#how to write a dissertation fast

[thepencilnerd]

A Lesson In Fear Extinction | part I

pairing: professor!Jack Abbot x f!psych phd student reader summary: You’re a senior doctoral student in the clinical department, burned out and emotionally barricaded, just trying to finish your final few years when Jack Abbot—trauma researcher, new committee member, and unexpectedly perceptive—starts seeing through you in ways you didn’t anticipate wc: 11.9k content/warnings: academic!AU, slow burn (takes places over 3 years lbffr), frat boys being gross + depictions of unwanted male attention/verbal harassment, academic power dynamics, emotional repression, discussions of mental health, mutual pining, hurt/comfort, angst, so much yearning, canon divergence, no explicit smut (yet/tbd but still 18+ MDNI, i will fight u) a/n: this started as a slow-burn AU and spiraled into a study in mutual repression, avoidant-attachment, and me trying to resolve my personal baggage through writing ~yet again~ p.s. indubitably inspired by @hotelraleigh and their incredible mohan x abbot fic (and all of their fics that live in my head rent free, tyvm) i hope you stay tuned for part II (coming soon, pinky promise) ^-^

The first thing you learn about Dr. Jack Abbot is that he hates small talk. That, and that he has a death glare potent enough to silence even the most self-important faculty members in the psych department.

The second thing you learn is that he runs his office like a bunker—door usually half-shut, always a little too cold, shelves lined with books no one's touched in decades. You step inside for your first meeting, and it feels like entering a war room.

"You’re early," he says, without looking up from the annotated manuscript he’s scribbling on.

"It's the first day of the school year."

"Same difference."

You take a seat, balancing your laptop on your knees. Your fingers hover over the keyboard, unsure if you should even bother.

Dr. Abbot finally glances up. Hazel eyes, sharp behind silver-framed glasses. "Let’s make this easy. Tell me what you’re working on and what you want from me."

You hesitate. Not because you don’t know. You’ve been rehearsing this on the walk over. You just hadn’t planned on him cutting through the pleasantries quite so fast.

"I’m running a mixed methods study on affective forecasting errors in anxiety and depression. Lab-based mood induction, longitudinal survey follow-up, and semi-structured interviews. I'm trying to map discrepancies between predicted and experienced affect and how that mismatch contributes to maladaptive emotion regulation patterns over time."

A beat.

"So you're testing whether people with anxiety and depression are bad at predicting their own feelings."

You blink. "Yes."

"Good. Start with that next time."

You bite the tip of your tongue. Roll the flesh between your teeth to ground yourself. There is no next time, you want to say. You’re only meeting with him once, to get sign-off on your committee. He wasn’t your first choice. Wasn't even your second. But your advisor's on sabbatical, and the other quantitative faculty are already overbooked.

Dr. Abbot leans back in his chair, examining you. "You’re primary is Robby, right?"

"Technically, yes."

He hums, not bothering to hide the skepticism. "And you want me on your committee because...?"

"Because you published that meta-analysis on PTSD and chronic stress. Your work on cumulative trauma exposure and dysregulated affect dovetails with mine on stress-related trajectories for internalizing disorders and comorbidity. I thought you might actually get what I’m trying to do."

His brow lifts, just slightly. "You did your homework."

"Well, I’m asking you for feedback on a dissertation that will probably make me break down countless times before it's done. Figured I should know what I was getting into."

Dr. Abbot's mouth twitches. You wouldn’t call it a smile, exactly. But it’s something.

"Alright," he says, flipping open a calendar. "Let’s see if we can find a time next week to go over your proposal draft."

You arch a brow. "You’ll do it?"

"You came in prepared. And you didn’t waste my time—as much as the other fourth years. That gets you further than you’d think around here."

You nod, heart thudding. Not because you’re nervous.

Because you have the weirdest feeling that Jack Abbot just became your biggest academic problem—and your most unexpected ally.

You see him again the next day. Robby was enjoying his last remaining few weeks of paternity leave and graciously asked Jack to sub for his foundations of clinical psychology course. Jack preferred the word coerced but was silenced by a text message with a photo of a child attached. The baby was cute enough to warrant blackmail. 

He barely got through the door intact: balancing a coffee cup between his teeth, cradling a half-closed laptop under one arm, and wrangling the straps of a clearly ancient backpack. His limp is more pronounced today. The small cohort watches him with a mix of curiosity and vague alarm.

You’re in the front row, laptop open before he even gets to the podium.

Jack drops everything onto the lectern with a heavy exhale, then glances around. His eyes catch on you and pause—not recognition yet, just flicker. Then he turns back to plug in his laptop.

You don’t expect to see him again two days later, striding into the 200-level general psych class you TA. The room’s already three-quarters of the way full when he walks in, and it takes him a moment before he does a brief double-take in your direction.

You return your attention to your notes. Jack stares.

"Small world."

"Nice to see you too, Dr. Abbot."

He sighs. "Why am I not surprised."

"Because the annual stipend increase doesn't adjust for inflation, I'm desperate, and there aren't enough grants given the current state of events?"

Jack mutters something under his breath about cosmic punishment and unfolds the syllabus from his coat pocket like it personally betrayed him.

When he finally settles at the front—coffee in one hand, laptop balancing precariously on the desk—you catch him bending and straightening his knee just under the edge of the table, jaw set tight. It’s subtle. Anyone else might miss it. But you’ve been watching.

You say nothing. 

A few students linger with questions—mostly undergrads eager to impress, notebooks clutched to their chests, rattling off textbook jargon in shaky voices. Jack humors them, mostly. Nods here, clarification there. But his eyes flick to you more than once.

You take your time with the stack of late enrollment passes. He’s still watching when you sling your tote over one shoulder and head for the door.

Probably off to the lab. Or your cubicle in the main psych building. Wherever fourth years disappear to when they aren’t shadowing faculty or training underqualified and overzealous research assistants on data collection procedures.

Jack shifts his weight onto his good leg and half-listens to the sophomore with the over-highlighted textbook.

His eyes stay on you when you walk out.

You make it three steps past the stairwell before the sound of your name stops you. It’s not loud—more like a clipped murmur through the general noise of backpacks zipping and chairs scraping—but it cuts straight through.

You turn back.

Jack’s still at the front, the stragglers now filtering out behind him. He doesn’t wave. Doesn’t beckon. Just meets your gaze like he already knows you’ll wait. You do.

He makes his way toward you slowly, favoring one leg. The closer he gets, the more you notice—the way his hand tightens on the strap of his backpack, the exhausted pull at his brow. He’s not masking as well today.

"Thanks for not saying anything," he says when he stops beside you.

You shrug. "Didn’t seem like you needed an audience."

Jack huffs a laugh, dry and faintly surprised. "Most people mean well, but—"

"They hover," you finish. "Or overcompensate. Or say something weird and then try to walk it back."

"Exactly."

You both stand there for a beat too long, campus noise shifting around you like a slow tide.

"I was heading to the coffee shop," you say finally. "Did you want anything?"

Jack tilts his head. "Bribery?"

"Positive reinforcement." The words trail behind a small grin. 

He shakes his head, mouth twitching. "Probably had enough caffeine for the day."

The corner of your lip curls higher. "As if there's such a thing."

That earns you a half-huff, half-scoff—just enough to let you believe you might have amused him.

"Well," you say, taking a step backward, "I’ve got three more RAs to train and one very stubborn loop to fix. See you around, Dr. Abbot."

"Good luck," he says, voice low but steady. "Don’t let the building eat you alive."

The next time he sees you, it’s after 10 p.m. on a Thursday.

You hadn’t planned on staying that late. But the dinosaur of a computer kept crashing, two of your participants no-showed, and by the time you’d salvaged the afternoon’s data to pull, it was easier to crash on the grad lounge couch than face the lone commute back to your apartment.

You must’ve fallen asleep halfway through reading feedback from your committee—curled up with your legs splayed over the edge of the couch and laptop perched on the cheap coffee table. The hall is mostly dark when Jack walks past. He’s heading toward the parking lot when he stops, mid-step.

For a moment, he just stands there, taking in the sight of you tucked awkwardly into yourself. You look comfortable in your oversized hoodie, if not for the highlighter cap still tucked between your fingers and mouth parted in a silent snore. 

He doesn’t say anything. Just watches you breathe for a few seconds longer than necessary.

Then, maybe with more curiosity than concern, he raps his knuckles gently against the doorframe. Once. Twice. Three times for good measure. 

No response.

Jack steps inside and calls out, voice pitched low but insistent. "This is not a sustainable sleep schedule, you know."

You stir—just barely. A vague groan escapes your lips as you shift and swat clumsily in the direction of the noise. "Just five more minutes... need to run reliability analyses..."

Jack chuckles, genuine and surprised.

He leans against the wall, watching you with no urgency to leave. "Dreaming about data cleaning. Impressive."

You make a small, unintelligible noise and swat again, this time with a little more conviction. Jack snorts.

After a moment, he sighs. Then carefully crosses the room, picks up the crumpled throw blanket from the floor, and drapes it over you without ceremony.

He flicks off the overheads and closes the door behind him with a quiet click. The hallway hums with fluorescent buzz as he limps toward the parking lot, shoulders tucked in against the chill.

A few weeks into the semester, the rhythm settles—lecture, discussion, grading, rinse and repeat. But today, something shifts.

You’re stacking quizzes at the front of the general psych lecture hall when Jack catches movement out of the corner of his eye. Two male students—frat-adjacent, all oversized hoodies and entitled swagger—approach your desk.

Jack looks up from his laptop. His expression doesn’t shift, but something in his posture does—a subtle, perceptible freeze. He watches from where he’s still packing up—hand paused on his laptop case, jaw tight, eyes narrowing just slightly as he takes in the dynamic. There’s a flicker of tension behind his glasses, a pause that says: if you needed him, he’d step in.

They swagger up with the kind of smirks you’ve seen too many times before—overconfident, under-read, and powered by too many YouTube clips of alpha male podcasts.

"Yo, TA—what’s up?" one says, leaning far too close to your desk. "Was gonna ask something about the exam, but figured I’d shoot my shot first. You free later? Coffee on me."

His friend elbows him like he’s a comedic genius. "Yeah, like maybe we could pick your brain about, like, how to get into grad school. You probably have all the insider tricks, right?"

You don’t even blink.

"Sure," you say sweetly. "I’d love to review your application materials. Bring your CV, your transcript, three letters of rec, and proof that you’ve read the Title IX policy in full. Bonus points if you can make it through a meeting without quoting Andrew Tate—or I’ll assume you’re trying to get yourself suspended." 

They stare. You smile.

One laughs uncertainly. The other mutters something about how "damn, okay," and both slink away.

Jack’s jaw works once. Then relaxes.

You glance up, like you knew he’d been watching.

"Well handled," he says, voice low as he steps beside you.

You offer a nonchalant shrug. "First years are getting bolder."

"Bold is one word for it."

You hand him a stack of leftover forms. "Relax, Dr. Abbot. I’ve survived undergrads before. I’ll survive again."

Jack gives a small, amused grunt. Then, after a beat: "You can call me Jack."

You glance up, brow raised. 

"Feels a little formal to keep pretending we’re strangers.

You don’t say anything right away. Just nod once, almost imperceptibly, then go back to gathering your things.

He doesn’t push it.

It’s raining hard enough to rattle the windows.

You’re having what your cohort half-jokingly calls a "good brain day"—sentences coming easy, theory clicking into place, citations at your fingertips. You barely notice the weather.

Jack glances up from your chapter draft as you launch into a point about predictive error and affective flattening. He doesn't interrupt. His eyes follow how you pace—one hand gesturing, the other holding your annotated copy, words sharp and certain.

Eventually, you pause mid-thought and glance at him.

He's already looking at you. 

Your hand flies up to cover your mouth. "Shit. I'm sorry—"

Jack shakes his head, lips twitching at the corners. "Don’t apologize. That was… brilliant."

You blink at him, the compliment stalling your momentum. The automatic response bubbles up fast—some joke to deflect, to downplay. You don't say it. Not this time.

Still, your fingers tighten slightly on the edge of the desk. "I don't know about brilliant..."

Jack doesn’t look away. "I do."

The silence stretches—not awkward, exactly, but thick. His gaze doesn’t waver, and it holds something steady and burning behind it.

You glance down at your annotated draft. The silence stays between you like a taut wire.

Jack doesn’t fill it. Just waits—gaze unwavering, as if giving you time to come to your own conclusion. No pressure, no indulgent smile. Just a quiet, grounded certainty that settles between you like weight.

Eventually, you exhale. The tension loosens—not completely, but enough to keep going.

"Okay," you murmur, almost to yourself.

Jack nods once, slowly. Then gestures at your printed draft. "Let’s talk about your integration of mindfulness in the discussion section. I’ve got a few thoughts."

Ethics is the last class of the week. The room's heating is inconsistent, the lights too bright, and Jack doesn’t know how the hell he ended up covering for Frank Langdon. Probably the same way he got stuck with Foundations and General Psych: Robby. The department’s too damn small and apparently everyone with a baby gets to vanish into thin air.

He steps into the room ten minutes early, coffee already lukewarm, and makes a half-hearted attempt to adjust the podium screen. The first few students trickle in, then more. He flips through the lecture slides, barely registering them.

And then he sees you.

You’re near the back, chatting with someone Jack doesn’t recognize. Another grad student by the look of him—slouched posture, soft jaw, navy sweater. The guy’s grinning like he thinks he’s charming. He leans in a little too close to your chair. Says something Jack can’t hear.

Jack tells himself he’s only looking because the guy seems familiar. Maybe someone from Walsh’s lab. Or Garcia’s. 

You laugh at something—light, genuine.

Jack tries not to react.

Navy Sweater says something else, more animated now. He gestures to your laptop. Points to something. You nudge his hand away with a grin and say something back that makes him blush.

Jack flips the page on his lecture notes without reading a word.

You’re still smiling when you finally glance up toward the podium.

Your eyes meet.

Jack doesn’t look away. But he doesn’t smile either.

The guy beside you says something else. You nod politely.

But you’re not looking at him anymore.

The next time you're in Jack’s office, the air feels different—autumn sharp outside, but warm in here.

He notices things. Not all at once, but cumulatively.

Your hair’s longer now. It’s subtle, but the ends graze your jaw in a way they hadn’t before. You’ve started wearing darker shades—amber, forest green, burgundy—instead of the lighter neutrals from early fall. Small changes. Seasonal shifts.

He doesn’t say anything about any of that.

But then he sees it.

A faint smudge of something high on your neck, near the curve of your jaw.

"Rough night?" he asks, lightly. The tone’s casual, but his eyes stay there a second too long.

You look up, blinking. Then seem to realize. "Oh. No, it’s—nothing."

He raises an eyebrow, just once. Doesn’t press.

What you don’t say: you went on a date last night. Your first real date since your second year. Navy Sweater—Isaac—had been sweet. Patient. Social psych, so he talked about group dynamics and interdependence theory instead of clinical cases. A refreshing change from your usual context. He’d been pining for you since orientation. You finally gave him a chance.

You’re not sure yet if it was a mistake.

Jack doesn’t ask again. He just shifts his attention back to your printed draft, flipping a page without comment.

But you can feel it—that subtle change in the room. Like something under the surface has started to stir.

Jack doesn’t speak again for the rest of the meeting, at least not about anything that isn’t your manuscript. But the temperature between you has shifted, unmistakable even in silence.

His feedback is sharp, incisive, and you take it all in—but your focus tugs sideways more than once.

You start to notice little things. The way his hands move when he talks—precise, economical, almost always with a pen twirling between his fingers. The way he reads with his whole posture—leaned in slightly, brows furrowed, lips moving just barely like he’s tasting the cadence of each sentence. How he always wears button-downs, sleeves pushed up to the elbows, like he’s never quite comfortable in them.

You catch the faint scruff at his jawline, the flecks of gray you hadn’t seen before in the fluorescent classroom light. The quiet groan of his office chair as he shifts to get more comfortable—though he never quite does. The occasional tap of his fingers against the desk when he’s thinking. The way his eyes track you when you pace, like he’s cataloging your rhythm.

When he leans in to gesture at a line in your text, you’re aware of his proximity in a way you hadn’t been before. The warmth that radiates off him. The way his breath hitches just slightly before he speaks.

When you ask a clarifying question, he meets your eyes and holds the gaze a fraction too long.

It shouldn’t mean anything. It probably doesn’t.

Still, when you pack up to leave, you don’t rush. Neither does he.

He walks you to the door, stops just short of it.

"Good luck with the coding," he says.

You nod. "Thanks. See you next week."

He hesitates, then nods once more. "Yeah. Next week."

And when you leave his office, the echo of that pause follows you down the hall.

At home, Jack goes through the same routine he always does. He hangs up his coat. Places his keys in the ceramic dish by the door. Fills the kettle. Rinses a clean mug from the rack without thinking—habit, even if it’s just for himself.

Then he sits down on the edge of the couch and unbuckles the prosthetic from his leg with practiced efficiency. He leans forward, slow and deliberate, and cleans the area with a soft cloth, checking the skin for signs of irritation before applying a thin layer of ointment. Only then does he begin to massage the tender spot where his leg ends, pressing the heel of his palm just enough to release tension. The ache is dull tonight, but persistent. It always is when the weather shifts.

He doesn’t turn on the TV. When he buckles it back on and gets up again, he moves around his apartment quietly, the limp less noticeable this time around.

While the water heats, he scrolls through emails on his phone—most from admin, flagged with false urgency. A few unread messages from students, one from a journal editor asking for another reviewer on a manuscript that costs too much to publish open access. He deletes half, archives another third. Wonders when it became so easy to ignore what used to feel so important.

The kettle whistles. He pours the water over the tea bag and sets it down, not bothering with the stack of essays he meant to look at hours ago.

He doesn’t touch them.

Not yet.

Tonight, his rhythm is off.

Instead, he looks over your latest draft after dinner, meaning only to skim. He finds himself rereading the same paragraph three times, mind somewhere else entirely. Your words, your phrasing, your comments in the margins—he's memorizing them. Not intentionally. It just happens.

Later, brushing his teeth, Jack thinks of how you’d looked that afternoon: eyes sharp, expression animated, tucked into a wool sweater the color of cinnamon. Hair falling forward when you tilted your head to listen, then swept back with one distracted hand. A little ink smudged on your finger. The edge of a smile you didn’t know you were wearing.

He wonders if you know how often you pace when you’re deep in thought. How your whole posture changes when something clicks—like your bones remember before your voice does. How you gesture with the same hand you write with, sometimes forgetting you’re holding a pen at all.

He tells himself it’s just professional attentiveness. That he’s tuned into all his students this way. That noticing you in detail is part of his job.

But it’s a lie. And the truth has started to settle into his bones.

He closes his laptop, shuts off the light.

He dreams in fragments—lecture notes and old conference halls, the scent of rain-soaked leaves, the sound of your voice mid-sentence. The ghost of a laugh.

He doesn’t remember the shape of the dream when he wakes.

Only the warmth that lingers in its place.

Across town, you’re on another date with Isaac.

He’s funny tonight—quick with dry quips, gentler than you'd expected. He walks you to a small café far from campus, one you’ve driven by a dozen times but never tried. He orders chai with oat milk. You get the pumpkin spice out of spite.

"Pumpkin spice, really?" he teases. "Living the stereotype."

"It’s autumn," you shoot back. "Let me have one basic pleasure."

You talk about everything but your dissertation—TV shows, childhood pets, the worst advice you’ve ever received from an advisor. Inevitably, you steer the conversation into something about work. It's a habit you seem to remember having since your earliest academic days, and one you don't see yourself breaking free from anytime soon.

"My undergrad advisor once told me I’d never get into grad school unless I stopped sounding ‘so West Coast.’ Still not sure what that means."

Isaac laughs. "Mine told me to pick a research topic ‘I wouldn’t mind reading about for the rest of my life.’ As if anyone wants to read their own lit review twice."

You laugh—genuine, belly-deep. Isaac flushes with pride and takes a long sip of his chai, eyes bright.

It's easy with him, you think. Talking, breathing, being. You lean back in your chair, cup warm between your palms, and realize you should feel more present than you do.

He’s exactly what you thought you needed. Different. Outside your orbit. Not tangled up in diagnoses or a department that feels more like a pressure cooker every day.

But still, your mind drifts. Not far. Just enough.

Back to the way Jack had looked at you earlier that day. The pause before he spoke. The silence that wasn’t quite silence.

You can’t put your finger on it. You don’t want to.

Isaac reaches across the table to brush his fingers against yours. You let him.

And yet.

You catch yourself glancing toward the door as he brushes your fingers. Just once. Barely perceptible. A flicker of something unformed tugging at the edge of your attention.

Not for any reason you can name. Not because anything happened. But because something did—quiet and slow and not easily undone.

You remember the way his brow furrowed as he read your chapter, the steadiness in his voice when he called your argument brilliant, the way he looked at you like the room had narrowed down to a single point.

Isaac is sweet. Funny. Steady. You should be here.

But your mind keeps slipping sideways.

And Jack Abbot—stubborn, sharp, unreadable Jack—is suddenly everywhere. In the cadence of a sentence you revise, where you hear his voice in your head asking, 'Why this framework? Why now?' In the questions you don’t ask Isaac because you already know how Jack would answer them—precise, cutting, but never unkind. In the sudden, irritating way you want someone to challenge you just a little more. To push back, to poke holes, to see if your argument still stands.

You find yourself wondering what he’s doing tonight. If he’s at home, pacing through a quiet, single-family home too large for his own company. If he’s reading someone else’s manuscript with the same intensity. If he ever thinks about the way you looked that afternoon, how you paced his office with fire in your voice and a red pen tucked behind your ear.

You think about the hitch in his breath when you leaned in. The way he’d watched you leave, that pause at the door.

And then Isaac says something—soft, thoughtful—and it takes you a second too long to register it. You nod, distracted, and reach for your drink again.

But your mind is already elsewhere.

Still with someone else.

You take another sip of your drink. Smile at Isaac. Let the moment pass.

But even then, even here—Jack is in the room.

You don’t see Jack again until the following Thursday. It’s raining hard again—something about mid-semester always seems to come with the weather—and the psych building smells like wet paper and overworked radiators.

You’re in the hallway, hunched over a Tupperware of leftover lentils and trying to catch up on grading, when his door creaks open across the hall. You glance up reflexively.

He’s standing there, brow furrowed, papers in hand. He spots you. Freezes.

For a moment, neither of you says anything. The hallway is quiet, just the hum of fluorescents and the distant murmur of a class in session. Then:

"Grading?" he asks, voice lower than usual—quiet, but unmistakably curious.

You lift your fork, deadpan. "Don’t sound so jealous."

Jack’s mouth twitches—almost a smile. A pause, then: "You’re in Langdon’s office hours slot, right?"

"Only if I bring snacks," you quip, referring to the way Frank Langdon always lets the TA with snacks cut the line—a running joke in the department.

Jack raises his coffee like a toast. "Then I’ll keep walking." A dry little truce. An unspoken I’ll stay out of your way—unless you want me to stay.

You watch him disappear down the hallway, his limp slightly more pronounced than usual. And you find yourself thinking—about how many times you’ve noticed that, and how many times he’s never once drawn attention to it.

Your spoon scrapes the bottom of the container. You try to return to grading.

You don’t get much done.

Later that afternoon, you’re back in the general psych lecture hall, perched on the side of the desk with your TA notes while Jack clicks through the day’s slides. It’s the second time he’s teaching this unit and he’s not even pretending to follow the script. You know him well enough now to catch the subtle shifts—when he goes off-book, lets the theory breathe.

He doesn’t look at you while he lectures, but you can tell when he’s aware of you. The slight change in cadence, the way his eyes flick toward the front row where you sometimes sit, sometimes stand.

Today’s lecture is on conditioning. Classical, operant, extinction.

At one point, Jack pauses at the podium. He’s talking about fear responses—conditioned reactions, the body’s anticipatory wiring, what it takes to unlearn a threat. You’ve heard this part a dozen times in college and a dozen more in grad school. You’ve written about it. You've published on it. 

But when he says, "Fear isn’t erased. It’s overwritten," his eyes flick toward you—just for a second.

And your heart trips a little. Not in a dramatic, cinematic way—more like a misstep in rhythm, a skipped beat in a song you thought you knew by heart. Your breath catches for half a second, and you feel the heat rush to the tips of your ears.

It’s absurd, maybe. Definitely. But the tone of his voice when he said it—that measured, worn certainty—lands somewhere deep inside you. Not clinical. Not abstract. It feels like he’s speaking to something unspoken, to a part of you you've tried to keep quiet.

You shift your weight, pretending to re-stack a paper that doesn’t need re-stacking, pulse louder than it should be in your ears.

From your seat on the edge of the desk, you can see the way he gestures with his hand, slow and spare, like every movement costs something. The way he leans on his good leg. The way the muscles in his forearm flex as he flips to the next slide, still speaking, still teaching—none of this showing on his face.

Your eyes keep drifting back.

And he doesn’t look at you again. Not for the rest of the lecture.

But you feel the weight of that glance long after the class ends.

You stay after class, mostly to gather the quiz sheets and handouts. A few students linger, asking Jack questions about the exam. You hear him shift into that firm-but-generous tone he uses with undergrads, the kind that makes them think he’s colder than he is. Efficient. Clear.

When the last student finally packs up and leaves the room, Jack straightens. His eyes find you, soft but unreadable.

"Good lecture," you say.

He hums. "Not bad for a recycled deck."

You hand him the stack of forms. "You made it your own."

His thumb brushes over the edge of the papers. "So did you."

You don’t ask what he means. But the quiet between you feels different than it did at the start of the semester.

The room is mostly empty. Just the two of you. You're caught somewhere between impulse and caution. Approach and avoidance. There's a pull in your chest, low and slow, that makes you want to linger a second longer. To say something else. To ask about the lecture, or the line he looked at you during, or the kind of day he's had. But your voice sticks.

Instead, you shift again, adjust your grip on the papers in your hands, and let it all stay unsaid. But Jack’s already turned back toward the podium, gathering his things.

He doesn’t look up right away. Just slides his laptop into its case with more force than necessary, his jaw set tight. He’s annoyed with himself. The kind of annoyance that comes from knowing he missed something—not a moment, exactly, but the shadow of one. An opening. And he let it pass.

There was a question in your eyes. Or maybe not a question—maybe a dare. Maybe just the start of one. And he didn’t rise to meet it.

He tells himself that’s good. That’s safe. That’s professional.

But it doesn’t feel like a win.

His hand pauses on the zipper. He breathes out through his nose, not quite a sigh. Then glances toward the door.

You’re already gone.

You let the moment pass.

But you feel it. Like something just under the surface, waiting for another breach in the routine.

It happens late one evening, entirely by accident.

You’re in your office, door mostly closed, light still on. You meant to leave hours ago—meant to finish your email and call it—but the combination of caffeine and a dataset that refused to make sense kept you tethered to your desk.

Jack’s on his way out of the building when he hears it: a muffled sound from behind a half-open door just across the hallway from his own. He pauses, backtracks, and realizes for the first time exactly where your office is.

He hears it again—a quiet sniffle, then a low, barely-there laugh like you’re trying to brush it off.

He knocks.

You don’t answer.

"Hey," he says, voice just loud enough to carry but still gentle. "You alright?"

The sound of your chair creaking. A breath caught in your throat.

"Shit—Jack." You swipe at your face automatically, the name out before you think about it.

He steps just inside, not crossing the threshold. "Didn’t mean to scare you."

You shake your head, still blinking fast. "No, I just—burned out. Hit a wall. It’s fine. Nothing serious. Just… one of those days." You try for a joke.

Jack’s eyes sweep the room. The state of your desk. The way your sweater sleeves are pulled down over your hands. He shifts his weight.

There’s a long pause. Then he says, softer, "Can I—?"

You furrow your brows for a moment before nodding.

He steps in and leaves the door slightly cracked open behind him. He remains by the edge of your desk, a respectful distance between you. His presence is quiet but steady, and he doesn't pry with questions.

You exhale slowly, suddenly aware of the sting behind your eyes and how tight your shoulders have been all day. You look down, embarrassed, and when you reach for a tissue, your hand grazes his by accident.

You both freeze.

It’s nothing, really. A brush of skin. But it lands like something else. Not unwelcome. Not forgotten.

Jack doesn’t pull away. But he doesn’t linger, either.

Jack doesn’t move at first. He watches you for a moment longer, the quiet in the room settling unevenly.

"You sure you’re alright?" he asks, voice low, unreadable.

You nod, quick. "Yeah. I’m fine."

It comes too fast. Reflexive. But it lands the way you want it to—firm, closed.

Jack nods slowly. He doesn’t push. "Okay."

He steps back, finally. "Just—don’t stay too late, alright?"

You offer a smaller nod.

He hesitates again. Then turns and slips out without another word.

Your office feels warmer once he’s gone.

And your breath feels just a little easier.

Jack makes his way down the hallway toward the faculty lounge with the intention of grabbing a fresh coffee before his office hours. He passes a few students loitering in the corridor—chatter, laughter, the usual.

But then he hears your voice. Quiet, edged. Just outside the lecture hall.

"Isaac, I’m not having this conversation again. Not here."

Jack slows. Doesn’t stop, but slows and finds a small nook just shy of the corner. 

"I just don’t get why you won’t answer a simple question," Isaac says. "Are you seeing someone else or not?"

There’s a pause. Jack glances down at the coffee in his hand and debates turning around.

But then he hears your exhale—sharp, frustrated. "No. I’m not."

Isaac huffs. "Then what is this? You’re always somewhere else—even when we’re out, even on weekends. It’s like your head’s in another fucking dimension."

Jack feels the hairs on his neck stand up. He sees you standing with your back half-turned to Isaac, arms crossed tightly over your chest. Isaac’s face is flushed, his voice a little too loud for the setting. Your posture is still—too still.

Jack doesn’t step in. Not yet. He stays just out of sight, near the hallway alcove. Close enough to hear. Close enough to watch.

You draw in a long breath. When you speak, your voice is level, cold. "I just don’t think I’m in the right place to be in a relationship right now."

Isaac’s expression shifts—confused, hurt.

Jack watches the edge of your profile. How your shoulders lock into place. How your eyes go distant, like you’re powering down every soft part of yourself.

He doesn’t breathe.

Then someone laughs down the hallway, and the moment breaks. Isaac looks over his shoulder, distracted for half a beat, then turns back to you with something sharp in his eyes.

"You’re not even trying," he says, voice low but biting. "I’m giving you everything I’ve got, and you’re... somewhere else. Always."

You stiffen. Jack stays hidden, tension rippling down his spine.

"I know..." you say, voice tight. "I'm sorry. I really am. But this isn’t working."

Isaac’s face contorts. "Seriously? That’s it?"

You shake your head. "You deserve someone who’s fully here. Who wants the same things you do. I’m not that person right now."

He opens his mouth to say something, but your eyes have already gone cold. Guarded. Clinical.

"I don't want to whip out the 'it's not you it's me bullshit'," you continue, each word deliberate. "But this isn’t about you doing something wrong. It’s me. I can’t give more than I’ve already given."

Jack watches the shift in your posture—how you shut it all down, protect the last open pieces of yourself. He recognizes it because he’s done the same.

"I'm sorry." The words are genuine. "You deserve better." Your eyes don't betray you. For a moment, though, your expression softens. You look at Isaac like a kicked dog, like you wish you could offer something kinder. But then it’s gone. Your eyes go cold again, your voice a blade dulled only by exhaustion.

Then someone laughs again down the hallway, closer this time, and the moment scatters. Jack moves past without a word. Doesn’t look at you directly.

But he sees you.

And he doesn’t forget what he saw.

As he passes, you glance up. Your eyes meet.

Only for a second.

Then he’s gone.

Isaac doesn’t notice.

Time passes. You're back in Jack's office for your regular one-on-one—but something is different.

You sit a little straighter. Speak a little quieter. The bright curiosity you usually carry in your voice has hardened, now precise ,restrained. Not icy, but guarded. Pulled taut.

You’re not trying to be unreadable, but you can feel yourself defaulting. Drawing the boundaries back up.

Jack notices.

He doesn’t say anything, but you catch the slight narrowing of his gaze as he listens.

You’d gone all in on this program, this career—your research, your ambitions, your carefully calculated goals. Isaac was the first time you'd tried letting something else in. A possibility. A softness.

And it crashed. Of course it did.

Because that’s what you do. That’s the pattern. You’re excellent at control, planning, systems, at hypothesis testing and case management. But when it comes to anything outside the academic orbit—connection, trust, letting someone see the jagged pieces under the polish—you flinch. You fail.

And you’ve learned not to let that show. Not anymore.

At one point, you trail off mid-sentence. Jack doesn’t fill the silence.

You clear your throat. Try again.

There’s something steadier in his quiet today. You finally finish your point and glance up. His expression is neutral, but his gaze is… undivided.

"Are you okay?"

It catches you off guard. You blink once, not expecting the question, not from him, not here.

You start to nod. Then pause. Your throat feels tight for a second.

"Yeah," you say. "I’m fine."

Jack doesn’t look away. He holds your gaze a moment longer. Not pressing. Not interrogating. Just there.

"You should know better than to lie to a psychologist."

It’s almost a joke. Almost. Just enough curve at the corner of your mouth to soften it. You let out a breath—half a laugh, half a sigh. "Guess I need to reassess my baseline."

Jack leans forward slightly. Then, without saying anything, reaches over and closes your laptop. Slides it just out of reach on the desk.

You open your mouth to protest.

Jack cuts in, quiet but firm. "You need to turn your brain off before it short circuits."

You blink. He continues, gentler this time. "Just for a few minutes. You don’t have to push through every wall. Sometimes it’s okay to sit still. Breathe. Be a human being."

You look down at your hands, fingers curled around a pen you hadn’t realized you were still holding. There’s a long pause before you speak.

"I don’t know how to do that," you admit, voice barely above a whisper.

Jack doesn’t say anything at first. He lets the silence settle. "Start small," he says. "We’re not built to stay in fight-or-flight forever."

The words land heavier than you expect. You stare down at your hands, your knuckles paling against the pressure of your grip. Your breath stutters on the way out.

Jack doesn’t move, but his presence feels closer somehow—like the room has contracted around the two of you, warm and steady.

You set the pen down slowly. Swallow. Your eyes burn, but nothing falls.

Your jaw shifts. Just a fraction.

You don’t say anything at first.

Jack doesn’t either. But he doesn’t look away.

After a beat, he says—careful, quiet—"You want to talk about it?"

You hesitate, eyes fixed on a crease in your jeans. "No."

He waits. "I think you do."

You laugh under your breath. It’s not funny. "This how you talk to all of your clients?"

He doesn't bite.

"You don’t let up, do you?" You're only half-serious.

"I do," he pauses. "When it matters. Just not when my mentee is sitting in front of me looking like the world’s pressing down on their ribcage."

That makes you flinch. Not visibly, not to most. But he sees it. Of course he does. He’s trained to.

You look at your hands. He's not going to let this go so you might as well bite the bullet. "I'm not great at the whole... letting people in thing."

Jack doesn’t respond. Just shifts his weight slightly in his chair—almost imperceptibly. A silent invitation.

Your voice stays quiet. Measured. "I usually just throw myself into work. It’s easier. It’s something I can control."

Still, he says nothing.

You pick at the seam of your sleeve. "Other stuff... it gets messy. Too unpredictable. People are unpredictable."

Jack’s gaze never wavers. He doesn’t push. But the absence of interruption is its own kind of presence—steady, open.

Your lips twitch in a faint, humorless smile. "I know that’s ironic coming from someone studying emotion regulation."

He finally says, softly, "Sometimes the people who study it hardest are the ones trying to figure it out for themselves."

That makes your eyes flick up. His expression is calm. Receptive. No judgment. No smile, either. Just… presence.

You look down again. Your voice even softer now. "I don’t know how to do it. Not really."

Jack doesn’t interrupt. Just shifts, barely, like bracing.

And somehow, that makes you keep going.

"Grad school’s easier. Career’s easier. I can plan. I can control. Everything else just…" You trail off. Shrug, a flicker of helplessness.

He’s still watching you. The way he does when he’s listening hard, like there’s a string between you and he’s waiting to see if you’ll keep tugging it.

"I thought maybe..." You press your lips together. "I thought I could do it. Let someone in. Be a person. A twenty-nine year old, for fuck's sake." Your hands come up to your face. "But it just reminded me why I don’t."

You draw a slow breath. Something in your chest cracks. Not a collapse—just a fault line giving way.

Jack just stares.

Then, slowly, he leans back—not away, but into the quiet. He folds his hands in his lap, thumb tracing a familiar line over his knuckle. A practitioner’s stillness. A kind of careful permission.

"You know," he says, voice low, "when I first started in trauma research, I thought if I understood it well enough, I could outsmart it. Like if I had the right frameworks, if I mapped the pathways right, it wouldn’t touch me."

You glance up.

He exhales through his nose—dry, but not bitter. "Turns out, knowing the symptoms doesn’t stop you from living them. Doesn’t stop the body from remembering."

He doesn’t specify. Doesn’t have to.

His eyes flick to yours. "But you don’t have to be fluent in trust to start learning it. You don’t have to be good at it yet. You just have to let someone sit with you in the silence."

You study him. The sharpness of his jaw, the quiet behind his glasses, the wear in his voice that doesn’t make it weaker.

Your throat tightens, but you don’t speak.

He doesn’t need you to.

He just stays there—anchored. Steady. Unmoving.

Like he's not waiting for you to come undone.

He's waiting for you to believe you don’t have to.

It's Friday night. You’re walking a participant through the start of a lab assessment—part of the longitudinal stress and memory protocol you’ve spent the last year fine-tuning. The task itself is simple enough: a series of conditioned images, paired with soft tones. But you watch the participant's pulse rise on the screen. Notice the minute shift in posture, the tension in their jaw.

You pause. Slow things down.

"Remember," you say gently, "we’re looking at how your body responds when it doesn’t need to anymore. The point isn’t to trick you—it’s to see what happens when the threat isn’t real. When it’s safe."

The participant nods, still uneasy.

You don’t blame them.

Later, the metaphor clings to you like static from laundry fresh out of the dryer. Fear extinction: the process of unlearning what once kept you alive. Or something close to it.

You think of what Jack said. What he didn’t say. The silence he offered like a landing strip.

It replays in your head more than you'd like to admit—the dim warmth of his office, the soft click of your laptop closing, the unexpected steadiness in his voice. No clinical jargon. No agenda. Just space. Permission.

You remember the way he folded his hands. The faint scuff on the corner of his desk. The way he didn’t fill the air with reassurances or advice. Just stayed quiet until the quiet felt less like drowning and more like floating.

And it had made something in your chest stutter—because you'd spent years studying fear responses, coding reactivity curves and salience windows, mapping out prediction error pathways and understanding affect labeling.

But none of your models accounted for the way someone simply sitting with you could ease the grip of it.

Maybe, you think now, as you log the participant's final response, this is what fear extinction looks like outside of a lab setting. Not just reducing reactivity to a blue square or a sharp tone.

But learning—relearning—how it feels to let another person in and survive it.

Maybe Jack wasn’t offering a solution.

Maybe he was offering proof.

Is this what it looked like in practice? Not just in a scanner or a skin conductance chart—but in the quiet, everyday choice of showing up? Staying? 

Perhaps the data is secondary and this is the experiment.

And maybe, just maybe, you’re already in the middle of it.

The new semester begins in a blur of syllabi updates and shuffled office assignments. It's your final year before internship—a fact that looms and hums in the background like a lamp you can't turn off. You’re no longer the quiet, watchful second-year—you’ve published, you've taught, you've survived.

But you’re also exhausted. You’ve become adept at wearing competence like armor.

Jack is teaching an elective course this semester—Epigenetics of Trauma. You're enrolled in it—a course you didn’t technically need, but couldn’t resist for reasons you cared not to admit. 

When you pass him in the hallway—coffee in one hand, a paper balanced on his clipboard—he stops.

"Did you hear the department finally updated the HVAC?" he asks, and it’s not really about the HVAC.

You nod, a wry smile tugging at your mouth. "Barely. Still feels like a sauna most days."

Jack gestures to your cardigan. "And yet you persist."

You grin. It’s a tiny thing. But it stays.

Later that week, he pokes his head into your office between student meetings.

"You’re on the panel for the trauma symposium, right?"

The one you were flying to at the end of October—thanks to Robby, who had playfully threatened to submit your name himself if you didn’t volunteer. He’d needed someone to piggyback off of, he’d said, and who better than his best grad student—who was also swamped with grant deadlines, dissertation chapters, and a growing list of internship applications. You’d rolled your eyes and said yes, of course, because that’s what you did. And maybe because a part of you liked the challenge, academic mascochism and validation and all. 

You nod. "Talk and discussion."

He steps farther in. "If you’re open to it—I’d like to sit in."

You glance up. "You’ve already read the draft."

Jack smiles. "Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to hear it out loud."

You lean back slightly, watching him. "You going to grill me from the audience and be that one guy?"

Jack raises an eyebrow, amused. "Wouldn’t dream of it."

You hum. "Mmhm."

But you’re smiling now. Just a little.

It’s not quite vulnerability. Not yet. But it’s a beginning. A reset. The next slow iteration in a long series of exposures. New responses. New learning. Acceptance in the face of uncertainty.

The only way fear ever learns to quiet down.

Robby’s already three beers in and trying to argue that Good Will Hunting is actually a terrible representation of therapy while Mel King—your cohort-mate in the developmental area, always mindful and reserved—defends its emotional core like it’s a thesis chapter she’s still revising in her head.

Mentored by John Shen, Mel studies peer rejection and emotional socialization in early childhood, and she talks about toddlers with the same reverence some people reserve for philosophers. Her dissertation focuses on how early experiences of exclusion and inclusion shape later prosocial behavior, and she can recite every milestone in the Denver Developmental Screening Test like scripture.

She’s known for respectful debates, non-caffeinated bursts of energy, and an uncanny ability to babysit and code data at the same time. The kind of person who shows up with a snack bag labeled for every child at a study visit—and still finds time to coordinate the department's annual "bring your child to work" day. She even makes time to join you and Samira on your Sunday morning farmers market walks, reusable tote slung over one shoulder, ready to talk about plum varieties and which stand has the best sourdough.

Samira Mohan, meanwhile, sits with her signature whiskey sour and a stack of color-coded notecards she pretends not to be working on. She’s in the clinical area too—mentored by Collins—and her work focuses on how minority stress intersects with emotion regulation in underserved populations. Her analyses are razor sharp and sometimes terrifying. Samira rarely speaks unless she knows her words will land precisely—measured, deliberate, the kind of sharp that cuts clean.

Although still in her early prospectus phase, choosing to propose in her fifth year rather than fourth, her dissertation is shaping into a cross-sectional and mixed-methods exploration of how racial and gender minority stressors compound across contexts—academic, familial, and romantic—and the specific emotion regulation repertoires that emerge as survival strategies.

Samira doesn’t stir the pot for fun; she does it when she sees complacency and feels compelled to light a fire under it. That’s the Samira everyone knows and you love—the one who will quietly dismantle your entire line of argument with one clinical observation and a deadpan stare. She does exactly that now, throwing in a quote from bell hooks with the sly smile of someone who knows she’s lit a fuse just to watch it burn. 

It’s a blur of overlapping conversations, familiar inside jokes, cheap spirits, and the particular cadence of a group that knows each other’s pressure points and proposal deadlines down to the day. For a moment you let yourself exist in it—in the din, in the messy affection of your academic family, in the safety you didn’t know you’d built, much less deserved. Samira’s halfway through a story about a disastrous clinical interview when she turns to you, parts her mouth to speak, and looks up behind you—

"So is this where all the cool kids hang out?"

You feel him before you see him—Jack’s presence like a low hum behind you, the soft waft of his cologne cutting through the ambient chatter. The light buzz of conversation has your senses dialed up, awareness prickling at the back of your neck. You don’t turn. You don’t have to.

Robby lets out a loud "whoohoo" as Jack joins the table, hauling him into a bro hug with the miraculously coordinated enthusiasm of someone riding high off departmental gossip. Jack rolls his eyes but doesn’t resist, letting Robby thump his back twice before extracting himself but instead of settling there, he leans down slightly, voice pitched just for you. “Is this seat taken?”

Robby at 12 o'clock, Heather to his left, then Samira, Mel, you, and John. The large circular table meant for twelve suddenly feels exponentially smaller. The tablecloth brushes your knees, heavy and starchy against your lap. You feel warmth creep up your cheeks—probably from the alcohol (definitely not from anything else)—and scoot over slightly closer to Mel, giving him room to squeeze in between you and John. You can feel the shift in the air, the proximity of his sleeve against yours, the silent knowledge that he's there now—anchored in your orbit.

He slides in beside you with a quiet murmur of thanks, the space between your arms barely more than a breath. The conversation continues, but the air feels a little different now.

He nods politely to Shen on his left, mutters something about being tricked into another committee, then glances your way—dry, amused, measured.

Always measured.

You feel Jack beside you—not just his sleeve brushing yours, but his presence, calm and dense as gravity. His knee bumps yours beneath the table once, lightly, maybe unintentional. Maybe not. The cologne still lingers faintly and you try to focus on what Samira is saying about peer-reviewed journals versus reviewer roulette, but it’s impossible to ignore the warmth radiating from his side, the way your skin registers it before your brain does. He's like a human crucible. You keep your gaze trained forward, sipping your drink a little too casually, pretending you don’t notice the way your heartbeat’s caught in your throat.

The charged air gives you a spike of bravery—fleeting, foolish, and just enough. Before you let the doubt creep into your veins, you nudge your knee toward Jack’s beneath the table, thankful for the tablecloth concealing the movement. You feel him exhale beside you—quiet, but unmistakable—and something inside you hums in response.

You feel Jack’s thigh tense against yours. The contact lingers, neither of you moving. Moments pass. Nothing happens.

So you cross your legs slowly, right over left, deliberately, letting the heel of your shoe graze his calf.

He stills.

The conversation around the table doesn’t pause, but you’re aware of every breath, every shift in weight beside you. The air between you tightens, stretched across the tension of everything unsaid.

Everyone else is occupied—Robby and Shen deep in conversation about conference logistics, Heather and Samira bickering over which of them was the worse TA, Mel nodding along and adding commentary between sips of cider. Jack sees the opening and seizes it.

He leans in, just slightly, until his shoulder brushes yours again—barely perceptible. "Subtle," he murmurs, voice pitched low, teasing.

You arch a brow, still facing forward. “I have no idea what you're talking.”

"Of course not," he says, dry. "Just sudden interest in the hem of the tablecloth, is it?"

You swirl your drink, letting the glass tilt in your fingers. "I’m a tactile learner. You know this."

He huffs a quiet breath—could almost be a laugh. "Must make data cleaning a thrilling experience."

"Only when R crashes mid-run." You angle your knee back toward his under the table, a soft bump like punctuation.

Jack tilts his head slightly, eyes flicking to yours. "Dangerous territory."

"Afraid of a little ambiguity, professor?"

His mouth twitches at the title. 

You sip slowly, buying time, letting the quiet between you stretch like a drawn breath. His thigh is still pressed against yours. Still unmoving. Still deliberate.

"You always like to push your luck this much?" you murmur, keeping your eyes trained on your drink.

Jack hums low. "Only when the risk feels... calculated."

You glance at him, the corner of your mouth twitching. "Bit of a reward sensitivity bias tonight, Dr. Abbot?"

He shrugs. "You’ve been unintentionally reinforcing bad behavior."

You smirk, but say nothing, letting the conversation around you swell again. Robby starts ranting about departmental politics, Heather counters with a story about a grant mix-up that almost ended in flames. You sip your drink, Samira taps her notecards absently against her palm.

The rest of the evening hums on, warm and loose around the edges. When it finally winds down—people slowly gathering coats, hugging their goodbyes—you rise with the group, still a little buzzed, still aware of Jack’s presence beside you like heat that never quite left your side.

Under the soft yellow glow of the dim lobby chandelier, everyone says their goodnights—laughing, tipsy, hugging, good vibes all around. Jack is the last to leave the circle, and as you turn toward the elevator, you glance over your shoulder at him. "See you tomorrow," you say. "Last day of the conference—only the most boring panels left."

Jack lifts a brow. "You wound me."

You grin. "I’m just saying—if you show up in sweats and a baseball cap for your presentation, I’ll pretend not to know you."

The elevator dings. The doors slide open. You step inside, leaning against the railing. Jack stays behind. 

"Goodnight," he says, eyes lingering. You nod, then turn, pressing the button for your floor. Just as the doors begin to glide shut, a hand slides into the narrow threshold—the border between hesitation and something else.

Palm flat against the seam. That sliver of metal and air.

He steps in slowly. Quiet. And presses the button for the same floor.

The doors slide shut behind him with a soft hiss.

Silence hums between you.

You don’t speak. Neither does he. But your awareness of each other sharpens—your breath shallow, his jaw tense. The elevator jolts into motion.

Jack shifts slightly, turning his body just enough to lean back against the railing—mirroring you. His arm grazes yours. Then the back of his hand brushes against your knuckles.

A spark—not metaphorical, not imagined—zips down your arm.

Neither of you pulls away.

You glance sideways.

He’s already looking at you.

Your eyes meet—held, quiet.

Not a word is exchanged. But something breaks—clean and sharp, like a snapped circuit. Long-simmering, unvoiced tension rising to the surface, clinging to the pause between heartbeats and motion-sensor lighting.

Jack leans in—not tentative, not teasing. Just close enough that his breath grazes your cheek. Your breath catches. His proximity feels like a fuse. He’s watching you—steady, unreadable. But you feel the pressure in the air shift, charged and thick.

"I don’t know what this is," you finally whisper. Your throat feels incredibly dry. A sharp juxtaposition to the state of your undergarments. 

Jack’s voice dips low. "I think we’ve both been trying not to look too closely."

Your chest tightens. His hand twitches by his side. Flexing. Gripping. Restraint unraveling. His breath shallows, matching yours—fast, hungry, starved of oxygen and logic. And then, like a spark to dry kindling, you thread your fingers through his.

Heat erupts between your palms, a jolt that hits your spine. You don’t flinch. You don’t pull away. You tighten your grip.

He exhales—shaky, like it’s cost him everything not to close the distance between your mouths. The electricity is unbearable, like a dam on the edge of collapse.

And still, neither of you move. Not quite yet.

But the air is thick with the promise: the next breach will not be small.

The elevator dings.

You both flinch—just barely.

The doors slide open.

You release his hand slowly, fingers slipping apart like sand through mesh, reluctant and slow but inevitable. Jack's hands stay in a slightly open grip. 

"I should..." you begin, breath catching. You clear your throat. "Goodnight, Jack."

Your voice is soft. Almost too soft.

Jack nods once. Doesn’t reach again. Doesn’t follow.

"Goodnight," he says. Low, warm. Weighted.

You step out. Don’t look back.

The doors begin to close.

You glance over your shoulder, once—just once.

Your eyes meet through the narrowing gap.

Then the doors seal shut, quiet as breath.

For now.

Contrary to Samira's reappraisal of you joining her for Friday night drinks, you begrudgingly allow her to drag you out of your cave. Just the two of you—girls’ night, no work talk allowed, and no saying "I need to work on my script" more than once. She makes you wear lip gloss and a top that could almost be considered reckless, and you down two tequila sodas before you even start to loosen your shoulders.

You’re halfway through your third drink when a pair of guys approaches—normal-looking, vaguely grad-school adjacent, maybe from public health or law school. Samira gives you a look that says seems safe enough, and you need this, and so you nod. You dance.

The one paired off with you is tall, not unpleasant. He asks before he touches you—his hand at your waist, then your hip, then lightly over your ribs. You nod, give consent. He smells like good cologne and something sugary, and he’s saying all the right things.

But something feels wrong.

You realize it halfway through the song, when his hand brushes the curve of your waist again, gentle and careful and... wrong. Too polite. Too other.

You think of the way Jack’s fingers had curled between yours. The heat of his palm against yours for a single minute in the elevator. The way he hadn’t touched you anywhere else—but it had felt like everything.

You close your eyes, trying to ground yourself. But you can’t stop comparing.

You’ve danced with this stranger for five whole minutes, and it hasn’t come close to the electricity of the sixty seconds you spent not speaking, not kissing, not touching anything else in the elevator with Jack.

It shouldn’t mean anything but it means everything. 

You step back, thanking the guy politely, claiming a bathroom break. He nods, not pushy, already scanning the room.

Samira follows a song change later. "You okay?"

You nod. Then shake your head. Then say, "I think I might be fucked."

Samira just hands you a tissue, already knowing. She looks understanding. Like she sees it, too—and she's not going to mock you for it.

"Yep," she says gently while fixing a stray baby hair by your ear. "Saw it the second Jack joined us for drinks that night." 

The night air feels cooler after the club, like the city is exhaling with you. You and Samira walk back toward the rideshare pickup, her arm looped loosely through yours.

You don’t say anything for a long moment. She doesn’t push.

"I don’t even know what it is," you murmur eventually. "I just know when that guy touched me, it felt like wearing someone else’s coat. Warm, sure, but not mine."

Samira hums in agreement. "Jack feels like your coat?"

"No," you sigh. Then, after a beat, quieter, "He feels like the one thing I forgot I was cold without."

She doesn’t say anything. Not right away. Just squeezes your hand. "So what’re you gonna do about it?"

"Scream. Cry. Have a pre-doctoral crisis," you say flatly.

Samira snorts. "So… Tuesday." You bite back a smile, shoving her shoulder lightly but appreciating the comedic diffusion nonetheless.

She exhales through her nose, gentler now. "If it’s any consolation, I see the way he looks at you."

Your eyes flick toward her. She continues, tone still soft, sincere. "Not just that night during drinks, but during your flash talk. I’ve never seen him that… emotive. It was like he was mesmerized. And even back during seminar last year, when he was filling in for Robby? Same thing. I remember thinking, damn, he listens to her like she’s rewriting gravity."

You should feel elated. Giddy. Instead, you bury your face in your hands and emit a sound that can only be described as a dying pterodactyl emitting its final screech. "I hate my fucking life." 

"It's going to be okay!" Samira tries to hide her laughter but it comes through anyway, making you laugh through teary eyes. "You will be okay." 

You shake your head back and forth, trying to make yourself dizzy in hopes that this was all a dream. 

"Who was it that said 'boys are temporary, education is forever?'" Samira all-but-sang. 

"Do not quote me right now, Mira," you groan, dragging the syllables like they physically pain you. "I am but a husk with a degree-in-progress."

The week that follows is both everything and nothing. You go to class. You show up to lab meetings. You present clean analyses and nod through questions from the new cohort of freshmen. You even draft two paragraphs of your discussion section. One of three discussion sections. It looks like functioning.

Since submitting the last batch of internship applications, your dissertation committee meetings have gone from once a week with each member to once every three. You'd already run all of your main studies, had all the data cleaned and collated, and even coded all of the analyses you intended on running. Now all that was left was the actual writing and compiling of it all for a neat, hundred-or-so-page manuscript that no one would read. 

It’s your first meeting with Jack since flying back from the conference.

In all honesty, you hadn’t given it much thought. Compartmentalization had become a survival strategy, not a skill. It helped you meet deadlines, finish your talk, submit your final batch of internship applications—all while pretending nothing in that elevator happened. At least not in any way that mattered.

Now, seated outside his office with your laptop open and your third coffee in hand, you realize too late: you never really prepared for this part. The after.

You hear the door open behind you. A familiar cadence of steps—steady but slightly uneven. You know that gait.

"Hey," Jack says, as calm and neutral as ever. Like you didn’t almost combust into each other two weeks ago.

You glance up. Smile tight. "Hey."

"Come in?"

You nod. Stand. Follow him inside.

The office is the same as it’s always been—overcrowded with books, one stack threatening to collapse near the filing cabinet. You sit in your usual chair. He sits in his. The silence is comfortable. Professional.

It shouldn’t feel like a loss.

Jack taps a few keys on his laptop. "You sent your methods revisions?"

"Yesterday," you say. "Just a few small clarifications."

He hums. Nods. Clicks something open.

You sip your coffee. Pretend the sting behind your ribs is just caffeine.

The moment stretches.

He finally speaks. "You look… tired."

You smile, faint and crooked. “It’s November.”

Jack lets out a quiet laugh. Then scrolls through the document, silent again.

But the air between you feels thinner now. Like something’s missing. Or maybe like something’s waiting.

He reads.

You watch him.

Not just glance. Not just notice. Watch.

Your coffee cools in your hands, untouched.

He doesn't ask why you weren't at the symposium he moderated. Or if you were running on caffeine and nerves from recent deadlines. And definitely not why you booked an earlier flight home from the conference.

You search his face like it might hold an answer—though you’re not entirely sure what the question is. Something about the last two weeks. The way he hasn’t said anything. The way you haven’t either. The way both of you pretended, remarkably well, that everything was the same.

But Jack’s expression doesn’t change. Not noticeably. He just skims the screen, fingers occasionally tapping his trackpad. The glow from his monitor traces the line of his jaw.

Still, you keep looking. Like maybe if you study him hard enough, you’ll find a hint of something there.

A crack. A tell. A memory.

But he stays unreadable.

Professional.

And you hate that it hurts.

It eats at you.

Why does it hurt?

You knew better than to let this happen. To let it get this far. This was never supposed to be anything other than professional, clinical, tidy. But somewhere between all the late-night edits and long silences, the boundaries started to blur like ink in water. 

You tell yourself to turn it off. That part in your brain responsible for—this—whatever it was. Romantic projection, limerence, foolishness. You’d diagnose it in a heartbeat if it weren’t your own.

You just need to get through this meeting. This last academic year. Then you'd be somewhere far away for internship, and then graduated. That’s all.

Then you could go back to pretending you’re fine. That everything was okay.

The entire time you’d been staring—not at Jack, not directly—but just past his shoulder, toward the bookshelves. Not really seeing them. Just trying to breathe.

Jack had already finished reading through your edits. He read them last night, actually—when your email came through far too late. He’d learned to stay up past his usual bedtime about two weeks into joining your committee.

But he wasn’t just reading. Not now.

He was watching. Noticing the subtle shifts in your brow, the tension at the corners of your mouth. You didn’t look at him, but he didn’t need you to.

Jack studied people for a living. He’d made a career out of it.

And right now, he was studying you.

You snap yourself out of it. A light head bobble. A few quick blinks. A swallow. "All done?" you ask, voice dry. Almost nonchalant, like you hadn’t been staring through him trying to excavate meaning.

Jack lifts an eyebrow, subtle, but nods. "Yeah. Looks solid."

You nod back. Like it’s just another meeting. Like that’s all it ever was.

Then you close your laptop a little too quickly. "I think I’m gonna head out early, I don’t feel great," you offer, keeping your tone breezy, eyes still somewhere over his shoulder.

Jack doesn’t call you on it. Not outright.

But he watches you too long. Like he’s flipping through every frame of this scene in real time, and none of it quite adds up.

"Alright," he says finally. Even. Quiet. "Feel better."

You nod again, already halfway to the door.

You don’t look back.

"Hey—" Jack’s voice catches, right as the door swings shut.

Your hand freezes on the handle.

You hesitate.

But you don’t turn around.

Just one breath.

Then you keep walking.

You make it halfway down the hall before you realize your hands are shaking.

Not much. Barely. Just enough that when you fish your phone out of your coat pocket to check the time, your thumb slips twice before you unlock the screen.

He’d called your name.

And maybe that wouldn’t mean anything—shouldn’t mean anything—except Jack Abbot isn’t the type to call out without a reason. You’ve worked with him long enough to know that. Observed him enough in clinical and classroom settings. Hell, you’ve studied men like him—hyper-controlled, slow to show their hand. You’d written an entire paper on the paradox of behavioral inhibition in high-functioning trauma survivors and then realized, two weeks into seminar, that the paragraph on defensive withdrawal could’ve been subtitled See: Jack Abbot, Case Study #1.

You’d meant to file that away and forget it.

You haven’t forgotten it.

And now you're walking fast, maybe too fast, through the undergrad psych wing like the answer might be waiting for you in your lab inbox or the fluorescence of your office.

You don’t stop until you’re behind a locked door with your laptop powered off and your hands braced on either side of your desk.

You breathe.

In through your nose. Out through your mouth.

Again.

Again.

Still—when you close your eyes, you see the look on his face.

That same unreadable stillness.

Like he wanted to say something else.

Like he knew something else. And maybe—maybe—you did too.

[sparrows4bats]

@vi-reads Thanks for the Inspo!!

Damian is smart, a genius to rival his father, everyone knows that, but what even the batfamily didn't realise is just how qualified he is.

Damian spent at least the first 10 years of his life with access to a multitude of tutors who were forced to change their ciriculums to adapt to how fast he learnt. By the time he joins his family, he has the equivalent of PHDs in many fields, including but not limited to Geology, Business and Finance, Engineering, and Zoology. He learnt classical instruments such as the violin and is fluent in multiple languages.

Now imagine a preteen Damian going from that to a classroom education with his age group for the first time. No matter how elite Gotham Academy claims to be, there is only so much they can do to keep him stimulated, and as Bruce wants him to learn social skills, he is stuck in tedium.

So he looks for other outlets out of pure boredom. As the stagnantation gets worse, so does his attitude.

The first one to notice is Alfred, predictably. The old butler remembers how Bruce was at that age and the terror he was in his boredom, so he took Damian aside and offered him a deal. If he completes all of his schoolwork, how his teachers want him to. (It takes Damian only two hours a week) Alfred has no issue procuring him learning materials on any subject he would like. Damian so frustrated at this point, agrees without hesitation. The Manor quickly fills with university level textbooks on Physics, Chemical Engineering and Mathematics.

But soon that isn't enough, and Damian, despite knowing more than ever, has nothing to do with it.

He start seeking out the rogues after he finds their research. Ivy, Quinn, Freeze, and Scarecrow are very confused but so happy and flattered to talk about their work with Robin, who has fascinating ideas of his own.

Barbara is the next to notice because while she is taking inventory of Batcave supplies, she notices chemicals and other raw materials are going missing, so she checks the cameras and sees Damian making gadgets, different antidotes and poisons, even a second flying Batmobile!!

So Barbara confronts him about it and he (and Alfred) explain what's been going on and Barbara feels her heartbreak a little because God does she understand this problem she herself is always pursuing at least one qualification or writing a research paper under a puesdo name. When she was young, her boredom and the lack of accommodations in Gotham literally led to her becoming Batgirl.

A bored genius in Gotham is a recipe for disaster, so she very quickly sets Damian up with placement exams in every subject she can think of. He passes every single one of them at a high school level and many past university.

Damian looks elated when the results arrive, and Barbara easily convinces Harvard (where she did her law degree long distance) to accredit him and formalise his qualifications. They even work it so Damian can write his dissertations in Gotham Academy so that he can still gain social skills and go to Gotham University to use their labs and libraries when needed.

By the end of the year, Damian has earned his official PhD. in Geology and Mechanical Engineering and plans on doing his next one in Chemistry and Bioengineering. He even easily completes an MBA and starts branching out to the humanities.

The family doesn't know about any of this until Damian invites them all to his graduation, but do note the improvement in Damians' behaviour. (Damian keeps forging Bruces signature on the paperwork).

To say they are shocked but happy is an understatement. Bruce has a crisis because Damian has multiple PHDs in Gotham! What if he becomes a villain!

Yet all of Damians' research is for the betterment of people and animals. The batfamily becomes very overprotective of him, especially around chemicals. Just in case.

Jon finds out about it after Damian and he start dating. He knew his best friend was smart but hadn't taken him that seriously when they were kids. Damian went to Gotham Academy and hated every second of it.

After he slept over for the first time and couldn't find him in the morning, Jon located him in the Manor by his heartbeat to Damians study, where his degrees were framed and hung on the wall. He was in awe of how many there were.

Damian proudly explained each one to him, and Jon kissed his genius for every graduation he missed. He now calls Damian Doctor just to see him blush. (In the privacy of his own mind, Dr. And Mr Wayne Kent has a nice ring to it.)

Damian and Barbara bond and give feedback on eachothers work regularly. The bats who are still in school come to them for help, and Tim is inspired to get his GED and join a university program. (Alfred is Delighted) The Wayne Family Library expands rapidly to accommodate research materials, and Bruce builds Damian a proper lab. (It's so much easier to make antidotes now!)

When Damian goes to med school, he quits being Robin as he has to be there in person at odd hours. Bruce mopes, but goes to yet another graduation. Damian still does some lab work but finds his calling in Surgery and Medical Research.

The thing is, outside of the family, and even inside of it, very few know how many qualifications Damian has achieved.

Until one of the rare times Damian goes to Watchtower and someone tries to correct him as he explains the very complicated biochemical pathogen that is being spread by a new villain.

Damian looks bored and asks where they did their degree when other answers he goes, "Oh yes, I know your advisor. I disproved his shoddy results last month. I published my paper last week."

The hero turns bright red and tries to argue, but Damian shuts him down at every turn. "Well, the expert in this field - "

"Is me, so if you don't have a better idea, sit the hell down and shut up!"

The bats look so smug, and Jon has to restrain himself from dragging his wonderful partner into the nearest supply closet. (He finds Damian so irresistible when he is both competent and verbally evisirating someone.)

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I think you mentioned you're cis, right? Many of my friends and acquaintances right now are cis women, some not even part of the lgbtq+ community. I'm a trans girl, and I'm very bad at standing up for myself. How should I talk about language they use that makes me uncomfortable? I don't know if I'm able to explain why "biological women" is a term I'm wary of because it's so often a dog whistle, or when they talk very sweepingly about the effects of male/female socialization, or espousing very cisnormative beliefs in general. I don't wanna be misunderstood and I don't think the words they are using are necessarily wrong or bad or hateful, I've just seen them so often in that context and am a bit shaken hearing them. I also don't think they want to hurt me or are cognizant of my discomfort. I'd love your input on this.

Thank you for reading this, mx batman.

hi anon,

I am so grateful that you trust me with this question and I am so sorry if you're looking for a way to do this gently. possibly you wee hoping that I would have some insights into how to gently call out cis women without upsetting them but the gag is that almost all my friends are trans and I'm an insane bitch who will unhinge my jaw and devour people at the first whiff of transphobia.

all you need to say is something to the effect of "you may not mean any harm by it, but the terms you're using spread transphobic ideas and hurt women like me and make me feel unsafe. please find other ways to express the thing you're trying to talk about." and that has to be sufficient for these people, or they aren't your friends.

listen to me right now. you Do Not need to justify why those things make you uncomfortable. you are not required to provide a dissertation to prove that your feelings deserve to be respected. if these women are your friends they are required to give a shit about your feelings, and that includes not requiring you to provide an entire powerpoint when you ask them to stop using terms that are transphobic. when a friend says "you're hurting me," you're supposed to just stop fucking hurting them.

if they want to educate themselves, which I strongly recommend the do, there are plenty of people who are writing books and articles and video essays and podcasts that will hold the hands of cis allies trying to learn Don't Be A Transphobe 101. you ARE NOT obligated to be that person for every person in your life, and they do not have the right to demand that of you.

recently I was listening to an episode of the podcast Vibe Check, which is excellent, and one of the hosts (I believe it was poet Saeed Jones, but don't quote me on that) offered some advice to the effect of "if you tell someone that they're hurting you and you tell them what they need to do to stop, and they do it again, they've told you everything they need to tell you." live that learn that love that. being fiercely protective of your needs and boundaries is an act of protection and self-preservation and it's what you deserve; cut a bitch OFF if she won't listen to you and be a better friend.

also hey as a cis woman. and specifically as a white cis woman. do NOT let them come at you with the cis lady tears, especially the white cis lady tears. anyone who starts whining and crying and acting like you're attacking them for just asking them not to say things that hurt your feelings, run. run so fast. those women do not love you.

[gowerhardcastle]

Tips After Writing Over Five Million Words

I’ve written a lot of words.  As an adult, from my dissertation to the role-playing games I’ve written or co-written, to various scholarly essays—this is all pre-Choice of Games—I estimate I’ve written 350,000 words. 

Then, Midsummer, which is 200,000.

Tally Ho is 620,000.

And Jolly Good:   Cakes and Ale is 1.2 Million.

That’s 2.37 Million words.  Now, I’m somewhat over 2.75 million words for Jolly Good:  Tea and Scones for a grand total of 5.12 Million Words, and I still have to look up how to spell “businesses” every single time.

My point is that I’ve written words.  Not all of those words are good, let me be clear.  Like, I don’t care if you are a huge fan of my game writing and you hunger for more, I don’t think you should go seek out my dissertation and read it.  But in the process, I’ve learned some tips about writing—tips about just the mechanical nuts and bolts writing, tips about the craft of writing, tips about writing interactive fiction, and tips about writing in Choicescript.  I want to share some of these things.

Here’s some really, really practical nuts and bolts things I’ve learned, for me.  They are what I wish I knew starting out.  I made a long list.  There are about fifty things on it.  Here are the first ten:

Writing a thousand words a day is fine.  It’s good, and it’s achievable.  But if your goal is to write crazy-long interactive fiction (as seems to be the fashion) be aware of what that means:  a thousand words a day, will get you to a million words in somewhere around three years.  Million word IF is getting more common and expectations are rising.  If you want to write two million words at that pace, now we’re talking six years.  You either need to write faster or you have to have realistic expectations for when this thing is going to be done.

I have to reiterate point 1.  Writing long interactive fiction takes forever.  You have to be prepare to pour your life force into it.  I was sitting writing Chapter Six and I suddenly thought about a scene from Chapter Two and I said, aloud, “is that from the same game?”  It seemed impossible, because I had written it so long before.  If you aren’t ready to spend years and years on this, this might not be your genre.  I am lucky that I happen to write (and type) super fast, but even so, years and years.

Because long interactive fiction takes so long to write, if you don’t have a character bible, you are going to have a really rough time of it when you have to describe some minor character’s facial hair about whom you last thought of sixteen months ago.  At the same time, every second you spend writing a character bible is a second you aren’t writing the thing itself. 

That leads me to this point:  when you write like this, you give up a lot too.  Time to play computer games, to go to a fall festival, to just sit with friends on the sofa and talk.  You are just there, writing, alone.  And thoughts about cost-benefit start drifting into your mind.  “If I want to start learning to read Ancient Greek, think how many hours that would take away from writing!”  So you have to be very very careful that it doesn’t invade everything, including your thoughts when you are doing other stuff.  You need the other stuff.  Without the other stuff you get boring and you lose the fertile ground for words to grow in.  But my point is that when you see a great piece of writing, there were a lot of choices made, things that were given up, and time that was carved out for it, and it can be painful.  You have to go into this open-eyed.

The back and neck are the weak points.  They give out way before the hands, on me, anyhow.  After a day of writing, I feel like my spine has fused.  Combine writing days with exercise days.  Especially as you age, which you will if you choose to write long interactive fiction.

I email myself my current draft every time I finish writing.  Have some way of preserving every single version.  I can’t tell you how many times I have to go back and refer to an earlier version when I realize I liked it better the way I did it last week.  There’s assuredly a higher-tech way to do this, but this works for me.

If you are bored when you are writing, the writing will be boring.  Enjoy your own writing.  Laugh at your jokes.  Feel bad for your characters when they are sad.  If you’re feeling, that’s a good sign. 

If you go to a café and bring a notebook and a sharp pencil, you can enjoy a nice writing session and be in the world for a while.  Writing you do with a pencil in a notebook will be different in quality and texture from writing at the computer, and I can’t explain why.  Mix it in.

Carry a little notebook with you that fits in your pocket.  The ideas will pop up randomly throughout the day.  This is how you snag them.  Write a hundred down and maybe two will be good. I have done this on carousels and in faculty meetings.

This last one I particularly want to address to my younger self who was trying to write novels and stories in middle school and high school, as well as to everyone else working on early stuff.  I used to be very annoyed at the process of writing because (and I remember saying this to myself) I didn’t understand the point of writing when nobody was going to read it, or maybe one or two friends but probably not.  Writing felt like a thing I did that I spent hard work on for a long time, and then I put it in a drawer. 

What I wish I had known regarding the above was that this is the equivalent of training in some mountaintop retreat, honing my craft, doing the million pushups, becoming a writing ninja.  I wish someone had told me that it didn’t matter if anyone read it.  That wasn’t the point.  I was figuring stuff out.  It takes a really long time to create your own writing style.  This is how it happens.  Just do it, and do it, and do it.  The practice is its own reward, not publication, which I incorrectly thought was my goal at the time when I was learning how to write.

[fangdokja-anon]

Hahaha! 🤣 your reaction to dottore aka the doctor and your about me posts makes me think you are not just online simp but also a hardcore masochist irl. By the way how did you get invested in yandere content? Like what was your first or most memorable encounter with it?

♡ Book 5. Ink & Insight (I&I): From Dead Dove to Daydreams. ; ♡ WC. 1,996 (contains video game spoilers)

Ah, so we’re calling me out this early? On my side blog no less? Bold move, Anon.

Let’s get a few things straight: I am not an online simp. If I were, you’d see me in the trenches of fandom spaces, writing dissertations on characters, engaging in debates, and swooning over every little thing they do. I don’t do that. I don’t simp.

I compare.

Because at the end of the day, I’m not fawning over fictional men—I’m simply coping. My husband won’t let me talk about him, so I settle for characters that remind me of him. That’s not simping, that’s making do with the resources available. And if certain fictional men share the same energy, demeanor, or sheer presence as my husband? Then naturally, I gravitate toward them. Not because I worship them, but because they remind me of him.

Now, onto the masochism comment. Do you think I write horror purely for the fear factor? For the thrill of it? Because if so, you’re mistaken. I write horror because it’s an intimate genre—it forces confrontation with the things most would rather avoid. It dissects, exposes, and breaks apart. It’s a genre of control and loss of control. And if I happen to enjoy that process, if I find something oddly compelling about the brutality of it all—

That being said, there is a line. There are characters that cross it. Dottore? Manageable. Gilgamesh? Handleable. But some characters? Some of them make me feel too much. And I don’t like feeling too much. I’d rather shoot them on sight than deal with the psychological damage they would inevitably cause. Not because they’re bad characters, but because their existence is disruptive.

Dottore, though? That man could dissect me, break me down to my component parts, run inhumane experiments on me, and I would thank him. He could reduce me to nothing, and I’d accept it. There’s no logic behind it, no deeper reasoning—just the simple, unavoidable truth:

Some people you kill on sight.

Others, you let ruin you.

Dottore falls into the latter category.

Now, STORY TIME (fangdokja lore).

Would you believe me if I said I hated yanderes before? And I don’t mean casual dislike—I mean full-on disgust. I found them creepy, mentally unstable, and fundamentally stupid. The idea that someone could revolve their entire existence around another person? That they could need someone so desperately that their sense of self dissolved into obsession? That was pathetic. It was unhealthy, it was irrational, and it was a complete rejection of self-sufficiency.

That was me as a kid.

Back then, I believed in fairy tales. I genuinely thought love was about mutual growth—about two people supporting each other in their careers, their personal lives, and their families. About building something together, side by side. The idea of romance being anything else—something consuming, something destructive, something one-sided—was outright repulsive to me.

Then I saw clips of Yuno Gasai. Instant NOPE.

Fast forward to my teenage years, aka the black-clothes-all-day, goth-adjacent-but-mostly-emo, people-are-annoying-so-I’ll-just-watch-horror era. Relationships were still stupid to me. The concept of needing someone for emotional validation? Idiotic. The idea of depending on someone for your reason to exist? Even worse. It all seemed pointless.

Then came horror.

I was already neck-deep in the genre by this point because, well, I hated everything and everyone. Horror was an easy escape—something darker, something honest. And naturally, when you spend enough time in horror, you will encounter yanderes. It’s inevitable.

Enter the golden age of Wattpad—the no monetization, anything-goes, unfiltered chaos era. I was already secretly reading fanfics at this point (because, for some reason, that was the one thing I was embarrassed about). I mostly read fluff—anything smut-adjacent was straight-up disgusting to me. I didn’t get it. At all.

Which makes sense.

Because at that point in my life, I had zero knowledge about sex. Like, I knew the technicalities—I knew the reproductive system, I understood the biological mechanics—but that was it. No porn, no hentai, no exposure to anything explicitly sexual. To me, "sex" meant literally sleeping next to someone. That’s what I was taught. And I never questioned it because I didn’t care. School was my priority—study, work, repeat. Learn, apply, profit. Simple.

Then I came across the term yandere.

I didn’t know what it meant. And when I read my first yandere fic? I was disgusted. Completely put off. It was one of those low-quality Wattpad dumpster fire stories, so that didn’t help, but the concept itself? The obsession? The violence? The sheer lack of logic? I hated it.

And yet, somehow, that wasn’t the end of the story.

✦✧✦✧

Fast forward a year.

At this point, I’d been playing video games my entire life, so naturally, I eventually stumbled into visual novels. And from there, it was only a matter of time before I ran into otome games.

And one of the most well-known otome games—one of the classics, the game that served as many people's introduction to yanderes—

—was Amnesia: Memories.

Guess whose route I hated the most?

Toma.

I was a Shin and Kent kind of player. Shin especially—he had the right balance of edge and depth (along with plot) that made him actually interesting. Even Ikki had his charm. They all had their faults, but at the end of the day, their routes were wholesome in comparison.

Also, Orion? Loved him.

Ukyo? Insane, sure, but he still had a genuinely good side. He made sense within the narrative, and at the very least, there was an internal logic to him.

But Toma?

Toma made me angry.

The moment he caged me, I was done. The moment he started spewing nonsense about trusting him while literally locking me up, I was sitting there, completely baffled, wondering:

"I thought this was a romance story—WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"

At the time, I didn’t even know what a yandere was. All I knew was that whatever archetype Toma was supposed to be? I hated it.

I hated him.

I hated all of them.

He was a creepy, possessive piece of garbage that I would not go near with a ten-foot pole. My entire reaction boiled down to one word:

CREEP.

And yet—do you see the irony in all of this?

I never got into yanderes romantically. Not back then. Not even close. It was impossible for me to feel anything for them. But fanfic-wise? I still found myself reading yandere content occasionally. Not because I was interested in the romance—but because of the horror.

Even then, I refused to engage with yanderes as a romantic concept, but as a horror concept? That was different. That was something I could respect. And admittedly? Even back then, there was one thing about yanderes that I could appreciate—loyalty.

No cheating. No exes they still care about. No third parties they’d even consider entertaining. A real yandere’s world revolves only around his darling. And that? That was at least logically sound. Even at my most yandere-averse, I could respect that much.

✦✧✦✧

But.

There was one character. One single character who changed everything. And to this day, I hate him for it.

I was minding my own business, peacefully gaming, completely unprepared for the irreversible shift about to occur in my perception of yanderes. And the man responsible?

Yuuya Kizami from Corpse Party.

…Which, in hindsight, says a lot about me. But let’s not unpack that right now.

At first glance, I liked him. Appearance-wise, attitude-wise, he seemed like a solid character. A bit of a loner, sure, a little blunt, maybe a little rough around the edges—but a reliable older brother figure. A nice guy, even.

And I was so, so wrong.

The moment his real nature was revealed—his yandere nature—I felt pure, visceral disgust. Immediate, instinctive NOPE. He went from a character I liked to a character that made my skin crawl.

…And yet.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a tiny, traitorous thought formed:

"Wait… am I into this?"

And then:

"…Shiz. This is so unhealthy."

The cognitive dissonance was real. I was horrified, repulsed—and yet, somewhere in all that, something had shifted. I refused to acknowledge it, though. When he died, I cheered. I thought, “See? No problem. I didn’t like him. No big deal. Moving on.”

But I did not move on.

Because without realizing it, I started seeking out more yandere content. Not actively at first. Just… reading one more fic here. Clicking on one more story there. It wasn’t that deep. Just casual curiosity.

Right?

…Right.

✦✧✦✧

Fast forward a few years. The emo phase faded (mostly). I was still goth-adjacent, but I wasn’t walking around exuding pure, unfiltered misanthropy anymore. Just a chill, hyperfocused workaholic with a hardcore "study, grind, succeed" mentality.

Then came the Undertale phase.

Yes. I am admitting it. I was one of those people. Part of the squad that made Toby Fox publicly say, “Some of you concern me.”

And you know what? I do not care.

Because the Undertale fanfics? They were insane. Not just insane—they were PEAK. Some of the most unhinged, soul-crushing, haunting stories I’ve ever read came from that fandom. To this day, my favorite one-shot fanfic of all time—of all time—is an Undertale fanfic.

And guess what?

It’s a yandere fic.

A yandere Sans fic, to be exact.

Yes, I am recommending this fic. No, I do not care if it raises concerns. This author wrote two stories total, and yet that one fic was so peak that it permanently burned itself into my memory. (Also, very Dust Sans-coded, which explains a lot.)

Now, I should clarify—before my husband, I never cared about physical appearances. Ever. What mattered to me was lore. Depth. The immaculate storytelling. That’s what made a character interesting. That’s what made me invested.

So who did I end up simping for?

…Ah.

First, it was Sans. And then—then the rabbit hole opened.

Cue my descent into Horror Sans and Dust Sans territory.

And let me tell you something: Horror Sans fanfics were a whole other breed.

Unrequited love? Check.

Soulmate AU with horror elements? Check.

Absolute emotional devastation? Check, check, and check.

And Dust Sans? Oh, Dust Sans was a different level of unhinged. Extremely mentally unstable. Psychopathic. A relentless killing machine consumed by his own broken psyche.

…And looking back at it now?

Yeah. That really should’ve told me something about my tastes.

I cry.

✦✧✦✧

Now that I really sit down and think about it...

Have I always been attracted to killers?

Because looking at my favorite horror tropes—the ones I actively enjoy writing—the pattern is very clear.

And yet, I never went through the typical killer-simp pipeline.

I never got into Creepypasta. Never had a FNAF phase. Sure, I know the lore (because obviously, who doesn’t at this point?), but the gameplay never interested me. And as for the mainstream horror icons—the ones everyone else was thirsting over? They didn’t do it for me.

But despite all that, somehow, I still ended up here.

And I never noticed.

Looking back now? It’s kind of hilarious.

It started small. A little intrigue here. A fascination there. Then came the red flags. And before I knew it, we were way past the point of concern.

We had gone full BLACK FLAG territory.

Blacker than pirate flags. Blacker than void itself.

The mental shift went from:

"Oh, he’s a little intense."

To:

"Okay, this guy’s got issues, but he’s interesting."

To:

"Aww, he wants to torture and murder me? That’s so sweet."

And that’s when I knew. There was no coming back.

But if you want to know the number one contributor to everything—every single twist, every turn, every single factor that solidified my fate—

It’s my husband.

And I am not opening that can of worms.

Ever.

All you need to know is that I have been cursed and corrupted by that cunning, possessive, terrifyingly loving man.

I love him.

Truly.

That’s all you need to know.

[crescencestudio]

๋࣭⭑ Devlog #45 | 12.02.24 ๋࣭⭑

well, this is more like a half devlog if i'm being honest

Hi everyone! Man, it's been a while since we last talked, huh? Somehow my last devlog to you all was end of August, and now we're all the way in December. It's crazy to know I was in my cave for that long LMFALSIDJF

I don't usually do devlogs starting the last two months of the year---usually because I end up getting busy, and with it being the holidays, I just give myself the devlog off as my one little "holiday treat."

This year, it's a bit different since I haven't given you all a devlog in quite a while. I have exciting and boring news to share with you all this month! First off for exciting news, as I'm sure you've all heard....

I'M A DOCTOR!!!!!!

That's RIGHT. The step away from Alaris was everything I needed to be able to crunch my dissertation and graduate this semester. To say it was painful would be a complete understatement. For context, people usually spend about 1 year writing and defending their dissertation. Since I last spoke to you all, I ended up analyzing, writing, and defending my entire dissertation in the span of about 2-3 months. Basically every moment that I existed as a living being was spent working on my dissertation (if I wasn't working), and even a month after I defended I'm in disbelief that I was able to pull it off.

But here I stand before you all, finally free from the confines of academia after a grueling 4 years.

I have worked on Alaris the entire time I've been in PhD school, and so there's literally no one here who knows me outside of being a PhD student. So it's crazy to enter a new chapter of game dev where I no longer have to balance work, PhD school, and Alaris. And instead, I can be a normal person that just balances work and game dev.

That being said...

I know I had told you all I would be back in the Alaris grind in November since that would be around the time when my defense would be. And while I've literally tried my damnedest to get back on the game dev horse, it's been a Fckn Struggle, everyone.

I don't think I realized how hard I was working myself until this past month rolled around and I entered recovery mode. Admittedly, I actually think I was working myself harder when I was balancing Alaris with work and PhD stuff than when I was crunching a 1 year dissertation project into 2 months. And this might not be a new revelation to some people---even earlier this year, I remember getting comments of like "wow, you're working so fast/hard!" "omg how are you getting all this done?" "you need to be nicer to yourself, i don't think you realize how much work you actually do" etc. etc.

But I think because I enjoy game dev so much, I didn't see it as working myself hard. Now, though, after getting some clarity and seeing how much that was affecting my physically, I really want to make it a point to take care of myself better and not push myself too hard (life is too short and healthcare is too expensive LMALSDF).

So, while this isn't me saying Alaris is going on hiatus or anything scary like that, I do hope you all can extend a bit more of your patience and understanding at least until the end of this year for me to get back into the swing of things. I have genuinely been thinking about Alaris a lot---the script and scenes I want to write, CGs I want to draw, etc. But I just haven't had the physical energy to do it.

I'm hoping writing this devlog will help me get back into the swing of things this month. But I do want to be transparent that the holiday season tends to get busy for me, so I don't want to make promises of working on Alaris at any kind of full capacity.

Luckily, a lot of Alaris is done. If you all remember, the only route that needs to be written at this point is Aisa's. And half of the routes have been programmed! While Etza and Kuna'a's routes do need to be cleaned up and edited, a lot of the foundational work, which is most time-consuming for me is done. So I do still hope to get Alaris to you all (at least the Central routes) in early 2025!

Thank you all as always for being patient and understanding. As I get back on the Alaris horse, I also hope to get back into answering your messages <3 Hope you all are staying warm and having a restful holiday season.

[waitineedaname]

POV for the no excuses writing meme, please 👀 (i love this game so much!)

a bit of context: this is for my lesbingqiu wip inspired by that "can yuo put that out on me" tweet! the wip is from binghe's pov, so here's shen yuan instead. she strikes me as the kind of person to think being thirty makes her old (it does not lol)

--

Shen Yuan wasn't sure why Shang Qinghua had insisted on dragging her out drinking if she was just going to abandon her at the first sight of her situationship across the bar. She didn't care if Shang Qinghua insisted she needed to go out more! She had work to do! Never mind that her "work" these days mostly amounted to opening her dissertation document, glaring at it for an hour, and then closing it again. She was simply getting too old to go out drinking. She was thirty now; she might as well join a knitting circle if Qinghua was that worried about her social life.

She continued grumbling to herself as she lit her cigarette. It was much quieter outside the bar, though she could still feel the music thumping through the wall behind her. She would give Shang Qinghua another five or ten minutes to prove she hadn't completely forgotten about her, just long enough to take a smoke break, and then she'd leave. She could go home, change into her pyjamas, and spend the evening working through her reading list like she'd originally intended.

Her plans were interrupted by a sudden spike in the bar's volume as someone opened the door and stumbled out into the alley beside her. Shen Yuan nearly dropped her cigarette as she was suddenly confronted by the most absurdly beautiful woman she'd ever seen.

She wondered deliriously for a moment whether there had been a modelling event that she didn't know about, because there was no other explanation for a woman this gorgeous being loose in the wild. Her dress hugged her curves in all the right places, and she had the kind of artful curls that Shen Yuan thought only existed in professionally styled wigs. Her bone structure was fine, and her skin was perfect. Seriously, was Shen Yuan hallucinating?!

The woman was also, Shen Yuan realized, extremely drunk. She stumbled over her high heels, reaching out to support herself on the wall with a groan. Shen Yuan's hands itched to reach out and support her, but she resisted the impulse.

"Are you alright?" she asked instead. The woman looked up, startled, eyes wide as if she hadn't realized Shen Yuan was there. Absolutely no way those eyelashes were real. They had to be falsies.

The woman made a slightly incoherent noise, and Shen Yuan frowned. How drunk was she? She then abruptly stood up straighter, though she was clearly still supporting herself on the wall.

"I'm fine," she said, surprising Shen Yuan with a low, smooth voice like honey. "I just needed some fresh air."

Shen Yuan nodded sympathetically. Poor thing. "Drink a little too much?"

The other woman's lips pursed in a pout. "My friend ordered shots," she explained.

And then just let her wander off?! Shen Yuan would like a word with this friend of hers. "You should be careful with those," she cautioned. "They can get you drunk very fast."

The woman nodded with the earnestness of an eager student. "Jiejie is very wise."

Oh, she was far too cute. Is this what people were referring to when they talked about blessed interactions between drunk girls at a bar? Never mind that Shen Yuan was hardly buzzed herself. She wanted to pat this girl's head and give her more wisdom, even if this wasn't really her area of expertise.

"Would jiejie keep me company while I sober up?" asked the other woman, her speech slightly slurred and her dark eyes pleading. As if Shen Yuan could say no to eyes like that!

"Of course." Shen Yuan nodded. It was her responsibility, after all! A code of sisterhood, to look out for drunk girls! "What's your name?"

"Luo Binghe." She found a more comfortable position leaning against the wall, resulting in her curls spilling over her chest. Shen Yuan foolishly tracked the motion, then forced her eyes back up to Luo Binghe's face. Aiyah! That dress really left very little to the imagination! Wasn't she cold?! Should Shen Yuan offer her jacket? "What should I call jiejie?"

"Shen Yuan." She lifted her cigarette to her lips and took another drag in the hopes that it would make Luo Binghe's appearance less distracting. Luo Binghe was staring at her with an intensity that made her want to squirm. "Are you here for some special occasion?"

Luo Binghe just continued to stare at her for a while. Poor thing, she really must be drunk. Shen Yuan knew how slowly she processed things when she was drunk. She could be patient with the girl. "My friends wanted to celebrate me starting graduate school," Luo Binghe eventually explained. Her pretty features pulled in a slight frown. "I think it's just an excuse for them to get drunk."

Shen Yuan chuckled at the petulance on Luo Binghe's face. "Maybe, but that’s a worthy thing to celebrate. Congratulations on starting grad school."

"Thank you, Shen-jie." Luo Binghe's expression softened into a smile again, still laser-focused on Shen Yuan's face.

Shen Yuan took a moment to look Luo Binghe over again. Grad school, huh? Shen Yuan struggled to believe that, but she couldn't see why Luo Binghe would lie. It's just, Shen Yuan was in graduate school, and she felt horribly outclassed by the girl in front of her. With looks like hers, she could easily become an idol or something! She didn't deserve to waste away in academia like Shen Yuan, though she admired Luo Binghe's academic drive. And so young, too...

"You seem awfully young for grad school," Shen Yuan said. It could be that she just took good care of herself, but she wouldn't have been surprised if she'd said she was still an undergrad. "How old are you?"

"I'm twenty-five," Luo Binghe said.

"Twenty-five," Shen Yuan repeated. Twenty-five! And she was here, talking to thirty year old Shen Yuan outside a bar. Shen Yuan's earlier impression was right; this really was not the scene for her. "I think I’m officially too old for this bar. People will think I’m a creep if I keep coming around here." She took another drag from her cigarette, feeling morose over her age. "When I graduated high school, you would’ve been thirteen. Isn’t that weird?"

It had seemed like Luo Binghe was sobering up, but she suddenly wobbled on her heels. She was staring intensely at the cigarette in Shen Yuan's hand. "Can you put that out on me?" she slurred.

Shen Yuan's heart rate spiked. Ah! How could she be so oblivious? What kind of helpful jiejie was she if she was blowing smoke in Luo Binghe's direction?! "Oh! I’m so sorry, I should’ve asked if it was okay to smoke near you. I’ll put it out." She quickly ground it out on the wall. Luo Binghe made a pitiful noise of complaint, but that's okay, Shen Yuan had this handled now! No more smoke when Luo Binghe had specifically wanted to get fresh air!

"I know it’s a bad habit," Shen Yuan attempted to make an excuse for herself, her fingers itching with nervous energy. "It gives me something to do with my mouth and hands. I guess I should get a fidget cube or something less bad for me, but…" She trailed off with an awkward laugh.

Luo Binghe's eyes were still wide and slightly wet, fixated on her hands. Poor thing, the smoke must've made her eyes water. She opened her mouth, but she was interrupted by the door to the bar opening with a slam.

"Bing-jie!" A girl burst out of the bar, covered in jangling jewellery and not much in the way of actual clothing. She latched onto Luo Binghe's arm, speaking way too loudly to be sober. "You left your Ling-er all alone in the bar!"

Luo Binghe's expression immediately soured, but based on the way she didn't shove the other girl away, it was clear she knew her. Ah, Shen Yuan realized. This must be the friend who'd ordered the shots. Well, she'd just been planning to keep an eye on Luo Binghe until she sobered up or a friend joined her, and here was the friend. Her company was no longer needed here.

"I should probably get going," Shen Yuan said, giving Luo Binghe a soft smile. She had been scowling at her friend, but when she looked back up at Shen Yuan, her eyes were wide and puppyish again. "Get home safe, okay?"

Luo Binghe nodded, once again reminding her of an earnest student. "I will, Shen-jie."

Shen Yuan waved and left the alleyway. She sighed and pulled out her phone to call a cab. Shang Qinghua could find her own way home. Serves her right.

Still, the night wasn't a complete wash. Even as she made her way home, her thoughts drifted back to Luo Binghe. Did she get home alright? Was she drinking enough water? Would she be too hungover in the morning? A girl that pretty and that drunk could be a real target for unsavory people. Shen Yuan didn't doubt that she could handle herself -- those arms of hers were impressive -- but she couldn't help but worry.

Ah, well. Worrying wouldn't do her any good. It's not like they'd ever see each other again.

She put thoughts of Luo Binghe aside and decided to put her energy towards preparing orientation for her department's incoming graduate students.

[inchidentally]

Inch what is your opinion on this clip? https://www.tumblr.com/eightyonefour/762429464940527616/what-kind-of-guyteammate-is-oscar

It makes me sad that Lando isn’t able to find a lot of words to describe Osco ;-;

ohhh anon I know for most ppl this is all so boring and not interesting but the way excitable!nervous!shy!butextroverted!fidgety!sassy!emotional!squirmy!insecuresometimes!pleaseloveme!whydoyouhateme?!seeIknewyou'dloveme!creative!sexualconfidence!HORNY!travelstheworldintechnicolor!babyfever!workaholic!Lando exists against calm, placid, self-assured, does his job well,what's the point in doing less than his best, work life balance, lowkey, rational, good with kids but talks to them like adults Oscar makes me so emotional for god knows what reason ??? ;_;

but to Get Into It, I know this is the choppiest messiest compilation I've ever done but hopefully it'll be both self-explanatory and also go along well w my usual dissertation on something that has no real life importance for me but that makes me Feel Things

x x x

so the main thing with how Lando's stops for long periods to think and mull it over is for two reasons: one is that he hasn't done the usual PR aspect of his rs with Oscar the way he has with other drivers/teammates - and the other is that if he found Oscar dull or uninteresting then he wouldn't have had to sit and think aslfgsaljfgsajl. Lando's rly good with the media and honestly this answer would've been rly easy and quick if he could just say "yeah he's very fast and a good guy! hard worker and solid teammate!" bc it's not like anyone is expecting any more about a guy like Oscar anyway!

and with everyone else, Lando's got lots of anecdotes and jokes and shared activities as well as lots of experience interacting on camera in ways that give fans something to enjoy. it's not being disingenuous, it's just that they can easily tailor the friendship to be useful for publicity.

but !!! it's also the case of all of Lando's friends on the grid being extroverts as well as being great on camera. and Lando maybe could be seen as an extrovert but he's also naturally (self-confessed as well as confirmed by those closest to him) painfully shy and he relies on extroverts around him to help him out a lot. I got this ask that we don't even need proof of bc it's exactly how Lando is when he's alone among strangers or around huge crowds. same with when he has to do publicity stuff all alone the thinking silences stretch and he gets that upward inflection where he's trying very hard to see if the other person knows what he means??

and Osc is very much not an extrovert and while he likes the odd shared activity, he has said he prefers quiet conversation in small groups away from public places. so literally ! the ways he and Lando are compatible are simply in enjoying spending time together and being extremely low pressure friends who don't like the publicity aspect encroaching on that.

so how do you describe someone to a stranger if they're just quietly a good, reliable person who you like and work well with ?? Oscar himself needs a fair amount of prodding and encouragement to describe himself, let alone Lando being asked to do it !!

which I think is why landoscar has actually had this strong resonance for a lot of us who have those kinds of friendships or love those kinds of people - you can only see it and get to know it by observing it and knowing it in a way yourself. the way Oscar stares at Lando and does his little self-assigned duties to Lando and the way Lando watches Oscar in that wide-eyed trusting way and lets his brattiness out bc Oscar will always find it endearing. none of that makes for snappy PR content but if you get the vibes then it's so so sooooooo sweet ;__;

it's also why their dynamic lends itself so much to fic authors bc you've got a strong foundation of their authentic dynamic since they can't/don't fake it or play it up, from which you can put them in any scenario or any roles and they just… write themselves! not in a sense that the author isn't putting the work in as a writer skfgalsfg but the strongest thread among landoscar fic is that dynamic always coming through so consistently (even in the more challenging dark fic or out there AUs) the classics I can think of first off are playdate by debrief, that one from work can come over on monday night by higgsbosonblues and q&a by corsi

the common development of how Oscar is so blatantly changed by Lando in ways that seem either superficial or purely practical so that Lando ends up initially missing out on the depth of what that means - and misinterpreting Oscar not changing emotionally for him as disinterest. only to find that when someone who is solid and reliable and knows who they are decides they love you, they show it by changing their life for you and not changing themselves for you.

and that irl considering that Oscar always says how important it is for his relationship with Lily that he spend time with her that isn't connected to his career/life's passion, it's clear that he considers that to be proof of how much he cares. so all of the little ways Oscar bends and adapts and fulfills Lando's practical needs are ways for him to say "I value you" "I make you a priority in my life" "I want to fit you into my life" "I am willing to give up something/change something for you"

like idk how much Lando realizes the significance of those things and that's how I interpret him spending a very long time mulling and thinking rather than just getting past the answer in a neat, succinct way. bc Max F is a very emotionally intelligent guy and very capable of expressing his feelings, all of the guys on the grid are varying levels of emotional awareness/intelligence but they all have the same regular expectation of using their words to express how they feel about friends, and ofc the people surrounding Lando for the past ten years are highly attenuated to his needs. Oscar stands out as this very very different person to what he's used to!

and lastly, there's the whole gentleness and communicating through their kitten smiles and their ways of getting lost on a random subject - they're just such a quiet, gentle introverted dynamic. there's this moment after Japan last year waiting for a train, as well as this moment from Vegas where the crowd is singing happy birthday to Lando that I think are like, poetic levels of how their shyness/introversion fully matches up. bc neither of them feels easy or comfortable actually interacting with the crowd, so they keep looking to each other and smiling for comfort and reassurance. if another driver from the grid were around they could probably rely on him to brazen out the situation, but these two kittens just find solidarity in each other to get through!

so a lot of what makes landoscar a flop for bromance-only ppl is what a lot of us love about it <3<3<3 like I love a good bromance and self-aware PR ships too but landoscar made me want to get an f1blr and write insane pointless dissertations about them so shrug emoji !!

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I'm not too familiar with the political sphere.

What exactly is "The right" and why do so many people here get worked up over them being nice to boys and men?

As simply as I can explain it from an American centric POV:

In general the right are for personal freedom, traditional morality, limited government, family values, the right to bear arms, strong military, lower taxes, less regulation, strong borders, and slow change.

In general the left is for stronger central government, less or no religion, breaking with established tradition/norms, higher taxes, especially against the rich, social justice/DEI/wokeism/ect, weak or nonexistent military, weakening or abolition of national borders, redistribution of wealth/abolition of private property, and fast, radical change.

The reason so many on the left get mad at the right for standing up for boys and men is that the left has adopted a belief system that says, basically, straight white men are the cause of everything wrong with society because they have all the power. When you point out how that isn't true, and that straight white men not only have their own problems, but are actually one of the only groups its okay to openly discriminate against, that shows their worldview is wrong and they can't stand that. Mostly because the "oppressed/oppressor" dynamics they've set up give them a lot of power, both politically and in society, and they don't want to give that power up or risk losing their "But I'm so oppressed!" defense whenever they get caught being assholes to certain groups of people.

It's all much more complex than that, but this is as simple as I can make it because I'm not sitting here and writing a dissertation on the last 20 years of western politics.

[intothedysphoria]

How I imagine different Billy Hargrove ships getting together because he refuses to leave my head (I’m procrastinating research for my dissertation)

Harringrove: It’s a long process across many years of hooking up and breaking up and fighting. They seem to spilt up for good in their late twenties until they reconnect twenty years later, without any youthful headstrong feelings that kept them apart. They find each other again in a bar in California and just never leave.

Mungrove: Billy learns about Eddie because they run in similar circles in Hawkins. It’s such a small scene, meeting is inevitable and they both have such similar tastes, they hit it off immediately. Billy is eventually worn down and lets Eddie design them couples Hellfire Club shirts.

Calicheer: it’s after cheer practice and Chrissy finds Billy hanging out aimlessly outside the gymnasium, reluctant to go back home. After a long night of talking, he makes a slightly clunky offer of a date and Chrissy is so charmed by him, she accepts.

Hollogrove: Post Starcourt, Billy and Heather are in adjacent beds in hospital. They’d been friends for a couple of months with a reciprocated crush neither had known about. Nothing like almost dying to confess your true feelings for someone though. They escape Hawkins together.

Argilly: There genuinely had never been anyone else. A first kiss for both of them at fifteen, then two years later Neil had found out. Billy was taken from a medium sized town in California to a small town in Indiana. Writing to each other is exceptionally difficult until after the mindflayer. Then Billy finds him again.

Kingrove: It was a secret from literally everyone, both having homophobic and abusive fathers. Good thing both of them are very good at keeping secrets. They break up briefly due to an argument about where to move after high school but get back together within 48 hours. Steve and Heather called it the longest 48 hours of their life.

Byergrove: Jonathan really loves photography. Billy has a passion for short stop motion films. They get paired together for a film project in school and get gradually closer throughout the month before the project is due. Jonathan makes the first move. Billy has a *small* crisis and runs off, before eventually accepting.

Cargrove: Jason is very, very closeted. Billy, slightly less so. Jason decides he wants to *experiment* with same sex relationships and sets his sight on Billy. Billys initial reaction is fuck no, because he isn’t just an experiment but Jason manages to prove that he’s genuine. Eventually.

Harringroveson: Billy and Eddie are together very very fast and Steve can’t decide who he’s jealous of. Turns out, it’s both. But he manages to endear himself to Billy and Eddie with a genuinely earnest and sweet nature and they decide to become a polycule. It works very well.

[h3lfaerie]

Babygirls, I am grinding. My keyboard is steaming. I have hermited myself.

I went through a period of genuinely not having been able to write to writing 24/7. I do sincerely apologize for making you wait this long. I'm aware I have missed the deadline.

I am giving you a big meaty chapter when I'm done.

This has... actually become a priority. I'm not even kidding. With everything that I've been juggling the past year, I am now actively pouring all of my energy into this.

I'm supposed to be moving out. I haven't even started packing. Because screw packing. It can wait.

I am not joking when I say this is all I'm doing right now. I'm sleeping, eating and I'm writing. That's it. I am currently writing this after pulling an all-nighter.

I have made a commitment to myself and to you to deliver this as soon as possible. I thought it'd be done by the 10th but I did overestimate the amount of content I wanted to deliver with this chapter. At the same time, I don't want to rush and give you a butchered Chapter 10 either. For a long time I've been getting in and out of the writing chair for various reasons (which led to further procrastination). For the last few days I've been sitting in it non-stop.

I am getting this done.

And please, I do not want you to think I am brute forcing my way into this.

It's quite the opposite.

I. Am. Buzzing! I can't write fast enough for the way the story is flowing through my brain right now. I am doing this with so much dedication and love. I don't think I even have the vocabulary to describe it.

What I'm trying to say is that I am really doing everything I can to get this out as soon as possible.

While I'm still working on it, I will be posting daily (for every day I've passed the deadline) to keep you updated on the process or to share with you any interesting things I might have encountered while doing research. ❤️

Again, I am so genuinely sorry.

Getting this out ASAP is my priority. I'm too scared to say with certainty how long it will take because I couldn't stick to the deadline I originally set. But I am working on this like my final year dissertation.

Keep your eyes on the blog for the daily updates and hopefully I'll be able to give you chapter 10 in the next few days. ❤️ I love you all very much.

As always, thank you... For your support and your patience, and for simply enjoying this world I've created.

[marigold-hills]

june 4: wildfire | @wolfstarmicrofic | word count: 626

PREVIOUS PART • NEXT PART • FIRST PART

Remus says: “take me to bed.”

Remus say take me to bed and Sirius remembers a trip to France when he was a child, the summer air during a drought, sharp and heavy and dense enough to blanket him, and then, a week later, watching a wildfire ravage through the forest. This is the spark, Sirius thinks.

He was safe within the Manor’s wards, but the fire was a savage, hungry thing and it ate the horizon. Sirius was a wild child then, and he is wild still, and the desire to go outside and feel the burn on his skin hasn’t changed.

“I’ve finished my dissertation,” he admits, not ready for this golden moment between them to end and coming clean about the little omission is easier than facing new thoughts.

(Remus says that’s amazing, Sirius. He says good job, congratulations.)

“And I… um… tattoo.”

“You got a tattoo?” Remus reads into the jumbled words, frowns, “why didn’t you say? You’ve been going on about it all year.”

Sirius is wearing an oversized Queen T-shirt he likes to sleep in. The hem is loose. Makes it easy to lift up above his torso. Down the middle of his breastbone, exposing more than skin: the sign of the alchemical Great Wolf and below it seven intricate moons, waxing and waning.

“You… you didn’t say that’s what you were getting.”

Remus doesn’t blink, not once. Takes in the ink like reading a book – top to bottom, careful eyes. Reaches out to touch each symbol in turn, one by one, his fingers holding the same reverence Sirius has seen in him when handling ancient texts. They’re keeping his place, marking where he is on the page. For one mad moment Sirius wants the mark to be permanent.

“Why, Sirius?” Remus asks as if Sirius knew the answer. He doesn’t say Pads or Padfoot or “you great big mangy dog” as he does usually, he says Sirius and that’s how they both know it’s important.

And Sirius wants to answer – wants to give the right answer - but he can’t because he doesn’t know. Only knows this: he was there, with the money ready, and the man with the tattoo gun asked what will it be? and out of the window, out of the corner of his eye, Sirius saw the moon and said: this. This is what I want to touch me for the rest of my life, this is what I want to carve into my skin.

And while the ink was being needled into him, it quietened the need he has to bite and keep, to hurt.

And now, Remus’ careful fingers meld it together and satisfy the part of him which wants to be soft and gentle, sweet.

“Sirius?” Remus prods when he doesn’t answer. Splays his hand so that it lays flat across the tattoo, and has Moony always had hands this large? Has the rough edge of his fingers, from years of using a quill, always felt like that?

It must have because this is Moony – their Moony, his Moony - but it couldn’t because Sirius never once has been rendered quiet by a simple touch before. There have been so many over the years, in the Shack, after Quidditch, in the Lake, at nights filled with nightmares. Always the same hands, and yet.

Sirius let’s go of the hem of his shirt and grabs onto the hand on his chest, presses it closer into his skin like he could push it through to touch his heart (it’s beating now, so fast, so, so hard). He wants more and he wants to understand, and he’ll give into both the urges. For as long as Remus will let him.

Remus, eyes wide, lets him.

NOTES:

This is part 4! There will be 30. I suggest reading in order for the full experience but they also should work as standalone.

Don’t do this in the library. If you must, I suppose 2am is a good time.

I’ve changed Sirius’ tattoo from how it was in the movies. Originally the symbol he has on the very top is for amalgamation and here I went with antimony because it signifies the great wolf and I like the idea of that. The symbols are actually very similar looking. If you remember part one, this one goes back to the dissertation he’s writing.

not sure if I should add smut to this. Thoughts?

@moon-girl88 @digital-kam @tealeavesandtrash @sweetstarryskies

(let me know if you do/don’t want to be tagged in next parts)

[the-invisibility-bloke]

fic writer interview

Thanks for the tags, @galaxostars, @microdamage, @shoopsthereitis, and @wolfpants! I love your deep dives, so much of y'all's on my TBR.

How many works do you have on ao3? 40

What is your total wordcount? 468,229

Top 5 stories by kudos: (please don't perceive these, I loathe my old work) now we walk, manie sans delire, Five Times Walter Meets Jesse and One Time He Says Goodbye, don't give me your heart i can't take it, blindsight

Do you respond to comments? Always <3

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending? ​Hmm how 'bout the Starcest where Reg DIES​ (don't come for me it was by request)

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending? Most have happy endings (heh), but I think this one's extra sweet bc Teddy's a lil honeybear (which sounds dirtywrong so all the better)

Do you write crossovers? Not unless you count the one in the next question

Have you received hate for a fic? Rarely because I disable guest comments. 😅 The artist and I both got death threats for this blip on the radar, which is especially hilarious because it's hardly my most problematique work. (It also scared the artist out of the fandom, which is. Less hilarious. Fuck antis.)

Do you write smut? With great disdain (my style is ill-suited to action/logistics)

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Reposted but not plagiarized, I’m way too niche to attract that attention 😂

Have you ever had a fic translated? My Breaking Bad fic, randomly enough

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Kinda, or do artist collabs count? Those are the frosting on fandom cake.

What is your all-time favourite ship? A multishipper's nightmare. Gotta be the Sirry > Heddy or Sirry > Drarry > Tedrarry pipeline. Sirius died so Tedrarry could live.

What's a WIP you want to finish but don't think you ever will? ​My Gauntcest... it's all outlined, but I have to go where the hyper fixates

What are your writing strengths? ​Turn of phrase, dialogue​, ​cadence, emotion

What are your writing weaknesses? *cracks knuckles* Plot, action, pacing, versatility (I am not as well read as many of my counterparts because yep I’ll admit it, most tradpub bores me), the balance between ​poetic prose and character voice. I get Artax-swamped in descriptors, I recycle metaphors, I'm a cringey tryhard in the face of transitions, never know if they land and I can't ever leave a sentence bare. I know, I know sometimes you can just say "He walked to the door" but good sir no I cannot.​ I could parse my shortcomings at the dissertation level... oh... oh maybe a ppt... El’s Insecurities: A Treatise.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language? I love the immersiveness and/or hotness, but I’m biased because I usually only run across French and I can muddle through. If you’re unfamiliar with the language it might be hard to follow. (I’ve seen translation footnote links, which, genius, can a tech-savvy gen Z teach me this?)

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written yet but would like to? ​Jalbus. Dralbus. Scarry. Drarry/Scorbus OT4. (Does Draco/Scorpius have a ship name? Scorco and Drapius are… yikes. Malfoycest it is.) Drarry as a two-wheeler and not a tricycle (soon soon soon).

What's your favourite fic you've ever written? ​Passion cools fast for me, but I like my Tedrarry. It got the biggest dose of my wit and sold me on Drarry (which, fail, given I wrote it for a rarepair exchange).

Everyone's already done this, I think? If you haven’t, tag you’re it, @ me. 🩵

[whateverisbeautiful]

On this day of love and the day of the queen herself Danai Gurira's birthday (🥳💜), I just needed to take a moment before we kick off the ten-day countdown to marvel over the official TOWL promo we've got over the last few months.

"just know I love you" "my wife is my choice" "together, you and me can do anything" "it was always about getting back to you" "she's not gone" "I love you so, so much." "Until my last breath, I am yours" "You're the love of my life"- Rick 'I'm Utterly In Love With Michonne & The World Better Recognize' Grimes

Y'all. 🫠 The way I have been gagged and a puddle of emotion upon every release of promotion for this show - I truly do not know how I'm going to make it through six eps when just these trailers and teasers have me nearly passing out. Loving Richonne is the epitome of being fed. It's been feast on feast on feast and the show hasn't even come out yet. I can't thank Danai, Andy, and Scott enough.

Richonne has been something special to me for so many years and for so many reasons. And I know so many of us feel the same. We've cherished every win in the lead-up to TOWL, and just when I think surely it can't get any better…I'm reminded that there is no ceiling on Richonne's perfection, and they top themselves every time. 🙌🏽 (i already want to write dissertations on the promo alone 😋)

So I just had to write this out because I always want to remember what this exhilarating moment of anticipation feels like. After all these years of waiting and hoping that Rick and Michonne would make it back to each other and our screens, man have we won in abundance with their return. 😭

Throughout all this time, we held fast to the belief that Rick and Michonne's story is an epic and enduring love story because that was exactly what was shown on our screen. We knew this was a love supreme way back then, and I love that now it's stated out loud (and on giant spheres!) for all to see. If this is the kind of heart-bursting content we're getting in the promos, I truly can't even imagine the ride we're in for with these 6 eps. But baby, I'm buckled up and so excited for Richonne, Andy, Danai, and Scott to keep messing with my heart rate, because I almost went onto glory with today's romantic trailer. 😇

I know we're in for a one-of-a-kind ride with our one-of-a-kind couple. And I can't wait to spend the next 10 days reflecting on my absolute favorite heavy-hitter scenes from Richonne's journey so far and hearing about your top 10 takes as we prepare for the Richone blessings to continue with TOWL. #We'reAlmostThere #We'reGettingThereWe'reGettingHome 🥳

[greeneugene77]

Do you think Eugene ran away because he couldn’t really accept the fact that he was queer?

Oh God, I feel like I could write a whole dissertation on Eugene's reasons for leaving... But I'm not good enough with words for something that long, plus I don't want to bore you with a big wall of meandering text. Soooo... I guess I can write my thoughts in a simple, bullet-point style?

IMO, Eugene's reasons for leaving Lee are mainly a messy combination of:

Struggling with his sexuality, having any attraction towards men in general, and how that relates to his sense of identity as an individual, but also as a member of a society that vilifies people like that.

A general fear of commitment, of allowing himself to be vulnerable, to open up and let someone else in, of being truly known and loved by someone else, regardless of gender.

Lee, in specific, being too much. Wanting too much, too fast, too often, overwhelming Eugene, who (considering his emotional baggage) would have probably reacted better to a slower pace.

On that last point, I've been kinda thinking lately how taking the yage together was ultimately a bad idea, because it forced Eugene to face himself when he wasn't ready yet. If Lee and Eugene had taken things a bit slower and allowed the relationship to organically flourish, maybe Eugene would have never left...

[wingstars]

So as of 2025, I've been regularly doing digital art for five years! I started in 2020, after around four years of an art drought caused by GCSE Art killing all the joy I ever got out of art. So this has been five years of rebuilding skills I'd forgotten, learning what I enjoy, experimenting, and above all prioritising fun over any sort of feeling of obligation to prevent burning out again.

That's why I post only every once in a blue moon and have no consistent style to speak of; I draw only when and what I want, and avoid it becoming a chore at all costs. And it's been working! I've made some pieces I'm really proud of, so I thought I'd make this lil post to reflect on the last five years, picking out some pieces and fondly critiquing some and giving myself permission to brag about others. Thank you lovely lovely people who follow this blog, even though I post so infrequently. <3

So! Starting with 2020, this was the first piece I ever did digitally:

TMA fanart, because TMA was the whole reason I started drawing again in the first place! I had trouble focusing on podcasts when I first started listening, so I needed something to do with my hands and there was only so much Mahjong I could play before I got bored. So I bought myself a tiny tiny drawing tablet (SO small, I didn't realise how much of a difference it made until I got a bigger one and suddenly everything was so much easier), and drew this.

It's cute! I remember having so much fun drawing all the little details - the books on the shelves all representing a fear each, the post-it notes (the phone number is for the Domino's nearest the Institute, haha), the little tape recorders - and I'm still quite fond of Jon's appearance. You can tell I had NO idea how lighting worked, or how to use lighting to create mood. But it's cute, and it's the one that started it all, haha.

Onto 2021, with a couple of my favourite pieces from that year:

I experimented a bunch that year!! The first image was for a Big Bang, and I think that's the piece I learned I really adore texture and I want it EVERYWHERE. A lot of my pieces that year were done entirely with the scratchiest brush I had, just for that lovely texture. That piece stretched me a lot, drawing two people's full bodies with a full background and so many different materials... woof! But I ended up so so happy with it, and I'm still very fond.

The other one was an experimental style which I ended up really liking. That year I'd challenged myself to draw at least one thing per month (with the caveat that I could quit at any time if it became too much like a chore) and I managed it! And it lead to a lot of very fun experiments and styles and outcomes that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

2022 was a very light year for art, but I still made something around once every two months. This was the year I was writing my dissertation though, so that's totally fine. But these two pieces, oohh I really love them. This year was a big year for learning how to use light and shadow effectively.

2023 was a great year for art. I learned a TON that year, and created pieces I'm still so damn proud of. That first image was the first real study sort of thing I'd ever done, and it was so much fun. It's based off Germanic Warrior Looking at a Roman Helmet by Osmar Schindler, and studying that painting triggered my hyperfocus sooo fast. I think I blinked like three times in the what, four months it took me to draw that. It was intoxicating and so much fun and I was sooo relieved when I finished and it was exactly how I wanted it to look. Still so proud of it, just unfortunate now what fandom it's in and what piece of shit author it's associated with.

The second piece I drew like, the day after I finished the first one. I needed something super chill and fun so it's just a screenshot study, but that sorta comic book-esque style with all the heavy black shadows just came out of nowhere and I haven't been able to recreate it since. But I looooove how this piece turned out. Also the rocks!!! The rocks turned out so good guys, they look so realistic and I have no idea how I did that.

2024 was also a pretty light year for art, but I made some of my favourite pieces ever. The first one was an art fight attack for my bestie @ninneko19 of his wonderful character I'm obsessed with, and I really like how it turned out. It was suuuuuch fun expression practice, and I love that guy. The hearts behind him are bc of ME, bc I'M obsessed w him. Mwah mwah.

The second piece is my beloved OC Juno. He's so sad all the time </3 so I got his permanent depressed face down p well, bless his heart. But I looove this piece, it's exactly what I picture Juno actually looking like. It took a billion years bc I tend to agonise over every single thing until it's perfect, but I love how it came out. Kissing him on the mouth and also crying abt him.

Finally 2025!! This is the only thing I've drawn so far this year, but I looooove it. Another study, this time of Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel, featuring my dear boy Bash who suffers so much every day of his life. His hair, horns, eyes, etc etc are made of gold and silver and copper, so the metallic textures made me a little insane but in a good way. I LOVE rendering metal, which is good bc I give so many of my ocs random metallic body parts and features, lol. The background on this one is a little iffy, but hey. I'm not here for perfectionism I'm here for fun, and I gotta freaking remember that.

Hopefully I keep going another five years!! Planning to do art fight again this year and maybe try push myself a little with it (I usually draw one (1) singular piece during AF lol). Was also toying with the idea of opening commissions, maybe if I push myself during art fight and see how I actually fare when drawing multiple things under pressure for other people. We'll see! Thank you for reading this far if you did <33