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chiriwritesstuff · 5 months

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Meet Me at the Farmers Market! - 7. A Clean Slate

A Farmers Market! Joel AU x Confident! Plus Sized! F! Reader

Series Masterlist

Series Summary: What does a Contractor do in his spare time? Sell his wood carvings at the Saturday Farmers Market, of course! A Grumpy x Sunshine Joel Miller series collective of one-shots.

Chapter Rating: T

Word Count: 1380

Warnings: A whole lot of swearing from our favorite teen, talks of infidelity (not by Joel), reader has PCOS and has a hard time conceiving, Joel has some thoughts about Tommy, mentions of Sunflower having a miscarriage, Sunflower's backstory is mentioned briefly, Ellie's shitty puns makes its big debut

Summary: Ellie and Joel spend some time together at the market. Joel takes a chance. This story takes place one month after the events of pt.6.

A/N: I had originally intended to bring up Joel's knowledge of Tommy's feelings towards Sunflower in another way, but thought that it fit better with this story, especially now that we have Ellie to banter with. I missed these two, and love their eventual relationship. It is building into something bigger, and I am excited about the Christmas special that I've been planning since starting this series.

There is a slight bit of angst as Ellie talks to Joel about Sunflower's past, so if the loss of a child or mentions of miscarriage is triggering to you, please skip this chapter. Thank you for reading!

Reblog Banner by @saradika-graphics

"Why do you carve critters?"

Ellie swiped an otter from the table and settled into the foldable beach chair she'd taken from Sunflower's van. She admired the small carving, tapping its head with her finger before placing it back on the table. "It's cute, but it doesn't seem like something you would make." she teased.

"What do you think I would make?"

She blinks, deep in thought. "Fuck, I don't know. Bowls or cutting boards or some boring shit."

Joel sighed, turning his head back to face her. "It was Sarah's idea; she wanted to find ways to spend more time together. She was the one who encouraged me to sell these at the market." He smiles fondly at the wooden otter Ellie had picked up. "She was really excited about them."

"Does Sarah know how to carve critters too?"

A small smile formed on the corner of Joel's mouth. "She sure does; hell, the otter is one of hers."

"That's so fucking cool," Ellie exclaims, reaching for her backpack perched on the side of her chair. She rummages through its contents, extracting a set of wired earphones and connecting them to her phone. A well-worn copy of No Pun Intended Volume Too rests on her lap. "Hey, Joel? Mind if I hit you with a serious question?"

Joel frowns. "Sure."

Sporting her most earnest expression, Ellie leans in, resting her elbows on her knees. "What did the mermaid wear to math class?"

Joel winces, his head shaking in bewilderment. "Ellie-"

"An Algae bra!" she exclaims, her body wrought with her giggling. "Get it? an ALGAE bra?"

Joel shakes his head. "No. Oh please no."

"Oh come on!" Ellie whacks him with the book, "It was funny!"

"Feel free to share these puns with Tommy, I'm sure he'll love it!"

She scoffs, placing her earphones on as she leans on the beach chair. "Tommy is actually quite fond of my shitty puns, you know."

"I'm sure he is," Joel mutters to himself. He gazes into the distance, anticipating the presence of his brother, knowing exactly where he would be. Spotting the two of you laughing, Joel notices Tommy looking at you with a hint of longing, causing him to shudder and turn away. He can't shake the discomfort of knowing that Tommy has always had a soft spot for you, even though things with his new girlfriend Maria are going well.

Ellie looks at the two of you, a smirk forming on her face. "it's weird, right?"

Joel looks away, busying himself with rearranging his critters, smiling at the passerbyers. "Whats weird?"

"The fact that your brother is madly in love with Sunflower. Don't tell me you can't see it," she gives him a knowing look, her eyes narrowing as she looks back at the two of you. "He's quite the smooth talker."

"That he is."

"...but you have nothing to worry about, you know. She's absolutely crazy about you, old man." You observe them from your stall, exchanging a wink with Joel as you silently mouth "I love you." Joel reciprocates with a wink of his own.

Ellie scoffs, rolling her eyes. "Yuck, you guys are gross."

It had been a few weeks since Anna's passing, and Ellie had made the move to Austin, settling into the guest room adjacent to Sarah's. "Make yourself at home," Joel had told her, unsure how to navigate the newness of having another kid in his space since Sarah moved into her own apartment closer to campus. Even if her presence was sudden, he had to admit that the inclusion of Ellie in both his and Sunflower's lives was interesting, to say the least. She was rough around the edges and curious, always wanting to tag along with Sunflower at the nursery and randomly popping into Joel's workshop from time to time. Joel was afraid to admit that he liked having her around, even if she had a penchant for shitty puns and riling him up about his age, not wasting a second to comment on his bad knees and calling him an old man. She was a little shit, but she was growing on him.

It was undeniably daunting, having another kid around, pestering him just as much as Sarah did when she was Ellie's age, Joel reflects. He believed his life was complete, especially with you coming into his world. He never imagined a second chance at happiness beyond Tommy and Sarah, especially at his age. Yet, your presence and radiance were something he yearned for so deeply it was almost painful. Sometimes he contemplates if Ellie is also a part of his second lease on life, something he was destined to have, despite the sorrow that brought the three of you together.

"You know, I'm happy she has you," Ellie muses. "... even if it hurt that she left Seattle, I understand why she had to, no matter how much it pissed me off."

"She had her reasons," Joel agrees, sitting on his stool. "I'm sure it was enough to want a clean slate."

"Well, if being cheated on and having a miscarriage because of it wasn't bad enough..."

Joel stalls, his face in shock. "Wait, Ellie-"

Ellie's eyes widen, her hand covering her mouth, realizing she had indeed put her foot in her mouth. "Shit Joel- I thought you knew."

"Well, no. She didn't say anything."

"Shit," Ellie whispers. Letting out a sigh, she turns to Joel with a serious expression. "Well, yeah, it happened. She was married to him for a long time. High school sweethearts. She... had a hard time getting pregnant," she chews on her lip, "...was told that the probability of getting pregnant was next to impossible, given her condition-"

"Her condition?"

"She has PCOS. Doctors blame her weight, which is FUCKED, but Sunflower is just built like that, you know? She's really healthy! This baby was her rainbow, right? She did all the right things, ate rabbit food and worked on her mental health and stuff... and then she found out that fucker was banging her sister..."

"Ellie-"

"She would've been a good mom. A great one! She's always been there for me, no matter how much I was a shitty kid with an even shittier attitude," Ellie stands beside Joel, her gaze fixed on you in the distance. "... I think that's why Mom trusted her with me, even if I have an aunt... when she knew..." Ellie looks down at her feet, her voice laced with sadness. "...maybe she thought I could fill that void in her, you know? She's a good one, you have no idea, Joel."

"I know," Joel admits, sighing deeply. "Hell if I even deserve her-"

"You don't," Ellie smirks. "No one does. But she loves you, and I know you're such a fucking simp for her..."

"What the hell is a simp?!"

"Oh, don't be such an old man! Google exsists!"

"Hey!" Joel exclaims. "You know, you can tone it down with your sarcasm and language, girlie."

She laughs, sharing a smile with Joel as she nods towards someone in the distance. "Thank you, Joel. You know, for taking me in and letting me crash at your place. You didn't have to, and I know it's probably not easy, having someone you barely know in your space and another mouth to feed-"

"Ellie, stop." Joel cuts her off. "It was the right thing to do. Besides-" he picks up a block of wood and a chisel, handing it to Ellie. "... now I have someone to help me carve these fucking critters, now that Sarah isnt home as often-"

Ellie jumps off her seat in excitement. "Fuck, really Joel? you're gonna teach me how to carve?"

Joel smiles fondly as she takes the wood and chisel out of his hands. "Sure, why not? Do you have anything else to do?"

"Fuck no! Teach me how to carve, old man! I want to carve a turtle!"

As Joel and Ellie begin to carve, you laugh to yourself as you observe them in the distance, Tommy standing beside you. "Well, if you look at that. She fits right in, no?" he asks, tsking as he shakes his head.

A small smile forms on your face.

"Yes, yes she does."

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idontknowreallywhy · 6 months

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Estera Ch 6 - Safe

(Prologue, Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5)

(Sofasurf’s Recrudescence which is the foundation for all of this)

Scott’s fled for the skies. Estera needs to find someone’s inhaler. But what happens next?

Well. Some details follow.

My usual blend of fluff and “Yikes”…

Confession - this got a teeny bit dark in the last section. If you want to stop reading at the end of the fluffy bit (you’ll know it when you see it) then there is zero judgment from me. I even make myself go “Yikes” with that one…

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The authorities had called her a cab home, the hired coach having been sent away when all the parents arrived in person to collect their children. Although she had protested at the expense - surely there was a bus route somewhere nearby - she hadn’t had the energy to argue.

Thus she sat alone in the back seat trying to collect her thoughts. They resisted collection in a way that made cat herding look like a relaxing past time. So she fidgeted, putting on her cardigan then removing it again, retying her hair, rearranging the contents of her rucksack. Which she’d already done ten minutes before. She tried to force herself to calm down and turned to look out the window, her forehead meeting the glass with a surprisingly loud clunk.

“There’s a universal charging cable under the seat, Miss, and free WiFi if you’d like to use it.”

Of course there was. Couldn’t escape it these days. She didn’t want to appear rude so she smiled, thanked him and dutifully plugged in her battered mobile.

It flickered to life and within seconds several messages popped up… from her sister, a couple of friends, her elderly neighbour, even her hairdresser - clearly today’s events had hit the news. She drafted a quick reassurance, copied it to everyone and put the device down. She felt weirdly detached. It seemed strange that everyone was freaking out about her having been stuck in a cave when that had paled into utter insignificance compared to the shock she had experienced afterwards.

How could it be possible? He couldn’t have escaped, could he? If it hadn’t been for his reaction she’d have persuaded herself she was imagining things. But his reaction had been… compelling.

She picked up the phone again and opened a browser

‘International Rescue Scott’

An overwhelming plethora of photographs and articles and, wow ok, actual fan pages sprang up.

Most of the photos were distant, or amateur and blurry but his unmistakeable blue eyes shone out at her from the official ones - profile shots for International Rescue, some charity positions and… she gulped… he was the multi-billionaire CEO of one of the biggest companies on the planet. Even she knew of Tracy Industries - they were one of the good ones. A school in one of the more difficult neighbourhoods nearby had just had a complete IT infrastructure upgrade thanks to a grant from them.

His official TI profile confirmed his Air Force background, with honourable discharge after active duty. It didn’t say where that was but she knew.

Oh, she knew.

She skimmed some of the more gushing articles. All fairly light on objective facts but weighty on opinion and that opinion was pretty much universal - he was a hero, beloved by millions, a undoubted force for good in an often cruel and selfish world.

And she’d left him to die.

She closed the browser, no longer able to bear the accusation in his eyes.

“Are you alright, Miss?”

The taxi driver was watching her in the rear view mirror.

“I’m fine. Thank you.“

She let out a breath as his eyes returned to the road ahead. But he wasn’t done:

“Long day was it?”

“Something like that.”

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For the second time in as many months Virgil vowed to chase Brains up on the speed upgrade to Two. It was absolutely pointless trying to catch up to his brother who could be halfway to anywhere by now. Thankfully, he had John and Five.

“Virgil! He’s heading back your way.”

“What?”

“One just did a U-Turn. She’s heading straight for you.”

“What do you mean “straight”?”

“A collision course. Virgil, I think you should get ready to take evasive action.”

Even at a moderate speed the two birds making any kind of head on contact…even a wing clip, meant mutually assured destruction. Was Two nimble enough to avoid that?

Scott would never risk Virgil being hurt.

But… he remembered the cold, unfamiliar look on the former fighter-pilot’s face as he’d spun to face him not ten minutes before. Was his brother in a state to know who was flying the ship chasing him down?

Virgil bit back a scream.

“Can’t EOS…?”

“No. She can’t. He’s blocked her access.”

Virgil looked down at the Atlantic far below him. Could he drop his ship safely on the surface of the water? He cut his speed.

“I’m tracking her path, I’ll tell you when to move.”

This couldn’t be happening. He tried the comm again, fighting to keep his voice calm and unthreatening:

“Scotty? Can you hear me bro? It’s me, Virgil. Please pick up? Please?”

“25 seconds, Virgil. Start reducing altitude.”

White knuckled, he tipped Two’s nose downwards and went to accelerate.

“Wait!”

“What? What???!”

“It’s ok. It’s ok, he’s adjusted course to pass on your port side. I’m… I misunderstood what… I’m sorry to have worried you.” John sounded almost light headed.

With her familiar crack-boom One shot past in a blur. Virgil flinched as her vapour trail crystallised on her sister’s windscreen for a few moments. He levelled Two off and pulled up the graphical readout of One’s tracker. Scott appeared to have done one of his signature handbrake turns and was heading back towards him at a more sedate pace… the rocket’s trajectory heading safely to the left of Two. Gleaming silver came into view alongside and Scott matched the green ship’s pace, the way he often did on journeys home from the more difficult rescues. Those times when Virgil knew his big brother needed company more than the adrenaline rush of g force and extreme speed.

The comm remained muted, but they were together. And that, until they got home at least, was all that mattered.

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The lift was broken again and Estera truly empathised with it as she dragged herself to the 5th floor. Her limbs were jelly and once she was on the right side of her front door she considered just lying down in the hall and having done with it. At which point 60 kilos of floof and enthusiasm canonballed into her and she realised with a quiet groan that she had to take him out before he destroyed everything in her apartment. Glancing down at her dusty sleeves as they contrasted with Bez’s snowy fur, she resolved to shower and change first else people would think she’d just escaped from a disaster zone.

Not so different from the state she was in when she first got here come to think of it. The darkness of the following few days in Processing crowded in on her and she didn’t have the energy to push it away. It was all too close to the surface today.

Bez licked the salt off her cheek.

With what felt like superhuman effort she dragged herself upright. At least here she had her own shower. And clean towels. Squeezing past the wall of hair she made it to the kitchen, draped her coat and bag over the back of a chair and spotted the note on the table:

Walked Niebieski. Soup in fridge. Glad you are safe.

Edith & George

She blinked back more tears. The elderly couple next door were an absolute godsend.

Ok. Shower. Soup. Stupid movie to prevent too much thought. Could maybe make some popcorn. That was a plan.

She did like a plan.

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The pool slid closed overhead and Scott allowed himself a few moments to sit back and breathe before regrouping and running through the comfortingly routine process of post-flight checks. His shoulder twinged sharply and that itchy trickling sensation reminded him that steristrips were no match for the physicality of flying a supersonic jet.

His vision lurched as her voice came back to him and he desperately focussed on grounding himself. He could hear the creaking of cooling engines, feel the harness over his shoulders, the seat beneath and around him. Wait, something else was off too. Something was pressing uncomfortably into his hip… he leaned to the side to extract the item from his baldric. A tiny Thunderbird 2 looked up from his palm, accusingly. His hand shook and the toy dropped, hitting the deck far below with a distant ping.

He stared down into the abyss.

Virgil was right. It wasn’t safe. HE wasn’t safe. If he couldn’t trust his mind to stay on track then he couldn’t be trusted. How could he keep his brothers safe from the world when he couldn’t even keep them safe from himself?

He tightened his fingers around the levers, every inch of the ship’s controls so familiar it was like an extension of his own limbs. Closer to him than his flight suit in a way. One was a part of him. IR was a part of him. Maybe the majority part. Certainly the best part.

If he couldn’t do this… then…

No. He shouldn’t think like that. He just needed more time. He flicked the switch to extend the chair and took a purposeful step down on to the gantry.

He had an apology to deliver.

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Virgil looked down at his twitching, sleeping brother and fought back the urge to bear hug him and never let go. There had been plenty of those earlier. Scott begging for forgiveness he didn’t need. Virgil and John trying to reassure him, their words seeming so powerless and both desperately hoping that holding him tight could somehow piece their hero back together.

He hadn’t expected the honesty. That was new.

Scott had looked Virgil in the eye and told him he was right. He wasn’t ready, he wasn’t safe, he wasn’t ok. Virgil had shaken his head, denying the words he’d said over and over this last week. He didn’t want to be right. It was too painful. It wasn’t fair.

But Scott had been adamant - he was grounding himself for another fortnight. He needed time to process. Something had triggered him, he acknowledged that much, but he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. He’d lowered his eyes and quietly asked if they wouldn’t mind staying with him because he didn’t want to be alone.

As if he could stop them.

And so the six of them crowded into the lounge in a nest of blankets, fluffy cushions and rogue bits of popcorn. Scott had sagged against Virgil’s shoulder and passed out not half an hour into the film. John curled on big brother’s other side, if he was asleep it was likely with one eye open. Allie and Gordon were a tangle of limbs on the floor while Kayo dozed with her head atop the pile.

They’d get through this together as they always had. As Virgil watched, Scott sighed in his sleep and his face relaxed. He was here and he was safe. Hopefully tonight the nightmares would leave him in peace.

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Estera braced her feet and shoulders against the splintering wood and bit through her lip as she tried to remain silent despite the terror of the world tilting and sliding. The rumble of aircraft engines filled her head to the point where she wondered if she could even remember any other sound. But she knew where she was. This was to be expected. It would end soon. It had to.

The unsecured packing crate slammed into something again, her head rebounding painfully off the inside and she was consumed by nausea. The tiniest sob escaped and she froze. With a click the lid was opened and blinding light flooded into her streaming eyes as she tried to focus on the figure leaning towards her. It was him! Was she saved? Was she safe?

No.

Dread filled every cell of her body. Vivid blue eyes looked down at her but they were unseeing. A dark line ran from the corner of his mouth and then red, sickly gleaming red was everywhere. His blood was everywhere and it was her fault. His body fell heavily on top of her and the lid was slammed shut and she screamed for help until her throat burned.

Nobody came.

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#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #virgil tracy #john tracy #idontknowreallywhy fanfic #Estera #Tw: ptsd #Tw: implied violence #Tw: mild horror #TB Estera

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slut4thebroken · 1 month

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Attention writers !!!

(Or anyone who uses google docs lol)

So for a while now I’ve been trying to find a new app to use because I literally have so many wips (around 160 JUST for cillian💀) and it gets overwhelming when I’m trying to look and see what I’m in the mood to write. Google drive helps organize them a little bit, but it’s not really enough imo.

So I came across an app called Obsidian. It’s a little tough to figure out honestly, but once you get the hang of it, it’s super easy. However, my little neurodivergent brain doesn’t like change lmao so I was really hesitant to switch over to that app completely because I like using Google docs for writing (Also Obsidian doesn’t have an underline option??? Lol). BUT I really really liked that you could have folders AND tags. But at the same time, you have to pay to use it across devices so I couldn’t transfer everything on my laptop from docs like I did when I tried using word. And also it did that thing where when you copy and paste from docs into somewhere else, the spacing between paragraphs gets fucked up and as I said before, I have 160+ fics… I’m not fucking going through each one and fixing the spacing😭 So I was about to just accept defeat and keep using docs, but then I literally came up with the best idea in the entire world🤭

TLDR: I don’t like google docs with how many wips I have and I needed an app with better organization than just what google drive offers. I finally found one and figured out a way to have it all organized and easy to find, but still let me write in docs (cause I don’t like change lmao)

Now I’m gonna explain how I use it lol

It has an option for “vaults.” So far I’ve made one for my cillian fics and one for all my c.ai bot stuff. I’m also gonna make one for dc stuff eventually lol but you get the idea

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In those vaults, you can have folders that the notes go in. Mine are just the characters I write for

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

So what I did was I made the note title whatever the doc was titled, added the tags, and then added the link to the original doc so when I click it, it opens it in the google docs app. (To add the link, open docs and stay on the “home page” don’t go in a specific document. Click the three dots next to the title and then click copy link and that’s it lol)

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Also when you click on “files” above all of the folders, it takes you to this

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

Clicking on “tags” shows all of the tags you’ve used and you can click on one to find a fic. So if I’m in the mood to write angst, I’ll click the angst tag and it’ll show me all of my wips that have angst

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

You can also change the appearance to light/dark mode (I made it dark so you could see the contrast of the screen shot on this post but I’m just now realizing that ppl probably have tumblr in dark mode lmao. Whatever) and change the accent color to whatever you want.

You can also rearrange the order of the toolbar (above the keyboard). So I put the ones I use the most (tag, undo, redo, etc) in the front so I don’t have to scroll. You should explore the app too because there are a lot of things you can customize.

Anyway that’s pretty much it. I really recommend this method if you’re someone who has a lot of documents. It takes a while putting the existing docs in, but after that you just have to add them as you create new ones which barely takes any time at all

#writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writer stuff #writer help #idk how to tag this post lol

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sprnklersplashes · 5 months

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time won't fly (7/?) (ao3)

I should not be left to my own devices

Exactly a week after Jason Dean’s memorial, Veronica begins her day by violently throwing up into her parents’ toilet. Which is already a crap way to start your day, but then she realises she forgot to lock the door. It creaks open, slippers shuffle on the tiles and her morning goes from bad to worse.

“That’s a little over-dramatic, Sawyer,” Heather sighs from the bathtub. “You know most kids would kill for a mom to check on them like this.”

Veronica lifts her head just slightly, enough to look in Heather’s direction and glare at her through her tangled hair. Had her mom not come in two seconds ago, she could’ve added something else to it.

“Oh, Ronnie,” her mom sighs, oblivious to Heather’s presence. Although the puking has-for now-finished, Veronica keeps her head down. She tightens her grip and stares at a little crack on one of the bathroom tiles. “You’re still not over that stomach bug are you?”

“I’m fine,” she mumbles. She wipes her mouth with her hand before flushing the toilet and pulling herself to her feet. Her legs are unsteady beneath her; matchsticks that could crack at the slightest push.

As she stands, the colours of the room build and swirl and blend together. They push themselves against her eyeballs, demanding entry, before again muting and settling back on their normal palette. The ringing in her ears copies them; rises up and up and then winds down, fades out like a song on the radio. Inside her mouth, the aftertaste of her vomit lingers, heavy and horrible, dripping down the inside of her cheeks.

“I might make an appointment for you with the doctor,” her mom says. “Just to make sure its nothing serious.” Veronica nods briefly and then staggers over to the sink. There, she slurps some water and rinses it around her mouth. “When did it start again? After the pep rally?”

She spits.

“Sometime around then.” She rinses once again, then smooths her hair and heads for the door. “I have to go. I’m going to be late.”

Not to her surprise but definitely to her annoyance, her mother follows her.

“Maybe you should take a day off,” her mom says. She comes into her room but keeps a generous distance, as if she’s contagious. Or at risk of exploding.

“I’m fine.” She grabs her bookbag and jacket from her bed. A cough prickles in her throat, but knowing how it would look to her mother, she forces herself to ignore it.

“You’ve thrown up every day this week.”

“And once I get to school, it’s stopped,” she sighs. It’s not entirely true, of course, but it’s close enough. In the grand scheme of things, she’s lied about worse things. “I’ll be fine.”

“Ronnie.” Her mom is standing in the doorway, as formidable as she can be wearing a floral blouse and white slippers. Veronica tightens her grip on her bookbag and wonders if she is really about to stare down her own mother. Her mom, who up until a few weeks ago was bringing celery sticks and hummus up to her room and rearranged her closet while she was at school. Who knew nothing about her life then and knows even less now.

She buttons up her jacket.

“Mom, I’m going.”

“What do you think will happen to you if you miss one day of school?” she asks. Without warning, she steps into Veroncia’s room and cups her cheek. Her palm is cold, and her touch reaches past her skin and squeezes her heart. Veronica tries to hide it, but the shudder passes through her, wrecking her like a tree blown about by the wind. The grip tightens on her chest, her heart beats wildly. Little by little, the world around her begins to lose focus.

Eyes wide, her mom pulls her hand away. Silence hangs in the air between them, uncertain, accusing. An apology sticks in Veronica’s throat. It should take such little effort to put it into the world. But it won’t move.

“I’m going,” she says instead. “I know you don’t want me to, but I’m going.” Then she brushes past her mom and is running down the stairs.

‘What do you think will happen?’ The question lingers and although she could never say it, she has answers. If she doesn’t show up today, Martha will eat lunch alone, circled by vultures who are desperate for afternoon entertainment. Duke will barricade herself in a bathroom stall and force up last night’s dinner. Mcnamara will smile and bat her eyes while hiding a pill bottle in her pocket. And those are the best case scenarios. She needs to be there. Even if its just to hold those three up, she needs to be there.

As for her? She already knows what she’d do if left to her own devices. Early this morning, she sat with her back to the closet door and re-read her diary, from September 1st to last week and back again, searching for something that would make the last few months make sense. Over and over, her bloodshot eyes read those pages until she forgot how to breathe and she once again felt the noose around her neck. Faded pink claw marks linger on her thighs from last night, and if she stays home today, they’ll end up bigger, deeper.

So yes; she’s going. Because it’s a shitty option but loking at what she’s got, its the best thing for everyone.

“I’m still making you that Doctor’s appointment,” her mom calls after her. Veronica jumps down from the stairs. Heather is already waiting for her at the bottom, her lip curled and her blue eyes raised up to the landing. Veronica keeps her face blank; her teeth grind until pain flashes through her jaw. If Heather picks up on it, she doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking expectantly in her mom’s direction, as though she’s a director waiting for the line that will end the scene.

“Thank you,” Veronica calls up. She raises her eyebrows at Heather, a silent ‘happy now’ thrown her way. Before Heather can react any further, Veronica runs out the door and into the bleak November morning.

Did she mean that sincerely? Probably not. Does she feel like crap about that? Absolutely. But her mom will take it as such, and that is all that should matter.

**********

The Doctor’s appointment is on Saturday morning. Her mom told her about it once she got back from school that day. Veronica guesses it had slipped her mind because when her mom opens her curtains at 8:00am, her first words are “Mom what the hell?”. Which is responded to with a chiding “language young lady” before she reminds her the appointment is today. And seemingly to make up for Veronica’s slip of mind, her mom talks about tsaid appointment the whole way there.

“And I was so surprised at how easily we were able to get booked in,” she tells her in the car. “Especially so last minute. Heck, remember when I had that chest infection last winter? I couldn’t get anyone to see me for days.”

Veronica nods and nods, adds “mm-hms” when appropriate and doesn;t mention that it was, at best, a mild cold. Outside, the sky is blanketed by dense, dark clouds, promising rain soon. Stray trash blows around the sidewalk. Her breath fogs up the window, white across grey, until the world beyond is more like a kaleidoscope of dull colours than an actual place.

It’s kind of comforting.

“You feeling okay, Ronnie?” her mom asks. Veronica stiffens, takes a deep breath, pulls her sweater tighter around her. According to the dashboard, her mom has had the heating on the entire time. She is yet to feel anything.

“M’fine,” she mumbles. The lie is potent on her tongue, her lips clumsy when they say it. She settles herself in the seat and forces herself to look ahead. In her periphery, she can see her mom glancing at her.

“Oh honey,” she sighs. “I told you you should’ve stayed off school.”

“I’m fine at school.”

“You’d be more fine if you took a day off. Just look at how pale you are.” The car slows as they come to a red light. “Look hon, I know senior year is a big year for you and you’ve been waiting for this year since you were a kid. But you need to take care of yourself too.”

The first part catches her off-guard. Had she really waited since she was a kid for senior year? Right now, it feels close to impossible to remember anything before JD, when her life turned into a series of near-misses, close calls, unwavering passion and now, this gruelling day-to-day survival. If she looks back, she feels something, a small whisper of excitement, brushing against her fingers like smoke. Maybe she was excited for her senior year at some point, back when she thought high school was where everything would make sense. And then she was 14 and she grew up.

God, if that kid could see how her senior year had turned out, what the hello would she do? What would she tell her? Probably to run away while she’s still able to. Get as far away from the upcoming damage as possible.

None of that, however, is what her mom needs to hear right now, so she folds her arms and digs her nails into her upper arm.

“I’m fine,” she says again. They’re quiet for the rest of the journey.

******

“I’ll wait out here for you, hon,” her mom says. “Suppose you don’t need your mom coming into the Doctor’s office with you.” Veronica nods in response, seeing nothing untrue in what she said. Then a second passes, and she sees the expectant look on her mom’s face. Behind her, Heather pokes her back, blonde curls bouncing as she nods towards her mom.

“Are you sure you won’t be bored?”

“Oh no,” she replies with a shake of her head. “They’ve got a stack of nice looking magazines over there. Think I’ll have a nice little catch up with the Bratt Pack.”

“How very,” she mumbles, and then the grey-haired secretary points her down the hall and to the left, to the office of Doctor Holly Mason, who opens the door with a bright smile and red-rimmed glasses hanging around her neck.

“Hi, you must be Veronica,” she greets as she lets her in. The office is simple enough-a small room with pale blue walls, equal parts decorated by cliche posters and diagrams of the human body. Holly pats the chair beside the desk. “Take a seat here and we’ll see what’s wrong.”

Entering behind her, Heather jumps up on the table and huffs a laugh.

“Not unless you’re a psychiatrist, babe.”

And in spite of everything weighing her down, a giggle bursts from Veronica’s throat. Because… well, shit, that was a poor choice of words on Doctor Mason’s part.

Of course, Dr Mason doesn’t get the joke. She eyes her with caution, concern creasing her face, and Veronica clears her throat.

“Sorry.”

“Let’s get started then,” she says. “So, your mother tells me that you’d been nauseous most mornings?” She nods. “And how long has that been going on?”

“A week… ish.” She shrugs. JD’s memorial was a week ago on Tuesday. She’d marked that day on her calendar. “About a week.”

“I see. And your mother says you’d come home injured after a pep rally the Friday before, is that correct?”

“Well, Mommy dearest didn’t hold back, did she?” Heather asks. She’d since strolled around the room and stood behind the doctor, frowning disapprovingly. “Hm. Shame. She could be hot. Anyway.” She lifts her head. Veronica finds Heather’s blue eyes blazing at her, twin daggers flashing. “Go on Sawyer. Tell the lovely Doctor lady how you got hurt.”

Goosebumps rise on Veronica’s arms. She breathes in, then again. Straightens her back. Images flash before her like projector film; the boiler room, the bomb, JD slamming her to the ground. His body, so much smaller than it used to be, int he middle of the football field. The sky looming above her when she was thrown backwards.

“Veronica?”

“There was a gas explosion at the school.” She bites her tongue. Breathe, she tells herself. “I um, I got caught in it. I hurt my ankle, mainly. And my ribs. Sort of.”

“I see,” she says softly. “And how is the pain now?”

“Fine.” Just as she says it, a series of painful flashes flare along her ribs, one after the other. She swallows. “It’s fine.”

“Maybe we’ll get you an x-ray to make sure,” she suggests. “Now, here are the awkward questions I’m afraid.” She chuckled. “Are you sexually active?”

Behind her, Heather gasps and guffaws and laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the whole entire world. She cackles and cackles, until she falls to her knees and her perfect skin is a bright red.

“Oh my God!” she screams. “Oh my fucking God!” She wraps her hands around her middle. “Who’d have thought! Who could’ve guessed that you…” The sentence breaks off into peals of laughter and she is on her back, hand pressed to her mouth, feet drumming on the floor.

“Veronica? If the question is too uncomfortable-”

“No,” she interrupts. Heather squeals again. “I mean it, it is but it’s not… Yes I’ve had sex. With my boyfriend.”

Her first instinct is to thank God her mom is not in the room.

Then she hears what she’s said. That JD was her boyfriend. It’s the first time she’s said it, she realises, but what else would she have called him? He was the boy who made butterflies take off in her belly, the boy whose shoulder was her headrest after a long day, whose arms felt like safety and whose lips felt like home. It almost feels too weak a word, but its the closest thing she has. Regardless, a puzzling cry of false, false, false echoes in her brain.

Eventually, she realises.

“My... my ex-boyfriend.”

Heather pauses her laughing and looks at her. The Doctor nods and notes it on the chart.

“And did you and your boyfriend use protection?”

“Protection?” she repeats. She shakes her head, flexes her fingers. “I was-uh-I am on the pill.”

“And your ex?” she asks. “Did he used a condom?”

“Yeah tell us,” Heather says from the floor. “Did the desperado put his gun in a holster?”

“Oh my fucking God!” she exclaims, cheeks red. “No he did not use a condom!”

And its only when she buries her fingers in her hair and pulls that she realises her mistake. Apparently, the pain makes her think clearly. Her feet are flat against a tiled floor and there’s a buzzing coming from the light and she doesn’t see Heather or anyone else, just Dr Mason who is in real time trying to process the fact that this teenage girl just screamed at her in her office because she tried to do her damn job.

Holy crap. Is she ever going to stop?

The red in her cheeks fades away.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. She tries to breathe, but her chest feels stuffed with cotton. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she reassures her. “So. Your ex didn’t use protection?”

“No,” she whispers. “He didn’t.” Dr Mason only nods. Her eyes flick to the door behind her, then to the chart, then to Veronica. Now, with her attention finally wher eit should be, Veronica sees her square her shoulders. Bracing herself. In case Veronica loses it again.

For fuck’s sake she tells herself. Keep. It. Together. Daringly, she glances behind. Heather is gone. She can take this. Whatever it is.

“Veronica?” she begins delicately. “Is there any chance that you could be pregnant?”

Except that.

“Pregnant?” she repeats. “No. No I’m on the pill. And we never… did anything like that.” Liar. She shakes her head again. Her heart grows faster. “No I’m not pregnant.”

“I understand why you feel that is the case,” she explains. “But it can only take one moment. And what you’ve said, nausea in the morning. It sounds like a possibility.”

“I was on the pill,” she says again, and then she flinches. Was. No, is. Right? She took it every morning. This morning? The one before? The one before the party, definitely.

But-

Then she woke up at JD’s place.

Then Heather died.

Then-

Desperately, Veronica searches for the image of her opening the dresser drawer, tries to conjure the oh-so mundane action of grabbing the sleeve, get a pill out, get water, down it. One move at a time.

Surely, she had to have done it. But she can’t remember.

And as for her and JD. That night after the party wasn’t the only time-

“I’m on the pill,” she says again.

“Well, do you remember roughly the date of your last period?” she asks. Something washes over her, something cold, dragging her down. Its November. November started two, three weeks ago. It happened, of course it happened, it was-no, who remembers the exact date of their period? It happened though. It happened.

Her fingers curl around the chair. Threads inside her come loose.

“I can’t be pregnant,” she says again. It’s hollow. “I’m not pregnant.”

“I understand this is a distressing idea,” the doctor tells her. Veronica heard it and she nods, but she wants to scream because no, you don’t understand, because she is not pregnant with Jason Dean’s baby. “We can do a quick test to rule it out. To make sure.”

Her first instinct is to tell her no, to jump from this chair, get to the car and just drive. Maybe flatten the hospital on her way out.

Instead, she just nods.

Dr Mason explains the process bit by bit, a strange mix of clinical and comforting. Veronica nods and nods and answers when she needs to. She drinks a juice cup. Dr Mason leads her to a little bathroom and waits while she pees in a cup. She hands it back to Dr Mason, is led back to the office.

Through it all, Veronica doesn’t feel a thing. Once she agreed to this, she stepped outside her body and stands as a ghostly observer, a spectator who watches another girl’s fucked up life. Not with amusement or horror, but with a detached curiosity.

“Right,” Dr Mason says. “Now, I’ll just get my colleague to run a quick test on this. In the meantime, do you want your mother in here?”

“Absolutely not,” she hears herself say. This time, there’s no follow up; she doesn’t apologise, Dr Mason doesn’t respond. Instead, she opens a little cupboard and hands her a cookie.

“I’ll go and give this to my colleague,” she says again. “And tell your mother that we’re doing a test and we’ll be done soon. Okay?” She smiles. Her voice is higher, her tone more suited to a preschool teacher than a doctor. “I’ll leave the door open. I won’t be long. Will you be okay?”

She forces herself to nod. Doctor Mason smiles and tells her to eat and then she’s gone, urine in hand, door open, the black-and-white tiles of the hallway sitting before her.

Slowly Veronica can feel the clothes over her skin. She pulls apart the cookie in her hand.

“Well,” Heather sighs. She’s back on the floor, probably gathering all kinds of dirt on her robe. “Preggo huh?”

“I’m not.”

“Something about rivers in Egypt,” Heather sighs. With impeccable grace, she rises from the floor and shakes out her glossy hair. Not a strand is out of place. “Have you thought about what happens if you are though?”

She swallows. An answer appears in her mind, but she pushes it away in a second. Because she won’t do that to her friends, to Martha, to her parents. And because she promised JD she’d stick around.

So Heather doesn’t get an answer. The best she can do is shake her head.

“Shame,” Heather tuts. “You’re smart, Sawyer. Or, you were. Can’t believe you didn’t plan for something like this.”

“Did you ever?” she asks. Goosebumps rise on her arms. Her hands sit limp in her lap. “When you were… like, with Kurt and Ram? Or…” She pulls at her sleeves. “Anyone?”

Heather laughs, a short, bitter-sounding thing.

“Did I never tell you?” she replies dryly. And its that moment, with her knees pulled to her chest and her chin resting atop them, that the Demon Queen of High School looks… well. 17. Like a 17 year old who should be off screwing the entire football team and making sure they have condoms.

Neither of them should be here. Heather has stuff she wanted to do and Veronica should’ve done anything else.

“Don’t fall apart now, Sawyer,” Heather says. She nods at the door. “We’ve got company.”

Veronica looks up and Dr Mason is coming back into the room, a piece of paper held carefully in her hand. She sits up straighter, tightens her shoulders and her jaw and her back, as if screws are wedged in her joints and forcing her to stay together. Her heart stops and starts and stops again. The cookie lies in crumbs on her lap.

God, how long has it been?

“Veronica,” she begins. “We have your results.”

If she’s expecting a reply, she doesn’t get one. From head to toe, her body trembles with the effort from staying in this chair. She thinks she should pray, beg the universe to stop this. She doesn’t.

“Veronica… you're pregnant.”

Silence.

All at once, the air is sucked from the room. The colour goes next, then the warmth. Dr Mason is saying something to her; her lips move but the sound can’t travel and its just meaningless movements. Her rigid joints come loose and float from each other. Her mind is gone too. The Doctor is speaking to a collection of scattered parts, not a person.

Weakly, Veronica presses her hand to her abdomen.

She’s pregnant. With his baby.

Someon speaks beside her.

“Well.” It’s not Heather. Its low, smooth, the unplacable accent curls around the words. “Quelle surprise indeed.”

No. No.

She turns her head. Just a fraction.

Jason Dean is at her side, a grin cutting wickedly across his face, dimples indenting in his cheeks, dark curls falling in front of his face. His eyes glitter.

Veronica stands.

“Maybe I should’ve worn a condom, Ronnie,” he shrugs. “My bad.” He doesn’t look sorry at all. He looks so fucking glad.

“Veronica?” the doctor asks.

She finds her voice then. It starts as feeble moan, quietly emerging from the back of her throat.

Then, she opens her mouth and starts screaming.

#heathers the musical #heathers musical fanfic #heathers fic #jdronica #veronica sawyer #jason dean #heathers #fic: time won't fly

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bedlamsbard · 4 months

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500 words written today and I think? I finally? finished the flashforward? which means I can rearrange the chapter(s) tomorrow? -- well, I started doing it now but that's a quick copy-and-paste job and I don't know if where I broke tonight is where I actually want to break. (reminder: I am splitting one chapter into two for length and pacing reasons.) Plus I need to do edits, but that's just edits and not writing any new scenes. Some of them might be substantial edits, but not too bad, I think. /she says hopefully.

Weird day in general today; staying indoors because we had weather in the teens with a much lower wind chill, which, like, I am from the PNW, so I have had worse, but I'll take an excuse to not go out, you know? Watched The Marvels, made a giant batch of gumbo (I feel like I can never get it right anymore and I don't know what happened), did some reading for class prep and dissertation even though I generally try not to do work at least one weekend day. (Tomorrow won't fly, I teach on Monday.)

Snippet from Of Home Near chapter 13.

“Can we –” Stark waved an arm at the holograms. “This is ruining the mood, I’m depressed enough already.” “This is ruining the mood?” Rocket muttered as Banner leaned over the table. “Also, what mood?” The holograms flickered out of sight as Banner found the controls. It left all of them staring at each other, the room suddenly much smaller without the ghosts the holograms promised. Bucky pressed his palms together, then his thumbs to his forehead, trying to stave off both what had the grim beginnings of a headache and the feeling of being suddenly vulnerable. It wasn’t as though he wanted or needed the reminder of what they had all lost in Wakanda, but their sudden absence left him feeling vulnerable and exposed. “I realize I’m new here,” Danvers said slowly, “but that’s not supposed to be there, is it?” Bucky looked up. There was a quarter-sized circle of glittering green energy hanging in the air, probably originally concealed by the flickering holograms. Bucky slid down from the edge of the table he had been perched on, wary and figuring that of all the people in the room, he was probably one of the most likely to survive it if it turned out to be inimical in any way. “Yeah, that’s not supposed to be here,” Rhodes agreed.

#daily fic snippet #iw time travel concept

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insertcoolermonikerhere · 7 months

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Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom theory about the secret stones and the elemental dragons in Breath of the Wild that I'm entirely unsure if anyone else has already said

Spoilers ahead for Tears of the Kingdom. I'm not yet sure what exactly for, but I've played through everything but the final boss fight.

Not putting this under a read more because I know I find it annoying as all hell to have to click away to a different page, just keep scrolling to avoid spoilers. Sorry.

so anyway we know there are only meant to seven secret stones (zelda's is a copy of rauru's from the distant past so there's a point in time where there are eight (during zelda's stint as the sage of time in the distant past) and a point where there are only six (during the game play of totk)

seven is a weird number to have, if only because the only significance I can attach to it is the fact that in botw there were seven settlements across hyrule prior to the side quest for tarrey town (kakariko village, hateno village, lurelin village, rito village, goron city, zora's domain, gerudo town), and I haven't come across anything that describes the number as sacred to either the zonai or the hylians (if anything, it would make sense for the hylian's sacred number to be three [triforce, the three goddesses, and it botw and totk the three elemental dragons]).

plus, draconification is a known thing, which is odd because it's at least a partially documented phenomenon hasn't faded into mythos, which means either a) a single entity was dracinfied with recent memory, or b) (and what I think to be more likely) multiple people have been draconified.

PLUS even PRIOR to totk (and zelda's subsequent time travel + rearrangement of hyrule [the depths, the sky islands, both things I believe have been sealed over and brought down to earth respectively in the timeline BEFORE zelda messed with it and were purposefully left accessible because she mentioned it would be useful for Link to have access to these things in the future in the timeline she altered), we had three (again, maybe a sacred number) elemental dragons VERY clearly named after or in inspiration of the goddesses of the triforce (farore to farosh, nayru to naydra, din to dinraal).

THEREFORE it isn't a massive leap to assume there were originally ten secret stones and three were consumed, turning three PEOPLE into three DRAGONS.

my theory is that the three elemental dragons used to be three high priestesses or priests to the three goddesses of the triforce.

presumably, each had a secret stone either as an acknowledgement of their rank to amplify their potential abilities (lightning, frost, fire) for rituals. i think it would make the most sense for them to have the abilities to being with, but not necessarily for said abilities to be associated with each goddess or dragon until later.

maybe they swallowed the stones as a ritual, and didn't know what would happen, or maybe they DID and the goal was some kind of martyrdom.

the high priest/ess thing also explains the names; they could be titles or maybe they had the names changed once they rose to rank.

either way, these three hypothetical priest/esses to the the three goddesses of the triforce eat the secret stones and become the three dragons we see in botw and totk.

which would MEAN that originally, there were TEN secret stones. the only issue with this theory is that the chamber behind the great goddess statue in the forgotten temple only has slots for seven stones, but it's possible the draconification of the priestesses happened before that.

and of course i have OTHER theories that i'm ALSO going to put here because i'm NORMAL like that.

I've typically associated farore (and farosh) as courage with the hylian race because of link's reincarnation, din (and dinraal) as power with the gerudo because of ganon, and nayru (and naydra) with the sheikah, because more often that not we get an impa in the game, even though she isn't technically tied to the cycle. which leaves hylia with zelda, which i think makes sense in its own right, because i'm under the belief that hylia was an entirely hylian-made goddess, just like the hyrulean royal family was an entirely hylian-made heirarchy that the other races of hyrule accepted after a while. and obviously, farora and farosh have faron, nayru and naydra have lanayru, but where is din and dinraal's named area? dinraal travels over akkala, not anywhere named after either the dragon or the goddess.

i have more theories. they're gonna go here, too

in keeping with my association of the goddesses with hyrulean races, i think they imbue each incarnation with their respective power (why impa is always in a position of advisor to the princess, why the princess has kept her sealing powers this long after hylia became mortal, why link is so powerful and so hard to kill, and why ganondorg just Keeps Coming Back), and that every time ganondorf goes from incarnation of power and din to the ganondorf we have to fight in the games, it's actually demise, latching onto the reincarnation cycle and slowly corrupting him. and of COURSE demise would go for the goddess of power, especially when the gerudo are so helpfully isolated from the rest of hyrule. so, sometime shortly after he was defeated, demise latched onto din and onto ganondorf through the reincarnation cycle, which is why i think din and dinraal don't have a place in hyrule named after them.

the gerudo desert is the gerudo desert, but why not akkala? i tihnk it's just because dinraal never stays in the same place long enough for people to really start to associate her with a location. obviously, the springs of courage and wisdom are located in the regions named after their respective goddesses, but i think the spring of power is in akkala simply because it's easier for hylians to access, and they'd need permission from a different goverment to build a temple on gerudo land.

and it's in akkala because it's one of the two locations LOOSELY associated with dinraal. i think dinraal would fly over the gerudo desert more between ganondorf's reincarnations, but when he's around and demise is there too, corrupting din's power (the goddess the priestess dinraal used to be used to serve and still draws some power from), she goes elsewhere to avoid being corrupted too, like we see in naydra in botw.

i don't know how to end this but know that i have more PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask me about this stuff i love to ramble. i'm more into dc and tmnt overall but botw/totk is where all my theorising and thinking capacity goes 90% of the time

#if you read this all the way through #know that i am passionately kissing you on the mouth #with tongue #totk spoilers #tloz #totk #botw #theory #iann be normal challenge FAILED #iann learn to shut up challenge also FAILED

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missjanjie · 11 months

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"is that my shirt?" with whatever ship you want

Jan hummed to herself as she filled up her plate at the hotel breakfast bar. It was her third day there, but she was still impressed and delighted by all the French pastries to choose from. She was there in France for her friend Nicky's wedding. At first she was hesitant to be a bridesmaid, taking on the work of planning as well as rearranging her schedule for a destination wedding seemed daunting, but she decided the special day was worth the trouble.

Her saving grace throughout the planning was Nicky’s maid of honor, Jackie. While they had met when living in California, Nicky had been living in New York for almost three years, and Jackie had made the cross-country move only a few months before Jaida proposed. Nicky had insisted it was serendipitous, that clearly Jan and Jackie were meant to be in her bridal party.

What ended up happening was Jackie taking the lead with Jan as her sidekick, a dynamic that worked well for them over the past six months. So much so, that when Nicky asked if they would be willing to share a hotel room, they agreed without hesitation.

All of that led to now, with Jan trying to open the door to her room with one hand while holding two plates of food in the other, beaming proudly once she’d gotten in without dropping anything. “I brought breakfast,” she chirped, setting one of the plates on Jackie’s bed before sitting cross-legged on her own.

Jackie started to eat, then tilted her head and furrowed her brows. “Is that my shirt?”

Jan paused between bites and looked down. “Huh. I thought it felt a little snug, just figured I was bloated.” While their figures weren’t drastically different, she did have a more curvy silhouette and larger breasts, leaving her amused at her own mistake of not noticing it.

She just laughed and shook her head. “You look better in my clothes than I do,” she remarked, because despite it being a couple sizes too small on Jan, it hugged her figure in a way that made it impossible for her not to stare at.

That made her blush as she became aware of Jackie’s gaze laser-focused on her. “Thanks, though I think anything looks good on you,” she told her as she finished eating and tossed the paper plate into the garbage bin. “God, I can’t believe tomorrow’s the big day. It feels kind of weird, not spending my free time with you planning this thing.”

Jackie chuckled softly. “You know we’re still allowed to hang out once we get back home, right? We don’t need a reason to.”

“See, this is why you’re the smart one,” Jan laughed. “I can’t believe we live in the same neighborhood and never ran into each other.”

“I don’t go out much,” she shrugged, “planning the wedding has been the most human interaction outside of work I’ve had in a while.” She threw her plate out as well, then sat at the edge of her bed. She had kept to herself a lot since she moved to New York – Nicky was the only person she knew and making friends had never come easily to her. “You’ve brought me out of my shell, I appreciate it.”

Jan moved to sit next to her. “I’m glad, ‘cause you’re really fun to be around, I like spending time with you. I’d have missed you too much if you went back to California,” she admitted, resting her head on Jackie’s shoulder.

Jackie smiled and wrapped an arm around her. “Well, you won’t be getting rid of me that easily.”

She picked her head up and grinned. Then, after a split-second’s hesitation, she leaned in and pecked her lips. “Promise?”

She blinked in surprise, her face flushing red. But in a move that surprised herself, she copied Jan’s actions and kissed her in response. “Promise.”

#jankie #shjankie #chjan #chjackie

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aohendo · 1 year

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2022 Writer Year in Review

Tagged by @oh-no-another-idea and @eccaiia! Thanks, guys, and happy new year! I hope you both succeed (and maybe even surpass!) your goals.

Tagging @whimsyqueen, @kyofsonder, @houndsofcorduff, @cactusmotif, @helathorloki, and @athena-anna-rose!

Total number of completed works: 6! (2 long, 4 short)

Total number of WIPs worked on this year: 6!

WIPs neglected this year: 0

Fandoms I've written in: 0 (this past year--previously Lucifer, Pokemon, NCIS, Halo, The Untamed, AtLA, Doctor Who, and Merlin)

Total word count: 353,550 (... holy shit.)

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you expected?:

way more. waaaaay more. That said, I met both goals I had set for myself.

Did you take any writing risks this year?

even writing this year. Lots of major life changes and general chaos. In terms of controllable risks, I submitted to magazines for the first time, and got my first round of form rejections! Breaking that ice :)

Do you have any goals for the new year?

Edit Prince for Hire to a legible and enjoyable point, do another round of editing on Reverberate to condense it down a bit (or split it into two--haven't decided yet), start querying agents, keep submitting to magazines and whatnot.

Biggest disappointment?

I've gotta rewrite the last chapter before the epilogue of Prince for Hire completely, and also completely rearrange the final three. I was hoping to not have to do that this time.

Biggest surprise?

I actually finished Prince before the new year!

Most popular story of the year?

What's your own favourite story of the year?

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

Most fun story to write:

Most unintentionally telling story:

My favourite part of fandom this year:

#not? writing #hendo rambles #tag game #writeblr #writerblr #writblr

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myrrhmaidwrites · 9 months

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Sunstruck Writing Wrap-Up

I think I’m going to start posting writing wrap ups here for my own benefit. Writing about writing is supposed to make you better at it, or something.

This fic was not only my longest ever, but it also ended up spanning 12 google docs, 6 Word files, 8 pages in Notion, and 100+ DMs. If you think my writing process could use some improved organization, well, you’re right.

Originally, Sunstruck was about Trevor writing the book. He had finished it, and the book was in some ways a love letter to Jamie, and a lot of their conversations revolved around what was in the book. (Have you read The Next Next One? Yeah.)

Anyway, that didn’t end up happening. Somewhere along the way I switched the story to Jamie’s POV and moved away from the book idea. I just couldn’t get it to fit. I don’t think I’ll write a sequel to this, but if I did, it would be Trevor POV and it would be about the book.

Now I’m going to talk a little about the writing process for this fic.

16k words isn’t that many for a lot of people. For me, it’s the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I think that deserves some note. Woo! May there be longer fics to come. Also I genuinely have no idea how people write novels, haha. Practice, I suppose.

Shortly before I started this fic, I did some reading about various approaches to the editing process. The method I ended up using, which worked well for me, was to basically just get some words down for the first draft (“shitty first draft), and then rewrite the whole draft based on that. This worked well for me because I was able to get the pure words down pretty well via writing sprints and typing on my phone in bed before I went to sleep.

Then came the rewriting. I took one scene, slapped it in a column on Notion, and used it as a guide to write a new version of that scene. No copy+paste allowed, but I could rewrite the original words if I did want to keep them. I almost never kept them exactly. The second version of scenes were almost always better than the first.

During this period is when the story feels most like a confusing mess that I have to muddle through. I have scenes missing that I don’t know I need, I have to rearrange things and delete things and realize that something I wrote won’t work anymore because I changed something earlier. I’m constantly re-outlining, adding notes to scenes, writing new bits and deleting them, etc.

To give you an idea of some of the things I changed in this stage, in an earlier version of the fic, Jamie said something really heartfelt for Trevor’s video and they cut most of it out for the public video. Trevor only sees it after the Ducks staff send him the full video, and their reunion/get together scene happens at home the day after the ceremony.

At another point, I really wanted to have that long distance/breakup/dark night of the soul moment that would require a big gesture from Jamie (flying across the country for Trevor or similar). In the end, I couldn’t get it to work, so we have the condensed crisis that starts during the sex scene. I’m not mad about that change, but I do sometimes wonder if I could have made that scene hit harder if the separation/downturn had been worse.

Anyway, after getting through this horrible muddled mess, there’s a third re-writing, where I have the scenes mostly in order and I go through and rewrite everything from beginning to end for a third time. This time around, there’s a lot more that stays the same. What’s nice about the earlier stages is that when I write something I don’t like so much, I don’t have to worry about it at the moment because there’s an incredibly low chance it’ll make it to the final fic.

After the third rewriting is when I like to loop in my beta reader. I usually try to have a couple of specific questions for them as they read. I think technically this is called alpha reading (and beta reading is just for spelling/grammar), but if I’m honest, I need this kind of help more.

Then I go about incorporating changes from my beta reader, which usually involves a major overhaul of 1-2 scenes, almost always the finale and another scene in the second half of the fic.

After that, I go through and re-read the fic in order and look for places where I need to make major additions. This typically includes descriptions of emotions or settings and additions to dialogue where characters get to the point of what they’re trying to say far more quickly than is realistic.

Finally, in the last couple of days before posting, I look at sentence structure and word choice. I tend to use the same sentence structures over and over in my writing as well as certain words. In this phase, I try to mix it up as much more and make the sentences and words sound interesting.

In the “adding” and “sentence structure” phases of this fic, I added about 5k words. Yep, the fic was only about 11.5k words before this. That means the fic my beta reader read, while kind of close to the finished version, is also hugely different from the fic up on ao3. It’s kind of crazy to think about.

Finally, I do one last read for typos, and the fic goes up.

There’s one thing about this fic experience (and others I’ve had) that I haven’t really gotten to talk about yet, though.

This fic was part of a big bang, and as a part of that, I worked with a hard deadline, and I also had an artist relying on me to be finished so we could post at the same time. Last year, I participated in an exchange that had a similar type of deadline.

Both times, I’ve had horrible insomnia for ~3 weeks leading up to the deadline. We’re talking 3+ weeks of not sleeping, sleeping extremely poorly, or not sleeping without pills. (And I’m talking sedatives here, not melatonin. God, I wish melatonin did something useful for me.)

It didn’t matter that I could have pushed the deadline back. It didn’t matter that I could have just dropped out. It didn’t matter that I was actually quite on top of this fic and not particularly concerned about finishing on time. My brain was not interested in sleeping.

Luckily, I got through it. Most of this week after posting the fic I slept just fine. But it does make me think about whether doing something like this is useful for me, or sustainable in the long run. I really love the community aspect of writing fic. I doubt that without doing a bigbang that my fics would have art made for them. I doubt I would have produced such a long fic so quickly without a deadline.

Maybe these are just things that I need to accept about myself. If I don’t want to cause myself weeks of insomnia (and I don’t because it fucking sucks), maybe I need to just accept that. Really what I need to do is probably talk to my therapist about this, but it’s hard.

Does this happen to anyone else? Just me? Okay.

To end this on a less depressing note, one final observation I want to mention is that after I choose one fic to concentrate on, my ideas for other fics tend to slow down, and then once that idea is close to wrapping, they tend to speed up again. Now I’m stuck in the middle of 4-5 fic ideas and I want to write all of them. Of course I don’t have the time, and I’m sure I’ll end up concentrating on just one or two eventually. But for now I have like five different gdocs that I want to keep open at all times. It makes me wish I didn’t have a job so I could just write. (Plus my two anons that I owe fics to…oops!)

If you read this far, thank you. Sometimes it’s nice to hear whispers in the void when you know you should expect silence.

#retirement fic #writing wrap up #posting this at 11:30 on a saturday so it can vanish into the ether

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jechristine · 11 months

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About TCR : I wasn't aware of this case but I've seen people from the community say they could've based TCR on another case of DID, the one of Jeni Haynes. She was sexually abused by her father for years and developed 2500 alters to survive, many of them were allowed to testify in trial and her father was finally founded guilty.

It's a case that highlighted the condition and was used effectively during a trial. It could've been the same outcome (in terms of learning about the condition) without having to take inspo on someone who had violent and criminal alters. It would've been more legitimate maybe to tell this type of story

But again from a marketing pov they wanted to approach it as a "murder mystery" kinda thing so they had to add something "gory" even tho they changed the crimes...? Like Idk it feels insincere to me to claim to want to "raise awareness about mental health" but spending half the show making it a bit sensational and "plot twisty" instead of caring about writing meaningful dialogues (I've yet to be impressed by the writing, quite the opposite actually).

I mostly agree with all of this! Although I do think they definitely could have found a very good 10-episode narrative and compelling characters in the Minds of Billy Milligan, especially after they decided to take literary license with it, but I think they missed that opportunity and the whole thing is pretty phoned-in, if you ask me. The more I see, the more I realize what 🚩it is to be rearranging your plot after the whole production has been shot. It’s screaming we knew something was wrong and needed a quick fix. Is that common? Regardless, we’re seeing some of the same exact (Rya) scenes copied and pasted into subsequent episodes; I don’t think I’ve ever seen that level of lazy film-making before.

IMO making Danny responsible for real harm would have deepened his character and made the task of drumming up sympathy more challenging and ultimately more rewarding. A story like the alternative that you’re describing maybe would have pivoted around a different conflict altogether, and maybe that’s what Akiva & co. would have preferred, as you’re saying! But, alas, in this series they zero’d out the narrative conflict and then tried to replace it with nothing but the weakest mystery frame.

There could be another opportunity in Jeni Haynes’s biography, but of course that could also be done in a cliched and perfunctory way😭

I can’t speak to TCR’s accurate representation of DID—and there are four more episodes—but regarding the TV series as a TV series, I find that most of the big “issues” (racism, feminism, abuse) have been given such brief and shallow treatment as to be emotionally manipulative, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if some in the DID community ended up being disappointed.

#tcr spoilers

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vael · 4 months

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2023 Annual Review

"I might as well copy-paste last year's Annual Review..."

Of course, even last year I thought the same thing. "A tiger doesn't change its stripes," and now in my 35th year, it's apparent I won't be changing mine.

What went well this year?

Parenting. I'm very aware of the cost of lackluster parenting. "It's a terrible thing to do to someone." No matter how strained I am, I've said I am going to be a dedicated father. This year I dedicated myself to both my girls and continued my usual routine of rallying the boy to greatness.

When parenting, I track their milestones and development because I want the children to be able to play at (and somewhat over) the level of their peers so that they're able to play with the maximal number of children. Milestones are also easily measured: they can do the thing or not. My son still struggles to relate to his peers today because he's never been on their level, and it's a pitiable thing which I personally experienced as a child. It lead to my poor self-esteem and lack of ambition. When I celebrate milestones, this is why.

Violet. "My little storm cloud." 🖤 Violet continues to meet her milestones. She's ahem strong-willed, sweet, intelligent, curious, and funny: I think she's picked up on my ability to parody -- songs and such -- and she'll make up her own little parodies of various things. This year she became a lot less fearful.

Olivia. "Child of light." I thought Violet was an especially happy baby; Olivia redefined that for me. For her first year, we called her the colon D baby. This guy -> :D

Olivia is an absolute joy to be around. She took 13 months to walk, which was a surprise given that Violet was fully walking at 10 ½ months, but it looks like she instead allocated her effort towards speech, because this girl can talk. And enunciate! She's also good with her fine motor skills.

My wife was able to flawlessly breastfeed Olivia for six straight months, which is a big achievement.

Made two new friends. Each from different countries, and each of them web developers. I always love hearing about other cultures and it was because of my Argentinian friend that I...

Started learning Spanish; soft-quit PGO. This year I finally was able to put down Pokémon GO. Partially because I'm playing Pokemon Sleep now, but mostly that I was a little too obsessive about PvP and I felt childish being distracted in public so that I could play the PvE events.

I started Duolingo mid-November. My learning strategy is slow-paced and with frequent review. I fully achieve "legendary" on the current unit before moving on to the next. It's working, and it's got to be better for my cognition, and certainly for my life.

Rearranged the house. My wife came up with the plan. My son took my old office and my new office is in the study, previously our entertainment room. I could barely stand living in this house before, but now I'm comfortable.

Game development. I may have burned myself doing it, but I can't argue with the results. I don't think I've ever been better poised for a successful year than I am now.

This year I also received the most volunteer help I ever have. Aforementioned Argentinian friend wrote a robust weather script, and Tinydark's Raigen helped develop tinydark.com and Hub features; I'm also excited to announce we've been able to hire him to work remotely at my workplace. We even had an artist draw some holiday costumes for Tinyblob, our mascot.

Health. I took almost three months off eating "optional sugar," breaking my nightly ice cream routine. I'd felt like I was starting to get fat, so I simultaneously started focusing more on building my upper body. I went as far as to take before-and-afters for Facebook, but I eventually had to stop so I could focus on game dev. Though I stopped my upper body work, I did start jogging in the morning. I fell out of the habit once Daylight Saving Time hit, and the girls' circadian rhythms were an hour ahead.

Artificial Intelligence. Not exactly "my" win, but AI has been instrumental in this year's high production. To think it's only gotten better throughout the year and stands to get even better, it's such a privilege to be able to use AI. That's just code; assets have always been a problem for my game development, but AI trivializes some of my asset issues (it's still pretty bad proper asset generation).

What didn't go so well?

Relentless work ethic. I have a long, contemplative post on this here, but: I am too ambitious. "A good problem to have." Well, in August I had my first real panic attack at 3AM. I thought it was a heart attack at first. But what's mildly concerning is that I felt stronger for it after; I overcame it on my own and that now that I know what it is, I'm better prepared for it. I didn't feel like I should try to avoid this at all, but rather that I'm more prepared for a second panic attack. Seems kinda not-a-good mentality.

My body. I said my forward neck posture would be my focus of the year, and I did a passable job of it, but it wasn't enough. I still get headaches and they feel like they're getting worse. We don't have the money nor do I have the bandwidth to see a rolfer, and I'm not sure what to do other than try to keep my posture in mind throughout the day. I tried to train myself to sleep without a pillow but had minimal success. I typically lay down once a day, mid-day if work allows it, for about 15 minutes just to clear my head and alleviate some of the pain.

I also abused caffeine: by my definition, two cups/packets/sessions a day. That likely contributed to the panic attack.

My focus. Nothing new here. It's just hard to truly focus when my morning's waylaid by children and I'm needed throughout the day. Interruptions break focus, so that's that: I cannot truly focus. The time I get at night is rarely good for focusing considering it's so scarce, the girls could wake up at any time, and that's typically the bulk of time I get to spend talking with my wife.

Buried. Two-under-two, working my job, working tinydark, doing (it seems) more chores than the typical husband does, my crumbling body and keeping myself healthy are the primary stressors.

No sympathy allowed; I chose this path and would choose it again.

Finances. We had two kids in two years (I regret not waiting an extra six months) so it's to be expected, but we've found ourselves deep in the negatives at the end of the year. Inflation's a real killer. We (ie: my wife) made some progress with the decision to grocery shop at two different stores for our weekly shopping trip, but the extra store is Trader Joe's... full of novel temptations. We're still better off for it, anyway.

Released neither Black Crown: Exhumed nor Bean Grower. I did have to take two weeks off for some contracting, but ultimately I just decided to spend more time on URPG, and everything takes longer than I expect.

What did I learn?

I feel like this year, I didn't get too worked up about our lack of financial progress. It feels more like acceptance than complacency. I will be free, unburied when my dream is realized: we just need to save up enough money for a down payment on a new house build, then sustain our finances while it's built, and finally sell this house for a minimum of $100k in the bank when all is said and done. I have confirmed this is entirely possible, and I'm grateful to have moved South before the pandemic. This is why it's acceptance: achieving this peace of mind is the only way I can finally buy the ice cream.

Otherwise, I've meditated on it, and honestly: I don't know that I really learned anything notable. At least as far as wisdom vs. tangible knowledge.

Goals and Expectations: 2024

Game dev. I can at least guarantee Bean Grower's getting a final release, presumably onto an app store. I'm giving myself three damn months for it. Black Crown is also getting three damn months, but I will concede that Steam Store support might be a stretch goal. Either way, I'm ending this year with two full titles under my belt.

Financial recovery. Sort of a given, and who knows, maybe the 15,000 hours I've spent building a game studio will actually pan out this year.

-- --

Welp, figger that's it. Vael

#Annual Review

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iviarellereads · 5 months

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The Eye of the World, Earlier - Ravens

(THIS PROJECT IS SPOILER FREE! No spoilers past the chapter you click on. Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Wheel of Time, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Ravens icon) In which I rearrange the timeline to suit my whims.

(First written for From The Two Rivers, the first half of a YA reprint of The Eye of the World, and now seemingly available in front of the ebook edition (so you might be able to read it in the "preview now" on Amazon or your ebook retailer of choice, if you don't have it in your copy) as well as a few print editions, this was placed before the Dragonmount prologue. I feel that's too jarring for a first introduction, because it's 8-9 years ago, then 3000 years ago, then back to the present day. It doesn't work well in the other direction either, because it undercuts the tension (and the narrative connection) between the prologue and chapter 1. But, I really love this chapter, actually. It's a great insight into not just Egwene, but other characters we've been interacting with. So, I'm placing it after chapter 4, when we've met most of the relevant characters, or heard about them enough to recognize, and there's a bit of a lull in the story.)

We meet Egwene, who's with some of the other children in the Winespring Water river.

She was not here to play. At nine, she was carrying water for the first time, but she was going to be the best water-carrier ever.(1)

She wonders why she has to keep her hair long and wear it in a kerchief, when long hair is a sign of womanhood and she's years off from it yet.

Why did you have to keep doing something just because it had always been done that way?(2)

Downstream, the men are washing the sheep that will be sheared later. She's gathering water in her buckets when a raven lands nearby, watching some men washing sheep in the river nearby. Only, why would a raven watch the men when the sheep are the better targets? There are rumours that ravens and crows are the Dark One's eyes, but what would the Dark One need to see in the Two Rivers? That's silly talk.

An older boy, Kenley Ahan, tells her to get back to work. She gives him a level look she's seen older girls use, but it's not very effective. He gets back to his, pretending he's responsible about it, but she knows that won't last long. Still, she gets back to the water-carrying, because she really does want to be the best.

Farmers came from all around Emond’s Field for this, and village folk came out to help relatives. Everyone in the village had kith or kin of some sort on the farms. Shearing would be going on all across the Two Rivers, down at Deven Ride and up to Watch Hill. Not at Taren Ferry, of course. Many of the women wore shawls draped loosely over their arms and flowers in their hair, for the formality, and so did some of the older girls, though their hair was not in the long braid the women had. A few even wore dresses with embroidery around the neck, as if this really were a feastday. In contrast, most of the men and boys went coatless, and some even had their shirts unlaced. Egwene did not understand why they were allowed to do that. The women’s work was no cooler than the men’s.(3)

Egwene describes the jobs everyone does at shearing, from moving the sheep in and out of the pens, the shearing itself, sorting and baling, and preparing and serving food for everyone. Shearing is one of just five times a year when the whole community comes together, so the crowd is huge.

Taking care not to run into any of her sisters, who often treat her as a baby, she tells herself she's not looking for anyone else. Of course, it's a bit protest too much. She sees Kenley try to steal a honeycake, and get punished for it, and feels satisfied that he won't be giving orders again soon.

On her way back to the river to refill her bucket, Egwene sees Perrin with his family talking to the local smith, who says he's a fine lad, he'll do a great job. Egwene watches Perrin playing with his youngest sister, and his other sister sneaks up on Egwene and asks why she's watching Perrin when everyone knows she's going to marry Rand someday. Egwene notices more ravens, insults the girl,(4) and gets back to the business of water carrying.

Egwene then nearly runs into one of her sisters, telling off a Coplin for trying to interfere with the wool sorting she's doing. This makes Egwene think of how all her sisters treat her like a child. One of them even takes books Egwene wants to read, calling them "too complex" for her. Egwene particularly loves reading The Travels of Jain Farstrider, dreaming about seeing all the places he did.

She notes Nynaeve, the Wisdom's apprentice, bandaging a cut someone acquired from wool shears. Nynaeve was orphaned a few years ago, and taken apprentice much earlier than is usual for a Wisdom, instead of being sent to live with other relatives. She finishes the bandage, but the Wisdom undoes it, and looks disappointed for some reason Egg can't fathom.(5) Nyn tugs at her braid, a nervous habit of hers, although she could be trying to draw attention to the fact that she's been considered a woman grown for almost a year, even if she's still an apprentice.

Nearby Egg sees yet more ravens, watching the men and the boys. Just as she's about to ask the Wisdom what it might mean, Nyn sneaks up on her and asks if Egg has work to be doing. Somehow since last fall, she's known where Egg is without looking, and Egg wishes she'd stop.

Egg curtsies, and as she leaves, finds herself face to face with another of her sisters, Elisa. She's folding fleece, badly, and Egg thinks it's because she's older than Nynaeve by a year, but the Women's Circle still hasn't let her braid her hair. Egg points out another girl, Calle Coplin, who's even older with her hair unbraided, and Elisa gets deeply embarrassed and tells her to leave the adults to their work.

Well, with that, Egg stalks away, refills her bucket, and goes in search of Perrin and Mat, Rand's friends, for no reason at all, nope, she just has a question she needs to ask them, that's why she sneaks up on their hiding place. And she finds them, all three plus some other boys about their age. Egg hides around the corner from them and thinks about marriage customs and adulthood, and how she really wants to journey before she settles down, even if Rand is a kind boy.

The lads start talking about how to get into some mischief, and then someone comes and summons them all on behalf of the mayor. Egwene follows casually, and it turns out he promised to tell them a story. Only, they ask for a story about a false Dragon, and he doesn't know any, so he asks Tam, Rand's father, if he does. Tam offers to tell a story about the real Dragon, from the Age of Legends, three thousand years ago. Cenn Buie says some stories shouldn't be told, shouldn't even be known, but Bran insists it's only a story, what harm can it do?

To paraphrase, three thousand years ago in the Age of Legends(6) there were great cities full of huge buildings, and vehicles powered by magic that could carry people faster than horses can run. They didn't even remember war, and had no sickness they couldn't cure. And then the Dark One touched the world, and war came that covered the whole world in shadow. So came trollocs and myrddraal, and human darkfriends and even some Aes Sedai who went over to the dark and became the Forsaken.

Egwene puzzles at this, because some of the Forsaken were men, and they couldn't have been Aes Sedai, could they?(7)

The story goes on that Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon himself, gathered an army of 100 men who marched on the Dark One's stronghold, and enough of them fought through to seal the hole in the Dark One's prison. And again Egwene puzzles, because didn't the stories say that the Dragon had broken the world? How could he have saved it and broken it?(8)

The story wraps up there, and Perrin asks what a dragon is.(9) Tam admits he doesn't know, and he's not sure even the Aes Sedai know what a dragon is. Still, it's nothing to do with today, so the boys are told to get back to work. Egwene is startled to realize there are more ravens in the trees than she's ever seen before. Worse, one of them is staring straight at her. She stares at it until it flies off with the others, and then she gets back to being the best water-carrier ever.

Egwene had to carry water again the next year, which was a great disappointment to her, but once again she tried to be the best. If you were going to do a thing, you might as well do the best you could. It must have worked, because the year after that she was allowed to help with the food, a year early! She set herself a new goal, then: to be allowed to braid her hair younger than anybody ever. She did not really think the Women’s Circle would allow it, but a goal that was easy was no goal at all. She stopped wanting to hear stories from the grownups, though she would have liked to hear a gleeman, but she still liked to read of distant lands with strange ways, and dreamed of seeing them. The boys stopped wanting stories, too. She did not think they even read very much. They all grew older, thinking their world would never change, and many of those stories faded to fond memories while others were forgotten, or half so. And if they learned that some of those stories really had been more than stories, well . . . The War of the Shadow? The Breaking of the World? Lews Therin Telamon? How could it matter now? And what had really happened back then, anyway?

=====

(1) Egwene is going to be The Best at anything she tries to do, or else the universe will have to pay. (2) And, our Egg is not a traditionalist. (3) Because your author wanted to make a particular point about your hometown being very conservative-traditional-having deep roots in the location. We've seen that with how many times things have been repeated and how many times people have said that's just the way it's always been. You, Egwene, may have been born here, but I think you can already see that you don't really belong. (4) In case you don't follow the logic here, my best guess, as someone who was once a 9 year old girl, is that Egg's embarrassed as all get out. She does have a crush on Rand, and they have practically been promised since infancy, even though there are many suitable kids of the right ages. But, she also thinks in this chapter about wanting to see the places Jain Farstrider did. She might not be fully aware of it consciously, but while part of her loves her home and her role in it, part of her also wants to journey beyond, and not be held back by decisions made before she was able to get involved. You can want something and still resent being pressured into choosing it, and resent any of that being noticed by someone else who's ready to embarrass you as soon as say hello. (5) Now, how odd. Do you think Nynaeve's that bad a medic? Egg doesn't think in that direction when she watches it. (6) Well, it's nice to finally have a timeline to work from, so I don't have to pretend I don't know when the Dragonmount prologue took place anymore. Oh, there's debate about the EXACT duration and whether the Third Age began before or after the Breaking, or even if it began with the great war, but we don't need to address that here. Plenty of places to talk about it once you've finished the series and can go find the full spoiler communities. (7) If the BOH in the prologue was to be believed, it was men who could channel who did most of the breaking, since they went mad and unleashed their power without control, while the "sisters" were still safe. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to suggest that Aes Sedai used to mean all channelers, and still means all not insane channelers. So perhaps Aes Sedai did break the world, but that got interpreted through three thousand years of semantic drift where the meaning of the term changed dramatically. A lot can change in how we interpret the words and prophecies of an era over the course of thousands of years. (8) How, indeed? This is probably the main reason why this fits before Dragonmount in publication order, technically speaking. Because this story leads into learning a little bit of the detail and the nuance. Not a lot, because book one of fifteen, but enough to tantalize the senses. We know that he led the Hundred Companions against the Dark One, because one of the Dark One's servants reminded him so. (Do you think that means the BOH was a Forsaken?) And we know that the men who could channel lost their minds and their control and broke the world, the way LTT broke his wife and his home and made that mountain. (9) Passing along information without context can be dangerous for just this reason. You never know what will be lost or made up in the game of telephone.

#wheel of time #wot #the wheel of time #twot #the eye of the world #eye of the world #eotw #teotw #wot ravens icon #egwene al'vere #rand al'thor #mat cauthon #perrin aybara #tam al'thor #nynaeve al'meara #bran al'vere #cenn buie

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seven-cents · 8 months

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dont like how the matryoshka logs were taking up so much space so I'm gonna copy and paste them here so can get rid of them

Day 1

Dear Devlog,

Today is day one of my long and mentally torturous journey. I am writing to you at the hour of 11am.

I have made minimal progress today. But important progress. Starting with setting up my normal preferences, running tests to get the ratio. Lame stuff, yknow.

I went on to outline many of the scenes and character sprites, there are quite a bit of them so it was arduous but thankfully my best friend, quentin, was here to help me out with a hip new video. His help will be invaluable throughout this timeframe. I love you quentinreviews.

I feel pretty good about how its going, and I'm sure as long as I don't sleep or do anything else for even a moment I'll be done in time. Easy peasy for me, the laziest most adhd person on the planet.

Word count: 0

I can only hope I can make it at least playable before the madness sets in.

Day 2

The madness has set in.

Dear devlog, I feel like a clown and not in the hot way. I got minimal sleep due to me being woken up at an unreasonable hour.

This morning I heard a crackling in my walls, like electricity behind my outlet. This was super concerning since I had a bunch of flammable shit near it. I immediately hopped up and started rearranging my entire room, moving all my canvasses and paint in boxes and whatnot, and in my cleaning I found what looked to be several tiny beads. The crackling had been a necklace I had on a shelf snapping and all the beads falling on the ground. Now I have to unpack everything.

I did however did get quite a bit done, though, 3000 words worth. Most of it is garbage that I'm going to rewrite like ten times but it's something.

Word count: 3,295

Day 3

Dear devlog,

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

everything is a sick cesspit of misery

I got some sprites done tho. By done I mean they're NOTHIGN, but I will fix them later.

demon

Day 4

Didn't get any sleep last night! Had to do stuff today!

Yet, I'm still keeping up pace. With the power of a gallon of chocolate milk a day. HAHAHA.

now get in the hole cunt

Day 5

Dear Devlog,

I've grown to dislike these horrible paints. I have to use craft paints because they're not shiny. They're fifty cents each so I've bought maybe fifty of them. They're all brown and green. All I dream of is brown and green. I hate brown and green.

Who knows what I'll do with them when I finish.

Day 6

Gonna be hard times for the next few days. Won't be able to paint as much but hopefully I can make up for that in writing. Which is terrible because I only have a million paintings to do. Regardless, I can program and write at the same time. nbd.

Words: 4851

Day 7

I didn't update last night because I was so tired! and I had to take time out of my schedule for my weeping break.

The thing about this painting is, I hate it. Like it's way too late to change the colors or pretty much anything without losing a day. That's the problem with doing traditional art, I can't make tweaks without losing so much time. I'm on day 8, that's a little over a fourth way through and I'm looking at my checklist and I'm gonna throw up. But also it's okay. I'm moving things around to keep the important stuff first so some things may be cut.

Day 8

The name is starting to piss me off. I keep having to look it up to remember how to spell it.

I painted rats today.

Day 9

Wahoo! i finshed some painting. Some of the easiest but good enough. I want to get all of them through with by the twentieth so I can make alternates and then digitally edit them in the next ten days. I think I can have a scene and the menu done by today but who knows.

Day 10

couldnt do anything got too sick from pizza cookie

Day 11

look at this fucking bitch what the fuck is his problem

Day 12

I dont think i wanna paint ever again.

its like on every surface of my room. why am i like this why did i wanna do this. oh yeah, its my drive to be the best in the universe.

Day 13

People are gonna make fun of me for making a character look like a vagina. I KNOW I KNOW ITS SUPPOSED TO BE A VAGINA. you dont understand yuri.

Day 14

I've gotten most of the backgrounds almost done. I've got the sprites almost done. Well I don't have the hallway even remotely done because I just sort of forgot it was there. CGs need to be done. I've only got the sketches.

Day 15

ive watched all of adventure time painting these. now i need a new show.

Day 16

Yeah baby parts of the gui are done. Rats are done. That's all I really need right?

Day 17

behold. all my goddam sprites. there's at least fifteen. almost complete bitches.

Day 18

Have you ever seen a prettier textbox? No you haven't.

Day 19

I don't waaaaaaanna paint. I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna have to be like okay what colors should I use here if I fuck up I have to do everything over again. How many times do I have to paint the same thing. I hate painting AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Day 20

My goal was around 10000 words I'm like 9379 so like I'm almost there baby but it will probably be shorter. I might cut some things.

Day 21

8 days left. I have so much to do in eight days.

Day 22

ITS DAY 22

I stopped updating after this because i lost my cunting mind.

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torbeen · 1 year

Note

Is your OC romantic in the traditional sense? Do they enjoy giving or receiving gifts of flowers or confectionary? Or are there other courtship traditions from their culture of origin that are important to them?

Does your OC have a Best Friend? If they do then how long have they known each other and how did they meet? If they don't then do they have a close group of friends they love equally? Or are they more of a loner?

Is your OC able to love without necessarily needing or expecting reciprocation or reward? Or are all their relationships to some extent transactional? Have they ever loved another person unconditionally, whether a child or another adult? (Now that I'm not on mobile, I can copy/paste more than one question per ask! xD)

Torben is a hopeless romantic. Through and through. The trouble is, he didn’t know it until the person who sparked it in him was thrown in front of him in the most unexpected manner. If you can count breaking into their tower an unexpected manner. In his defense, she wasn’t supposed to have been awake. Just as a coin purse was supposed to have always been filled with gold, or the guard at the door was supposed to have been sleeping. Torben far too often takes what is supposed to be true as inherent of a fact as the sun rising and the world turning.

Much to his own misadventures.

The trouble with falling in love with someone at first sight, a true love. A love that redefines the meanings of things you hadn’t ever known, or considered, is that it turns the world upside down, flips it, and then sets it back upon its feet.

It left Torben reeling. It left him awestruck. It left him, for however brief a time, speechless. Because, though the words had never been spoken aloud in his mind in the depth of the night where such thoughts found such rich soil, he wasn’t supposed to fall in love. That kind of love that pierces through the carefully crafted facade of his. Because, truthfully, he doesn’t see himself as a good man. And just as the stories go, only a good man ought to fall in love with someone who loves them back.

Ahhh, but what a deciever he is. For he even tricked himself. For beneath it all, he is what he feels he could never be. Good.

The kind of man who would rearrange the stars to the liking of his beloved. The kind of man who would go to the greatest of lengths to find a flower that smelled of home for them. The kind of man who would steal a trinket from the rival of their beloved and offer it as a gift.

Torben had a close knit group of friends. If not best friends, at least compatriots. Comrades who shared the hardships of rebelling against the inevitable. Those who shared the burden of living the lonely life of a fugitive. The few who could truly understand the struggle in carrying on what they all knew was a lost cause, but none of them dared to speak it. For if their compatriots did not, neither could they. For the cruelty of murdering hope was something not even these brigands could bring themselves to do.

But they died. Not all at once. Ohhh, the pain may have been less if they all had died in one single, freak accident. To feel the sword thrust of grief in one swift, sudden blow that cut him to the core. As opposed to losing them, one by one over the years. Pin pricks of sorrow, one delivered right after the other when the pain had lessened. The reopening of the wound, again and again, before the healing could finish. Before the opportunity to heal could be completed.

How easy it would have been for Torben to have remained alone, as he was, for a time.. True, he still had the Bortherhood. But what good is Brotherhood when all those who shared your struggles are gone? His compatriots that remained his allies were but allies in name. Bound together by the red bandanas on their faces, not by the ties of shared struggle. The audacity of shared hope. The nerve of challenging the world, no matter how unlikely their victory was. For an instant, with his friends at his side, it seemed possible.

Ahhh, but that was but for a time. Just as Torben had found if not enjoyment, but contentment in the solitude that his assignments with the Brotherhood offered. Subtle work. Snatch and grab jobs. The retrieval of valuable information from the sanctuary of secure places. The scaling of towers, falling through the window, and having his life changed forever.

“Can you see the sparkle in the eyes of your lover and feel as if they owe you something for that feeling? Is it possible to expect reward for the softening of their eyes, that instant their lips slip into a smile that belongs wholly to you, and expect a reward beyond their joy? What reward is needed more than the sound of your name in the air, and the feel of it in their mouth in their moment of bliss?”

Torben is greedy. This is no secret. When he sees something he wants, he craves it until it is his. Until his fingers are wrapped around it, the feel of it, the weight of it, in his hands. Ohhh how his eyes shine in those moments of triumph.

But love is not a thing. Even a man as greedy as Torben knows that. To say that love can be taken is like saying you could reach into the sky and pluck the stars from the heavens. It is ethereal. Invisible. Like trying to capture the wind with bare hands. It can never be seen, only felt. To capture a feeling in your grasp is impossible.

Love with the expectation of reward is not love at all, even Torben knows such things. Love is that desire to see someone smile for the sake of their smile. To make them laugh for the sake of their joy. To make them feel desired and appreciated and wanted for the sake of that person being deserving of it in the other’s eyes. To Torben, unconditionality is as inseparable from love as warmth is from the sun, chill from a winter’s morning, and greed from the heart of a brigand.

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