#i know a lot of my posts lately have been me talking about resources and not so much art

[rad-roche]

been digging into, and really enjoying, framed ink. it's really helped me bridge the gap on a few comic concepts. i'd consider myself an intermediate illustrator/portrait artist, and i'd struggled for years to grip the idea of a page composition that has a lot of smaller compositions in it, like a collage. i'm having a lot of fun. what helps is that all of the example comics in it were drawn for the book and also shred incredible penis

[cherrygorilla]

The Mixtape Mysteries: Chapter 1 (Part 2)

Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne - 4:53

Yes, it is a ridiculous amount of time since I last posted anything to do with this (or anything at all really), but I've been dying to write for this story again, so I thought it would be a good way to help me get my groove back. Plus, I wanted to wait until Camp Wanamaker was done before I went back to working on Acting School Drop Out (because I feel like I might be able to use some stuff that's been mentioned in the next part lol). So, after months and months of uni stress that's kept me away from my google doc, here's the next installment of the story that's kept me going through it all.

Listen along with the gang here. Enjoy!

Heavy eyelids dropped over a pair of umber eyes trying, and failing, to focus on the computer screen in front of them. Whilst the radio often felt like Butchy's only co-worker, today it just seemed to be functioning as a lullaby machine - and the smooth, fade-out ending of Electric Light Orchestra's 'Evil Woman' just proved the point further. One second he was staring blankly at a page of pixelated text on a fuzzy screen, and then the next thing he knew he was drooling into the palm of his hand and almost falling off his chair at the sound of a car racing past his window. 

It's not even that he was tired - it was barely even 11am for Christ's sake - he was just so bored his brain was shutting down from lack of stimulation. And considering the latest turn of events, his body wasn't far behind. The roaring engine disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the incessant ticking of the plastic wall clock in its place. It didn't matter what kind of car it was, or where the hell it was going; all Butchy knew was that he wanted to be in it. Hopefully travelling far, far away from this crappy, dead-end town, and this shoe box of an office, that was more dust than desk, and smelled like a wet rat. 

Begrudgingly, he gathered himself together and finished typing out the latest file he'd been working on - something about trespassing in the old steel mill, he didn't care enough to look into the details. Tipping his head back, he rubbed his palms across his eyes, trying to press as hard as he could to draw some sort of alertness to the forefront of his mind. If anything, it just made him more tired.

One glance across his desk let his gaze settle on the dorky Star Wars mug Royce and Bentley had gifted him on his last birthday, and for the first time since he'd slumped in the splitting leather swivel-chair that morning, a ghost of a smile graced his features. He took a swig and drained the mug of the last of its contents: bitter, room-temperature coffee. Wincing at the taste, he picked up the next file to work on, but swiftly dropped it in favour of refilling his mug. After all, the walk to the coffee pot in the main office was the only change of scenery he got all day. Sometimes he watered the dying yucca plant beside him with the rancid liquid just so that he had an excuse to get away from his desk.

The tapping of keyboards and mumblings of the same, tedious phone calls he overheard every day met Butchy's ears as he lumbered down the hall and pushed open the office door. Lurking behind the frosted panel, caked in as much dust as the rest of the building, was the rag-tag reception team, consisting of three women Butchy had absolutely no intention of even looking at, let alone speaking to. He'd given up trying to make conversation with his co-workers pretty quickly after every meagre attempt on his end had been ignored. Most shifts passed without him uttering a single word. However, Lela ditching his ride that morning must have thrown him off more than he realised, because this shift was about to become an anomaly. 

"So I said to him: If you know so much about the damn sausages, why don't you cook 'em yourself?" 

"I bet he knows a lot about one kind of sausage."

"Oh Jen, pull your mind out of the gutter, you sound like a teenager."

"She practically still is one."

"I'm right though, aren't I?"

A strained sigh slipped past Butchy's lips before he could stop it. The nasal drones from the women behind him were enough to make his eye twitch at the best of times, but the added scraping of Jennifer's nail file made it inevitable. Before he could short-circuit altogether though, one of the adjoining doors to the main office was pushed open, and the conversation unfolding behind it immediately caught his attention. 

Heaving a sigh that put the young trainee's to shame, the fourth, and final receptionist, led the charge into the room - two officers hot on her heels. "Well, you'll just have to go alone then, won't you, gentlemen?" 

"We can't just 'go alone', the chief's the only one that goes on solo investigations. What if it's dangerous? What if we need back-up?"

"And what, pray tell, Officer Reynolds, is so 'dangerous' about a broken store window?"

"Well from the sounds of things it's a pretty clear-cut robbery. What if the culprit's still on the scene? What if he's armed?"

"Why are you assumin' it's a 'he'?" Jennifer piped up with a smirk, punctuating her question by blowing the acrylic dust from the tip of her nail. 

As expected, neither officer batted an eyelid at her interruption. 

"We got the call last night. You've got a higher chance of him sticking the damn window back together."

"But what if it's like that time when Old Man McRoberts'-"

"Enough, boys. I don't want to hear it," she finally snapped, slamming the stack of paperwork down on her desk so hard it even made her glasses chain quiver. Turning to the pair with her hands planted firmly on her hips, she continued. "Callahan, you're on patrol with Officer Powell; Reynolds, you're investigating that store window. Alone."

"But Fran, that never-"

"No, I don't want to hear another word. You're going solo, Reynolds, and that's that." 

"...Uh, I could go with you."

The whole office fell silent. Even Jennifer's nail file seemed to pause for thought. But all too soon, six pairs of eyes fell on Butchy, whose grip on his mug instinctively tightened under their bemused glares. He couldn't exactly blame them; even he couldn't believe that he'd dared to speak - let alone suggest such a thing. But then again, this was a perfect opportunity - perhaps the only opportunity he'd get (at least for the foreseeable future) to prove himself a worthy member of the team. Being stuck behind a computer screen all day was getting him nowhere - in fact, he was pretty sure he had even less respect now than when he'd first set foot through the door over a month ago. But working on a case, a real case, meant he could put all the skills he'd learnt in his training to the test - show everyone that potential he'd promised in his interview. This could be the making of Officer Bandoni. This could be his ticket out of that godawful, stuffy office. This could be-

"Oh my god, look at his face; he's serious."

God, he hated Jennifer. But he hated that cackling laugh of hers even more. 

"Jennifer," Linda, the crotchety receptionist to her left, scolded. If Butchy hadn't known better, with her brusque, hushed tone and sharp glare from over the top of her tortoise shell glasses, he'd have thought the woman was her mother. 

"Yeah right," Officer Callahan snorted. But a pause, followed by a brief glance in the new recruit's direction soon had his confidence faltering. "I- Oh…" 

"Hey, cut him some slack, Jen; the kid's still learning the ropes," Officer Reynolds piped up, ignoring Officer Callahan's attempts to hide his smirk by smoothing out his moustache, and instead sending the smarmy receptionist a blasé, yet stern frown. "Of course he wasn't being serious."

"Actually, I was," Butchy corrected. He set his mug down and stood his ground opposite the two officers, gently nudging his chin up and puffing out his chest in an attempt to outwardly show some of the confidence he was so desperately trying to scrounge together. At least that would help to mask the stubborn rage bubbling away in the pit of his stomach. The staff's dismissiveness was frustrating enough on its own, but being reduced to a 'kid' was downright infuriating. 'Kids' did not single-handedly raise their little sister. 'Kids' did not give up their weekends to go and work in a shitty garage for two bucks an hour all throughout high school just so they could have food on the table. 'Kids' did not shoulder the responsibility of four adults after stepping up to parent, not only his own sister, but the three boys next door too. Butchy hadn't felt like a 'kid' in years. He had always been the oldest - the most mature, the most dependable, the most capable… So for these six adults, who had barely given him the time of day in the month he'd been working with them, to stand there and tell him he was nothing more than a 'kid'...it was insulting. And he was determined to prove them wrong. "If you need another officer for back-up, and no one else is free, then why can't I go with you?" 

"Well, for one, you're not an officer-"

All Reynolds had to do was hold up a hand for Callahan to snuff out his snickers. "Because you haven't finished your training yet, son," he plainly explained. At least his withering look was softened by a bored tone. 

"But I've aced every part of the course I've completed so far," Butchy argued. "And this could be a chance for me to learn on the job, out in the field-"

"Son, let it go."

"You said, yourself, that I've got potential. Why can't I just show you-?"

"Look, kid, you're not ready - you won't be for a long time. I admire the optimism but we've gotta look at the facts here. And truth is: the dirt on Callahan's shoe's got more experience walkin' 'round a crime scene than you do. I know you want to get out of the office and get a taste of the action, but I can't work the case and babysit you at the same time. It's just not realistic."

'Babysit'? Butchy could feel the word in the palm of his hand as he clenched his fingers into a fist around it, crushing it, along with all its juvenile connotations. "I'm not a 'kid', I'm eighteen years old," he insisted, choosing his words and tone very carefully as he fought not to lose his cool. 

"Yeah, and I'm not a chainsmoker neither," Jennifer sniggered, appearing to have swapped her nail file for a cigarette during the confrontation. She took a long drag as her, deep, carob eyes latched onto his, lashes sprawling across a rough sea of streaky kohl, before letting the smoke leak out through her crimson-painted smirk. 

Butchy didn't know what was more nauseating: her attitude or the stench of tobacco hanging in the air. 

Officer Reynolds let out an exasperated sigh that soon stole back the trainee's glare though. "That's all well and good, but it's not gonna change my mind. You need more experience before you go out in the field, Bandoni," he explained, with an expression that told Butchy he was well-weary of the conversation now. "You can't learn to run before you learn to walk. It's just not realistic - if anything, it's naïve."

"But how am I supposed to get more experience when I'm stuck behind a desk all day?" 

Butchy's question was shot down though as the pair of officers crossed the room to the office's main door, back to their usual routine of barely acknowledging his existence. "If I'm not back by two for your CPR training, Officer Powell will handle it, okay?" Reynolds said as he plucked his hat from the coat stand in the corner and secured it atop his head of thinning, taupe hair. Knowing the new recruit wouldn't be satisfied with any answer he could give him, he'd just decided to brush the question aside altogether. 

And knowing that defiance, and further provoking, would get him nowhere, Butchy finally relaxed his hand, and gave a stiff nod. He silently watched the officers announce their departure to the room and felt his shoulders slump in defeat, his chest aching with betrayal. Officer Reynolds was supposed to be his mentor, the one who would take him under his wing as he learned the ropes - and yet he'd kicked him to the curb and spat in his face the one time he'd tried to do the right thing. At least that's how it felt to him anyway. 

"Bye boys," Jennifer trilled with a flirty giggle as the office door closed behind them. Tapping the ash from the end of her cigarette, she turned her vampish smirk to Butchy. "Nice little show there, Bandoni. And there I was thinking today was gonna be boring." 

Butchy's frown deepened as her scornful laughter battered his ears. The thick-headed she-devil wasn't worth his breath though - even the sickened huff that escaped his throat felt like a waste. His fingers once again closed, although this time they at least found the warm ceramic of his mug beneath them. Letting the heat seep into his skin, he took a deep breath in through his nose and tried to focus on anything else other than the anger boiling in his chest. At least the Star Wars mug, and the memory of receiving it, gave him something to anchor himself to: a way to discharge all the bitter resentment that had been steadily building for weeks, but had finally come to an ugly head. One more snarky comment from Danielle and he'd have hurled the coffee at her sloppy up-do, he knew it - he could feel himself teetering on the brink. 

And yet, a friendly hand in the centre of his back was all it took to draw him back from the edge. "I should be thanking you," Fran said with a sympathetic chuckle, and roll of her eyes at the officers' expense. "I thought they'd never leave."

Managing a weak, but grateful smile to the receptionist, Butchy finally picked his mug up from the drink station and took his leave before he could draw any more unwanted attention to himself. Jennifer's squawking voice still rang in his ears as his footsteps pounded down the hall, desperate (for once) to shut himself away in his office. At least in there he knew he was safe from further embarrassment, even if the only thing waiting for him was a stack of files on petty traffic crimes. Apparently reading about speeding fines and parking tickets was all the excitement his life could afford him for the time being. But, for once, he actually found some comfort in that. 

"Well, Wuthering Heights, you were fun while you lasted, but I am not going to miss you," Vivien snorted, holding the worn paperback out in front of her, as if to address it like an old friend. 

The gentle chuckles that bounced the soft, chocolate brown curls beside her set her innocent little middle-school heart aflutter, and she caught herself clamping her lips shut in case it tried to escape. Craving the thrill of that sensation again, she snatched a shy glance in his direction before plastering the jovial grin back on her face. "Thank you for the 'A' though, Emily." 

"What are you thanking her for? We did all the hard work," Royce scoffed. "I wrote so many notes on the moors I'm pretty sure I almost gave myself Carpal Tunnel."

A snicker crinkled the brunette's nose. "Well you do have the neater handwriting."

"And you have all the good ideas," Royce chuckled, praying desperately that the prickling he felt across his cheeks wasn't what he thought it was. 

Stopping in front of a set of painted metal doors, Vivien turned to him with a disapproving frown. "Not all the good ideas." 

"Fine… most then."

Whilst Royce may have been able to keep his blush at bay, Vivien felt hers raging like a wildfire as she downplayed his compliment with an affectionate eye-roll and pushed her way out into the crisp autumn air of the Hawkins Middle parking lot. Hopefully a bracing breeze like the one that smacked her across the face the second she set foot onto the asphalt would help her systems stop running on overdrive, because right now she felt like a live wire about to catch light. One wrong move from Royce and he'd be fried to a crisp. 

Wrapping her free hand around the forearm that flanked him, protecting his arm from being barbecued should he decide to fondly bump her as they fell into stride once more, Vivien, composure regained, offered him a smile. "I guess that makes us a pretty good team then, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess it does," he agreed, holding her gaze for a beat and letting the sincerity of the moment swell alongside the tingly, warm feeling spreading through his chest. "...And we've got the A to prove it." Terrified by the sensation, he snorted out a laugh that shattered the tenderness of the moment just as awkwardly as how he almost tripped over his own feet because he was spending more time looking at Vivien and her freaking dimples than where he was walking. Damn his stupid hand-me-down sneakers from Miles and their stupidly long laces.

More awkward, cheerful chuckles tumbled from the middle schoolers' lips as Royce steadied himself again and they made their way over to the cluster of trees by the soccer field. It didn't take Vivien long to break the comfortable silence that had fallen over them though. "I don't know what we're going to do with ourselves now that project's finished; it completely took over our lives for like two whole weeks there."

"I'm sure we'll find something."

But Royce's laidback grin was the complete antithesis of Vivien's tense shoulders and skittish gaze. Then again, he had no idea what she was planning, or what her skating friends had been begging her to do for weeks. 

It couldn't be that hard, right? It was just one little question. She asked him questions all the time, this one didn't need to be any different. And besides, there wasn't really anything Vivien felt as though she couldn't talk to Royce about; he was her best friend, he was always her first port of call for anything that was bothering her - well, unless it was about something like her period; that was strictly for her mom…

But this was just a question: one that could very well have been asked without another thought had she not attached all the extra weight to it in her mind. And yet here she was, fighting her own tongue, trying to persuade it to recite the script she'd meticulously planned out in her head the night before, because for some reason it wasn't convinced by her promised ability to brush the sentiment off as 'just a friend thing' should Royce take it badly. And neither was her mind, really. 

Realistically though, what was the worst thing that could happen if he had a weird reaction? It's not like a meteor would crash out of the sky and strike them both down or anything, no matter how much she may want it to in the moment - she knew; she'd checked and it wasn't the right time of year for it. The worst that could happen is things might be a little awkward between them for a couple days, right? He wouldn't- 

-Actually, scratch that. Vivien didn't want to think about it. 

"Well, actually…" she began, before she could talk herself out of it any further. 

Vivien felt Royce's gaze land on her the second she stopped to clear her throat, which had become inexplicably scratchy ever since those last words had left it, clearly so reluctant to be said they'd dug their heels in the entire journey out into the cool, October air. And as soon as it did, it felt as though all her sweat glands released at once, adding a glistening sheen to her already crimson skin. Horrified, Vivien kept her gaze on the ground a few paces ahead of her to avoid having to find out if Royce had realised, and pushed her round, silver-rimmed glasses further up the bridge of her nose in an attempt to shield herself from further embarrassment as a result of her thirteen-year-old hormones wreaking havoc in her own body. 

Fearing that the longer she dragged this on, the more her subconscious would betray her, she swallowed her nerves and ploughed ahead. "Do you remember how you missed out on going to watch The NeverEnding Story this summer because you had to spend your ticket money on a new wheel for your bike?"

In her periphery, Vivien saw Royce's hand shift up to play with the fraying fabric of his backpack strap. He only ever did that when he felt uncomfortable. She didn't even have to look at him to confirm it either, the pause before he responded told her almost as much as his tone of voice did. 

"...Yeah, but what does that-?"

"Hey nerds!" 

Despite their disdain for the term, both Vivien and Royce's heads whipped around to try to locate the source of the voice, mentally cursing themselves for even acknowledging that the phrase could have been used to refer to them, let alone responding to it. But as green and brown eyes scanned a sparse sea of middle schoolers, searching for signs of anyone with ill-intent, they came up short. 

"Over here!"

The voice, carried on the wind, drew the pair's gazes to a figure, practically standing on the bench of a rotting, wooden picnic table to try to grab their attention and their disgruntled grumblings fell from their lips within seconds of one another, replaced by fond sighs. 

Bentley waved the duo towards him so spectacularly that, for all they knew, he could have been directing a plane to land. And whilst Vivien couldn't help but smile at the blond's boundless energy, she also couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment with how easily Royce shelved their conversation by letting out an almost relieved: "Duty calls."

"Yeah," Vivien agreed with a forced smile and a breathy, awkward laugh to match his. Although it dropped from her face the second he turned his back to head over to the shaded seating area. 

Once he was a good few paces ahead of her, and she was sure he was out of earshot, Vivien let out a frustrated huff, so hot she was surprised it didn't steam up her glasses. "Goddammit, Bentley," she muttered, shoving her library copy of Wuthering Heights into her backpack as she started trudging along behind Royce. "I almost got through it all that time."

But Bentley was none the wiser to Vivien's grand plans; too excited by his own news to consider that the pair may have been busy. And besides, the easygoing grin his older brother shot him as he approached made him none the wiser. 

"You've gotta come up with something better to call us, Benny," Royce said, fondly shaking his head as he climbed the last few steps of the hill leading up to the picnic table, adorned by Bentley's friends, the contents of at least three up-turned pencil cases, and enough sheets of paper to paper mache a small child. Thankfully, the table was sheltered from the worst of the breeze, so the most that a stray gust could do was flutter the edges beneath the various, makeshift paperweights (dog-eared textbooks and unopened juice boxes) strewn across the splintering surface.

"Why? You are 'nerds'," the boy laughed as he bounced back down into his spot on the bench seat beside August. 

"We are not," Royce protested.

"It got you to come over here, didn't it?" Bentley replied with a cheesy smirk. 

Royce let out a slightly bitter sigh as he fumbled through a response. "Well- yeah, but it's… demeaning." 

"Then why'd you respond to it?" Kona snorted, apparently more focused on selecting the right shade of crayon than bothering to look Royce in the eye as she insulted him. 

The bluntness of the eleven-year-old's comment drew a snort of laughter from him before he could stop it, whether it was in amusement or incredulity though he'd never know. But the smile that threatened to envelop his disapproving frown stayed firmly in place as he said, "Because I'm so used to everyone else calling us it, that's why. And you shouldn't be contributing to the problem anyway; I thought we were all on the same side here."

"You calling us nerds, RJ?" Zack piped up with a challenging quirk of his eyebrow. 

"Pot calls the kettle black," Royce smirked.

"White boy says what now?" Zack retorted with a confused frown that soon gave way to a mischievous grin the second that Royce rolled his eyes and playfully ruffled his hair, insisting through shared laughter that the boy knew what he meant. 

"What are you guys doing up here?" Vivien asked with a breathy laugh of her own as she arrived at the picnic table and caught the end of the boys' friendly roughhousing.

"Having fun until you nerds showed up," Zack scoffed as he shoved Royce's chest in an attempt to get the older boy away from him. But the bubbling giggles that tumbled from his lips as Royce expressed his disdain for the name once more told everyone all they needed to know about how much he enjoyed the brunet's company - proved even further when he resorted to wrapping his arms around his torso and tackling him into a hug from his spot on the bench. 

"Looks like it," Vivien noted with a bemused chuckle. "What's all this then? You writing out your own comic book or something?" she continued, gesturing to the vast collection of paper spread out before the quartet. 

"We're designing our characters for this cool new game Gus brought in," Bentley raved, holding up his sheet of paper for Vivien to see. "Look at my guy, he's got a wand that's disguised as a paintbrush and this magic flute that lets him talk to animals." 

"Damn, Benny, that's so cool," she grinned, marvelling at the artwork with almost as much care as the blond put into creating it. 

"And look, here's the one I'm doing for Gus," Bentley continued, shuffling the papers around until he selected the right one. 

"You didn't want to draw out your own?" Vivien asked the boy, whose sandy blond eyebrows were furrowed in concentration. 

"Nah; Ben's better at art," August admitted, only glancing up from his work to shoot his oblivious friend a shy smile. "And I enjoy the planning part of it more anyway," he went on to explain. "So he's doing the drawing, and I'm filling out his character sheet for him." 

"Yeah, 'cause there was no way I was gonna be able to deal with all that," Bentley snorted.

"This looks like a lot of work for just one game," Vivien noted, inching another piece of paper towards her and finding it covered from top to bottom in meticulously written words, numbers, and the occasional, scribbled doodle. 

"Tell me about it," Kona scoffed. "I feel like we got extra math homework with this stupid number system we've got to work off of," she added with a huff that blew a straw strand of hair away from her eyes. Begrudgingly tapping the open, yellowing pages of an intricately illustrated book with the end of a pencil, she brought the thirteen-year-old's gaze to the table she was drawing from. 

"You guys are willingly doing math over lunch and you're calling us nerds?" Royce asked with a teasing incredulity that earned him further, playful bickering from Zack. 

"So what do you do with all this when you've created your characters then?" Vivien continued, feeling a fond smile tugging at her lips as Royce's unbridled laughter tickled her ears. Fighting the urge to swat the imagined sensation away, she focused her attention on the other children at the table. "What's this dorky wizard math game called?" 

"Dungeons and Dragons," Bentley explained.

Vivien’s ears perked up. “Dungeons and Dragons? That weird roleplaying game Riven plays with his sweaty high school friends?” 

“Who’s Riven?” Kona asked.

“My skating partner,” Vivien said, throwing the explanation away like a used napkin so that she could get back to the main point at hand. 

“Ew, so is he like your boyfriend then?” Kona teased with a devilish wiggle of her eyebrows. 

“No!” Vivien blurted, maybe a little too quickly if everyone turning to look at her was anything to go by. "No, not like… It's just- He's like my brother, ok?" she hurriedly tried to explain, trying to ignore the bile now creeping at the back of her throat the very thought alone had placed there. 

"Ok," Kona snorted, smirking to herself as she caught Royce's shoulders slump in relief in her periphery. Making the ninth-graders squirm was a favourite pastime of hers, and lately, all this girlfriend-boyfriend talk around them, despite making her want to hurl, had been a homerun every time. 

"I didn’t know Riven played DnD,” Bentley piped up, earning himself a grateful smile from Vivien for taking some of the heat off her. 

“Neither did I until he made us switch our practice days so that he could go play pretend with a bunch of dorks out the back of Eddie 'the freak' Munson's trailer."

"Riven's in that weird Hellraiser club?" Royce asked, bushy eyebrow raised in disbelief. 

"My sister says they're all devil worshippers," Zack mumbled.

"It's Hellfire," Vivien corrected. "And they're not devil worshippers - well, Riven's not anyway. As far as I know they're just losers in matching shirts who play make believe like they're still in first grade."

"It's more than just playing make believe," August dared to pipe up with a somewhat defensive frown, immediately toying with the corner of Bentley's character sheet the second the group's attention landed on him. A sideways glance in the blond's direction earned him a reassuring smile that breathed some much needed confidence into his lungs, and as he released it, he said, "There's this whole world you can build your own stories around with all these super detailed characters and a bunch of lore you can discover. I spent my whole weekend reading through the books my cousin gave me and that doesn't even cover half of it. It's like one big choose-your-own adventure story, but everyone gets a say in what happens, and gets to feel like they're a part of it."

A beaming grin and steel blue eyes, sparkling with excitement, found Royce with startling ease. "Doesn't that sound cool?!" Bentley enthused.

"...It actually does," Royce admitted, even surprising himself with his answer. 

"Hear that, Auggie? You didn't even have to mention dragons to convince someone that time," Kona snickered, firing the curly haired boy beside her a smirk. 

"Whatever," Zack scoffed, rolling his eyes. "You thought they sounded cool too," he added with an accusatory nudge of the blonde's elbow that had her cursing him under her breath for making her pencil skim across the page. 

Ignoring his friends' sibling-like arguing, so used to it by now that it honestly would have been stranger to acknowledge it, Bentley kept his attention, and his toothy grin, focused on his older brother. "I knew you'd like it! You're always borrowing those old fantasy books from the library and writing your own versions of them."

"Well- yeah, ok, but what does that have to do with this?" Royce stuttered, cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment despite Vivien's small, amused smile. 

"Well this is just like that! Gus wrote out our first campaign all by himself," Bentley gushed before leaning into the shying blond beside him. "That's like the story, right?" he checked in a hushed tone. And after receiving a confirmatory nod, he turned back to Royce with renewed enthusiasm. "The plot, the monsters, the bonus quests - he came up with it all!" 

Bentley pushed a stack of papers towards his brother, bound by treasury tags and bearing enough ink to have drained an entire pack of ballpoint pens. "Holy shit," Royce breathed as he picked it up and began flipping through the makeshift book, becoming more and more stunned with every turn of a page. "You wrote this whole thing by yourself?" he asked August, who timidly nodded. "In one weekend?" Again, the boy nodded, this time a little more eagerly. And Royce could see why. "...Wow," he marvelled, smiling as he watched the younger boy swell with pride. "This is really impressive, August."

"You put some serious work into this, huh?" Vivien noted.

"Yeah, I guess," August admitted as his steadily reddening cheeks were pulled aside by an appreciative grin. "It's not like I minded though," he went on to hurriedly explain. "It all came together pretty quickly once I got into it. Plus it gave me an excuse to shut myself up in my room away from my stuffy aunt and that stupid dog she carries around in her purse," he added, earning himself a bright laugh from Bentley that completely stalled his train of thought. Luckily, it was nothing that clearing his throat and refocusing his gaze on the blond's character sheet couldn't fix though. "I guess I just thought it would be something fun for us all to do together, you know?"

"Yeah, it sure sounds like it," Vivien said with a warm smile. But there was still a little, nagging thought hammering away at the back of her head, and she feared that if she didn't use this opportunity of an out as her last-ditch attempt at getting Royce alone before the end of the school day then that nagging thought would break right through her skull and puncture her brain with its pesky little pickaxe. And she needed all the brainpower she could muster to get through this, so she did not want to take any risks. "Anyway," she continued, snagging the attention of the table of eleven-year-olds as she clapped her hands together. "We'd better let you guys get back to planning. We wouldn't want to be the reason for you guys delaying your first adventure now, would we?" she asked rhetorically, firing a knowing look across at Royce that was not-so-subtly hidden behind a theatrical grin.

If Royce picked up on the intensity behind Vivien's gaze though, he didn't show it, instead remaining as blissfully oblivious as he always seemed to be when it came to her intentions as he took his turn to offer a fond smile to the table of his brother's friends. "You'll have to let us know how it goes," he said, before adding with a chuckle: "I'm invested now; it sounds awesome."

Breathing out a sigh of relief between her teeth as Royce rounded the picnic table to join her, Vivien kept her almost clown-like smile plastered to her face as she thanked whatever great powers were at work for making Royce ever so slightly more perceptive than the other, gormless teenage boys in their class. But just as she was inching her way back down the hill, and readying her opening line for the brunet once they were out of earshot of the eager little gremlins, one of them piped up with a perfectly pointed pin to burst her bubble. 

"Why don't you just play with us then?" 

Bentley's wide-eyed, hopeful grin was the only thing keeping Vivien from snatching up Kona's muddy jump rope and strangling him with it. Besides the years upon years of sibling-like friendship, obviously.

Forcing out a strained laugh, she managed a tight, "It's alright, Benny, we don't want to crash your fun." 

"You're not crashing anything; we want you to join in. Right, guys?" 

Ok, so Bentley can't read social cues… Good to know. 

It would have made things a hell of a lot easier if Vivien could have known about that before she set the wheels of her master plan into motion though, because right now she felt like they were so out of sync they were about to derail the handcar she'd strapped this grand idea of hers to. But even if she could have brought herself to get mad at Bentley, Zack jumped to the blond's defence before she even had the chance. 

"Yeah, we're gonna need all the help we can get because Kona can't add up for shit and I'm not about to let my guy Omar Scale Crusher die after I've spent all this time working out his stats."

"I can't add up for shit?! What the hell are you talking about? You're the one who got put in Math 2!"

"Only for a week! And I totally got a better grade than you on that test last week."

"No you didn't!"

"Did too!"

"Bite me!" 

As the pair energetically bickered about Zack's accusations, which Kona steadfastly claimed were built on entirely false foundations, Vivien found her frustration with the picnic table occupants crumbling away. After all, they weren't to know that she'd been practising for this lunchtime conversation with Royce for weeks. How could they? The only others she'd confided in were her three skating friends and the balding Big Bird stuffed animal from the end of her bed that had taken on the role of Royce during her many rehearsals. And she couldn't blame them for their excitement over the game either; even she had to admit that it sounded pretty cool. Plus, after hearing Riven rhapsodise about Hellfire's epic campaigns for weeks now, she was starting to get a little curious about the game and how it was played. 

"Omar Scale Crusher, huh?" she eventually chuckled, raising a quizzical eyebrow at Zack that soon ground his and Kona's squabbling to a halt. "How'd you come up with that?" 

"Isn't it sick? Auggie had this big list of names with cool meanings to help us decide."

After shuffling through the endless sheets of paper around him, August found the right one and went on to explain for a very enthusiastic Zack: "Omar means 'one who has a long life'."

"Yeah, so he'd better live up to his damn name! I'm not planning this whole thing out to have him die in the first round," he declared with a hearty laugh, before tagging on: "Plus my uncle's called Omar and he's awesome."

Vivien couldn't help her snort of laughter at the blunt innocence. "Very creative," she noted. "What is he then? Like a viking or something?"

"No, he's a wizard," Zack stated matter-of-factly. "'Cause why would I bother using a sword when I could just kill an enemy with magic?" 

"How come your guy's holding a sword then?" 

Royce's frank delivery, from over the younger boy's shoulder, had a laugh spurting from between Vivien's lips before she could stop it. And Bentley, August, and Kona were all quick to follow suit. 

However, as to be expected, the brash brunet soon scrambled a retaliation. "Well I'd still want one for backup."

"No duh," Kona chuckled as she finished shading in the metallic sheath of the dagger her character clutched in a leather clad fist. "Magic or not, you still need a weapon."

"Is your character a wizard too then?" Vivien asked Kona, but the incredulous snort the blonde let out could have told her all she needed to know on its own.

"No, Andromeda doesn't need to rely on magic to keep herself out of danger; her dexterity's off the charts." 

Before another argument could break out between Zack and Kona as a result of her roundabout dig at him, August decided to speak for the table. "Zack’s our mage, Kona's our thief, Ben's our Bard and my guy's a ranger."

"But you're the dungeon master too, right?" Bentley checked, mischievous blue eyes peeking out from beneath furrowed bows. 

August's own eyes were drawn to Bentley's the second that he'd opened his mouth, but the smirk tugging at his friend's lips was what captured his attention. "What's so funny?" he challenged through a chuckle that coaxed one out of Bentley too. "You don't think I could be a dungeon master?"

"I never said that," Bentley laughed. But the look the boys shared meant they both knew that's what his tone had implied.

"You didn't have to."

"Well can you blame me? It just sounds so menacing and scary. I know you read all those horror books and stuff, but come on, you're about as intimidating as Winnie the Pooh - who, last time I checked, was still tucked under your comforter next to your pillow and your old baby blanket."

Jaw dropped in incredulity, August lightly elbowed Bentley in the ribs. "I can so be intimidating," he retorted. But if he was pretending to be mad at the boy, his true feelings were soon revealed by the smile he couldn't seem to keep off his face.

"Yeah, well, we've yet to see it," Kona bluntly noted, which once again set Royce and Vivien off giggling at the sixth graders. 

"You sound like you've got a pretty well-rounded group then," Royce carried on, drawing the conversation back to August's point from earlier. "Are there even any roles left for us? Or are we going to have to start doubling up?"

"You can double up if you want, but there's still a bunch of classes that haven't been picked yet," August explained, flipping through the large book spread out before him until he got to the right page. "We've not got a druid, a cleric, or a fighter."

"What does a fighter do?" Royce asked.

"Fighters are weapons-oriented warriors, who fight using skill, strategy, and tactics," August recited from his handbook, bringing the group's attention to the detailed illustration of an armoured swordsman, wielding what looked to be an incredibly heavy shield with almost no effort at all.

The second Vivien's eyes met the page she knew it was game over; her imagination kicked into overdrive and tossed all other thoughts about how she could have been spending this lunchtime to the curb. Racing at a million miles an hour, her brain plucked ideas from seemingly thin air and began piecing together a muscular young woman, strong enough to knock an ox clean off its feet in one quick shove, although you'd never know it since her frame was cleverly disguised in roughened leather padding, tarnished silver armour, and rich, violet robes fashioned into a sort of cape. Her face was weathered, but kind, and her vibrant, emerald eyes sparkled with determination, and the promise of adventure. Like the picture in August's book, the woman carried a large, battle-scarred sword by its ornate handle, and kept a hefty shield vigilantly by her side, painted in, again, deep shades of indigo, violet, and the blood of her enemies, naturally. She also had a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder though, nestled beside a crossbow, just peeking out from behind a head of flowing, chestnut locks. The heroine had no time for preening, so her hair was tousled with grease and grime from combatting the elements on her journeys, but as it fluttered in the wind, it was kept away from her face by intricate braids, weighed down by silver rings and stolen jewels of amethyst and topaz. She smiled at Vivien from the forefront of her mind, as if marking her territory there, and Vivien felt her heart skip a beat as she breathed out a quiet, and hopefully nonchalant: "Hmm…cool."

"That sounds like a good one for you, Viv. Strategy and tactics? You're great with planning stuff out," Royce noted. But one glance in her direction and his face broke into a knowing smile the second he clocked her eyes, glazed over in thought, and lips, parted in awe. 

"Yeah, and look, you'd make a great cleric," Bentley continued, pulling Royce's gaze away from Vivien, albeit reluctantly. Flipping the page of August's handbook, he excitedly tapped at a drawing of a tall man, draped in heavy, fur pelts and bronzed chainmail. A glowing staff was held in one hand, and a massive axe was thrown over his shoulder as though it weighed no more than a sack of flour. 

"Clerics are versatile figures, both capable in combat and skilled in the use of divine magic," August recited from the page after a light, nudge from Bentley. "They're also powerful healers."

"See? That's perfect for you! You're always helping patch us up if we fall off our bikes," Bentley enthused, undeterred by the amused chuckles that his brother unleashed as a result of what he thought was an adorably innocent explanation. 

"Yeah, and we could use a healer on our team, especially with those two and their lack of impulse control," August snorted as he gestured to Kona and Zack, who jumped at the chance to express their indignation. 

As the group of friends returned to jovially bickering amongst themselves, Royce and Vivien's minds were quietly whirring with ideas. Ideas which, upon glancing at one another, they soon realised were all too perfectly aligned. 

"What do you say then, losers?" Kona finally asked once she'd finished fighting her ground against the boys, snapping the eighth-graders out of their heads and bringing them back to reality with a knowing smirk. "Are you playing with us or not?"

Royce, as always, left the decision to Vivien. But the hopeful glimmer in his caramel eyes, paired with her own, itching curiosity made that decision all too easy. And besides, even if she wasn't spending time alone with Royce, she was still spending time with him. And that was good enough for her.

…For now. 

"Well… I guess one game couldn't hurt, right?" she said with a smirk that soon broke out into a grin as Bentley's face lit up like a firework display. And it only grew when she glanced across at Royce for one last confirmation that she'd made the right decision, only to find him beaming with almost as much enthusiasm as his brother. 

If this nerdy little game brought Royce this much joy, and was even half as much fun as it sounded, then Vivien knew it would be worth another few hours of crippling anxiety. Besides, she hoped that she could immerse herself in the story so much that she'd forget all about her predicament with the brunet anyway. But as they took their places at the picnic table, and Royce's sneaker brushing against her shin shot a jolt of adrenaline up her leg with such a force that she almost jumped straight back out of her seat, she knew that that was just wishful thinking. Covering up the brief waver in her cool, confident exterior with a quiet cough, she tried to refocus her mind on the endless streams of information August was unleashing on the pair of them.

"-and so the group our characters all belong to is called The Circle of the Emerald Torches, but part of the first campaign is about how we get our name, so I'll explain more about that later. Before you start, and before I give you your character sheets though, if you want to be in our party then you'll need to recite the Oath of Noble Heroes so that we know you're serious about this."

"Don't worry, we had to do it too. But it's so cool, you'll love it! And then there's a declaration of loyalty for you to sign somewhere too," Bentley tagged on before the boys started animatedly babbling amongst themselves about the ins and outs of their party's rules again. 

Shaking his head at the pair, Royce took the opportunity of them being distracted to lean over to Vivien and teasingly chuckle, "What the hell have you just gotten us into?"

Fighting the urge to roll her eyes at the boy, knowing that his enthusiasm for the game was a major driving factor in her decision to play, and that he was also well-aware of that fact, she looked him square in the face and hid her smirk behind a deadly serious, blank expression, "I'm pretty sure we just joined a cult." 

American History, Volume 2, lay open on page 38. And it had laid there like that for the past 45 minutes, having been abandoned by its current owner almost as soon as it had been removed from their backpack. Because instead of completing the assigned history homework, the desk's occupant was using their study hall period much more wisely: by shredding a solo, courtesy of Ozzy Osbourne, on possibly the most prestigious instrument of all: the air guitar.

Ethan's eyes slid shut, and a blissful smile curled his lips as he mashed the volume button on his Walkman with practised ease. Bar after bar of 'Crazy Train' pounded through his skull at a staggering volume, rattling what little of his brain was left in the mostly vacant space between his ears, helped along by the bopping of his head in time with the song's beat. When his fingers weren't plucking out riffs on imaginary strings, they were banging out the drumline on a drum kit that was just as real as his Gibson SG. And all the while, he was passionately miming the lyrics for his audience of the pencil shavings and dust mites that hugged the wall beside his desk. 

He felt the music in his bones. The bass line pumped through his veins. Every note that was played resonated through the chambers of his heart until it felt like the song was as much a part of him as his left arm. And the deeper he let himself sink into the music, the less aware of his surroundings he became - or the less he cared to remember them anyway. Until a sharp elbow to the ribs shattered his rockstar illusions, that is. 

Bleary brown eyes met earnest, steel blue, and held nothing but confusion for the several seconds it took him to realise that Miles’ mouth was moving without making a sound. 

“What?” Ethan bellowed, prying a wailing headphone speaker away from his ears as he leaned closer to the exasperated brunet. 

“Jesus, man!” Miles exclaimed under his breath as he reached across to his friend’s Walkman to frantically turn the volume down. “Are you trying to blow your eardrums out or something?” 

“That would be pretty metal, so maybe,” Ethan chuckled, entirely unphased. But Miles’ disapproving frown soon had him rolling out an explanation. “You’ve got a front row seat for my biggest show yet and you’re choosing to lecture me about volume control? I can care about my hearing when I’m in the retirement home.”

“You’ll be lucky if you make it to a retirement home," Miles snorted. "You've got the survival skills of a two dollar house plant."

Instead of arguing back, or even rolling his eyes at his best friend's dig, Ethan just continued chuckling along in agreement as he slid his headphones down to rest around his neck - still blaring out Ozzy Osbourne's vocals, although they were only just audible over the hubbub of chatter and laughter that filled the rest of the classroom. "What were you saying before anyway?" he went on to ask. "Did you want something?"

"Yeah, the answer to number four."

"Pfft, you think I've even made it past one?" Ethan guffawed, astonished and highly amused that Miles thought highly enough of him to assume he hadn't been shirking his responsibilities all afternoon. "I've got no fucking clue. What chapter are we on again? Abraham Lincoln?"

The mix of despair and disbelief Ethan was faced with when he glanced back across at Miles told him his guess might not have been as accurate as he'd pitched it to be. "...Are we not on Abraham Lincoln?"

"We haven't done Abraham Lincoln since freshman year," Miles deadpanned before letting out a chuckle of his own. "When was the last time you actually paid attention in one of Mr Bishop's classes?"

"Probably freshman year," Ethan noted with a laugh, slumping back in his seat and starting to rock on the back two legs of the flimsy, plastic chair. "I think the only chance I've got at retaining any of the information in that textbook for this month's pop quiz is if I eat it."

The look of reproach Miles shot the carefree stoner could have fooled any passerby into thinking that he was the boy's father, but he blamed that on the past however many years of having to act as a sole parental figure for two young boys - who, on several occasions, had actually proved to be far more mature than the lank-haired brunet before him. More often than not, Ethan felt like a third child he had to keep alive. And somehow, his lack of height was not one of the driving factors behind that reasoning.

"Oh come on, don't give me that look," Ethan groaned, ever the resentful teenager in their relationship. "You've not exactly been Mr Studious yourself today."

"What are you talking about?" 

"Well you've been stuck on that same question for the last twenty minutes 'cause you keep making goo-goo eyes at you know who," Ethan smirked as Miles' eyes widened in horror and his forehead started to prickle with sweat. 

"No I don't," he indignantly tried.

"I thought you said you were over her," Ethan teased.

"I am! It's not like that anyway," Miles muttered, then added. "And it's not been twenty minutes."

"It totally has."

"How the hell would you know? You've been listening to Motorhead since we sat down."

"Yeah but my fuckin' eyes still work," Ethan snorted, hitting Miles with a loving grin that had him rolling his eyes before Ethan had even finished his sentence. And yet, the boy's frustration did nothing to deter him from probing further. "What's the stalking for this time then? You know, if you're not trying to get in her pants anymore." 

Miles was at as much of a loss as Ethan. His eyes found the head of bouncing, blonde curls with almost no effort at all (likely a result of an entire study hall period of practice), searching for some sort of answer. But all he found was a dull, fluttering in his chest. 

Even the giddy, lovestruck butterfly that had been trapped in there for months seemed to have admitted defeat. 

Still, his gaze never wavered. He watched airy laughter spill from her glossy lips, and her nose crinkle beneath brilliantly blue eyes, framed by thick, black lashes and copious amounts of mascara. Whilst before, Miles could have eaten through a movie theatre's entire popcorn supply and still want to look just a little longer, in that moment he just felt empty. And that’s when he realised it wasn't actually Carrie herself that was occupying his mind, it was everyone else around her, and how she was treating them. Plucking a proudly presented flyer for a house party from one, impishly teasing another, waving at Sharon Frye on her way out the door, firing a flirty wink in jest at Steve Harrington after giggling at one of his jokes…

Miles was certain she'd looked at every other person in that room at least once since their study hall period had begun, and yet the closest her eyes had ventured over to him was when she glanced at the clock on the wall. Every thought in his head was plagued by her smile, or her voice, or her laugh… Had he ever even crossed her mind? 

"Do you think she actually cares about us?"

Miles hadn't been able to bring himself to tear his forlorn gaze from the blonde in question, but that didn't stop Ethan from snorting out an answer. "Well yeah, I'd hope so; we spend enough time with her." 

"Not by choice," Miles huffed. 

“Well she talks to us now, and that’s more than we could have said before we worked with her, so that’s got to count for something,” Ethan chuckled. “But if this is about what I think it’s about, then she absolutely cares about you, dude. Like way more than the rest of us.”

“You really think so?” 

“Dude, it’s like you two are glued at the hip. I can’t get you away from each other for shit once we close every night,” Ethan replied. And when Miles still looked unsure, he added, “Why else do you think I always get stuck cleaning the kitchen with Mick? She hates my guts!”

“No she does not,” Miles softly chuckled.

“Well I definitely don’t think she likes me, not like Carrie likes you anyway,” he retorted with a smirk and a wiggle of his eyebrows. “I’m telling you, man. There’s something there. There’s no way she’d laugh at your crappy jokes like she does if she didn’t at least have a little interest in you - I don’t care if Mick thinks it’s bullshit, I know I’m right.”

Miles just rolled his eyes, but a hopeful smile desperately pulled at his lips, no matter how many times he tried to dismiss it. “I don’t know, I think she probably just does it to be nice,” he mused, watching as Carrie animatedly responded to Rachel Price before turning back to resume her conversation with the girl sat beside her - the very girl that Miles still had an irrepressible urge to swap lives with: Juliet Harmon. Now faced with nothing but the back of her head, he quickly lost interest in the view. “…She seems to act like that with most people.”

“She definitely does not, man. Why do you think the entire marching band is scared to look her in the eye? She’s like one of the biggest bitches in school,” Ethan scoffed. But he paused when he realised Miles wasn’t laughing along with him. “Why does it matter how she acts around other people anyway?” 

“It doesn’t,” Miles huffed. “…Not really.” 

But the second he dared to make eye contact with his oldest friend, the floodgates opened and the truth came tumbling out. 

“I just…feel stupid for letting her get in my head, and for actually thinking that we had something special - that I was somehow different to all the other idiots who throw themselves at her to get a second of her attention. But here I am, thinking about her constantly, hanging onto every interaction we have like my fucking life depends on it, only for her to… Ugh, I don't know. I just…don't want it all to not mean anything to her, when it means so much to me - no matter how much I try to convince myself it doesn't. I mean, yeah, she's nice to me at work - really nice - but she barely even acknowledges me outside of All Skate… It's like I don't even exist, like she doesn't even realise I'm there. And it makes me feel like shit."

"She barely acknowledges anyone," Ethan absentmindedly mused. "I wouldn't take it personally."

"That's a lot easier said than done," Miles huffed dejectedly. There was something freeing about Ethan's nonchalance over Miles' feelings though; it made them feel less suffocating. And whilst he still felt entirely hopeless about the situation, he did feel a little bit of the pressure ease off as he rested his chin on his hand and let his mind start to wander. "...You think she actually considers us friends?"

"Sure; she calls us her work friends all the time."

"No but like her actual friends," Miles clarified. 

"Dude, I don't fucking know; the female mind is a mystery to me at the best of times, but hers is on a whole other level," Ethan scoffed in incredulity. "Do you not remember that like thirty minute debate I had with her about diet sodas? Actual insanity.”

Miles' quiet chuckling as he reminisced about what had started as an innocent question, yet progressed to a full-blown screaming match, with each participant equally as confused and frustrated as the other, was soon silenced by Ethan's next prompt though. "I know a way you can find out though…"

"...No!" 

"Oh come on, man. Don't be a sissy. It'll be so easy. And then you can stop getting hung up on all these bogus hypotheticals."

Miles' initial horror slowly dissipated as Ethan's reasoning started to lure out a far greater force from its hiding place in the corner of his brain: his curiosity. "...You really think I can just go up and talk to her? In class?" he asked, as his eyes once again found that jumble of golden curls. 

"Sure, why not? It's only study hall." 

Again, Ethan's nonchalance, which was only heightened by the fact that he was trying to balance a pen on his curled upper lip as he responded, did far more for Miles' confidence than any pep talk of his own could have. And besides, maybe he was onto something - maybe it really was that simple; it always was in his world. 

"It wouldn't be weird?" Miles double-checked. 

"Why would it be weird? All you're gonna do is talk to her. And we already established you two are friends, so what could go wrong?" 

Miles shuddered at the very thought. "So much."

Ethan glanced across at him, ready to fire out further encouragement like a sixth grader with a penchant for making spitballs, but when he clocked his friend's nervous fidgeting, he reconsidered his situation and gained a little clarity. "Ok…yeah, fine, stuff could go wrong. But are you gonna die?" he proposed.

"No," Miles begrudgingly mumbled.

"Are you gonna break something?"

"No, but-"

"Then how bad can it be?" Ethan cut in with a lopsided, optimistic grin before Miles could tie himself up in any more self-conscious knots. "Just get over there and scratch that itch that's been bugging you for weeks; it's not gonna stop until you do. And you'll feel so much better after."

It took Miles by surprise every time it happened, but yet again, it seemed as though Ethan might actually be…right. This question of Carrie's loyalty had been eating away at him for weeks now. And, as he'd stressed earlier, it was making him feel shittier and shittier with every day he let it drag on. Asking her outright was a definite way to get his answer… It was just going to require him growing some balls, as anything to do with All Skate's resident disc jockey apparently made his own shrink to the size of peas.

"...Just walk over and talk to her?" Miles checked. Although, between us, he was just stalling to give himself more time to muster some courage.

"Yeah, as a friend," Ethan confirmed. 

"You really think I can pull that off?" Miles asked with a dubious, but hopeful quirk of his eyebrow that had Ethan melting like a bomb pop that had been left out in the 4th of July sun.

"Absolutely," he grinned, totally enamoured by his friend's giddy trepidation, and the promise of a relationship he so steadfastly defended. "She's got a major soft spot for you, man. I see it like every night," he went on to reassure. "There's no way she's gonna blow you off. You'll be fine."

And as a result of that dopey grin, complemented by the ratty, chestnut locks, and vacant, dark chocolate eyes… Miles believed him. 

"...Ok, I'm going in," he breathed through a determined smile. 

"Atta boy," Ethan chuckled, fist-bumping Miles before tipping his chair back onto all four of its legs again, as though to signal the resolution of their predicament. "Go scratch that itch," he added, finishing their little handshake with a bolstering point before lifting his headphones back over his ears and disappearing back into his wildest rock star fantasies - totally oblivious to the disaster about to unfold right behind him as Miles took a deep breath and waded into the wild, uncharted waters of the female mindset. 

"So now that we know that y=7, we plug that into this side of the function, that we've already simplified, to give us this…which then means that we can carry this over here, giving us x=3." 

…Silence.

"Right?" Juliet checked, although the satisfied smile that had settled on her carnation pink lips as soon as she finished the sum was beginning to falter into one of desperation as she turned to her tutee. "Did you follow along ok that time?"

But all Juliet was met with was a glassy stare and an infatuated grin, smushed between two fists as its owner rested their chin on their palms. "You're so smart, Julie," Carrie breathed. 

Juliet just rolled her eyes, although she did little to hide the bashful blush tickling her cheeks. “Never mind that, did you understand how I worked it out that time?” 

"...Kind of?" Carrie tried, offering a lopsided, hopeful grin to try to lessen the blow.

If Juliet's exasperated huff was anything to go by though: it didn't work. But her frustration dissolved the second that she met Carrie's gaze. "Where did I lose you?" she asked with a gentle, patient sigh. 

"The whole reversing the function bit," Carrie admitted as she bit her lip and braced herself for Juliet's reaction. Although the blonde's expression never wavered, the dismay that flashed in her eyes soon had Carrie barrelling through an explanation. "I swear I was getting it before that this time, but then it all started to sound like you were talking in another language, and then I got distracted by that pretty way you write out the 'x' again, and then I just…"

"...Stopped listening all together?" Juliet teasingly offered with a fond smirk.

Carrie scoffed in mock-defence. "No, I listened the whole time, I just stopped taking it in," she went on to clarify. But as soon as she drew a giggle from Juliet's lips she melted into that same infatuated grin from earlier as she admitted, "I'd never stop listening to you. You know I could listen to you talk for hours."

"Even about algebra?" Juliet teasingly tested with an affectionate smile of her own. 

"Of course about algebra," Carrie gushed with a glittering honesty that soon had Juliet giggling again. "Believe it or not, this is the most I've ever understood a math module," she carried on, straightening up in her seat to help give her point a little more credibility, before tagging on a jovial, "And it's all thanks to you, smarty pants."

"Would you stop calling me that? It's so lame," Juliet protested, hiding her smile behind a frank eye roll. "And besides, I'm not that smart." 

"You so are; you're like the smartest person I know," Carrie gushed, never one to let her friends downplay their successes, much to Juliet's disgruntlement. The blonde's frown didn't deter Carrie from continuing to lovingly babble straight through her stream of consciousness though. "That brain of yours has to be huge - no wonder you get headaches all the time, it's because it doesn't have enough space in there."

Carrie's knack for making herself giggle never failed to make Juliet smile, but yet again she found herself trying to cover it up with a bashful roll of her hazel irises as she let out a sigh and attempted to get their conversation back on track. "You wanna try another question then?" 

"Don't try to change the subject," Carrie fired back with a mischievous grin. 

"I'm not, you are!" Juliet retorted, biting back an incredulous laugh. "We're supposed to be doing algebra, not Juliet 101."

Carrie's mischievous grin only broadened. "Now that's a class I might actually get an A in."

Rolling her eyes for the third time at her best friend's antics, Juliet teasingly tried, "What? Not an A+?"

"Maybe," Carrie smirked. "But then again, I might get distracted by my teacher." Her wiggling eyebrows soon had Juliet reprimanding her and attempting to draw her focus back to her school work, but Carrie's mind was already wandering off too far down a different path altogether. "...Do you think you'd ever wanna be a doctor, Julie?" 

The comment, that fell slap-bang in the middle of Juliet's offer to rewrite the steps of the previous algebra equation, baffled her into silence - so taken aback by the suggestion that she almost thought she'd misheard the golden-haired girl. "What? No," she spluttered, looking at Carrie as though she'd just sprouted a third nose. "Where did that come from?"

Juliet's confusion didn't seem to faze Carrie though, because her dreamy smile stuck it out through her whole, rambling explanation. "I don't know, I just figured you should use your big brain for a job one day. You know, like one that actually actually makes you think instead of just like a working a cash register, or stacking books or something. And you need to be super smart to be a doctor, so…"

Juliet was quick to shoot down Carrie's optimistic grin. "I do not have what it takes to be a doctor, trust me."

"Sure you do," Carrie defended. "I'd let you be my doctor."

"Oh well then hand me my diploma," Juliet sarcastically replied, once more fondly rolling her eyes and chuckling at her best friend's enamoured stare and incessant bolstering. 

"I'm serious," Carrie pressed on though, determined to get through to Juliet despite her doubtful smirk. "I'd trust you with my life, you know I would. I'd let you save my life any day of the week," she grinned. But, after giggling to herself and absentmindedly twirling her pencil between her fingers, when she finally latched onto Juliet's hazel gaze again, only to find it significantly less jovial, it was her turn to express her confusion. "What? You don't believe me?" she teasingly challenged, with a quirk of an eyebrow. 

But Juliet still didn't seem to be in the mood to joke back, as her lips fell in line with the horizon and her gaze darted to Carrie's right before finding her again. 

Ok, now Carrie was really confused. 

"Huh?" she murmured, clearly not as in tune with her best friend's thoughts as she assumed she was. 

However, this time, Juliet flicked her eyes to Carrie's right with a touch more resolve, and paired it with a slight, but very purposeful nod of her head in the same direction. And finally, Carrie seemed to get the message. 

Following Juliet's line of sight, Carrie turned to look over her shoulder, only to find herself face to face with a person that almost caught her off guard as much as Juliet's sudden shift in dynamic had. "Oh," was the first word to jump from her lips, startling her back into what Juliet lovingly dubbed as 'show-mode' as she rolled her shoulders back and fixed a brilliant smile to her face. "Hey, Miles."

The second that Carrie acknowledged Miles, any confidence he'd managed to trick himself into conjuring fled. And whilst he had a Herculean urge to do the same, he too plastered what he hoped was a convincing smile to his face as he finished his approach to the blondes' shared desk. "Hey, Carrie," he said, breathing a sigh of relief for even managing to get the words out. And yet, he still pushed a little further to add, with a nod of acknowledgement too, "Juliet." 

The entertained smirk that started pulling at the corner of Juliet's lips in response caught him off guard, and he felt his stomach gently clench in defence. But he chose to ignore it, returning his gaze to Carrie's bright smile - its familiarity putting him back at ease and igniting that usual fire in his chest that sent warmth spreading throughout his- 

Wait, why was she turning back around? 

"Right, where were we?" Carrie said, dazzling Juliet with a grin as she readied her pencil on the page. "I've got a good feeling about this next one; I think if you just take it slow-."

"Ahem," Juliet interrupted. Her gaze caught Carrie's once again and held onto it for a beat before she tilted her head forwards, signalling with her eyes that there was still something - or rather, someone - behind her. The confusion, almost disbelief, swimming in Carrie's eyes made Juliet have to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing, and locking onto Miles' look of bewildered dismay just made it even harder. But luckily, Carrie was quickly able to decipher her visual message once again, with little prompting this time.

Turning around to find that, to her surprise, Miles hadn't just been greeting her as he passed by her desk, he was, in fact, standing there - well, expectantly shuffling from foot to foot anyway - Carrie remounted her smile. Although now, Miles realised, it wasn't so welcoming. It felt almost…uncomfortable.  

"Oh, sorry. Did you want something?" she offered. 

He did - desperately so. And yet, he felt as though the sudden shift in tone had already started to write out his answer. 

The hairs on the back of his neck started to twitch as the walls of his stomach steadily closed in tighter. But, determined to stand by his heart, and prove to himself (and Mick) that his feelings weren't all built on fantasies he'd created in his head, he brushed the unease away and stood his ground. "No, not really. I just thought I'd…stop by…see how it's going."

Carrie's smile faltered again, giving way to further confusion. "...See how what's going?"

"...Study hall?" Miles said. But the response came out as more of a question than an answer, which he supposed was down to the fact that he wasn't even sure of it himself. And despite his hopeful grin, which he feared was now looking more like a grimace, he couldn't seem to stop trying to rub the growing discomfort from the back of his neck. 

God, he hoped that he didn't have any sweat stains. 

"Oh, uh, it's going fine," Carrie politely replied. Although her awkward fidgeting with her pencil's eraser told a different story. "We're just going through the algebra homework."

It was weird; it wasn't as though the conversation was making her seem 'off', it was like…the very fact he was talking to her was so distracting she couldn't settle. She was the centre of Miles' universe. And apparently he was just an asteroid in hers: a misshapen hunk of space rock, hurtling past in the blink of an eye, and completely blindsiding her with his very insignificant existence. 

A fellow asteroid must have collided with him at some point, because he could feel this weird twinge in his chest, by his heart, almost as though the impact had chipped a corner off. He swallowed thickly, pushing the creeping discomfort away. "The one for Mr Moreno's class?" 

"Mhm," Carrie confirmed with a nod. 

"Oh, nice…" Miles trailed off with an awkward chuckle and what he feared was now looking like a rather desperate smile. And he was sure his expression only got worse when his gaze was pulled off-course by Juliet, who gave him a look that made him want to give up altogether. How her hazel irises had managed to harness the ability to hiss 'you are totally blowing this' in his ear, he had no idea. And yet, the urge to prove her (and everyone else) wrong gave him the motivation to plough on. "Well, if you still need any help with it later, I don't mind going through some of the answers with you at wo-"

"It's alright," Carrie bluntly cut in, slicing out a chunk of Miles' self-esteem as she did so. "Julie's got it covered," she added, turning to dazzle the blonde with a brilliant grin. 

By the time that grin made its way around to Miles though, it felt cold. And it seemed suppressed, like she hadn't really wanted him to see it. What he feared was the beginnings of a smirk were tugging at the corners of her lips too. And whilst he wanted to believe that it wasn't at his expense - some cruel inside joke the pair of blondes had whispered with their oh-so talkative eyes in the second that Carrie's back was turned - something in the pit of his stomach told him otherwise. 

"Thanks though," Carrie lazily tacked on, with a brightness in her tone that just felt hollow to Miles now. 

"No problem," he breathed. But there was a problem, and he was staring right at her.

Miles tried to find it in him to mean the smile he sent her, but he just couldn't. Somehow, what was supposed to have been a simple conversation between 'friends' had left him feeling more insecure than ever. Why was she so difficult to talk to? And was she making it so difficult? If they'd been at All Skate, cleaning the rink after their shift, he'd have had no trouble talking to her - their conversations flowed like the Mississippi River when it was just the two of them. And yet here, he felt like he was trying to coax water out of a rusty garden tap in the peak of a summer drought. 

He couldn't find the words to piece together what he wanted to ask - he didn't think such a sentence existed, not one that he could construct anyway. Carrie seemed hellbent on getting rid of him, which did nothing for his creeping fear that she was only nice to him at work because she had no other option for company. And the damn heat radiating from Juliet's pitying smirk had so much sweat running down his back he contemplated running to the nearest bathroom to wring out his underwear. 

And somehow, those glittering, sky blue eyes of hers still threw him a line - a glimmer of hope to cling to. After all, she'd surprised him before - countless times - maybe she'd be able to do it again.

Just as Miles was moving to open his mouth to try one last time though, he was beaten to it. 

"Was there anything else you wanted? Or was that it?" 

Any hopes of a redemption for the blonde were snatched from Miles' grasp, and the reality of it felt like a punch to the gut. Thoroughly deflated, he accepted his fate with a heavy sigh. It may not have been the outcome he wanted, but at least he had an answer now, and there was a silver lining to that, he supposed. 

"...No," he breathed through a forlorn, but relieved smile. "That was…that was all."

Miles felt he must have imagined the concern that flickered in Carrie's gaze - wishful thinking, he supposed - because the airy giggle and laidback grin she flashed him certainly didn't marry up with it. "Oh, alright then. See you later!" she chirped with a wave as he started the walk of shame back to his desk. Again, just as he was turning back to offer a farewell of his own though, she managed to get her words in first. "Don't forget your thick socks."

Miles stopped in his tracks. Now he was more confused than ever. The cheeky glint in her eyes, the knowing smile, the reference to a throwaway joke from their closing shift last night… Everything he'd just come to terms with about her vehement disinterest in him had been called into question with those five, simple words, and a wink that just about made his heart stop.

…Maybe she did really care after all. 

With his heart leaping up from its dejected slumber, Miles shot her a grateful smile and chuckled an earnest, "I won't." Breathing out a contented sigh, mind already racing with ways to talk to her about this more that evening, Miles finally felt his shoulders relax as he raised the hand that had been rubbing the back of his neck his whole time. "See you la-"

Nevermind, she'd already turned around to talk to Juliet again. 

Again the brunet was flummoxed. The only thing he felt truly confident about as he slunk back to his desk was the very thing he'd been warned of before wading into that mess: the female mind was a mystery. And he had never felt further from figuring it out.

Turning back to Juliet, Carrie couldn't help but shake her head and chuckle under her breath. "That was weird," she noted, tilting her head in the direction of her retreating co-worker.

But Juliet's eyes had never left the bumbling brunet. "Mmm… He's kind of cute," she mused. Although her prompting smirk was lost on her tutee, since her sapphire gaze was immediately pulled to the back of Miles' head.  

"Yeah." Carrie's breathed response fell from her lips with startling ease, so much so that it even surprised herself. Hoping to catch it before it slipped into Juliet's ears though, she shook the starry-eyed gaze from her head and scrambled together a cover-up. "Uh, yeah? I can try to set the two of you up if you want. You know, put in a good word at work and stuff." 

If she expected Juliet to accept her optimistic offer with open arms though, she was soon proved wrong.

"Yeah something tells me he's not interested in me," she snorted.

Carrie looked at her, perplexed. "What are you talking about? Why wouldn't he be? You're like a total babe."

"Oh come on, Carrie. Please tell me you know that he's got a major crush on you," Juliet said with an almost disapproving frown. "Like major major."

Carrie scoffed at the accusation. "It's not major," she tried, rolling her eyes in a further attempt to downplay the gravity of what Juliet was implying. 

"Carrie," Juliet pressed as she knitted her brows. "The guy could barely speak."

Caving under the blonde's hardened gaze, Carrie let out a resentful huff. "Ok fine, so he's got a little crush," she finally conceded. "What's so bad about that? It's not like anything's gonna happen; he knows I've got a boyfriend."

"Mhm… And what does Eric have to say about Miles?"

Carrie rolled her eyes so hard Juliet thought for a second that they might never come back down again. "Why does it matter?" she groaned, her skin prickling with irritation. 

"Well he's not exactly got the best track record when it comes to being understanding about you hanging out with other guys," Juliet sighed, with a sneaking suspicion that her tutee's frustration had been triggered by the mention of her boyfriend's name alone: a welcome sign that their relationship was as healthy as ever. Not.

Carrie scoffed as a bitter scowl settled into place. "It's not like I'm 'hanging out with him', we just work together. I barely talk to him during my shift anyway, only when we're clearing stuff up at the end."

"Oh yeah?" Juliet started, curiosity piqued. "And what happens then?"

"Nothing!" Carrie insisted. "We just talk - you know me, I can't keep my mouth shut even when I want to, so of course I'm gonna talk to the guy." Letting out a sigh to try to blow off some steam, she softened under Juliet's gaze and allowed the blonde to lead her through her haze of thoughts. And if Juliet's gentle nudge in the right direction wasn't already enough to do the trick, one glance at Miles' retreating form completely burst the dam. "We've been talking for like the whole last hour of every shift since I started - about school, movies, whatever really - it's like the only thing in that dump that's worth sticking around for. I kind of just did it because I was bored out of my mind at the start, but turns out he's actually really fun, and sweet too - you wouldn't believe some of the stuff he does for his little brothers, Julie; I've literally gone and cried in the break room before after he was telling me about it. It's that cute." 

"You cry at everything," Juliet countered with a fond, teasing chuckle. 

"Oh come on, not everything," Carrie retorted. Naively hoping that their conversation on the matter had ended there, she let her eyes settle on Juliet's again, only for them to inch open the floodgates once more with a simple bat of her lashes and a tilt of her head. "We just talk and…goof around," she tentatively began - defensive, despite her nonchalance. "You know, make each other laugh about weird things customers have said, or stupid things we did. It's not like we're fooling around or anything. And before you say it, because I know that face: no, I am not leading him on. It's all totally platonic, I swear."

"Ok…" Juliet softly trailed off, taking a moment to choose her words before raising her next point. "Does Miles know it's all 'totally platonic'?"

Carrie let out a groan of despair, as she always did when her best friend lovingly lectured her. "I don't know, Jules. I'm not a mindreader. He's not grabbed my ass or spiked my water bottle, if that's what you're getting at," she grumbled, before promising, "I've got it all under control, I swear."

Somehow, Juliet didn't seem to be buying it; as impervious to Carrie's confident charm as ever. 

"So Eric's totally chill about this whole thing with Miles?" she tested, arching a perfectly plucked eyebrow.  

"He knows I work with him…" Carrie mumbled.

Juliet nodded understandingly - almost too understandingly - in Carrie's periphery. 

"...And does he know how he makes you feel?"

Daring to challenge Juliet's calculated point with ignorant defiance, Carrie whirled around to meet the blonde's smug expression with a gasp of indignation, and an argument that fell away the second she realised that she didn't have a single word in her head to back it up with. Admitting defeat, she sighed and let her body slump, along with her hopes of her vindication in her best friend's hazel eyes. "Ok, yeah, fine. I know Miles has a crush on me," she confessed. Although the guilt laced into her words steadily morphed into hurt the more she tried to defend herself. "And yeah, I do lean into it sometimes because it makes me feel good about myself. Is that really so bad? Is it such a bad thing to want someone to be extra nice to you for once? Or to give you some positive attention?" 

"No, of course not," Juliet assured, assuming a fierce determination of her own. "I just think your boyfriend should be able to do all those things and more, and clearly he's not."

Carrie sighed, exhausted by the very thought of him. "This isn't about Eric."

Juliet sighed back, exasperated by her best friend's submissiveness, especially when she was usually so domineering. "How can you still want to defend him, Carrie?"

"Because, I love him, Julie," Carrie replied, finally finding the contented smile the thought of him should have immediately slapped on her face. "And because he's a good guy."

"Really? Because he's been nothing but a dick to you lately," Juliet flatly countered, hoping that with a little pushing her friend would see sense. 

"We've just had a couple of arguments, it's not a big deal," Carrie casually defended. "And they're all resolved now, so I don't know what you still have to complain about."

"Just because you had make-up sex does not mean that the problems were resolved," Juliet rolled her eyes before fixing the golden-haired girl with a more earnest look. "Did he actually apologise this time?"

"We talked it out first-"

"Did he apologise?"

Carrie squirmed under Juliet's gaze before muttering a reluctant, "No."

"Ugh," Juliet groaned, rolling her eyes again as she wound up to unleash a rant she'd been working up to for weeks. But, to her dismay, Carrie's defences beat her to it.

"Neither of us did, really. We just agreed to forget it and move on."

"How is that resolving anything?" Juliet asked with an annoyed frown that Carrie was starting to take personally. 

"Well I hadn't thought about it until now, so it must have at least kind of worked," she attempted to justify. 

But Juliet's nettled scoff told her that her stance on the matter wasn't budging. "You and Eric might as well speak two different languages; I've seen a pig and a fly communicate better than you two." 

The comment drew a giggle from Carrie's lips before she could stop it. "Don't try to distract me with your cute, Southern lingo," she said as the amused smile settled on her face and she affectionately bumped her friend's arm - the act bringing both their tempers back down to Earth. Before Juliet could launch into another lecture though, Carrie hoped to diffuse the situation once and for all. "Anyway, we worked it all out and everything's back to normal," she said. Although Juliet's questioning glance made her correct herself, "Better than normal. In fact, we're going to go look for Halloween costumes together this weekend," she finished with an optimistic grin. 

Now that was an improvement. For the first time since they'd sat down, Juliet found herself pleasantly surprised. "The Barbie and Ken costume's back on? I'm impressed. You two really must be getting along." Knowing how excited Carrie had been about the idea, she couldn't help but smile at the prospect of it finally coming into fruition. 

"Oh no, the Ken idea's long gone. I think he's going as a firefighter or something now."

Juliet's optimism shattered in a split second, and yet she stayed frozen in place, mouth hanging open in disbelief. "...You're kidding, right?"

"No, but I don't really mind. I'll just find something else to go as," Carrie sighed through a small, indifferent smile. If she'd spotted the disgust hidden in Juliet's eyes after her last revelation, she chose to ignore it. "It'll be fun getting to plan out my own costume anyway; I've got so many more options now. And plus, the Barbie one was only gonna be a pain in the ass to-"

"You're not even doing a couples one?" Juliet asked, far too concerned with what she was learning to care about hearing out Carrie's excuses. 

"He thinks couples costumes are lame," she explained with a huff. "Or at least that's what Adam told him anyway. He said he wanted to just do his own thing."

"But Carrie, you've been excited about doing a joint costume with him for like a whole year."

"So?" Carrie asked, with an eyebrow quirk of her own, shoving the accusation aside as though she was kicking an ice cube under the refrigerator. "It's just a dumb Halloween party, it doesn't matter what we wear; everyone will probably be too drunk to even pay attention anyway."

"Yeah, but it matters that he doesn't care about stuff that's important to you. He never has, and it's selfish, Carrie - super selfish…" Juliet trailed off with a frustrated sigh, praying that she might finally get the ditzy DJ to see sense. "You need to stop defending his shitty behaviour."

"And do what?" Carrie mumbled, unknowingly giving Juliet just what she wanted: a chance to unleash her anger with the infantile blond bozo and the mockery of a relationship he had roped her best friend into.

"Hold him accountable," she urged, hazel eyes blazing with passion. "Relationships should not have to revolve around making excuses and placating your partner with blow jobs - it's a fucking joke. I don't care about all the 'good times' you guys have, or all the memories you've made; the way you've been treating each other lately is appalling, and you deserve way better," she said, pausing to let Carrie absorb everything she'd just thrown at her before delivering the finishing blow. "And I know you know that too, because you're already looking for it in someone else."

Carrie's blood stilled in her veins. Sometimes it scared her how deeply Juliet understood her, and other times it felt comforting. This was not one of those times. 

She took in a slow, shuddering breath as Juliet's words seeped into her skin, carrying a deep sense of guilt with them. As much as she wanted to denounce Juliet's observations and stand by her own, joyously declaring her undying love for her boyfriend at the top of her lungs…her mouth made no attempt to move from its crestfallen frown. It couldn't, because she knew she was wrong. 

The despondency in the blonde's vacant, blue eyes soon drew Juliet down from her soap box though. This time she approached with a gentle, almost apologetic, smile as she entwined their fingers and began rubbing circles into the back of her tanned hand with the pad of her thumb. "I just want what's best for you, Car," she quietly promised. 

"I know," Carrie murmured, mustering a grateful smile as she squeezed her hand back, as though to say a 'thank you' her mouth wasn't quite ready to commit to yet. "I'm fine, Julie, I swear," she went on to profess. But when she started to get a sneaking suspicion that the statement wasn't all that convincing, she decided to switch up her tactic. "Now can we please get back to algebra?" 

The genuine laughter that tumbled from Juliet's lips was music to Carrie's ears. "There's a sentence I never thought I'd hear you say," Juliet chuckled as she picked up her pencil again. 

"I'll do anything to get us talking about something else," Carrie admitted with a woeful chuckle of her own. "And besides, I think I've got a better chance of wrapping my head around this than anything to do with my love life at the moment."

"Boyfriends suck, huh?" Juliet snorted with a knowing smirk.

"Try all boys suck," Carrie countered with a smirk of her own, at last feeling as though some of her signature confidence was leaching back into her frame. Although the pair's giggles took a few seconds to die back down, a mischievous glint remained in Carrie's eyes before she let them glaze over in thought. Mind idly wandering down untrodden paths, a wistful sigh escaped alongside a rogue proposal. "Wouldn't it make life so much easier if we could take them out of the equation altogether?"

Carrie was too lost in thought to notice, but the words that left her mouth forced an entire systems reboot in Juliet's brain. She had to do a double take, certain that she must have misheard her, or had at least missed the joking undertone. But no, the glassy, pensive blue irises held nothing but sincerity. And that confused Juliet more than ever. Her mind whirred with possible explanations for the brainless musings that definitely didn't sound as though they came from a girl in a committed, heterosexual relationship, but before she dared to question her on any, a tanned hand, the size of a frying pan, pulled her prospective interview subject right out of her seat. 

Carrie's eyes widened as she was whisked into a pair of cotton-clad arms the size of tree trunks, hardly able to catch her breath before it was being exchanged for someone else's. A faintly stubbled smile pressed into hers several times before she fully regained her bearings and was able to catch the frying pan hand from travelling too far south of her waist. "Eric," she giggled once she finally managed to inch their lips far enough apart to mumble a greeting against his skin. A subsequent flurry of kisses kept her from elaborating any further though. It was a wonder they didn't pass out from lack of air. 

"Hi, beautiful," he eventually greeted with a smitten grin. But their lips didn't stay apart for long as the dopey quarterback seemed hellbent on keeping his coated in his girlfriend's saliva. "You have a good study hall?" he mumbled, nuzzling his nose against hers. His roaming fingers shattered any hope of his interest in her life being genuine though.

Even if Carrie had wanted to answer Eric's question, his tongue was shoved so far down her throat she couldn't get her words out. "Eric," she finally gasped, jerking her head back from his with a breathy laugh as she felt his thumb start to lift the hem of her cheerleading skirt. "You're gonna get us both detention." 

"I can't help it," he chuckled, pulling her back towards him for another seemingly endless stream of kisses. "I missed you." And whilst a stupefied grin played at his constantly interlocking lips, something didn't feel quite right with Carrie. Her kisses were lazy, almost reluctant, and whilst her body normally felt like putty between his palms, today it felt…stiff. She seemed distracted. And because Eric's head was only ever swimming with thoughts of her, this worried him. "Hey," he gently prompted, nudging her chin with his knuckle to bring her gaze up to meet his. "Everything ok?"

Carrie's breath stuck in her throat, too scared of getting caught in the crossfire of two sets of brown eyes to dare to leave. Eric's sat beneath a pair of thick, furrowed brows, marred with insecure concern, and she could feel Juliet's boring holes into the back of her skull, begging her to remember everything they’d just spoken about. Tensions were high in her usually spacious brain - thoughts flying back and forth too quickly for her to make sense of as she tried to let her conscience guide her in the right direction. And although she felt herself inching towards a blonde ponytail-bolstered confession, her conscience's valiant efforts were all for naught. Carrie's fingers found purchase in the bristly blond hairs at the nape of Eric's neck, her cheeks were dusted in the scent of spearmint and the sweaty must from his football helmet. The profound warmth of his embrace seeped into her bones, and she curled up into it like a cat in the glow of fireplace embers - helpless to resist. "Everything's great," she promised, drawn in by the comfort of familiarity. "I just missed you too."

Disappointed, but not surprised by her best friend's decision, Juliet sighed as she tore her gaze away from the stomach-churning couple and began gathering together her and Carrie's things. She'd get through to her eventually, she had faith in the pit of her steadily grumbling gut. She just needed to be patient…or to find something that could drive a wedge between them once and for all.

"Ethan!" 

The pint-size pothead almost jumped out of his skin at the barked greeting, which actually felt more like an accusation than a 'hello'. He didn't know what was more offensive, the girl's tone or the fact that she'd interrupted his concert-for-one. 

"Jesus, Mick! You scared the shit outta me!" he cried. 

Rolling her eyes, Mick let go of the headphone speaker she'd had to pry away from Ethan's ear after he'd blatantly ignored her fifth call of his name, letting it thwack the side of his head. The look on his face as he recoiled in bewilderment did have a faint smile tugging at her lips though. But it soon disappeared when he slumped back in his seat and readied himself to tune her out again. 

Moving to stand in front of his desk, Mick didn't give him a chance. "Where's Miles?" 

"What?" Ethan squeaked.

"Where's Miles?" she reiterated, crossing her arms across her chest and nodding at the empty seat beside him.

"He's talking to Carrie," he revealed with a blasé wave of his hand in the vague direction of the pair.

Even with AC/DC blasting through his headphones, Ethan swore he heard Mick's face crack.

"He's doing what now?" she demanded, flames roaring in the mahogany logs that made up her irises. 

"He's just asking her something, it's no big deal," Ethan said - although his attempts to reassure the brunette were ham-handed at best given his lazy grin and total lack of concern. 

This was further backed up by Mick's growing urge to strangle him. "Can I not trust you to do anything?" she hissed. 

"What did I do?" Ethan squawked in indignation.

"Nothing - that's the problem! All you had to do was keep his mind off her-" 

"I don't know what fucking mind-control powers you think I've got, Mick, but that was a bogus plan in the first place."

"Oh so what? You just weren't gonna go along with it at all?" Mick scoffed. "I just said to try to keep him distracted."

"And I tried, so I don't know what you're getting all pissy at me for," Ethan retorted. "What's so wrong with him talking to her anyway? I thought 'working through your feelings' was supposed to be a good thing."

Scowling at him for using her own advice against her, she snapped, "Talking to her is not helping him distance himself from her." But when her eyes scanned the room for that familiar mop of coffee brown hair, the sight it settled on made her heart drop to her collegiate green Campuses. "And neither is a run-in with Eric Brennan."

Trailing back to his seat, muttering to himself about the mystifying female mindset and what the hell all of that could have meant, Miles soon realised he wasn't looking where he was going when he collided with what felt like a wall of meat. 

"Shit, sorry," he muttered.

When he looked up and saw who it was that had almost knocked him off his feet though, he realised his assumption hadn't been too far off.

"Woah, watch it, man," Eric guffawed.

The amused twinkle in his eye, and the smirk that blossomed as soon as his gaze landed on him, made Miles' stomach twist. Something told him that this interaction wasn't going to be nearly as quick as he'd hoped. 

"Miles, right?" Eric went on to ask, eyebrow cocked in recognition. 

"Uh, yeah," Miles stammered, although he was more confused than concerned at this point. 

"Why you in such a hurry, bud? You got somewhere to be?" he continued, a charming smirk still sitting proudly on his chiselled jaw. 

"I'm just going back to my seat."

"Oh yeah?" Eric probed, steadily turning up the pressure. "And why were you out of it?"

Miles immediately regretted the exasperated huff that fell from his lips, but he couldn't help his frustration. "Why does it matter?" 

To Miles' surprise, the jock didn't snap back at his remark - there was no sign of meat-headed defensiveness at all. Instead, the guy just laughed. "It doesn't," he reassured with a jovial smile. "I just thought I'd ask 'cause, you know, from here it kind of looked like you were going over there to talk to my girlfriend." 

Any relief that jovial smile had filled Miles with steadily leaked out as Eric's words sunk in. "I was just asking her about our work schedule," he explained with a careful, albeit tight smile of his own. 

"Yeah?" Eric tested.

"...Yeah," Miles confirmed. Although he could feel his bravery slowly shrinking under the hulking weight of Eric's arched eyebrow, he stood his ground, hoping that a nonchalant tone and a set of squared shoulders was enough to convince the dopey blond.

"Oh well, that's a relief," he said with another booming guffaw. Miles' wishes were seemingly granted as the warning smirk slipped from Eric's face, replaced with a laidback grin. "There I was thinking you might have been trying to make a move on her or something."

Miles managed to eke out a chuckle, more at his own expense than anything. "I wouldn't do that, man," he promised through a freshly starched smile. "I know you're both very happy together."

Eric's shit-eating grin must have been powered by at least three AAs with the way it lit up his face. "That we are, my man," he proudly proclaimed. "And that's good to hear 'cause I know you spend a lot of time with her at the end of your shifts, and she says you two get along super well, so I'd hate to think that you were getting the wrong idea or-"

"Not at all," Miles assured, cutting the blond off before he could drive the knife any further into his chest. Fixing a plastic smile to his face to cover up the wistful sigh that escaped between his teeth, he delivered an admittedly painful, "We're just friends."

Eric's rich brown eyes seemed to scan every inch of Miles for any sign of a lie before he proceeded, and the brunet's lack of acting skills left him squirming like a worm on a hook as a result. But the satisfied grin that soon surfaced, dropping the tensed shoulders to help it rise, told Miles the quarterback probably needed an eye test. 

"Good," Eric said with a contented sigh. "'Cause you and I both know that it'd be stupid to think anything else, right?" he went on to cockily taunt. "Like, no offence, but she'd have to be fucking insane to choose you over me… Right, Miles?" 

Although his ego was severely bruised, to save his face from meeting the same fate, Miles forced himself to maintain a smile, albeit reluctantly. "Right," he confirmed.

"That's what I thought," Eric smirked, finally satisfied that Miles had taken enough of an emotional pounding if his lazy grin and affectionate arm bump was anything to go by. "Alright, nice talk, bro. I might catch you tonight if I drop by to see her, ok?"

"I'll be there," Miles verified with a strained sigh. Finally daring to drop his gaze from the sturdy blond, he made his escape without so much as a goodbye.  

Apparently Eric thought he could take a little advice on the road with him though. 

"Remember, watch yourself, Murphy," he hollered.

But the words didn't even register with Miles, because the swift shove between his shoulder blades was so jarring his entire focus was dragged to keeping himself upright. 

Miles kept his eyes trained on the scuffed linoleum as he hastily lumbered back over to his desk, cheeks burning with self-hatred as he tried to push Eric’s no doubt smirking face out of his mind. It wasn’t until he heard a familiar voice that he finally dared to lift his head again. 

“Are you ok?” Mick asked, expression overrun with an almost frantic concern. “What was that about?”

“I’m fine,” Miles brushed off, retrieving his threadbare backpack from its spot, slumped on the floor in one swoop. Haphazardly shoving the books from his desk into the main compartment, he mumbled a quick, “Can we just go?” 

But Ethan’s glassy-eyed intrigue held him firmly in place. “Yo, what happened, man? Did he bust you for flirting with her?” 

“No,” Miles sighed, wearily shaking his head at the stoner’s excitement. 

“Did you flirt with her?” he pressed. 

"No, I just- ugh," Miles huffed, quickly giving up on trying to explain the situation he didn't even fully understand himself. "It doesn't matter. Let's just go."

"I told you to just forget about her," Mick sighed. 

"Yeah, well, that's a lot easier said than done, Mick," Miles retorted, returning her disapproving frown with a defensive one of his own. 

"Did you at least get some closure?" Ethan offered as he rose from his desk - partly from curiosity, partly to try to prove a point to Mick. 

Whilst Miles' tongue instinctively prepared to shoot Ethan's optimism down, his brain jumped in to tell it to hold fire. And after a few, brief seconds recalling the interaction, his answer soon changed. "Actually, I kind of did," he admitted with a chuckle of incredulity. 

"You gonna try to talk about it more with her tonight then?" Ethan asked, smirking to himself at Mick's look of disbelief. 

"Fuck no," Miles snorted with a nonchalance that took both of his friends by surprise. "I just want to forget it ever happened- just…move on."

"From her?" Mick asked, trying to hide the hopeful edge in her tone with a gentle smile.

Sparing the blonde in question one last glance over his shoulder, only to catch the tail end of her and Eric getting pulled up for their excessive PDA by their (up until now) entirely uninterested study hall supervisor, he let out a wistful sigh. A chorus of voices swelled in his head - Mick's, Ethan's, Carrie's, Eric's - each one telling a different side to the same story. He couldn't have picked one to listen to if he'd tried. So, in the end, his own took over, steering his heart down a path that promised the least damage in the long term, and that Carrie's indifferent dismissal of him had already forged in his mind. "...That's the goal."

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I an asshole because I told someone to shut the hell up about his autism?

Now, please read this before making your vote.

I (21 F) started going back to school recently, I signed up for classes late because it took so long for the paperwork and processes to be finalized. I was taking a speech class in the morning and we had to do a group project in class. Now, I spoke with the professor and told her I did not do well in group projects because I either get treated like literal crap or I do all the work. She said she didn't care, either I join a group or get a 0. Someone (20 M) was watching, we'll call him Ed for clarity. I asked if I could join Ed's group and he said yes. I tried being really nice to Ed and waited for our group members to meet with us after class. He showed me which music he liked and I said it was nice. So, during the entire time period of this project I would meet a lot with my group mates and we'd do the project. It was very difficult because professor wanted over 10 resources and a certain length for the report, then to top it off a PowerPoint we'd be presenting too. Ed did a lot of things to make me feel very uncomfortable, but my group mates ignored it and didn't say anything. He'd talk about how he visited the dark web and looked into hitmen. Then he showed us an intro to a porno. I felt very uncomfortable and mentioned it to the other girl in our group, she said she would talk with the other boys in our group about it (they all had been friends since highschool except Ed) , she said the assignment did require us to find an intro that was terrible, but maybe a porno intro was too much. The assignment in question was basically a research project about why introductions are very important. They ended up choosing some 90's tv show intro, I don't remember which one it was, just that the show got 2 seasons and the intro was too stereotypical for the time. During the time Ed would send me random "hi"s and he added/followed me on all my social media. He would comment on everything and would try to make conversations on them when I wouldn't text back. I kept the texts as bland as possible. Ed just gave me a bad vibe and kept doing shit to make me uncomfortable. Now here's where the autism part comes in. I was talking to a guy I had a crush on instagram and I guess Ed noticed. So Ed basically calls me and asks if I'm not attracted to him because he has autism. I said what the hell and hung up. It made me feel so uncomfortable then he started bringing up his autism on all my photos, posts, tweets, you name it. I didn't know what to do anymore. Ed kept blowing up my phone too. He'd message me every 5 mins and would get mad when I wouldn't answer right away. So back to my crush, Ed messaged him I wasn't interested in dating him! Like dude! So my crush says he doesn't have time for immaturity and blocks me despite me trying to defuse and apologize hundreds of times for that. So I asked for some advice and basically I got that his autism was making him act like that. I don't want to sound ableist, I'm sorry if I give off that impression, but enough was enough. I told him to fuck off or else I'd get the authorities and school involved since what he was doing was harassment. He said he can't harass since he has autism so I told him to shut the hell up about his autism since it wasn't a "get out of jail" card so i finally blocked him everywhere. I don't know if I'm being an asshole or maybe I'm just not patient or equip to handle Ed? Even then, I am in no shape or form attracted to Ed nor was I ever. Now I just never want him bothering me again.

[hillbillyoracle]

How to Have Better Conversations

I’m writing this at the request of my partner. She shared she’s really been struggling with making conversation more than usual lately. I shared some thoughts on how I navigate conversations she found useful and asked if I’d be willing to make a resource or write more about it. This is not meant to be a definitive expert guide, it’s built from my observations and experiences as someone who is autistic and has to navigate a lot of social situations completely manually. This is how I break down the individual components of conversation.

When I spelled this all out, one of her takeaways was that conversations actually involve a lot of microdecisions and that’s why they can be so tiring. And I think that’s totally correct. But I think it’s also why some people can thrive with them because it’s actually a lot of difficult decisions that are tricky to pull off well so when you can and do, there’s a real sense of accomplishment that can make talking more appealing.

I have a feeling this post will be overcomplicated and convoluted to a lot of folks but maybe there’s a handful of folks for whom it is helpful. Take what works, leave the rest. Summary at the end.

Types of Conversation

Topics of conversation are decently important in my experience. They ultimately let you know where the conversation will go - whether it’s likely to end in a dead end, what sorts of things it will allow you to learn about the person you’re discussing with. In my experience, just about all conversation topics fall into one of four camps.

While I talk about Best Use and Don’t Use here - most conversation in the following topics will fall somewhere in-between. They’re just sign posts, not rules.

Me

The focus is on you. Me topics are ultimately about telling a story about yourself with some amount of conscious intent.

Best Use

The best use of this is setting expectations and conveying preferences. This allows your talking about yourself to serve a purpose that ultimately assists the other person in knowing how to understand and interact with you best without necessarily demanding certain treatment front. They might change or not change how they interact with you and this can show how responsive you might expect them to be.

Examples:

“I’m a writer so I don’t work 9-5. If I reply at odd times, that’s probably what’s going on.”

“One of my favorite ways to get to know someone is to grab a hot drink and go for a walk with them.”

Don’t Use

The worst use of this is look a certain way - knowledgeable, impressive, interesting. Basically any use rooted in getting another person to like you. Genuine connection doesn’t start from a place of elevating one person over another. Plus honestly 90% of people just do not care about why you think you’re interesting, important, etc and hate feeling pressured to validate you.

Examples:

“My boss was even stumped by the issue but I figured it out on my own.”

“All my friends say I’m the best at baking.”

“I keep a bunch of tools in my car, I’m ready to fix anything anywhere.”

You

The focus is on the other person. You topics are ultimately about letting the other person share the story of themselves.

Best Use

The best use of You topics is to better understand how a person understands themselves. Open ended questions that invite them to show their thinking as well and shows you how they reason. The common acronym FORD (family, occupation/occupy time, recreation, dreams) is a decent

Example:

“So how did you find yourself in this city? What was that journey like?”

“Why did you take up [your hobby]? What drew you to it?”

Don’t Use

Don’t use you topics to actively try to find fault with someone else. It’s great to have standards and hard no’s for your friendships and relationships. But poking around for them upfront can alienate people who you’d otherwise like - suspicion is not a desirable quality in a friend or potential partner. Ultimately you have to let a person show you who they are and make a personal call. There’s no short cut.

Example:

“So why did you and your ex break up?”

“So you get angry easily then?”

Both

The focus is on a shared expertise/language, not on the story of either of you.

Best Use

The best use of both topics is to notice things about them they wouldn’t think to explicitly share necessarily and to connect in a way that only people with your shared interest or expertise allows.

Example:

My partner and I both have a background in academic medical research. However when we talk about it, it becomes apparent that my focus is on the practical and researcher side and hers is on the data and compliance side. It’s interesting to note where our similar interests compliment and diverge.

Don’t Use

Don’t use both topics to try one up or show you know more than the other person. The minute you do that the shared aspect - and therefore connection - is gone.

Example:

I once went on a date with a man who spent a half hour explaining how GIS systems work in a very “look at me” way after I mentioned I had used them when I was studying forestry in college. It was boring as hell.

Neither

The focus is on a topic without a shared expertise/language, not on the story of either of you.

Best Use

The best use of neither topics is a shared exploration/experience. One person will usually know a little more about a topic than the other person. The person who knows less benefits by learning about a topic they’re curious about. Their questions and observations invite the other to think about this topic in a new light so the experience winds up being somewhat shared.

Examples:

A woman in line at Lowes let me know I could overwinter mums in this area. I proceeded to ask her about how she’d taken such good care of hers and whether the effortwas worth it. She thoughtfully answered my questions and I learned a lot.

I mentioned to my partner a personal project I’m considering undertaking. She asks about my motivations for it and in doing so I have to further clarify them. She learned a little about what my project was about and I learned what I was really after, seeing it fresh.

Don’t Use

Don’t use neither topics to soapbox about things that are of solely personal interest. If someone makes it clear they’re not interested pivot to something more interesting. Even neither topics require at least a little bit of common ground.

Examples:

I regularly talk about group hypocrisies I’m trying to make sense of before realizing that people outside of that group don’t really care.

Ideal Ratio

In general, in reflecting on my own conversations, I think a ratio where more than half the conversation is on either both or neither topics are the most rewarding. It’s where neither party walks away feeling like they talked too much about themselves and when meaningful and interesting topics still have been discussed.

I think it’s a common mistake to try to get the conversation to be 50% you, 50% me. That’s where conversations feel like a job interview and get exhausting real quick. They also have an appearance of depth as people disclose more to keep the conversation going but with out a feeling of connection after because little time is spent on exploration and shared experience.

How to Respond

So knowing what topic you’re currently or want to talk about is one part of this, but the other is choosing a response. I generally let the other person’s response dictate some measure of my response.

Pivot

If someone seems negatively engaged - leaning back, looking around a lot, arms crossed, giving short answers - I pivot to a neutral topic. I find neutral topics work best because the focus is not on either of you - they don’t feel like they’re under pressure to disclose or act interested in you. Neutral topics also allow them to lead the pace - asking questions and making observations at the level they feel comfortable. If they continually seem negatively engaged, it’s usually best to bail from the conversation, especially if asking questions about the dynamic itself seems like it might not be welcome.

Matching

If someone seems neutrally engaged - mostly looking in your direction, not leaning toward or away, giving input on what you’re saying - I match and continue with the topic.

FOOL

Being a little like the Fool in the Major Arcana is actually a great way to be a good conversationalist - genuine, curious, brave, and receptive. Bellow are some concrete ways how.

Follow up questions - Good follow up questions come from a genuine place of curiousity. They also tend to either fill in gaps in your own understanding or encourage the speaker expand the discussion into a new but related area.

Observation - Observations on the topic itself are great but not your only option. You can oberve how a person seemed to feel when talking about the topic. You can observe that they’d touched on a related topic before. Comparison is a fruitful ground for observations as well - “That’s similar to…” and ”That’s very different than….”

Opinion - Offering an opinion or requesting their opinion is a good way to keep a conversation going. In general, it’s best to avoid generalizations, soften them a little to start with, and make sure there is some measure of compassion in the opinion you’re sharing. Rigidity leaves little room for discussion and exploration.

Levity - Where appropriate, make a joke, share a meme, craft a pun, tease them a little. Laughter is a shared experience that connects us.

Building

If someone seems positively engaged - leaning forward, making eye contact, coming closer to you for neurotypical people and actively engaging with the content of what you’re saying regardless of stims or eye contact for neurodivergent folks - I build on what we’re talking about. I self disclose my feelings and personal connections to the topic one step further than what the person I’m talking with has.

It’s important not to disclose a lot more than the person you’re talking with has. It leads to a vulnerability hangover for you and can be quite awkward and uncomfortable for them. If you disclose just a little more than the person you’re chatting with, then it’s much more easy to recover and match their level if they seem uncomfortable with what you shared.

Decision Tree

“What topic are we talking about currently?”

Me - Set expectations, share preferences; you focused

You - Understand you as you understand yourself; other person focused

Both - Connect over a shared language; idea focused

Neither - Connect over a shared exploration; idea focused

“What cues am I getting from the other person?”

If positive, build on current topic - be vulnerable

If neutral, match on current topic - be a FOOL*

If negative, pivot to a different topic - preferably neutral or in ratio**

*FOOL

Follow up questions - genuine curiousity - “I wonder…”

Observe - conversation, feelings, topic - “I noticed…”

Opinion - cautious, concise, compassionate - “I’ve often thought…”

Levity - make jokes, share memes - laughter connects

**Ratio

51% Both/Neither

<49% Me/You

[trans-cuchulainn]

Could you recommend some good resources on accurate depiction of parchment in the medieval period? I feel like most people interested in medieval studies have a basic understanding of what it is and how it’s made, but you seem more well-versed than most on its tactile properties and regular use cases. Where can others acquire this knowledge?

most of what i've learned about manuscripts and book history has been either during my degrees or from work (i have worked in various libraries including with special collections, although mostly with early printed books and later paper manuscripts in that capacity). and in terms of what it's like to interact with, i have learned this mostly from interacting with it, but if you don't have a library or museum near you that will enable you to do this, it's a bit harder. this makes it hard to give recommendations although there are lots of very good books out there about books and manuscript history

(there's one i read early on in my journeys with palaeography etc that went into loads of detail about different writing surfaces including wood and wax tablets and so on, but i cannot remember the title and past me did NOT write it down which was really unhelpful. if i remember it i'll post about it)

there are also a ton of online resources about manuscripts though. lots of museums have online guides to manuscript production, parchment, writing through history. there's lots of codicology stuff out there. so it's not like you have to learn it in a formal environment -- that's just where i learned it and therefore mostly from lectures rather than shareable resources

but to understand parchment specifically i think understanding the process of making it is a crucial step to understanding why it is the way it is (and why it's not paper). here's a couple of youtube videos that give an overview

this is a more detailed video about a project that got people to make parchment themselves which is just kinda interesting (haven't watched it all the way through but am watching parts):

once you understand how parchment is made and the resources that go into it, i think it's easier to understand why it probably wouldn't be used for ephemera and scraps, and that helps you think about situations where people might use something else -- e.g. a wax tablet to take hasty notes, send messages that don't need to be permanent, send messages that are emphatically not permanent (your recipient can melt it and hide the note), etc -- as well as beginning to rethink the modern world's reliance on the written word in general and consider how oral messages and other non-written communication might have been used

as for the tactile side of things, as i said in a previous post, if you can't touch book parchment, go find your local irish musicians and see if the bodhrán player will let you handle their drum (or good quality orchestral timpani will do too! but with a bigger drum it's harder to feel both sides of the skin). drumskins made of goatskin are very similar on a tactile level to parchment, just a little thicker and not processed to quite the same level as a writing surface. it helps you stop thinking of them as super fragile once you realise people are whacking them with a stick regularly, and you can learn about the difference between the hair side and the flesh side of the skin and stuff and see the way the hair leaves traces in the skin and so on. this helps with the tactile understanding

(the cheaper the bodhran, the rougher the reverse side will be even if the front is still nice and smooth, which also makes you realise the difference between high quality books where you can barely tell which side of the page is the hair side, and low quality ones where they're not fully treated, there's still hair, whatever)

i talked to a conservator lately who told me the way he got into book conservation was via musical instrument repair -- they are more similar than you would think -- and i know trad musicians scattered far and wide enough to be reasonably confident that even if you're in an area with no touchable medieval manuscripts, you can probably at some point find a drummer who will let you play with their bodhrán in exchange for a pint or something, lol

but in the mean time there's lots of cool videos about there about parchment making which i do think is a crucial step to understanding it as a writing surface! and i will see if i can remember the names of any of the books i've read...

[mjjune]

How To Have a Good Beta Reading Experience (or: what I've learned from 3 years of beta reading)

So lately I've been having a lot of discussions about beta reading with my discord groups so I thought I would write it out here and also share some resources I've used over the years.

This is mostly by and for writers, however readers can learn from this post as well!

DISCLAIMER: I'm by no means a writing expert, but I have been either beta reading others' books, or having my own stories beta read consistently since 2020. THIS IS ALL PERSONAL EXPERIENCE/OPINION. Others may agree or disagree ❤️

Here are the main points I'm going to talk about in this post, and I'll do it under the cut to save your dash space:

Understanding Alpha vs. Beta Readers

Choosing Readers

Being Clear About Feedback

Swapping / Compensation

The Importance of Writing Community/Groups

Websites/Resources for Finding Beta Readers

1. Understanding Alphas vs. Betas

So this is extremely important and for me, this may be the difference between me finishing your book or not. Many times, especially from new writers who had never had anyone read their work before, had extremely rough drafts that were barely coherent and were NOT beta ready, but asked me to beta read. I am not a person who can look past extensive grammar errors, nor am I the kind of person who will sit and fix all your grammar line-by-line for you.

Alpha Readers - for first/second drafts

Beta Readers - for polished drafts

It is ok for alpha reads to be unpolished and have grammar issues, and it's even ok if they have plot issues, continuity errors, etc. Because alpha readers are there for that purpose: to be the first eyes on your story and help you find and fix those issues.

The issue I have had over and over, though, is people asking for a beta reader when what they really needed was an alpha. I went in expecting a polished draft and got someone's Draft 0. In some cases, I got 100k drafts where the writer obviously had no idea how to format dialogue grammar and every single dialogue was wrong. Obviously this made me slow and in many cases, unable to finish.

Alpha readers will go in expecting it to be unpolished, and will be prepared to look past grammar/stylistic errors in order to focus on the big picture issues (plot holes, character consistency, pacing/engagement issues, etc). A Beta may be too frustrated by an unpolished draft to finish it or provide the feedback you're looking for. If you have been experiencing a lot of betas backing out and not finishing your work, you might consider this as a possible reason why.

I would also recommend, if you have never had anyone read your work before, even if you have had multiple drafts, it might be safest to ask for alphas rather than betas.

A quick way to see if your work is beta ready (again, personal experience): Pick up a published book from the shelf in your genre. Does your book read similarly? Does your formatting & grammar look the same? Bonus: read it out loud! If reading the published book out loud is significantly easier than reading yours out loud, you're probably in the alpha stage.

TL;DR: Understand your draft and which level of reader your draft is ready for. Know the difference between polished and unpolished, and be upfront about it.

2. Choosing Alphas/Betas

You may not like it but: Just because someone is your friend, real life or online, does not mean they will make a good reader for you.

#1 MOST IMPORTANT: GET READERS WHO LIKE & REGULARLY READ YOUR GENRE!

I cannot stress this enough. As someone who writes vampire content, I cannot begin to express to you the amount of useless comments I got from readers who had clearly never read a vampire book in their life.

You need someone who is familiar with your genre and you likes your synopsis/blurb.

Caveat: that said, I did find a few great betas who had never read vampire content before and gave awesome feedback. However, these readers knew and admitted they knew nothing about the paranormal genre, and because of that did not make any comments on worldbuilding, instead sticking to plot and character development only. Some readers can't make this separation.

Another thing I would recommend, especially if you are swapping or the beta reader is also a writer/on writeblr, I would recommend reading their writing before having them beta read. If you read their excerpts and see that it's really unpolished or a style that's vastly different than yours, that might change whether you want them to read for you.

In my most recent beta round, I used a google form to do a quick survey to see who was interested in beta reading. This worked really well for me and I would recommend it! You can also use this to make all potential readers agree to not share/distribute/plagiarize your work, so you have it in writing just in case someone were to try something.

This was also a great way to see which genres they usually read and how many times they have beta read in the past!

TL;DR: Get readers who LIKE your genre. Read their writing and see how they write. Use an online signup form to narrow down.

3. Be Clear About The Type of Feedback You Want

This is perhaps the second most important thing when you get readers. Many readers will shy away from reading your work if you have nothing in mind for them to look out for. Also, being clear about this shows that you 1) know it isn't perfect and needs work and 2) you have insight into what the issues already are.

For Alphas, these traits are what I have found to be the most helpful:

Immediate inline reactions - particularly emotional engagement and pointing out lines that resonated with them

NO grammar/stylistic comments (unless incomprehensible)

Questioning of worldbuilding, character decisions, and character development - particularly if confusing or unclear

Comments on action sequences & their readability

Comments on believability of the plot points/progression

For Betas, these are what have been most helpful to me:

Comments on grammar, especially if repetitive

Stylistic comments, particularly for over-used words or noticeably repetitive sentence structures

Comments on pacing

Comments on plot initiation point and buildup/execution of the climax

Not questioning my worldbuilding/plot and trusting that what I have written is intentional. Only pointing out areas that have on-page evidence of inconsistencies.

Everything above is simply personal preference. You might find other comments to be better for alphas/betas. However, being upfront about which comments you want or don't want can drastically change which people want to read for you!

Some readers are obsessed with in-depth inline grammar/style comments, some aren't at all. Some writers LOVE these in-depth grammar comments, and some don't. Being clear about what you want is the best way to make sure you and your readers are compatible for the stage of editing you're at.

4. Swapping / Compensation

So this one I might have a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I wanted to cover it because so many people talk about it on here and other sites.

Again, based on my personal experience, swapping and compensation does not mean you're going to get better feedback or have a better experience or relationship with readers.

For the record, for everyone who beta reads for me—and finishes—I always offer to read theirs, even if it's a genre I don't like.

Personally, I have never tried compensation (re: money) for beta readers. However, there are a few issues I've come across with swapping:

Mine was beta ready and theirs was unpolished first draft

Our types of feedback didn't align

Our genre preferences didn't align

Their feedback was nowhere near as high quality or constructive as mine

In these cases, one or both of us burnt out on reading the others' work, and then we'd both bail. Especially with #4, it was very disheartening for me to spend hours finding their plot holes, helping them come up with ways to fix them, for them to then write 1 paragraph about what they thought of my story that was extremely surface level. To me, that wasn't even a swap, and was practically worthless. There was even one who got sensitive about the feedback I was providing (which was a queer sensitivity read) and then left almost identical comments on my story, which weren't even relevant. It was like revenge-commenting.

All this to say: I have had positive experiences with swaps. My alpha for twtr was a swap and I really enjoy her work and she enjoys mine, and we will probably continue to swap forever.

This goes back to #2 above: be picky & choose your readers well. Your story is your baby, and it deserves to be critiqued by people who value you and your story, and want to help you make it the best possible version of itself.

To summarize, I have had two good swapping experiences. I have had 10+ good uncompensated betas—with an offer for me to read their stuff when it's ready. Do with that what you will.

5. Writing Community / Groups

On to a more positive note! I have had the best experience here on writeblr, and this is coming from someone who has tried multiple other communities (which I discuss in the last section below). Having my own discord server from tumblr, joining a few other writers' discord servers, has completely changed the game regarding finding consistent betas, more resources, and just having an overall much more positive time writing and editing.

Writeblr keeps me grounded, keeps me hopeful, and even if I share something that doesn't get tons of notes, it's so nice to have interaction. It's so nice to give and get back, consistently.

I do want to emphasize the importance of giving to get back. If no one is liking/interacting with your excerpts, tag/ask games, etc. then that's probably because you're not interacting with them! It's very important to show interest in other people's work!!

I'm not saying you need to jump onto everyone's taglists for all their wips, but join the ones that genuinely interest you the most. Play in ask/tag games consistently. Follow writers back who follow you (if they post things you're interested in, ofc).

I have the same amount of followers as the people I follow right now, and I think that goes to show that people reciprocate here on writeblr! It's a lovely community and don't be afraid to reach out ❤️

I have found almost ALL my recent betas from my tumblr and discord groups. They have been lovely so far and I would highly recommend building up community here if you are interested in finding betas.

6. Websites/Resources for Finding Betas

Alright, last section. Thanks for bearing with me. I'm going to go through the sites I have used, and why I still use them, or why I dropped them.

Scribophile

So, for starters, this is one I don't use anymore. This was the site I first used when I had a polished draft in 2020 and had no idea how to get feedback. Essentially, they have a point-system. The more comments you make, the more points you get, and then when you have 3 points, you can post a chapter. It continues in a cycle.

Pros: Personally, I think the site helped me a lot in realizing what a bad critique looks like (which is helpful!) and also helped me learn which comments/feedback types work for me, and which don't. I don't regret my time there by any means, and I found one life-long friend and beta reader there I wouldn't trade for the world. It also allows you to post/remove your story and the readers don't have direct access to it—meaning if they want to download/steal/plagiarize, they'd have to copy and paste or screenshot chapter by chapter. It's a little safety precaution.

Cons: It's not the best place to get constructive feedback. The issue with their system is it encourages quantity over quality in critiques. Because of that, you'll get strangers rewriting your entire chapter in their own style so they get 2-3 points for one critique, but... was any of it actually helpful to you? Maybe, maybe not. It's also random, so you can't control who comments on your stuff, and they might just comment to get points even if they hate your genre. I also don't think it's fair to have to do 3-5 chapter critiques in order to save up enough points to post ONE chapter of your own. And if you want to post your story for full beta reads and control who reads it and who doesn't, you have to subscribe monthly.

So I keep an eye on it occasionally to look through their forums on writing, agents, publishing, etc. But most of the forums gets nasty, because there are a lot of really pretentious writers who think they know all the rules. If you join small groups (e.g. sub-groups based on diversity, etc) they tend to have better and more meaningful discussions.

Personally, I would never use it for beta/alpha/feedback ever again. This is the site where most of my bad swaps came from. But you might find it useful! So I thought I would share it.

Nanowrimo Forums

This is another one I don't use anymore, but might consider reusing in the future. The biggest issue I have with nanowrimo is that a lot, and I mean A LOT, of these participants are first-time writers and have no concept of what polished vs. unpolished even means. I did find two really good swaps there (actually the only two good full swaps I've had) but those were very hard to find.

There is also the issue that a good chunk of them only write during November, not year round. So for finding consistent, year-long partners, this is not the best option. I'm a member of 2 discords that have all fallen silent as soon as Nano actually ended.

Also, in my experience, asking questions about anything related to "controversial" topics (especially trans and minority ethnic groups) becomes toxic very quick, which is unfortunate. There are even a few moderators who seem to be contributing to the toxic/immature discussions rather than fixing them/shutting them down, which is the main reason I stopped using it.

However, it's a GREAT place to get free, simple covers! Their artisan section is fantastic and there are a lot of people there willing to make basic covers/banners for you for free.

BetaBooks

I've only been using this one about a month so far, but I'm really liking it. It's set up that you can invite betas to your story specifically, or you can look through a beta reader library, read their profiles, and invite them to see if they're interested.

This is essentially an alternative to Scribophile. It allows you to post your story online and find betas and become a beta.

Why I like it better than Scribophile: it's not a point-based system, meaning it's uncompensated so the readers have nothing to gain other than enjoying/helping your story. There's no hard feelings if someone bails. It allows you to see all comments in one place (which Scrib can't do). (And with discount codes found through google, it's cheaper, too. Message me if you need help with this 👀)

It also is all online, easily removable, so readers would have to copy/paste or screenshot chapter-by-chapter to steal it. So again, just a little safety net that makes me feel better.

Writeblr

Yep, that's right. Right here. Actually right here on tumblr has been where I have found the most beta readers and in the shortest time. I talked about this in the section before so I won't regurgitate. But there's a reason why this community is so long-lasting. It really is the best one out there I've found.

TL;DR / IN CONCLUSION:

Know where your book is in terms of reader-readiness. Know the difference between alphas/betas and polished/unpolished. Know the types of feedback that work for you and specifically request it when recruiting betas.

Interact with a community. Give interaction in order to receive, and don't expect people to reblog/like your content if you don't reach out first. Join small, niche writing community discords. Find like-minded writers.

Decide to swap or not, but this won't make or break you.

There are many writing communities out there designed to help you not only find betas, to provide beta-reading feedback forms and commentary. Try them out and see what works best for you.

And above all, thank Writeblr for being such a lovely community ❤️

[lizzaneia-elizalde]

Another yandere set 2 ask, from yours truly! This is another one inspired by the yandere set 1 asks regarding fatherhood…

How would each of the yanderes’ react/behave during their darling’s labor and post-labor?

I wanna know who’s panicking, composed, excited, etc.

Sorry I got baby fever right now…

Yandere men and their darling in labor and post-labor

Assuming the reader this time is AFAB, or is in an A/B/O situation! By the way, i'm so sorry if i'm moving so slow with the requests! I've been busy lately so i'm trying my best to write.

"Why don't you just close the requests?" True, but some people use the ask box to talk and chat to me without compromising their anonymity. So, I hope you can be patient! I don't really like rejecting asks, so I probably will answer all of them. I know, I can reject them or not answer. I'm working on it lol. Especially that there's a lot of asks like these, which includes all the yandere OCs in a set... It's a bit exhausting. I kind of regret it, but hey, we're here already lol.

I added a section of... You'll know if you read HAHA

YAN! DELINQUENT

Liam will definitely panic. He's sweaty, he's smiling, he's about to blow off his top from the way the nurses were so nonchalant with your labor (It's normal). Can't they see you're about to die (You're contracting)?! Oh god, you can't voice out your pain without you talking (The midwives are not dumb enough to not read body language)! He will swear up and down that no more babies. NO MORE! It's already painful enough seeing you get swarmed by other people, let alone touch you.

Post labor Liam will be calm, fussy, and overprotective. Well, more overprotective than usual. He has a 70/30 chance of fainting, and will praise the gods if you delivered safely.

But, if you died... He will let out a gut wrenching cry by the foot of your bed. The baby won't even be noticed by him as he clenches his chest, sobbing and heaving his heart out. It will take more than days to calm him down, and have the heart to take care of your child. He will love the child, since he knows the child is innocent. But a big, gaping you-shaped hole in his heart is carved painfully in place.

YAN! BULLY

Uno will be the quiet panic-type. He sure is calm... On the inside. He's about to scream and rip the heads off of everyone who's touching you even a smidge wrong. NO MALE HANDS! NEVER! He's never been like this, ever. Even in your wedding, pregnancy, he never panicked. So why now? He's biting his cheeks to the point it bled, and you swore every single nurse and midwife in the delivery ward were yelled at by Uno.

Post-delivery Uno will calm down and act like nothing happened. "See? I know you can do it, nerd." Yeah sure. As if you can't see the blood stained teeth from him biting his cheeks. For the first time, he'll cherish a person other than you. He's so soft that it's new to you too.

If you died, Uno will turn the whole hospital up and down. He'll ruin everything, blame the midwives and nurses for not taking care of you enough, the hospital for lacking the resources to make a safe delivery.... And unfortunately, your child for killing you off. I'm gonna be honest, Uno will be the type to blame the child for your death. So, be healthy, darling!

YAN! NSFW ASMRTIST

Rose would be composed. He knew you were gonna be fine. Of course, nervousness will still be there, but he had enough trust in this hospital that he hopes you and your baby will be fine. That, and all of those breeding roleplays was his fault so he had to be composed since he brought it upon himself.

Post-delivery Rose would be relieved. He's right. And the cute little bugger is so small. He fits just by 3/4's of his arm. Wait, why is the baby so small? Are they really this small? But you were eating quite a lot... He's also a big guy, so the genes..? Is it from you? Or just recessive? He will have many questions. All those pregnancy asmr roleplays didn't really help.

If you died, Rose would feel like the whole world collapsed on his feet. What do you mean you died? He swears you would be okay. That you will be alive and well. He suddenly feels an immense guilt eating him up. Should he have panicked more? Should he have ensured the personnel that you're going to be alright? He sinks to his knees, weeping. He will swear on your body to take care of the baby well.

YAN! ISEKAI'ED ADVENTURER

Aeron is definitely skeptical. Sure, this world has magic, but it doesn't have the technological advancement of the modern world. It's also a world where he can't be with you in the delivery room. So all he could do is pace around the hall as he hears your cries of pain. He'll also cry with you if the delivery was too long for both of your likings.

Post-delivery Aeron will burst through the door and will go to you first. "Are you fine? Do you feel lethargic? Do you feel weak?!" The nurses have to pull him off of you so you can have the baby latch on you. He'll pout, but grips his arm as he watches you and the baby with a fond smile.

If you died... Aeron will regret everything. He knew he should have found a way back to the modern world. Maybe you could have delivered safely. He shouldn't have had a baby with you. A demon king's child will be too much on a mage's body, with all of those mana mixing. The whole hospital will be engulfed in demonic power as he suffocated everyone except his kid. He'll disappear with the child, forever retreating to the Demon realm to raise the kid alone.

YAN! PLAYER

Amor would be excited. He never thought he'll finally get a kid of his own after years and his past life. His parents spoiled him a lot, his guardian angels (gods) spoil him too. And this kid? A product of you and him?! Gods above! That's like, such a blessing! He'll be persistent in asking the nurses and midwives if the kid is there, if you're alright... OH god are you okay? All of these other people touching you... He feels the bile rising up to his mouth. But he knew these people are just doing their job, and then--

Post delivery Amor would be all over you. He'll kiss your face, your lips, your forehead, immediately buy you food you cannot have, and spoil you rotten as you recover. And his kid? Oh his kid is so cute! Look at them. So pretty and small... Is that his nose? Oh they got your eyes! His hair color and your hair texture... Oh they're the perfect mix!

This is one of the rare times were you are guaranteed on not dying... In the backstage, Amor shook the gods on putting so many blessings on your body to make sure your delivery will be safe and easy. That the child will be healthy. So, no deaths at all.

YAN! PARASITE

Acheron will be overly cautious one. He will have you deliver in your home, in his lab, where he transformed it to a delivery ward. He trained in birthing too, so he's as good as professional midwives too. He will be there for you, ensuring that the pregnancy will end well. Because honestly, technically speaking, this child is from this body of his and yours. Not your original body. So he's a bit conflicted.

Post-delivery Acheron is smug. He knew he could handle the delivery well. The baby is healthy, and he's planning on how to make the kid a parasite too. Which can earn your ire or approval, depending on what you want. But now, he's content, and actually loved this little kid, despite knowing the biological composition of the kid.

If you "died", Acheron will be filled with regret too. He wasn't skilled enough. He should've listened and admitted you to a hospital. He'll have to extract the parasite from your body and dump the body, and then find another body for you to inhabit. He'll have to nurse your parasite form to healthy levels first before letting you wriggle into a body. He will be a bit cold to the child though, but a bit more time with him will calm him down.

YAN! EMPEROR

Callisto will only have the best midwives. He'll be overbearing, making sure you WILL be alright. He will, for the first time, be religious and pass by the church to pray that your delivery will be safe. He will force himself in the delivery room. No matter what anyone says. He's the nervous type, biting his nail and barking orders if something even went wrong just a bit.

Post-delivery Callisto will be proud. He's not the type to freak out, he'll just feel the calm washing over him as he showers you with kisses, saying "you did so well", "thank you so much", "Take your time recovering", etc. The baby, he's more or less concerned since he knew the baby will be fine.

If you died though, he'll storm out of the palace, then to the church, and blasphemize the whole place. If he's the chosen one, then why did you die? Why did the love of his life slip past him? After hours of desecrating the church, he will be hell bent on revenge, making the church the enemy. His kid will be not loved, unfortunately. He will neglect them, only providing the bare minimum. Don't get him wrong, the kid will be the heir, but they have to prove himself.

YAN! COLLEGE STUDENT

Alpheus would be the type to be suddenly so overwhelmed with worry. Since he's never been one to feel, the sudden feeling of panic, dread, and worry settled in his stomach. He would probably lay down on the hospital floor, clutching his belly as he rocks back and forth. The nurses and midwives would have to fuss over him before you to the point that you're getting annoyed. He will have to be separated from you, or else he'll probably goes to shock when he hears your pained cries.

When you're done, he goes to your side, crawls beside you, and becomes a clingy mess. He'll apologize, kiss and nuzzle you. He can't believe he subjected you to such a painful ordeal. One child. Just one is enough. He can't have you (and himself) be in this situation again. But the baby is worth it.

When you die, Alpheus will for the first time, cry from grief. It's his first time experiencing something like this, that it overwhelms him. He CANNOT father your child. Unless some divine intervention happens and he'll be fine again. The child will go to his parents, and they'll hope that he'll recover, for the baby's sake and yours up in heaven.

YAN! DEEP SEA CREATURE

Viper's not a worrywart. Since you can't exactly go to the civilization to deliver your eggs safely in time, he would have to let you birth on what's akin to a nest. He'll be there with you, his hands all over your body as he whispers encouraging words to your ears. use his tail as a pillow, who cares. As long as you're comfortable and safe, everything will be fine.

Post-delivery will have Viper give one of his rare smiles. He massages you gently, telling you that you did great, feeding you food, and then fixing the clutch of eggs you birthed. He will have you asleep in no time to rest your weary body as he fusses over the eggs and making sure none of them are wrong.

If you actually died during the birthing process, there will be only two outcomes. If you came to him willingly and you weren't forced to love him, he would take care of the eggs diligently, not wanting to waste your life. If you didn't, let's just say a little cannibalism goes a long way with eggs. Viperfish caviar, anyone?

YAN! HUNTER

Orion will panic throughout your pregnancy. He really thought that he's gonna be the laidback type, knowing you'll be fine and whatnot. But noooo. Now he's here, pacing back and forth in the delivery room as he watches your face wince and cry from the pain. Oh, he almost can't take it anymore. He's begging you to get an epidural. He's really doing it. If you refused, he would shut up and look at you like a puppy kicked. But who cares about him rn? You're giving birth!

Post-delivery Orion will have him faint lol. He'll already wake up when you are cleaned up with the baby also cleaned up. He'll zoom past the nurses and midwives then go to you, where you held the baby up to your breasts to feed. He'll feel a much more overwhelming love in his heart, and he cries his heart out. If it's a clutch of eggs, he'll be starry eyed as he watched the eggs float in an egg incubator, eyes filled with adoration and gratefulness to you.

If you died, he'll be more or less in denial. No way, right? No way you just died like that after giving birth to your precious child/children. You just left them like that? You're so heartless. But deep down, he knew it wasn't your fault. And he goes home that day, eyes hollow, but filled with grief and love for your baby/ies.

YAN! KING

Soma would be pissy. Nobody should talk to him, or he'll blow his top off to them. You were giving birth! Can nobody understand that?! This is a crucial time that it needs his 101%, no, infinity percentage of his attention if that makes sense. He'll also break the rules and be inside the delivery room, letting you hold his hand and even break it. May it be from the pain or from you wanting to exact revenge. Who cares? He'll let you break it if it meant your comfort.

post-delivery Soma would be a lot calmer, and he'll immediately order the people to make you more comfortable, and treat you to make your recovery as fast as possible. Your kid will be given the best amenities, and made sure to have the best upbringing. Hell, he'll have the kid enrolled already and they only got birthed lol.

If you died, he'll be in a stormy mix of emotions. First, grief, second, denial, third, anger, and fourth, relief. Soma knew that what he did to you was wrong and not normal. He doesn't regret it at all. But now that you died when he himself did this to you... As he carries your baby in his arms, he somehow felt relief that you're gone from his clutches, and probably off to somewhere safer than by his side. He will take care of the baby, and he will slowly turn to normal.

YAN! GOD

Technically speaking, Liviticus can just spawn a kid. With the right genetic mix, etc. So it's up to you if you want to go with the nuances of pregnancy. He will be calm. Like, calm calm. It's almost unnerving how he smiles and leads you to an almost fantasy like ward (a forest) laid you down on the delivery bed (a comfortable circle mattress by the foot of a gigantic tree trunk) with helpers in tow (fantastical beasts), and guides you to a safe delivery. You weren't in pain, just a dull ache in your system as you push your child.

Post-delivery Liviticus will have him shower you with the most dazzling display of flowers and sprites dancing around you. The whole forest, and somehow the whole world feeling festive as they made this day a celebration, getting a divine message that the God's child is born. Everyone is ecstatic as they gave thanks to you, and worship you, and give blessings to you.

Again, unlikely to die. Considering your mortal body is dead, and now you're a goddess/god, you cannot die no matter what.

YAN! PROSECUTOR

Yuta was a nervous soon to be father, but he's more or less calm. He's following procedures to a tee, almost robot like. But in reality, he's on autopilot. He already panicked enough internally that he's robotic in your delivery day. You're already worried enough, why would he burden you with his whims and wiles too? He can't afford you getting your mind off of the baby at all. So, he's acting all calm and collected as he held your hand, wishing for everything to be over.

Post-birth Yuta will have him finally break down. At first, all of the personnel around him and you will be shocked as he slumps down to his knees. He doesn't even know why too. Until the tears fell, one by one and he's sobbing from relief. He'll thank you a thousand times, prostrate in front of you, and be spoiling you once you're good to eat. He's truly grateful.

If you die, Yuta will also fall to his knees and sob, but this time from grief as he lost his trusty partner, his true love. Why did he kill all of those people for? Just for you to die? He misses you a lot. He wants to hold you, kiss you again... But all for naught. Mysteriously, the people who helped you give birth died in random patterns. He'll also include others to put the suspicion off of him. But who cares right now? As he cradles your baby and watches the whole midwifery section burn and ensure that no mother dies from giving birth, he sighs, and wishes you were there with him.

[kaftan]

Some Notes on Arcs 18-20

(Long post! Here there be ramblings! Sorry)

- I forgot this was an arc 18 moment till I checked — Taylor feeling seduced (her words) by Dinah’s power, longing to hold on to her despite her mission being to free her… goosebumps. I love how the villains she hates rub off on her, worm (ha) into her.

- And then describing the act of returning her to her home as throwing away a resource… something that felt dumb to do… being proven right, in a sense, in arc 20, when it comes back to bite her… I’m reminded of some dialogue from animorphs that I’ll have to paraphrase, something about how what matters isn’t what’s right or wrong, it’s what’s expedient. Taylor isn’t all the way there yet, but feels like a matter of time.

- More on Taylor and morality: it’s fascinating to see her go through the same rough trajectory for every major battle — she starts from her baseline, being disturbed at the notion of seriously hurting or killing anyone, slowly numbs that sentiment with plenty of half-hearted strands of reasoning, eventually escalates to the point of cold-blooded violence or the enablement of such… and feels nothing. “Dissociation as an integral aspect of being” moment!

- I love Jessica Yamada. Not enough to read Ward, I have my limits. Getting a better perspective on the “all Amy’s horses and all Amy’s men couldn’t put Victoria back together again” situation was a treat. I love the horror elements in Worm. I love the horror of having the face of your trauma etched into the folds of your brain.

- Met Sveta! People on tumblr namedrop her a lot, to the point where I wondered if she’d been introduced before and I forgot. She’s a darling.

- Lily’s meltdown about Skitter… you can’t even look straight at her without feeling your skin crawl ❤️ but she sounds idealistic and naive even with cockroaches and bees crawling over her face ❤️ she starts making sense ❤️

- [Trickster voice] my beautiful gamer princess with a disorder… talk to me…

- This quote here:

“I mentioned it in passing to Miss Militia,” I said, “Better that you tell the truth and say we pushed hard for it. Blame me.”

“No,” Regent said, “Blame me.”

I shot him a look, and he shrugged. “Just wanted to get in on the fun,” he said.

says so much about Alec, lmao. It flagged in my brain because it’s the second time I’ve consciously noted it: his jokes about wanting to be included speak volumes. The truth he does not dare to know, etc etc

- Taylor “we cannot rule out human sacrifice” Hebert

- Marissa: She’s my friend. / Taylor: Was. It’s a big difference. Fast forward: Emma interlude, crossing paths at Arcadia. I love storytelling.

- Speaking of the Emma interlude: reading about Taylor’s bullying always makes me feel queasy; this was bone nausea on a deep level. What happened to Taylor is like if your worst fears about other people came true. You know, the nagging worry that you’re a burden, that a late text means I don’t want to be your friend. The worry that any reasonable person will tell you to ignore. How the fuck do you come back from living that nightmare?

Reminds me of Amy, how what happened to her is like if your worst fears about yourself came true.

- Everyone always talks about Taylor’s repressed rage but holy shit her repressed rage. What a character. What a character. I love her fantasies of violence. I love how much she basks in that meager catharsis.

- There’s something beautiful about how effortless the supervillain persona is for Taylor. (Every you is the real you, you are the mask and the wearer, etc.) Her standoff against Dragon and Defiant might be one of my favorite scenes yet. The perfectly affected nonchalance, the hanging threats toward hostages (becoming a theme), the mile-a-minute plotting, the grandiose gestures, the leveraging of fear… she’s a wonder and a terror.

- When she smiles and Clockbocker says “Fuck me, it just sunk in. It’s really her.” :-)))

- “and so that Defiant could make something resembling an apology as part of his twelve step assholes anonymous process” I fucking love you Taylor I love you forever

[redditreceipts]

I've been a very staunch supporter of trans ppl for years. I have learned to swallow my discomfort around some of the things said in those circles. When they said it was transphobic for lesbians to not like dick, I bit my tongue. I told myself, "this is just the loud minority" and to be fair I do think that is the minority but still ... as a lesbian I wasn't even able to talk about people who argued that because "it never happens. No one says that. That sounds like a transphobic lie." And I hate the constant assertions that gender is real, innate, and that everyone feels it. I can't describe my own experiences with growing up as a woman without someone telling me that maybe I'm nonbinary ... no thanks I tried that for a while. I respect everyone's gender, or I want to, but apparently doing that also requires me to put that oppressive structure onto myself and act like it's liberating.

The final snapping point for me was a trans woman telling me that I'm privileged for being a cis woman because I've never experienced dysphoria ... except I have. I grew up with intense thoughts about my body and hating my vagina and breasts. It was never that bad but I would often imagine mutilating. I'm in a better place now but I still feel some discomfort over my body sometimes. And when I expressed this to her, she asked me if I was really cis or was still questioning ...

They act like misogyny doesn't exist or something. I just ... I disagree with a lot of radical feminists beliefs or at least I think I do. But for years I have felt like radfems were the only ones even talking about misogyny anymore so idk

Anyway what I wanted to say is that I really like your posts and perspectives and thanks for this blog. I want to learn more and question more and your blog has become a helpful resource to help me start thinking critically about some things

Hey :) thanks for writing to me and sorry for the late answer. 

And yeah, you are totally right. I have also spent such a long time justifying gender ideology because I really wanted it to be right. I’ve excused so much weird behaviour with weird mental gymnastics because I didn’t want to accept that I had been wrong for such a long time. 

The entire “that never happens” thing - and then you show them an occasion where it happened, and they say “well, it doesn’t happen that much”. And yeah, people have suggested me being non-binary as well. I mean, by strict gender definitions I am non-binary because I don’t identify as a woman lmao. Just as the “you’re uncomfortable in your body?? what about fucking cutting it up??!!!!” thing. 

And for disagreeing with feminist beliefs, the thing is that being a feminist is not a package deal. You are not being some sort of heretic if you disagree with certain things, and I know that I am most probably wrong on a lot of stuff myself. If I wasn’t, I would be the first person who is always right in human history. And yes, even in feminist spaces, there is sometimes some sort of imperative to follow every single belief or you are not a “real feminist”. But being a feminist is not an identity, it is an action. It is an action towards yourself, in the workplace, in interaction with other women and men, in your consumption, in your voting, in how you support women in your personal life and how you do political action. So yeah, I would say that it is less important whether you follow every rule of the radical feminist catechism and more important to support women in your life (which includes yourself). At least, that’s my opinion. 

So if you want to learn more, you can look into literally anything Julie Bindel says on Youtube, I really like her perspective. And cool that you’re here! 

[stellae-de-baphometis]

Hello!! I am extremely new to demonolatry as I have very recently discovered it and I would like to know if you have any resources for beginners to read/watch that are helpful. Don’t worry about it if you don’t or if you simply don’t feel like it, I don’t mind!! Ty and have a nice day!!!!

Hey there! Terribly sorry for answering this so late. Xx So I've only been into Daemonolatry for about a year now, though I have learnt a lot thus far and I'd be more than happy to share some really important pointers to aid you in walking this path. ^.^

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So first and foremost before I get into the main blogpost, I really cannot stress this enough...

Please educate yourself on closed practices and steer clear of cultural appropriation in your personal practises. There are a group of people in the Daemonolatry community who appropriate the heck out of Jewish daemons, especially Lilith. Judaism is a closed practise and therefore it's only respectful to not incorporate Judaism into your personal practises. Appropriating Judaism is actually a form of anti-Semitism, so please be mindful and respectful of these things! 🖤

I'm ashamed to admit this but I actually used to think it was completely fine to appropriate Jewish daemons last year, thanks to subreddits like r/DemonlatryPractices who would constantly try to push propaganda about Lilith being a "Mesopotamian Pagan Goddess" and other excuses for appropriating her. That same subreddit decided to attack me when I merely mentioned (on a completely different subreddit, mind you) that I disagreed with them appropriating Lilith, and in turn I got witch-hunted so that's great lmao. 🤡

Please avoid that subreddit at all costs, it's an absolute cesspit of cultural appropriation and passive anti-Semitism, and honestly they exhibit cult-like behaviour if you do so much as simply disagree with the appropriation of Jewish daemons. It's pretty disturbing... But yeah anyways sorry for rambling lol.

I'd also recommend avoiding people and organisations such as S. Connolly, V.K. Jehannum, Satan & Suns/Sons, BlackWitchCoven, The BecomeALivingGod Forum, The Satanic Temple, Joy Of Satan Ministries, The Order Of Nine Angles, scarletarosa (a user that literally exists here on Tumblr... yikes), etc. They engage in Jewish appropriation, and some of them even have ties to Nazism, racism, and other forms of bigotry too.

Some other Jewish daemons/spirits that you should avoid appropriating alongside Lilith are; Naamah, Agrat Bat Mahalath, Eisheth Zenunim, Samael, Abyzou, and the Grigori / Watcher Angels.

There are many other closed practices too, but if you'd like to do further research I can leave that up to you. ^.^

Okay sorry about that huge ramble lmao, just thought I would get that out of the way before getting into the main post because I think it's an important point to make and I don't want you to fall down a cultural appropriation apologist pipeline like I did at the beginning of my practise lol. Xx

Anyways, let's talk about The Infernal Divine!

+: GIF Credit :+

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So we'll start with some really basic stuff. What exactly are daemons?

It's not commonly known outside of Daemonolatry that daemons themselves actually predate Christianity. The term 'demon' (alternatively spelled 'daemon') comes from the word 'daimon' which originates way back in Greek mythology. Daimons were a type of tutelary deity as well as guiding spirit whose divine nature was that of both mortals and deities. They were also sometimes regarded as bringers of knowledge, wisdom, and destiny. In this sense, they could be considered deities in their own right.

Contrary to popular belief, daemons are not evil and never were to begin with. It was only until the coming of Christianity that daemons as well as other gods were vilified and ostracised due to the cultish, radical, monotheistic mindset a lot of Christian extremists held back in the day. Lucifer himself was a "demonized" Roman god also known as Phosphorus, associated with light and the planet Venus. From that description alone, I don't really get evil vibes lol.

In my opinion, our world cannot simply be split up into just black or white, and daemons are no exception. Daemons aren't evil, but they aren't completely love and light either; They're neutral. Much like humans as well as the universe itself, the Infernal Divine are various shades of grey, and all daemons are unique and differ in personality.

⭒☆·━━━━━━━•( 🌑 )•━━━━━━━·☆⭒

So with all this in mind, what are some good resources that don't endorse and/or engage in appropriation of closed practices?

The YouTube channels ESOTERICA and ReligionForBreakfast have great information on the history of various religions and practises!

~ Book Recommendations ~

Livre des Esperitz

Dictionnaire Infernal

Pseudomonarchia Daemonum

Pandemonium: A Discordant Concordance Of Diverse Spirit Catalogues

I personally am working towards being a daemonolatry resource myself, but I haven't been able to post much lately due to my mental health issues. I also took an active break last year, as it was pointed out by a friend of mine that my belief of thinking it was fine to appropriate closed practises was obviously problematic, and so I took time off from posting in order to educate myself and delete any problematic blog posts I had made endorsing that in the past.

But nonetheless, I hope that what I was able to provide in this post was helpful! I wish you well on your spiritual path. 🖤

❀ ~ Many Blessings ~ ❀

-Korv

[lbulldesigns]

UPDATE (1 Month Later): AITAH For accusing my former best friend of trying to break up my relationship, and promptly ending our thirteen-year-long friendship?

Posted June 20th, 2021

TDLR: I (18M) allowed himself to get gaslit into believing that my best friend of 13 years was being toxic and possessive, and threw said friendship away without a second thought. And realized, too late, how stupid and rash I was being and now can't make things right because she ran away from home.

It's been a month since I last posted here, and have been getting comments asking for an update. I initially decided to not post here anymore, but figured that the people who showed genuine concern for Pow deserved an update.

Sorry for the silence, the past month has been emotionally taxing, to say the least, I'll try and keep this post short but fear it might be long.

So my last update ended with me at an Enforcers station with Pow's family, Van had managed to get hold of his best friend, who is also Pow, and Daisy's maternal uncle, to inform him and his wife about Pow's disappearance. The uncle appeared at the station shortly after getting off his flight, the two were on vacation and came home as soon as they found out Pow was gone, and went straight to the Enforcer at the front desk and just hands him a piece of paper.

I don't know what was on that paper, but suddenly the officer was super cooperative and calling the sheriff down to meet us.

There was a lot of back and forth between everyone, I honestly wasn't paying attention. But the uncle wasn't happy with how the whole situation was being handled, he was incensed with Van for not making sure Pow was where he expected her to be sooner, and was snappy with Daisy (for reasons I wasn't privy to).

He then turned his anger onto me and started interrogating me on how foolish I was and he wasn't pulling his punches, this man has a sharp tongue and a talent to hit where it hurts the most. He only stopped when his wife put a hand on his arm and just gave him a look, she then gave me a pitying look and he decided he was done with me then and there.

Long story short the sheriff stated that there was nothing they could legally do to search for Pow because she was 18 and had by all accounts left voluntarily, that they could put out a missing person for her in the hopes of performing a wellness check but considering she had gone home and taken some of her belongings and paperwork, the chances she'll hurt herself are slim and they couldn't waste resources looking for someone who doesn't want to be found.

We were confused for a second but then it was revealed that Cat, Daisy's GF, knows the sheriff (I didn't care to ask how) and had told her that her and Daisy had gone through Pow's room and found she had left her phone behind, as well as a note, and that some of her belongings were gone.

There was a lot of arguing going on at this point, mostly between Van and Daisy with him asking why she didn't say something to HIM earlier, but by this point I was checking out and only checked back in when Benny (my godfather) gently shook my shoulder to get my attention.

Everyone was looking at me, as if waiting for me to answer a question or something. Cat didn't say anything and handed Pow's phone to me, to show me something and what I saw made my whole body cold and numb.

There were chat logs between Pow and Kara, where Kara was being her "sweet self" and buddying up to Pow thanking her for her help with tutoring her for their science class. Apparently Pow was helping Kara with her studies because she was falling behind in science, and Kara was using this as an opportunity to become friends with Pow.

This would have been a good thing, except Kara was "helping" Pow realise her feelings for me, and encouraging her to confess her to me. She wasn't letting on that her and I were interested in each other, if anything she kept talking about me as if I were just an acquantance, a friend of a friend she says. I paid attention to the dates on every message and noticed when Pow finally decided to "take a leap of faith" and confess to me, was the same day Kara confessed she really liked me and asked if we could be offcial.

I felt sick and numb at the same time, I handed the phone back to Cat and then pulled my own out and unlocked it for everyone else to look through. I didn't say anything the whole time.

Everythign after that is a blur, everyone stood around talking but I didn't pay attention. Benny took me home but I didn't say anything. And when we got home, I just went to bed and didn't get out for a week.

Benny had called my school and told them that I was sick, and organised for my schoolwork to be delivered to my home so that I could catch up when I was feeling better. But I kinda just gave up on everything, my best friend was gone because of me and none of us could go look for her.

After a week, Clag (Pow's eldest brother) came into my room, took one look at me, sighed and then proceeded to fireman carry me out of my room and into the living room. Where Van, Daisy, and Zer were, to give me an intervention. They were worried for me and didn't want me to spiral further than I already was, Van told me that I made a dumb mistake but none of this was solely my fault, and that there were many contributing factors at play, and that giving up on everything wasn't going to help anyone let alone Pow.

I didn't fully believe him but a large weight had been taken off of my chest, Daisy said that she was there to talk at any point if I needed to and that she wasn't angry at me, she said that I was just as much a victim here as Pow, that the real person at fault was Kara.

I'll be honest I had completely forgotten about her at that point, and stupidly felt guilty for ignoring my GF before remembering that she was the drivng force behind everything. Suddenly I felt angry and sick all over again.

Zer noticed my change in mood and filled me in on what had happened at school, about how my friends and Kara had been planning on how to "get back" at Pow only for her to never turn up to school, and then I didn't turn up and wasn't picking up any of their calls.

She told me how she was in the girls toilets, hiding in one of the stalls trying to get hold of either me or Pow, when she heard Kara and her friends come in and listened to Kara bitching about how she couldn't get her "revenge" on that "blue haired bitch".

Kara had organised for half the school to meet up at the front of it, with half rotten tomatoes, ready to throw at Pow when she showed up. But she never did, and it spoilt the "fun" for Kara. One of her friends was being "comforting" and reminded Kara of the little gifts left in Pow's locker, Zer couldn't get a idea of what they emant because they were being vague.

One of the girls, apparently had an actual braincell and morsel of conscience, and asked if maybe Pow didn't actually know and if this wasn't a bit much. Kara actually groaned and said that "that was the point" and that everything worked out much better than she expected because of what a "simp" I am.

There are no words to describe how I'm feeling, even now. I want to say angry but that feels like an understatement, I probably shouldn't direct all my anger at Kara, I should never have been swayed, but the difference is that Kara had meticuosly planned this like a complete sociopath.

I wanted to get back at her, but I also did't want to be worse than her. So I did the only thing I could think of. I dumped her over text. I just said "I know everything. We're done" and then blocked her number, after saving screenshots of her messages. She never said anything obviously incrimidating, but I felt it was worth doing so anyway.

I also told Zer about the messages between Pow and Kara, and Zer just said "leave it to me". She also told me that she wanted to still stay friends, but that she wouldn't hold back in any ass whooping in the future if I got stupid again.

For now, Benny has organised for me to take an extended leave from school on the condition that I do all of my schooling online. He also organised with Pow's aunt for me to volunteer at the food drive and community centre she runs, I'm thankful for how much of a caring person she is. She adores Pow and is disappointed in me for my actions, but she's also a forgiving person and believes in second chances.

I'm sorry for the long post, this will be the last post I make about all of this. I wish that it could have ended with Pow coming home, and everything being well again but it isn't.

She's still gone, but knwing that she took money, clothes, and necessary paperwork with her makes me hopeful that she'll take care of herself. She's an incredibly intelligent person afterall, maybe one day I'll see her in collage or run into her on the street.

But until then, I'll work on myself. Better myself. And hopefully grow to be a better man, than I was a boy.

Thank you to everyone who simultaneuoly kicked some sense into me, and showed support throughout all of this.

Take care.

[furiousgoldfish]

Hi, just a little reminder to everyone who has attempted to message me or talk to me, and didn't get a reply or didn't get a reply they wanted.

I often have people messaging me expecting instant friendship and emotional support and talking to me as if we already knew each other. I don't think this is done with ill intent, but I do want to gently remind everyone that we are complete strangers when interacting online, and that I cannot grant anyone instant friendship; to me you are a person I don't know. I will talk to you as a stranger would. Even if you've been reading my words and taking solace and imagining a friend telling them to you, to me you are someone I've never met or known, and I cannot function as an emotional support on a personal level to strangers. It ultimately is not helpful for you to convince yourself that a stranger on the internet is your personal friend, or to push that stranger into trying to act the part; I am unable to fulfill this role. I am not emotionally well myself, and I do not have a support system, so being put in a situation where I'm expected to be one for a stranger feels unhealthy.

Another thing I'd love for everyone to remember is, that I don't have all of the answers. I love to help where I can, but ultimately I am a person in a lot of distress, trying to deal with multiple disorders without any access to therapy or even friends who understand what I'm going thru. I am isolated and posting on this blog is often all I have. If I knew how to get rid of trauma, how to deal with disorders, how to not be sick or in pain, how to evade abuse or how to feel okay, I would use this advice to fix my own life. But I am sadly, lost like the rest of us.

There are times where I am in too much distress to talk to anyone, if you sent me a message and it went unanswered, it is very likely that I was in a state so bad I could not communicate. I will usually recover from it within several weeks, but by that time I feel bad even reminding someone they've sent me a message, it feels asinine to try and reply so late. And it reminds me of the period where I felt bad looking at the message, unable to respond. I'm not ignoring messages on purpose. If you try again some time later, you're likely to get a reply, if I'm in a good state of mind.

However, if you send me a big number of messages at once, start talking about your issues without asking if it's okay first, send several messages without a reply and then keep sending them and demanding a reply, put pressure on me to communicate with you, try to guilt me into giving you an answer you want, or assuming I'm maliciously ignoring you, you've made me uncomfortable and I have to listen to my instincts and stop talking to you.

I am sensitive to anger, aggression, ranting, swearing, slur-use, and doing that in a conversation with me it will make me feel threatened. Because we're strangers, and any stranger acting like I'm an acceptable target to take their anger at is dangerous. We are not friends, and dealing with angry strangers is terrifying. In that situation I have to do what I would advise anyone else to do - leave the conversation.

The last issue is with people attempting to trigger me on purpose, pretending they need help then defending abusers, trying to convince me that all of my resources are harmful and doing nothing but damage, or trying to get me to delete my content, change my posts, advocating for abusers, siding with my abusers, telling me I'm a monster, insisting they're victimized by me unless I personally disprove my smear campaign to them, and generally trying to get me to lash out in order to post it online to claim I should be cancelled. That is the worst thing you could be doing to a traumatized abuse victim. I am a person, of course I sometimes say something wrong and not well thought and put out. That doesn't mean anything I ever do to help others is worthless and should be erased. And you will not convince me that my blog is useless or harmful. It helps me. And I am someone too.

[nerdygaymormon]

I just found this blog and I got super excited because lately it’s been feeling like both my online and irl life surroundings have been trying to convince me that my faith and my sexuality (I realized about two years ago that I’m bi and I am also a very active member of the church) are two separate and sometimes even opposing sides to my identity even though I know that they’re just two ingredients in the Me Soup that don’t seem like they mix on paper but you can’t make Me Soup without both of those ingredients (sorry if that doesn’t make any sense). There are a few people that I’m out to and they get it but they don’t get it and even just skimming a few posts on this blog has helped me to feel a little better. I’ve never doubted that I’m loved and accepted by God and my family no matter what (thankfully) but it’s really hard to find other places that makes me feel totally accepted, whether we’re talking about my faith or my sexuality they have a hard time with. I also really appreciate that you seem to have an attitude of ‘what’s right for me won’t be right for other people’ instead of ‘there is a definitive right and wrong way to deal with this’ and I feel like that’s a really rare thing to find online. Thank you for creating this safe place to exist

Thank you for such a kind note!!!

As a queer person, I don't feel incompatible with God, but sometimes I have struggles with the LDS church and hope it will figure out that all are alike unto God.

Queer Mormons get each other in a way that few others do. Check the hashtag #queerstake and you'll find more of us. Also, we're on Discord at #queerward (DM me for more info)

There are some groups out there that may be of interest to you. I'll list a few of them:

Lift+Love has monthly zoom group meetings for people.

Affirmation is an organization for queer LDS people no matter where they are in their faith journey, and may have a local chapter near you where you can meet others (not all the chapters on the map are currently active, but worth a shot).

Last year was the first Gather Conference, and about 1400 people showed up to Provo for it. I'm not sure when it will be held in 2024, but if you're able to make it, I think you'll really get a lot from it. Meanwhile, you can check out videos of the presentations from the 2023 conference.

Beyond the Block podcast was maybe the first podcasts created to go with the Come, Follow Me study program. It is hosted by a gay man and a Black man. They aren't currently making new episodes, but they did weekly episodes for 4 years so there's likely an episode for nearly every week's Come, Follow Me lesson

Questions from the Closet is a podcast by two gay men in Provo. One recently married his husband and they still attend church, the other guy is also an active Latter-day Saint and just announced he's going to start dating.

Over the years I've written about a number of scripture verses from a queer perspective. One day I'll make a post which will contain links to all of them, but until then, you can do a search for the hashtags #queer faith & #queer scriptures.

I hope you find many resources and communities which affirm all that is part of your Me Soup.

[reasonsforhope]

A wild about post appears!

Me

Hey! Call me Cactus. They/them, late twenties. I also run Direct Action for Hope, for petitions/campaigns/protests that don’t fit on a good news blog, as well as my own takes and activism.

Queer, trans, disabled, white, USian, for context. (Please let me know if I accidentally post something offensive, btw! I promise I have like. an actual ability to take that kind of feedback gracefully and work to remedy the situation)

 Some Info about This Blog

Actual good news only!

No heartwarming stories that aren’t actually news. No stories that other sources THINK are heartwarming, but that are actually super depressing and dystopic!

All websites/sources are at least preliminarily vetted by me

If I don’t think a source and/or a news story I find is accurate or reliable enough, I find a new, better source with a new, better article

Relatedly, any links that have the url web.archive go to an Internet Archive copy of a paywalled article. Usually this is the LA Times, NY Times, or Washington Post. Not a weird suspicious link, I promise!

All posts are cited and dated at the end!

All posts should be tagged, including for major/common content warnings. I can’t promise that I won’t miss any warnings, but I am definitely keeping an eye on this

Filter the tag “not news” if you only want to see the news articles/posts

Feel free to send me articles to look at or submit posts! I’ll vet these before I feature them. That said, you might be waiting A While, because despite many efforts to the contrary I am the worst about checking/answering messages. Sorry about that

Posts are generally long because I have Many Words And Endless Details Disease. Hopefully the thoroughness and the bolded highlights make up for that

A couple people have asked me if I could share their donation posts, so I wanted to pin this up: I’m sorry, but unfortunately, I will not be sharing any donation posts, because I don’t have the time or skills to vet all of them and weed out any potential scams. If you’re struggling, please check out this post, which lists communities designed for donation posts and mutual aid. You’re much more likely to get help there than on tumblr. You can also find other mutual aid resource lists and wikis here, here, and here

If you’re struggling with depression or anxiety, especially around climate anxiety or climate grief, there’s a really, really thorough directory of crisis hotlines by country that you can find here. Seriously, they have so many countries I wouldn’t have expected them to list - try it, if it might help

Tip Jar

I put a lot of work and passion into this blog—and a not inconsiderable amount of time. Also, I’ve been too disabled to work much at all for most of the past year...rip. (but thankfully doing better now!) So, if you want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee!

Good News Source

You can find a comprehensive list of all the websites I’ve bookmarked as sources for this blog here!

Note about Gaza

I will be posting good news (as much good news as there can be in this sort of situation) about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, because one of the most important ways to help is to refuse to be silent. Palestinians in Gaza have asked us to please keep talking about it, that it really does help, so I’m going to listen.

And honestly, my disabilities significantly interfere with my ability to take irl action like going to protests, so using what platform I have here really is all the more important to me. (Though I am also setting a notif on my phone to remind me to call my representatives every few days, and I encourage you to do the same if feasible.)

All that said! It is completely legitimate to need a break from horrific news (a huge part of why I started this blog), and it’s also legitimate to say “I need to find out about this stuff Not from my tumblr dash.”

If news about the war/genocide (esp on social media specifically) is making you spiral and shit, then I genuinely encourage you to filter out these posts. I’m not judging. I have significant filters around what Israel/Palestine stuff I see on here myself, because I want to be very intentional about the times I do engage with it. (Which is every few days and via the Actual News.)

I’m committing to fact-checking this stuff before posting, fyi, even with reblogs.

So, tl;dr:

I will be posting about Palestine and Gaza

I will still only post good news, eg: about successful protests, aid reaching Gaza, progress toward ceasefire

I’ll only post actual, concrete news, not just Politicians Saying Words

If you need to not find about this shit from tumblr and/or my tumblr, then filter out the tags “Palestine” and “cw war”

If you don't want to see my posts on this blog about the Israel-Palestine War, then block the tags "Palestine" and "cw war"

if you need a break, then take a break

[desultory-novice]

A-ahem. Starting over again...

@newthinkerer found THS post and said to me: "I'm sure the Kirby fandom has done something to grind your gears."

Which, in truth, the answer is not lately / not really no. ^^; But it wasn't hard to reach in and find some "comical outrage" style gear-grindy answers for those who find such rants entertaining! So, here those are for everyone's (hopeful) enjoyment

[Original Response Below] Ohhh? Did you want "Salty" Dess? XD Let's go down the list...!

Marx / Reduced to one single trait

Look, I know the games don't give people much to go on, but a lot of people (1) seem ha~ppy to come up with pages and pages of backstory for all the other characters - but Marx? Nope. Marx is the one character who people seem almost allergic to rounding out when he is RIPE with mystery and potential. "But the game doesn't tell us anything about him so maybe he isn't that big of a deal, Dess?" Tsk! The game tells us just as little about Meta Knight! The only difference is the number of appearances! Use your imagination, people!

It's like some folks are trying to invoke the Smash Bros conspiracy theory that Kumazaki and Sakurai have a rivalry (they don't) and just like Sakurai would NEVER put a Kumazaki-era character in Smash (...he already did in the form of the trophies) no one is allowed to characterize Marx cause he's from the Sakurai-era of Kirby where characters just didn't have personalities and lore! Pah, I say!

Oh yeah, if you want to see me destroy something, say "He was just hungry!" : ) in my presence. Do it. I dare youuuuuu...! 

:holds Magolor over a wood chipper:

Susie / They stole (...some planetary resources and MK's autonomy...) and fandom labeled them a hard criminal

You all knew this one was coming, right? ^^ But if I start up the Susie debate again, I'm going to regret it so, uh, let's move on...

Kirby / Popular headcanon so off-base it hurts. 

I fear the Metadad people have their hands over the block button right now. But it's not that MetaDad is necessarily wrong! MK can act protective, sure. It's "Baby Kirby" that is wrong! He lives on his ownnnnnn with a houseeee he does not need babyinnnng.....!!

Magolor / Constant (eh, semi-frequent??) misinterpretation

...I want to be as gentle as possible when I say this because I GET IT. Please believe me when I say I understand so, so much and as far as AU versions/alternate HC goes, it's fine! This isn't a call out!

But... Magolor being a shy, reserved kitty boy who just wants...f-friends... Look, Magolor may not have EVERY disease, but he does have a lot of them. However awkward he may be though, the form his awkwardness takes is very clearly extroverted! Again, it's super okay though because I get seeing yourself or an aspect of yourself you're dealing with in a character and wanting to make them more like you! Dess supports comfort characters! (Plus, my own version of Magolor is a little laser-sighted on his frustrated side)

...But he runs a shop and a theme park. He actually LIKES talking to/dealing with people! He gets along with Marx because he LIKES tricking people. He likes to get under people's skin! He doesn't fear it! Magolor is/has been sad and probably has some deep trauma, yeah. But he also deserves to be more than :gif of a sad cat:

DMK / The worst takes.... 

I'm not going to start up The Debate here, same as with Susie, but... The unabashed glowing adoration the fandom has for Meta Knight and you take away ONE good trait and enhance ONE bad trait and now he is Satan?!? Some of you people hate him more than HYNESS (:spoken by a Hyness fan:) and I don't know why?!

Maybe add on "He would never say that" for the people who do the opposite and make him exactly like MK but he says the F word

Daroach / ...Ignored

Like, the real crime (haha, get it? crime?) about Daroach is that he IS used occasionally. More than like, I dunno, Chew Kawasaki? But when he does show up, it's with his crew being "The Leader of the Squeaks" (showcasing that Dad Energy(tm)) or DMK's husband. (The thief and the murderer are boyfriends! Diversity win!) And...that's it?

Daroach has so much potential to interact with literally everyone?! He roasts Dedede IN GAME?! Why are people not running with this energy more?! (Also, shipping Darkroach because of that one picture is fine. I do too. Shipping Darkroach because you don't want to break up MetaDede and so you relent to "giving" him MK's mirror clone like buying a grieving kid a new puppy is...kinda weird? Just me?)

Adeleine / Reduced to one single trait (part two)

...This might sound like THE most hypocritical thing coming from the creator of "Apologies" aka, "Sad Siblings in Snow" but Adeleine potentially being from Shiver Star (potentially!) equating her to "The Little Match Girl." Now I love all kinds of Adeleine origin headcanons! And I also love Sad Adeleine on Shiver Star stories! I don't want to put an end to them or suggest they are bad thing! Never!

But... I worry e~very now and then THAT  is the thing people find most interesting about her. That she would/should be a sad girl when she's really not. Since writing "Apologies," I've gotten a handful of asks about how Adeleine must be really sad about Noir's death or asking if she will ever be able to smile again and... like...um...

...S-she is? Already smiling, that is. ^^; "Apologies" was crafted in a way to PROTECT Adeleine's innocence so that she can be happy and relatively close to the canon Adeleine! Adeleine being able to move on with her life and smile and make friends is exactly the thing Noir died for - so that Adeleine wouldn't have the life he did!

So, again, kinda hypocritical of me because I actually really like sad Adeleine art and "Adeleine the Human" HC, but I sometimes fear it might become all that she is.  :spoke by a contributor to this trend:

...TLDR, continue to write and draw Adeleine angst because it allows me to ignore the option I almost considered just for a second which was sexualiza...Nope. We're going to go back to forgetting about all that unfortunate Pixiv content right.this.minute!

-

(1) So, despite my tone and the things I said, I'm not actually upset at anyone for anything they'd done! I'm really happy that people are creating at all - whether you're writing sad Magolor or itty bitty Kirby or lol random Marx or PTSD Adeleine or trophy husband Daroach!

I don't even see a lot of the things I'm ostensibly complaining about anymore, honestly. Thus my reasons for posting less and less salt on this account! Outside of a few fandom kerfluffles in the last month (alas...) I would say we're actually in an era of peace as far as good content about the characters goes! People are thinking and inventing. People are having fun. People are being measured with their takes and anything "gear grindy" is really going to be remembered stuff from the past, not present flaws!

...plz don't block me...

[dwn024]

hii i was wondering if you have any good resources or tips for y2k styled background patterns/elements? i wanted to look at stuff for some inspo but i've got a lot of trouble figuring out the right search terms and stuff to find specifically what i'm looking for... you're The Y2K Mutual in my head so i was hoping you might be able to help out? XP

YOU HAVE COME TO THE RIGHT MAN MY DEAR FRIEND

first off, in general when it comes to Y2K design research [and really any any historical aesthetic design from 1960s-present] i always love to point people towards the consumer aesthetics research institute

it is the most useful research on this subject you will probably ever find because it is VERY well organized, well researched, they're the ones that coin basically all the aesthetic names that the aesthetic fandom wiki uses, and at some point since the last time i checked the site they added a new search feature that lets you filter by relevant decade!

now for Y2K type shit you might be tempted to search for resources from "the 2000s", but the Y2K futurism aesthetic was actually already on its way out by 2003 [the decline officially started post-9/11] and many 2000s aesthetics are wayyyy more different than the Y2K futurism type visuals i specialize in. it's better to seek out things from the 90s, especially late 90s [1996-2000 is the general Peak Era for Y2K style design], but don't limit yourself to JUST the 90s! it's also extremely helpful to look at the decades that Inspired Y2K futurism, because the late 90s was nostalgic for the 60s and 70s, so a lot of design styles from those eras are useful to research too! i mean just look at space channel it is EXTREMELY 70s revival

Y2K futurism itself is its own distinct aesthetic style, but it's very connected in a web of other visual styles from the same era. plus, the term "Y2K" has been corrupted by bad SEO and people who don't know what they're talking about conflating it with mcbling, so just searching "Y2K" won't really net you anything very helpful. "Y2K futurism" or "cyber Y2K" are good search terms to start with!

besides just the classic Y2K style, here are some other similar/related styles that will help you branch out your research even further

disco deco [60s] *art deco revival combined with disco aesthetics. you can very clearly see its influence on Y2K when you look at a lot of the fonts; case in point bauhaus 93 AKA the homestar runner font

supergraphic ultramodern [60s] *very very influential on Y2K design trends especially with all the organic flowing shapes

corporate gen-X cyber [90s]

gen X soft club [90s]

metalheart [90s]

vectorheart [90s] ***my personal favorite and probably what you think of when you think of flat Y2K graphics and UI

ultramodern revival [90s] *revival of supergraphic ultramodern with Y2K flair

frutiger aero [00s] *USE AS INSP WITH CAUTION. this style sprung into being AFTER the Y2K style had already waned, but since history is more like a gradient than a checkerboard, very very early examples of frutiger aero overlap with Y2K and contain similar design elements. still, if you're going to look into it, try to stick to the earliest possible examples, especially since Later frutiger aero starts to look very apple minimalist in a way i can't stand

mcbling [00s] *same as above, WITH MORE ANGRY PASSION THIS TIME!!!! Y2K futurist fashion is WAY different from mcbling, but more casual everyday fashion styles from 1998-2003 are fairly similar/precursors to mcbling, but mcbling and Y2K are NOT the same and should NOT be conflated. mcbling's real popularity began After the death of Y2K, so they weren't exactly The Big Thing at the exact same time

^all of the above can be found on the CARI website with plenty of example pictures. thank you for coming to me with this question if you have any further questions do not hesitate to ask i would be happy to help^_^