#it's one of those formative experiences that i wouldn't have gotten if i'd stuck to just '10/10' games

[greatwyrmgold]

More Otherverse OCs

A bunch of people liked the last post I made about an Otherverse character I made up, so I figured I'd share a couple more with varying degrees of detail.

Frode Kvasir, the Emptied Vessel

I'll start with Frode, since he's possibly the most detailed out of all of these. But those details are all in this Reddit post I wrote on him, so I won't write too much here.

Frode is basically an Other in the form of a transient, which faeries created and use to gather and refine the experiences of people faerie don't want to directly interact with. He's stuck in a cycle where he gets rescued by local unhoused people; listens to, refines, and shares stories; and has all of that knowledge violently extracted from him before being abandoned again.

Eve Penders, Glamour Alchemist

The protagonist of Pith, a fanfic I posted one chapter of. Her backstory was supposed to be explained in chapter 2, but I never got that to a state I was happy with before getting distracted.

Born Evelynn Micaiah Isolda Pendra, firstborn of a couple of lesser faerie Practitioners. Her parents pawned her off to the faerie for reasons she was too young to understand. The terms were relatively lenient, with three important points.

First, there was an option to buy Evelynn back at a later date, if the original price plus interest was paid. The parents intended to use this option more or less immediately, once they used the amount borrowed to do...something...but if this worked, being sold probably wouldn't be a defining moment of Evelynn's childhood. After all...

The faerie swore not to seriously or permanently harm Evelynn for the duration of the contract. No long-term transformations, no maiming, no stripping away her identity, stuff like that.

Finally, the contract would end when Evelynn came of age. No more special protections, no precontracted buy-back, etc. Evelynn would have one chance to win her freedom at that point, with terms left up to her owner. If she won, she'd be given a new life to replace the one she lost. Otherwise...

Eve's feelings about this arrangement are complicated. She recognizes that her parents cared about her to some extent; if they didn't, they could have gotten a much better price out of her. But at the same time, they still sold their own child to the Fair Folk. If they truly loved her, wouldn't they have found another way? If nothing else, one parent could have agreed to be temporarily sold. Aren't parents supposed to do stuff like that, to sacrifice themselves instead of their children?

Stripping away details that only matter in the context of the unwritten fanfic: Evelynn's contract was passed around, and wound up in the hands of Guildmaster Morcant, a faerie businessman who ran a literal sweatshop. (His workers make stuff, but the sweatshop's primary money-maker is the sweat of exploited children.)

Morcant has a thing for stripping away names and identities from his workers, to make them fit into his machine better, but he was limited in what he could do to Evelynn by the terms of the contract. He could reduce her name to Eve Pendra, but couldn't eliminate her personal identity or ties to her family. Eve caused enough problems for this faerie that he wound up selling her off; he sees the whole thing as a big disgrace.

As her eighteenth birthday approached, Eve's contract wound up in the hands of one of Morcant's rivals. Eve convinced her that she could embarrass Morcant again by selling Eve to him, specifically so he could get vengeance on her through the contest...and also giving Eve enough of an edge that she won the contest he rigged.

That happened; Eve won. She kept the gifts she was given to win the contest (notably including the ability to produce a small amount of glamour herself), and also gained a new life to replace the one she was taken from.

Eve Penders was no longer connected to the Pendra family, but she had awakened at a normal age and was trained in the art of using glamour. Eve Penders was awakened, bound by the Seal of Solomon as a Practitioner, but Eve technically never took the relevant oaths herself; thus, her Practice tends to be fragile and ephemeral.

Eve has the skill of someone trained by a family of faerie Practitioners, but this quirk of her Awakening exaggerates the weaknesses of glamour-based Practice. Luckily, she chose to attend college in a town where a prominent alchemist lived. Alchemy is a much more stable Practice, to the point that even non-Practitioners can use it to some extent.

Eve still uses glamour sometimes, both on its own and in conjunction with alchemy. For instance: After she decides to turn against her tutor, for reasons irrelevant to this bit, she steals alchemical reagents she's working with, replacing the stolen portion with glamour. Since some of the active ingredient is still present, the potion has part of its normal effect; the glamour makes it appear to be fully effective. Eve hopes nobody will realize it isn't before she's rescued her tutor's homunculus-clones and turned fully against him.

The Melomanic Bug & the Calamity Bug

This story starts with a third bug, the Millennium Bug. This Bug was a Nex Machina, created when a technomancers tried to channel some of the global fears over Y2K into an entity they could use. They wound up snaring more of the Y2K panic than they anticipated, creating a centipede-shaped Other powerful enough that it took most of the powers in one of the world's largest cities to contain.

Luckily, the technomancers tried this in late 1999, so it wasn't long before Y2K went—and with it, most of the fear that kept it going. The Millennium Bug collapsed in on itself as people realized that Y2K was largely under control. But that much power can't just go nowhere.

First off, the Millennium Bug created a powerful echo. (A pale shadow of the original Bug's power, but that's still very potent, especially compared to other vestiges.) It was bound by a Practitioner with an interest in creating artificial Others, who sacrificed several visceral Others in an effort to stabilize the echo. The first of these was a musically-inclined bogeyman, which was disproportionately influential over the end result—a slithering bug-snake-thing surrounded by haunting music. The Melomanic Bug.

Now, part of the process of stabilizing the Melomanic Bug involved forging a sort of master-familiar bond with it. The Bug's creator(?) assumed two things: That the stabilization would be largely effective, and that a familiar bond with a powerful Other would be less hazardous if he designed the Other for the purpose of being his familiar. These assumptions were theoretically sound; in practice, what he was doing was too experimental and volatile to have that much hope in things going according to plan.

The Melomanic Bug's "master" now spends most of his time maintaining either the Bug or his connection to it. It's only a matter of time until something disrupts him enough that he gets utterly subsumed by the Bug. Whether this results in the whole thing messily collapsing/detonating or gaining enough Self to truly stabilize depends on the circumstances.

But the Millennium Bug didn't just leave a ghost, it left an impression, something like the Carmine Beast's. But instead of collecting violence, it collected fear; and instead of manifesting as violent behavior, it coalesced into a new bug. A scorpion-shaped mass of the dread people felt towards a seemingly inevitable doom.

Known as either the Millenarian Bug (a reference to millenarianism) or the Calamity Bug, its core was formed around fears that the city would decay under a crime wave, which has a strong influence on it. However, over the past couple decades, most of the power it accumulates comes from global climate change.

The Calamity Bug can take human form, appearing somewhere between a corporate executive and a yakuza boss. (Did I mention that these characters were written for a fic set in Tokyo?) If it isn't trying to look normal, it has a stovepipe hat like a caricatured 19th-century industrialist, aside from the fact that it's belching smoke like a literal stovepipe.

Aside from this shapeshifting, the Calamity Bug retains some of the Millennium Bug's Nex Machina nature. In particular, it infects areas with its presence, cutting them off from reality. People trapped in these areas emerge, apparently the victims of either violent crime or industrial accidents. And of course, it has an affinity for technology—especially internal combustion cars and industrial machinery.

The Calamity Bug and Melomanic Bug are nowhere near the godlike power of the Millennium Bug, but they're certainly among the city's local powers. (Well, the Melomanic Bug's "master" is—that Bug isn't fully sentient.) They're remnants of a calamity that almost befell the city.

The Virgin Killer

A bogeywoman, living in the same town as Eve Penders up there. They are, in fact, friends! It's probably worth noting that the city they live in has an associated realm, called the Undertow. It's a bit like Kennet's undercity, but shallower and less bloody. The details matter in theory, but aren't interesting enough to get into here.

The Virgin Killer usually goes by Virginia or VK, both because her true name is a double misnomer and because it's not a name most people would want to be called by. The big thing I like about VK is the way she hunts.

Imagine you're some stereotypical frat boy, bar-crawling to get lucky. You're drunkenly hitting on girls, ignoring them when they tell you to buzz off, maybe getting a little handsy. Finally, one girl responds positively, a girl wearing a white jacket over a red sweater. Virginia. She looks vaguely familiar, but you're pretty sure you've never seen her before.

Virginia invites you to her place, and you accept. But something's off about the apartment. it's eerily quiet, and you notice that she doesn't turn around after taking off her jacket, even when she's leaving the room. As Virginia goes to tidy up her room, you think you see something move by her shoulder. A trick of the light, surely.

When she's ready, you head into her room. Virginia faces you still, sitting on her bed, wearing her red sweater. On the wall behind her is a great big mirror; you can see that Virginia's sweater is backless.

So is Virginia.

Where there should be smooth human skin, there is instead a gaping cavity. Bloody things squirm in her hollow torso, like a cross between intestines and earthworms, coated in blood.

You flip the fuck out. Virginia stands up, asks if something's wrong. The things in her back unfurl, stretch out behind her. One reaches forward, you stumble backward before it can grab you. This shit is not worth the pussy.

You run out of the apartment, Virginia following. You scream for help, but nobody responds. One of her bloody tentacles almost grabs your arm, your ankle, your neck. You run out the back door, duck through an unfamiliar alley, keep running, running.

Suddenly, you realize she's gone. You're in the middle of downtown, in the middle of the night, high on adrenaline, with a bit of red smeared on your cheek. But you're alive.

Over the coming weeks, you keep thinking you see Virginia in the corner of your eye. It's not her, just some classmate or neighbor or random chick who looks kinda like her. But seeing those girls reminds you of that horrific night again.

So yeah, that's VK. She hunts douches, brings them to her apartment (which straddles the normal city and the Undertow), reveals her true form, chases the douche back through the Undertow version of her neighborhood into the normal city, and lingers in their mind.

That last effect is achieved through glamour she barters from Eve, which lets her look a bit like the women her targets run into. Not their friends or family, just random women they happen to pass by regularly. Each time someone thinks they see VK and is afraid it's actually her this time, she feeds on that fear. And there are a lot of douches in town.

VK is, physically speaking, one of the strongest Others in town. She works as an enforcer for the local council—keeping peace in the market, intimidating ornery goblins, driving out unwanted intruders, that sort of thing. She doesn't have a lot of special tricks; she looks human, looks familiar, and has basic bogeyman tricks plus extremely strong back tentacles.

Okiko, the Cinder-Urchin

A side character in an Otherverse/Jujutsu Kaisen crossover fic I never wrote. My notes identify her as "an 'it's complicated,'" specifically noting "Ghost:Wraith::Revenant:Okiko". Which doesn't feel quite right, looking back, but it's a snappy opener.

There once was a petty thief, shot to death by police officers while running from the scene of a crime—a common enough occurrence in any large city. Somewhat less commonly, she got up and began killing police officers in revenge.

Practitioners working in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department reacted quickly. One of them caught the revenant and threw together a quick-and-dirty positive binding to keep her in place long enough for her to be bound properly. As Pact/Pale nerds know, positive bindings bind like with like; they're not particularly forceful, but they feed power into the bound Other, so it generally chooses not to break the binding.

The Practitioner contacts Sakura*, a local incarnation of Spring. She wove living green plants into the revenant's binding while the group's more powerful members got ready to deal with it. In theory, this was replacing the positive binding with a negative one, binding (un)death with life, which would keep the revenant trapped against its will. Instead, the revenant kept drawing power from the life-infused binding.

This made the revenant verdant, stronger than expected, and unsuited for what the police Practitioners had prepared. She escaped to kill more police officers; they tried to bind her again, this time in fire, but again she drank from their binding and became a burning torch of a revenant.

I'm a bit torn on whether the group should try to bind her with a third thing, have her overcome it a third time to cement Okiko as a breaker of bindings, and then contact the local Lord; or if they should see that coming and contact the Lord first. Either way, the Lord gets contacted.

For most Lords, this should be the end of the story. The Lord sees that this new Other is a threat to the local community and puts it down. But this is a Jujutsu Kaisen crossover, and part of the fic's premise is that Satoru Gojo is the Lord of Tokyo.

For those who don't read/watch JJK, Gojo has an anarchist streak. In my fic, he took the position of Lord specifically to prevent anyone else from using it; when he realized powerful Practitioner families and such took this opportunity to abuse their power even more, he instead started abusing his Lordship to disrupt various power blocs in Tokyo's Practitioner community.

So instead of destroying the revenant, Gojo shapes her, guides her. This is where the revenant becomes Okiko. No longer is she blindly attacking anyone in a police uniform; she's a being of life and fire and freedom, delivering righteous violence on those who abuse their power over others. Police officers, of course, but also corrupt politicians and abusive businessmen and the like. Obviously the police Practitioners aren't happy about this outcome, but the optics of complaining about how she still murders the cops who brutalize people aren't great, and it's not like they could directly oppose Satoru Gojo even if he wasn't Lord.

That's Okiko. A revenant who gained a knack for absorbing anything used to bind her, consolidated into someone who punishes abuse of power.

*Sakura isn't notable in any way I feel like sharing, but I really like her name. See, sakura/cherry blossoms are symbolically important in Japanese culture, and specifically symbolize the start of spring, when the titular cherry blossoms—hey, where are you going? Come back!

Carl Thurow, Magus at Law

(He isn't an attorney but I don't have any other law magi to make that joke with)

"The universe is perfectly balanced. Action and reaction, good and evil, debit and credit. All things have a price equal to their value, and that is how it should be."

A Law Magus/accountant who buys into the status quo hard. He started with significant advantages that he turned into overwhelming strength, so he assumes anyone else could do the same if they worked at it. Never mind the fact that he actively made it harder for others to succeed as he ascended.

Another critical part of Carl's worldview is the belief that everything is a zero-sum game. He believes that for anyone to gain something, someone else needs to lose something. (Justified in part by seeing the world as innately competitive; if Alice gets stronger, Bob gets weaker. Mostly justified by being extremely loose with his logic.) The only way to make the world better or worse is for the "good" people to gain as much as possible at the expense of "bad" people.

He has two unique points of Practice.

First: With a proper ritual space, tools, and enough time, Carl can calculate a numerical representation of value for a person/object/etc. Their karma, their Self, their social clout, their personal strength, and so on, reduced to a single number. This process involves drawing a diagram around them—like long division, but magical (and circular).

Once he's done this, Carl can add additional elements to the diagram to either drain or add raw power to them. Draining power leaves them diminished but exaggerated; a goblin becomes pettier and nastier, a faerie becomes more ethereal, an Incarnation becomes less human and more axiomatic. Adding power dilutes them, making them less special (though more powerful).

Second: With a bit of raw power and the right ritual diagram, Carl can create two equal and opposite spirits. This has many uses; for instance, some elementalists would be interested in someone who could turn a store of raw power into fire and ice elementals.

Most often, though, Carl does this to create Omens of fortune and misfortune, binding the former to bolster his own luck and inflicting the latter on those he deems deserving. (Being a Law Magus, he's naturally skilled at finding karmically-deserving targets.) Frequently, these people are already desperate; an extra dose of misfortune drives them to do even worse things, which makes Carl feel justified in targeting them.

A literal shower-thought idea.

Blackforest Angler

A concept that I've worked into a couple of different characters for different fics.

Step 1: Have a powerful Blackforest Trapper who uses Others in the "trap". (This usually involves something brothel-adjacent, binding succubi and the like, but anything that requires trapping Others to serve as part of the trap could work. Or maybe mundane humans, if they're bound to it magically and not just by a salary.)

Step 1b: The Blackforester has the full Practitioner panoply. His place of Blackforestiness is his demense, and his familiar and Implement are in part used to control, tap, or otherwise interact with it.

Step 2: The Blackforest Trapper dies, but his connections remain. (Maybe justify this with an exotic form of death that doesn't sever his connections cleanly, or entangles them, or something.)

Step 3: The spiritual remains of the Blackforester—his legacy, his memory, the connections between his panopoly and other possessions—stick together, animating a new Other.

This Other, the Blackforest Angler, is formally a complex spirit. It's composed of the Others bound within the Blackforest Trapper's Practice, the demense and building it was based out of, the Implement that...was involved somehow.

The angler is a living symbol of the idea that the harm someone does can outlive them. The system our Blackforester created outlives him, continues to ensnare new Others to keep it working and claim new victims to empower it.

It's powerful; not as flexible as the Practitioner that originated it, but about as powerful, and not tied to a single fleshy body.

Unnamed car salesman

I never got around to naming this character. Let's call him Kobeni, because his cars rate more highly than he does. He's a chaos mage, which is like a Finder except that he calls himself a chaos mage (and doesn't think of what he does as "finding" things).

Kobeni buys and sells cars, but the most notable car on his lot is his own work. He dragged a sedan off the Paths and gave its internals enough of an overhaul that a mundane mechanic should be able to fix it if something goes wrong (taking Lost engine bits for use in other projects).

He also channeled the car's Lost nature into a very useful ability. If nobody outside is looking at the car, and everyone inside the car closes their eyes, it can teleport to another empty street with the same name. The big limitation is that the jump consumes as much gas as it would normally take to drive there, and the car has pretty crummy gas mileage for its weight class; if you don't plan things out carefully, you'll be stranded on the wrong Third Avenue with an empty tank of gas.

It also hasn't been extensively tested; in particular, Kobeni hasn't tested things which might let the car slip back to the Paths. Don't teleport to or from roads with "oak" in their name, don't drive on those roads too long if there aren't people around, and definitely don't drive off a cliff.

There's also a gremlin-built city car which has been on the lot for years. It was probably designed to be crashed, so obviously not many people want to drive it.

Batteries Spirit

I guess this isn't a "character" in the conventional sense, but I don't know what else to call it. A magic item with a soul?

It's a complex spirit—part electricity elemental, part automotive spirit, part infrastructure technomancy...thing. Its primary hallow is a portable car jump-starter. (You know, one of those batteries with the jumper cable clamps that you can stick in your car to jump it in case you don't have a friend around when your battery dies?)

That jump-starter is very good at jump-starting cars, in part because part of the batteries spirit enters the car's battery. While that segment of the spirit resides in the battery, the car is basically guaranteed not to have battery problems (no more jump-starts, no matter how cold it gets). In exchange, the spirit siphons some energy from the car's engine, which has somewhat worse performance and gas mileage. The effect is easily large enough to be noticed if you're already tracking those things, but probably not if you aren't.

The spirit segment in a battery can thrive or starve, depending on circumstances. If the car is driven every day, it will grow to fill the battery and infiltrate parts of the car's electrical system; it shapes the electrical system of that car to serve as a better hallow for itself. Such a segment can spread to cars which its host vehicle jumps.

On the other hand, if the car isn't driven much at all, the segment withers and dies, returning the battery to normal. If the segment inhabited the vehicle for any significant length of time, other immaterial Others might take up residence in its place, with all sorts of interesting effects on the vehicle.

I keep calling these spirit segments "segments," because they're all still parts of the same complex spirit. The spirit is distributed over dozens of cars, giving it significant power...while making it difficult to use that power for any specific thing. And since events which let it spread from one car to another are relatively rare (a car it inhabits being used to jump another car), it's not likely to spread across the entire continent any time soon.

Whoever holds its primary hallow can consult the spirit for its wisdom. It knows a lot about automotive electrical systems, of course, and also understands the flow of electricity in general. Mostly, it's a way to tap power from cars across the county. Of course, drawing too much from the spirit risks draining the weaker segments to death, removing both a source of power and a spot it could theoretically spread from. (And creating haunted car batteries, but that's somebody else's problem.)

The batteries spirit itself doesn't have much personality or agency. It has dreams of spreading to one of those new electric cars, with their massive batteries, and maybe figuring out a way to infect the broader electric grid from there. But it doesn't have any plans for that other than "Hope someone jumps a Tesla with one of my hallow-cars," and it's not clear whether it could spread to something charging a battery it's in the way it spreads to batteries it charges.

The Bogey-dragon

Just a random weird idea. Dragons are created when power feeds into itself, like a fire burning on itself, growing stronger faster than it consumes itself. Bogeymen get power from fear. What happens if a bogeyman sustains itself on fear of its own reflection?

[coralhoneyrose]

The Princess and the Frog Chrobin AU... you don't know how hyped I was to read that.

I'm the exact opposite where I can't seem to write longfic. Do you have any suggestions for someone looking to try her hand at one?

Ohh I'm so glad that you're excited by the idea! 😊 Honestly there is such a tragic dearth of Birb!Robin content that I feel compelled to remedy it myself haha. And I think the fairytale-ish angle has a lot of fun / cute potential!

As for suggestions on getting into writing long fic, I certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert by any stretch, but I can tell you what has worked for me!

Find an idea that you *love* that just won't let you go

This, really, is the biggest tip I have. Obviously it's going to vary some based on the efficiency of the writer and just HOW long of a long fic we're talking about, but you're going to be thinking about and working on this fic for a long time. If that work isn't something you are extremely excited about, it's very quickly going to start to feel like a drag and become challenging to see through. Again, I can only speak to my own experience here, but I have thought about my long fics in some capacity for at least a few hours every day for the last two years (and often much much more than that LOL). Definitely I have days where I am not in the mood to write or I am not in a great head space with the fic and need to take a step back. But when all is said and done, it's still a story I am excited to tell and involves scenarios I *want* to have an excuse to think about all the time, day after day. If you're that excited about the ideas, I think that alone will carry you far!

2. Ask yourself why you want to write a long fic

To elaborate: what is it that a long fic allows you to do that you feel as though you can't accomplish in a shorter fic instead? Extensive world building? A more intricate plot? The answer to this question should drive a lot of your story conceptualization process. Honestly for me the biggest draws of long fic are how it lends itself to slow-burn, extensive opportunities for agonizing pining, and the ability to portray much more gradual character growth. Those are three of the things I love most in the fics and novels I read *and* three things that I love to write about. Because those things are such big priorities for me, the way I formed and built my story ideas around them was already very naturally geared towards long fic--I didn't have to try to fit it into that mold at all!

3. Find a good beta reader

Easier said than done, I know, but I genuinely think a fresh set of eyes / a brain to pick when you're stuck makes a world of difference. I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten myself into a deep rut with my long fics that I was convinced there was no way out of, or where I'd written a whole chapter draft that I thought was un-salvageable only for my beta reader to provide a very elegant solution / quickly pinpoint and direct me towards what wasn't working so that I wouldn't have to throw out the whole thing. One of the dangers with long fic is that you're working on it for so long that your sense of how things move and progress in the story and where they are going winds up being very divorced from the way readers experience it. Having someone else who can give you outside POV on what's working and what's not is invaluable during the drafting and revising process. Ideally that person would also have tastes that align well with your own and be someone who you can trust to be both honest and encouraging (even better if they know the characters of the world well and can give feedback from that angle too) but I do recognize perfect beta readers don't grow on trees. If not a full fledged beta reader, I think having a close friend or two who you can talk through the writers blocks or concerns with is helpful too!

4. Plan ahead but don't be afraid to change directions

Probably the most subjective piece of advice on here since I know different writers vary wildly with how much they like / need to plan ahead, but this is the combination that I've found has worked best for me. The reason being that if you don't do *some* more extensive idea generating and planning before hand I don't think it gives you anything to get hyped up about and look forward to. Having a big exciting moment in the story that you can't wait to write is a really good motivator, but unless you are very good at delayed gratification, brainstorming smaller moments along the way that are iddy and fun while still moving you closer to that big moment will be imperative for motivating yourself to stick it out long enough to get there. That being said, I don't think you have to feel locked into those early ideas either. Things are going to occur to you as you're writing that didn't during the planning stages. New ideas you like better, logistical bumps you didn't think to account for, the discovery that a character feels a different way about something than how you anticipated they would...there's a whole bunch of possibilities and all of them may wind up derailing your initial vision to varying degrees. And I think that's okay! Part of the writing process is re-discovering the world and characters from new angles...I honestly think it would be odd if that *didn't* impact the story's direction, at least a little! And generally I think those changes just tend to make the story even better in the end~

5. Let the fic be gratuitous and self-indulgent

Echoes of this are present in some of the previous pieces of advice, but I think it bears repeating as a separate (and final) point. Don't be afraid to pile on as many of your favorite tropes as you can!! Build your fic concept so that it includes lots of story beats and themes you're a sucker for every time. The more opportunities you find to load in things that you love, the more fun you'll have writing and thinking about the idea and the more likely it is that you'll both have an idea big enough to write a long fic for and that you'll be willing to stick it out and see it through to the end 💕

Okay...I think that's all I've got. This was so long and apologies if you were not looking for an answer anywhere near this detailed but, well, I did say I struggle to write anything short LOL Thank you for being interested enough in my perspective and experiences to ask in the first place! And I hope you'll find something I said here was helpful!

[jackinalex]

I cannot understate just how much TMIA coming out this year when it did helped me so much mentally. I was feeling probably my most depressed in a long time and it made basically every song resonate with me in some way, I had the title song looped for a couple weeks (the MV form no less so I could occasionally just check up on it and see it as I love it) if it had come out even just a month earlier or later it wouldn't have stuck as much with me. But I attached myself to this album and got the strongest obsession I ever had with ATL, and bare in mind I already liked them for around 5 years, not even just like casually, but this year they jumped from "pretty good" to "help me I have an obsession I am playing with Jalex Sims for months straight and listening to every album dozens of times over (except LYR my favorite album to hate on) watching STD 1 and 2 (why are those the appropriations was that on purpose) and buying shirts as I had like 2 before. I think I need another " to end this, and overall just catapulting the band from within my top ten to right up to #4. Even my complaining about Alex's hair or my struggles with finding photos or clips I want, I wouldn't trade any of it for all of it helping me so much mentally. I am way better now, obviously not JUST because of ATL, but being the majority factor in my recreational free time mental health upgrade. Embarrassingly I skipped getting actual therapy as my Jalex sims and fanfics I've read just helped me that much. Yeah I'm obsessed, but I'm happy, and my problems have gotten better, and I still love TMIA, but I also still love Dirty Work with all my heart and objectively maybe I still like Dirty Work more, but TMIA is like RIGHT NOW my favorite. I can complain about Alex's hair for hours sure, but I can also just obsess for even more hours, and my friends may not fully understand my ramblings, but they're just happy that I'm happy. And I am happy, 6 months ago I couldn't have said that I was.

I'm so happy that you've had this experience! It's a cliche, but music is so healing. Not to turn this into a me story, but I know exactly what you mean. In 2019, I was the most depressed I'd ever been. I felt like life had just completely wrung me out. But then, SKOD came out in early 2020 and it was like I was just completely pulled out of that dark place. Like I was hanging off of a cliff and losing my grip and then one of the guys reached down and grabbed my hand, and they all pulled me to safety. I know that sounds literally insane, but it's the truth. Having something to love so fiercely can outweigh the bad shit and I think that's just beautiful. Once again, I'm happy for you and so proud of you for getting out of that.

[ma-gic-gay]

So this is a new one of these and the other one is probably over so yeah

It's a weird Christmas.

It marks a year since anyone last saw Sonny, a year since Julian's death, and a year full of drama, as one would expect.

Michael and Willow had had another child, a girl this time. Her name was Ophelia and Wiley loved being a big brother to her. The pair had also burned their annulment papers when they'd realized she was pregnant and finally admitted their feelings for each other. Watching them together had probably been the highlight of the year for their family.

Sam had started hooking up with Dante much to the chagrin of, well, everyone. It had started as a few random hookups but changed quickly into an actual relationship, testing several familial bonds.

Luckily, that disaster on wheels had been halted when Lulu had woken up from her coma. Lulu and Dante got back together and fell in love, again.

Sasha and Brando had formed a relationship as well, which was quite a surprise at first glance but made sense after a few weeks.

"Carly? You okay?" Jason asks. Surprisingly enough, she hadn't completely broke down yet, or ran away. The furthest she'd ran was the island and even then, it was only a few hours no one knew where she was, since he couldn't teleport and it took that long to get to the island.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking," she responds, faking a smile.

"Tell that to the tears in your eyes and obviously fake smile," he says to her. "What are you thinking about?"

"It's been a year since any of us have heard from Sonny. For all we know, he's dead. Hell, he probably is. I know I should give up and just agree to a funeral, but it feels wrong to do that without a body," Carly sighs, head in her hands in an effort to hide her tears. "It feels wrong for him to not be here. Last Christmas, we were convinced he'd be home by now and now it's like we've all resigned ourselves to him being dead."

"If it doesn't feel right to have a funeral, don't have one. I've known you for a long time, and your instincts are right a lot of the time. Just because Sonny's not confirmed dead doesn't mean he's not," Jason frowns, putting his arm around her and rubbing circles along her back.

Sonny's "death" meant he had to step up in more ways than one. This had marked the year of Jason running the mob, which he'd practically been doing before but was actually doing now. He'd also had to become sort of a surrogate husband to Carly to the point he practically lives there by now. The kids hadn't questioned it; they'd asked a few times if there was anything going on there but after getting a firm no there hadn't been anything else from them in forms of questioning their relationship status. It was what it was and that was the same friendship they'd always had.

There had been times even Danny had questioned why they were at that house so much, to the point he once asked Carly if they were together or not.

You know it's reaching an odd point when a twelve year old is asking if you're in love with your best friend.

Of course, they didn't take into consideration the fact the whole town thought they were together. Again. Everyone had assumed, based off of how much time they'd been spending together- surprisingly more than normal- and the fact that he'd all but moved into the house that they were together.

That was a fun one to realize when he'd gotten shot and everyone had assured her that her boyfriend would be fine.

It just wasn't happening, they were friends. Anything more could complicate it and complicated almost always meant that there would be fights they couldn't go to each other to uncomplicate.

"I know that, but I just don't want to live knowing that there's a chance he could be alive somewhere and he's been kidnapped or forgotten his name or something. It's like I'm stuck in this neverending circle where there's barely any hope but I can't pretend there's none either. Sometimes, I wish that the police would show up with a body and I would have to confirm that yes, he is dead, just so that I could get out of this loop," Carly sobs. "And then I feel terrible for wishing he was dead because I love him, you know, but then at the same time, I can't help but feel like I need closure."

"That's not a bad thing, to need closure. None of us get any closure when it comes to this, Carly. You're not a bad person for wanting some," he reminds her. "You've been grieving for a year a man you don't even know for sure is dead. It doesn't make you bad to want to have something definite."

"But wanting my husband dead? That's dark," she argues with him.

"You want to know if he's dead or alive, something to confirm what's happened to him. I hate to break it to you but you don't qualify as a terrible person," Jason chuckles. "You've never killed someone, never hurt a kid."

"I shot a dude in open court, I almost killed AJ. I've done a lot of questionable things in my life, Jason," Carly fights back.

She's not wrong, persay, but she's not right. "That stuff doesn't make you a bad person. Morally grey? Yes. Bad? No. You do what you think is best and you're impulsive. If something's not going your way, you'll tip the scales. It's just how you are. None of that makes you a bad person. Some people might not like it, but you've never killed someone or hurt a kid, so in my book you're a good person."

Carly's head comes out of her hands for a minute and he smiles, wiping away the tears. "Well you're not a bad person either. You'd never hurt a kid and you only kill in self defense or if the person's really bad and threatening someone you care about. It's not like you wake up and go kill someone for shits and giggles. You mourn the people you kill and feel bad about it. Only a purely horrible person wouldn't feel bad about their murders."

"Neither of us are bad people, let's just agree on that at least."

"Fine," she relents finally. That only took a year. "I miss Sonny. Especially this time of year. Last year, he read Donna and Avery the Grinch and he had the world's worst Grinch voice. I practically begged him to read another book because of how bad it was. But this year, I wish he would be able to read it to them."

"I miss him too," Jason admits. "It's been a hell of a year without him."

"That it has. So much has changed," she agrees with him, shifting her position on the couch so she's lying her head on his lap.

That's probably why the kids thought they were dating.

He plays with her hair as she laughs, remembering some obscure detail about his telling of the Grinch and decorating for Christmas.

Scratch that, this is definitely why everyone thinks they're together.

"Hey Mom, Jason," Joss greets them, coming in from the kitchen. "I'm going to Trina's. Donna's with Ophelia at the Quartermaine's and Avery's with Ava."

"Alright sweetie, have fun," Carly bids her daughter goodbye, sighing. "Why is she so adult now? I mean, I can remember when she was born and it feels like yesterday. Hell, Michael's birth feels like yesterday. And they're both so grown up."

"Time flies when you're having fun," he answers.

"Where'd you get that? A throw pillow or some advice of my mother's?"

"A card someone sent me back when I was in the hospital. Needless to say, that card got tossed in the trash as soon as you'd let me stand up to go to the trash."

"Who the hell sent that to you of all people?"

"No clue. It didn't have a name attached."

"Huh. Well, it's a terrible expression. Too throw pillow. The real answer would be that we're aging, sadly," Carly sighs again, equally as dramatic. "Granted, I still look like I'm 27, but somehow I've aged."

"Age is but a number."

"You sound like a Hallmark card."

"Rude."

"You do!"

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm aging as well. You're not in this whole getting old thing alone. Provided, of course, that you agree to age," he smirks.

"I don't have anything better to do, sadly, so I suppose I'll agree to getting older. But I refuse to have a gray hair."

"Then go to the salon when you notice one and dye your hair."

"I plan on it," the blonde smiles at him before changing the topic. "Do you think we're weird?"

"That came out of nowhere."

"Answer the question."

"No?"

"That sounded like a question."

"Carly, how am I supposed to answer this one? I don't know, maybe?" Jason says, though most of it comes out as a question.

"Well, I mean, think of it. Sonny's been presumed dead for a year. You've been in charge of the business and been there for all of us in more ways than I can count. Seriously, I think Donna sees you as a father," Carly chuckles. "And you've listened to me crying and losing it. Hell, you spent a month and a half at the island just so I wouldn't be alone."

"Hey, you're family. I was happy to do all of those things. Besides, you wouldn't leave my side when I got shot. Or for a very long month after that," he jokes.

"I know but you didn't have to do that. You didn't have to step up and parent the kids. You already had Danny and Scout and the breakup with Sam to deal with, that's a lot at once. Not to mention, taking over the business and grieving Sonny. And dealing with me. All at the same time," she smiles. "Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, but you had no obligation to do any of that."

"Carly, do you think I'd be here right now if I didn't want to? You know me better than that. I love you and the kids and want to be there for all of you. So far, I've only gotten shot once and that was unrelated, so I'd consider this a pretty good experience."

The blonde scoffs at him and he chuckles. "Not funny. You could've died."

Rolling his eyes, he reminds her, "I didn't."

"Well you're not allowed to get shot for a long time."

"I'll take getting shot off of my to do list."

"Don't you dare joke about this!"

"Alright. Look at me. I'm not going to die anytime soon. I promise. It takes a lot more than a measly bullet to kill me, after all. Not even Russian madmen could do it," he says seriously.

"Good. Because if you do that to me again, I'll have no choice but to resign myself to a life in either prison or Ferncliff," she says half seriously, getting a laugh out of Jason.

It's not entirely unrealistic she'd end up in one of those positions, especially given that it's already happened. Repeatedly.

Maybe there's a sign she should stop doing dangerous things.

Almost as though she's being told to by something inside her, Carly connects her lips with his.

to be continued

why do i get myself into these things smh