#but I just don’t like treated like im a blank character where other people can insert themselves in place of me 😭😭😭

[cupiidzbow]

im adding a new thing to my new carrd im making and i know not everyone reads it when following me so im just gonna post this here in advance before I finish the carrd 😭😭😭

[evintide]

✧.   get to know the author !

name : zeta

pronouns : she / her

preference of communication : im’s via tumblr atm! i’m on discord but i am EXTREMELY shy so that is currently saved for mutuals at the moment.

most active muse ( s ) : as of right now midna is my main gal! though i’ve been feeling very tempted to pick up lumine since it’s been awhile. i have a few other muses that are burning a hole in my pocket (along with an oc or two) but they’re either a) a passing fancy or b) i feel... way too embarrassed to even think about offering them to anyone. LOL.

experience / how many years : as if i didn’t feel old enough turning 30 in June LMAO... i would wager at LEAST twenty or so years at this point, but i’ve had a lot of irl things that took me away from writing for stretches at a time during all of that.

best experience : hooo this is hard... probably back when i was writing in my original fandom and i found a writing partner with an awesome au that i just clicked with really with. we don’t talk much any more but i still care for them deeply, and i loved working off their ideas. we even had a single thread that continued for MONTHS. wild to think that i had the mental stamina for that! also i was in a group chat (same muse) and someone mentioned that our thread (albeit a short one) felt very in character and i was just. beyond touched at the time. small things like getting asks and stuff were always a big treat too! (and still are!!)

rp pet peeves : when people don’t give me anything to work off of. rp is a two way street, and while i know not every reply has to be a novel or move the characters in a certain way every time, if i’m left carrying the scene on my own it dries up my interest very quickly. also, not fully rp related but over complicated blog themes. i love themes! coding is absolute wizardry to me and people who can make and/or edit stuff beautifully are magic! but if i have to highlight the page to try and see where links are or have to copy/paste text onto a text document due to eye straining colors? nah dog. i’m outtie.

plots or memes : i ADORE plotting! not every detail has to be hashed out but getting a feel for the direction for the rp or if there’s some sort of idea you’d like to talk about and experiment through writing? LET’S GOOOOO!! though that can also easily be brought up or be inspired by memes so! kinda both? is that an acceptable answer?? i’m admittedly prone to getting super hyped to talk about plots and then... have my mind go blank from a stage fright response, LMAO. so having memes to work off of can be INCREDIBLY handy for me. the two more or less go hand in hand in my book!

are you like your muse ( s ) : yes and no? IT’S A BIT HARD TO EXPLAIN. but at  least one thing midna and i share is that we care very deeply but expressing it, especially through words is. very difficult. or we make it more difficult than it should be. :,D at the very least i know for a fact ALL of them would disown me the minute i started spitting puns (which is very, VERY often.)

tagged by. @hyruin thank you friend! ♥

tagging. @riwrite @twilitae @cyclebound @legendryhero @silenthime @calamight and anyone else that reads this! >:D

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

I posted 820 times in 2022

That's 324 more posts than 2021!

384 posts created (47%)

436 posts reblogged (53%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@i-will-physically-fight-you

@sidespart

@ironwoman359

@brain-deadx0

@sandersstudies

I tagged 738 of my posts in 2022

Only 10% of my posts had no tags

#kat talks - 309 posts

#kat answers - 109 posts

#with you i'm always queue - 86 posts

#virgil sanders - 52 posts

#anon - 49 posts

#janus sanders - 46 posts

#roman sanders - 45 posts

#kat reblogs - 44 posts

#werewolf au - 40 posts

#logan sanders - 38 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#but i did think of it in a poetic way as the creature didnt ask to be brought to life in a world that despises him on his outward appearance

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

SvS except Thomas actually can’t remember if the wedding takes place the same day as the audition or not, so instead it’s like

“Thomas, it’s just...the audition sounds really great but aw, jeepers, isn’t that the same day as the wedding?”

“Is it?”

“Patton is right, it is the same day. Look, I have it in my planner!”

“Logan, that paper’s blank.”

“Wait, no, that can’t be right...Thomas, I thought you agreed to a phone planner app to help with productivity and remembrance of important dates.”

“I--well, you did make a very compelling argument! It’s just Roman also had a compelling argument.”

“The idea of blocking out specific times to do specific tasks is very incongruent to how creativity works! You cannot restrain or control creativity--”

“Alright, fine, what about just putting down important dates?”

“I would but--”

“Oh, let me make a deduction--Virgil made a more compelling argument?”

“Listen, a phone planner app...thing...is great and all, but it’s only setting Thomas up to fail. In a perfect world, sure, it would work. But if Thomas is unable to complete a task on his list or even just looking all the commitments he has to fulfill is only going to be more stressful and demotivating than it’s actually worth.”

“And somehow that outweighs the possibility of Thomas forgetting an important date or task that could cause a larger amount of preventable stress?!”

“...Are they hissing at each other?”

“Uh, guys, I don’t think that’s Logan.”

222 notes - Posted January 21, 2022

#4

Normalize the idea that anxiety and depression can often be a life-long issue that can be treated (therapy, medication, healthy coping mechanisms, etc) but not completely cured. Anxiety and depression is something that can be in remission for people, i.e generally unimpactful to a person for weeks, months, sometimes years but it can flare up abruptly and unexpectedly in a person’s life and greatly affect their ability to function and do certain tasks that people without anxiety and depression would otherwise not struggle with.

298 notes - Posted February 22, 2022

#3

Being ADHD means somehow opening up a whole different website than the one you intended and then proceeding to get completely distracted on it until you forget your original intention upon opening up your web browser smh

551 notes - Posted June 27, 2022

#2

Say what you will of Sanders Sides, but I love the fact that the show followed a coherent timeline that was aligned with our irl timeline up until April 2019 and now it’s been ambiguously stuck in April 2019 for like three years now

2,359 notes - Posted January 18, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Non-writers will assume that you control every action a character makes and will think you’re crazy for saying “I do not control every action my character makes” but it’s true. As a writer you will be writing something where you go “And so Character A does this” and Character A looks at you straight in the eye and goes, “No FVCK YOU IM GONNA DO THIS INSTEAD”, takes the keys and drives away in the plot car on a narrative of their own choosing while you’re just left stranded going, “DAMMIT I HAVE TO REWRITE THE OUTLINE FOR THE TWENTY-SIXTH TIME”

2,755 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[rynzii-419]

I’ve been reading about this study on psychology and it talked about this thing, “positive sentiment override” vs “negative sentiment override” and so, of course, I connected it to apologist discourse.

Bit of warning; this is going to talk about Dream in a negative light, and I’m going to reference Tommy and Wilbur in a positive light. The point of this is to show why I think common interpretations of Wilbur and Dream are exaggerated, and I try to talk about Wil critically too even though normally thats a bit harder for me, which is actually related to the psychology thing I’m gonna talk about here. So yeah, please read this if apologist discourse something you’re interested in! I try to make this readable and unbiased as best as I can. (I say this but the point here is to talk about misconceptions and exaggerations about Wilbur and Dream, meaning I say why I think Dream isn’t as deserving of forgiveness as the fandom treats him and Wilbur isn’t as deserving of the hate he gets, but I really feel like this one isn’t biased.)

Alright, first I want to explain positive sentiment override (im gonna abbreviate it to “pso”). Pso is something I see used on Dream a lot, where people will see someone do something negative and think “oh well they probably had a reasonable explanation for that”.

Negative sentiment override (nso) is what I see used on Wilbur (like all the time). This is where someone will do something even positive and people will look on with skepticism and think “that was manipulation.” (ex. The reaction to every conversation he’s had with ranboo)

While its great to look for reasoning behind a character’s actions, and great to have skepticism about a darker character’s motives, its also taken too far in these cases very often.

Okay here’s where I get a little critical of Dream. The reason that I believe he isn’t very deserving of this “benefit of the doubt” he gets so often is because:

He isn’t apologetic for any of his actions. Now, we could go back and forth all day on whether his treatment of L’manburg was right or not, but we all know that his behavior with Tommy in exile was wrong. The thing is that Dream doesn’t agree. He even says in the prison when Tommy got trapped in there, “this is gonna be so much fun, just like exile” (paraphrasing, im sorry </3). When a character shows no remorse for actions that are inherently evil (like theres no getting around that Dream in exile was evil), it makes me feel as if they cant be treated as if they’re redeemable. Of course, he could be redeemed, but i can’t see that happening to him until he apologizes to Tommy and Tubbo and distances himself from them entirely. The problem is that i don’t see that happening at this point.

He showed signs of being a bad person/friend before exile. Again, I’m actually not even going to address L’manburg because that’s something that people disagree on often, so here I’d rather talk about Sapnap and Dream’s relationship and why I believe that was very unhealthy. After Dream’s speech about Spirit and how he doesn’t care about anything other than the discs (and its implied that he really meant tommy but thats besides the point), Sapnap instantly took that as meaning Dream didn’t care about him. Now some people hear that as “Sapnap is such a bad friend, he immediately assumed the worst out of Dream, how could be be so rude?” What i see that as is a sign that Dream probably wasn’t a very good friend himself. I also had a situation similar to this, where i had a friend who was really trashy (but i didn’t realize at the time) and I was always scared that they would ditch me. A lot like Sapnap, I would ask “do you think they’ll leave me?” then go back and say “haha, no, thats irrational, isnt it”. The problem is, those kinds of fears often aren’t based off of nothing. They come from an understanding of how that friend treats others, and the fear that they feel the same way for you. I think Sapnap saw how Dream treated others and didnt care much for his relationships and that made him scared for his own friendship, and rightfully so, as we saw later.

Dream was unapologetically manipulative and abusive continuously. A few spur of the moment actions would be an unhealthy mental state, but continued and premeditated abuse without remorse is a… really bad sign.

WILBUR TIME!! At long last aha. Now, this is where i speak POSITIVELY about Wilbur. I’ll throw in some crit dont worry <3. So here’s why I dont believe that Wilbur is deserving of the amount of hate he gets:

Wilbur has shown at least an attempt to apologize to people, which goes against his usual mentality. He’s a very prideful character, and he hasn’t apologized much in the past i believe. While he’s nowhere near better mentally than he was on Nov 16, he’s shown that he’s trying.

While he has manipulated people since his revival, it’s all been spur of the moment reactions. No continuous decisions, like I mentioned with Dream. Its likely that they come from his delusions/paranoia (which he still suffers from, isolation does not heal mental illness).

I believe that the times that we see him being most genuine are when he’s with Ranboo, since Ranboo is a nonjudgmental person who Wilbur has related to and feels is a blank slate for him to talk to. We’ve heard him open up about his motives a lot, such as feeling as if everyone is scared of him. That’s further pushed by the fact that cc!Wilbur confirmed that when he said that Quackity is the only one that makes him feel human since he’s not scared to question Wilbur.

I think this is the big one: Wilbur recognizes that he was in the wrong in Pogtopia. He sees that he hurt Tommy and regrets it, which I think is really important to remember. Simple as that. He said he sees Tommy look at him with the same eyes as he did in Pogtopia, which makes me believe he would want to be better. I would talk about what i believe Wilbur’s motives throughout Pogtopia was here but I think that’s a post for another dayz

Alright uh thats it i think, sorry this was so long i was just havin a lotta thoughts about it, ya know? This is open to discussion i think, i just really enjoyed writing this out :D

[manchesterau]

my thoughts after reading my policeman: SPOILERSS of course!! (ignore spelling or grammar mistakes) (this is very ramble-y and not as in depth as it could have been sorrryyy lol, if you want specifics send me an ask after reading this)

okay...so i read the book in 3 days....which....im very proud of myself bc it takes me so long to finish books but that’s not why you are reading this.

im not going to lie to you...i liked the book. i love angst, and this had plenty of it and i liked it. if you like books such as: harry potter, six of crows, red queen, red white and royal blue you will not like this book. i know many people found it boring, which yeah i can see that, but i didn't find it boring at all. but mostly because i love boring books but that's beside the point. 

the book flowed easily, there isn't a bunch of raunchy sex scenes that ive seen people say it has (i...the things ive read idk what book they even read????) and Tom does has backward views on marriage and what it means to be a wife. but he is not overtly sexist or misogynist or abusive, or subvertly those things either. to be frank he's a scared gay man in the 50s trying to not get caught and thrown in jail. that's literally it. (ill go more into detail on him later). but if you want to read this book i recommend you go in knowing that there will be homophobia (the word queer is used as a slur....3 times or 4 but no more than 5), expect outing, expect not supportive characters, and remember to have some compassion (more on this later).

next i want to go into characters: starting with tom, then Marion, then Patrick, and then the other characters. so if you are planning on reading this book or just dont want to be spoiled them....don't read the next bit.

Tom:

I'm going to get this out of the way.........Tom (who we never get to know outside of the two-point of views we are presented with, and who is being played by Harry) is a police officer in the 50s UK. to be frank when the rumors first went around I was mad like a lot of people were, which is funny because when we got those pictures of harry reading the book before all the speculation we were....happy, that he was reading a book about a gay man. now...I don't care honestly. I could call out the hypocrites (i won't) and honestly I'm hypocritical myself. I use to watch shows like svu (if you were to turn it on right now I wouldn't turn it off) and I enjoyed watching svu. I know and have seen a lot of mutuals, people on my dash enjoy cop shows like b99, or who like actors who have played the character of police before. so it would be hypocritical of me to be mad at him (this is just my single black opinion) and then go and turn on svu (which I don't do anymore). 

I'm not saying that no one can be mad, I'm not saying that the anger people have at him playing this role is bad or not needed or valid. all I'm saying is.....is that I don't care. I got angry over this months ago, and all that anger I felt I don't have anymore, and I can't tell you why. Harry is playing an abusive demented husband who traps his wife in a simulation, and then he will play a gay policeman trying not to face persecution..........and that's that. nothing I can say will reach him, he's playing these roles and there is nothing I can do. will I watch them (pirating of course) yes.

anyways let's get back to tom's character (do not use my opinion to silence other black people I will find you....don't do that shit weirdo): tom is......tom?? like I literally was expecting the worst when I read this because of what other people had to say. but as I'm reading him through the eyes of Marion (his wife) and through the eyes of Patrick (his...true love, fuck the 50s I hate the 50s) one word came to mind constantly: scared. Tom is very scared that he will be found out and his life will be ruined. His family knows about him, which is why I think his father (more on him later) pushed him to be in the national service (where he was a cook, which disappointed him). you don't realize his family knows and then his sister says something and then you go 'wait....THEY KNEW???' and then you will go 'oh so that's why-' 

tom does have old fashion views that you would expect of any man at that time (gay or not it's the 50s and gay men are still capable of saying sexist shit). when asked by Patrick if women should still work after having a kid he said no it's the men's job to provide, Marion said she would like to keep working, he said no when they do have a baby (they literally never did, and idk why he thought he could be intimate with her for that long to produce a baby lol). that's....the most sexist thing he said in the whole book (there maybe some small things im forgetting but nothing that really stood out). that's it. I know it's not small and that was a legitimate issue in the 50s but yeah. Just in case you were apprehensive about Tom's character being a raging woman-hater, no,....he just wasn't a true feminist yet (???? I don't know that's like..the most this book says about an issue women were facing at this time). It's still bad what he said (you'll see how Marion justifies it in the book and both Patrick and her don't agree and try and challenge him on his view).

i dont want to go too in depth but it is very obvious from the beginning he has no and i mean ZEROOOO interest in her at all (you can tell when it hits him that he needs a wife and he starts to act a littleee different but it's not romantic at alll). 

i feel like my review on tom is shit but like!! we don't really get to know him without bias from Patrick and Marion. I think Harry will play a wonderful Tom (even tho he doesn't not fit the description for Tom...at all....like at alllll).

To summarize Tom: very scared gay man from the 50s who is trying to do everything he can to not be found out. his family knows, even he knew at a young age, and yes he does quit being a police officer but it doesn't happen as soon as id like but then again he wasn't one for that long if you pay attention to the years.

Marion:

😑 

i just...if yall could see the notes i made on her.....

To summarize Marion: SHE IS LIVING IN LALA LAND, TOM LITERALLY SHOWS HER NO ROMANTIC INTEREST AT ALLL, AND WHEN SHE METS PATRICK FOR THE FIRST TIME SHE FREAKING NOTICES THAT HE'S ALL BLUSH-Y AND SHIT LIKE...GIRL.....

this is a note i wrote that sums up her and tom's relationship (which is more like friends then anything romantic i mean god their honeymoon was horrible and he proposed to her....nvm 😑)

listen...i can't lie and say i didn't feel sorry for her up until the end when she (spoilers: she outs patrick to his employer which ends up with him getting arrested). after that...ive never hated a character more in my fucking LIFEEEE like oh my god i was pissed

all she does is have fantasies about him being romantic with her (holding hands, hugging, etc) and none of them come true...BECAUSE HES GAYYYYYY i really....the author could have done a better job because there were so many damn red flags.

she's fucking annoying and whiny and yeah it sucked to be a woman in the 50s but you literally outed someone your husband was in love with and thought that you could just go back to being married like he's not devastated and instead of telling what you did you stayed unhappy and made your husband thing that at any point they were coming for him too.......*****

Patrick:

PATRICKKKKK

Patrick and tom deserved a fighting fucking chance i hate the fuck 50s fuck you 50s!!!! I absolutely LOVEDDD his pov and seeing Tom through his pov like it was just so damn refreshing seeing the world through his eyes and how he navigates his queerness in the society they live in. (the dichotomy between a proud gay man and a scared maybe proud but fear overrules that (talking about Tom here) gay man).

There was a lot more to say on how gay men were being persecuted at this time than how women were treated in this particular book. There were some little things here and there about what was expected of Marion as a wife and of a girl/woman at that time but it wasn't the focus.

I loved seeing the way Patrick navigated through his world of art and creativity. And how Tom seemed to fit right in with him.

I hate the things the author made Patrick go through (outed, sent to prison, stripped of his job, and later on in the present day he has had 2 strokes in his 70s). it felt a bit much but it's not too distracting (Patricks pov takes place in the past as he writes in his journal). 

Patrick and Julia (more on her later) are my two favorites in the whole book (Tom is third bc he's a very multi-facted character, Marion is not even on the list) and I wish we got a lot more of Patrick's pov.

Other characters!! (speed round bc this is wayyy too long):

Syvlie (Tom's sister): SYVLIEEE IM MAD AT YOUU I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU WHYY WHYYY

Julia: JULIAAAAA QUEEENNN (you'll see why i love her at the end) 

Tom's parents: his father is abusive point-blank. or at least i think he's abusive (verbally). as im writing this i am now realizing that the way Tom's mom reacts to him (sometimes crying) is bc they knew he was gay omg wow.

tom's dad is very much a man's man guy?? Picture a sexist man from the 50s....now picture him with a gay son.....yeah, I'm not surprised Tom went into national service then to the police force. you can tell he didn't want anyone to find out about Tom so he pushed him to do what he thought best and Tom went with it, scared. 

overall: please do not go into this book expected things to be all flowers and rainbows...this is a book about two gay men in the 50s yall.....

there is something to be said about the tragedy that is in a lot of queer stories, I'm more interested in how white these stories are (that's a rant for another time). but I don't mind my policeman, and i think stories like this should be told. because this actually happened (here is a link to em forster's story where the author takes inspiration from, he really had an affair with a policeman!!! who had a wife!!!).

the ending is bittersweet, and i couldn't help but curse for what could have been. Marion could have not outed Patrick (which she instantly regretted), she could have gotten a divorce (she even contemplated it), they could have been more secretive, Julia could have not said what she said. I think Patrick and Tom were sadly doomed from the start, I just wish they had more time together because I loved seeing their love (the little glimpse we got) bloom into something bigger than them.

thank you for reading!! here are random screenshots of my notes as i read this lol enjoy!!

can’t*

[nomazee]

Komorebi (4)

komorebi, p.4

synopsis: Tsukishima dislikes the amount of parallels there are with you and Hinata. He dislikes the way you’re so energetic and exuberant when you want to be, and the way you can get along so well with people. He dislikes the way that people are naturally drawn to you, and the way you’re so willing to put time into your dumb gifts and snacks and treats for a team of boys you barely know. 

But Tsukishima does not dislike you. And he supposes that’s part of the problem.

series content: developing relationship, (sort of) ooc tsukishima, strangers to (sort of) friends to lovers, angst, fluff, slow burn

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six (final)

(THIS TOOK SO LONG TO GET OUT IM SO SORRY and this is definitely shorter than the other chapters (which were already short to begin with) but i hope you guys dont mind that!! that was kind of my intention with this series (i think i’ve mentioned it before,,,?) but this took so long to get out in the first place that i feel like it’s a little underwhelming to have a chapter this short 💀💀 but anyways i hope you like it!!! 

pspspspsps check out this post & help me pick what to do for my 200 special pspspspsps)

☾.:°∗★.:☆:.★∗°:.☽

Tsukishima thinks that the repetition of his surname ringing in his ears is making him go crazy. Well, crazy is the wrong term. He hasn’t lost his senses yet—he thinks that despite being faced with the daunting wall that is attraction, he’s faring rather well in his day-to-day life. 

You, however, don’t seem to be doing well.

If he’d voiced his concerns to anyone else, he would’ve gotten looks that really solidify the whole “crazy” narrative. You’re perfectly fine on the surface. You’re laughing, giving away more friendship bracelets that line the wrists of his teammates in a steady row and dropping off big white pastry boxes full of cookies and danishes. (“Homemade puff pastry!” He remembers you calling out proudly. “Took me a while to get the hang of it but I don’t think I did too bad!”)

But Tsukishima Kei knows what facades look like. He knows what it’s like to cover up countless feelings and thoughts and words with a blank face and a sarcastic tone. He imagines that using the opposite tactic (one of bright smiles and airy laughs) is somewhat similar. 

He hates to think that he’s the cause of the lack of a crinkle in the corners of your eyes and the scratchy, aching noise of your cello-string-laugh. 

But Tsukishima just does not often know what to say. How to say it. How to categorize the things he feels and send them into funnels where the right words slip out the other end. 

He thinks he’s gotten the first step down pat—he knows he’s attracted to you— (that word is terrible. He pauses and rethinks the terms he can use.) He knows he’s fond of you. Very fond, actually. It’s great that there’s a word for this in his head now. The big issue here, though, is that one word out of five-hundred-thousand is not going to help him figure out how to talk to you. 

So Tsukishima Kei bites. Not like a dog, but like a mosquito. Dogs really only bite when they’re provoked. In truth, he hasn’t been provoked by you—not at all. It’s like he only exists to bite people with no reason and with nothing to provide to society, only leaving pesky, itchy bumps on people’s skin that linger for an annoying amount of time.

The thought is sad. But he thinks it’s accurate. 

He starts off small, like dipping his toes into the water of despondency. His sarcastic remarks sound to start less like sarcasm and more like disdain. It graduates slowly into small insults, ones that sort of slip under the guise of his personality, but he knows that you don’t take it that way. He knows by the way your responses turn into tight-lipped smiles and silent nods. He knows by the way you shift your gaze and furrow your eyebrows and chew the inside of your cheek.

He hates that he knows. He wants to forget about your habits and your voice and your smile and the orchestra of your laughter. The point of this is to forget, he thinks to himself, so why is he still clouded with the faint images of you skipping your feet against the concrete with Shouyo and focusing on the threads between your fingers during lunch as you weave yet another friendship bracelet. 

He watches you do the latter, chopsticks tapping absentmindedly into the content of his bento as he watches you intently. You’re tying off the ends, cutting a shorter thread to make a sliding knot closure. 

The infatuated part of him wonders if you’ll stand up from your table, walk over to his, and hand it to him, slip it around his wrist with glimmering eyes and raised eyebrows and a soft smile. But he’s hoping too much, he realizes as you hand it to Shouyo with a laugh. 

Yamaguchi takes a seat next to the blonde. Tsukishima is aware of his presence but doesn't make a move to glance at him. Yamaguchi sighs. He knows what this is about, and he could say a lot of things to Tsukishima, but thinks his words would be redundant and a simple repetition of Tsukishima’s inner monologue. 

(Tsukishima can handle this, he thinks. It’ll take some time, but he’ll get it eventually.)

You’re reciprocating the distance, the blonde thinks. You’re finally taking his cold remarks personally and pushing yourself away. Tsukishima knows that’s what he intended but the tightening of his lungs and the way his fingers tap rapidly against his desk makes his subconscious reconsider what he’s doing. 

Yamaguchi sighs again. He can’t help it—he thinks the dazed look on his friend’s face is so comically out of character, and he pushes aside his momentary pity to let out a quiet chuckle.

“She’s not just your friend.” He tells Tsukishima. There’s silence at the table for a moment. Tsukishima’s mind whites out for a minute as he tries to understand what Yamaguchi is telling him. 

He hums in response, acting despondent and oblivious. The twitch of his eyebrow gives him away, though. He knows what to do and how to do it, finally—he knows that if he takes enough time to think about it he can finally find the right words to tell you. It’s not the ideal situation to do so, but he guesses he’ll take the chance. 

(He’s strong in his regard until he shows up to school the next day, where a bottle of cold tea and a homemade pastry sits on top of his desk. It’s undeniably you. He feels his eyes start stinging.)

[insert-cleverurl]

solaine copies her dsmp meta twitter part one

preface: i wrote this on february 13th and am now archiving it over here on tumblr before i get around posting it to the actual archive (of our own). i'd like to clean it up before i go there, becuase i wrote this at like one am lying in bed and typing on my laptop that was sitting on my stomach. it's a lot of rambling. i go on a lot of tangents. it is not the cleanest nor likely most accurate meta you will ever read.

how characters (children) on the smp learn from history rather than repeat it: a thread

aka: stop liking the other one you fucks i opened the wikia so i actually know what happened now /lh

context here is that i had earlier made a much less coherent thread (not that this one is very coherent) with the caveat that i was going entirely off memory

this thread is mainly going over how tommy + tubbo both emulate and turned away from wilbur + schlatt respectively, and how i think that's going to reflect in ranboo's arc

"as long as i can't be the next jschlatt, you can't be the next wilbur." okay we all know this. it's obvious from this point on that both tubbo and tommy saw or had fears of how they were each developing into scarily familiar people - schlatt, a dictator, and wilbur, a madman.

starting with tommy, the parallels between his exile arc and wilbur's pogtopia arc are immediately, and glaringly, obvious. paranoia, trust issues, "maybe i'm actually the bad guy here", and most notably, intense loneliness. wilbur made it obvious he believed pogtopis's allies would all abandon them in the end (them being he and tommy, though how much he trusted tommy by the end is also up in the air), and he was completely prepared to kill anyone he had to in order to secure pogtopia's victory, despite also preparing himself to be the one to end it. wilbur gave up on l'manberg, at the very end. he believed tyranny was all that would ever reign, so he blew it up.

tommy, in his exile arc, was also despairingly lonely. he hallucinated tubbo, grew attached to dream, etc etc. tommy was very very close to "becoming" wilbur here (god i'm sorry this is so long already and just me summing things up we already know it's to keep my thoughts in order + satisfy my inability to shut up and use too many words)

where wilbur and tommy go their separate ways is when they were given an out. dream gave wilbur tnt + for tommy, he was. you know. gestures vaguely at logstedshire. wilbur took the out - he gave up. he gave in. we know he had moments of clarity (when niki was in danger) and Maybe this was one he could've had too, but he didn't. he took the tnt.

tommy decided enough was enough. so at a crucial moment in time, tommy turned away from being wilbur. he did not repeat history.

onto tubbo; admittedly i know much less about his arc as president so this will be less outlined. tubbo,,,, acted very similarly to schlatt. probably moreso than tommy and wilbur! strange new laws, ignoring his cabinet, execution, generally appearing to lose his care for the world and the opinions of others. i'd argue the thing that separates him from schlatt is the most important part of this thread, because it proves my point: he remembered.

i just want to clarify here: by "proves my point" i mean this is the clsoest we get to an agreement of the ideas i'm putting out here in canon?? ig?? as in like. this is the most on the nose way to say it. similarly in recent days to quackity consistently referring to his treatment of dream as torture, which seems to be a very "I Am Not In Character" move but is definitely meant for us, the viewers, rather than character dream or character quackity themselves. tubbo's is a little less like that but still it's kind of like pointing at the X on a map for us the viewers. ok tangent over

tubbo lived under schlatt's rule as one of those people he treated extremely shittily. he lived under schlatt's rule as that person he executed. and tubbo remembers all that! tubbo remembers how schlatt's rule played out, and he looks at his own uh, less than stellar time in office, and he admits this out loud (to ranboo, according to the wikia. i am getting all of this off the wikia. i did not watch any streams during this arc.) that he can See himself becoming schlatt.

and when quackity tries to execute ranboo for being a traitor, tubbo stops him.

onto dream and ranboo! dream is a special case in that we never get to see his perspective of things and are rather left to play fill in the blank, and this whole arc is special (in terms of this thread) in that it isn't over. so i will be doing a lot of extrapolating here.

dream starts out as a generally ambivalent character who has very few rules that he pretty much never bothers to enforce anyways (i think? i don't remember).

by this i mean, this is all stuff i heard secondhand in recent months and can no longer remember what it actually was because i never went back to check. i'm pretty sure, but just a disclaimer. i don't wanna get hit with an "um, actually

his villain arc starts very very early - two whole seasons before he really became one. in the war, he is the antagonist and he plays up to it! most of the war is from l'manberg's pov (or that's how we look at it now, at least) so obviously he is the Bad Guy here.

ranboo griefed a house like two days into the server. 'nuff said /lh

ranboo + dream are both heavily vilified characters from the get-go - dream's part should be fairly obvious (uh, the everything leading up the exile arc where he actually did villainous things), whereas ranboo's is most notably during the second festival's aftermath. taking the blame for blowing up the community house, wanting to "pick people not sides" (he wants all his friends to be happy - sounds familiar, right?), etc etc, and now he's with techno and phil, the former of which is Definitely considered a villain for working with dream

now many many parallels are being drawn between he and dream, especially with the whole enderwalking thing. in the aftermath of everything happening, he chooses to stay out of all conflict, until Something Happens and forces his hand. (the egg!) he wants peace for everyone, which again, sounds very familiar, right?

(slight tangent: yes, the griefing was forcing dream's hand. it's nigh impossible to construe it as anything other than a political attack - the vice president of l'manberg griefing the home of the greater dream smp's king? dream looks weak + open to attack if he lets it slide)

this was a bad way to put it but the spirit of it gets across i think. fuck character limit on twitter

that catches us up on all current lore. where do i think dream and ranboo are going to split? dream has been alone in his decision-making basically since the very first war. not once has he (successfully, we don't know if he tried) gone to fall back on his friends' support and ask for their help in making these hard decisions (of which there are many). he severs his final connections ("i don't care about anything on this server") and cements his place in history as a monster.

i think it is very likely that we are getting a ranboo "friendship and relying on other people" arc here. there are other ways they could go with it, obviously, but given his current arctic anarchist ties and what appears to be other friendships developing. hmm! i'm interested. this part is entirely speculation/extrapolation. point being. the kids on the smp do, in fact, learn from history. they still make mistakes sometimes, but past a certain point, they're always different mistakes. they learn, and they almost always get happier endings for it

i don't know if it's a coincidence that it's the three lore-relevant kids who are the ones doing this. i don't think it is, because this is a very well-written and clever story. the younger generation is the one learning and fixing past mistakes and leaving the world better off for it. that's very neat! i like it a lot. also now that purpled's becoming lore-relevant, goddamnit if i don't want to see next season being his "learning from history" arc. punz vs purpled, maybe? that'd be neat. who knows. ok i think im finally done lol ty for reading :)

caveat I forgot to add last night: obviously ranboo and dream start out in very different positions, moreso than both tommy and tubbo. but at the end of the day, all three of them are their own people who just happen to take after other people in some ways :)

again, ty for reading! here's the original thread. i'd like to add that this is probably out of date and i may come back to it some day but who knows. maybe this will just be a relic of before Now (may 25)

[lassieposting]

Hi i havent read the books post-resurrection so im kinda lost on why you dont like phase 2 val? She was easily one of my favourite characters ever, she was flawed (and the books took time to acknowledge them) and relatable and still really admirable (intelligent, brave, loyal) and i really liked her and really appreciated that she wasn’t perfect unlike every other young adult heroines. What went wrong😢😢😢😢

Okay I'm gonna put this under a cut because I very strongly dislike phase 2 val and I know it bugs people who don't feel the same, so. Dead dove dont eat

Okay so first off, phase 1 val and phase 2 val are completely different people. literally. phase 1 val was based on an ex-friend of lardo's who used to apparently be involved pretty heavily in like, editing the books and "she'd react like this" or "val wouldn't say that", and that val she was one of my favourite fictional characters from when book one came out to the release of resurrection. phase 2 val is based on his whiny little girlfriend who likes to start shit with 14yos on twitter, and you can absolutely tell she is no longer the same person. so the long story short of "what went wrong" is "the original irl val's friendship with dirty laundry ended for whatever reason and he decided to retcon her entire personality to suit his gf"

Phase 2 Val, in my opinion:

Weak, like won't even fight back when she gets jumped bc boo fucking hoo she's so awful, bitch get up already, nobody signed up for ur pity party

Whiny. So fucking whiny. All the time. And she's the POV character so it's inescapable.

"Pacifist" but in a really pathetic virtue-signalling kind of way like "Oh, I've done such terrible thiiiiiiiiiiings I'm so awfulllllllllllll look how good I'm trying to be nowwwwwwww pay attention to meeeeeeee" kind of way, it was both boring and a massive eye roll. It's a book about magic and asskicking. Kick some ass. We're here for escapism not "realistic" whining. Yes, irl she'd be a mess. As an author it's his job to strike a balance between the "realism" he wants to portray and making his readers so depressed and done with his heroine that they quit reading, and in my case, he absolutely failed.

Everything must be about her at all times. Skug is having personal problems? Fuck him, they're about her now. Everything is about how it affects her, and her feelings, and be damned to the person actually having the problem. Fucks phase 2 val cain gives about anyone except herself: 0

Bitter and jaded. Which yeah I get why but it's like jesus christ what do we get out of reading about this? It's not even good bitter and jaded where it makes you empathise or admire her strength in adversity or whatever, she's just become a really nasty person with no redeeming features that I could see. Which? Landy outright said she's based on his gf? If your boyfriend is gonna drag ur entire personality through the dirt like that and write "you" as just a collection of incredibly negative traits...yikes.

Really ungrateful about the awesome life she leads? Which bugs me bc I fucking hate mundanity and knowing that all there is to life is fucking working and bad mental health. I would kill to live her life. All she does is moan about it. Like? Quit then. Fuck off back to being a mortal if it's that bad and live the shitty life you wanted to get away from in the first place. That way we'd get no more books, and quite honestly, thank fuck for that. But anyway, she needs to pick one, stick with it, and stop complaining about whatever she chose.

The girl wallows in self pity. And if someone else isn't indulging her enough, she'll wallow harder and louder and more obviously. Yawn.

Her POV is now so depressing to read that Resurrection literally tanked my mental health. I'm not kidding. I fell off the self-harm wagon, the suicidal thoughts came back, reading her dissociating would make me dissociate, I just did not cope whatsoever. Being in her head was just like being in my head during my worst points, and I hate myself, so naturally, I hate her too. Like I get why some people like phase two val. I get that her depression is "realistic" and that trauma does just make some people completely dislikeable and self-pitying, and if people want to read about that, then...sure. you do you, my dudes. But I live that reality, I am that person whose trauma made her a dysfunctional, isolated bitch, and I hate, passionately, having it infest the media I consume to escape.

Essentially if I wanted to engage with a bitter, spiteful, depressed piece of shit in her 20s who pushes everyone away and sucks at everything, I'd live my gd life. Yall see me tryna engage with my real life? Hell nah I'm on tumblr dot com burying my head up the ass of whatever fandom will force my brain to produce some s e r o t o n i n and that is what I need this series for

Also? The dynamic she had with skug in phase one? "Until the end"? "You save me, I save you, that's how we work"? Forget that, it doesn't exist anymore. I stopped reading after Midnight, because she was written like he was a coworker she could barely tolerate. They went from "Lardo confirms on twitter that they talked on the phone a bunch while she was in america and he'd always ask her to come home" to "she comes home and proceeds to blank him for five months while she sits in her fuckin multimillionaire's mansion feeling sorry for herself". Their friendship completely disintegrated, they were totally separated for most of the book, she's written as not giving a single shit about him. She treated him like dirt, and their dynamic basically felt like it was becoming "Local Man With History Of Gravitating Towards Abusive Women Makes Same Terrible Choices For Fifth Time" and? that was the point of no return to me. he supports her unconditionally, no matter what he's going through at the time, he's walked on broken bones to try and get to her when she was in danger, she can tell him anything and he'd never use it against her. I did not, for one second in phase two, believe she felt the same about him. tbh it felt like she could - and wanted to - drop him at the first opportunity and not even feel bad about it, and that's not the dynamic that made me so emotionally attached to phase one. i signed up for "until the end", not whatever bullshit phase two has going on.

Apparently she's "less depressed" now and their relationship is "better" in the books published since midnight, which! might well be true. but I haven't read them and don't intend to, and she's gone from one of my favourite fictional characters ever (which! was impressive! because i almost never bond with the female lead - i normally get attached exclusively to the character i crush on, which would be skug here. val was the first female lead i actually cared about since xena! so im deeply salty about losing her!) to a character i? honestly prefer to pretend doesn't exist. i live in war era dead men/generals crackship land because that way, i don't have to acknowledge her or the fuckin character assassination phase 2 pulled on her.

so yeah, no hate towards phase one val at all. phase one val was awesome and flawed and gave me something to aspire to despite my shitty mental health and trauma, and if she'd kept her original personality she might still have been those things. but the original "real life" val is no longer involved (and doesn't talk to landy at all anymore, apparently), and the val based on landy's insufferable gf? i cannot get behind her at all ever, four for skug and none for phase two val cain bye

(tldr; you're not missing anything by quitting after spx)

[bosspigeon]

Adam versus that most evil of foes...the office printer?

two glass houses, twenty stones

Pairing: M!Detective/Adam du Mortain Word Count: 1711 Summary: Having recently learned that he is the target of a power-hungry vampire who wants to experiment on him because of his “special blood” (oh, yeah, and vampires are real, apparently), Detective Arlo Priestley deals with the aftermath. The aftermath, of course, including one Adam du Mortain and his sparkling personality.

So... I don’t even know what to say anymore. I get completely innocuous prompts and they become something COMPLETELY different than what i had in mind. so, uh, hope you enjoy an Arlo Character Study with a side of Printer Shenanigans! This takes place in Book 1, shortly after the detective finds out about, uh, everything. I had fun playing the unreliable narrator with Arlo! And I have a fun idea for a sequel that’s Adam’s POV! Title is from Type O Negative’s “I Don’t Wanna Be Me.”

“You can, uh, sit down if you’d like,” Arlo offers, picking at the chipped polish on his thumb.

Adam hardly glances at him, keeping his attention on the window that overlooks the rest of the police department. “I am fine standing,” he says shortly. It almost seems like he’s determined to not look directly at the detective at all.

Arlo winces a bit, blowing a loose strand of hair out of his face. “Yeah, sure. That’s fine too,” he mumbles, looking down at his pile of reports. He brushes the accumulated black paint chips he’s shed in his anxious fidgeting aside. He’ll have to paint his nails again soon, they’re looking rather ragged, almost to the point he can bite them again. He’s been trying to stop, he knows it’s sort of gross, but still…

He furrows his brow and starts thumbing through reports, absently flicking through his color-coded tabs that help keep him marginally organized even when his “system” doesn’t really work for anyone but him. He calls it improvisational. Verda calls it “slapdash.”

 He frowns, chewing on his lower lip and clicking his tongue when he notes his color system is out of order, and that one of the red tabs is missing. His eyes flicker up when he hears Adam shift slightly, but the vampire still isn’t looking at him, so he focuses back in, counting through reports again. He sighs and rolls his eyes, turning to his computer and pulling up his group chat with Tina and Verda.

big-depeche-mood: Tina, did you take my copy of Mrs. Holt’s police report?

big-depeche-mood:  And why did you change my display name again?

BubblegumB!tch: how do u know i did it? why do u always blame me? 😥

big-depeche-mood: Because Verda has no reason to care about Mrs. Holt claiming her ex kidnapped the dog when they separated.

big-depeche-mood: And if you mean the display name, you’re the only one with admin privilege, because you made this chat.

BubblegumB!tch: i am being unfairly targeted 😭😭😭

BubblegumB!tch: im taking this to HR

DoctorDILF: HR has found no evidence to support this claim.

DoctorDILF: Really, Tina?

big-depeche-mood: Just tell me if I need to print another copy, please.

BubblegumB!tch: 👉👈

Arlo rolls his eyes and minimizes the window so he can start the task of going through his backlog to find the digital copy of the original report. Once he’s found it and sent it to the printer, he pushes himself upright, groaning as his spine pops in several places

Adam finally, finally turns to look at him. “Where are you going?” he snaps.

Arlo flinches, clenching his jaw to bite back the nasty retort burning on his tongue like acid. “To the printer,” he grits out, jerking his hand towards the window. “Literally twenty feet away. So unless you plan to go get that report for me, let’s just hope the megalomaniacal vampire that wants to use me as a lab rat doesn’t decide to snatch me from a police station in broad daylight.”

Seems he didn’t bite it back hard enough after all.

Adam recoils, like he always seems to when he realizes he's stepped directly on Arlo's nerves. He feels a little guilty for snapping, but he’s had more than enough of being treated like an unruly toddler. He wants to snidely suggest Adam see about requisitioning a bloody leash for him, but he snatches up a pen and starts furiously clicking it until he can calm himself down instead. Adam’s lip twitches, and Arlo clicks faster.

Adam turns sharply on heel and stalks out the door, slamming it behind him so hard the window rattles. Arlo is just grateful it hasn’t broken.

He sinks back into his chair and rolls his eyes skyward, dragging his hands down his face and wondering what the hell he’s done to deserve this whole situation. It’s bad enough he knows there’s some mad scientist vampire wanting to experiment with his freakish blood, but being shut in the same room as Adam for multiple hours a day when the man won’t even look at him, much less talk to him, makes nerves squirm under his skin and sets his whole body on edge. Unfortunately for the both of them, when Arlo gets nervy, it gets much harder for him to temper what comes out of his mouth.

He melts into his chair a little more, ignoring the pings from his computer that are probably Verda trying to convince Tina to change his display name back, and Tina reacting by changing it to increasingly ridiculous things. He just closes his eyes and focuses on breathing for a bit, trying to remember a single thing from his anger management classes from years ago when his brain is still buzzing with a squirming twist of irritation and guilt, a desperate need to apologize warring with the urge to snap and unload every frustration this whole thing has got knotted up inside him.

It's some sort of cosmic joke that Adam occupies so much of his attention, when Adam seems like he can't wait until he can get as far away from Arlo as possible.

He's just pretty, Arlo tells himself. Remember the last time you let someone pretty get you all stupid? Maybe remember what you learned from that.

He almost falls out of his chair when he opens his eyes to see Adam in the doorway, his shoulders so taut they're making Arlo's hurt just looking at them.

Maybe stop looking at them, idiot.

He forces his eyes up and is confronted with perhaps one of the most bewildering things he's ever seen.

Adam du Mortain, stoic, no-nonsense, terminally brooding Adam du Mortain, is standing just outside Arlo’s office, looking almost... sheepish. Arlo has to blink a few times to make sure he’s not seeing things. He’d almost say he’s imagining things, but at this point he’s so familiar with Adam’s general stone-faced demeanor that any sort of change to it is almost glaringly obvious. The scrunch of his eyebrows, the twist of his mouth, the almost painful stiffness of his posture, as if he’s pointedly trying to look as unaffected as possible and failing spectacularly. Arlo’s a detective, and while he doesn’t consider himself an expert at reading people, he’s still fairly decent at it. Adam, from time to time, can be pretty easy to read, but especially when he’s trying not to be.

Maybe Arlo’s been watching him a bit too closely.

“Uh,” he starts, already cringing internally at himself, “what’s up?”

Adam is silent for a moment, and then he exhales sharply through his nose, as if he is trying to calm himself down. Arlo’s nerves immediately ratchet up a few notches. “There is an issue with your printer,” he says.

Arlo blinks. “Oh. Um, I didn’t think you’d actually—” He bites his tongue when Adam’s brows furrow harder. “Let’s go have a look, shall we?” he offers instead, standing up. He hesitates to approach the door until Adam takes a step back to allow him through unimpeded. He lets Arlo lead the way and Arlo tugs his braid over his shoulder so he can twist it between his hands, because there is something a bit unnerving about Adam behind him, silent but radiating a tension Arlo can almost feel. It’s likely his imagination, considering his annoying awareness of the man, but still.

Arlo sees the problem almost immediately upon arriving at the little alcove that houses the station’s printer. The top cover for the document feeder seems to have been pulled off entirely. He turns to give Adam a bewildered look.

“The paper jammed,” Adam says stiffly.

“Yeah,” Arlo replies, “it does that sometimes.” He lifts the cover and turns it over in his hands, to see that, yes, the little plastic hinges that attach the feeder to the tray are entirely broken off. He frowns a little. Adam is so tense next to him, so still, Arlo wonders if he’s even breathing. “I can just ask Verda if I can send it to his, then see about calling someone for repairs.” He snags a sharpie from Tina’s desk and pops open one of the other trays to pull out a blank sheet of paper so he can write a quick “Out of Order” sign and slap it on top.

Adam still hasn’t moved, staring at the printer as if it has somehow personally offended him.

“It’s fine, Adam,” Arlo insists quietly, stepping a bit closer with his hands raised, though he doesn’t dare to touch. “Really. It’s a shitty old printer. I bet the second I let Tina know, she’ll go pester Doug until he calls his dad about it. We’ll have a shiny new one in no time.” He offers a wry little smile. “Say what you like about nepotism, but it has its perks.”

That doesn’t seem to help in the way Arlo hoped it would, because Adam raises an eyebrow and gives him a sharp look that has him shrinking back. “I am surprised you have that attitude, Detective.” He doesn’t have to say he’s disappointed, Arlo can hear it loud and clear and hates that it bothers him so much.

He steps back and turns away so Adam doesn’t see the look on his face before he can smooth it over. “Well, it’s the reason I’m here, isn’t it?” he can’t help but snark. “And it’s the only reason you’re here too. Explains a lot about your attitude, I suppose.” No wonder Adam’s been so bloody sour about all this. Must be a pain to have to babysit your boss’s kid because she said so. His silence on the subject speaks more than he could hope to.

More than anything Arlo wishes Rebecca could just go back to ignoring him. Things were a lot less complicated then.

Shoulders tight enough to rival Adam’s, Arlo heads towards the stairs to the basement. “I’m going to get that report,” he tosses over his shoulder, trying and failing to sound casual as Adam’s eerily quiet footsteps begin to follow him. “I’ll try not to get kidnapped on the way,” he adds under his breath.

The way Adam’s footsteps falter tell him he wasn’t quiet enough.

[aster-aspera]

Oleander

Prompt was given to me by @skylarstarlight so blame her for all the angst

Relationship: Logince

Warnings: Major character death, injury, blood, betrayal, angst, technically unsympathetic roman ig? Im going to put that warning here in any case, unhappy ending

If you enjoyed please reblog <3

Roman watched Logan from the back of the tent, admiring the sharp slant of his shoulders, the way his long, curly hair cascaded down his shoulders and unveiled the soft brown skin at the back of his neck. He’d been at it for hours, poring over maps with that concentrated furrow grifted into his face, occasionally bringing up a hand to brush some stray locks out of his face, before he turned all his attention back to the mess of papers on the large hardwood table. 

Roman was technically here to stop him from working, to drag him away from staring at how badly they were losing for just a few minutes and get him to eat some dinner. And those plans were definitely still on Roman’s to-do list, but for just a moment, he let himself stare at the other. They didn’t often get quiet moments in the midst of all the chaos that surrounded them. An advisor always flurrying around Roman, a commander pestering Logan about battle plans or food supplies. Roman wanted to save this little bubble of silence for as long as it could last.

“Are you going to continue to stand there growing mushrooms or are you going to speak?” Logan piped up with a soft chuckle, apparently tired of being stared at. 

“My apologies love, I was just admiring your beauty.”

Logan gave him a tight smile. “I’m sure you have better things to do than simply watch me.”

“Nope,” Roman said brightly, wrapping his arms around Logan enthusiastically and tucking his chin over his shoulder. “Never a wrong time for that.”

Logan sighed but begrudgingly gave into the hold, placing his hands over Roman’s where they were tightly wrapped around his stomach. 

“You should eat,” Roman murmured softly as he swayed them both from side to side. Logan hummed noncommittally. “I have work,” he deflected.

“And you’re of no use to us if you pass out from hunger.”

Logan buried his head in Roman’s shoulder. “It’s not like anyone thinks I’m useful either way,” he mumbled.

Roman looked up at Logan, dislodging his head from his shoulder. “Hey now,” he said firmly, “No one thinks that. You’re really smart and you’ve helped us so much.” 

Logan didn't meet his eyes. “We should eat,” he said shortly, “I need to finish organising these supply runs.”

Roman chewed his lip uncertainly as Logan pulled away from him and headed out the tent towards the campfire, the embers dancing up to the sky in dizzying spirals. 

~

Roman paced from one side of the tent to the other, periodically pushing open the flap to gaze out at the midnight quiet camp. An occasional guard strolled passed, bowing to him before he waved them off impatiently. He huffed and flopped down on the bed, watching the faint luminance of the moon filter through the thick tent fabric. 

He jerked up at the rustling of the tent flap and relief brightened his mood as he saw Logan make his way in. The relief was quickly doused with ice cold dread at the way Logan looked, hair a ragged mess, circles under his eyes so dark they could rival Virgil, bruises and scrapes littering his long limbs. 

“Where the hell were you?” Roman burst out, concern and worry and bittersweet relief forming a toxic mixture in the back of his throat. 

Logan’s expression shuttered close and he drew his arms around himself defensively. “Leading your army, that’s what I was doing,” he hissed out.

“No you weren’t! You disobeyed orders again, you put yourself and our soldiers in danger.”

Logan looked past Roman, his expression blank and unreadable. “Of course, and the people we tried to help, what about them?”

Roman sighed in frustration, running his hand through his hair. “I know Lo, I know it sucks, but people are always going to get hurt. And you can’t just run out there and pretend you know better than everyone else.”

“Do you think,” Logan murmured softly, eyes still glued to where a patch of crass crept in under the walls of the tent, “that maybe we’re not the ones in the right here?” 

Roman stiffened. “I’m trying to protect my kingdom. Don’t you dare try and tell me that's wrong.”

Logan finally looked back at him, those deep, night dark eyes staring into him. “How many people have been killed in your meaningless quest of stubborness and glory, how many more people are going to lose their homes and their children? That’s your kingdom, not those spoiled nobles in their pretty palaces.”

“And what do you suggest I do then?” Roman hissed back venomously, “Just let those invaders in? So that they can lock us up in cells or behead us? Is that really what you want?”

“Maybe it is,” Logan whispered, mournful eyes boring into Roman’s. He turned on his heels and walked out the tent, coat flaring behind him, hair spilling past his shoulders like the pitch black river of Styx.

It was the last time they were together in their shared tent. An abrupt end to the cold nights they spent curled up so tight together they could barely breathe. An abrupt ending to the lazy mornings when Logan would card a hand through Roman’s hair as he read, and Roman would sleep as long as he possibly could. An abrupt end to Logan pressing kisses all over Roman’s body and telling him he was beautiful. 

Roman tried not to stare at his slender hands as they pointed out places on maps. Tried not to quail under that sharp, piercing gaze as it swept over him, barely giving him a second glance before he snapped out an order that ended up ignored. They had all noticed Logan wasn’t in good graces with the prince anymore and it seemed all they had been waiting for to right out shun and scorn him.

Every day, Roman could see the lines in Logan’s shoulder tense more, his face harden and the curious gleam to his eyes dull. 

Roman turned away every time, too much of a coward to face him.

And one day, he didn’t see him at all. Not at the meetings, not anywhere in the camp. He asked around, trying not to appear as worried as he was and the others just shrugged, refusing to meet his eye.

His bed was stripped bare from the tent he had been sharing with others, all his possessions presumably packed away and taken with him. 

Roman tried not to show his worries. Logan was a grown man after all, and he had made his position here perfectly clear. He could handle himself. 

But it didn’t stop Roman from missing his eyes and his careful touch and soothing voice. He wished things had gone differently, but he knew that one fight was merely the match that lit the fuse already soaked in kerosine. Merely the spark to set off the feelings Logan had been hiding away for so long. 

And after seeing how the others treated him, Roman couldn’t really fault him for it.

Roman slipped out of the camp, as the heavy monsoon rains gentled into a soft drizzle, the warmth of the afternoon turning the night foggy. Logan’s letter sat tucked in his pocket, held near to his heart, which was beating in a mixture of hope and apprehension. It had been four months, four months since Logan had stormed out of their tent, leaving Roman with an empty bed and an empty heart. He walked silently through the forest, the occasional leaf crunching underfoot as around him the canopy rustled from the rain it caught. He followed the familiar path from memory alone, a soft smile curling his lips as he remembered sneaking out at midnight to go watch the stars with Logan. 

He stepped into that familiar clearing, looking up at the sky in hopes he would spot some of the stars Logan had pointed out for him, but all he saw were the thick grey clouds. His eyes drifted down and he saw Logan, standing in the middle of the clearing, one single lantern casting a circle of light around him, his hair misted with rain. He brushed his glasses dry with the sleeves of his coat and placed them back on his nose. 

Roman walked up to him, unsure why Logan had asked him to come here and scared of what he would say. Logan watched him come, face blank and expressionless.

“Roman,” he greeted, and where once his name had sounded warm and fond on those lips, it now sounded cool and cordial.

“Logan,” Roman replied, and he couldn’t hide the hope in his voice, the hope that this would be an apology, that everything could go back to the way it had been.

“I’m here with an offer,” Logan said, his words formal and serious, so unlike the nicknames and jokes they used to share. “The people are tired of the war. It has only brought them pain and loss. I ask you to end it, give in now and you shall not be harmed. You and your court shall be safe and more capable rulers shall take over the kingdom.”

Roman’s heart froze at those words, uttered so matter of fact. As if the years of his life, the effort and pain he had put into winning this war and keeping his kingdom safe meant nothing. As if he was the one in the wrong here.

He had come here to hear Logan’s apology. He had expected him to admit how much he missed him and that he was wrong and then he would have taken Logan into his arms and everything could have been right again. 

But no, here he stood, resolute, so self assured and infuriating. 

A breeze blew past and the lapels of Logan’s coat lifted, revealing the crest proudly emblazoned on the flags of their enemies, the crest that Roman had been taught to hate. Fury filled him at the sight.

“You’re with them,” he growled, grabbing the coat and displaying the crest for all the world to see. The forest around them didn’t seem impressed. 

“I’m on the side with the least blood on their hands,” Logan said calmly, pushing his glasses further up his nose, “Which you have never been.”

Roman shook his head. “You’re working with the enemy. I trusted you!” His fist tightened on the thick wool fabric.

“Roman please,” Logan said softly, emotion filtering into his voice for the first time, “You’ve been taught by everyone around you that this is what you have to do, that this is your birthright, but they’re wrong. You can choose your own destiny.”

He drew himself up to his full height, looming over Roman. “Take the offer and we can leave this kingdom together. We can build our own life.”

Roman shook his head. “No,” he choked out as tears welled up in his eyes, “No! you’re just… You’re trying to trick me. You never loved me or you wouldn’t do this.”

“Roman,” Logan said gently, cloying sympathy in his voice and Roman could only feel that burning, corrosive rage in his gut, his mouth tasted sour and he could barely see through his anger. Logan gasped suddenly and stumbled back a few steps, his eyes widening in shock and betrayal.

Roman let go of his coat and looked down, his mind registering the ornate handle of a familiar knife, and blood pooling on the navy vest. He looked up, mouth opening and closing mutely, as if Logan could explain. As if he could tell him why there was a knife in Logan’s gut. Why was it his knife. Plunged in so deep only the hilt still showed.

“No,” Roman whispered as Logan sank to the ground, a high keen tearing itself from his lips.  

He breathed in raggedly, hands curling on the forest floor, dirt staining those slender hands. He looked up at Roman, eyes pleading, scared. 

“Please,” he choked and Roman backed away as he reached out a hand to him, reaching for anything that could save him. Blood pooled around his body, the heavy wool of his coat darkening almost imperceptibly as the leaves around him turned red. “Roman,” he rasped and Roman had never heard Logan sound afraid like that.

He kneeled down, dirt muddying his pants and reached out to take Logan’s hand. He pulled away at how cold his skin was. 

“You betrayed me,” he whispered and Logan only continued breathing those ragged, gasping breaths, eyes staring into the middle distance. “It’s not my fault,” he said, because it couldn’t be. Logan was wrong. Logan had betrayed him.

But then why did it hurt so much?

“You never loved me!” Roman burst out. “Come on, just say something! Don’t just lie there!” He yelled because Logan was never this quiet. He always had something smart and stuck up to say. 

“Say something,” Roman pleaded and Logan shuddered, eyes glazed over as they stared up at the sky. 

Roman looked up, to a sky as dark and cloudy as Logan’s eyes. A sky that once was filled with stars and was now flat and empty.

“Logan?” he whispered softly, reaching out to take his hand. Logan didn’t react, he just stared up at that empty sky and Roman felt an ache spread in his chest as he curled his fingers around Logan’s palm, brushing off the dirt.

[gryphsdeadbones]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so i had to make something that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_

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

[chatonyant]

im just so sad about this funky crow ninja

Listen

Listen

Itachi is just

Such a tragic character and it makes me so sad

Like he's a pacifist at heart but he was forced to be the literal opposite at such a young age and I'm just so sAD ABOUT IT

(Under cut cause it’s long and it’s about the uchiha massacre if yall would rather not read bout that But it also has some soft ideas down at the way bottom if yall wanna just speed scroll to the bottom)

How he came to the choice he made regarding the Uchiha massacre totally makes sense to me. It wasn't a good decision, it wasn't a decision best suited for the situation, but it made sense. And it gets worse once you realize that he was 13. Thirteen. No wonder he couldn't find/use a third option. He's still a child, even in this world of child soldiers. He bloodied his hands and wore a mask so that the home he loved and the brother he adored could be safe.

I wish his story could've been written... better, for a lack of proper words. Maybe that is the right word. But I want to see him do more for Konoha. He became a missing nin for Konoha to spy on Akatsuki/Madara but we don't see the results of that. What information does Konoha get from him? Because we know that he's still loyal to Konoha after all this time. Did he do anything to slow Akatsuki down? Did he do things to benefit Konoha or stop something from badly impacting it? What did he do?

And then he dIES AND HE JUST DOESNT GET A BREAK AND IM HHHHH :((((((

And he was sick and going blind too!!!! I swear he was the universe's punching bag (though one of many cause the naruto universe just Be Like That)

Fuck ok I came on here to ramble about Itachi in my au but then got sad sO AU TIME NOW

For one I want to make him.... more sympathetic? A redemption works best when its shown from the start that there is more than meets the eye. Like Zuko, for example. He was a jerk, but there are moments where it's clear that he's not as much of a jerk as he could have been. And I wanted to do something similar with Itachi (and a couple other villains tbh but it's also a matter of "Should you survive" coughObitocough I love you but idk if you survive in this au or not but I have ideas nonetheless but that is for a later time)

Anyways, morally grey but more clearly Itachi

Honestly I've got more ideas for his ending than the beginning. Which is... very annoying. This is unfortunately the case for many... many of my ideas....

An idea I've been juggling with is Itachi not killing everyone. He definitely kills everyone who's activated their sharingan and anyone who is/was a shinobi. So everyone who's not a civilian. So,,, the survivors are very very little and are civilian mothers and civilian children too young to even attend the academy and like the occasional shop owners. The massacre was to stop the coup and prevent it from ever happening, so those who have the power to set forward this coup are any shinobi. And unfortunately, the Uchiha clan is an old shinobi clan.

Itachi is not a blank mask and does cry when he kills his parents and they leave their parting words. He's 13, forced to commit a crime that goes against his every wish, moral, and beliefs. Plus I believe the Uchiha are naturally every emotional- or at least feels it more intensely than others. Their whole defining ability has to do with emotions. They feel Very Strongly.

And thus by "cry" I mean he cries a lot. He almost has a breakdown right then and there when little baby Sasuke crashes in and see his crying older brother holding a bloody blade over his two very dead parents. 

For someone willing(ish) to murder a(lmost) a whole clan for the sake of his little brother, Itachi sure does directly hurt Sasuke a lot. Like genjutsu torture? Placing responsibility of avenging a whole clan on his tiny, angry shoulders? Oof, Itachi, bad ideas. 

So Itachi wants Sasuke to be safe. To be happy to the best of his ability. So instead, he uses a milder form of Tsukuyomi to place a suggestion in his baby mind that Itachi was in fact a cold hearted murderer. But the human mind is a strange thing that is difficult to understand, so for years Sasuke has nightmares of that night with his perception of Itachi varying wildly between a stone cold face and a tear-stained one. 

Itachi doesn’t do the whole “hate me and kill me for vengeance” because, again, he wants Sasuke to be safe and happy. Considering that he lives in a shinobi village and just had a highly traumatic experience, both are hard to come by, but the least Itachi can do is not have Sasuke’s whole life be overcome by hatred. Curse of Hatred is a very real thing, Itachi. I know you want Sasuke to have a goal to drive him forward and not waste away but bad idea Itachi. Maybe he says something else. Maybe he tells Sasuke to get stronger (but not in a “so you can get revenge” kind of way). I don’t know. But he doesn’t quite plant the idea of vengeance in his mind, so Sasuke’s motivation and drive ends up differently. Butterfly effects oho Also since Sasuke unlocked his sharingan during the massacre... is it possible to activate mangekyo as well? Cause he loves Itachi most, yes, but he also loved his parents, his mom especially. Would that be enough? Wiki says “death of someone close to the user”, so it’s possible, I think.

So many ideas about the massacre holy shit

Like Shisui. I’d totally love to make him live but frankly, I’ve got no idea how. :”D sorry Shisui, you’ll have to stay dead until I can find a solid reasoning as to how you survived and why

As for Madara/Tobi, well in anime he went after the Police headquarters while Itachi went after everyone else so there’s that, not much to change there

Then there’s a whole bunch of aftermath hijinks

Itachi is said to have aided Konoha within Akatsuki, but it’s not very clearly shown. Considering how we aren’t shown what exactly he passed on, that will be uh.... perhaps expanded on later. 

Sasuke and Itachi interactions before Shippuden would be different due to Sasuke’s own differences, but those differences haven’t be set yet so that will be explained later.

Ok, now the whole Itachi dying and being reincarnated shebang. Fourth War sure is wild as fuck. “Let’s mass reincarnate people!” what.

I don’t want Itachi to die. I want to let him rest. But not in death. 

So the general idea I have for the “end” of the story is:

He becomes legally blind. Not completely blind, but very close. His chakra coils are fucked and his sharingan are stuck in a way that he can kinda see chakra but very vaguely. 

His illness isn’t completely healed, but it’s much better than before; Sakura and Tsunade are legendary at what they do

He returns home to Konoha. Not sure how he will be accepted into the village but I was thinking the village makes a half-lie half-truth story pinning the blame on Danzo (Cause when in doubt, blame Danzo. Or Zetsu. But Zetsu isn’t blamable here)

He may not be imprisoned, but he isn’t free to roam. He’s monitored and has a (temporary?) seal placed on him limiting his use of chakra.

Itachi is surprisingly ok with all of this. He gets to retire from a shinobi life and he’s unraveled the story to Sasuke and was gifted a form of forgiveness. Life’s chill.

He works at the Yamanaka flower shop. It’s calming, peaceful, and it’s run by Yamanaka, powerful shinobi and also knowledgeable on psychology.

His crows are now seeing eye crows. They sit on either his shoulders or head and squawk whenever Itachi is too close to bumping into something. Sasuke very much enjoys when the crows are on Itachi’s head because when he tosses little treats at the birds, sometimes they land in Itachi’s hair.

It’s very hard for the shinobi to fear this honestly tiny man (because Itachi is small, fight me) who’s humming while watering plants with a bird on top of his head while the various heroes of Konoha take turns tossing treats at the bird like it’s a dog. 

“Nii-san. Nii-san stop squishing my cheeks.” “But Sasuke I want to see your face.” “Nii-san-”

oh my god so much brain power used on the massacre just so i could make itachi have a very domestic ending

[bigskydreaming]

Continuing on that observation because I forgot to add this part, as a gen z I'm glad you understand that we or young people don't invent new ways to be evil, but it's not completely true. You aren't seeing new forms of online abuse in every platform, I doubt second hand information is going into details as well. Also the fact that you are a white man, there are things being said and done to poc in various online communities that I don't expect you to be privy to. Harassing fans of color and poc media has become a lot more common and normalized which parts of the fandom at large will never see. I don't know if anon did all of the thinking before saying "gen z bad" but they're not completely wrong looking at the kind of mass bullying behavior literal kids are exhibiting. They are learning from or being encouraged by older people but that shouldn't take the focus away from them to blame only the older people.

And my ask regarding Barbara, you assumed I hadn't thought about if my disdain for the character could have come from ableism. I had tho, granted you couldn't have known that and it was surely a possibility, so I'm not saying I'm mad about it, I was at that time a little bit. But you could perhaps give your anons a little more credit sometimes. Sometimes people know what they're talking about, you don't need to explain other possibilities to them each time.

Once again, sorry if this came off as very rude I just needed to share that observation and among many other instances these two were really highlights and kept bothering me. My issue with Barbara goes in a different direction than anything to do with her appearance and I've personally faced online abuse from people younger than me in ways that technologically, even politically, wasn't possible or as easy a few years ago, so you can maybe see why...

Please keep in mind that whatever context you have for yourself or your ask when you come into my inbox on anon......I have none of that. You have an awareness of yourself relative to whatever you asked me. I literally only know an anon by the words they put into my inbox and nothing else.

Also please keep in mind that every anon I answer, I do so in the larger context of my own interactions with tumblr overall. I have a lot of precedent with things I say being taken out of context, misrepresented or even just me not conveying myself as well as I like.

So the combination of those two things is that a) I literally just don't KNOW what any anon does or doesn't know and b) If I'm going to answer an anon, I tend to want to answer as fully and clearly as possible.

I can understand it coming across as being talked down to, so I'll work on that, but I would ask people to remember the above and keep that in context too when weighing my responses.....am I actually being condescending in every case, or does it simply feel that way because I'm including stuff you already know in my response? And if its the latter, is THAT something I COULD know about you without knowing who you are or you as a person and not just a paragraph sent in anonymously?

I'd rather be safe than sorry, and so from my POV since there's no harm in somebody seeing someone cover information they already know as PART of their overall answer or response, like, there's no reason for me not to include whatever I think is relevant and just expect readers to decide for themselves what about my response, if anything, is helpful, and like....just ignore the rest, y'know?

Also, just for the record, I am ADHD and I save my medication for when I'm working or writing or have stuff I absolutely need to get done, which doesn't include my usual blogging. So I'm usually posting while not on my ADHD meds at all, hence the rambling tendencies and the length. Another aspect of ADHD that doesn't get talked about much ime is we tend to over-explain, part out of just excitement/interest in whatever it is that has our attention, and also in part because we're used to people not necessarily following the leaps our minds take when jumping around rather than proceeding in an orderly thought pattern.....so, part of why I break things down so incrementally is I literally just don't know where my way of looking at things diverges from the way neurotypical thinking views things, so I want to draw as detailed a map as possible in order to ensure the most people possible can follow my thought process, just in case.

(And again see, this is something you might already know, and hell, you could have ADHD yourself, I just literally have no way of knowing that so rather than just mention it and be like "oh and also I have ADHD and so that's something to keep in mind" I'd rather explain WHY I feel that's particularly relevant to your question, since I'm kinda like, why not answer as fully as I have the spoons for? People can stop reading at any time if I go on too long. Its fine).

As for the specific asks you're referencing - my response to the gen z anon was not meant to convey that the sort of things you're describing don't occur among gen z, so sorry for giving that impression. Its actually the opposite of my point, which was simply that I don't think its a generational thing, or that anything is gained by treating it as a generational thing. This kind of behavior exists in gen z, yes, but it also existed before gen z. Its not gen z SPECIFIC, or limited to just that generation. That's all.

And the other ask, the one you made about Barbara - to be honest, I don't have anyway of knowing for sure which one you meant, and there are a couple it could have been, but if its the one I THINK you're referencing, I believe you asked how to stop people from assuming you dislike Barbara for reasons rooted in ableism when its because of other things? If that's the one, then I mean, the thing is....I DID answer your question, in as much as anyone could. I addressed the perceptions other people might have of your stance there, but basically - there IS no way to ever ensure people take you at your word or any kind of guarantee you can present your POV in a way that won't be misrepresented or misunderstood. So ultimately, I just had no real useful advice for that?

And so I expanded into the only thing I think anyone CAN control, aka their own thoughts and words, and suggested that you just double check to be sure of your own possible biases that others might read into your words without you being aware you were putting them in there. That wasn't meant as an insult or to suggest you hadn't already examined yourself for possible ableism - it was simply saying it never hurts to check again, y'know? We don't always catch everything every time we do a self-review, and internal biases are inherently tricky to pick up on ourselves. And it just loops back into the fact that I really had no way to know what you had and hadn't already considered, you're essentially a blank cipher to me....and in my experience, a lot of people are a lot more ableist than they realize.

And this isn't an insult either! It applies to me and I'M physically disabled! I'm constantly to this day unpacking new realizations about how I still have more ableist views and opinions than even I realize, even after about five years of living with chronic pain, vertigo, nerve issues and associated problems stemming from only half a working mouth lol. I'm not trying to insult people by asking them to just do what I do every day and just like....make sure I'm not the problem when other people have a problem with me. Because sometimes, even after reflecting as fully and genuinely as I can, I think they're still wrong! I don't have to agree with their conclusions! But that doesn't mean that they're never right.

And for the record, I do think its still worth examining on your end, because I don't love that you said your issues with Barbara have nothing to do with her appearance, when we're talking about ableism specifically. It very well could be just a poor word choice on your part and not a reflection of your actual views, but it could also be a suggestion that you tend to think of physical disability as something that's limited to there being a visual sign of, and there's a lot of invisible symptoms and changes to the ways a disabled person interacts with society and society with them that don't alter a disabled person's appearance in anyway...and many of these things are the exact stuff a lot of unacknowledged ableism revolves around.

So I'd like to give you and other anons more credit and the benefit of the doubt and assume you know what you're talking about and don't need things broken down as much as I tend to break them down to - but keep in mind I don't OWE you that, and its a lot to ask someone to take you on faith when you've already made the conscious choice to present yourself to them anonymously, and deliberately limit how much a person even CAN know about you before answering, when you have an equal opportunity to present yourself by name, allowing someone the full context afforded by your blog, that they can use to familiarize themselves with you and what you likely do or don't know before answering. I don't think its entirely reasonable to anonymize YOURSELF and then expect people to still give you the benefit of the doubt.

Especially when not giving you the benefit of the doubt only really results in me over-explaining something you don't think you need explained in certain ways or in as much depth. Its not hurting anyone, and you're not going to be the only one reading this response and maybe that over-explanation ISN'T something other people know and it could still be of use to someone else, y'know?

But lastly, please keep in mind that you came to me, and I just answered in the way that made the most sense to me. If that didn't work for you or wasn't what you're looking for, that's fine, but like. You knew way more about me going into this interaction than I could possibly know about you, and assuming good faith of you and your interest in my response and giving you as much of a response as I did in the first place, let alone now, IS giving you the benefit of the doubt in the sense that I'm assuming you can find some way in which these responses are of use to you.

And if not, like....just don't send me more asks? LOL. I kinda feel like you just didn't expect the answer you got, and that's sitting weirdly with you. Which I get, to be honest, but I don't particularly think that's a me problem, because that has nothing to do with anything I can control.

I can only give the answer that occurs to me when I read and think about an ask. I can't guarantee it'll ever be the answer the asker actually WANTS.

[cloudyfm]

ok yes i’m here with lilia’s info ur resident demon have fun pals<3

family background - yes this is copy pasted myob<3

ya’ll ever read one of those drug ring ao3 fanfics where y/n is dating the sexy drug cartel leader? well that’s their family!

generational family blood money because that’s how cartels work i think. started running + dealing three generations back with their great-grandparents in order for them to make a living. it wasn’t until the so-called business was handed down to their grandparents that they wanted to expand and generate more money. the big pharma cover was created in order for them to manufacture, distribute, and supply at a larger scale. present day, their family name has notoriety with other cartel and mafia families.

basically avery was supposed to take over because he was the oldest right, but lilia did not want that at all. their parents started favoring avery and schmoozing up to him a little bit to get him to say yes (even though avery was fully prepared to give lilia the position) and lilia was like! what the fuck! so she told their parents about this one time that avery accidentally blabbed the family secret to a stranger at a party which broke their one rule of keeping it a secret. their parents wanted nothing to do with him anymore and completely cut avery off and kicked him out of the family.

everyone knows that avery and lilia are siblings, even though they don’t really know the actual details about their past together because avery doesn’t say anything about his family and the cartel is a secret. now that they are both at yale and in the elites together they are just kinda like haha awkward <3 they basically would just tell everyone that they grew apart if other characters tried to pry but also lilia is now telling people that avery fucked up a business decision which is why he left the family and avery is like alright but good luck trying to get other info out of them! xo, the jeongs

personal background

a legacy and a member of the yale's elite, they're twenty-one and a junior undergrad student majoring in pharmacology. they are as zealous as they are vain.

blackmails: and yes ik we only needed 2 i got pressed and stubborn (drugs tw):

blackmailing vanity fair to keep them from speaking negatively about her and her family by dealing to their reporters. she’s more so doing this to protect herself and her brother than her parents.

is aware of annie and violet’s work arrangements with her family’s drug business. she refuses to involve herself by mentioning that the family they work for is hers and is currently turning a blind eye to the questionable tasks that are asked of them.

purposely sent an ex boyfriend to prison when she was 18 due to her being tired of being in a consistently toxic relationship. she set him up to be found with various bags of illicit drugs (of which were owned by her family) and framed him with possession with intent to distribute and supply to garner a felony charge as an adult.

ok moving to present day stuff<3

ever since avery left the family, her parents have basically put immense pressure on her to fill his spot - the spot she wanted, and since her loyalty is with them and herself, she accepted it and did whatever had to be done. she was 16 when it became her job to take over, so whatever parts of her childhood she had left kind of just left when they began to prime her.

at 18, her mom finally revealed to her that avery had the intentions to give her control of the family when she came of age - something that she didn’t know until 2 years after she fucked up ! her guilt eats her alive to this day, but rather than mending her relationship with him personally, she sends him money anonymously through shorting her parents. 

she actually loves being in the elites ... it gives her such a sense of importance whether or not she is considered a legacy. was kind of excited to join actually and frankly that bit her in the ass with the blackmailer out here but its fine.

her college years have frankly been quiet like .. she’s studious to the point she needs to be but she really is not a partier, doesn’t do drugs because she’s seen first hand the shit that her parents are involved in, and barely drinks. when she does she literally doesn’t know how to handle it and fears losing control. literally if you wanna manipulate her this is how u do it lmao.

this is mentioned in the personality section but yes she is in the classics book club at yale ... she loves her classics</3

she’s actually easy to get along with ok just don’t cross her i promise my god im going to lose it

i don’t know im blanking so bad and this is alrdy almost 1500 words i cant do this anymore. UGHGHH more of her personal stuff is in the personality section im heaving

personality

ridiculously cut throat and has no issues stepping on people to get to where she needs to be. like if it came down to saving herself or saving someone else who she doesn’t have a close connection to? she will always pick herself. 

makes a game out of other people one - upping her<3 if she knows she can win, and sometimes even when she can’t, she will purposely cause a problem just to see them fall and grow her own ego.

also will start problems casually and then just sit back and watch them unfold while drinking wine out a mug.

literally ... and i mean literally obsessed with being perceived as beautiful and pretty. she’s so mf vain that it’s actually a problem, and i can promise you if you call her ugly miss girl will cry. this mostly has to do with her self esteem issues and the pressure put onto her by her parents after avery left. yes she did this to herself dni.

loyal only to those who she cares about otherwise they can frankly rot<3 and there are times where she will break that loyalty if it benefits her.

ik this may not be believable but she actually is extremely insecure and anxious deep down lmao like she has such an obsession with proving that she’s the best to her peers and her family that it flat out consumes her consistently. this is what causes her to act out most of the time and if someone was to become close to her it would be plainly evident. yes - she can be soft.

has an overt persona of positivity and carries herself as someone who doesn’t have negative intentions and sometimes makes it hard to believe that she’s actually capable of doing the things that people accuse her of.

yes she is calculating and manipulative and miss girly will look for faults only to make them worse.

she literally wasn’t always like this but when her and avery’s relationship started to fracture, she kind of let her own selfishness consume her.

she plays stupid a lot KLNDFKNDLKFSD  will pretend to be interested in random men in her classes so they will baby her and do shit for her that she could have easily done herself. it’s not that she’s lazy but she’s only studying pharma because of her family. she has an obsession with classical lit and would have rather majored in that if given the chance. 

has a fear of emotional intimacy </3 went through a really toxic relationship from the ages of 16-18 that was basically more done to bring her family and another together for a business deal and it just ... did not end well for her and basically she was treated like shit. literally the only way she could get out of it was to frame him and then bribe people to make sure the felony charge wasn’t dropped. her family doesn’t know she did this so<33333 

statistics

full name: lilia iris jung.

nicknames: lili or lia.

age: 21.

date of birth: august 02, 1999.

siblings: avery ( older brother ).

birthplace: new york city, new york, united states.

current location: new haven, connecticut, united states.

astrological sign: leo sun / capricorn moon / virgo rising.

gender: cis female.

pronouns: she / her / hers.

height: 5′1″.

sexuality: bisexual.

religion: atheist.

piercings: double lobe on her right ear, triple lobe on her left ear, tragus on her right ear, and a helix on both her left and right and ears.

tattoos: this on her inner, right bicep, and this behind her left ear.

haircolor: brunette.

literally for wanted connections i want 2 things: (1) someone to rock her shit bc that is deserved, and (2) idk she’s wearing a mask like 80% of the time so someone who she is close enough to actual b real with :\ if this doesn’t make sense myob im taking a nap

[nomazee]

Komorebi (6)

komorebi, final.

synopsis: Tsukishima dislikes the amount of parallels there are with you and Hinata. He dislikes the way you’re so energetic and exuberant when you want to be, and the way you can get along so well with people. He dislikes the way that people are naturally drawn to you, and the way you’re so willing to put time into your dumb gifts and snacks and treats for a team of boys you barely know. But Tsukishima does not dislike you. And he supposes that’s part of the problem.

series content: developing relationship, (sort of) ooc tsukishima, strangers to (sort of) friends to lovers, angst, fluff, slow burn

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six

(the final part!! i don’t wanna ramble too much for right now so all of my final thoughts will be at the end! 

love yall :) )

☾.:°∗★.:☆:.★∗°:.☽ 

Just like that, Tsukishima is back to square one. 

The world goes silent for a few days. He hates to admit that he’s losing sleep over you, but at this point he’s too far gone to care what anyone thinks about him. Except for you--and while he knows that assuming things is bad, he can only conclude by the way you looked so scared of him before, that you do not think he’s a good person. 

(The gifts you gave him nearly contradict that assumption. But he ignores those for the most part. The scarf you gave him a while ago rests on a chair in his room and more often than not he finds himself staring at it during the deep hours of the night. He hasn’t worn it yet.)

Yamaguchi keeps giving him glances during class--not that that’s any different from before, but it irks him more now that he’s actually seen you. The blonde wonders if his friend knew about you, knew that you were going to drop something off in that moment and just never thought to warn him. Maybe you two were plotting that together, like an odd sort of revenge tactic. 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know a lot of things. What he does know is that he’s tired, and he misses you, and he wants to be warm again. 

The morning is cold when we wakes up. He wasn’t really sleeping--it was one of those nights of a daze of exhaustion where he kept blinking himself awake. At five-thirty AM, he sighs, staring at the blank, matte wall of his ceiling. Tsukishima wills himself to crawl out of his bed and get ready for school. It’s still dark outside, the flames of daylight creeping up on the horizon while he steps around his room. 

He’s ready to leave by six. His mother is awake, sitting in the kitchen sipping hot tea and scrolling through her cellphone. She catches a glimpse of her son walking through the front door--Tsukishima feels her pensive gaze on him but refuses to say anything, just like always. 

The air is cold. Despite the long-sleeved uniform he’s wearing, Tsukishima feels ill-prepared to face the day, in more than one way. Nevertheless, he lets go of his reluctance at the door and trudges onward in the frigid air, nose flushed with red and cheeks going numb in a matter of seconds. 

(The scarf is in his bag now rather than his desk chair, hidden beneath his books and folders and pencils. He wants to wear it, knows he should, but his guilty conscious tells him to leave it unworn for now.) 

The walk passes by quickly, far too quickly for his comfort. Before Tsukishima knows it, he’s faced with the front doors of the very school he dreads to enter. 

His fingers tingle with numbness as he pulls at the metal handles of the door. The school is quiet, empty for the most part. The faint shuffle of teachers in their classrooms echoes throughout the halls as his feet lead him to Class 1-4. 

There’s a faint pitter-patter of footsteps from inside the classroom. Tsukishima passes it off as one of his teachers, again, but the sight he’s met with when he walks through the doorway gives him a disturbing sense of deja vu. 

You’re there, at his desk--the same bracelet from a few days ago resting on top of a box that  you seem to have just placed on his desk. You blink up at him owlishly. He can only return the gesture, dumbstruck as he is. 

It’s too reminiscent of the events from a few days ago. Once again, his eyes are prickling with stinging pain and his throat dries up. 

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do.

What does he know, he wonders. He knows he hates crying. It’s unfortunate that that’s the only thing he seems capable of doing. 

It’s all overwhelming for him. The cold of the outside lingering on his skin, the sheets of sunlight pouring through the window as the sun rises, your eyes, your sheer presence in front of him. It piles on his shoulder and soon he feels liquid heat pouring down his cheeks. 

Tsukishima Kei is crying. In front of you, in a classroom, watching you grip the box in your hands and stare at him, unmoving. 

His throat hurts. He tries to choke down any audible sobs, but loud, ugly sniffles echo throughout the room. He wants to fall through the floor, squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look at you. He can’t bear to know that you find him pathetic, even more so than he already seemed in the last few weeks. 

Distantly, he recognizes the sound of footsteps coming closer to him but tunes them out in hopes that he’s just imagining them. A hand finds its way to his shoulder--it’s warm, and he flinches. He knows it’s yours, knows by the heat of it and the comfort he feels from a simple touch. It’s the first time he’s felt your touch, but he feels so light now--so warm and comfortable and cloudy. 

“Kei.” It’s your voice. It swims through the air and into his ears, sobs only increasing in severity at the sound of his first name on your lips. Your other hand comes to rest on his cheek, both sets of fingers gently brushing away the pouring stream. 

Fond. Tsukishima Kei is very fond of the feeling of your skin on his. He hopes he can become well-acquainted with it, if he tries hard enough. 

“Kei, it’s okay.” You’re so soft, voice low and lacking any hostility he expected you to have. Your thumbs pat at his under eyes, soaking up the wetness that pools. 

“Can you look at me?” He’s stubborn, hand coming up to grip your wrist and lips clamped tightly shut to reduce the shiver of his entire body as he weeps. A gentle shake of his head makes you sigh--he knows the way he’s acting is so uncharacteristic but he can’t help it. Not with the feel of your hands on his face, your voice, the sound of his first name spoken by you still ringing in his ears. 

“It’s okay. It’s alright. I’m here.” 

You are here. It seems impossible to him, but you’re here. With him. With your hands giving him warmth and comfort and fondness. Everything he ever wanted. 

His eyes blink open. Tsukishima Kei looks at you--really looks. Your lips are upturned, gentle as is the rest of you. The sun is halfway above the horizon now, the light from it filtering through the leaves of the trees that are planted outside the window. The golden rays hit your eyes perfectly, changing the hue the slightest bit and making him stop his tears momentarily--just to admire you. 

You blink at him. You smile. Tsukishima Kei is in love, just a little bit.

☾.:°∗★.:☆:.★∗°:.☽

(so... this has been a wild ride. 

first off i wanna say thank you for all the support i’ve received throughout this whole thing! it really means so much to me. i love you all so much. 

im very proud of myself for finishing this. this is by no means the greatest product i could’ve created--it was a little bit messy, and the word count of the entire series (ab 6000 i think) is lower than some long oneshots i’ve seen.

there’s a lot of things i could’ve done better--no doubt about that. but i am very proud of myself for making this. for finishing a WHOLE multipart series,,,,yes it was short but......its here! i did it! i’m finished! very happy with this. 

this series was mainly set in tsukishima’s own head--and i know it was probably at least a little disappointing that it was NOT action-based---and the fact that it was tsukki-centric was definitely a downer to some people because you didnt really get to feel what.... YOU would feel in that situation. we didnt get to see that here. 

and its okay if that’s what you disliked most!!! in truth i think that was one of my biggest weaknesses writing this series. but i liked it this way, i think. i like trying to analyze characters within my writing and i think that, at the very least, this was a good challenge for me to try to take on with characterization and the like.

anyways....that’s it i think! thank you so much for supporting me, really. i’m very thankful for everyone whose liked or reblogged any of the parts to komorebi. you are all incredible i love you. <3) 

(pssst!!! i’ll be talking about my 200 follower event soon. if you wanna participate, be on the lookout for that!!)

[ranposlittle]

Hey! I have a request! Could you do a Poe x Shy Poet reader? The reader insecure of themselves and their work but one day decided to share their work with Poe , and how tries to make them feel better about their work? (If you need some poetry for the reader I’ve wrote some poems I can give you one! Even tho I’m also insecure about my work) Sfw but fluffy please!

Genre: SFW, Fluff

Tags: Confession, Comfort

A/N: Here it is, poe-is-bean! I hope the fluff is enough and you find it worth the looong wait. Thank you so much for sharing your own poems to me (theyre great) and I hope I did them some justice ;-; ENJOYYY~ ٩( ๑^ ꇴ^)۶

((EDIT!!! idk if the read more break can be seen on mobile but when i was editing, there's a break after the ask & idk how to fix it so im so sorry aaa))

***

The room is so empty

I can hear my own heartbeat

Day and Night

The sound of pencil on paper

It echos

I just want someone to talk to

Someone to hold me close

To make the room feel less empty

The words faded on the white paper as the ink on your pen ran out. You clicked your tongue and sighed as you look around the park you're sitting at. Just the cherry on top of your already dismal day, you thought.

It was a cloudy day but you squinted at the harsh light of the sun peeking slightly through the wispy clouds. You leaned back on the warm bench and closed your tired eyes. You slowly inhaled the delicious summer air but your chest feels as hollow as the tube of ink inside your pen.

"Karl! No!"

A voice suddenly rang from somewhere near and as you sluggishly open your eyes to peek, something heavy and fuzzy landed on your lap, causing you to shriek and jump from your seat. Your heart raced from the surprise, but as you quickly realized that it was just a raccoon who got attracted by the leftover peanuts you have on your side, you heaved a sigh of relief.

"No! Stop that!" A man with messy hair and an outfit that's undoubtedly too hot for the weather rushed to you. His eyes are barely visible through his dark overgrown hair but it wasn't able to hide the handsome features beneath.

"It-it's okay," you said shyly, mentally hitting yourself for stuttering. "He can have it. I don't mind."

"I really do apologize," the unknown man said, his voice low and trembling. He scratch his temple in embarrassment. "Karl is just crazy for peanuts lately."

You just gave him a meek smile and fiddled with the notebook on your lap. You thought about how cute it is that he has a pet raccoon, how cute it is that he named it with such a humanly name, and how cute he is.

Wait, what.

Heat rushed from your body and up to your face, feeling foolish for having such a thought with someone you just met. You hunched to hide your face, fearing the stranger would see the blush covering your cheeks.

"Can I sit with you?" He asked, snapping you away from your thoughts. "M-my name is Edgar, by the way. Edgar Allan Poe."

Your eyes traveled up his slender form. Despite his dark clothing, his timid and humble appearance made it easier for you to let him enter into your space. He thanked you and asked for your name in return. And just like that, your otherwise usual and grey day became colorful like the evening sky as you sat there beside him, familiarizing yourselves with each other while the innocent racoon eat the rest of the stale peanuts on the bench.

Is this a dream?

Is it real?

He was so close

Yet so far

We sat together for hours

The time was ours

But now it’s not

It slipped away

So quickly

Birds chirped around you as you looked up from your writing, searching through your surroundings and hoping to see the stranger once again. The more hours that passed, the more that you're starting to believe that it was just all somehow a vivid hallucination. You sighed in defeat and eyed another blank spot on your notebook. You thought about writing another poem about how sometimes, it's better to stay in an illusion than face reality because at least in your daydreams, wonderful things happen.

You pressed the tip of your pen on the paper to write the first letter of your work when all of a sudden, the ink bled all over the page, causing you to spat a curse under your breath. You quickly handled the situation, making sure that your clothes and the rest of your notbeook isn't affected by another one of your daily misfortunes. You groaned and pulled out the wipes out of your bag, aggressively wiping the stubborn ink blots on your hand.

"Um, are you okay, (Y/N)?"

You glared up to the quiet voice that called out your name. The tightness of your facial muscles from frowning slowly loosening up as you recognize the figure in front of you.

Poe's tall physique shaded you from the blazing sun and from where you are sitting, he looked just like a dream; a mirage that manifested out of your imagination and into your reality.

"I'm... I'm okay," you mumbled. Your heart thumped heavily against your ribcages as you remain frozen, your wide eyes glued to him as if you're scared that he'll disappear if you blink.

He flashed you a bright smile and gingerly sat beside you. Poe eyed the notebook on your lap and saw the familiar structure of the words on it.

"You write poems?" He asked with excitement evident on his voice, pulling you back to the ground. As Poe reached out to have a closer look with the item, you swiftly pulled away.

"Don't!" You exclaimed. The volume of your voice made nearby passerbys turn their heads on your direction and Karl critter on Poe's shoulder as if by surprise, too.

Poe was taken aback by your reaction as well but being a creator himself, he quickly understand that there is a certain reservation an artist have with its works. He understands the insecurity of being not good enough or questioning yourself as to why are you even trying when there's always someone out there that can do better than you. He knows the feeling very well.

"I'm sorry," he said calmly. "I know an artist's works are always very personal. I shouldn't have intruded."

Guilt spilled all over you and spread a bitter taste on your mouth. "I'm sorry, too," you sighed after a while. "I'm just not ready to show it to anyone yet. It's not your fault."

"I understand. I am a writer myself," Poe said with a gentle smile. "However, if the time has come when you've finally found the courage within you to be proud of yourself and your creations as an extension of yourself, it'll be my pleasure if you'll have me as the first person that would ever lay eyes on it."

Poe's words echoed to the deepest parts of your being. You felt bare to the bones, like everything that you've tried so hard to hide is just somehow exposed for him to see. Gone was his timid character and he's now exuding confidence; a sense of sureness in everything that can only come to people who has been through the ringer and survived to be an inspiration. Your eyes glistened to see another layer of his natural mystique unfold in front of you. Right then, you were filled with the hunger to know more, to uncover more, and to see more of his fascinating self.

Karl climbed down from Poe's shoulder, searched for something on his layered clothes and ran to your lap with an object wedged between his pointy mouth.

"It's a gift," Poe explained when Karl dropped an expensive looking pen in front of you. "I hope you never stop creating, despite of life's minor inconveniences."

"Would you meet me here again tomorrow?" You asked without you even realizing that you were speaking aloud and feeling the weight of your question only after it's done.

Poe tensed up on his seat. Your question was unexpected and it made his own heart raced for a reason he can't quite explain. However, seeing your eyes looking more alive than when he first met you delighted him and he gave you a humble smile.

"Karl has an appointment with the vet tomorrow," he said with his usual gentle voice. "But we can meet at the cafe nearby after."

Your heart soared way above the cloudless sky that day as a big smile stretched your lips and you felt like you haven't smiled like this for a while now. You accepted his invitation and noted the place and time on your notebook. For the first time in a long time, you felt thankful. You thank yourself for being able to push the words out, albeit almost unconsciously, and you thanked life. Despite the mishaps and blunders it brings you everyday, it gave you the opportunity to meet someone. A someone who made you look at everything in beautiful colors you don't even see before. You view everything so differently now; everything including yourself.

Months have passed since that fateful day and you still can vividly remember how your world shifted from then on like it was just yesterday. You meet Poe with any spare time you have and with every moment you spent with him, you got to know all of the layers of his being and in return, he got to know yours. You felt like you're rediscovering yourself as you open up to him. You felt freer. As time went on, a certain feeling crept up on you. It was a strange but awfully familiar feeling that sits inside your chest, like an everlasting bonfire that warms you up from inside out.

The paperback cover of the notebook crunched as you gripped on it tightly. Your mind is foggy with nervousness and immediately doubting if you've made the right decision to finally show him your poems. You shifted on the same bench you sat the first time that you've met and you waited for Poe, all kinds of imaginary scenarios playing in your head in the meantime.

"Hey, (Y/N)!"

You finally heard his familiar voice, a sound that no music can compare to. He was cheerily waving at you, you waved back and nervously greeted him. You laid peanuts on the bench for Karl and he happily hopped off of Poe's back to get on his treats.

"So, you've finally found your courage, huh?" He said before sitting down on his usual spot beside you. "I'm really proud of you, (Y/N). I know it wasn't easy. This is a big step for you and I want to thank you for choosing me."

Your anxiety dissipated in a snap. The flames on your heart grew bigger and brighter with his encouraging words. This tender moment solified your suspicion; you're absolutely, undoubtedly, sincerely in love with him.

"No, Poe," you replied, "I should be the one thanking you. You're the one who showed me that I have that courage inside me in the first place. I can't even begin to explain how you've changed my life."

"Well, that's what art is for, isn't it? To help us express what our words can't," Poe said, his warm smile never leaving his lips. "Besides, my words wouldn't mean anything if you didn't made the decision yourself. It's all you, (Y/N). Give yourself more credit, won't you?"

You beamed at him, the fluttering feeling on your chest continue to grow and filled every part of your being where you used to feel hollow. Your fears disappeared and you handed him your notebook like you're handing him your heart. Poe reached out for it, handling it as gently as you would a china doll.

You sighed contently and gaze at the clear sky above you as you let Poe flip through the pages of your notebook like you're letting him flip through the pages of your life. Every experience you've went through, every emotions, every secret thoughts and desires and everything that lead up to the person you are now; all of them contained in a single book.

Karl muched on the last peanut you laid out for him as Poe reached the last poem.

 Love, what a beautiful thing

It makes my heart flutter

No matter how much I mutter

I always stutter

Those simple words

It races when he’s near

And falls when he’s far

Why can’t I tell him?

Poe's concealed eyes widened and his racing heartbeat vibrated on his whole body. He knows it's an absurd thought to assume the poem is about him but somehow, he was certain that it was. He thought that perhaps it's just wishful thinking brought by his delirious affection he's been hiding from you for a time now.

"You're really promising, (Y/N)," his voice wobbled as he said your name and he cleared his throat as he tried to give you a more constructive feedback. "I can really feel the emotions on your works. Every artist has their own way of making art and you shouldn't feel insecure with how you choose to express yourself. Art isn't about pleasing other people, it's only about you. If you're confident with yourself and your work, other people will reflect that. All you have to do is to stay true to yourself. And as far as I know, you are capable of making more beautiful poems, because you're beautiful."

The distant sounds of people and animals in the busy park rang as the both of you froze on your spots, equally taken aback by Poe's compliment.

"I–I–I mean, you're a great person, that's all," Poe stammered, full of worry for his well-kept secret.

You turned your blushing face away from him and chewed on your lips. Thoughts on whether you should finally admit to him your feelings rushed through your mind. Karl, finished with his snack, climbed on your lap and looked at you as if he's conveying a message. You know that he's probably just asking if you have any more peanuts for him but at that moment, you took it as an encouragement for you to tell him about the nagging feeling inside you that occupies every corner of your mind.

"The last poem," you told Poe while looking at the ground, "I wrote it for you."

Poe once again picked up the notebook, turned it on the last entry and re-read it. He felt like he's being choked out of air as he drowned on the exuberant joy he's feeling as he realized what you meant. His head whipped at your direction, looking at your fidgeting form and felt an urge.

He moved closer to you and gently called out your name. When you turn your head to face him, he reached out and touched your cheek. His finger traced along your jawline and ended on your chin. Although his eyes are barely visible, you can see the solemnity of his gaze and your heart skipped a beat.

"I feel the same way, (Y/N)," Poe confessed as his thumb caressed your lower lip.

You were happy. You were happier than you've ever been in your entire life and yet, your eyes strained as tears threatened to fall. You smiled at Poe and slowly closed your eyes, giving him the permission his gentle touches are asking.

Poe's lips closed in on yours and the rest of the world was quiet as you return his kiss, letting your feelings unravel and tangle against each other. Everything felt right, like every puzzle piece has been put in their place and the picture is complete. You felt the satisfaction, the pleasure, the joy and the pride. You finally understood why there are so many stories, poems, songs and artworks about love. It's just one of those things that can only be truly explained through art. One thing is certain in your head now: love, it is truly such a beautiful thing.