#corefen

[queenofbaws]

It’s not the weekend quite yet but I’ll be busy hosting myself a little birthday tea party of one and don’t want to forget this. Once again an Okkervil River prompt: the song black sheep boy for any fandom.

not-quite-six sentence weekend :P

The house had never felt emptier than it had when he'd first been released from the hospital, stitches tight and the smell of antiseptic high in his nose. It had been empty for a long time, really - if you sat and thought about it, that was - because Pop was always off working, and Mom was always out schmoozing, and the twins...

It had been empty for a long time. It just felt emptier now, somehow.

He'd sat and suffered through enough Lit classes for the irony to gag him; home was where the heart was, home was always waiting for you, there was nothing like coming home, home was anywhere you felt it, blah blah fucking blah. Josh didn't feel any of that as he unlaced his shoes and set his keys in the dish. If he felt anything at all, it was tired. And even that wasn't quite right.

By the time the sun had hidden away behind the neat row of houses across the street, he'd gotten rid of every photograph he could. That was dramatic. An exaggeration. He'd turned them around, though, or laid them flat on their faces, toppling them like dominoes until he was positive - absolutely sure - that there weren't any eyes on him. Not his parents', not his sisters', not their fri...not anyone's. He didn't want to be seen, wasn't even sure he deserved to be.

At some point, he'd fallen asleep on the couch. It was hard to say when, but harder to say how. There'd been a few days there where he'd been sure he'd never sleep again (not without the drugs they'd been pumping him full of back at the hospital, anyway, or maybe a good old fashioned mallet to the head). Lo and behold, fallen asleep he had, and as he rolled onto his back, blearily staring at the shadows shifting and sliding on the ceiling, flickering in time with the late-night show playing on the tv, he struggled to figure out what'd done it.

Had he been dreaming? Felt likely, all considering. Or maybe remembering was the better word, his brain not spinning stories out of whole cloth but instead piecing them together from everything that had happened lately: the mountain, the monsters, the mayhem, the mealy-mouthed ranger who'd told him, almost matter-of-factly, that only two of them had made it, that only two of them -

And then the knocking had come again, and the question answered itself.

He knew the sound of it at once. It was too clear, too familiar, and for that reason he was almost positive he was dreaming after all. There wasn't any way that could be who he thought it was. No way in hell. He sat up slowly, watching the front door with suspicion and detachment in equal measure, and when it came a third time, he took to his feet.

Once, he'd fancied himself a horror buff - the kind of guy who didn't flinch in the face of the goriest or most gruesome. Just then, he found he didn't have the strength to check the peephole. He opened the door before he could think himself out of it.

The silence that followed probably lasted a second. Maybe half that. Maybe even less. It felt like forever. It felt like how he imagined limbo, or purgatory, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it.

Despite all the effort he'd put into turning her pictures over, Ashley Brown stood on the welcome mat, looking at him. Watching him. Seeing him. Her boots rubbed anxious circles on the nap of the mat, her hands rubbed at her arms, and her bruises hurt him to look at.

Josh wasn't sure what he expected her to say. What could a person say at a time like this? Hi? Howya doing? Would she just fling herself at him, beat her fists against him until his eyes were as swollen as hers? Spit at him? On him? Remind him that this was all his fault? Every last second of it? Hold him accountable for every loss, every death, every -

"So," she said softly, her voice rasped, maybe from disuse or from crying or screaming so hard into her pillow at night that something simply tore. "Guess it's just you and me now, huh?"

When he swallowed, he swore he felt sandpaper lining his throat; the same sandpaper, he had to imagine, she felt in hers. "Guess so," he agreed after a beat, then stood there, same as he had been, feeling her eyes on him, wishing he didn't. "Guess so," he said again, no longer sure whether he was answering her or convincing himself, not entirely positive there was a difference. He took a step back - just the one - and held the door open an inch wider than before, a silent question with no good answers.

Ashley watched him, and he watched her, the wound in his shoulder pulsing a Morse code reminder that the parts of the brain responsible for love and for hate lived right beside one another, that both of them were capable of hurting, of being hurt.

Josh held the door. He waited.

He realized the house didn't feel quite so empty now.

[the-heart-of-a-monster]

reading the comic on the website and just saw amy, im in love with her design and overalls oufit <3<3

im late answering this but thank you so much ♥

[son1c]

i empathize so much with the terrible ebay prices for sonic merch. this figure was 300 dollars when it came out and now i have to deal with pricing like this

? what figure

[queenofbaws]

🎀 [Bow] How many named characters are in this WIP? How many do get a POV?

aw man, see, the problem here...is that, while working on the (almost)s, i got a taste of the low-stakes oc creation euphoria that is putting 2-dimensional characters in the background of a story, so like wringing blood from a stone has....................QUITE A FEW NAMED CHARACTERS

i'll throw a handful of the ones we've already met (in one way or another ;P) under the cut for anyone who's just like. collecting fun facts about this fic 🤣 there may be some EXTREMELY MINOR spoilers about plot points that we haven't gotten to quite yet, but nothing earthshattering, i pwooomise

the only characters who get POVs are the family themselves, though - jed, constance, travis, chris, bobby, caleb, kaylee, and jack - the good people of north kill county will have to wait for some other project if they want a POV of their own, i'm afraid 😔 but lord knows they live in my head

random wip asks!

NORTH KILL'S FINEST (background characters)

the hacketteers

y'all already know these fools ;P

the neighborly sort

jim & pearl warren (80s), the ones who live on the other side of hackett woods

diane kelly (40s), the camp mom nurse and chris's good good good pal

silas vorez (teens/early 20s), :)

the day crew

carver graves (30s), the responsible one; nephew of the late sheriff hank

callie kildeere (30s), the one who probably shouldn't have a gun but does anyway

graham cutter (30s), the one who thinks he's funnier than he really is

abel gore (70s), the one whose sister absolutely saw bigfoot that one time

the dead

hank graves (~50s/60s), previous sheriff of north kill

amelia grant (30s), chris's wife; caleb & kaylee's mother; niece of sheriff hank

eliza vorez (70s/80s/???), silas's handler mother...and a problem

susanna hackett (???), one of jed's sisters

francis hackett (70s), jed's father

john fiddler (~50s), jack's grandfather; a monster hunter and occasional friend of jed's (but "occasional" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here)

hannah & beth washington (early 20s), the girls jack couldn't didn't save

charity (~30s/40s), constance's mother :)

"mama" (~50s/60s), constance's grandmother :)

amos grundy (~60s), constance's father; a good old fashioned preacher by trade :)

maybe a pattern has begun to develop, hmm? hehehe

while i can't promise every character on this list will be pivotal...they all very much have their roles to play, and if it doesn't seem like it just quite yet, well...

we've still got us a few more weeks of summer now, don't we? ;)c

[queenofbaws]

For the ask game

💾

💾What is your document of your wip/ a wip called? (not the stories actual title but what you’ve saved it as)

dksfjsdlkf oh boy, so this one is interesting because i keep several docs for each big fic i write so, uhhhHHHHHH when talking about like wringing blood from a stone, the docs are titled thusly:

-the chapters i'm actively working on: the (hackett)s - a joke title that never got changed lksjdfklsjdklfj

-the outline/pieces-parts for future chapters: wolf info - this doc was JUST supposed to be, um, info about wolves sldkfjslkdjfksjdf

-and finally, uh: hacketts AUGUST 22 ONLY

that last one feels...pretty self-explanatory XD but yeah, honestly, i dont think...as a general rule, my doc titles are usually NOT the actual title of whatever im working on, which i'm sure will NEVER come back and bite me in the ass 😎

[queenofbaws]

I don’t know what you mean by good bad and bad bad is this a channel or a series of videos? How do I find them?

!!! oh man, i've been watching so much of these guys lately, i GENUINELY forget they're not like. huge. sdfksjdflkjsdf MY BAD

so good bad or bad bad is a series on youtube where the two hosts watch movies that are ALREADY known for being bad/shlocky, and then they break them down and decide whether they're GOOD bad (fun to watch, fun to make fun of, fun to put on when you're hanging out with friends, just FUN in general!!!) or if they're BAD bad (not worth your time AT ALL)

they have a BUUUUNCH of videos looking at all kinds of movies, and it's impossible for me to pick a fav, but if you're looking for a good place to start, just.......just.....bi...billy owens.

*chefs kiss* i've been watching these nonstop lately, and i cannot recommend them enough i SWEAR

[queenofbaws]

here with a music promptfor whatever fandom you feel inspired to write for:

pink slips by okkervil river

By and large, scary stuff just wasn't his bag - never had been. Back home his friends (Kaitlyn included) would flap their arms and cluck when he bowed out, tweaking his nose as they called his raging machismo into question with singsong voices, but he never let it get to him because fuck them, that's why. He knew what he liked and horror just wasn't it, and even more than that, he had a sneaking suspicion the people who willingly subjected themselves to that crap were probably more than a little bit cracked in the head, so no thanks, hard pass, keep it moving buddy.

So how had he ended up here, his head in his hands and his stomach in his feet, the tick of his pulse so off-rhythm he thought he might puke? It didn't make sense, the lodge was still bright with the orange light of golden hour and everyone was laughing, the counselors and campers alike dancing horribly goofy dances until they got too dizzy or tears streamed down their cheeks; he should've been out there with them, striking dumb poses and hamming it up, convincing the younger kids the punch really was made of crushed-up bugs, then turning around and chugging it until they screamed...but he couldn't.

He couldn't, because something about the way the sunlight caught in Emma's hair as she twirled around with two of her campers had shot a bolt through him, clenching everything in his chest until he couldn't breathe around the realization filling his lungs like lake water: He wasn't okay with this ending, he wasn't ready to say goodbye, and holy shit, he'd never been half so scared of anything as he was in that moment.

six sentence sat(or)sunday!!!