your thoughts once again.

You and Eddie, Eddie and you. You and your secret crush...had just...on his couch. You and your best friend, your only friend in town...got high and kissed and canoodled and now he refused to even look at you.

You didn't know if it was the weed again or if it was just you, but you could see stars in the corners of your eyes and you felt lightheaded as the panic settled back in. And it only got worse the longer you sat there and tried to get some kind of sign from Eddie, only to be left with nothing. Such a stark contrast from just moments ago where you were giving and taking and responding to one another so freely.

Giving and taking...was that really what it was? Or did you just...do this to him? Do this to the both of you? Effectively tank your friendship the way you'd worried about since the first time you'd hung out and Eddie had specifically said it wasn't a date?

You abruptly got to your feet and Wayne stopped his chatter and looked at you questioningly.

"I..." you felt your throat closing up with emotion. "I just forgot I have a really important call first thing tomorrow. I...need to go!"

Eddie finally looked at you with wide, shocked eyes.

Were those tears? Oh god...

"I...it was nice to see you Wayne, sorry..." you scrambled to grab your bag from where you'd tossed it by the door and then looked back at both Munsons. Back and forth at Wayne's curious expression...and Eddie's devastated one. "I'm...sorry."

And you bolted out the door, into your car, and back across town to the lonely confines of your apartment, where you would wish for a second chance at Sunday all over again.

Because until tonight, Sundays had always been your favorite days.

Next Part: Leave of Absence

[cindersnows]

@singer-smiles-101

HI OK SO

second and chosen already have (intentional) parallels ---- down to the powers and even the name, second is supposed to be like a mirror of chosen and (what i imagine chosen would have been like if alan had been more merciful). however, i feel like there are some lesser acknowledged parallels between dark and purple, and also dark/chosen and second/purple's relationships.

first, the parallels between dark and purple: we start with the obvious. they were both introduced as tentative allies before becoming antagonists quickly, and then coming back much later for revenge. (purple also got redeemed, but dark hasn't been confirmed alive and redeemed again so...)

it goes a bit deeper than that, though. they both come off as selfish at first, though if you look at their pasts and implied motives, that's not the case. they were both betrayed by a parental(?) figure early in their lives, and spent a lot of the rest of their lives focused on that figure --- although dark was focused on getting revenge, while purple wanted to live up to his ideals. (note: i dont see alan as dark's parent but he definitely had some kind of parent-like significance to dark). both purple and dark are weaker than their peers, but make up for it using their smarts. also they can both code <3

theyre both dramatic and smug. they don't have short tempers, but when they do get mad they get Extreme (re: throwing blue and green in jail). i do believe that purple and dark would get along quite well (bugduo propaganda) but that's not the point of this ramble.

now, dark and purple's relationships with chosen and second are Very interesting. dark and purple both start off fighting second, but after losing, they switch sides. here's the thing: when dark joins chosen, that's when she switches to the "evil" side. purple joining second is when she joins the good side. this becomes significant later.

both of their relationships mainly take place off-screen, but we can make some assumptions. purple and second are close, at least moreso than purple is to the rest of the cg (- green), since he only goes to hug them in avm21. dark and chosen are obviously close, considering they only had each other for years, and in ava5 we can see that dark was friendly with chosen, at least til they started fighting.

second and chosen are both the catalysts for purple and dark's lives changing. second helped purple learn to accept loss and make new friends, and chosen helped dark escape from the computer and uhhh... commit genocide...

this is where things get really different. chosen was dark's only friend for a long time, and even if they later realised that killing Bad, they had influenced dark to think that she could do whatever she wanted. (not blaming chosen, but from what i can tell dark wasn't really that murderous prior to joining chosen). dark was without any good influences or support system for her whole life, so when chosen tried to convince dark to stop, instead of tentatively listening like purple did, he just got angry and fought back. this is also because theyre both fucking awful at communicating.

purple also didn't have much of a support system prior to meeting second, but at least grew up with some semblance of a family. when second stopped purple and offered a truce, she decided to accept it. ofc he went back on it later, god knows why, but yeah. i feel like dark's fate is partially bc of the lack of support system, and like second and chosen, i feel like purple is (kind of) what dark would have been like if he'd been created under better circumstances.

i think both second and purple would be able to guide their respective foils into bettering not only themselves but their relationship with each other, especially purple and dark (more bugduo propaganda). but yeah those r my thoughts on why these second/chosen and purple/dark are the same flavor of guys.

[dream-meister-translations]

DREAM MEISTER THE RECOLLECTED BLACK FAIRY

MERRY ROSE PAST #1

━

EMMA : That marks the last of the deliveries. Thank you to the pair of you for your hard work!

ADEL : Honestly, there’s nothing more troublesome than working on an in-seam…

MERRY ROSE : Seriously, seriously! Ahh, I'm so tired…

EMMA : Mm…

Merry Rose gives a casually languid stretch, arms reaching out, hand inadvertently brushing against Adel.

ADEL : Hey, be careful! Watch where your putting those hands, Merry Rose!

ADEL : Your soft, delicate hand, as graceful as a white fish, completely enthralls those who touch it!

MERRY ROSE : Right, my apologies. Though… It must be said… It does seem to be highly effective, does it not~?

ADEL : Honestly you need to pay better attention. I won’t be able to bear it once if you manage to charm someone else…

EMMA : Yeah… It’s definitely having an effect on Adel…

This is the power of Merry Rose's peculiar constitution, 'Enthrallment.' The pheromones in the flowers growing on Merry Rose’s arm charm those around him. The effect is at its strongest through direct contact. Even the likes of Adel fall under its influence. Much to Adel’s malcontent.

MERRY ROSE : Haha, well I’m glad it doesn't work on you, Em--... Hm?

EMMA : Merry Rose?

MERRY ROSE : This fragrance…

EMMA : W-Wait! Merry Rose! Where are you going?!

ADEL : Stop right there, Merry Rose! You can’t go leaving me behind— I'll chase you to the ends of the earth!

EMMA : Adel, you really need to calm down!

━

MERRY ROSE : ......

EMMA : Merry Rose, what's gotten into you all of a sudden? Is-- Is there something about this flower.

MERRY ROSE : Mmh. You see~... This is the place where we collided with Destiny…

EMMA : Collided with Destiny?

MERRY ROSE : You see, this country, Bloomeria, is actually my hometown.

EMMA : Wait, really?

MERRY ROSE : Yeah, I don’t really have any sentimental attachment to it or anything. But...

Merry Rose, with a wry smile, gazes at the flower blooming on his left arm, the source of his enchantment.

MERRY ROSE : My encounter with… ‘this’... Is something I could never forget, not even if I wanted to…

━

…I was never good at staying still. Even when I was little. I used to play outside until the sun went down each and every day…

…So it was only natural, then that I’d end up sporting a lot of cuts and bruises, but well, that's just what kids do…

…As my parents would always say, 'It's better for kids to be so energetic!'. They would laugh while cleaning my wounds…

Which brings us to the day of Destiny Itself… My friend and I, so caught up in our adventurous spirits, trespassed into a flower garden in complete disregard of the warning sign branded… 'No Entry.'

BOY : Look at all the flowers blooming here! I’ve never seen so many beautiful flowers before!

MERRY ROSE : Then let's make it a competition : Whoever finds the weirdest flower, wins!

BOY : Then, I’m gonna win!

…That eagerness would become our downfall...

As we flitted around the flower garden, we accidentally disturbed a tree housing a beehive, and ended up fleeing in panic.

BOY : Rose, run faster!

MERRY ROSE : I’m trying!

MERRY ROSE : Ahh!!

BOY : R-Rose! Are you okay!?

MERRY ROSE : ……….

BOY : Whoa! Rose, you're bleeding! Your arm is bleeding! We need to get you to a doctor!

CARETAKER  : Hey, you kids!! Didn't you see the sign!? 'No Entry'!!

BOY : Crap, it's the caretaker!

MERRY ROSE : Too late! We gotta keep running!

In the end… I didn’t get the cut on my arm treated until I finally returned home...

If only I had sought out as a doctor at the time… Maybe things would have been different...

[steves-strapcollection]

For the fanfic ask game 🫶

H

E (peace of mind)

A (icbhicbh)

R

T

Aaaaah Sandy thank you so much for the ask, this was stupid cute omg

H: How would you describe your style?

Oh jeez, coming in swinging right out the gate. I have... idea how to describe my style. Like I know I'm big on the dialogue and the inner monologues, and I'm huge on injecting the voice of the POV holder, even when it's third-person POV. Idk if that's a style but like [gestures vaguely] yeah????

E: If you wrote a sequel to here i have found some peace of mind, what would it be about?

Okay, so, I'm already writing a sequel to peace of mind, and that sequel is about Steve and Eddie figuring out being together while being apart, and also Steve kind of grappling with his own growing sort of fame on social media. Also other things. That I'm keeping... hush hush.

A: How did you come up with the title to i could be honest, i could be human?

i could be honest, i could be human was named after lyrics from the song Werewolf by Motionless In White. I got obsessed with the song, and I decided that those lyrics would make a sick fic title.

If you haven't listened to the song, you definitely should~*~

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

If I had to pick an influence, i would have to say Maggie Stiefvater and Naomi Novik, specifically for the way they both weave these immersive, magical stories? Oh! And VE Schwab! Same reasons, just... the way these authors flesh out their worlds, make it all feel real, even the magic? I especially really admire their ability to juggle multiple characters, and multiple POVs, and how each character feels Whole and Separate, like they're living and breathing, y'know? It's a quality I try to emulate in my own writing, and I hope I succeed.

T: Any fandom tropes you can't stand?

Damn, I already said "miscommunication" on another ask with this. I don't know if this counts as a trope, but I don't like... Hanahaki!AU and I think a lot of it comes down to the miscommunication aspect of it.

Send me more of these fun fanfic asks!

[applestorms]

i just binge-played off over the course of a couple days so let's relate that back to homestuck now

exactly what the title says. WARNING for spoilers of off, undertale, & omori (and homestuck. obviously), all fairly minor but involving some of talk about endings, as well as warning for canon-typical suicide talk (distri moment)

TLDR: off & undertale both use meta elements in a neat way, especially for their more horrific/fucked up parts, ult. dirk is definitely being puppetted by something (lord english, it's lord english).

so just as the title says, i've recently spent the last few days playing through the game off (also yume nikki but i haven't found a homestuck connection there so i guess you all will have to wait for that essay), and after poking around a bit for other interpretations of the themes & story i stumbled across this video that's given me some ideas about the post-canon content again, since i apparently can't stop relating everything back to that. specifically, the conclusion that he comes to near the end about the "real" story of off being a kind of parody of other rpgs where you mindlessly follow a protagonist's divine mission while actually just brutally exterminating/destroying an entire world of beings reminded me a lot of a criticism i heard of the epilogues that said it felt like the creators just watched the hbomberguy undertale video and decided to do that, but badly.

i talked about this a bit in my last essay about the post-canon stuff (don't be surprised if you missed that one btw, i got nervous and buried it under a mountain of reblogs ;v;), but one of the things that really fucking gets my goat about the epilogues & hs^2 is the fact that the creators both 1. talk down to the audience so goddamn much, and 2. are actively antagonistic to the audience, in a way that even homestuck proper never really felt, which, just to say, is also weird as hell to me because homestuck wasn't exactly nice to its audience either?? there has always been this back and forth between audience & creator in this fandom that is a prominent underlying dynamic in both the story itself & responding fanworks (a notable example being theater of coolty, which i personally interpret to be more of a character study of hussie rather than dirk), but even ignoring the history of twitter battles & literal petitions to get creators off the team, post-canon homestuck wants to make you fucking hurt and it refuses to be subtle about that fact.

anyways, here's a couple sections working through my thoughts on all that into something slightly more coherent.

1. off & purification (ft. undertale, omori, & yume nikki)

one of the things that really stood out to me throughout my playthrough of off these last couple days is the ways in which "purification," as a concept is associated with the mission of the batter, and, more broadly, all of the heavily religious connotations associated with his extermination of/destruction of the world.

a cool feature of the games that i've been playing recently (e.g. off & yume nikki) is seeing retroactively how they influenced other wildly popular games that i've played before that came out after (namely, undertale & omori). in particular, this more recent generation seems to take huge inspiration from the previous specifically in some of their most fucked up/horror-related elements, largely through the use of similar imagery/ideas that are then incorporated into the context of a new, clearer storyline. a good example of this is how black space in omori takes a lot from the imagery/mechanics of yume nikki (sleeping, doors, fucked up rooms with weird floors, etc.) but re-contextualizes it within the storyline of sunny's trauma/mental state as presented through the earlier sections of the game.

undertale does this too, taking both from yume nikki and, for what i'm focusing on here, off. from what i can tell, undertale seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from off in the creation of both its genocide route and the more meta elements of the game in general, which is interesting to me specifically in the interpretation of off it gives back retrospectively.

if you haven't watched it (though you really should it's only like ten minutes long) the key point that the hbomberguy video about undertale revolves around is the idea that at some point the game actively wants you to stop playing it and let the story & characters go. this is most obvious throughout the genocide route where characters in the game repeatedly & explicitly tell the player to give up, go back, and leave them the fuck alone, but notably also at the end of a true pacifist run where upon reopening up the game flowey pops up to tell the player to leave everyone be & let them enjoy their happy ending.

the divine quest of purification that the batter goes on throughout off (as is implied through his own words) is a lot less overt about the fact that its just murder & destruction but that element is definitely there, especially when revisiting the zones post-purification. the batter, bluntly speaking, gives no shits about the fact that he destroying everything in his path, even when enemies start switching from ghostly specters to "burned" people (or coughing children). if anything, destruction of the world is his outright goal as evidenced by the ending w/ the titular flipping of the switch "off," and he seems more surprised to come across people that claim to be happy when running through the area of cannibalism sugar drugs in zone 3 than all of the typical misery elsewhere. the repeated use of the word "purification," & heavy religious symbolism found throughout the game give this path of destruction a very different connotation to undertale's genocide route, however.

this ties into the use of meta elements in both games, which are also quite different: where undertale explicitly appeals to the player in quite a few instances when it's trying to get players to stop playing/taunting them about saves & whatnot, off only breaks the fourth wall in a few notable places, primarily through the judge & batter's dialogue at the start & end of the game as well as the character zacharie, all of whom directly refer to the player as a separate entity in control of the batter, slightly different to how undertale distinguishes the player character both as frisk vs. chara but also as powerful player/human vs. npc/monster* (since flowey is also equated w/ the player through his ability to utilize saves).

*deltarune also hammers this shit in even more w/ the opening character creation sequence & the fact that you have to enter two names, for creation & creator.

so- how does all of this relate to homestuck's post-canon? one word: puppets. (and dirk. it's always dirk)

2. homestuck^2 hates you & wants you to know it (dirk & puppets)

the epilogues begin with a nightmare wherein john watches the entirety of paradox space, reality as he knows it, begin to fall into a crack in the void. the meaning of this dream is made very clear over the course of a conversation with rose soon after: the story is in danger of becoming "non-canon," after too many years without an official continuation, and if john wants to stop that from happening he's going to have to make a big decision. meat or candy: either john directly tries to deal with the leftover major plotholes of the original story, enacting the previously foreseen events of the masterpiece in order to stop lord english, or he can choose to stay on earth-c and continue with the rest of his life as is.

one thing that only gets more and more overt the more i read through the post-canon content, whether that be the actual material released or authors notes from the patreon archive, is the fact that these two timelines were built from the start to be nightmares of slightly different flavors. i've talked about this many times, and there's honestly so many things pointing to this that i think it'd be more helpful if i just wrote it out as an actual list by this point, so here you fuckin go:

calliope compares the decision between meat & candy to a coin flip, invoking the image of terezi's coin flip that led to the killing of vriska & thus the game over timeline (HS^2:406)

in the smut drawing conversation, caliborn strikes down the idea of a dirkjake drawing specifically because the colors green & orange invoke the image of pumpkins which he doesn't like, instead preferring meat & candy (A6A3:4971), thus tying the epilogues to the whims of homestuck's biggest endgame villain

another connection to caliborn: despite having 43 & 40 chapters for meat & candy respectively, each route of the epilogues is split into 8 sections, reflecting the fact that LE gets 8-ball eyes midway through act 7

meat & candy also reflect the kind of content that caliborn (as a stand-in for the kinds of annoying fanboys hussie hates) loves, w/ brutal violence, death, & a power-struggle involving alt. calliope in the meat route, and the horrors of heterosexual marriage & reproduction in candy

ult. dirk in particular seems to take a lot of influence from the more LE/caliborn-connected splinters of himself- the fact that there seems to be more of a focus on dirk & jake's relationship in particular in the post-canon content also points to more of caliborn's underlying influence since they're very connected to him (both thematically through their struggles w/ masculinity & their literal connections in the lore as the boys that caliborn is the closest to as he literally looks up to them as inspiration e.g. LE's outfit matching jake's, etc. etc.)

also when it comes to narrators, note that in meat the fight is between ult. dirk & alt. calliope for control over the story while in candy (as the archived patreon commentary notes very pointedly) it is unclear who the narrator actually is

the routes are also just. fucking bad, to an extreme that is both phrased initially like a joke through the numerous ao3 tags & very carefully, thoroughly executed. we begin with a timeskip and every character is just spontaneously the absolute worst version of themself w/ quite minimal explanation as to how they got that way other than "adulthood is just Like That". even ignoring Absolute Horrors like the dirk suicide chapter & the gamzee/jane breast milk thing, you don't tag and execute the concept of gerrymandering for no reason

anyway, there are two main ways that this connects to the undertale genocide/off discussion from before: meta elements & nightmarish world destruction. but first, speaking of meta elements:

2.1 the post-canon creators don't understand the concept of what "canon" means and they ain't gonna let us forget that

homestuck is really fucking good at making up the weirdest shit imaginable but presenting it in such a natural, meticulously careful way that by the time you're saying sentences like, "He took the hammer which had been captchalogued into his sylladex and made it his strife specibus," you barely even realize you're doing it. the singular exception to this is the use of the word "post-canon" in all content created after the run of the original comic, which fails so incredibly to establish itself as a new term that it's honestly kind of embarrassing. every single time i have to write the term "post-canon" in relation to homestuck i cringe a little bit inside at just how unnatural it feels and frustrating it is to type. imo there are a few distinct reasons why the attempt to call the epilogues/homestuck^2 post-canon fails so badly:

"canon" as a term already has a very strongly established practical use within fandom: namely, to distinguish between original ("canon") works & fan-made creations like fanfiction, fan art, etc. this is to the point that an alternative, related term, "fanon," is also used to distinguish creations on the other side of the line.

the use of "canon" in fandom is thus typically quite intuitive, in that a creation is either "official," (created by the same person & set within the same universe, created by a person closely related to the original creator & clearly established to be connected to the original work, etc.) or not. there is no in-between of canon vs. fanon, it is simply a clear line distinguishing between what is considered official and what isn't.

in the cases where it isn't necessarily as clear if something is canonical, whether that be due to the work being done by a different creator, long after the work is over, etc. (e.g. the yume nikki comic, jk rowling's dumb baseless twitter ramblings, etc.) the word "canon" is often dropped entirely with the context of the new works instead being invoked to clarify the distinction

people tend to only feel the need to distinguish between the original/"canonical" run of a story & its new content/additions when they fucking hate the new additions. nobody says that deltarune is not canonical just because it doesn't connect to the original undertale universe, they just say its in a different universe & take note of the implications. on the other side of things, even ignoring rowling's stupid ass tweets, people have been ignoring the epilogue to the final book of harry potter for ages simply because it sucks & many people hate the kind of future it presents

"post-canon" does not make any goddamn sense. no amount of ao3 formatting or desperate pleas from the creators can take away from the fact that the epilogues & hs^2 show up on the official website, were in part outlined by the original creator, & pick up the story right from where the comic ends. i can turn around in my seat right this second & look to my right to see a shelf where the words "THE HOMESTUCK EPILOGUES" is printed twice on the spine of the official goddamn book (don't ask why i bought that thing. i was in a distraught mental state in 2019 okay) printed by viz fucking media, come the fuck on you guys.

this is all to say that the meta elements of the epilogues & hs^2 (okay i'm gonna start saying post-canon again but remember. remember) is pretty fucking weird to begin with, and that's not even accounting for the direct antagonism that the continuations take when addressing the audience.

a key quality of the epilogues that make them come across as particularly nightmarish comes from the fact that so many aspects seem to be specifically designed to hurt the audience as much as physically possible. characters like jane & dirk fall into villainy and become the worst versions of themselves and more with very little regard for the reasons why they might've been sympathetic originally. even outside of those two obvious examples, there are a lot of elements that seem to only exist to make the audience hurt. the most overtly edgy example of this is the chapter in candy where dirk very graphically commits suicide (which comes entirely out of nowhere with basically no warning- the trigger warning wasn't added until later), but there are a shitton of minor examples that slowly build up to make even just reading through the epilogues an agonizing experience if you ever bothered to care about any of the characters involved. imo even characters like dave, karkat, & vriska, all of whom are generally considered to have gotten through alright by the greater fandom, suffer when it comes to characterization, dave & karkat from how much it feels like they've backtracked on character development when it comes to self awareness, and vriska because the creators are frankly unable to face any of the major character flaws that made her actually interesting, instead preferring to depict her as this tired hero above everyone else come back to earth to save everyone from the horrific versions of themselves the authors twisted them into to create plot.

what really stands out throughout all of this though, and is the reason why that connection between the epilogues & the hbomberguy undertale video was originally made, is the fact that the epilogues contextualize all of this suffering as a punishment for the audience wanting more out of the story- a point which especially stands out since, as far as i can remember, end of comic homestuck fans really didn't give that much of a shit about a continuation? while the response to act 7 & homestuck's ending was fairly disappointed, and there was some talk about a continuation after it got teased by some elevated fans with a closer connection to hussie, the consensus that i remember was that the epilogues were the snapchat update and that was it. lasting homestuck fans from 2016-2019 seemed to have come to understand that the ending was unsatisfying due to being planned far in advance and/or executed quickly so that hussie could get the story fuckin finished already after the last few years of long breaks & legal disputes surrounding what would be hiveswap, and many of the people who stuck with the fandom after the comic ended were late fans that were already well-acquainted with archive reading & thus cared much less about the original ravenous upd8 culture. the epilogues coming right out the gate trying to punish readers for wanting more therefore not only felt cruel, but confusing considering the more recent vibe of what the fandom felt like.

so, to link this all back together- between these three stories (off, undertale, & homestuck's post-canon) we end up with three different takes on how to incorporate meta elements w/ horror:

for off, meta elements are largely incorporated through the separation of the player & the batter, with certain notable characters referring directly to the player (or even referring to the game itself, as in the case of zacharie). the destruction of the world is given the connotations of a religious crusade through the batter's talk of "purification," with the supposed "official" ending of the game leaving the world entirely destroyed and gone, and the "special" bonus ending (where you pick the judge) leaving it desaturated and depopulated. a potential interpretation of this can thus be that the game acts as a meta commentary on other games of the same genre, twisting the typical routine of, "play as a dude going a something something vague mission for justice while destroying/murdering everything in your path," into something more explicitly horrifying. the path of divine destruction that the batter goes on w/ little to no regard for the suffering of the world is something that typically makes players quite uncomfortable, many people choosing to side with the judge by the end of the game despite siding with the batter being the "official" default ending.

for undertale, meta elements are utilized through characters like flowey & sans, most obviously in the genocide route where characters actively ask you to stop playing but also in true pacifist where flowey asks you to let them keep their happy ending. the horror of the game comes from the fact that the player has power unmatched by any of the characters in-game through the use of saves, clarified within the lore as a distinction between humans (players) & monsters (npcs) with some timeline fuckery thrown in for flavor. "punishment" of the player is introduced through sans & his genocide-run boss battle following the judgement of the player, which notably only happens when someone explicitly goes through and grinds out the killing of every single major & minor fight in every area of the game.

for homestuck's post-canon, meta elements are utilized through characters directly engaging with the concept of what it means to be "canon," and narration fuckery, as seen most notably through the character of ult. dirk taking over the narration in the meat timeline. nightmarish elements are present throughout the structure & content of each timeline largely through how they relate to LE, homestuck's main villain. "punishment" of the reader is introduced by contextualizing the inclusion of the most terrible elements as a way of punishing audiences for wanting more, enacted by the continuation's creators.

SO. puppets fuck i forgot about the puppets

3. what kind of villain is dirk trying to be, actually (okay we're actually talking about the puppet thing now)

at the end of off, the separation between the batter & the player is again emphasized through the final decision where you choose between siding with the batter (the "official" ending) or the judge (the "special" ending). no matter what you choose, the battle ends up fairly easy, affirming the fact that it is up to your choice as the player to decide who wins the fight. the player is fairly explicitly denoted as the puppeteer, and if the batter succeeds in his mission to destroy the world, the blame is placed on the player for going through with playing the game.

in undertale, the identity of the human moving through the underground is different depending on which route you take: frisk in the pacifist route, and chara/the player-entered name in genocide. at the end of the genocide route, chara takes over entirely, stopping the player from even being able to get the final hit in to kill the final boss before killing the player themself.

there is a pretty distinct difference between how off & undertale are able to tell their story in the context of a game vs. how homestuck tells its story as a mostly set-in-stone comic (at least now), but the key theme continuing throughout all of these stories as far as i see it comes down to one thing: puppets. WHICH is especially significant considering the fact that dirk, The Puppet Guy, is now one of the big post-canon villains, in part taking on the role of LE in parallel to jane taking on the role of HIC.

this post has been fucking long enough so i'll get to the point already: the whole path of destruction and quest to purify the world that the batter goes through in off feels very reminiscent of some of dirk's actions in the post-canon content, and that seems significant when considering who dirk is likely being puppetted by, LE (homestuck has a reader, but no player, so who is controlling who is marginally less obvious).

that's probably not too big of a surprise, especially considering that long ass list i wrote out a couple sections ago, but i think it could be notable in trying to contextualize dirk's actions throughout the story. in particular, it stands out to me that dirk's first big action within the meat timeline before going totally batshit is helping jane with her political campaign against karkat, which as we can see in the candy timeline is a terrible fucking idea considering she seems to be going right down the same path of fascism & troll eugenics in meat.

dirk isn't stupid, but here especially it's weird that he would be so down for jane getting political power, considering 1. he knows jane very well (very well, if we consider his heart aspect & ability to read people due to that), and 2. he knows the condesce very well. dirk is a fucking historian combing through documentation of the end of humanity, he's aware of what a global dictatorship looks like. he's smart, but as i said in my plato intelligence post, he's not necessarily on the same level as other omniscient narrators. it's the same problem as before, dirk is pretending to be the puppeteer but really has very little control over the actual situation. the idea that his "ascent to power" in the epilogues is actually just him becoming everyone's brain ghost has a lot of merit to me because of this.

in a similar vein, i've been thinking about this post a lot in terms of how ultimate dirk has taken on a lot of the traits of dave's bro (who also could fit in w/ the "who's the puppet/really in control" theme w/ how he is potentially being puppetted by a literal puppet. god there's too many fucking puppets). that leads me to a pretty major & interesting question to consider too: does ultimate dirk even have a soul? lots of implications depending on how you answer that. i made a joke not long ago about ult. dirk being just another dirk splinter that he created while attempting to deal with all the dirk splinters, but that idea might have more weight to it along these lines.

counterpoint though, i have to question if ult. dirk's goals really fall along the same lines of "purification" as the batter. his goal of creating a new sburb session (? iirc)/world creation is pretty much the direct opposite of the batter's world destruction, but i think we all know the prince's relationship with destruction by now. conclusion: the baby is 2 was the correct timeline all along. babies are the true ultimate creation, let's make this shit text already. (sorry, i've been watching a lot of evangelion lately.)

anyways. this post has been a WIP for a couple days and i'm starting to seriously lose the thread of the original thought, so i guess i'll just cut this off here with a couple minor sidenotes. this all came to kind of a simple, somewhat obvious point, but i think the exploration itself was decently interesting so. yeah!

sidenote1: sugar & lollipops

what is it with sweets being the most fucked up drugs imaginable in these stories. actually no, i get it, sugar is the closest you can get to the idea of drugs as a child, that kinda works. homestuck does have a surprising lack of cannibalism though, like even the trolls-eating-grubs thing is pretty weak. sad.

sidenote2: jake & religion

just thought it was interesting that the batter's purification quest has so many religious undertones (the add-ons having the roles of "father, son, & holy spirit," the names of other characters, etc.), though i don't have much of a connection here other than that jake (& karkat, really) also have a lot of the same thematic associations. not that big of a deal considering, but kinda interesting to note nonetheless (maybe w/ some interesting implications for ult. jake???)

sidenote3: davesprite & namco high

absolutely could not find a place to shove this in but the davesprite route in namco high is so fucking meta, has anyone still in this fandom even played that thing? the justification there is that davesprite gained meta awareness as a sprite & game guide, which i guess carries over to namco high too. feels very reminiscent of a lot of ideas to show up more prominently later, at the very least. hm.

[trixstriforce]

hello :) i saw your posts about lu and idk if you were gauging interest in people hearing your opinions. personally i would be super interested in reading what specifically about every lu character is ooc! i am similarly frustrated with the current dominance of lu characterizations in fandom as a ww fan. ive been following for a while i just logged into this side account because i am scared to ask on main :( i hope you do not mind the somewhat bare blog. thank you!

oh my god oh my god oh my god someone wants my opinion??? do u wanna make out???? u do not understand the power u r giving me rn u do not understand how annoying and nitpicky and very passionate i can get specifically about lu bc i care so much about link its unreal and also bc i just like things like linkedmaze, dimensional links, and minaslinkverse better characterization wise bc to me they have shown the "found family links meeting up" thing a lotttt better than lu when i still read it

but to be fair i STOPPED reading around the part where four split due to the way the lu community reacting to the person with DID, a very stigmatized disorder who genuinely just wanted Jojo to acknowledge they messed up in the past and present and didnt like the vauge ass apology she gave making me actually disgusted. ppl talk about accountability then rallied against 1 tumblr user who was uncomfortable bc ppl liked Jojo's comic so she doesnt have to explain that now she respects nonbinary ppl and understands how past things were wrong for her to say we just infer this bc lu good :/ like hey maybe Jojo owned up to it afterwards or something bc she made 2 apologies that would make a YouTuber blush so i was done w/ the community and it was only rlly after that and after i played a few of the actual games + read some mangas i realized wow actually i do not like lu as much as i thoguht i did they butchered my boy, also i feel i should say it literally wouldnt matter to me do what u want in ur au but lu is now a fandom of its own and its influenced a lot of other aus and interpretations of link so i do take issue w/ how ooc these guys end up being

OK HERE R THE MOST BASIC ISSUES W/OUT GETTING INTO EACH LINK RN:

for one i dont know for me having link as a secret hoarder who would rather DIE than use the full scope of his abilities around OTHER HEROS is just no bc thats fucking stupid levels of wanting to appear normal around OTHER HEROS possiblly the ONLY other ppl to ever understand what u r going through

for me having every single link act like a frat boy/standard teenage white boy who is emotionally constipated is a no??? have u SEEN link he is so sociable and kind and understanding to other ppl WHY r the links like this, so many fics just...make them stew in their issues for angst and not trust the others and be incredibly insecure about the other heros(which is lu canon for at least hyrule and wind i think?) and like ok that is definitely fine for 1 link but why r they all like this in the games link is clearly not like that he wouldn't be this closed off and wouldn't hesitate so much like my dude he just inserts himself into other ppl's lives to make them better than leaves he wouldn't pussyfoot around other heros like what

also another major issue is the mergings just lead to certain characterizations or important backstory for certain links(FOUR. LEGEND.) being completely erased and the nuance of their journeys lost like when u merge links who r canonically 100s of years apart not just in the timeline but in the GAMES? yeah u lose things that make that link special

also bc u mentioned wind waker i found it kinda fucked up that wind waker link was delegated to The Kid TM even tho his entire journey was about moving on from the past to a brighter future and he took on the mantle left behind by the hero of time on his own volition and did what Time COULDN'T do which is kill Ganon but he is constantly underestimated and made into the Kid Who Wants Approval trope specifically around Time which sucks ass ngl he deserves to be an equal him still being a kid while the others got to grow up, including Four who's first journey arguably would have been a better fit for this archtype of wide eyed kid, is just side lining one of the most interesting links especially considering most of the other links were YOUNGER than him when they started

this is all general stuff plus 1 of my issues w/ Wind bc ur a Wind Waker fan bc as a Spirit Track fan i feel a kinship, im gonna make another post for specifically each link breaking down my issues w/ how they r portrayed later bc rn it is 8am and i ment to just say haha ty for the permission but then my inner ranter came out i am INCAPABLE of being normal about lu especially after i actually experienced zelda games bc lu was my FIRST introduction to zelda outside of smash bros lol

toast if u r reading this say rip to ur dms bc i am once more gonna talk to u about a comic for a videogame franchise u only know about due to my rambles and forcing u at gunpoint to learn about link...godspeed comrade

[an-eldritch-peredhel]

may i ask for your thoughts on dior my beloved??? 👀

DIOR MY BELOVED. HIMST. BLORBO. Ok now that I have my initial reaction down:

Given the post I assume sparked this re: Dior as a rebellious kid, I'm gonna start there

I don't think it was quite rebellion in the traditional sense? Definitely not as much as like. Feanor (bc Dior doesn't have mommy/daddy issues). It's more of a "I am different from my parents and need to go my own way and that way happens to be the Exact Opposite of what they did"

I have a Whole Heckin Bunch of headcanons on he and Nimloth (and their kids) here, also a reblog with Valinor relationship headcanons, if you feel like reading 6+ pages on our underappreciated king, if not, I shall Sum Up relevant stuff

Basically: he joins the marchwardens at 18-ish where he meets Nimloth and they have a rivals to lovers speedrun. She's the one who calls him Eluchil (an insult at first but turns sincere) and he tells her his plan to get respect and political capital by increasing his influence, but the Plan falls apart just when he's starting to get Properly Acknowledged bc Thingol gets killed and Melian leaves and Menegroth gets sacked and whoopsie time for Political Influence Speedrun because he's KING NOW

(DIOR (also Elros and probably Arwen) is the politically ambitious peredhel thank you very much, NOT Elrond)

Gonna put a cut here because this got pretty long lol, I am just getting started with all my many random headcanons

Anyway, Beren and Luthien don't really know about his political aspirations at first, they just think he's joining the Marchwardens to connect to his elvish heritage and make friends his own age and fulfil the Elvish YAWN (Young Adult Wandering iNstinct), and while they don't really Get It they understand and are reasonably supportive

(Luthien grumbles privately for a while but once Dior starts writing them abt Nimloth she's like "Ooh? Another person to dote on? Daughter!?" (Beren: in LAW. Luthien: D A U G H T E R) and all is forgiven)

They find out about it at a Very Inconvenient Time. Don't know when except that probably he doesn't mean for them to find out. Maybe Nimloth lets something slip at a dinner?

I know Luthien and Daeron are like "You WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN DORIATH POLITICS??? After our childhoods and the Quest??? We raised you better than this???" (Beren in the background: "Daeron this is your fault for being his Favorite Adult and cushioning how much being prince sucked.")

Obviously they're mostly worried for him and after an argument and more grumbling they're supportive but. Two Forest Hippies and a Wandering Musician, all former royalty (or close to, wrt Beren) who all ran from Society like hell was behind them Do Not Get It lol

After 6 fairly miserable years of Kinging and getting killed and reembodied he is. Significantly less gung ho about being in charge, but he still expects his political opinions/advice to be listened to, within reason (just because he doesn't want the kingship back Does Not mean that they can deny that he was king)

(Compared to the Noldor, who went through kings like paper towels and had twelve times as much nobility, this is an entirely reasonable request)

anyway some other general headcanons, in no particular order:

This is a general Eldritch Peredhil thing but None of them are allo. Or cis. They all got two things from Melian: being Spooky, and being aspec genderqueers of some flavor.

Dior is a fairly picky eater, mostly because of Texture. He, like his parents, is generally vegetarian with some supernatural (*vampire and werewolf*) exceptions. He really likes Luthien's vegetable dumplings, and Beren's curries and stews. He Cannot Stand cooked greens unless they're thoroughly disguised though.

Really, really loves fruit candied in honey. Big sweet tooth in general, and no shame about it. He passes this to his kids.

He learns to play lots of instruments and to compose from Daeron, but the flute is his first and favorite bc ~nostalgia. He learns singing from Luthien but doesn't like it quite as much- loves dancing though. Beren teaches him whittling, which he uses to occupy his hands. He makes lots of hair combs and pins for Nimloth.

He takes after Beren a little bit more in personality, but it's not really noticeable because it's colored a lot by lack of trauma and eldritch peredhel stuff and habits that he picked up from Daeron who shares them with Luthien. He takes after her too though, the biggest thing being unrelenting stubbornness and determination to get what he wants, by the Valar, even if he dies trying.

He also looks a Lot like Beren, but similarly it's hard to tell at first glance because inevitably what stands out is all the Spooky Shiny Stuff, rather than his actual features. His eyes are bright orangey-gold, which is important because it's the exact same shade as Beren's brown but hyper-saturated and lighter.

He wears his hair in Proper Styles for appearances, but he doesn't like how it feels 90% of the time because it's too tight or too loose or too stiff or-. His hair also inherited a lot of Luthien's Weirdness (her hair is only very debatably called hair and may or may not have a little sentience) which makes it extremely hard to do. The plus side to it though is that once he gets the braids right there is very little that can budge them, so he can keep them in for a long time. Still prefers his hair down, or in a simple braid to keep it out of the way if he must.

Also goes barefoot whenever possible- this is more socially acceptable because Thingol often did too, and you couldn't get shoes on Melian and her kids for love or money, so it's become something of a trend/statement that the royal family takes too far sometimes (affectionate) rather than a sign of wildness (judgemental)

He's fluent in Sindarin (multiple dialects, this guy can code switch like crazy) and Taliska, but he also knows a non-zero amount of Quenya because Beren has some from Finrod. He doesn't exactly use it, but it's enough that he can hypothetically parse simple conversations with a lot of guesswork and tone-reading and common root words.

When he's 8-ish he gets a kitten. He names the kitten Rhoss (whisper/rustling sound). The kitten is Very Very loud. Luthien is the "dad that didn't want the pet" in this situation (cats + songbirds=BAD, Dior promised to keep him inside/in the barn). Beren is the one who championed the cat and regrets it immensely, because he is a very light sleeper and Rhoss gets Zoomies. It's all very ironic.

Beren and Luthien tell him the Tale Of Tinuviel (roughly) version of their adventure when he's very young (they keep "Uncle Finrod and Friends were brutally slaughtered via werewolf" out until he's at least eight) and he occasionally confuses small details. He's very irritated by this, and actually writes out different versions to keep them all straight when telling them to his kids.

(This is the big reason so many details about their quest survive even though they went off merrily to be Bog People, and why so few details about their life post quest exist- he knows that part and didn't write it down.)

Because they are dad's dear departed friends, Dior never admits that he picks favorites of the Faithful from Beren's stories. It changes throughout his life a lot depending on what he's going through, but when he meets them in Valinor he gains a surprising respect for Eluihu (or perhaps not surprising. That they turned away from Celegorm to aid his father when it was Celegorm's followers that left his children to die is... Poetic)

This man has a wicked sense of humor. This is entirely from Beren, ("even now it is in my hand") and ranges from absolutely *terrible* dad jokes, to Legitimately Concerning gallows humor. He's also very snarky- many a comment has been muttered under his breath to Nimloth that made her have to try Very Hard not to laugh

He doesn't like shapeshifting very much (species dysphoria~) but sometimes you just have to give your spouse snuggles as a giant wolf. And being a bird is just really fun.

He has a crazy green thumb- Nimloth insists that he's cheating with Maia powers, he insists he's just that good, this debate never gets resolved. He grows her lots of flowers.

They have lots of silly little arguments like that, lots of lighthearted bickering. Like over nicknames for Elured and Elurin: Dior calls them Thoroval and Thorogamp (Eagle-wing and Eagle-talon), Nimloth calls them Erionnath (Daisy-sons) and both of them jokingly protest over the other. It's very cute

He loves basking in sunlight, but also really likes storms, preferably in the day. He likes being able to see the stars at night.

All peredhil have "In this world, it's adopt and be adopted" vibes they give off, some stronger than others. Dior's aren't as strong as Elrond's but they're pretty dang strong. He gets so many honorary uncles. He becomes an honorary uncle to so many people. He meets Earendil for the first time and goes "Ah, another son". Meets Idril and Tuor and goes "Ah, new cousins". Meets Elrond and goes "Ah, beloved grandson". If you are even distantly related to him by blood or choice you are Not Safe from becoming Family.

Luthien's brand of feral is pretty consistent, she's always this close to becoming a full-fledged eldritch abomination and it's just part of her personality. When she hides it is when you really need to run, because that means she has a Plan. Beren's brand of feral is essentially "depressed forest cryptid cleans up nice"- when he isn't crippled by grief and rage and trauma he can play a very normal, respectable member of society, he'd just much rather be lurking in the woods somewhere.

Dior gets Beren's brand of feral with all of Luthien's intensity and without the trauma. He is very good at putting up a stern, graceful elvenking front. He can walk the walk and talk the talk as it were, and unless you're close to him or have seen him let loose, it's easy to think it's real. Make no mistake though, it is a front, and he is as completely and utterly feral as his parents when you take that away. He is always 100% down to go wild with the slightest excuse, and can switch from Dignified King to Nightmare Beast to Dignified King With Blood Dripping Off His Mouth in the span of a minute.

(The Feanorions got a very big receiving end of this. It's Terrifying)

[the---hermit]

21.06.2022 // reading updates

I haven't posted a lot on reading lately other than book reviews, and mentioning what I am currently reading in daily posts. I felt like doing a reading updates post separate from other daily things, so here it is.

These past few weeks I have been in a weird reading place, as I mentioned in other posts there has been a lot going on lately, and I am not at my best, which is definitely influencing me. I feel the desire to read and to distract myself, but I find reading way more difficult than noramally. I can't seem to focus, I feel like I am not satisfied with what I am reading, and so on. I am a bit stuck.

I had been reading House Of Leaves by M.Z. Danielewski, a very intriguing and weird horror, but I put it on hold after 100 or 150 pages more or less. It's a really cool book but it requires a certain amount of focus, which I do not have at the moment. I really hope that I'll manage to pick it back up soon, or at least before I forget about everything I have already read. Yesterday I have dnf-ed the audiobook of Fatal Eggs by M. Bulgakov, because I wasn't vibing with it. Today I decided to look for another audiobook to listen to while going on walks and I found on spotify an audiobook of Gaiman's Graveyard Book. I have been wanting to reread this childhood favourite for ages, and I am really excited for this audiobook (which I will be using for the summer reading challenge 2.0). Then I have a digital book and a physical book on my currently reading shelf. The digital book is The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by L. Mitchell, which I am reading for the studyblr w/knives pride challenge. It's really interesting, but since I am already staring at screens for hours while studying I have been reading it quite slowly. The last book I have started is Once Upon An Ice Age by R. Lewis. I've had this in my wishlist for ages, I finally got it last week, and I was super thrilled to start this lighthearted book, but apparently my focus is terrible even for that. So I am struggling a little bit. I am enjoying it but not as much as I normally would, which is bothering me so much. I cannot say I am in a reading slump, as I am still reading, but I am out of my normal routine, and this thing is messing with me. I have decided to try one last remedy, and to add just one more book to my currently reading pile. I will be rereading for the millionth time The Hobbit, one of my top comfort books, in hopes that it will bring me back to "normal".

[astrobei]

hi astro (hope thats ok if i call you that!) heard you wanted interactions 👁 just wanted to say i absolutely adore your fics and i can tell how much love and passion was put into each and every one of them. so my question for you is, whats your favorite fic to write? what exuded the most emotion for you and what you feel like is your magnus opus? this can be multiple answers because you deserve to be proud of a lot of your works since theyre all great! have a great time wherever you are 🎉

omg YELLING that is so cute 😭 yes ofc u can call me that !! that is soooo kind of u !! seriously idk smth abt this compliment just . is so personal to me bc i Do probably care more abt my fics than i should for someone who is a full time student w a job but i just Cannot help it,, anyways thank u sm that made me smile so big i’m hugging u so tight 🫂🫂 and ooohhgg boy ok never ask me my favorite Anything bc i will not shut up abt it ! for me i think my fav fics of mine to write would be either you can hear it in the silence or i might be hoping about this which are both so deeply personal to me and i probably projected more than is feasibly healthy in both of them,, oops! and ik u did not ask for an Analysis but u are going to get one anyway so settle down grab some popcorn here we gooo

ok so idk about Magnum Opus but . you can hear it in the silence is probably the most personal fic i have ever written and the closest to a magnum opus i’ll ever get bc 1. i relate so deeply to mike wheeler as is and this was kind of how i interpreted his struggle w his identity and coming into himself just as a teenager navigating that weird place between high school and college and figuring out your interests and who u are,, and 2. full disclosure bc we’re all Friends here i Did write this fic right after a long distance relationship ended earlier in the summer which definitely influenced my decision to write it in the first place and 3. idk! there were so many aspects of this fic that were just me projecting, like mike getting the older sister mentor figure he deserves (i love nancy but she is Not the greatest older sister ok) and learning to take his time w things when you feel like u dont have enough of it,, anyways i would say this fic is probably my Favorite ive written ! it’s rly hard for me to reread my works but this one ive read back a few times and i actually. enjoy it?

i might be hoping about this is also rly special to me because IDK i just want what they have in this fic so bad dsdfjsdfj like. tender intimacy w someone who knows u better than u know urself! never having to feel like a burden to someone who loves u because they r happy to take care of u even when u can’t do the same,, idk i just think will byers deserves everything good in the world, and i really liked exploring his relationship to illness/his past trauma in this fic, especially since it was my first time writing established relationship! i Did have to step away from my laptop multiple times while writing this to scream into my pillow (literally im not exaggerating guys) because it was just so soft! and i felt so Lonely! anyways this is also a very special fic to me ik im literally the one who wrote it but GODDAMN i made myself sad.

thank u so much for the kind message again! i know u literally did not Ask for this page long analysis of my own writing but i am nothing if not incapable of being succinct so. <3

[negrowhat]

all this talk about Arm is making me suspicious now, he really has access to all the gadgets and he was also in the forest while everyone was looking for kp, previously i suspended my disbelief that they couldnt find them bc it was necessary for plot reasons but what if he purposefully kept them off their tracks? yall might be onto something

I honestly hadn't even thought about his access to the gadgets, I was going off of just this ep lol. Some of the things he said and did felt mildly suspicious.

First him being the ONLY one to notice KP's relationship. I know they're not as inconspicuous as they think, but literally none of the other bodyguards have noticed and I don't think Arm is THAT intuitive when the rest of the lot are idiots.

Then the untraceable listening devices. Why is he issuing out mafia technology with not a single stamp of approval? Is Porsche's influence of bad decision making that strong over Arm? Someone else pointed out that Arm is probably the person to retrieve the CCTV considering he's over the tech in the entire compound. How easy would it have been to simply erase the auction footage of Vegas attempting to r*pe Porsche?

Also him casually letting Porsche know that he's on his side and the ominous face he was making. I'm sure he was being cryptic just to not say it out loud, but Idk it felt very sketchy. It felt very much like, "I know more than you think." But again he really could've just been talking about KP's secret romance.

As you and some others have pointed out, Arm definitely had a drone and with mafia money we know it had to be top of the line. So it's extremely possible that Arm had been tailing KP in the forest from a safe aerial distance with it, long enough to learn the general area where they were camping out to send some goons to take out Kinn.

Lastly, he's the most non-suspect person to suspect. Here we have this cute nerdy and easy going bodyguard. We would never, ever suspect him to be the mole. But that's exactly what a mole is, the most unlikely person. The one who blends in seamlessly.

We're over here suspecting Big and Ken because it's obvious they hate Porsche and suck at their jobs, but we're not looking for someone who hates Porsche. Kinn is the target.

[fluffypotatey]

f g p r from the fanfic ask game? please?

Hey bestie 🥰 thanks so much for the ask this one took me awhile lol

G - Do you write your story from start to finish? or out of order?

i like writing things from start to finish. key word: like. my brain, however, likes to jump ahead to specific scenes and events. i used to fight that bit and force myself to forge on along and wait until i finally made it to that part in the story.

lmao that was a horrible idea. those scenes would continue to haunt me and pester me until i finally give up and wrote them. so i just stop fighting it and write out of order. (honestly it was a blessing for me to decide to make my lmk one-shot series not in chronological order bc then i’d never get it done lol

it’s why my writing can get slow sometimes because while writing the chapter for the next event, i’ll be hit with some scene 2 chapters later or 3 scenes after some confrontation i haven’t started yet!!! i have ch7 for the dr geyer fic. it’s in my docs but i haven’t finished it bc someone *looks at brain* wants to write more of s6b bc Theo’s in that one >:(

P - Are you what George RR Martine would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance vs letting the story unfold as you go?)

you know, i know i read of this before like years ago but i don’t remember it lol. had to look it up to make sure i was understanding this right.

so… i think it depends?

with my merlin multi-chap fic and my medieval fantasy wip i plan those in advance. the merlin fic? i have that 1st arc’s plot down, i know where the story will lead to, i even know which characters i’ll keep alive or keep dead. 

with my one-shots (and my one-shots that chose to say “fuck you”), those are a spur of the moment kind of writing. i had something playing in my head that’s wants to be free, so i write it down and pray that it’s satisfied (it typically is not which is why you see a lot of my one-shots become multi-chapters or one-shot series). these don’t have a solid plan when i begin. i tend to come up with it as the plot comes together. 

tbh this works well with my fics bc i have a base outline: the actual show/book/movie. with my dr geyer fic, i know where s5-6 begin and end. sure, i’m choosing what gets to happen in-between, but i at least have the comfort of that base. the lmk series? it’s literally just me plugging in an oc and forcing a couple characters to air-out their issues. 

R - Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

oh definitely. tbh my main one would have to be Lemony Snicket. fell in love with the narration of those stories. the snark, the personality, the vocabulary, the inner dialogue. idk it just did something to 9 year old me lol

another big one i’d have to say is Branden Sanderson. not really his writing, but how complex and beautiful his worlds are. i didn’t know that you could create and capture the essence such beautiful worlds in writing but reading his books and seeing them come to life really influenced my desire to write and design fantastical worlds or even just explore snippets of other worlds like BBC Merlin Albion.

F - Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it

babe, i’m so sorry but it took me forever to choose. i debated on whether i should do lmk or teen wolf or abc merlin or even shit i haven’t posted bc i love too many of these T^T

but dw i did find one (it’ll be under the cut bc this got long jfc). i giggled a lot when writing it just because the back and forth with Liam and Mason interjecting was fun. also i picked this one to prove the dr geyer fic hasn’t been forgotten. i’ve just been….preocupied and going feral over immortal monkeys

*

“I’m not here to start anything,” Mr. Doughlas said to them calmly. “I just want the mountain ash barrier open, mh?”

“Yeah, because this isn’t starting anything,” Liam growled.

Mr. Douglas smiled, sharp teeth in full display. Again, he twisted his claws in the chimera. Theo, again, kept quiet. The only indication he was in any being came from his winces. Liam can’t tell if he should be impressed or horrified that getting stabbed in the spine barely got a reaction out of Theo. 

“This is simply a contingency. I just want the barrier open, then I’ll be out of your hair. I promise. No funny business.”

Theo chuckled (well, more like gurgled) and snorted.

“Says the Nazi.”

Douglas drove his claws further into Theo’s spine, polite smile cracking, in response. The chimera grunted, but Theo just laughed again.

“Sorry, sorry.” Theo’s smirk looked almost deranged with the blood coating his lips. “Nazi was the insult others threw at you, right?”

“He’s a Nazi?!” Mason shrieked. 

Doughlas sighed, all politeness disappearing as he addressed them all.

“Must we obsess over my previous occupation? I don’t see how this is important. I was just a soldier there.”

“Oh yeah, being a part of a genocidal fascist group should totally be overlooked!” Liam exclaimed. “Not like you were involved in and advocated for any of that!”

“Yeah, it adds nothing for us to even slightly trust you,” Mason added.

[theladyelara]

Could a tv show save the sequel trilogy?

After watching Clone Wars and Rebels and Clone Wars again and getting my heart absolutely wrecked every time, it brought me to two conclusions. One, Dave Filoni is a god and must be protected at all costs, and two, animated shows and tv shows in general have immense power 

So there’s a fair share of prequel hate out there, a camp which I sort of understand but definitely don’t belong to, but it’s pretty much universally accepted that the clone wars is golden. For a lot of people it made the prequel trilogy so much more meaningful and impactful than it was before. Rebels only continued this trend, continuing to give depth to the world of star wars, tying in some of the EU and continuing stories of tcw characters while also simply telling a really good story of a new cast. 

Which led me to the question I posed at the beginning. Could a tv show save the sequels? We’ve seen tcw ‘save’ the prequels, could a new show do the same for Disney? 

Disclaimer, I have not watched Resistance, and I have watched Mandalorian. 

In order to break down the question we’ll have to outline some things. First: Why did tcw ‘save’ the prequels. I think it comes down to these things. They... -- expanded upon and added depth to existing characters -- expanded the world building, and lore -- successfully introduced compelling new characters  -- continued the thematic elements of the prequels and sw as a whole  -- had really good storytelling overall  -- none of these above things contradicted or disconnected from the existing world of the movies

Now, is there a show that could do that for the sequels? Explore the characters more, delve deeper into the world, and tell a compelling and cohesive story? (listen I really am asking, lmk your opinion!) 

I am going, also, to posit some of the base ideas I have as well.

First: The year is before the Force Awakens, and after Ben genocides Luke’s temple. The show will center around one Jacen Syndulla and friends. Jacen is now a young Jedi who survived the temple razing, as he had been studying under Luke beforehand. Jacen is a quick tie in to the rest of the tv shows, being the child of Hera and Kanan from Rebels. He would travel the galaxy, perhaps trying to reach out to Ben, perhaps trying to stay the heck away from him. At some point he’ll find out about Something On Jakku and we’ll see him try to get there, always thwarted at exactly the wrong moment. Rey never meets him and it’s a tragedy. I could see him working with the resistance, and we could see other facets of the ST characters through him that way. The most potential I see with this idea is exploring Ben through a character like Jacen who grew up alongside him, and we could see more of exactly how Ben fell to the dark side, Snoke’s(and ig palpatine’s) influence and Luke’s teaching. It could also be used to salvage Luke as a character and give him better motivation for whatever happened in TLJ.  Of course, if you haven’t noted it already, we come to the stumbling block with this plot thread that FA made possible. It’d be almost exactly like Rebels. And I choose to blame this entirely on the New Hope Awakens episode 4 7 and not on my elevator pitch! 

Second: The other idea I had would be half about the sequel trilogy? It’d be more of a direct sequel to episode 6, basically following the OTs as they set up a new Jedi and a new Republic. But this may be bias talking, as that’s what I’d have wanted to see, and I also don’t know how well it’d work into the ST we actually got. The potential with this story thread again is Luke and Ben and Snoke, figuring out how Palpatine, one, survived, and two, has been pulling strings this whole time. The worldbuilding potential here is also huge, chances to explain what the first order is and why it exists.  However, I don’t know how well this would make for a tv show, and does little to help the characters of the ST, as it’d largely be set slightly before their time. 

Third: Somewhere between TLJ and ROS. This is the only time skip present between the mainline movies. It’s not like tcw, where the showrunners had something deliberate and fleshed out to talk about in their show. So they don’t have much low-hanging fruit to pick up for plot, and I think the time skip is pretty short. Still, this gives the most potential for the ST characters, and expounding upon them. We could see the trio actually work together, discover their relationships together as they go on missions. Rey is trying to learn how to be a Jedi, and is getting increasingly frustrated because she can’t get it. There could be darker hints as to her heritage. Also some proper bloody foreshadowing to the rise of palpatine and the Sith in the next movie. We should see her struggle and grow, go back to Jakku and deal with that, keep confronting Ben and Luke and Leia in more interesting ways. In my head the structure is pretty much like tcw or rebels, but maybe that’s just how I expect star wars shows to be structured at this point. A series of missions, exploring themes over arcs of a few episodes. And again we come to lovely originality problems, because this would be basically TCW with OT flavor and ST characters. But if it works it works, and I think this is really the best option to ‘save’ the ST. We need to get invested into these characters, and their best bet (as far as a tv show goes), is to do for Rey what TCW did for Anakin. 

[doodlesfromthebird]

(1/3) Previous question-asker here! Thx for giving such a detailed answer - I’ll refer back to this post when I get stuck. Im a lil baby writer - my art skills r more developed, but when it comes 2 making characters, theyre usually for stories I wanna write. Someday. Writing's hard. & I think it’s cool that one of the tips you gave was to interview your characters - my current fav OC group are all in a band, and when I first came up with them I pretended to interview them for a music magazine X)

(2/3) Plot’s a struggle for me too - tbh, the reason I started developing my OCs/worlds more was bc I tried to write a story plot-first, & ran into a brick wall bc I didn’t know the characters or setting that well. With that in mind, how do u know when ur done? When is a character or setting complete enough to write about? Theoretically you could just keep going forever, but do u have any markers you use 2 figure out when an aspect of character creation or worldbuilding is “finished”?

(3/3) [srry for sending so many asks omg, the character limit is ramble-phobic] but thank you for including those worldbuilding prompts!! They're exactly what I needed. You’ve inspired me to make a little guide for myself on character/design, trope and setting stuff that I think is cool, so that I can go back to it when I need new ideas. Thanks again, happy late birthday and good luck with whatever you decide to do with the Spiral universe! No need to apologize at all! I really enjoy the discussion!

I've always been character first, handwave plot for a few years until it puzzle pieces together into...something. Nothing water tight, but something I can at least give a semi in-depth synopsis of *most* of the things that go on in the story lol

I think its SO COOL that you gave your band-members a little interview for a music magazine -- that's exactly what I'm talkin about! And so fun, too!! And it sounds like it'd be something that would end up in the world itself, which is perfect.

"When is a character complete enough to write about?" I definitely recommend keeping an eye out on advice from your fellow writers, but... I personally think you can go on as much as you'd like to! As long as it hasn't become an excuse to delay in actually sitting down and writing for them in your story. (like ME lmao) Because sometimes smaller details just end up filling themselves in as you go along. I think you're fairly set if you have a good grasp on their personality, how they would react in a varying level of situations, what their goals, wants and fears are (and what have they experienced to have those develop) You may even want to write a character-focused little one-shot separate from the story that would help feel things out, while also establishing a mundane or significant moment in their lives, independently from everything else. This goes for multiple characters who are like a package deal. Like a pairing or a close-knit team that influence each others lives. Maybe even to convince you that the character is who you say they are. Like, it's one thing to say a character's charming, it's another to write about a moment where they're interacting with others in a way you actually find endearing and likable to back that up in your own head. Even while I was writing a rough script for a scene in a potential web-comic idea for Damian and Rio (the merman and vampire) a lot of small things started falling into place about the characters and world-building just started to SPRING FORTH, and I only had a general idea on how the scene would have gone, with key moments. From writing dialogue and character actions on the fly, I discovered: more about both characters body language, vampire lore and more how vampires function, a solid example of what an emotionally heavy conversation looks between the two of them, and more examples that convinced me of the chemistry between the two of them, in ways that I wanted.

Sometimes you get caught up in a creative current and suddenly you've blasted through like 3 pages of ideas. This goes for world-building too because characters are so frequently affected by the world around them in various ways. World-building is often something I overthink and I end up a fretting over about a lot of things that probably would be cumbersome to list in grand detail about anyway, but sometimes its fun to just think about, y'know? and if you're having fun then that's all that really matters. I'd say a general knowledge of what a general day of living in this world would look like, and maybe how it would affect the people living there long-term. What really sets the stage and how does it change over time, if at all. What makes waves and changes what was normal in either the world at large or for your characters.

The thing that personally always stumps me is structures of power and politics, and those are often times the real gear grinders of stories.

BAH I'M RAMBLING, MYSELF. I honestly wish you the best of luck with your characters and worldbuilding and I truly can't wait for you to fall in love with them. More than anything, try to be easy on yourself and the process and start with what brings you the most joy. Everything else will follow. Thank you so much for the birthday wishes!! :3

[crisps-craft]

Hii Crisps!! 💙 How are you doing ?

Can I get a free reading ? If yes

My question is:- What are my toxic traits generally and even in romantic relationships?

My initials:-YP

My sun sign:- Capricorn in 9th house

Thankyou so much. Have a nice day!! 😁💜💙

Take care!! Have some rest too.Sending you lots of love!!💜💙

hello! im good how r u? :) and i like ur question! its always good to be aware of the shadow self. the balance and acceptance of both light and dark is so essential.

here is what came out:

-hermit, 5 of cups, 2 of pentacles, tower, star, judgement, queen of swords

okay- the first message that came out immediately had to do with the queen of swords since that card caught my attention first. you might manipulate the course of events very easily? i think you are very 'convincing' is something i heard- you definitely know how to use your words to come off however you want. i think that you have a very strong ability to communicate and speak! which is a gift, but also one that needs to be used wisely. you are able to make people believe things that might not necessarily be true or be rooted in reality- like for example saying "we are going to be together forever" meanwhile you have no intentions of keeping that promise. i think people believe what you say so easily and you might get people wrapped around your finger veryyyyyy easily. you might influence people veryyyyy easily which can also be dangerous.

the tower came up because it shows the effects of this shadow quality - you've experienced a lot of situations and circumstances where communication was so out of whack that situations blew up in your face. people were under a certain impression from you believing that you wanted the same thing that they wanted - meanwhile, you never were on that page in the first place. so then when they find out, its like a dramatic blowup of a situation that could've been navigated better in the first place with more honest and intentional communication. i think you get swept away with your ( ** lemme correct this- you don't get swept up in YOUR emotions, but the emotions of your PARTNER. so you agree with everything they say while neglecting what YOU really want which is why you say one thing but mean another in your heart..)

i think the hermit came up as advice with how to deal with this shadow quality! spending time alone / introspecting about what YOU really value / want is so important. you need to separate your needs from your partners- because sometimes you blindly follow their needs because you dont want to hurt them - but then.. it ends up hurting them in the end. so be careful - and that self awareness from learning what you really want will actually help u attract better partners with the same needs / wants!

i hope i wasn't too brutal or anything - i hope this could help! its always good to be aware of our shadow :) so i respect u for asking this question because i think it is a very important one that we should all ask ourselves