#but considering I've never created a pattern myself before

[threepandas]

Bad End: Snake Bride

There were pudgy little yellow creatures everywhere, here. As common as squirrels, it seemed. They looked like squishy, somber, ditto-faced Pikachus...sorta? I made a note of it. Stopping to make a few sketches. Not that anyone here would ever get the reference, mind you. And they didn't have the iconic tail. More of a nubby little hamster tail?

I'd have to figure out a better description. For the bestiary. Not to mention a suitably cute name, assuming they weren't deadly, after all...

You never knew, with hidden realms like these.

Throughout my training, the other disciples and I had been beaten over the head with countless tales of "it looked cute/pretty/beautiful/holy/or otherwise harmless AND THEN TRIED TO KILL US. Do NOT make our mistakes! I will pull you from the jaws of death! Just to kill you myself!!" by our Shizun. The man could rant for hours.

He still couldn't let go that a glowing, flower patterned, butterfly tried to rip his throat out. And? Since he technically for them "first"? (As far as anyone can find.) He got to name then poor creatures.

Which is why, there exists a very beautiful species of highly deadly butterfly... called the "flying demon rat bastard spawn".

(God, I love Shizun so much. He is so, SO petty. Hilarious, vengeful, the man's the living manifestation of "target sighted". Man has beef with specific TREES for god sake. I wish I had HALF that kind of energy. Even if it DID get us banned from like... so many places.)

I tried to get a good look at the little guys mouth, seeing one yawn. Hmmm... the teeth suggest venom. Better not startle any of them... but NOT I'm gonna need to catch one to milk it. Great. They seem fast...

A knock out array? No. Need them to want to bite me, so I can get a venom sample...

Crouching, I mulled over the problem. Admiring the little creatures as the clambered up and down the strange flora of this realm. It was fascinating. Humbling, in a way. When, I considered that? No one else had DONE this before. I knew it for a fact. Every single reference to this hidden realm? Was from either the immortal who created it... or four hundred years later, the immortal who sacked the placed.

It was hard to get into, hard to find, didn't boast any supposed ten thousand year treasures or legendary beasts. Just? A humble pocket of life. Started and left to cultivate. Shift and change. Grow!

Who CARES what uses the creatures or plants have?! This place should be STUDIED! All these realms should be studied! They're amazing!!

I spot a moss I haven't collected yet and carefully take a sample. Noting it's location on the map I've started (which is a mess, I fear I definitely have no future there). Of course, as is so often the case? Finding one sample leads to another. Moss leads to "oh hey, a mushroom" to "is that bird or a leaf?" And so on and so on. I nearly forget to make camp.

(It was a bird. It just looked like leaves! Fascinating camouflage!)

Only noticing the light shifting qualities, drags me from my hyperfocus. A nasty (or, I guess, productive? For an immortal.) habit. I had lost days to it, before. Disappearing into the library or some work room, back on the peak, for time blurringly long periods of time. Inedia keeping me from hunger. Younger disciples bringing me tea.

There was a reason, after all, I never made Head Disciple. Even though I got along great with Shizun. I was about as responsible as a goldfish. Entirely too focused on my own studies, to be honest. But to be fair? Let's see YOU focus! When there is so much... I don't know, Xianxia bullshit?

(IS it Xianxia bullshit? Or is it Xuanhuan bullshit? Fuck. It's been a life time. I literally can not not remember. Let's see YOU remember the differences! After literal decades!!)

(God, I miss my books. And the internet. And TV. Honestly? I miss everything.)

Fuck! Side tracked! Again!!

Careful not to step on any of the marshmallow-y not-pikachus, I scramble to collect the last of my samples. Reach out with my Qi, to feel how the ebbs and flows around me shift. I should? Be able to sense any nearby predators. As well as posdibly find a nice qi rich spot to set up camp. Maybe meditate.

Just because I'm exploring hidden realms, doesn't mean I should grow lazy, after all! Whole point of cultivation it to ascend. God hood and all that. And, yeah, I'm still sceptical as fuck. But... count me curious. Why not try?

Oooh! That's a nice ca-! Hmmm?

Something... not-brushes against my senses. As though it should be there. I should sense something. An almost taste and nearly smell of... something? Someone? Kinda like the faintest hint of someone's cologne, lingering in the air, as you move through a crowd that isn't touching you. But... warmer. Like it's still on the skin. Not a lingering remnant from someone who passed through?

It's... weird. I can't sense anybody.

Maybe if I try harder? I pump more qi into my technique. More then is technically polite, honestly. But maybe they are farther out then I think they are? I hadn't exactly expected to be sharing space. This Realm isn't exactly BIG. Just a ring of mountains and the valleys between them. One big, lush valley. Many smaller ones.

Again, it's not a popular realm. Not to mention already looted. And not even particularly Qi rich. So meditating here would be a strange choice. But... maybe they want the relative isolation?

I still can't find them. Dispite knowing they are there. (That technique does not give false positives.) So I risk rudeness. Figure I can always apologize. Maybe they are deep in meditation or something? Pumping more qi, frankly appalling amounts, into the technique, I am damn near half blind as I walk. (For all that I can see better then anyone in this valley at the moment.)

The sensory input is cacophonous. Beautiful. Terrible. Like balancing atop a single hair thin thread. Suspended carefully, above a raging sea, made of wonderous light and churning pains. I use my foot steps to anchor me. Balanced and even. Yet... find nothing. Pull back.

Are they... hiding?

Why?

Up ahead it the qi rich cave (more an over hang, cave is generous) that I sensed. A good, defensible place to set up.

It's only as I'm setting up? That I notice the little Marsh-a-chus? (Is that a good name? I really do need to start thinking of a good name for them.) Have followed along. Crowd the trees and settle thick in various bushes. And... part of me? Wants to go "away, I made friends!" But...

The rest of me? Was drilled in horror story and horror story by my Shizun. And that's so mighty fine "unusual interest" behavior going on there. Might even go so far as to classify it as hunting behavior!

Mmmmhm! Don't like THAT! No sir! Time for some nice and cozy warding talismans! Shall we? The STRONG ones.

Under far too many beady little eyes, I slap down security talismans. Full three sixty. Against the ground, the stone, the mountain behind me. I am taking no chances. Just as I was taught.

Which... as I am settling in for the night? Dinner done and dishes drying. Sleeping mat, out and reading to go. Light and warmth talismans, positioned just where I need them? Turns out to be for the best.

Because there is something in the dark. Big. Predatory. And coming towards me.

It's not so large as to show above the trees. But that is small comfort. They are fairly large trees. And honestly? I know only too well, massive size does NOT indicate lethality. Sun turtles are mountainous after all, and THEY photosynthesize! The problem is? There wasn't supposed to be a predator that big in this realm.

Did someone fucking shove a spirit beast or monster in here!?

What? Out of sight out of mind?! No longer their problem, right!? Why kill it, when you can put it in a hidden real to LET IT GROW BIGGER! Destroy an ecosystem! MOTHER FUCK-!!!

The night is silent.

It should NOT be.

Gripping a sword I am only kinda decent at wielding, I pray to the gods, I don't have to use it. I am a spiritual cultivator! Not a martial one! This is BULLSHIT. I don't have anything on me for "unknow predatory mega-fauna" because there WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ANY! Oh, this is the LAST time I-!

Foot steps. Crushing through the underbrush.

Into the circle of light my talismans cast, fades a pale young master. Graceful and pale in the moonlight. Very... very pale in the moonlight, actually. No better in the light of my talismans. Near ghostly, in his white silks. Touches of pale gold and stark black. Curls of ink wash grey. Like a painting brought to life.

Just a touch too perfect. A touch too beautiful.

With a grace to his movements that... that is too smooth.

It's not until he all but stands in the light that I am certain. His hair. Too lovely and well kept, for it to be an accident or some sort of shaming. Those are NOT bangs. That is the entirety of it. Nothing held back, in a crown or subtle styling. No... no it is SHORT.

No Human Wears Their Hair SHORT Here.

Entering the light? His eyes reflect. Grey like blades. Like storms and death. No pretty silver things. No, it is far too deep a color. Far too dangerous. Slits, that contract with the light. Half hidden by a heavy expression, that I can not begin to interpret. I desperately try to identify the creature before. Feline? No. Lacks the savage edge. Too cool... serpentine. Snake!

"Like a panicked little mouse, honored cultivator. This one might begin to suspect you weren't happy to see me~" they...? He? Says; his voice a low, honeyed rasp. "But how can that be? When this humble servant has been hunting for so long?"

"Surely, my dear little mouse, has been anticipating this day~! Dreaming of the day when her lord would catch her?"

There is something... mean, in that tone. Vicious and victorious. The silent echo of a madman laugh, as he burns the world to ruin. Seizes and achieves all that he desires. Strangles all that he can not possess. Covetous and ugly. Dancing, dancing, dancing around the edges. Demonic, indeed.

Yet... I do not recognize this creature. This demon. He certainly recognizes me, as horrifying as that is. What past does he speak of? Hunting? What HUNTING?! I try to find something familiar, in this strange form. Unless, of course, he is simple insane? Not impossible... but...

"Ah~ my poor little mouse." The demon coos, mocking in his indulgence. His eyes still dance with laughter. Mad and unable to feast. "You don't recognize this poor servant, do you? How cruel! To be forgotten. A passing fancy, barely held, in my mouse's fickle heart."

He's laughing me. Knows I could not possibly recognize him, yet plans to punish me anyway. Somehow. Fuck! This seems genuine. But how? Why!? When would I have-!?

Then, he shifts.

Gone is the beautiful young man. In his place? Rising, rising, RISING? A behemoth of a bandy-wolf king snake. Black, white, with occasional bare traces of that pale gold on the under belly. Hundreds of thousands the times it ever should have been. But... but? There. A scar. Oh gods.

I recognize him now.

A snake got into the village I was born. Absurdly poisonous, unthinkably venomous, it should have been left alone. Gathered very, VERY carefully and taken far away from people. But... people panic. Get stupid. The adults didn't fucking listen. And over sixteen people died that didn't have too. I was sick at the sight of it. They captured the poor creature and were going to burn it alive.

For the crime of being afraid. Hungry. Getting attacked and then protecting itself.

I couldn't bear it. So... I stole it. Hid it in a cave, half way across the valley. Didn't my best to nurse the poor, injured, creature back to health. At least... I tried. The injuries were too severe. I was able to close the wounds. But sickness, blood loss...

Shit. That cave was incredibly qi rich. It's why I chose it! To make up for what I couldn't do! If he had already started cultivation and then... or just resented enough...

It was entirely possible to become a snake demon. Easily, even.

"Sss Sss Sss, ah, recognition~" the massive creature laughed "Why so fearful? Little mouse~ It's not you I want dead. Kindness for kindness, a debt for a debt. And aren't we be grown? Look how strong we've become!"

The booming, breathy cackle did not fit snake lungs. Silibant and painful. Hissing and near silent. It was more pressure in the air then anything. A madness long coming. As demons born of resentment energy tended to be. All burned villages and the screams of those who wronged them. Hatreds and obsessions made manifest.

I... I could barely breathe. Oh gods. Oh gods! What do I do? I.. I can't-!! Tears threatened to choke me. Fear, shaking my limbs and fogging my mind. W-what do I DO?! I'm scared. No. No, no, NO! Please! I'm SCARED!

"Ah~ so cute, so cute! My little mouse grew so lovely~"

Like the world sighing, as fluid and graceful as his steps, the snake became a man again. His grey tinted lips curled in a fang bearing smile. Hands up and braced against the barrier, his full weight leaning forward as he leered. He loomed. My talismans casting odd shadows across his face, giving the madness in his eyes a terrible glow.

"This husband truely did pick his trap well, didn't he? My sweet little mouse~" he purred, eyes unblinking, above a terrible smile. "My little wife has no where to run~! No where to hide! Her husband has trapped her quite cleverly, hasn't he~? Poor, poor, little mouse. Your husband is so mean!"

My heart felt like it was going to burst. Cold. T-trapped. Can't breathe! Oh gods. Is this a panic attack? I.. I think this is a panic attack! Can't think! Static. Legs, refusing to hold me. Sink. Crawling backwards. Away. G-got to get away! Trapped! TRAPPED!

I horror, I watch as he sinks his nails in to the barrier. Hands no longer resting, but digging into it. He-! He shouldn't be able to DO that! Oh gods! PLEASE gods! Tell me he's not strong enough to BREAK barrier talismans of this level! Please! PLEASE!!

"Ah~ acting this way, you make this husband want to bully you, little wife~♡ And ah, such big, fearful eyes~ Am I being mean? Is husband being cruel? Poor thing~"

CRACK.

In horror, I watch as his nail push through the barrier. Like driving stakes through stone. Cracks shooting from the holes, as he digs and digs. Hands closing around the shards he has created, ignoring the blood that spills from where it cuts into him. As the barrier itself whines and crackles in protect. Tryinging desperately to maintain its integrity. Slowly... cracking... failing...

"Let me kiss it better, hmm? No use in trying to run~"

"So be a good girl~♡ my little Mouse. Come to husband~♡"

[balkanradfem]

So I got incredibly lucky; one of the ladies I know is about to move, and she's looking to get rid of a lot of her stuff, so she called me up and asked me, if I wanted her old knitting supplies. And oh did I want her knitting supplies. I was at her place in 15 minutes, receiving a ful bag of various yarn and needles, and thanking her endlessly, which honestly had her a bit concerned for me. I got home, I snooped through everything, and I got, a LOT of supplies.

I divided the yarn based on fiber content; I have one smaller bag of cotton yarn, few little balls of wool, and a big bag of various acrylics; now this immediately had me in ethical peril, because if I make something out of acrylic yarn, and then I put it into the wash, it's going to leek microplastic all over the place, and I can't emotionally handle that. But if I made stuff that I never wash, it's possible that all the microplastic will just stay in the yarn, it's the wretched machine that makes it shed. So what I need is just horrible laundry habits, and I have that. What I really want is to learn how to make a hat, and if I end up making a wearable hat, I can just handwash it maybe? But even just the knowledge of making it is valuable to me.

So, I went back to learn how to knit; two years ago I made an unusable hat with messy yarn I found on the street, and using paintbrushes instead of needles. But I forgot how I've done that. So I pulled up a tutorial, and immediately I ran into several issues trying to make a practice sheet. I kept increasing the number of stitches I had, every row, and I didn't know how that was happening, and all the stitches on the end were loose and my little practice sheet was a mess. I imagined this happened to other people as well, so I looked up solutions – and found them, and then I was finally able to make a good looking little practice sheet! I made fabric and it looked nice!

That sheet was made using the knit stitch, and I needed to learn the purl stitch as well, something I've never tried before. And the purl stitch. Is a nightmare. I could not get my hands to memorize how to do it! Doing the purl-stitch practice sheet was a fight to the death between me and yarn. For every stitch I had to consciously think about every step, I couldn't do one smoothly, I had to wrestle with the yarn to death to make it happen. When it was over I felt like I gave my life for it and it had the nerve to look exactly like the knit sheet. They're the same stitch! But one is easy and the other is created in hell to torment me!

But okay, at least I knew how to purl, and could pull it off struggling and crying all the way trough. Time to knit.

I wanted to make a hat. I decided to use black yarn because there was a lot of it, and mentally prepared myself for the fact that I will make a very bad hat. I was going to follow all the instructions, and I had the stitches down, but it was going to still look very bad because it's my first, but I will learn a lot and I need to be cool with that. So with this mindset, I started.

Immediately I had to unravel the first row 5 different times due to multiple different mistakes with cast on (100 stitches!), and when I finally started the third row I realized that I forgot to co-join the edges to actually form a circle. This is where I had to go rogue. I knew then that if I were to unravel the hat one more time, it would never get done. I connected the edges belatedly, and then, another mistake presented itself.

See I was following a pattern, but the pattern specified a yarn size and circular needle size, but I never considered that having different weight of yarn and needle would affect my hat whatsoever. It was only on my 5th row that I realized my hat was way too big, like it would fit 2 heads, and at that point I'm like, oh I'm not starting over. I'm too deep in. I'm gonna reduce the amount of stitches now. Pattern is gone it's dead to me.

After 7th or 8th row I finally gave up on the purl stitch and decided to just end it in knit, because I was moving so slow, and at this point I am obsessed with the hat. I'm neglecting everything else in life in favour of obsessively knitting, my wrists hurt, my neck hurts, my both arms hurt, I want the hat to be done, I don't care how ugly it is. This is where I encountered another problem: the cable on the needles is too long for the hat, so it's tense and getting harder and harder to knit using it.

I am once again, fighting for my life against the tool I'm working with, I didn't understand why they made these needles like this and it kept getting worse until it got so tense that... part of the cable popped out. And I went OH.

The entire time... I could have pulled out a part of the cable and the hat would pleasantly sit on the rest of it, with the normal amount of tension. I felt like an idiot. But then how else was I supposed to learn this? Was I supposed to look up how to use circular needles before grabbing them? I looked at them once and said 'how hard can it be' and went on my merry way. But it could have been worse. I could have made the entire hat not realizing this was an option. At least it was just 10 rows of dumb behaviour.

I worked on the hat until 11:30pm the first day, and I got half of it done. I'm surprised by how good the knit stitch is looking; I expected to be worse at this. I wonder if it's because I had experience with weaving baskets from natural fibers, which taught me to keep continuous tension while doing it. I'm gonna finish this tomorrow and show you the results!

[deramin2]

I'll say this for Daggerheart:

I didn't even make it through character creation before the physicality of the game inspired me to imagine the sort of Character Sheet Contraption that I would truly love playing it with. What would feel like a customizable instrument for playing the game?

I gathered simple materials and spent yesterday taping it all onto a cut of paper grocery bag. Got through several bouts of "This is so stupid; why am I doing this?" Actually finished a physical prototype, which I've never done so fast. Spent hours today gathering even more materials and reworking a particular system. I've done a lot of it through feel, using origami measurement folds for measuring and closing my eyes to feel how it would work during play as much as how it would look. There's sheet holders with various loading configurations, card holders, many abacus-like trackers, and hard surfaces all in a thing I can fold into a binder at the end of the game with very little to set back up or put away. Like a steamer trunk where all your things are tucked into neat little compartments. The mechanical button cockpit of my dreams for flying the game.

Something like this has been lurking in my mind taking root for the quarter century I've been playing TTRPGs, but everything's been so book-and-memory oriented that it never quite fully formed.

Things I've tried before to varying success:

Papers on table with a stack of books.

Lots of tabs in the books.

Storage clipboard.

Advanced Excel auto-leveling character sheets other people designed.

Advanced Excel auto-leveling character sheet I designed.

"Character Manual" where I copy over all relevant rules from every book into a single document and create combined leveling tables and detail every single thing I took when and how I calculated every number and put it in a binder. (This is what the Daggerheart cards effectively construct for you.)

Digital toolset platforms that conceptually do what I want but are confusing and buggy to use in practice.

Back to the Character Manual version 2.0.

Counting tokens.

Rotating dice as counting tokens.

[I've considered an abacus many times but never actually committed.]

Item and spell cards in the binder.

I've considered an abacus or abacus-like tracker many times but never actually committed. I accidentally taught myself how to count on my fingers similar to an abacus as a kid based on bastardized ASL. It is significantly harder to lose count when physically holding the numbers. Plus being able to count on my fingers up to 110 or 1023 depending on number system used is very handy. Counting to 10 rapidly outgrows its usefulness.

None of them have fully worked because the games themselves have not been designed for them to really work. I've been fighting the system every time. Mostly I've come out of it feeling bad about myself and that I was too incompetent at memorization, record keeping, and character building to play.

But Daggerheart is explicitly made to accommodate poor memories, minimal math, attention/comprehension gaps, rapidly getting assistance with the rules, arranging your own physically engaging space, and creating enough generalized scaffolding to fit the system into your ideas instead of trying to fit your ideas into the system.

Looking forward to trying it out in play with my other neurodivergent and disabled friends to see how it feels in play. But just being able to intuitively imagine and feel out the physical space of play is huge. Analogue interaction that would let me do things with my eyes closed accurately and not lose my place. Even if it ends up not being my preferred system, it's already taught me how I really want to be playing.

I really hope I'll keep pushing myself to complete this contraption and have a working, repeatable pattern. I would love to make + sell something like this, and/or make a pattern and instruction zine to sell.

[juliesque04]

Radfem and gender critical in the sense that I understand that within a society that has created a concept of gender, it IS understandable to "feel like a man/woman" because we subconsciously associate certain traits/behaviors/activities with male and female, however also being reasonable enough to conclude that these vague definitions of gender are social constructs, and complying with them harms everyone because it leads to perpetuating stereotypes associated with both sexes.

I'll use myself as an example. I identified with men/'nonbinary' people for multiple years because I did not "feel like a woman," and I was raised mainly by my father (who for whatever great reason lacks any sense of conservatism and raised me identically to my brother) and have very few female relatives, so I naturally shared more in common with men. Like, literally, I was raised with the stereotypical "crying is weak" father, except he extended that policy to both his children and didn't exempt me from it because he thought I was inherently weak due to being female.

I'm assertive, i'm ambitious, I'm competitive, i'm driven, i'm very literal and down to earth, I like working with my hands and am very physical, I dislike being given princess treatment and enjoy much more giving said treatment and serving others, i'm highly independent, i often struggle with reactive aggression and am very out of tune with any other emotions, and I often get along well with men before they discover i'm female.

I've also never experienced key markers of what society deems "womanhood." I have never worn makeup in my entire life. I still don't know how to do it, nor do I have a desire to. I've never regularly shaven, only my armpits. Ive worn "boy" clothes since childhood because I like their practicality. I've known I was sapphic since I was 10, and lesbian specifically since 14, and because much of what we deem "womanhood" revolves around men, I lack that aspect of "femininity." I've never had an emotional connection with children nor particularly maternal instincts; I feel the urge to protect children physically and keep them safe, but not much else. I've never felt particularly connected to other women besides our physical bodies.

It makes sense why I thought I was born as the wrong sex; internally, I am very similar to many men and cannot relate with what society deems "womanhood" to be. So obviously I fell for the idea that I wasn't a woman. I'd make a great man in the context of what society deems to be masculine.

But this only lasted until I was, like, 15 and realized that what society considers feminine and masculine is extremely culturally specific. There was nothing inherently masculine about me. I'm only "masculine" in the context of the society I live in. There is no objective definition of masculinity or femininity; they're merely the traits a given society associates with and expects out of males and females, but they're not inherent or sex-specific.

This can also be extended to gender in general. We've come to a point where "man" and "woman" have been stripped of their literal definitions and reduced to vague and ambiguous senses of identity that are extremely specific to every person, but generally follow the pattern of sex stereotypes that exist within the given society. When you comply with these stereotypes and identify as a different sex because of your traits not aligning with what society deems feminine/masculine, you are implying that these traits are inherent to male/female people (also known as bioessentialism.) If i were to identify as a man/male because of my traits and say i was "born the wrong sex," that would imply that these traits cannot be found in female people. That's obviously a ridiculous idea since I am myself a female person who has these traits, and every transmasc is also a female person who naturally has these traits. The ideology is inherently harmful because you continue to perpetuate the idea that certain behaviors/traits are inherent to females, and others to males.

Additionally, not my main point but worth mentioning, having to separate the use of men/women from "male human" and "female human" is linguistically a pain in the ass; we no longer have words to describe male and female humans because we can no longer correlate femaleness and maleness to the words due to the idea of gender. Man and woman (literally) are like stallion and mare: they tell you absolutely nothing about the individual besides their sex.

So yes, I am a woman, but not for any reason aside from my biological sex. I do not "identify" with being a woman, it is not a personality trait nor sense of self, it is merely a descriptor of my physical body. I do not feel discomfort being female, I feel discomfort with a misogynistic society. Gender isn't real.

However, this is also the reason I am not particularly hostile towards trans people. I do not think most trans people identify as such out of malice- their actions don't exist in a vacuum. It is perfectly logical to believe you're the other sex when you have traits that society continually tells you are inherent to the other sex. But to deny physical reality is delusional.

[suddencolds]

a personal milestone 🥳 + author's note

i finally made it 😭 (there is probably another 10k sitting in my drafts, but i have always tracked word count for this project as a sum of already-published installments)

also a (somewhat long) journal entry below:

—

This has been the main project in my life for almost two years, now (I started writing on 1.26.2023). It's my first proper attempt at a novel, and it's one of my first times ever posting original work anywhere 😭

It's hard to say how I feel now, perhaps because I feel too much.

Where to go from here? I considered dropping the series entirely before I hit the milestone because I was very tired. In a way, I felt like I had said everything I wanted to say. But I think I also love this series a lot more than I can properly verbalize.

To be completely honest, writing this series was so lonely. To work for so long on something that I could not show to nearly anyone irl (not family, not close friends, not peers, not strangers I met who I talked to about art); to spend hundreds of hours on something that I could only ever post to a small subset of people... all of that was very lonely. I'm sure other creatives have felt this way too.

And at the same time, hearing what people on snzblr thought became probably the most potent source of happiness in my life (is that pathetic? Maybe so.) I don't think this project was self-sustaining at all; I think to some extent, I wrote it because I wanted to hear people tell me that they liked it. I realize this is a terrible and unsustainable reason to create art, but that's the truth.

On some level, though, I kept writing because I loved Y+V. They've been at the forefront at my life for almost two years now 😭 I spent a long time teaching myself how to write them, and a lot of the themes & choices in the series are quite personal. Embarrassingly, I still want to talk about Y+V all the time.

When I posted to ask if I could send my unfinished/unpolished WIPs, some people reached out to offer to read them... and then I never sent anything over to anyone. I think a part of me could not get it through my head that people would be willing to read something completely unpolished, because... well, frankly, a lot of my drafts are just pretty unreadable; I typically only post things that I have already cleaned up. More importantly, I felt like sending my drafts to people—even people who had given me explicit permission to send them!—was selfish and troublesome.

On some level, I also felt the same about asking others to brainstorm with me: I felt like I was asking them a favor which I did not know how to pay back. Perhaps this is just another way in which I have been cruel/uncharitable to myself, but I never imagined people enjoying receiving my drafts. I could never convince myself that for those people, giving feedback/discussing ideas might not actually be a chore. I was always scared to make writing less of a lonely process because I could only think about how easy it would be for me to ask too much.

This is probably the most honest I've been about this particular subject 😭 I am not good at gauging what constitutes 'too much.' I feel like I can get carried away when someone expresses interest, so I try to preemptively position myself as someone who does not impinge on others... I think that even outside of this series, I have defaulted to this pattern of trying to give and trying not to ask. In that particular sense, I am perhaps to blame for my own loneliness.

Anyways! Recently, I've gone back to (tentatively) writing after months of not writing. I'm not sure if I will post another installment here (maybe if the drafts are 'good enough', I will?), but it's nice to write without worrying so much that what I am writing needs to be publishable/presentable.

If you have ever left tags/comments on my work, and you are reading this, I am grateful beyond words to you for keeping me company + for making me feel like what I was spending so much time on was a little more meaningful :') I always go back to reread them when I'm in need of encouragement. Thank you sincerely for the happiness. ❤️

[cheerycherrycandy-resurrected]

What You've Done, You Cannot Undo (Medieval AU)

Epilogue

As summer fades, the ghouls settle in further. New friends and relationships blossom, and a new band performs their first ritual in the local village.

Rating: M Content: possessive behavior Words: 4812

Links to full fic: Tumblr | AO3

Not bad for a fic that was meant to be 5 chapters and about 15k words… this was supposed to be a quick little fic that I wrote before moving on to write the longer soulmates AU I’ve been planning since around March! 

As I think I've mentioned, this isn't the end! This was always supposed to be a Raindrop fic, and so Swissalps's story will be continued in a sequel. I'll be dropping the first chapter shortly, and I have a special invitation for it if anyone wants that in their ask box! message me or reply if you'd be interested?

I can't let myself get too sappy here or it'll end up longer than the chapter itself. But thank you to everyone who's been so lovely about this fic in replies or reblogs (especially looking at @everybodyshusband @cosmicseafoam @jazz-bazz @0-miles-away @papaslittlesunshine @ligovskaya @midnight-moth @karmicbias @kentuckyfriedsatan and anyone who's AO3 username I haven't correlated to a tumblr blog yet!), I wouldn't have stuck with this so long without you guys 🖤🖤

Read below, or on AO3!

The weeks passed, the summer fading further every day. With the final harvests nearly all brought in and the trees painting themselves in a hundred shades of amber and gold, autumn was finally upon the Abbey. No amount of dulling of the colours of nature could dull the passion of Rain and Dew’s relationship however, even as they found themselves slipping into a routine. For the Abbey’s fire ghouls, it was all hands on deck to help keep the grain dry, yet amidst his busy schedule Dew still found ample time to luxuriate in him and his pack’s safe and comfortable new home. Most importantly though, he thought, he had time to spend with his m– Rain.  

Dew had to stop himself for the thousandth time from thinking of Rain as his mate. To him, the rituals were practically complete. Having passed on his amulet, he had opened his heart and shared his soul. For Rain though, he knew they were only at the end of the first step of the many that comprised a water ghoul's courting ritual. They had many months left before Rain would have completed his side of the tradition; the next step being gifts that were less about being pretty, and more practical gifts for their future together. Dew had no way of knowing that Rain was already hard at work on that front; taking advice from his new pod of water ghouls on the best kinds of kelp to harvest from the lake here, and the weaving patterns that would create the softest possible blankets from it. Dew was happy to wait for Rain however; even if it took millennia, he would wait for him. 

As the weeks passed for Dew and Rain and their relationship grew both deeper and stronger, Swiss and Mountain continued to dance around each other, both backing out of making the final move at the last second. Their friendship had never been stronger, and with that came the higher pressure of what was a stake if their feelings were not reciprocated. 

Aether could see straight through their – at times – comedically oblivious behaviour. He had known Mountain for so many years now, and Swiss a great number too, that he could decipher the thoughts running through their heads just like reading a book. Seeing his pack couple off like they were doing could have made him feel lonely and jealous, he supposed. Considering his thoughts however, he couldn't find a scrap of negativity towards any of them. Really, he was just happy to see his pack happy.  

He had a fulfilling life; a pack, new friends around the Abbey. Aether had always said that he was happy alone, with no desire to settle with a mate. Admittedly, Mountain had said something similar when they first met, but Swiss seemed to have been an exception there. Over the recent weeks since Cumulus had properly introduced them, Aether had especially been enjoying getting to know Cowbell. The quiet ghoul's steady, timeless attitude felt grounding amongst the recent chaos of his life, and Aether could tell they seemed as delighted to have made a new friend as he was. 

Aether’s role in the infirmary was also going better than he could have expected. Astra had quickly seen how unnecessary any training she could offer him would be, and had set him up mentoring some of the younger quintessence ghouls. To his mild amusement, he had gained a small gaggle of quintessence ghouls who followed him around the infirmary like little ducklings, hanging on his every word and keen to lap up every scrap of knowledge he imparted. Aether found he enjoyed that side of his new role more than he had expected, and looked forward to teaching the younger ghouls each shift. 

With the Harvest Festival quickly approaching, one of the main tasks of the infirmary ghouls had been to prepare a supply of tinctures and remedies for the ghouls and siblings alike who would inevitably indulge a little too heavily in the Abbey’s famous blackberry wine. Due to his extensive knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs, Astra had delegated the task of organising this to Aether, who had grasped the extra responsibilities firmly. 

Before the festival however, came the one thing that was more exciting to the pack; Swiss, and Copia’s first musical engagement in the local tavern. Sunshine and Mountain were also heavily occupied now in rehearsals for it, the three ghouls – and one human – doing an excellent job of hiding their nerves from the rest of the pack. 

The pack was something else that had grown stronger at the Abbey, thought Aether. It hadn’t taken long for the five ghouls to begin to see the ghoulettes they lived their lives in such proximity to as more than just casual friends. Dew had clearly seen them as family long before the others had, but within the span of time they had been here the other ghouls also came to see them as an interwoven part of their lives. 

The ghoulettes, Cirrus and Cumulus in particular, had been referring to the new ghouls as pack, long before they were aware of it. The Den had become so much more crowded and noisier since they arrived, but none of the ghoulettes would change it for the world. The Abbey could feel large and lonely at times, and the constant presence of at least one member of the newly extended pack made everything feel cosier.  

Indeed, the concert – Aether still found calling it a “Ritual” to be laughable, although he would be happy to be proved wrong – was to be their first true pack adventure. The nine ghouls, plus Cowbell, Copia and several Siblings of Sin, were all planning to make the journey down the hill to support their leader’s latest passion project. Cowbell had offered to drive them in the large horse and cart usually used for their monthly grocery runs to the village, and as such the event was developing quite a party-like atmosphere. 

Even amongst the ghouls not attending, most either too busy or incapable of holding an adequate glamour, the day held excitement and novelty. There was a general buzz in the air throughout the Abbey, and it was riding this high that inspired most of the ghouls to finalise their remaining chores before the harvest festival the following day. 

One ghoul in particular who seemed to be buoyed along by the jubilant environment was a young, dark-haired fire ghoul. He was comparatively new to the Abbey, arriving some years after Dew left. Swiss was hurrying back to the Den, bringing armfuls of freshly-washed clothes from the laundry when the fire ghoul strode up to him with a self-assured, almost cocky, grin. 

“Good luck for tonight,” he purred in a low voice like treacle, reaching out a muscular arm to lay a hand on Swiss’ own bicep, “I’ll be at the festival tomorrow, if you want to get a celebratory drink together?” 

Swiss stood confused: he couldn’t remember ever speaking to this ghoul before, and certainly not in a way that would cause him to be so familiar with him. He hoisted the pile of clothes further into his arms, trying to think of a polite was to ask who he was exactly. 

“I, um…” Swiss trailed off, distracted by a low noise ringing in his ears. He shook his head slightly, trying to dislodge it but to no avail: if anything, it seemed to be getting louder. A dark and earthy scent suddenly assaulted his senses, and he wondered if he was falling ill, or if he had been cursed or something. It seemed the fire ghoul could feel it too though, as Swiss saw the colour drain from his face, rendering his tanned, olive skin an ashy grey. His terrified eyes were fixed on a point above and behind Swiss, and he stood frozen like a deer caught in a ranger's torchlight. Swiss cautiously turned around, half expecting to see some kind of nether-worldly monster oozing out of the wall. 

All he saw was Mountain however, stood tall and stony-faced with a dark aura emanating from him. The added height of his antler-like horns meant he cut an imposing figure. His lip curled into a snarl as he growled again, and a new wave of that woodsy, almost possessive scent washed over Swiss. As much as it seemed to be scaring the fire ghoul, Swiss thought it smelled divine. He smiled at Mountain with a questioning head-tilt, wondering where this strange behaviour was coming from so suddenly. The Earth ghoul’s eyes were fixed on the fire ghoul however, who managed to unfreeze for long enough to stutter out a disjointed sentence. 

“I’m sorry!” He looked like he was staring straight into the face of death himself. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry!” 

With a jerk of his head, Mountain dismissed him, sending the terrified fire ghoul scuttling down the hallway as fast as he could run, his tail between his legs. Once he was out of sight, Mountain seemed to calm down. His expression softened, and the air around him seemed lighter again.  

“What was all that about?” Swiss asked, confused by the earth ghoul’s sudden black mood, and the even more sudden departure of the unknown fire ghoul.  

Mountain muttered something Swiss didn’t catch and started relieving him of the large bundle of black clothes in his arms. Swiss trailed back to the Den beside him, still utterly confused by the interaction that had just taken place. 

“Was I meant to know who that was?” He mused aloud. “He acted so familiar, yet I can’t remember him from anywhere!” 

Mountain almost dropped the clothes, as he doubled over and snorted with laughter, previous aggressive attitude long behind him now that he had the multi ghoul to himself again. Was Swiss seriously that clueless about the fire ghoul’s unsubtle actions? Ever since he’d known him, Swiss had been taking advantage of the humans’ proclivity for flirting with him, often reciprocating if he thought it would secure him more work, or tips and favours. He couldn’t think what would have changed now to make him so oblivious, unless it was simply that it was another ghoul, rather than a human? 

“He was clearly flirting with you, Snapdragon!” Mountain guffawed in disbelief. “Could you really not tell?” 

Swiss’s quizzical expression suggested that no, he had not been aware of that. Adding to his confusion was Mountain’s reaction: he seemed to be finding the fire ghoul’s actions funny now, but what had the growling and – he realised what it was now – scenting been about? The bounce in the taller ghoul’s gait could only be described as victorious, and he chose to file all the hope about why that could be away until after their performance tonight. That wasn’t a distraction he would allow himself today, not when Copia was relying on him. 

Swiss had a suspicion however – one he kept to himself – about why he hadn’t grasped what the fire ghoul was really suggesting, and it had everything to do with the earth ghoul trotting slightly ahead of him. He was self-aware enough to know his feelings for Mountain bordered on infatuation, and he figured that now he had become used to the intensity of those feelings that he had forgotten what anything smaller felt like. The thrill of attraction, or of a newly developing crush felt so insignificant now that they were dwarfed by the magnitude of his feelings for the earth ghoul. He only had eyes for Mountain, and the thought of anyone else thinking they stood a chance in the battle for his heart was laughable to him. Hastening his steps to catch up with Mountain, Swiss fell into step with him to revel in being by his side once again. 

Reaching the Den just before they did was an excitable Dewdrop. He burst through the main door, and then into the room he shared with Rain, brandishing a dull metal object. 

“Look!” He exclaimed to a slightly startled Rain lounging in their nest. “A horseshoe!”  

Rain could see that, although what he couldn’t see was why Dew was quite so excited about such a mundane object. He smiled at him with a questioning tilt of his head and waited for Dew to elaborate. 

“The humans do something with them at weddings,” Dew explained as he joined Rain on the bed, still clutching the curved iron shape, “something about them catching luck? I thought we could hang it on our door!” 

He held it out for Rain to examine, demonstrating how it could look like a vessel for capturing luck when held in a U-shape. Rain took it from him, and it really was just a regular horseshoe: slightly rusted and worn down from use. More interesting than the horseshoe though, Rain realised that this was the first time Dew had ever brought back something to keep for himself. He let Dew chatter on about needing to find a hammer and some nails, if they should think about painting their door before or after mounting the horseshoe, and what colour Rain would like if so, would he like teal? Rain nodded along, only half his mind on the conversation. The other half was preoccupied celebrating this relatively large step for Dewdrop; this was yet more proof that he was finally starting to settle properly and relax, putting down roots for himself and Rain, finally feeling a sense of permanence. 

“I got it when I went to see Cowbell just now,” Dew elaborated, “to check if they’re all ready to drive the cart down to the village tonight. They were just reshoeing the mare we brought with us from the village, so that means this shoe played a part in getting us out of there! It really is lucky!” 

Rain melted further. It was becoming increasingly apparent that deep down Dew had the potential to be an incredibly sentimental ghoul, and he couldn't wait to see how that continued. 

“It seems to be working so far then,” Rain murmured, holding it up, “I've had nothing but luck since you came back for me.” 

With that, he leaned in to steal a kiss; both the horseshoe and all talk of home décor soon being forgotten. 

The day seemed both to drag and pass all too quickly at the same time. Before they knew it, Swiss, Mountain and Sunshine were all dressed, and carefully buffing the metal masks that were a part of their outfits one final time. Copia had decided they added a nice touch to their costumes; the shining horns hinting at their ghoulish nature without actually revealing it. The whole Den was alive with excitement and nerves, the fervour growing as the light outside began to fade. 

Walking out to the front courtyard to meet Cowbell with the cart, Swiss proudly led the way with his guitar strapped to his back. This felt familiar, and more importantly it felt right; doubly so with Mountain by his side. Cowbell was leaned against the wooden trailer, as human-looking as anyone could remember ever seeing them before. They were smiling softly, although slightly apprehensively, as the pack approached. Behind the pack followed the Siblings of Sin, who had initially been keen for an evening out but now seemed to be regretting their decision. Swiss could smell the waves of alarm pouring off them as they got closer, none of them used to interacting with the ancient ghoul who lived in the stables. 

“Good evening, dear ghoul!”  

Copia greeted Cowbell as he bustled forward and hoisted himself up next to them at the front of the cart. The rest of them would be travelling in the back, even though none of them were particularly keen to be sharing the space. They had no choice however, and the Siblings dutifully lined up behind the crush of ghouls that were piling in and jostling for space on the narrow wooden benches. Rain and Dew happily squeezed themselves into a corner, and Swiss settled himself into another; Mountain willingly joining him and shuffling closer until their thighs were pressed tight against each other. There was eventually space made for everyone and with a jolt, the cart set off. The sudden motion and continued bumping along the cobbles of the courtyard threw Mountain even closer into Swiss. Even once they were onto the smoother path into the village, he remained plastered along Swiss’ side as the countryside flew by.  

It really was a beautiful evening, Swiss though as he glanced out at the trees and fields around them. The orange sunset cast its glow over everything, making the whole world look like it was on fire. Most vibrant of all however was Mountain; his auburn hair glowing in the light like it was itself aflame. With his large horns glamoured away, the russet glow was all that served to make him appear as otherworldly as he did. Swiss thought that the whole world around them could truly be on fire, and he would be happy to sit and burn if only to stare at Mountain for a second longer.  

They continued rattling down the hill towards the village, and Swiss felt a pang of longing when he spotted Dew with his head leaning on Rain’s chest; held against his front by the water ghoul's long arms. He wished he could be so casually affectionate with mountain, but he dared not. He wouldn’t allow himself to dream that until he had first concluded the hard part – making sure they really were both on the same page. He didn’t deserve such a reward without the prior work, he thought.  

All too soon they were slowing to a stop outside a wide stone building that was emitting a narrow stream of smoke from its chimney: the village tavern. The Siblings practically fell out of the cart, their instincts screaming at them to put some distance between themselves and the ghouls. 

“Go, my Children, enjoy yourselves!” Copia laughed as they threw themselves towards the tavern door. 

The ghouls were only slightly more restrained as they clambered down and spilled into the building. Cowbell made no move to follow the others inside, instead staying next to the pair of horses, stroking one's nose. Aether paused, looking back at them. 

“You aren't coming in?” he asked, worried that the ghoul didn’t realise that they were welcome in too. Cowbell shook their head. They didn’t like crowds, especially human ones, as the noise and bustle were too much for their deeply ancient mind to handle. Despite that, the biggest thing stopping them now however was their appearance: Cowbell gestured to their feet, where Aether saw that their hooves were very much still visible. 

“My glamour’s incomplete,” they shrugged, “’m out of practice. It’s been centuries since I last used it.” 

One day, Aether thought, he would ask Cowbell just how old they really were. He suspected it was millennia. 

“Go inside with the others,” Cowbell smiled a wonky smile, “I’ll be happier listening out here anyway. Besides, I have company.” They stroked the second horse. Reluctantly, Aether followed after the rest of the rabble he called pack, throwing a final look back at Cowbell. They were muttering something in the horse’s ear while continuing to pet them. It sounded to Aether like they were speaking Infernal, a language only spoken in the pit, or so he thought. The horse didn’t seem perturbed though, and she whinnied happily at the attention. 

Inside the tavern, the atmosphere was jovial already. The large room was dimly lit, wood-panelled walls and supporting columns all stained dark with years of fire and tobacco smoke. Scattered across the panelling were a patchwork of lighter sections from recent and less-recent repairs. The only lighting came from lanterns that lined the walls and hung directly from the vaulted ceiling, as well as a small number of candles dotted on tables that lent a cosy and friendly air to the place.  

Better lit however, was the makeshift stage against the wall. It was slightly raised, simply built from a few wooden planks resting on crates, but it did the job. On the other side was the bar, its countertop polished as smooth as glass from generations of patrons leaning on it. Along its length were a line of stools with faded fabric covers, and the remaining floor space was filled with a hodgepodge of tables and chairs, scattering in increasingly private settings ranging from the centre of the room to corners almost entirely shrouded in darkness. 

Leaping lightly onto the stage, Copia looked resplendent in his robes, with his face painted black and white in the mimicry of a skull. Swiss thought he cut an imposing figure, when he wasn’t turning around to look at his ghouls with nerve-tinged excitement at least. The man stretched his arms out wide, the candlelight flickering off his bedazzled chasuble and truly making him look like the head of the dark church. 

Before long, the tables began to fill up with locals, intrigued by the talk of visiting musicians from the mysterious Abbey up at the top of the hill. Rain, Dew and the other ghouls not performing settled themselves at the table nearest the stage, Dew looking particularly excited and practically bouncing in his seat beside Rain. Swiss didn’t know what had overtaken him recently, but he seemed so much lighter and carefree now. He assumed it was Rain. The bustling crowd completely filled the tavern as the four musicians took their places on stage. Swiss caught Mountain’s eye once he was settled on the box he used as percussion. He saw the twin green flashes of his eyes behind his mask wink at him, silently wishing him luck. Swiss beamed back at him, his teeth glinting in the firelight through the bottom of his mask. With a final tune of his guitar, and another smile at Sunny, Swiss nodded to Copia and the man addressed the crowd. 

The ritual passed in a blur, and before Swiss knew it, they were leaving the stage to rapturous applause and cheers. As he stepped down onto the solid floor, Swiss had a large beer thrust into his hands by a grinning stranger. The jubilant atmosphere continued as the night wore on, the ghouls and their Papa swept up with the crowd, never finding their tankards dry. Even the ghouls who had not been performing seemed to be having fun, spending the local money Copia had given them to allow them to fit in and enjoy the night. The man himself was circling through the crowd, inviting anyone and everyone to the Abbey’s harvest festival the following night. His plan to spread their message was going better than any one of them could have imagined, and he had gained the interest of several curious village members.  

The noise and ruckus were proving too much for Aether however, and after a while of watching Dew and Swiss race each other to down their pints, he grabbed a pair of tankards and slipped out the door. Another musician had taken the stage, an accordion player, and Aether found Cowbell tapping along to the beat on the frame and iron wheels of the cart with two sticks like it was a drum kit. Aether chuckled as he approached. 

“Copia ought to make the band all wear floor-length robes, then you could join them!” 

Cowbell looked slightly sheepish at being caught, but their forked tongue slipped out as they smiled anyway. They joined Aether where he perched on some crates and accepted one of the beers gratefully. Apart from the rhythmic sound of one foot and one hoof tapping on the ground, they sat in a comfortable silence; two friends enjoying each other’s quiet, unhurried company. 

Back inside, Swiss could feel every drop of alcohol going to his head, and he thought Mountain must be feeling it too. The night was blurring together into a busy cacophony of singing, cheering and laughing. The one thing he could feel coherently was the constant, grounding pressure of Mountain’s hands on him. The earth ghoul had slunk across the tavern to join him, then barely let him go all evening, always keeping a hold of his waist or hip, or letting their shoulders press against each other. If their tails weren’t safely hidden away, Swiss had the feeling that they too would be braided together.  

In his fuzzy mental state, he wasn’t entirely sure what could have brought such behaviour on. The almost possessive twinge to it, like Mountain was trying to ward the humans off, was making his him feel even more floaty than the alcohol. Running on a high from the successful performance, Swiss couldn’t find the mental energy to really care about why Mountain was suddenly glued to him, he only cared that he was. He saw Rain and Dew similarly pressed together, and his inebriated mind let him convince himself that they could be the same, if just for tonight. 

Whoever was on stage currently seemed to know the audience well and was gradually convincing more and more of the tavern’s patrons to dance to the jig he played. The humans pressing close, swirling and stamping to the beat, swept the ghouls up in their fervour. Swiss soon found himself pressed closer to Mountain, dancing partners even without indenting to be, the pair clutching each other's arms for balance as they ebbed and flowed with the tide of the crowd. 

As the dance ended, Swiss fell against Mountain’s chest. The earth ghoul held him close while they both caught their breath and laughed at the exhilaration. For a while, they held each other and swayed to a slow dance only they could hear. Hearts beating in sync, Swiss looked up at Mountain to see him already staring down at him. His peridot eyes were at the centre of his vision, the only thing Swiss could focus on. They seemed to grow and expand to fill his field of view, and Swiss only realised that this was because they were getting closer together when the twin points of light blurred out of focus.  

Swiss’s eyes fluttered shut, and with his vision gone all his other senses heightened in response. He could feel Mountain’s breath against his face and could smell the sour note of beer in it, although he didn’t find that as off-putting as he supposed he should as he stretched up on his tiptoes to bring them closer still. Swiss felt rather than heard Mountain’s final sigh against him, before the soft yet insistent press of Mountain’s lips to his shook him like an earthquake. With all their prior hesitancy washed away by the free-flowing liquor, Swiss pressed back instinctually, throwing his arms around Mountain’s shoulders and holding on like his life depended on it.  

Time meant nothing to the pair as they ignored the general ruckus of the crowd around them, and the chorus of whoops and cheers that Dew was leading. It was like all the background noise had faded away leaving only them stood in a world of their own. Before long, although it was really several hours at this point, Copia was desperately trying to shepherd his sleepy, tipsy ghouls and the Siblings into the cart to head back to the Abbey. They had a busy day tomorrow, he reminded them, as he had promised all the villagers that their little band would be performing at the harvest festival too.  

Slowly, they all stumbled out into the brisk night where Aether and Cowbell were waiting, three sheets to the wind themselves. Swiss and Mountain had managed to make it over the threshold of the tavern without separating, but getting into the cart proved more difficult. Breathing their own air for the first time in a while, they unsteadily clambered into the trailer, cramming themselves into a corner to continue where they left off, despite the jeers from the ghouls around them. 

“Even we're not that bad!” Swiss thought he heard Dew crow from somewhere behind him. 

Eventually, they had made the short trip back up the hill and were all bumbling back into the Abbey, still drunk off free beer and good energy. Kiss broken, Swiss continued to hold Mountain's hand as he pulled them into the Den and their room. He kicked his boots off, uncaring where they landed as they tumbled into bed, still giggly and touchy but both too tired to do any more than that.  

“Today was fun.” Swiss purred sleepily, as he wriggled in Mountain's arms. The earth ghoul was almost asleep already as he hummed in affirmation. Quickly, they fell into a deep, contented sleep. They could think about what the events of tonight meant for them in the morning. 

To be continued... 

[cass-windfeild]

Star stable Creepypasta: Staring Horse

At last, my sso creepypasta is complete! Sorry it took a while, work and Halloween preparation got in the way. But, as promised, it is ready for Halloween!

As stated before, this isnt going to be anything spectacular. Ive never written anything horror related before, and while I tried to do my own thing, I was mostly inspired by creepypastas like Ben Drowned, Sonic.exe, and lot of WildCraft creepypastas Ive been listening to. Its also mostly just a very edited first draft. This was more or less a test of my skills.

As a warning, there is no gore or blood in this, however there is a description of a pretty messed up horse model that may or may not be considered body horror, as well as mentions of a possible mental break? Not 100% sure, but I want to cover my bases.

Without further adieu, enjoy.

And Happy Halloween!

I've never really been obsessed with video games.

That's not to say I don't like them, or even that I don't play them. I game quite a bit in my free time, from action packed first person shooters, to emotional story driven games, even relaxing farming and life simulators. I've always tried to be open to all kinds of games. However, the issue is I never seem to stay interested. I tend to hyperfocus on specific games for weeks, even months at a time, and then, eventually, I just put it down one day, and don't come back. I just tend to lose interest, be it in the story, the mechanics, the characters. I just get bored and move on to new things.

Except for one game.

Star Stable Online. An open world MMORPG horse game where you can create a character, buy horses of varying breeds, coat colours, and patterns, train your horses in races or a variety of other disciplines, talk with friends, join clubs, dress up your character and horses, and complete story quests to save the world and learn about the island. Everything an equine crazed individual like myself could ask for in a horse game. Out of all the games I played in my life, Star Stable was the one that seemed to have a constant grip on my psyche.

It started out as just a way to finally unleash my love of horses, an obsession that had started as a child and only increased in my late teens, without shame or judgement. But over time, it became so much more. It became my comfort. My way to cope with all trials and tribulations of everyday life. No matter how mentally straining school was, how exhausting work was, or how bad my mental state was at any given time, so long as I had wifi, my laptop, and the will to stay awake into the dead of night, I had my escape. I could let my mind wander to a world where I wasn't alone or stressed. Where there was no homework that made me feel like I was going insane, no entitled or argumentative customers, no overbearing managers. Just me and my horses exploring the island of Jorvik, saving the world from evil organisations and dark magic, and living peacefully, knowing the real world couldn't hurt us here.

At least, until recently.

In the game, there are certain areas of the game that are closed off, having both invisible and physical walls around them to prevent players from getting in. They're either areas that aren't done yet, or ones that just never ended up opening up. Not that that stopped anyone though. If there's any area people know they're not supposed to go, they're gonna do everything in their power to get there. This is usually done through knowing the layout of the land, knowing what steps to take, and, often, getting a bit creative. There's countless tutorials online of how to get into closed off areas. Some are no longer working due to patches in the game, but finding one that still works is never too difficult. On days when there are no quests or special events, and training starts to feel repetitive, I've taken to testing these glitches and seeing just how efficient they are. I've glitched into Ashland, Devils Gap, Marchengast Castle, Cape Point, the typical areas that seem of interest to players. I even started trying the techniques in other areas to see if I could glitch myself somewhere no one had seen yet, though my efforts have so far seemed to be in vain.

Late one night, I was attempting to glitch into Mystic valley, like I had before, in hopes of getting some nice photos. I jumped out of the Secret Stone Circle and fell into the purple haze as usual, when I heard a familiar whinny, followed by a black screen with the text “Your horse was badly hurt.”. Great. I must've messed something up, I figured.I waited for my screen to return, expecting I'd be transported back to my home stable and have to start the glitch all over again. But to my surprise, when it did, I was in the Mystic Valley, as though I'd successfully made the fall, only, the area was now covered in a thick fog, like when you entered the Mirror Marshes.

I suspected that it was a glitch, or maybe the area had been updated. Hoping to find something new, I rode around a bit, checking all the edges and open space of the area. But after around 15 minutes running around and bumping into invisible walls, I still found that everything seemed normal. Just the same old rolling hills, sparsely placed bushes and trees, and occasional unfinished textures. After a while, I grew bored, and just started looking for some nice photo spots instead. But as I rode past an indented area in the mountain, I saw something I hadn't before. Something white amongst the trees and shrubs that was just barely visible through the fog. A horse. A grey horse with a black mane, standing perfectly still near the base of the mountain.

I had seen plenty of unused or work in progress models hidden in supposedly unreachable areas to keep them out of sight from players, and although I'd never seen one in Mystic Valley before, that's what I suspected it was. Possibly a new NPC horse or even an unreleased breed or colour the developers had been testing. I tried to get closer to see it better, but was blocked by an invisible wall that hadn't been there the last time I visited. Of course, they had to block off the most interesting thing in the area. I tried a few times to pass the wall, but no matter the angle or area, my horse halted and reared in refusal. I was giving up hope of getting any closer, so I resorted to just taking a photo and zooming in as much as possible. I got off my horse in the slim hope that I could get a little closer for a better angle. Only, this time, the wall didn't stop me. My horse couldn't pass, but I could walk on foot as close as I wanted. It was odd, but I wasnt about to question it.

I started approaching, but the closer I got, the more I realised how odd this horse looked. It didn't look like any breed of horse in the game, or like any breed I knew of. Everything looked… wrong. Like a bunch of different horses merged into one. Its legs were thin and long like a saddlebred, but its body was thick and wide like an ardennes or Jorvik wild horse. Its neck looked like that of the friesian, but it was bent down at an odd angle, like its head was being forcefully pulled against its chest. Its long, dark mane looked twisted and tangled, like a longer version of the mustangs. But what was the most disturbing was its face. It looked like it meant to be shaped like an Arabian, but the eyes were all… wrong. They were angled far more forward than they should have been, placing them more on the front of the face than more to the sides. Not only that, but the eyes themselves looked inverted, making it appear as though there were instead two hollowed out sockets in their place. Even the shading made it seem as though that was the original intent. Everything about this horse was downright creepy. Why the hell would SSE make something like this?

I decided to take a picture and see if anyone online knew anything about this eerie horse or if they had any idea why it looked like this. I pressed the photo button, but the second I entered photo mode, the horse vanished as though it wasn't even there. Was SSO so determined to hide this thing that they even hid it from the photo mode?

Not wanting to leave without evidence of this thing, I resorted to screenshots, taking a few photos before clicking out of the game to check the folder. But when I did, what I saw made no sense. In every screenshot I took, I saw my character, the area, the fog, even my own horse in some shots… but not the NPC horse. How was that even possible? The screenshots weren't in game, they should have just captured what was on the screen. I clicked back to the game to try again, but completely froze.

The horse had moved. It's neck twisted at a harsh angle, as though it had been broken in half. Its previously hollow indents of eyes now had two small pinpricks of light at their centre, barely big enough to make out. And with those tiny dots that made up its eyes, it started.

It started at me.

Not my character.

Me.

Have you ever had someone stare at you so intensely that, even if you had your back to them, you could feel it? Like an almost primal instinct kicks in to warn you that there's danger and to prepare to defend yourself. The moment you notice, you get this split second where your body freezes up, and everything around you goes numb except for that feeling of a pair of eyes. That's what I felt when I saw that things eyes staring back into mine through my computer screen. Those hollow eyes felt as though it was staring straight through to my very soul, making my blood run cold. I wanted to move, to scream, to  do anything, but I felt frozen in place, as though that things cold, unblinking stare had me trapped. As I stared, I began to hear the faintest sound in the back of my mind. Almost like a raspy, gargled breathing. The longer it stared, the louder the sound got, slowly becoming the only thing I could hear. As though, even without moving, it was drawing closer.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I managed to snap out of my frozen state, quickly slamming my laptop shut, not even caring in the moment if it broke. The second I did, everything stopped, and I found myself gasping for air despite not even realising I had been holding my breath. My eyes flickered around the room, instinctually looking around the room for danger. After a few minutes, I managed to calm myself down a bit. My body trembled as I became drenched in a cold sweat, and questions ran through my mind faster than I could even process any kind of answer. 

What the fuck was all that? Why did it feel like that thing was actually staring at me? Like it was actually in my room?  What was that messed up breathing sound? Why was that disturbing thing in a game targeted at kids? What the hell was going on? The questions, as well as the lingering adrenaline and paranoia of what just happened, kept me up the rest of the night. My eyes cautiously scanned the darkness, as though that thing would creep around the corner at any moment, until sunlight finally poured in the windows of my room.

I went about my day in an exhausted haze, still mulling over what happened as I tried to find a logical answer. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Was it a glitched horse model? Or a new scare tactic to keep people from glitching into areas they weren't supposed to, like the old anti-pirating screens of old video games? Maybe even an early model of a new Halloween horse? But why was I so freaked out by it? It was just a pixelated horse in a video game, but when it stared at me, it felt so terrifyingly real, like it would crawl out of the screen or even like it was already in the room with me. Maybe I was just tired from staying up late so often, and I was starting to become paranoid because of it?

The more I thought it over, the more I managed to convince myself. Of course it wasn't staring at me. It was probably just a glitch. Just a bunch of pixels on a screen. It wasn't real. Hell, maybe it wasn't even as scary looking as I thought. My brain was probably just experiencing hallucinations from lack of sleep. That had to be it, right?

Besides, even if that thing was real and as scary as I thought, I wasn't going to let it stop me from playing my favourite game.

That night, after I had dinner and finished my homework, I turned on my computer (which, thankfully, was not broken from the rough treatment last night), and logged on to Star stable again. As I waited for the site to load, I couldn't help but wonder. What if it was real? What if I loaded into Mystic Valley again, and that thing was still there? What if I froze up again? I pushed the feeling away. I had already left the lights on to ease this ridiculous fear, I wasn't backing down. It was just a stupid creepy horse in a video game. It was fake. I was safe. The game opened with the familiar welcoming ring, and I was thankful to see I was back in front of my home stable, and there was no glitched NPC horse anywhere to be seen. I sighed in relief. It was all just in my mind.

I spent the next few hours training my lower level horse, completing race after race as I made my way across the map like always. I even competed in a few championships, despite being one of the only people online at that time of night. However, I couldn't shake this eerie feeling. Everything was normal, but I kept feeling as though I wasn't alone. Like there was always someone or something watching me from just out of my line of sight, and whenever I looked around, it would disappear. I tried to ignore it, telling myself it was my imagination or that I was still just anxious from everything.

At around 4 am, I had finished all the races and decided to call it a night. I called for pickup, and went to enter my stable. But after a few seconds of loading, I noticed something. There was no image of Maya walking through the stable to take care of the horses. Just a pitch black screen with no text. At first, I thought my computer had frozen, and I begrudgingly waited for the “Star Stable.EXE has stopped working” pop up. But, after a minute or so, the loading finished, and I was standing inside the stable. Only, my horse was gone. All of my horses were gone. Was my game crashing? I looked around briefly before clicking the stable button to see where my horse went. 

What I saw made my breath catch in my throat. In place of every icon that was meant to be one of my horses was instead replaced by that same, deformed face of that horse, staring back at me with those dark, soulless eyes. And where my horses names should have been, was instead my name. My real name.

How was that even possible? I never used my real name anywhere on star stable, or anywhere online for that matter. I exited the stable menu, and there it was. That mangled, horrifying thing standing in the stable aisle staring at me. I felt my body tense, but I refused to let that thing trap me again. It's not real, I told myself. It's a glitch. That's all.

I pressed the exit button to quit the game, but nothing happened. I kept pressing, but no menu appeared. I started to panic as I heard the distorted breathing begin again, and as it did, I watched in horror as the horse's jaw slowly unhinged, stretching down towards the ground, revealing a set of sharp, fang-like teeth that lined its jaw. I felt its eyes burn into me, like a predator sizing up its prey before going for its throat. This wasn't in my head. This wasn't just a glitch. Whatever this thing was, it was real, it was sentient, and it wanted me. I kept clicking every button I could think of to get the game to close, but still, nothing worked. Even when I finally had enough and slammed my laptop closed again, I could still hear those tortured breaths getting louder and louder in my head. I covered my ears and closed my eyes, begging it to stop, to just go away, but still it persisted till I couldn't even hear my own panicked heartbeat over it.

I was about to scream out of pure fear and desperation when all of a sudden, it stopped. Just as quickly as the breathing had begun, it stopped, leaving me in the silence of my room. I sat motionless for a few moments before slowly opened my eyes, tears threatening to fall as I looked frantically around the room for any sign of danger, but all I saw was my lit bedroom and my computer all but tossed off my lap, teetering near the edge of the bed.

Was it over? Was that thing gone? I sat as still as possible for the longest time, as though waiting for something, anything to happen, but still, nothing. After what felt like hours, I mustered up the courage to reach for my computer. I had to know. Just a quick peak to make sure it was off and that that thing wouldn't come for me. Slowly, I lifted the screen, just enough that I could see the light of the screen.

Nothing.

Inch by inch, I opened the laptop fully, only to be met with a black screen. A sigh escaped me as I confirmed the computer had powered itself off after being closed. So long as I didn't log on to the game, that thing couldn't possibly get me.

But as moved to close it, my eyes caught sight of my reflection in the darkness of the screen.

And I saw it.

In the reflection was that long, grey, mangled face with its dead, hollow eyes staring motionless at me from the shadows, its jaw still unhinged like a snake.

The next thing I remember was my parents rushing into my room as I screamed bloody murder, thrashing violently as I tried to get away from that thing. They practically had to restrain me to get me to finally calm down. I cried in their arms as they frantically pushed for answere to figure out what had happened. When I tried to explain, they chalked it up to a night terror brought on by stress. The more I tried to insist it was real, the more they assured me it wasn't. I only stopped insisting when they started suggesting getting me psychological help and the idea that I was having a mental breakdown. I knew no one would believe me. Even if I got proof, what could they really do about any of this anyway?

It's been months since I last played Star Stable Online. Even the thought of logging on makes me feel anxiety build up in my chest. I want so desperately to have things back to the way they were. To just log on and forget the world again. And yet, I know that I never will. That thing didn't just  traumatize me. It stole a part of me. It stole my comfort. My escape from the world. It stole that sense of peace and safety, a part of me I will never get back.

What's worse, it stole my sense of reasoning. I tried researching what I saw and asking around the community. I even emailed Star Stable Entertainment themselves, just hoping for any kind of answer, and still got nothing. I dont have an explanation for what happened or why it affected me so much. 

I can't explain why it chose me, or how it was able to do what it did. 

I can't explain why I still see it, or why it almost appears to be getting a bit closer everytime I see it in the corner of my eye. 

I can't explain why every night since, the moment I start to fall asleep, I hear those same, horrid, gasping breaths in my ears, getting louder and louder. 

And, no matter how hard I try, I can never explain why Ive started feeling a cold rush of air run down my neck in time with each breath.

[thegingerwrites]

Tag Game

Thanks for the tag @teaandjumpers!💕

A random niche pet peeve you have?

I feel like I'm pretty easy going and then I'm on the train listening to like three people on TikTok at the same time. Incredibly rude, really irritating, 0/10 please turn it off I'm begging you 🥺🙏😡 I don't think that's super niche but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The biggest animal I think I could take in a fight?

Absolutely no idea 😂 I'm kind of thinking size isn't everything? There are probably really vicious little dogs and like piranhas or something that I couldn't take in a fight. I'm not sure if that's a reflection on my fighting skills or the fact that I'm not out here trying to fight animals When I'm running in the park and a big dog gets a little too excited I do tend to square up, so we'll go with that.

What color would you paint your kitchen if you were allowed to paint it any color?

Green! Not sure if I could really carry off a full green kitchen but I love to look at them ☘️🌳💚✅🍀

Flamingo or swan?

I don't have flamingos where I live but there are plenty of pretty but mean swans, so flamingos 🦩

Childhood TV show that had a strong influence on your childhood?

Probably Kim Possible? But I was just talking to my younger sister about this. I used to get up early before school and curl up to watch cartoons by myself at like ~6-7 in the morning. So I watched the PBS cartoons like Cyberchase and Arthur but I also ended up watching some weird ones, like the one I was explaining to my sister that for a moment I was convinced I was making up. I was not making it up. Probably not my first but perhaps my most intense early introduction to Sherlock Holmes was Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century. Lestrade's ancestor brings Sherlock Holmes back to life to stop a clone of Moriarty, Watson is a robot, it's wild.

What would I wear to a costume party?

I really want an excuse to dress up kind of regency or pirate-y. I also fantasize about someday putting together an Obi-Wan cosplay. When I'm thrifting, I'm constantly on the hunt for the right pair of cherry leather boots 👢

Something creative I'm working on or thinking on?

Outside of fic, I've been posting about my crochet exploits. Once I finish that bag, I'm returning to my knitting white whale--a Welsh wig from a pattern used in The Terror. It's sort of a silly project that I wanted to try my hand at and learn new skills. I started back in January, had a crisis of faith, got a knitting lesson, and was finally cruising along until the crochet project landed in my lap. I have to return to it before it gets too warm out. I really can't do any kind of knitting or crocheting once it gets to warm out 🥵

Give a piece of advice you think people should know:

I'm still trying to sort this advice out in my own head but I've been thinking a lot about art and creativity and the idea of persistence being a huge factor in creating something great. In a lot of projects, there comes a time when all you can see are the mistakes, when you know that you are never going to create something as good as someone else, when it feels like you should cut your losses and save your breath. I think that a lot of good comes from pushing through that feeling of doubt and uncertainty. I consider myself an amateur at a lot of things (drawing, baking, painting, sewing, to name a few). When I make things with my hands, I tend to see the flaws and I've been trying to look at what I make through someone else's eyes to see the successes that outweigh the failures. Even just the fact that something exists where something didn't before is something of a miracle.

My Italian teacher in high school used to tell us "learning is uncomfortable" and I used to hate her for it. The way she said it when we were struggling always seemed like a cop-out for her failure to find a better way to help us with conjugations or something. But I have come around to the idea that she might have been at least a little bit right. I saw an article recently that talked about perseverance and students learning to write with AI, that the ability to sit with the struggle of learning to write, to push through difficulty in order to find success on the other side is being lost. While I think we have to take a step back from glorifying suffering and burn out, I do think that there is something to be said for sticking with something you know is worthwhile even when it is hard. Learning to judge for yourself what is worthwhile and what isn't and being brave enough to see the good in the results waiting for you on the other side is advice I try to keep in mind.

A few no pressure tags: @unspuncreature @samstree @darthwillies @usakostar

[dailypokemoncrochet]

hey, i saw your vent about patterns and i just wanted to tell you that i think it's totally fair for you to not want to share them after all of the work you already put into this project. i don't do crochet or anything similar myself, but i've considered trying to learn someday and i always wish that more people would understand just how long these kinds of things take and how difficult it can be. i also wanted to say that i love your blog and seeing all the different little pokemon plushies you've created!! i know if you looked at my blog it'd seem like i've never reblogged any of your posts before but that's because i like them so i can remember which ones i've already seen, and then queue them to post on a sideblog.

Thanks! Glad you like them and reblog them ^^

[tinystepsforward]

had a formal consultation w a friend (professional/editor) about mentorship/guidance as i plan my first longer-form publication so i guess now i've spoken the intention i have to fuckin do it

there's a hell of a lot of self doubt there, you know, the kind that says "you won't finish this" or "it'll never get published" or "nobody wants your work, it's too specific" and simultaneously somehow "you have nothing to say that hasn't been said before". but really all of that is about being too nervous to start something//i don't even think i'm regurgitating just the things others have said to me at this point, more inventing new ones drawn from pattern-matching with a warped ruler throughout my life as i parsed my place in the world

+ normally i don't consider myself a particularly anxious person, though with therapy i'm coming to learn that it's simply that i a) have the kind of ptsd that makes me incredible in crises but pretty fucking bad at identifying my own feelings or how much stress i carry and b) am just very good at managing my anxiety when it does become notable — but what i mean to say is that this does make me more notably anxious than usual, which is a sign that it's probably important, and something i don't want to do because it's important and i'm scared of failing. so we'll see! bc it's really about the journey and not about the... making something that makes me famous, god fucking no. historically creating has always been a process of self-discovery for me, and i feel that as i step into a new chapter of my life and a new chapter of opening more fucking cans of trauma it's time to find as-yet untrodden creative paths, and walk them, and see who i am on the other side

got a pretty loose plan for where to start scavenging my past works and thoughts + continuing my daily journal practice and seeing what turns up, and maybe adding guided prompts or weekly work-on-this sessions if i need them. still very loose but it's remarkable what paying an expert who i trust and who isn't so white they're nervous about editing my work for an hour of asking the right questions did to bring it suddenly much more into focus

[toastling]

I'm contemplating something of an experiment. Aside from Red Rocket, I have one other idea for a Pokemon game/story that's a lot less developed in my head, which I've named Shimmer. Rather than pursue it myself as *another* theoretical fangame or flesh it out alone though, I thought, what if I did something new and engage with the Pokemon community?

Here is Shimmer's premise: A sudden deluge of strangely colored Pokemon have recently appeared on the black market. While these so-called "shiny" Pokemon are nothing unheard of, the specific color palettes being described are, and there seem to be several variations for even individual species. These oddly colored Pokemon also seem to display some odd behavioral patterns, and are occurring at a rate far exceeding anything that could ever be considered to be natural. What exactly is going on to create so many oddly colored Pokemon, and who are the mysterious Team Prism that seem to be selling these odd Pokemon at inflated prices?

The way it would work is that through both AO3 comments and a dedicated tumblr blog, people can both submit prompts of their own or respond to prompts within the story and make choices to determine how the story would progress and characters would develop - within reason, of course. I'm ultimately going to choose whatever I can use to make a coherent story and character arcs, but that might not be as linear and logical as you might first assume.

Before I even begin writing and sharing the story through AO3, there would be a period of information collection through that dedicated blog where certain details will be ironed out via questions asked to my potential readers. Traits regarding major characters such as their names, interests, regional themes, Pokemon nicknames, and various other tidbits like that. Then once I've got enough starting data I'd start writing the story proper.

I've never written a fic like this before, nor have I seen one done before - emphasis on fic, of course. We all remember how Homestuck began. So this would be an experimental format for everybody I think, especially me. I normally avoid prompts like the plague since I'm very particular about only writing things I like or want to write. But! I think this might be a fun little exercise, and an interesting way to tell a Pokemon story that everyone can sort of live vicariously through, like a personalized game every player gets a say in.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, let me know in the poll above and I'll decide whether or not to really put the energy behind doing this!

[oonajaeadira]

State of the WIP Address

Okay, y'all, I've been in a really weird place where I've been avoiding...pretty much a lot of stuff. Dunno if I have to talk to my doctor about upping my meds or what, but this is why I actually went on them--my depression manifests not in laziness, but avoiding things I need to do and things I actually WANT to do. Then I don't do them and it all starts building up. And then the to do pile feels insurmountable, like I'll never get to finish all these wonderful things. So I just...freeze up and roll over. Like a fainting goat. You'd think I'd be like "yay! lookit all the things to look forward to! I have years ahead of me full of things I really want to do! I should never be bored again!" But no. Can't do them Right Now? Fainting goat. It's weirdo. We've all got our weirdo and this is mine.

I only mention it here because I do State of the WIP Address to be accountable. Now, the weird thing is, I don't actually expect anyone to read these posts--they're boring and personal and totally for my own motivation. I just know myself and know if I put something out there, I'll feel bad if I don't do it and that should motivate me to actually do it.

But here's the thing....it doesn't work anymore. I'm no longer fulling for my own snake oil. The placebo has run out. If I know it's inconsequential, then my brain tricks me into thinking that I'm accountable to no one. And, in reality, it's true that I'm actually accountable to no one so the trick doesn't work.

Anyway. Welcome to Adira's brain where she finds her own thought patterns a fascinating psychological study and the lab results are inconclusive.

So I'mma try to twist the experiment a bit. Rather than list the things I know I can't get to right this second and feel bad about it, we're gonna let promises go and do it this way. It's not interesting to anyone but me and anyone who nerds out on process. But rather than listing the things I'm not working on, I'll talk about the ones I am, how it's going, what's in my craw about it, and maybe in my ramblings I'll clear the gears to start rolling again.

This isn't interesting to anyone but me unless you really wanna see how seriously I take my fic writing. Cringe if you want. I'm just being honest with myself. My fic isn't high art, but as with anything I create, I can't half-ass it either. It's "be satisfied with it on my terms" or bust.

STATE OF THE WIPS

I have one million projects happening, but these are the pieces I'm actively thinking about and working on at the moment.

SECRET SANTA Where it's at: I'm writing for someone I think is a wonderful person and want to do right by them, so the pressure's on. But at the same time, it's not. Because I know how accepting and lovely the person is and they gave me a lot of prompts and options and like a lot of the things I do and seem to like a lot of the types of things I like to write. I also know that this doesn't have to be over-complicated, that I can write my heart and it will please both of us. While I haven't actually opened up a doc to start, I know that it's the type of thing that if I have a little uninterrupted block of time, I can just sit down and it will flow. I won't say much about it here, but I will say that while it can 100% be read as standalone, it hits on a character/series I'm currently writing and acts as a kind of prequel, a reason for loving the reader as he does. It's something that is kind of missing in the planned series and I think this would be a nice opportunity to explore it before moving forward (and maybe helping propel that series a little) while also touching on one of the characters my giftee likes, a genre they are interested in that I hadn't considered with this character, and it will have a tone I think they'll appreciate. So while it's for them and being written with their likes in mind, I thank them, because it's also a little gift for me and my yearnings. What's stopping me: Time constraints and general anxiety.

TROPE FIC: MODERN DOM!PERO Where it's at: This one got a little sloppy and I'm working on it. I've been following @max--phillips' entries about what defines certain types of kinks and while my thoughts on dom!Pero started as true dom, they swung wrong when I started working on this, and now I'm just thinking myself back to the definition of dominant. And while I may still be missing the mark, it's helping me to think more about how I want to explore and frame this dynamic. It's also giving me a little trouble in that it's not coming out chronologically which causes me to waste time jumping around and retrofitting things. What's stopping me: I put this one on hold to start prioritizing the Secret Santa piece.

TROPE FIC: SEX POLLEN!OBERYN Where it's at: This piece is flowing chronologically. It's going to be longer than I anticipated and the first draft is about 1/3 done. I already know that after the first draft I'll have to do some shaping and I think maybe I got overwhelmed with the task I set for myself and that triggered my avoidance. I know where it's going, I'm excited for it, it will flow easily if I let it, I just have to do it! What's stopping me: I put this one on hold because I got distracted by tasty Pero thoughts. I blame @perotovar for the thots, but not the stopping. That's all on me.

TROPE FIC: ALPHA!JAVI Where it's at: I'm about 1/2 done with the first draft. Again, this one will be longer (and also more angsty) than I anticipated. I love love love where it's going though and reader and Javi's history is beautiful and sad and complex; I really love that half. I'm just now switching into the modern day section of it and have to make a few decisions about how I actually want it to go. My mind is over-complicating the story and I'm trying to wrestle it down a softer path. What's stopping me: I got distracted by the Oberyn story which is why this one's on hold and now this is all Inceptioning on itself.

GOOD. THINGS. TAKE. TIME. Where it's at: The asks are all sorted, there are only a few more sessions left before chapter 4. I just have to write it. What's stopping me: Here's the thing about PATS. If I was out for notes, I'd be pounding on this series, because it's my most popular one. But... really, I'm just here to dream up stories I like to tell. I put PATS down not consciously and not because I don't love him, but I got excited by other ideas. I want to finish it because I don't like having a bunch of unfinished projects lying around, but I also don't want that to be my #1 motivator for writing him. I want to enjoy it. I did enjoy putting the latest installment out, but I also don't feel like I'm letting anyone down if I don't hurry it, just because engagement is low. Again, I'm not here for the notes, I truly love the connection and the squeeing and sharing a yearn. We're all so busy now that it's tough to get to everything and the mutual timing is a bit off. That's okay. It's planned out, it'll get done, I just have to do it when I'm feeling it.

LEAVE OFF YOUR WANDERING: WINTER Where it's at: Finished plan. Yet to begin writing. What's stopping me: I was wrestling with this one for a bit because I had two directions it could go--soft and fluffy without much meat, or weaving all the details together and serving a story that gets rather dark, a little sad, and serves as a fix it. On one hand, I felt like I would be betraying readers by not keeping the euphoric escape. But I would also feel like I built this whole backstory that needed to manifest itself in a test for Joel and Meadowlark, as well as the fact that--other than backstories--there hasn't been any canon hardship or violence displayed. It's like I'm missing a huge chunk of who Joel and Meadowlark are. In the end, that's where the story wants to go, so I'm going there. And I have to not think about what anyone else wants, just me. Not just for selfish reasons, but I know that's when I do my best. It doesn't mean there won't still be fluff and a happy ending. It just means I have to write darkness and perhaps it will serve me better to do it in the season in which it takes place.

[erinelliotc]

I hadn't written almost any fanfiction in my life until my hyperfixation on Ed, Edd and Eddy hit me hard. Before that, I had only written two: an Adventure Time fanfic, and an Ano Hana fanfic (my biggest story), and I never finished any of them.

I love writing, it's one of the things that gives me the most pleasure in life, and as an autistic person, writing allows me to communicate and express myself in a much clearer, detailed and spontaneous way than speaking. However, I'm much more into writing informative and personal texts with my thoughts, analyses and opinions on different subjects. Writing fictional stories is something I always wanted and tried but I always had a lot of difficulty. I didn't really know what or how to write, and when I did, I only wrote the beginning and didn't know how to finish. I don't consider myself a very creative and imaginative person in general...

One thing that bothers me about my stories is that they tend to be made up almost entirely of dialogue. As much as I have good writing skills (at least I was always praised at school and college for it), ironically, I don't have the habit of reading books (but I've always read a lot of random content on the internet), much less fictional stories. I believe that my lack of reading works of fiction, and the fact that I consume fictional stories almost entirely in audiovisual format (series, films, cartoons, animes...), must have influenced my writing of fictional stories to focus on dialogue.

I don't know if this is really a flaw or if it's just a particular characteristic of my writing style, but I think my fanfics are so different from others because of this. I tend to write a looot of dialogue and almost no description of what's happening, especially if I'm writing in English since it's not my first language, so I don't feel comfortable going into so much detail in a language in which I don't feel 100% confident to write pleasantly, fluidly and without making mistakes.

Now that I'm hyperfixated on Ed, Edd n Eddy, I've written so many beginnings and parts of fanfics and comics that I don't even know how many I've done so far. This hyperfixation awakens my creative side in a way I've never seen before. The stories are so spontaneous that I feel as if they wrote themselves and even that they're beyond my control. Sometimes I plan something for a story and suddenly it takes another direction, as if it were alive and the characters were deciding on their own. The ideas just come to me without me having to put in any effort and that's really amazing and unprecedented to me. I don't find it difficult to continue the stories, and on the contrary, I find it difficult to stop writing them (which is also an obstacle to finishing them).

I feel like especially in my Ed, Edd n Eddy fanfics my writing follows this pattern. I think it's because I try to make it feel like a real EEnE episode (I even like to play with fourth wall breaks in this written format, such as the characters referring to the number of lines in the story), I try to keep the vibe of what an EEnE episode would be like, so I focus a lot on the dialogue and not so much on describing the scenario and what the characters are feeling (I'm not saying that I don't make these descriptions, just that they tend to happen eventually or to be very straight to the point compared to other fanfics).

I don't know, my impression is that the dialogue in my stories is enough to understand what's happening and the characters' feelings, but I need to be careful because since I'm the one creating the story, it's obviously easy for me to imagine what's happening, and maybe that won't be so clear to other readers. But I think I also like the idea of ​​letting the reader have the freedom to imagine how things are happening themselves.

A very positive point in Ed, Edd n Eddy is that the characters, especially the 3 main ones, have such unique and distinct personalities that it's practically not necessary to identify who's speaking because it's easy to know. So that's one more reason why I don't feel the need to interrupt the dialogue in my stories, because the dialogues are fluid and hardly broken by a (Name) said.

[dollsonmain]

So, my mom got me a mini diamond painting coaster kit for Christmas (the only thing I got.....) and I'd been avoiding diamond painting because I know me, and I know that I would end up obsessing over sorting and organizing the little, plastic gems instead of doing actual projects with them.

I was considering not even opening the kit just to avoid even tempting myself with it, but also figured I should see if I would get sucked in horribly like I thought or would I be able to handle it.

The biggest problem I foresaw was ending up needing to buy and label storage containers for the gems, and the labels and containers would have to all be the same, and they'd all have to look perfectly aligned, and they'd all have to be. THE. SAME. but it would take me forever to figure out how, exactly, I wanted them just like my pony photos that I keep re-re-renaming and.......

I already had tiny zipper bags meant for beads and stuff, and I was able to find them (almost never can find them when I want them), and decanted each little un-re-closable bag of gems into a zipper bag with a bit of paper that had their number or letter on them, and that's been fine. I managed, so far, to store the gems in a simple way.

Another problem I'd foreseen was wanting all of the nice, fancy tools and stuff that people use to do their paintings.

I've been fine with the exceedingly cheap applicator pen and itty little block of wax.

I let myself overdo it in the hopes that I would lose interest BEFORE wanting to buy a bunch of stuff and I think it's working. I've done 4 out of 6 coasters yesterday and would have done all 6 but I ran out of light.

Not good, though, that I'm tempted to create my own patterns which would require purchasing sturdy paper, spray adhesive or large sheets of double-sided tape, and hunting down the right colors of gems leading to storing and labeling and.......

It's better I don't, even though it might be fun to make my own kits to sell.

I mean, it's just pixel art.

I don't know what I'll be doing with these coasters when they're done. They're still sticky all over because there are areas where there aren't gems (I know there's a setting spray but I don't want to spend money on this), and I figure if they were to get wet or hot the glue would let go and the gems fall off anyway.

-

As an aside, ye olden ADHD has proven to be an absolute bitch while trying to make these little coasters. I could be looking for every little A, for example, and as soon as I had covered the last dot and went to put the unused gems back in their bag am unable to remember which bag they go in or which letter or number I'd just been working on.

I have to make sure I remember to keep that bag separated while I'm working so I don't forget.

[timeslostart]

March 29, 2025

TRULY AN END OF AN ERA

After all this time I finally made a sweater that I like...

It started during Covid-19... I was confined to my house with my toddler, and I was sick to death of knitting baby hats.  I was bored and on Pinterest a lot and I saw a very interesting knitting trend... oversized sweaters.  Now, I'd never made anything bigger than a baby blanket at this point in my knitting journey, and I had absolutely no experience in garment construction.  So, of course, this was the perfect time for me to attempt to design a sweater.  (If you hadn't guessed already, that comment was meant to be sarcastic!)  

If you've read some of my previous posts from 2021 I do talk a bit about this sweater or at least version 1.0 of this sweater.  It turned out okay considering I had no idea what the heck I was doing but it did always bother me.  I didn't like the construction techniques I had used or the neckline or the sleeve length.  I knit-picked it apart both metaphorically and literally and I knew at some point I was going to have to take it back to the drawing board.

2025 rolled around and I've been on a redesign kick.  I've been taking all of my older knitting patterns, the ones I created when I didn't know anything about proper garment construction, and revamping them... adding a wider size range, fixing pattern errors and design errors; truly just polishing everything up and making it more professional.  So of course at the top of my list of fixes was this sweater.  My "Campfire Sweater"... my big, oversize, squishy sweater that I designed to be a knitter's first sweater project.  It is kind of fitting that this was my first sweater project and now I want to market it that way on my website.  It does make me a bit sad, though, to finally have it done.  I knitted this thing about 10 times over before I got it here.  All that's left now is to weave in my ends and it's ready to wear.

This sweater frustrated me, made me cry, made me feel like giving up and, ultimately, taught me how to persevere and challenge myself in ways I never thought I'd be challenged by knitting.  I feel accomplished and very proud that I finally brought my idea full circle.  The next step is to test knit this monster of a sweater and get this pattern up on my website at last.  It's been a four year long journey but it's been worth it even though I'm sure my past, very frustrated, self might not agree.  On to bigger and better things; new adventures in knitting are on the horizon.  What's that old proverb?... A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step... I look forward to seeing where my next steps will lead.

Gabrielle Vansteelandt - Times Lost Art

[ashtxeman]

*Slam dunks myself into ur inbox*

You got any tiger or bull hcs?

Also, are you willing to talk about ur cool au?

~ fan-mans

Ooo, a lovely ask to see, Fan-Mans! Well, lets start with the big one.. my 'cool au' (thank you!!!). Assuming you mean my interpretation of the wacky Punchout world, I can't reveal too much.. tension building and all, but I'd be delighted to share a little synopsis and drop a few important notes to build off. After a tragic event in 1998 that rocked the very core of the WVBA, things started to fall apart. Famous faces departed, shady deals were made, everything was emerging into a new dawn. With Mr Dream gaining ownership of the company from its original founders Phillip Margo and Terrence Lemming, a company named Sun Corp was intergrated into the WVBA behind the scenes, slowly replacing medical employees and other roles with their own. Sun Corp pledges to create a better world for boxing and revolutionise the sport, but they might have ulterior motives that need to be looked into.. The Sun Corp website provides a lot of information on the AU, and has a bunch of secrets to find that have some vital stuff if you haven't looked already. Looking now.. there's about 8 things to find! https://sun-corp.onepage.me/sluncekorporace If you have any other questions, maybe I'll let some info slip.. feel free to send in any more asks! And now I can get onto the purer stuff, headcanons! We'll share some Bull info first, shall we? - Bull doesn't have any personal pets, but has plenty of farm animals (and several bulls) back in Turkey that he gets along well with. - Bull has never even considered dating. As a child he wasn't interested, as an adult he's too closed off to try anything. He would need a lot of convincing to give anything a go. - Bull barely tolerates anybody.. except Soda. He finds Macho annoying, he finds Aran aggravating and he's just fine with Sandman, because he's quiet. - Bull has been involved in a cover up by the WVBA for something he did. - He's blind in one eye, he will not discuss it. - I've mentioned it before, but his actual name is Burak Binici! - Bull is admittedly terrified of being noticed. He hates large crowds, ironically, and that means he often gets overstimulated. As a coping mechanism, he hits his head to try and concentrate on that pain rather than what's going on around him.. it's not very healthy, but it does work. Whenever he goes out in public, whether it's alone or with friends, he'll usually cover up with a hoodie or a coat to make himself less noticeable. In a worse case scenario he'll even make those going out with him cover up so they don't draw any attention, like the one time he took Joe out to a restaurant and had him wear a fluffy coat the entire time until he passed out from heat exhaustion. It's definitely an issue for him, but he refuses to work on it because he refuses to talk about his issues. It just makes him frustrated.

And now some Tiger info! - Tiger owns a white tiger called Gahana. - Tiger is fine with everybody, except Don who he constantly argues with and the rest of the time just manages to tolerate. - Tiger is very interesting for scars. He has tons all over him, and it gives him a kind of tiger stripe pattern. They're a mix of accidental magic injuries (teleporting into dangerous spots, burning himself with fire, etc etc). But there's a scar along his palm that's from a blood pact he made with an old friend, who was convinced they could get some of Tiger's magic if they did one (which was completely untrue and just ruined the friendship).  - His actual name is Zeeshan Kapoor!