#my hyperfixation kind of popped off today

[coffeegnomee]

Why the Eclipse Federation is so beloved for so long. An essay about Story.

In the book “Story Genius: How to use brain science to go beyond outlining and write a riveting novel” author Lisa Cron proposes:

“What drives a story forward is, at first blush, invisible. It’s not talent. It’s not voice. It’s not the plot. Think electricity. The same way even the most powerful lamp is useless unless it’s plugged in, a story can’t engage readers without the electricity that illuminates the plot, the voice, and the talent, bringing them to life.

The question is: what, specifically, generates that juice?

The answer is: it flows directly from how the protagonist is making sense of what’s happening, how she struggles with, evaluates, and weighs what matters most to her, and then makes hard decisions, moving the action forward. This is not a general struggle, but one based on the protagonist’s impossible goal: to achieve her desire and remain true to the fear that’s keeping her from it. As we’ll explore in detail, story is not about the plot, or what happens. Story is about how the things that happen in the plot affect the protagonist, and how he or she changes internally as a result” (bold added) 

And more to the point, “You can’t write about how someone changes unless you know, specifically, what they’re changing from.”

———

Where we begin

We launch the Eclipse Federation arc with PrinceZam telling his tale to ItzSubz_ in Detroit. Zam has just left his team because they duped thousands of items, terrorized the server, and were unwilling to let go of this unfair advantage. He tells how he battled them on the nether roof, lost everything, and was exiled. He was chased down, followed to his castle and was terrorized every day until he was killed over and over (#stonesword). He’s lost everything. He needs a team, he needs friends. 

This is where our story begins, a hero who has a specific and definitive backstory, something that compels him to reach out to our inciting incident: speaking to Subz when he’s on 2 hearts. 

Subz, seeing everything that has happened, sympathizes with Zam citing that he thinks they have both been wronged by the server and it’s time they stopped letting that happen. 

This is where the tragedy begins. 

Subz operates under the assumption that Zam wants to get back at those who wronged him. Zam agrees with this in the moment. 

But Subz fails to realize that it is the exploits that caused Zam to be wronged: if the exploits hadn’t happened, if the dupe war hadn’t happened, Zam would never have left his team and he, in turn, would never have been terrorized for weeks. 

And above anything else, Subz fails to realize that Zam does not want to be on a team that exploits.

Our hero, with a definitive backstory, is placed in a situation that directly places tension on that selfsame backstory.

The days go by and the team, now including Vitalasy, grows together, bonding over shared fights, laughing and joking, creating silly bedrooms with the most obnoxious blocks possible. 

All is well.

Then Ashswag reveals that he can one-tap any player, in any amount of armor, he has seemingly infinite amounts of totems, and he’s acting like he’s on a power trip, giggling and evading questions. 

Exploits have returned to the LifestealSMP.

Zam’s heart sinks as he realizes that something huge is brewing on the server. And it’s worse than any duped item he previously had been involved with.

Confused and hurt, he reaches out to his team to figure out what their next steps will be. How they’ll fight this disaster. 

But tragedy strikes again. Thanks to the beauty of streamed content, Subz accidentally goes live instead of starting a recording and he reveals that he and Vitalasy are the cause of these new exploited items and that they are very upset with Ash for showing them off. Because of this mistake, they decide to tell Zam everything.

Suddenly, against all odds, against all logic, against all reason, our main character is once again on a team who is using exploits and is unwilling to let them go.

It baffles the mind. How could he have been so clear with Subz about the reason behind him leaving Team Awesome and Subz still let him on the team knowing they had this exploit plan.

Once again it’s the beauty of streamed content that has brought our main charater into the most absurd of situations: they’re friends. Genuinely. Outside of content. Of course Subz brought him onto the team. Why would he not.

The reasons for the situation are simple, but the gravity of them affects Zam deeply. 

Our hero has to face a situation that directly relates to his past, as struggle of friendship vs values. 

No longer is this a situation of school yard bullying, creating obsidian prisons at spawn and using duplicated items to win fights; this is an apocalyptic situation. Lifesteal season 4 will end if this exploit is not stopped. What was obsidian is now bedrock, what was duped netherite is now one-tap potions, what was once withers destroying spawn are now mysterious creatures that kill players instantly.

So our hero has to face not only the apocalypse, but also himself. Battling against his love of his friends and his need for community and safety, while also battling for the safety of everyone on the server.

These streams slowly unfold a dark reality that anyone who has every been in a bad relationship has had to face. What do you do when the person you love is no longer recognizable? 

When your values are no longer aligned, have never been aligned? 

Do you leave them? Do you stay? Do you hope you can change them? 

How do you process the fact that they lied to you, let you in knowing that you are diametrically opposed to something that they were secretly doing? How do you process that it was an accident? That you hadn’t communicated the depth of the importance of this value (not exploiting) well enough so they didn’t pick up on it as important to communicate from the start?

How do reconcile lies that are told to your face? How do you stand up for yourself in the face of gaslighting? 

To quote Lisa Cron again, “The purpose of story - of every story - is to help us interpret, and anticipate, the actions of ourselves and of others.” (bold added)

This is the foundation of why this arc was so tragic, so compelling. Why it sticks in my mind for over a year now, the details as clear and crisp as the day I watched the streams. I can still see the actions being played out in that Minecraft blocky world like it was yesterday. The deepslate tiles of the communication room, the glowing yellow and purple and red signs, the prison in the sky, the exchange of trust apples. 

It’s not about the apocalypse, it’s about one man’s battle within himself. So he leaves the team. Sticks up for himself and stakes a claim against exploits.

But the tragedy continues. As the days pass we realize that maybe Vitalasy was telling the truth and he isn’t going to be the villain. Everything contradicts this opinion. He’s flying, he’s one-tapping Planet in the prison, he’s using the potions. He’s going insane but remaining delusional. 

And yet he continues to insist he’s not evil. He’s good. 

Every storytelling tactic says this man should be the villain and yet he refuses to do so (creating some new interesting content as the streamers have to contend with other members who don’t act within the rules of Play and of Content).

Eventually Vitalasy burns all his exploited items. Zam, left in abject frustration, releases a chunk ban which only bans Mapicc. Giving up, he leaves. And Vitalasy bans himself, throwing himself off the prison over and over, sealing the story that he is not the villain. He was misunderstood.

To quote the Mer essay “anger transmute(s) into grief as if by magic” and FarmerZam is born. The story has affected our protagonist deeply and he has changed. He has no enemies. He refuses to look at how he’s hurt his friends because it’s simply too painful. Everything that could have gone wrong has. 

Then Subz revives Vitalasy. Takes him around the server to their old bases while Vitalasy remains in depression about being misunderstood. He doesn’t want to be here. 

But as Subz reveals the final base, before they go through the end portal, Vitalasy catches a glimpse of a new sign room, one filled with depressive thoughts. The same thoughts he has been having this whole stream. You can almost hear his posture fix as he realizes the state of mind Subz is in. He needs to convince Subz to stay.

But we all know what happens, the trajectory of lives are changed. Subz has Vitalasy kill him, banning him off for the rest of the season, promising to be back when Vitalasy needs him most, but for no one else. 

Zam sees the death message and panics. He needs answers, he needs to bring Subz back. He’ll do anything to bring him back since it was Subz, it always has been Subz, who took him in when he had nothing. He realizes in a flash that he cares more about the friendship than about any values he held. But it’s too late now.

The tension, the sorrow stays. Zam decides to repair all his old friendships before the wormhole opens and this world ends. Vitalasy is forgiven. Spoke, Mapic, Ro. Planet, Bacon, Jaron. Everyone he betrayed. Everyone he let down.

But he forgot about Pangi. 

But Pangi didn’t forget about him. He has always been there for Zam, but Zam time and again has abandoned him. He’s had enough. With the server ending, he’s going to get his amends, make him repent (thanks Chips. I mean. Credit to the artist)

He traps Zam in bedrock. 

And Zam breaks. 

Friendships, betrayal, enemies. Everything comes full circle. It seems you can’t escape your past just as you can’t escape being on the exploit team.

Once again we enter the story with a defined background, but this time it breaks Zam completely. 

It’s not about exploits. It’s not about fairness. It’s about friendship. It’s about Subz. Subz was the only one who truly cared about him. He didn’t bring him onto the team maliciously, he really and truly cared about Zam and now he was Gone. Grief wells to the surface, Subz’s words about getting back at everyone who wronged them rings in his ears. 

He’s going to talk to Spoke and end the world. 

But his heart rebells even now. He’s betraying everyone again. But he’s sick of betraying. He won’t do it again, no matter how much chat tries to convince him Spoke is just using him and doesn’t care about him.

He’s going to end the world so that Subz will come back. 

And then the pièce de résistance. Subz IS revived. And he’s disappointed in Zam for changing sides and joining the exploiters when he left them because if it.

The depths of that final conversation makes Zam’s story the most insane tragedy. It has been 5 months of near daily or every other day developments on this story. The twists and turns have produced laughter and tears, cheering, anger, frustration, satisfaction, depression. 

And in the end? Subz still chose Vitalasy. Man how I wanted them to take him back in that moment. But what was done was done. These are the consequences of our actions. 

And in the end the circle comes to another completion: he’s back on a team with Mapicc, the same person he betrayed over the duped exploits. They promise each other to end the server with everyone banned, no matter what anyone else has to say. In the end they jump into the portals together and the server is moved to season 5. (I too, in union with where Zam ended his video, think it’s a good place to end the plot here rather than with that final scene on the grass. This is the last character decision he made)

———

The Present Moment

Zam was talking on stream a few days ago about how Kaboodle wanted to know why Eclipse was so beloved still. Mer’s essay came up (which I read and absolutely loved), but the essay talks more about the dynamics of the streamers themselves and how their relation to Play made the story compelling to watch. Which it absolutely does, and I’ve written about how much this has reframed how I view Lifesteal.

But I think that only covers one aspect. The deeper reason why there’s still fanart being drawn of Eclipse is how Zam created (and/or was handed) one of the most tragic plot lines ever created by man, and how he allowed himself to be affected by the story, and how he brought it alive through his streams as he “struggles with, evaluates, and weighs what matters most to [him], and then makes hard decisions, moving the action forward.”

And this is why Zam is so beloved by the community in general. This is how he approaches every arc on Lifesteal. Most recently the Joker arc launched from the Abyss betrayal, which in turn, after his ban the first day of hardcore, turned into the possession arc as he realizes his love of Mapicc and Ro goes beyond his obsession with Minute and Jumper. 

Each note of Lifesteal flows into the other as he lets us into the inner workings of his mind as he weighs one decision from another.

Because at the end of the day, I remember the tragedy, the longing for friendship and the betrayals, more than I will ever remember the circular reasoning of Vitalasy or the “okay”’s from pb&j. I only remember the strained voice of Zam as he wrote signs and went in circles trying to reconcile the fact that he couldn’t stay on a team and he couldn’t leave. How he was being dangled off the edge of a cliff being held up by Vitalasy. How Minute just doesn’t get it, he needs to be shown what Lifesteal is. His maniacal laughs as the Joker. Zam allows the story to affect him and he uses every ounce of it to create even more. 

As Branzy said in the therapy session “It’s a human story. About what humans are.”

To their credit, Subz and Vitalasy also allowed themselves to be affected by the story. Without Vi banning himself because he was so misunderstood, and Subz bringing him back to ban him so that Eclipse could have some sort of ending, and without Subz doing so much lore with Zam in 1 on 1 conversations, we wouldn’t have the same story.

The same with Pangi finishing his lore by trapping Zam because Zam didn’t do the god-off with him. The same with Ash being Ash and flexing his god powers. The same with Spoke bringing Zam into the team and then getting caught up in managing the wormhole so he didn’t have time for 1 on 1’s with Zam to make him feel totally accepted as a valuable member. The same with Mapicc always being willing to let go of the past to save himself as well as never letting go of the past so he has something to do on the server. The same with Planet talking to Zam and Bacon and figuring out how to fight the exploits and realizing they needed to convince Zam to betray. The same with Branzy giving the craziest therapy session lifesteal has ever seen. Without each member allowing themselves to be affected by the story, the story doesn’t go anywhere. 

[cats-of-eden-valley]

ADHD strikes again with oddly specific thoughts! I've been falling down rabbit hole after rabbit hole today, and thus I have more questions 😅

1) What kind of natural disasters occur in the Valley? Like, do Goldspring get earthquakes due to their volcanic terrain, or do Coldbank or Bogden experience flash flooding? How do the Prides deal with that kinda stuff? Are there any areas prone to hazards (such as areas prone to landslides, or places with a lot of dangerous animals)?

2) Are there any myths/folklore regarding natural disasters? Sorry if this question is too spoiler-y!

3) I'm not sure if you've answered this before, but what is the terrain/climate like outside of the Valley? I follow so many similar concepts that it's all starting to mix lmao

4) What kinds of pollinators live in the Valley? Are they more similar to bees, or things like butterflies or birds?

5) Do the cats have a symbiotic relationship with any other animals? I've been researching the relationship between wolves and ravens for a while now and the question just popped into my head.

6) Are there any carnivorous plants in the Valley? Because the idea of someone getting eaten by an enormous plant is both horrifying and kinda funny.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love this project, and it's rare that something like this gives me such insistent brainworms. But, I'm happy - it might even be developing into a hyperfix!

As always, no pressure to respond! I'm content just yelling into the void.

(Also, I don't know is it okay to ask for advice here, especially for my own writing, and I would appreciate knowing-) (/gen)

Have a good day/night! (Sorry if I'm becoming annoying lol)

-🦇

The reason this took me so long is because this post is longer than the colour of the sky. see you in hell (affectionate) o7

1.

Lots! Most earthquakes are little rumbles, but of more note are the seasons. Eden Valley has two: Rain and Fire

During monsoon season, the river gets muchhh bigger. When water levels rise, while it does eat up a lot of land space, there are several "living islands" of matted vegetation which float with the water while remaining tethered to the bottom. Flooding is typically pretty predictable, and never passes certain levels.

Once monsoon season ends, fire season begins. And I do mean Fire Season. You know how all the leaves drop for dry season? The flora here doesn't even bother, it's evolved to just let it get burnt away (or sheathing leaves for the season). Bogden and Goldspring both retreat up the cliffs into stone holts to let the burn go by, and live there for the season for subsequent burns (caused by the mushrooms that grow stupid fast off all the ash)

And then you have everything else, like landslides, Many dangerous animals (have you seen the croc-snake), storms, droughts, but like we'll be here all night if i keep going

2.

Dunno if it counts, but it's common belief among the prides that the Moons reached down and scooped out a divot in the mountains for cats to escape the burning eye of Hiverne

There is also currently a rumour that has been bouncing around among the outsiders about some apocalyptic change, which can only be escaped by travelling west, but like. That's nothing to worry about, nothing can harm the prides in their cozy, impenetrable little valley :)

3.

So, as far as the cats know, Eden Valley is nestled in the middle of a mountain range, with uncrossable deserts on one side and endless mountains on the other (with the occasional claim that, if you go far enough into the mountains, you'll see something vast and blue far in the distance)

The prides ignore the outside world and like to believe they live in the only oasis of life left in the world, which they believe was scorched and destroyed by Hiverne. Obviously this isn't true, because Windswept aren't even from this region, but y'know.

4.

I haven't thought much about pollinators cus I've been hemming and hawing about the existence of flowers in the Valley (because im a baby that doesn't want to learn to draw them)

But now I'm kinda thinking about the role that mushrooms play in the Valley, where they actually thrive in hot and dry conditions (vs the fungi we know preferring cool and wet) and grow like nuts during the Sleeping Year, and maybe they make?? Mushroom flowers? I just like the idea of applying "here i have this tasty treat for you in exchange for you taking my junk gunk to some other guy" to mushrooms and then making that system easier to draw

5.

Nothing like. Specifically. I need to do more research so I can really start hammering out the relationship the cats have to the rest of the ecosystem, but the only thing I'm capable of reading at the moment are research paper #3453239 about felidae evolution

It will be a thing, though!

6.

There are but the great thing about plants is that they don't move much, so the cats know where they all are.

Hell, maybe that's your mutualistic relationship: the cats have learned that the sticky traps close if you place small prey sacrifices into them, allowing them to safely harvest nectar. Or something. Then spread that pollen babey (and get good, good nectar, tastless yet thick and soothing to the throat)

[softmick]

Super Special Thursday Tag Game

thanks for tagging me, Gigi!! @sgtmickeyslaughter <3

How did you get into the fandom?  I came to tumblr to find gifs and stumbled into fic and an active fandom.

How long have you been here? One year today!!! I made this thing on June 6th and posted two drabbles the first day. A @galladrabbles for "Still Into You" by Paramore and a drabble based on @darthvaders-wife art!!

What’s the first fandom channel you found? (Youtube, Reddit, Tumblr, Insta, Twitter, FB, other?) Tumblr! I'm not looking anywhere else.

what’s your favourite now?  Tumblr.

Which mutual have you known the longest in the fandom? I'm not sure? I think it took me a week to insert myself into Nosho and Cameron's trans Mickey thoughts. That's the first interaction I remember, anyway.

Which tumblerino’s did you have your first fandom crush(es) on and wanted to get to know? Let me be for real for a second. I have too many tumblr crushes to name! If I've ever tagged you or replied to your post or written elaborate embarrassing tags on your stuff, it's probably you! I spend 97% of my time feeling awkward and/or depressed but we're all friends in my head.

First Gallavich fan fic you read (or that blew you away that you remember) I accessed @thegallavault really early on and I think Cooperative Gameplay was the first long fic I read and I really enjoyed it.

First fan art that blew your mind?  I am very much not an artist so I kind of have my mind blown all the time and I could list so many but @harukanaaaa's baby Ian makes me feel INSANE. I found it kind of soon after becoming active and idk man, something about it just melts me inside.

Fanfic trope that you were sure wasn’t for you but now you low key (or high key) love? I was about to say ABO and realized that's a LIE. I still don't really like it. But there are specific fics in this fandom that I've enjoyed. And Sports AUs. Loving them a lot, surprisingly.

What surprised you most about this fandom? I felt super welcomed right from the beginning which I didn't expect at all. It's also more diverse in some ways than I've seen before.

Moment in the show (or YT vids if you’re one of those) that you fell in hyperfixation with Gallavich? The first was probably "take your hand off the glass" where I was like okay, yeah, these two. But the 5x11 fight is peak for me.

Ian or Mickey? Ooof. It's Mickey, but really this is just a rude question.

Which Gallagher or Milkovich are you? Oh man. I think the reason I love the show so much is that I can relate to parts of all of the Gallagher/Milkovich kids and there's no way I could pick one. In the past I've said Fiona, but it doesn't feel very accurate atm.

I just tried tagging two people and they didn't pop up as taggable so please please please if you want to do it I'm tagging you and you can tag me back!!!

[moncey-imagines]

WDW Trip Headcanons | Sans x GN!Reader

Sorry this took so long, Thanksgiving week has been quite busy 🥲 but now it is done and out for all the world to see 🐎🐎for context, the reader is hyperfixated on the disney parks (just like me 😎)

!!THIS HAS NOT BEEN PROOF-READ OR EDITED!!

enjoy!!!

Also I added an intro to lead into the headcanons 😱

It started with a simple statement:

* WHAT?? SERIOUSLY???

* seriously.

This is the first time you found out that Sans had absolutely no idea about the pure magic and majesty of Disney parks.

* You've been on the surface for like a year...how do you STILL not know about Disneyworld...

* idk

* Do you even know about the Disney company at all??? You have to, they are industry giants in like every category of anything ever...

* i think so, are they the ones that have the princesses?

* Which princesses?

* you know, the ones.

* No I don't, you have to tell me which ones.

* the ones with the hair.

* WHAT KIND OF HAIR?

* long hair i think.

* Rapunzel?

* idk

* Okay yeah that's it, we're going to Disneyworld, lemme go book the flights.

* cool

Two weeks later, you and your skeleton boyfriend were off to Orlando so you could expose him to the wonders of Walt Disney World.

Once you two are there and walking around, he'd probably be more focused on you rather than the park. I mean, it's kind of hard to ignore how excited you get over being in the park. The amount of facts that pop up in your brain the second you're in the parks is abundant, so much so that there is no way to stop you excited rambling (not that he'd try, he thinks it's cute).

* Look!! Look at the windows!!

* im lookin.

* It's a tribute to Marc Davis!!

* i...sorry, i dont know who that is.

Expect a lot of Sans not understanding a single thing you're talking about.

* Sans!! Look at the rocks, it's shaped like the Nautilus!!

* yeah?

* Yeah!! That's cause 20000 Leagues Under the Sea was here before The Little Mermaid ride!!

* wow.

* Do you know what any of what I just said means?

* um...not really no, im sorry.

He'll still listen though, he likes seeing you happy and excited.

* i really don't think these guys have the guts to be in here naked

* They're fake skeletons, Sans, but there's a rumor that the skull on the bed in Disneyland if re- wait...they don't have the guts. I just got it.

* took you a minute huh.

* Shut it, bonehead.

* sorry, but a name like that won't get under my skin.

* These jokes suck, you must have left your funny bone at home.

* i know, im just a lazy bones like that.

Everyone around you two have to occasionally either sit through agonizingly horrible jokes or get up and walk away.

* Hey, Sans! Do you think you can solve the murder mystery?

* murder mystery? isnt that a little dark for magic kingdom?

* It's not too dark for the Haunted Mansion, that's what this ride is all about.

* ah, okay. i wont let it rattle my bones then.

* You're such a doofus.

* actually, in your own words, im a bonehead.

* Do you think you can do the puzzle or not? The lines gonna move...

* yeah, yeah, okay.

Sans also seems to really like standing in line to hear what other people are saying.

* people say some wild stuff here, (y/n).

* Like what?

* i just heard a little girl ask her mom what happened to Mickey Mouse when he went backstage and her older sister said that the staff skinned him.

* Oh my god.

* thats not all, after that her mom agreed and told her thats how they make the Mickey ear hats.

* these fireworks are pretty nice.

* Did you know that they have to set them off no matter what? For safety reasons, they can't let old fireworks sit back there unused, even is they cancel the shows.

* so theres technically always a show?

* ...I guess so, yeah.

* ...

* What do you think happens if an airplane flies to close to the fire works?

* what happens?

* It probably becomes a scareplane.

* that one's a stretch

* C'mon, I thought it was funny.

* you were close, but not close enough. maybe next time.

Driving the car to the hotel, you turn to Sans.

* Did you...like today's trip? I wasn't annoying was I?

* i liked it, yeah, and not at all, i thought all your little facts were great. im excited for what you tell me tommorow.

* Alright, I'll stock up on my facts for Animal Kingdom tomorrow.

* you better, ill even polish my humerus.

* I knew you were gonna make some kind of pun, I felt it in my bones.

* what, have you been spine on me?

* Okay, that one was knee-t.

Sans lets out a sigh.

* What's wrong?

* nothing at all, i love you.

I'M SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG AAAAA

also sorry if its more dialogue than headcanons, I've been coding VNs as of late DHFYSGADFh

I kinda wanna make this into a short visual novel...but I cannot at the moment, I must get this fic out DHGFIYFSG

I hope it was good, if anyone wants a part two in another part just send in an ask 😎

[rainystrawberryyouth]

I did it!!!

I finally did it. I manifested something I considered big in my life. What was that thing? The continuation of the Rainbow Factory AU. Now to those who follow this blog, I would occasionally post about my hyperfixations. One of them being Welcome Home, By Clown( which still is pretty fresh ). One of my favorite characters from Clown's project is Wally Darling, and I favor one of his variant alot; that being RF Wally. He is one of my comfort characters. So when I heard that his AU will be discontinued, it put me in a little funk. Now here is the thing. I've never really intentionally manifested something before. Or at least something like that. It would be small things like cats visiting my house and seeing my favorite tiktok pop up on my FYP. But it was never something like that, and it took me by surprise. So last I was determined to have RF Wally AU continued since; yeah I do favor RF Wally, but there are unanswered questions I have about the AU in general that I really want answered and illustrated. So last week I did three manifestation methods; Scripting, askfirmations, and the 777 method. I combined the two to try an maximize the success rate of my desire to come through. But keep it a buck with y'all, I was not consistent.. like at all. On the first day I only did 3/4 of my script and the 777 method, I tried to do it again on the second day and ended up with the same result. So I decided to take a break for a couple of days, and start back again. Which unfortunately lasted a day, but I managed to complete all methods fully. And despite my consistency being patchy and 3/4 the way do, my manifestation went through... I kept telling my self even when I wasn't consistent, even when I had my silly doubts, My manifestation will come through, just give it a week. I think the thing I did right in my kind of messy manifestation process is that I persisted in knowing my desire will be here when I said so, even when I wasn't doing my methods just persisting on it by thinking it was enough. So on this week ( The week I said my manifestion will take place ), I found out today that the AU will no longer be discontinued and that it's back. I know I shouldn't really be surprised in the slightest, but still. I'm just super happy right now loves. So that's all I had to say, sharing my success story. So if there is anything anyone who reads this has to take away from this is that the key to manifesting is just persistance. If you're not going to be consistent with whatever method you use to get your desire, just be persistent that's all 😊💕

P.S. Interestingly enough, this was originally supposed be a punishment for myself for not following through with another manifestation method I said I was going to do for myself ( I was supposed to make my own personal subliminal ) but I kept putting it off because of my laziness. The punishment being that I can only manifest one of my desires and not all of them at once. So there is also that. Don't procrastinate y'all and don't break your own promises to yourself either.

[thefourchimes]

🍌🍈

Wasn't able to answer this last night as I had passed out and then I got really busy the whole day today, whoops, my bad about that, but here we go!

🍌 In your opinion, what’s the funniest joke/reference/pun you’ve made in a fic?

Ooooh...well, as mentioned in the previous ask, I haven't actually posted anything for Encanto yet, and while I probably have a lot of possible choices from my other fandoms, I can't remember any from the others off the top of my head atm oof

Plus most of my stuff is angst instead of crack AHSFUIHAFS but I'll do my best

So yes, a joke/reference/pun I've made for a fic...I honestly have a few in mind right now for Encanto, ones from the 233 page AU, but if I say it now, it'll lose its magic when I hopefully post it AHSFUHASF

I'll probably just mention this one scene I had written for the one All of Us Are Dead fic I have, one that still makes me laugh every time I reread it:

It probably doesn't help that my sense of humor sucks but it's funny to me at least HASUFHASF

My bad if I wasn't really able to answer this properly 😅

🍈 Who’s your blorbo and what are some of your favorite headcanons/ideas about them that repeatedly show up in your fics? Free pass to rant about blorbo opinions.

Ah, this question <3

I don't think I made it too obvious as to who my blorbo is before, besides a few posts and the fact that I love all the cool sisters so much, so yeah, guess it's time to "reveal" it

It's Isabela

I remember watching Encanto again all those months ago, the moment where my hyperfixation was about to rear its head and grab me by the throat, never letting go

As that was happening, the feral, chaotic, and unhinged cactus gremlin sister decided to jump me too

I can't remember exactly when I knew she was my favorite, but I just knew that she already was before I even fully realized it

I had WECID on repeat for a long while at one point

I think her exploring herself after everything hit me hard, I relate to her so much in a way, ngl... (except the hilarious thing is that I'm not even Isabela in this case, I'm the youngest out of my three siblings so I'm technically Mirabel in a sense ASHFIASF)

But anyway, I digress, my thoughts on her (along with my ideas for her that pop up in fics—er, will pop up anyway) are so wild that I'm not too sure on how to write it down in paragraph form, plus it probably won't be anything new since someone else in the fandom has probably already mentioned these, but I guess we keep going with it in a chaotic and wild way, true to Isabela's character (apologies in advance for the explosion of thoughts—except also not really sorry):

She's chaos incarnate, a force of nature that is so very extra and so petty as hell but it's okay because we love it sm

We don't get to see it all as much though because of her mask, but that just makes me even happier since she gets to be free post movie

She's acrobatic and athletic as seen in WECID, not to mention her skill with vine swinging, but that doesn't mean she didn't get at least a bit of clumsy genes from Agustin in some way, she just hides it pretty well due to her mask of perfection

She's always colorful and changing colors every time, experimenting with all the possibilities and she changes the color of her hair strand a lot too

She makes and discovers and explores all kinds of plants (ones she keeps track of to know what they are and what they can do), but we all know she has a soft spot for cacti <3

She knows a lot about flower and plant language, whether already having knowledge during the movie or learning after

She loves her family so much that she would and has sacrificed her happiness for them, that's something I admire so much but am also sad about because she really loves her family that she wants them happy even if she can't be happy, ow—

This seems to be a consensus the fandom has: she's one of the ones who will most likely murder someone and will kill for her siblings, very protective of her sisters and her family <3

Speaking of which, she has a ridiculously overpowered gift, one she has just as ridiculous control over as well, that I cackle and shake my head every time when someone just underestimates her and her gift

We know how she wants to be free but is feeling trapped as she's forced into perfection, half due to her own making and half due to others boxing her in, so there are lots of fake smiles and pretending on her part, but that does mean she's a pretty good actress considering she had everyone fooled for so long

I fucking love her bonds and relationships with her sisters and her cousins, but, as my PFP is indicating, especially the cool sisters

They weren't close with each other for several reasons for a long while, not even mentioning the strained relationship between her and Mirabel, but to see them have the chance to connect again and make up for everything was done and all that happened after the events of the movie? I love it so much aaaaaa

She teases the hell out of them in various ways, that's for sure, the sister vibes are so real <33

But that doesn't mean the cousins are left out here, ofc, the exploration of dynamics is always so nice and fun to see

I love all the grandkids so much <33333

I want to keep going so badly but I feel like I'd never finish this ask if I do AUISFHUIASHF plus I'm very sure I forgot something, but oof 😔

Ngl, this was me the entire time I was trying to answer this question:

Isabela <33

yep, that tracks HASFUIAHSF but yeah, thanks for the ask!! :DD <33

[rollercoasterwords]

I LOVE ZOMBIES TOO

I have this zombie hyperfixation that comes back every few years and at least one tri-yearly zombie apocalypse dream.

I have this podcast where I talk about spooky stuff I find interesting and the zombie episode was at least twice as long as all the other ones.

Ok so what I find rlly interesting is ancient Hatian zombies, which were real. It wasn't like an actual zombie but basically somebody was tricked into thinking they were dead with drugs and herbs and medicine or smth, then actually buried, then dug up again to be used for slavery. And theyre actually called zombies too. And it's just. wow.

LOOK https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/how-america-erased-the-tragic-history-of-the-zombie/412264/

lol love the enthusiasm!! i am definitely the same way about zombies as previously stated they are probably my favorite monster <3 and this response got very long so i am putting it under a cut lol

personally i have not studied actual ritual practices enough to really talk about how much truth there is to the notion of "real-life zombies," what that practice might have looked like, or how widespread it was. i've read a bit of ethnography + anthropological writing about zombi rituals, but my understanding is that the extent to which there may have been "real" zombies has been largely exagerrated and exoticized in a way that is...not great. so while it's definitely super interesting to research what sort of historical practices + rituals were/are attached to cultural understandings of zombiism, i'd just caution against any portrayal that inaccurately exagerrates the history or seems to be mysticizing "real-life zombies."

if u (or anyone) are interested in some reading that adds a bit more nuance to cultural conceptions + origins of the zombie, some recs!

haitian zombie, myth, and modern identity by kette thomas

new narratives of haiti; or, how to empathize with a zombie by kaima l. glover

zombi narratives: transatlantic circulations by gudrun rath

figures of terror: the "zombie" and the haitian revolution by raphael hoermann

not all of these scholars are in complete agreement with each other, but all of them are doing really interesting things re: questioning the way the zombi has historically been tied to Haiti + Africa in scholarship + pop culture, and how oftentimes those ties have been examined or portrayed largely through a neocolonial + racialized lens

anyway--thank u for sharing that article (here's a link minus the paywall for anyone interested)! another great jumping-off point for anyone interested in zombie history. i definitely appreciate the point he's getting at--the idea that zombie media has become so immersed in consumer culture that it no longer contains any meaningful critique of such a culture, and instead functions largely as a mechanism for escapist fantasies. this echoes some other interesting research i came across in undergrad about the idea that the "dystopian" genre has really become the new "utopian" genre, though i can't remember where specifically i first encountered the idea (i think it was somewhere in my zombie research, but i'd have to go hunt for the specific article/book/etc).

personally, though, i think it's a bit of a reach to imply that the zombie used to contain a significant critique of "societal ills." specifically, where he writes:

For a brief period, the living dead served as a handy Rorschach test for America’s social ills. At various times, they represented capitalism, the Vietnam War, nuclear fear, even the tension surrounding the civil-rights movement. Today zombies are almost always linked with the end of the world via the “zombie apocalypse,” a global pandemic that turns most of the human population into beasts ravenous for the flesh of their own kind. But there’s no longer any clear metaphor. While America may still suffer major social ills—economic inequality, policy brutality, systemic racism, mass murder—zombies have been absorbed as entertainment that’s completely independent from these dilemmas.

what i think he's perhaps overlooking here is that--yes, zombies have historically represented different "social ills," that doesn't necessarily mean that representation has been somehow more radical or liberatory than the zombie media of his time (2010s--article was written in 2015). even in the earlier 20th century when "zombie" media stuck more closely to the original lore of the zombi, the zombie was still typically represented in a way meant to reinforce existing systems of power rather than call them into question, and this has been a theme of much zombie media throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. i also think to suggest that there was no longer any clear metaphor by the time 2015 rolled around is a bit facetious; i can think of two zombie movies from 2015 specifically where zombies are being used as a clear cultural critique in different ways, and multiple other zombie movies from the 2010s where this was also the case. so while i appreciate what he's trying to do here re: making a point about dystopia-as-utopia and how western reimaginings of the zombie have fundamentally altered it, i think he's detracting from his own argument a bit when he suggests that using zombies as a tool for valorizing western individualism rather than exploring oppressive power dynamics that result in dehumanization is reflective of some sort of deterioration in modern media, and not part of the way zombies have pretty much always been used in western media since their co-option

[unisexobject]

Chapter VII. Closer

Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader Summary: A callous run-in with a certain someone leads you and Eddie to grow closer, but are your enemies more dangerous than they seem? Trigger Warnings: Violence, blood, past trauma, ptsd, exposed skin, idk Author's Note: I know it has been a hot minute since last, but life has been seriously roundhouse kicking my ass. Next chapter, a character that rhymes with sissy goes snap, crackle and pop...

Having Eddie in the same classes as you was not as enjoyable as it sounded.

He would always grab your arm and start drawing all over, creating little but many illustrations of old rickety houses, lightning bolts, bats, cemeteries and wyverns across your supple skin. It lead to you furiously scrubbing his artwork off during lunch just before you got home, sick of your parents questioning you over your impromptu sleeve and the curly haired metal head who barely left your side.

Eddie also couldn't be quiet, as the constant tapping of his ivory Reeboks or the clinking of thick metal rings practically drove you insane. Let alone his constant whispering of absolute nonsense into your ear - whether it be the melodic tune of his latest hyperfixation or completely inappropriate comments about Mrs. O'Donnel - that nearly made you burst into laughter every lesson.

But the worst of all, was that he needed you to explain practically everything from class to him. Not satisfied until his thousand "but why" 's were answered. Despite his subtle intelligence and unabating creativity, Eddie still needed a little hand here and there. And God was he annoying. 

On today's menu, creating original poetry. Great, you thought.

You groaned across the cafeteria table after Eddie had pestered you about helping him write.

"I'm going to see Robin at Family Video first after school, so come over a little later." 

Your best friend flashed his pearly grin. 

You hadn't seen Robin over the last few days, apparently she was caught up in some business with Nancy and Steve. You hoped that she would be there this afternoon to help you pick out something to watch later tonight. 

"Why is Jason Carver looking at you and Y/N like that?" Dustin asked. 

His comment pulled you out of your reverie.

The whole table turned their head in unison toward the infamous Jason Carver, or to the balls-and-laundry-basket table as Eddie so imaginatively coined. 

It was true. Jason's expression was a little unsettling. His face was hard and stern, like he was in the midst of taming his blazing rage. He barely broke away his piercing gaze from Eddie.

"Maybe he's still pissed about Y/N dunking a big fat bowl of punch on his stupid head." Gareth mused. 

His comment earned a light chuckle from the table. You and Eddie smiled in earnest.

"Don't forget how she threatened to fight him too." Dustin interposed. 

"Yeah. He's probably like, super embarrassed." Mike added. 

"Embarrassed that Eddie has Chrissy wrapped around his little finger." Jeff retorted teasingly. 

The whole table laughed, except for you and Eddie.

Your smile dropped along with your gaze. You scratched the back of your neck sheepishly, attention returning to your carrot sticks. They no longer were as appetising as they were when lunch had started, the slender orange now suddenly a nauseating sight.

Eddie remained still and wary - and unbeknownst to you - death staring Jeff for his flippant comment. He didn't have Chrissy wrapped around his finger. It was obvious from the moment that she flashed her wide smile and innocent eyes and asked Eddie if he had "the stuff" that she wasn't interested in him. At least not in that way. Sure Chrissy showed Eddie genuine kindness, but she was more concerned with what he had to offer.

Eddie didn't understand why the thought of him and Chrissy spoken aloud made him so uncomfortable. He had a crush on her not too long ago and felt free enough to share the desires of his heart to you. In fact, it was something he still ruminates on, groaning to himself as he tosses and turns late at night. He wanted to go back in time and smack his past self in the face for acting like such a love sick fool.

But ever since his fire for her fizzled out, he became incredibly anxious at the thought of you thinking that he still liked her. 

The second Jeff teased Eddie about it, his heart quickened. He couldn't hide his immediate shift in demeanour.  Eddie couldn't understand why he even felt concerned about the whole thing to begin with.

"I do not." Eddie snapped. 

Everyone went silent, his sudden change in mood earning confused looks from a sea of naive eyes.

"I mean..." He continued in a much calmer tone. "I don't know what you're talking about." 

You started to bite your nails absentmindedly, desperate for something to distract you from the unpleasant conversation that seemed to encircle you. 

"Don't you meet her in the woods outside of school all the time?" Gareth asked humourlessly. 

That's our spot. 

You met Eddie's gaze, a twinge of sadness growing in your chest. Its weeds wrapped around your heart when Eddie stayed silent, his doe eyes boring into yours. 

After a moment, he continued on. 

"I told you not to mention that out loud Gareth. It's not exactly public knowledge." Eddie seethed, briefly looking around to ensure no one in the busy cafeteria heard. 

You looked away from Eddie, unable to decipher the all encompassing distrust that suddenly emerged.

You didn't really have much reason to doubt Eddie, his heart bold and honest on his sleeve. Yet, for some reason you did. These feelings of almost jealousy made you wary. 

"I help her take the edge off, that's all. If Jason knew, who knows what he would do to the both of us." 

Gareth and Jeff hummed in response, willing to drop the whole thing out of boredom. Like they were a dog playing with a chew toy whose piercing squeak were no longer entertaining. 

So, you and Eddie finished your lunch in silence, whilst the rest of the boys returned to mindless chatter. But your mind - as usual - would be consumed by thoughts that your best friend was growing dishonest with you. And soon enough, would learn the dreadful yet all too true past which followed you everywhere. 

-

It was afternoon now and you were at Family Video, hoping to catch Robin to help you rent a film for your post writing session with Eddie. You wandered the aisles, waiting to discover something that would please the both of you.

Eddie adored anything scary and filled with gore, whilst you enjoyed the likes of a good story or some German expressionism. Although, getting Eddie to enjoy a silent film was a terribly hard task. He had never been one to focus and needed dialogue to really capture his attention. 

You hoped that whatever weird funk you were in at lunch would dissipate by the time Eddie arrived. You hoped even more, that watching a movie together would put your mind at ease, allowing you to fall into sync with your best friend effortlessly. 

You were tossing up between Frankenstein and Nosferatu, hoping for Robin to pop around and help you decide.

"Hey." Steve beamed.

His voice caught you off guard, causing you to drop Nosferatu onto the carpet. 

"Shit." You muttered, crouching down to pick it up. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Although, based off the looks of it that's what you're after?" 

He motioned toward the films in your hands and smiled convivially. 

"Yeah, I have a thing for vampires and reanimated corpses it seems." You shook your head, playfully ashamed.

Steve smiled wide and leaned against the shelf, stumbling a little when his elbow missed the surface. 

He cleared his throat. 

"You doing okay? After Friday, I mean. Thought I'd have to call the cops to haul you away." He mused teasingly. 

You genuinely laughed, somehow coming around to the humour of the previous Friday. 

"I don't know what you put in that punch Harrington, but it really got my wires mixed up." You replied playfully. 

He scratched his chin and flaunted his pearly teeth.

"And here I was thinking that they were already like that." 

"Hey!" You chided. 

You smacked him on the side jestingly and chuckled at his antics. When he recovered, he took a deep breath.

"So, what are you doing here?" Steve asked, leaning the side of his head on closed knuckles. 

"You know, looking for something to watch tonight. I'm just waiting for Robin to help me out." 

As if saying her name had spoken her into existence, she magically appeared next to you.

"Nosferatu? I mean it's not bad, but The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is way better. Might relate to it a bit more considering you aren't sleeping these days." Robin remarked, resting a gentle hand on your shoulder. 

You and Steve exchanged knowing glances, glint of humour dancing around in your eyes. 

"Hello to you too." You replied sarcastically.

"Wait, you're not sleeping?" Steve questioned with a furrowed brow. 

Before you could clarify, Robin did.

"Yeah dingus, she keeps having these awful nightmares and crazy nosebleeds. The other day her headache was so bad that she didn't listen to her walkman because the headphones hurt to be on her head." She explained animatedly. 

Your eyes widened in embarrassment. It wasn't a big deal and Steve didn't need to know. You were afraid that he would worry or look at you as if you had some serious psychological issues. Not like it would be such a terrible fate, but you didn't think something so odious could be easily digested by someone like Steve. 

"Thank you for the suggestion Rob, but I think that's my cue to leave." 

You gently squeezed Robin's shoulder to soothe her and hopefully discreetly inform her that she had overshared. 

Steve forced a placating grin as he ran a firm hand through his swirly mane. 

You waved a kind hand to Harrington as you walked out of Family Video, hoping to God that this weird tizzy of a day would draw to a close soon.

-

The warm Indiana afternoon faded into a raven sky, set aglow by tiny speckles of constellations. Sprawled across your fuzzy rug still in the same clothes, worry ate at you when Eddie still hadn't arrived. 

It was 9pm and you were coming to the conclusion that perhaps he never would. You were slightly worried, yet mostly annoyed. He had pestered you at lunch about helping him with his poetry. But maybe he ended up with Chrissy? The thought kept pervading your mind, never allowing you to rest. 

Desperate to get comfortable, you slowly rose from your languid position in hopes to change into something more agreeable. 

After you discarded your shirt and jeans onto your bedroom floor, leaving you in just your underwear and white singlet, you slowly pulled on some great sweat pants and woolly socks. 

Just as you pulled them on, a sudden yet light tap from your bedroom window garnered your attention. You snapped your head in its direction, heart almost going asystole at the intrusion, until a familiar head of curls came into view. 

Clutching at your chest in fear, you watched as Eddie gave a small wave through the window pane. You let out a relieved breath and slowly stalked your way over. 

The window opened with a click. 

"Eddie." You breathed, voice a little raspy from fright. "What on earth are you doing? You were supposed to be here hours ago." 

Eddie hoisted a jean clad leg over the frame and slid into your room with practiced ease. 

"Was a little caught up." He groaned in response as he tried to shut your window. 

"I was getting changed, you could have just come through the front door."

"Don't worry, I didn't see nothing." Eddie remarked unconcerned, turning around to face you. 

As your warm bedroom light hit his pale face, you noticed a shattered mosaic of deep blues and purples across his right eye and cheek. A bright crimson stain trailed down his Helfire shirt that was now soiled in what seemed to be blood. His plush bottom lip had an angry slit in it, revealing layers of tonal reds amongst vivid pink. Eddie looked like he had just come back from hell.

"Jesus fucking Christ." You muttered, taking his injured head into your hands. 

"Gentle, sweetheart." Eddie replied, wincing as your hands came to rest on his battered cheeks. 

A million thoughts ran through your mind all at once, as if each one were a train colliding directly into one another. Your eyes nearly burst out of your skull as you took in Eddie's injuries, making note of each indigo splotch and dots of dried blood. 

"Who did this to you?" You asked incredulously. Eddie swallowed the lump that had magically formed in his throat.

"Jason." He replied, sore lips grazing the inside of your palm. 

Eddie gripped your wrists gently and pulled them away from his face.

You remained silent as he skulked around your room, taking a liking to the end of your plush bed. He patted the spot next to him, motioning for you to come sit.

You held your arms over your chest and joined him. 

You might have appeared calm albeit shocked, but on the inside you were fuming. 

How the fuck could Jason do this? You wanted to stride over to his house and set him alight. You could barely wrap your head around it.

"Eds...why did he do this to you?" You asked softly, still bewildered by his injured complexion.

Your question made Eddie think back to this afternoon. 

"Hey freak!" Jason called, cornering Eddie in the school parking lot. 

Jason and his posse waited until late, the time of day where it was deserted and when Eddie had finished writing his newest campaign for Helfire in the drama room. 

Eddie turned around with a whoosh, only standing mere centimetres from his van. He barely had any time to register what was happening, falling to the ground with a thud. 

"Think you could get away with it freak? Hanging around Chrissy. Your little slut threatening me?" 

Jason started punching Eddie over and over and over. His rage unleashed and untamed. 

Suddenly Eddie was laughing, a wide smirk growing across his busted lip and bruised cheek. Jason stilled his vicious movements, brows furrowed in hesitancy.

"That's it Carver?" Eddie taunted. "I thought you were a tough guy, but you punch like a girl." 

Jason blinked in shock and stepped back, before throwing an even harder punch. Eddie rolled to the side and spat out some blood. 

"Maybe a little harder this time and you might actually leave a mark." He groaned.

Eddie tilted his head back in roaring laughter, smearing blood across his face with the back of his palm. 

Jason took the incentive and hit him harder and harder, growing ever more frustrated. Eddie was becoming battered and bruised, yet he didn't lose the fight. 

When Jason stepped away, conceding to Eddie's taunts and the feeling of humiliation, Eddie laughed even harder. 

"Come on champ, thought you were trying to prove me wrong." 

After several more punches and groans of frustration, they left a manically cackling Eddie in the parking lot, peeling away in Jason's car and driving off into the late afternoon. 

"Wait, he did this because of me?" You asked disbelievingly.

Eddie turned to face you, grabbing both of your wrists to anchor you to him. 

"No, absolutely not. He's had it out for me ever since middle school. This has nothing to do with you, okay?" Eddie soothed, absentmindedly running his thumb over the back of your palm 

You hung your head low, trying to listen to his comforting words. They were failing in their effectiveness. 

"There's a first aid kit in the bathroom, I'll be right back." You remarked, slowly slipping out of his reassuring grip. 

When you returned with swabs and gauze, you disinfected his many wounds. The sight of deep burgundy against sharp white made your stomach curl. You kept gently dabbing the cut above his eye, mesmerised at how a protuberant head of blood kept returning after several attempts at blotting the skin.

"What's the prognosis doc?" Eddie questioned sarcastically, momentarily breaking his trance from your worrisome complexion. 

You huffed, tucking a loose coil of hair behind his ear. You didn't want specks of dried blood to be caught in his mane.

"Well, you're going to be okay. Just a little swollen and bruised, but still beautiful." 

Eddie quietly crooned.  

"Did you hear that? My little Florence Nightingale thinks I'm beautiful." 

"Shut up." You warned, lightly smacking his arm. 

You placed all of the soiled swabs and gauze that were still slick with blood into a plastic bag. You closed the lid of the first aid kit from the bathroom and placed it on your night stand. 

The soft incandescence of your lampshade casted a warm glow in your room, subtly highlighting Eddie's battered complexion. He looked vulnerable in front of you, an elusive reminder that he was not impervious to pain or brutality. That Hawkins was a terribly violent place and people like Eddie, people who were different were a constant target. A source of retribution.

Just like in the past, people who you care about can be taken from you without warning, without any proper reasoning at all. And in the grand scheme of things, you are forever powerless to stop it. 

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" Eddie queried, nudging his jean clad knee with yours.

Your silence worried him. 

"Nothing." You replied instinctively. 

Your reply was thoughtless and even Eddie couldn't understand why you even attempted to lie at all. He knew you too well. 

What Eddie didn't know, was why you always kept him at arms length. Sure he had an idea that it had something to do with the enigmatic Matt, or your distant relationship with your parents, or even your past life before Hawkins (whatever that consisted of). But he could never really be certain and the weight of that speculation had started to become impossible.

Yet, he let it go and hummed softly in response.

"So um, you're gonna get mad at me for bringing this up but, when I saw you getting...getting-"

"Changed?" 

"Yeah, changed. I noticed a little something around your uh...hip area." 

Your eyes widened and you shot up from the bed. 

"Eddie! You said you didn't see anything!" You practically shouted. 

Eddie roared to his feet to join you.

"I know! I know! I didn't want you to feel...violated. I swear I didn't look on purpose!"

You turned to face him, groaning to yourself that Eddie had probably seen your half-naked form. Not just you in shorts and a singlet, but part of your bare things and hip bone. 

"Christ, Eddie." You muttered, relaxing back into the mattress. 

Eddie joined suit, mirroring your movements out of fear of your wrath for seeing you in such a vulnerable and compromising way. 

Another silent moment passed.

"So, is it uh, a tattoo?" He asked quietly. 

You turned to face him as his he cast his gaze toward his feet sheepishly. 

You let Eddie's question linger in the air, deliberating what to do next. It was a tattoo, but it wasn't done on a whim or for a stupid bet or dare. It was important, a part of something larger, something you hadn't shared with Eddie. Something that even the thought of sharing had you petrified. 

"You want to see?" You asked, barely above a whisper.

Eddie now turned to face you, fashioning a delicate expression of caution. He knew his abrasiveness could land him in some deep shit sometimes, but he didn't want this to be one of those times. Eddie had taken notice of how your mood would suddenly shift or how the air would carry something heavy at the drop of a pin. He had never really known what caused it, but he learnt that it was specific to you and he shouldn't push if he could help it. But he knew that moments where you would pull back the curtain even for a mere second were precious and worth savouring. 

"Okay." 

You cleared your throat before pulling down the right side of your waistband, slowly revealing an inky spot saddled on your hip. The whole thing felt so inglorious, revealing a strange part of skin that Eddie wouldn't have ever seen typically. It didn't feel sensual, it felt deeply pregnable. 

Suddenly, the small tattoo was completely exposed, the rest of your waist hidden by the fabric of your singlet. 

Eddie's breath hitched. Seeing a tattoo on you did something to him. What that something was, he wasn't quite sure yet. 

"It's a butterfly." You remarked, noticing his tacit silence. "A monarch more specifically." 

With your statement Eddie chuckled lightly. 

"I never would have expected you to have a tattoo." He replied, looking up to your orbs with a mischievous grin.

You hummed sardonically in response.

Before you knew it Eddie ran his thumb over the butterfly, sending sharp shudders down your spine. 

"You give me so much shit for my tattoos and the whole time you had one and didn't tell me." 

Eddie was smiling to himself, tracing the small orange inking, running his finger tip along the fanned out wings.

"I didn't get this so girls would think that I was hot Eddie." You chided, his hand still resting on your waist. 

"You think I'm hot?" Eddie asked, devilish smile growing.

You turned away, desperately wishing for respite from his grin, his burning touch, his all-encompassing proximity. The whole thing was a little too much for you all of a sudden. 

Eddie must have noticed, pulling up your waistband for you and shifting away nonchalantly. You couldn't hide anything from him. He was too terribly perceptive and it killed you.

"So why'd you get it?" He asked inquisitively.

You pulled your knees to your chest, attempting to compose yourself. 

"My brother always liked them." You replied, resting your elbows on your pale knees. "There used to be a whole cluster of them back home."

Eddie nodded in response, savouring the fitful acknowledgement of your past. 

You stood up from the bed and moved to the other side of your room. Opening the cupboard doors, you pulled out a crocheted blanket. 

"I don't think you should go home to Wayne looking like that, you should call him and tell him that you're staying here for the night." You mused as you placed the blanket gently into his lap. 

Eddie watched in awe as you moved around your room so effortlessly. He hadn't ever been treated with such kindness, softness or sentimentality in his entire life (apart from Wayne) until he had met you.

The way you always thought ahead, about little infinitesimal details that seemed to escape him so frequently, rendered him overcome with wonder. It was this moment that he wanted to cry, not because he was sad or fearful, but because he felt seen, cared for and loved. Even if it wasn't the kind of love that could be articulated in an overt way, it was the kind of love that surfaced so subtlety, yet always in complete abundance. 

-

“How do you even like this movie?” Eddie asked with a sigh. Mock annoyance dancing off his plush lips. He had already grown tired within the first few minutes, struggling to read the German that presented so boldly on the screen. 

You turned to your left, studying Eddie’s profile, or more distinctly his nose. You made note of its slanted descent and bulbous tip. You watched how the lowlight of the tv reflected off his pale skin, illuminating little mousy spots that peppered his complexion.

“I don’t know.” You started, nudging your shoulder with his as you laughed.

You looked to the raven words that flashed on the screen.

Does this word not sound like the deathbird

calling your name at midnight?

Beware you never say it - for then

the pictures of life will fade to shadows,

haunting dreams will climb forth from your heart

and feed on your blood. 

“You can’t ever deny death. But maybe you can commemorate sacrifice. Right the wrongs dying causes, even if it feels hopeless to do so. Even if you’re depleted of willingness to try.”

Eddie stilled, shock very much evident in his rigid features. You on the other hand had been consumed by heavy and existential ruminations. 

He studied the faraway look you possessed within your glowing black irises, drinking in your despair like crisp water in the middle of a dark night.

“And here I thought it was about a hairless vampire.” Eddie remarked jestingly.

It made you chuckle and turn away shamefaced. You hadn’t intended on growing so experiential.

But the movie had eventually ended, leaving you laden and dreary eyed on Eddie’s firm shoulder. He watched you breathe in and out slowly, consumed by the rise and fall of your heavy chest. 

He didn’t dare move - despite the stinging pain on the side you rested - afraid you would stir and wake. Even with the absolute shit beaten out of Eddie, he always thought of you in the way he thought of no other.

After gazing at your form as if you hung in the deep walls of the Uffizi like a Botticelli painting, Eddie drifted off into sleep. His body directly craned into yours, with calloused fingertips barely touching, the space between singing to the infinite. The two of you molded together so sweetly, naturally, like two small children unaware of the world's failings and frailty. 

[house-of-slayterr]

Can you do security breach please🥺🥺

Darling, I'm afraid I am a poser, despite FNaF being one of my hyperfixations, you have caught me lacking, I have not caught up past Sister Location yet. I'm still reading the books right now. I've actually never played any of the games, cause I'm a weenie, but I'll watch gameplay soon. I'm gonna go off what I've seen in fandom, so sorry if this is short. I don't have a lot to go off here, I'm trying my best.

It had been a long day at school, your teacher not giving any licence in your absence. College could be quite taxing at the best of times. But this week had been god awful. You slumped into your night job, pulling on your security uniform, and attaching your flashlight to your belt.

Some kids were still in right now, you'd gotten in early today and there was still about half an hour until the place closed. For the most part, it was kind of cute to watch all the little gremlins around. That was until one of them tugged on your sleeve.

"Mx. Security guard, I've lost my bunny, I can't find him!" They said.

The kid couldn't have been older than six at the most. You sighed heavily, leaning down to him.

"Do you know which room you last had him in?"

He shook his head.

"Scary room, I think."

Scary room? You laughed a little. At his age, everything must have been scary. But you tried to think it through, which room would you find he scariest as a little boy? Then it hit you, he must have gone to an employee-only room, that's why he couldn't find it.

"I'll be right back ok? Stay put, I'll find your bunny."

You pulled out a chair and sat the kid down. As you walked toward the back room, you looked back to see him kicking his feet and looking around. sometimes you really didn't mind kids, when they weren't being total demons. You pushed through the back door with ease.

"Day shift should really get locks for these doors." You thought out loud.

If a six-year-old could push open the door with ease, it was a safety violation. You'd talk to your boss about it during the next meeting. This may just be your job while you get through college, but that didn't mean you wanted people to get hurt due to negligence. You looked around for a moment, sighing when the lights wouldn't turn on. Another thing you'd have to leave a note so maintenance could fix it in the morning.

You turned on your flashlight and looked around for a moment. It was cold back here, you shivered slightly. Then you spotted tuft a blue, it must have been the bunny. You made your way across the room to grab it but froze when it moved. You squinted your eye wearily. You reached for it once more, but once again it moved. You crossed your arms over your chest.

A second later, an animatronic popped out at you, from the ceiling.

"What's the wrong Sundrop?" They asked.

You rolled your eyes. Of course, Sun had crept away to lurk in the darkness. You would scold him for running around freely while customers were still around.

"I just need the rabbit, Sun. Could ya give him to me?"

"Oh, this?"

They shook it in front of your face.

"Yes."

You reached for it once more, but they pulled away.

"I don't have time for this right now Sun. Don't make me send the programmers to reprogram you." You seethed out.

Sure, it was harsh, but you'd had a long day. You saw red eyes in the dark. Shit, Moon was on the verge of showing up, you couldn't have that while there were still people around.

"I didn't mean that Sun. I'm just tired ok, it's been a long day."

"Then maybe you should get some sleep Silly Goose."

Their voice came out slightly crackled and deep, but it was clear they were keeping Monn at bay.

"You know I can't do that. Someone has to watch over all of you."

"I could do it! Sun is a good friend to Mx. Security guard!"

A month ago, you would have sworn you were going insane, talking to a children's animatronic. But when Sun referred to themselves as your friend, it made you feel warm inside. You didn't have many other friends, considering your busy schedule.

"Sun, you know I can't let that happen either. I've heard reports of the last time you were left alone." "That was an accident, the kid wasn't supposed to be back here." "And neither were you..."

The animatronic huffed, pouting like a little child. You rolled your eyes.

"The toy, Sun, a little boy is anxiously waiting for his return. Wouldnt you want me to return your hat if you lost it?"

The animatronic thought for a second, humming.

"No, I'd let you keep it. Mx. Security Gaurd would look nice with my hat."

Now you knew you'd gone mad, blushing at a compliment given by a hunk of metal and some faulty coding. You hide your face behind your own hat.

"I'll let you and moon hang out in the guard office with me all night if you give it back."

Their eyes brightened, you could practically see the actual gears turning as they discussed between the two them.

"Can we play with Mx. Security Gaurd's hair?"

You sighed heavily, it was like making a deal with a toddler. How ironic.

"Yes Sun, you and Moon can touch my hair. Now the toy."

They slunk down from the ceiling, extending the toy to you. You gave a polite smile.

"Now, back to your station until we close, ok big fella? The children are expecting you."

You scooted them off, returning to the child with the toy in hand. You were confused when you not only didn't see them, but you didn't see or hear anyone else either. The place was empty before close. Everyone had just vanished. You didn't like the feeling of this.

"Sun! Moon!" You called out.

Whatever they had distracted you from, you didn't like it. You'd get to the bottom of this if it was the last thing you did.

[facetsofthecloset]

I have been thinking a lot about vampires and my recent ADHD diagnosis and now I’m thinking about vampirism as a metaphor for ADHD (though I’m sure I’m not the first person to make this comparison)

(Warning for personal mental health rambling and suicide mentions) (also blood bc vampires)

The bulk of it is the constant…aching. The world feels like sandpaper on my brain, always and forever, unless I have something distracting me or keeping me focused.

(Or possibly if I get medication. Which I have not yet because did you know Adderall and other stimulant ADHD meds are straight up banned in Japan bc it’s potentially abusable?!?!? I had no idea the laws were THAT fucking draconic bc I’m not really a drug person personally. Like obviously I knew about pot being illegal but ADDERALL?? I’m 100% certain based on personal experience with suicide ideation caused by chronic understimulation that this is a factor in Japan’s high suicide rate!!!! I literally get suicidal when I’m hungry and I’m sure that’s due at least in part to the emotional disregulation and difficulty identifying emotions/triggers, although I need to discuss that with my psychiatrist next time!)

Lots of vampire stories/lore touch on the hunger for blood in kind of similar terms, or at least in ways that aren’t too far off.

A deep down, uncontrollable and insatiable longing, a drive that can cause you to fixate on achieving a goal that you think will satisfy you, yet every success has a hollowness at its core bc you KNOW that satiation is temporary?

A drive that can be destructive and detrimental to you and everyone around you if you’re not careful or always mindful?

A need that can be overpowering, intoxicating, pushing you to temptation and impulse, or subtle and pervasive and creeping in the background?

Familiar, right?

At least vampires know there’s one answer that will satisfy them every time, even if it’s temporary. People with ADHD have to jump from stimulus to stimulus, spending so much energy just searching for a solution, never knowing what might do the trick.

Or having something that works today be a useless dried out husk tomorrow.

Then there’s the tendency of ADHD folks to be night owls—not always of course, but I think it’s relatively common? Or at least having irregular/unaligned-to-broader-society sleep schedules. Oh, and schedules, who ever heard of a vampire with schedules? (Don’t @ me I’m sure there are plenty of examples in media 😂, but I’m talking your stereotypical pop culture Dracula [and not to actual book Dracula since that guy actually seems to have had a schedule or at least an agenda lol])

Discworld vampires who take up the Black Ribbon (a vow to not drink human blood for those who don’t know) do it by switching their fixation on drinking blood to something else—explicit textual examples being light (in practice photography)(Otto Chriek my beloved) and coffee (don’t let the beans run out). I think you can argue this as more of a special interest than hyperfixation, but they’re along similar lines.

You can also talk about the social isolation. It’s not always true but plenty of people with ADHD have a hard time in general society bc the way we think doesn’t align. Vampiric isolation tends to be more along the lines of not wanting to live near something that could and would kill you so obviously not a one to one there, but there’s also lots of media that depict sympathetic vampires who WANT to be part of society “normally” but can’t bc people don’t understand them and thus don’t want them around.

I don’t really know how to end this, it’s just something I was thinking about today. I’ve always liked vampires as a concept but never thought about the need for blood as the main appeal—but maybe subconsciously I was relating to it?

Idk I’m dizzy and tired and want the sandpaper to go away. I’m gonna go play around with my vampire OC lol

[artknifeandglue]

Hit a tiny lifelong milestone today!

It got me thinking - I used to write fic in a very active fandom with friends and big bangs, and then I stopped all fandom for a bit and ended up getting back in nearly ten years later. I always kind of accepted that yeah maybe no one's going to read the things I write, but there's a story I want to tell and so I'm going to tell it?

ngl I want to pitch some of the decade-old fics out the window and off the internet, but every so often someone happens upon them and leaves kudos on a story from some time ago. When that happens, it always makes me think of the joy of writing and completing the story I wanted to tell, and it makes me happy to know that there's someone out there who had something to read that they might have enjoyed.

There's "write for the sake of writing" and "write because you have a story you want to tell", and there's also "I'm really, really glad that someone else is also interested in this story that I wanted to tell". It's sort of mindblowing to think that a thousand people - I see a thousand people every morning 200 days a year, that's an entire school where I am, holy shit - took a couple of seconds out of their day to go hey I liked this, thanks! to a stranger they'll probably never meet.

Thank you fandom friends past and present (especially @lovingherwasgay and @toleranza-zero, the beta readers I had the fortune of working with!!), commenters all who leave the kindest words on every chapter and piece, readers who took the time to go through the piece, and everyone who's ever bothered clicking. 💕 I'm always up for talking and making new friends, so pop by DMs/asks anytime!

This is probably an excellent time to talk WIPs and statuses of ongoing projects, for anyone interested. List and musings below:

shadows, shadows took a backseat for a while for a couple of reasons: I hit a sudden dearth of inspiration and needed to relook how I plan, write, and publish to make sure I could keep going; my mental health took priority due to some things going on at work (I'm better now!) and my attention got pulled away from fic for a couple of weeks; I changed workplaces and then stopped writing for a month or two while I settled in; lastly, around the time that all of this happened, I started on a WIP that stayed a WIP for a few months, and then I embarked on Camp NaNoWriMo in July and my plans to write shadows, shadows went out the window for a few months (more details in next point!). Still, I fully intend to continue it - there are half-written scenes and plot outlines and side characters that I thoroughly enjoy writing. It might take a while longer, but it hasn't been abandoned. I'm pretty excited to go back to it!

as shattered stars shine technically doesn't count as a WIP given that it's finished, but it's on a publishing schedule and I really wanna talk about it because it's the work that pulled my attention away from shadows, shadows HAHAHA this started as a very simple "I have been inspired by a song!" but then I thought "hey what if we took Trope A and put it together with Trope B?". I started it sometime around end-April and it lay fallow for a little bit, and then Camp NaNoWriMo happened. What resulted was a small 5000-word piece abruptly became 26230 words, I suddenly realised there was a lot more story to tell, and the intensity of this piece unexpectedly ratcheted the mental capacity required up from inspiration to borderline-hyperfixation. I spent pretty much every waking moment from July to November either writing this piece or thinking about this piece until it was finally finished at the end of November, and then nearly all of December STILL thinking about it. I'm pretty proud of the piece and REALLY happy to have worked with my two wonderfully kind and helpful beta readers, and it's one of the pieces I'm proud to have finished and to have started posting.

presently untitled Kingsman coffee house AU happened while I was overseas and stumbled upon the New York Café in Budapest, known as one of the most beautiful cafés in the world. In keeping with the long tradition of writers and artists hanging out and working in European coffee houses, I started writing something while there. This is somewhat a reaction to as shattered stars shine and the process of writing it - every work I've written since November 2022 has been high-stakes and emotionally fraught in various ways, and as shattered stars shine is in many ways the culmination of all of that. I decided that I wanted to return to the good old coffeeshop AU with its minimal stakes and general happy vibes, and so this is born! It's still in bits and pieces, but I'm hoping I figure out what to do with it because it'll be nice to write something in which no one dies or gets hurt.

barista of the year (not Kingsman) is a WIP that's been on hold since February. Sorry! There's a really simple explanation for this: Kingsman and Hartwin took over my life, and hitherto-unexplored fandom is always shinier and more attention-grabbing than writing for a pairing in which I account for a double-digit proportion of the AO3 tag. I do want to get back to it eventually! It's my first coffee shop AU, and the fun I had writing the low-stakes everyday adventures of barista and dying PhD student pretty much laid the foundations for the above coffee house AU.

other miscellaneous WIPs: they're all Kingsman and they have maybe a couple of sentences / less than 1000 words, but I've got documents open for a Hunger Games AU and a reincarnation AU. Genuinely no clue if I can make anything of them, but we'll see how it goes.

That's it!

[therarara]

Okay so y'all are about to hear me go on cause my newest hyperfixation (aka vtubers) really hitting me in the feels so respectfully here is a keep reading tab for those who just want to nhoom by.

The reason being the one who basically got me into this rabbit hole in the first place, Mysta Rias, graduated ("retired") today 🥲 and like yeah I knew for a month cause he gave us fair warning because of the circumstances but like twitter is like popping off with clips of the graduation stream in which I am lowkey avoiding but also trying to watch in small doses as if that hurts any less and I am just feeling things. Like I looked up Mysta because I first found Shoto and watched their skyblock collab (because its minecraft 🤪) and found him so funny and chill. From there I watched some clips and some of those included his groupmates from Luxium, then I was bouncing between the five, branched out further into other nijiEN livers and even some JP. I've changed my oshi a dozen times and now its our woman my boy Kyo Kaneko but back to subject. Mysta is my first niji liver who introduced me to my current comfort streamers. I may not be a mystake (his fan name) but Mysta holds a special place as my goofy streamer with the wildest things to say and creative stream ideas, he may be a little awkward but he is kind and good natured. Again I didn't watch him all that often but I always kept tabs on him and even if he isn't my favorite he was the one I talked about the most.

Of the things I've seen in regards to thing leading up to his graduation, it was either a text transcript or a clip bit it was basically saying that Mysta's fear was being forgotten but I'm like my boy that isn't possible because the mystakes definitely won't but I wouldn't either. Honestly this spiel only sparked cause one of his groupmates was addressing how Mysta had this alluring presence that had honestly gotten himself and other EN livers out there and he is right of course but my brain started spiraling on this tangent cause its my own personal story.

And like you can still send fan letters I believe up until a month after graduation and I so wanted to write one but it just felt weird to thank him for introducing me into the world of nijisanji where I met my comfort streamer (it would basically be like this and like that's not really a fan letter) so like I'm not gonna but it is making me feel so many things and idk how to explain it. I guess I just want to say, Mysta was the start of it all and I'm thankful to him for it.

[popculturebuffet]

Amphibia Weekly Reviews: Bessie and Mircroangelo/The Third Temple “The Things We’ve Set into Motion Cannot Be Stopped”

Hello all you happy people. It’s been a long road, with an even longer road trip, but the season’s almost over: just two more weeks of Amphibia.. and with all the build up weighing down on our heroes two things are clear: this cannot end well for Anne or anyone involved, and this is going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a LOT. it’s going to be some...

... how have I not used more MST3K gifs. Questions for later. Point is with emotional pain immient, a revolution on the way this episode only ratchets up the tension.. while also sparing some time for makeover jokes and a breather episode about snail mentorships, fashion montages and giant crabs. I do love me some giant crabs. And i’ll tell you allllll about it under the cut. 

Bessie and MicroAngelo:

This episode finds our heroes preparing for the third and final temple, loading up the wagon and preparing weapons, maps, potions, all that good stuff. 

We end up getting two plots out of this. The first is the titular one: so Polly can help prepare, Hop Pop gives Bessie the task of watchin gher snail and certified cutie MicroAngelo, that tiny Snail who I assumed would disappear forever after his intitial apperance because that’s usually what cartoons does. But much like One Piece, Al Ewing and that owl what watches me while I sleeps, Amphibia never forgets. 

It’s some Looney Tunes style shenanigans.. not the bugs or daffy, more on him later today, kind more the “Bigger more responsible party protects the smaller more vunerable or reckless one” kind you’d see eveyr so often. Tom and Jerry also really loved this. And Amphibia wears it well, with some good gags and really cute bonding and some really excellent animation on Bessie, giving the old girl plenty of life and animation. The only part I genuinely do not like is Hop Pop  blaming Bessie for.. running after micro angelo afte rhe ran off. Aka doing the job you assigned her. 

Someone i’m looking at. Regardless otherwise it’s just some fun, adorable slapstick with a downright precious ending. And hop pop DOES apologize.. and wish he was a cute snail. I do not have time to unpack all the implications there nor ponder what Hop Pop would look like in a snail costume. This week’s given my brain enough nightmares. 

So anyway, our subplot has Marcy trying to give Anne a Makeover... and her past attempts with Sasha have been objectively horrifying so Anne is rightly scared, though the armorer who comes to help with it has a blue crab so tha’ts where all my attention. I fucking love crabs.. they just look so neat. Some see the fact a spider crab being out and about in animal crossing as horrifying. I see it as oh look at my cool terrifying crab friend. About the only crab I don’t like is this asshole. 

And even then he can be VERY funny. .he’s just also an exploitative douchebag and having worked in food service, let me tell you I.. I get why Squidward is the way he is. That said Krabbyland is a masterpiece entirely because he’s such a terrible person, so it ballances out when the show’s doing it’s best. 

Point is I like crabs and I like this subplot.. though mostly because it says a LOT about who Anne and Marcy are and where there at. Part of why Marcy is so gung ho about helping Anne is she figures this is her last shot to be whoever she wants to be. But really she’s just projecting: it’s been obvious since we properly met her that Marcy.. likes living HERE more than earth. On earth she’s an outcast: her hyperfixations, her tendency to babble about things she likes, her smartness... alll things that just make people turn away from her or pick on her on earth, with only two people relaly understanding and appricating her.. maybe more but we don’t know the situation with her parents yet. As someone who is a lot of those things, I get where she’s coming from. 

So ending up in a world straight out of an rpg... she florished. Everything that made her life difficult at home suddenly made her florish: her skill with RPG’s meant she could blend in easily with the courtly high class of Newtopia, gave her a love of taking on missions, and allowed her to put her hyperfixation, knowledge and enthusasim to real world use, creating massive improvments in an already ritzy city. Everything that made her an outcast in our world made her a hero there. It’s why I worry about what’s to come: to both Grime and Andrias.. she’s the perfectly made pawn: too desperate to have Sasha back to see the kinfe he wants her to plant in Marcy’s, and too happy to be accepted to see the rpg convention, the benevolent ruler turning out ot be a puppet for the big bad, starring her in the face. Amphibia’s given her her freedom.. but it’s also left her very vunerable and may leave her alone. 

As for Anne.. she realizes how far she’s come: from selfish and kind of distructive to selfless and self reliant.. and still kind of destructive but hey, you can’t cahnge eveyrthing about yourself. It’s why when given heavy armor.. all she needs is the core of it.. something simple to guard her but nothing too complex. She’s fine with who she is.. and it’s why she’s in the best place of the three girls. And why she’s left smack in the middle of the war to come. A war she can’t stop and that will leave her having to choose one... or do the right , hard thing and choose neither and try and free them from the bad influences they’ve embded themselves in. Either way this is going to hurt both her and the audience. 

Final Thoughts: Bessie and Mircoangelo is good classic cartoon fun with a suprisingly deep subplot. Simple, but a nice pallete clensar, especially since the next episode is pretty tense and given it’s ending and eveyrthing that’s been building this season, it’s likely only going to get worse from here, so it’s nice to have a quick and breezy break before hell comes to frogtown. 

The Third Temple:

Before we get to the final temple we get a flashback showing how Sasha met Anne and Marcy. The other two were playing on the swings when two big dillholes pushed them off and Sasha selflessly and fearlessly stood up to them. And promptly beat herself up more than the bullies who dodged her and eventually got so freaked out by whatever the hell this was they ran and a friendship was born. But noticably she’s a lot diffrent 7 years ago, aproximately, than she is at 13: she’s every bit as fearless and willfull.. but the compassion she once had got buried under a need for control. It’s easy to see now WHY Marcy and Anne loved her so much: she was their friend, their protector, she cared about them.. and while she never STOPPED somewhere along the way it became less about doing the right thing for the women she loves and more about getting her way. 

And now the two have had time to heal from what their friend girlfriend became.. it’s time to rip that wound wide open as finally, after almost a season of waiting, Sasha reunites with Marcy for the first time and Anne for the second. 

Naturally her return is in time for her gem to be charged, though our heroes unware of that didn’t seek her out before going in. This time Frobo’s riding claw though weirdly dosen’t come inside. Which is a problem with Frobo’s addition to the cast as the whole: they’ve kept him out of any episode since his induction into the family and only properly explained it once. It just dosen’t make a lot of sense to me; Yes he is massively powerful but his childlike thought process counters that. He’s easy enough to write in but is left out becasue the writers don’t want to deal with an extra character. And I had more than enough of that shit when watching Ducktales. I don’t need it when your main cast isn’t NEARLY as large or hard to juggle. It’s just galling to have spent an entire season showing he was following them, give him a whole episode.. and then just forget about him because i’ts convient. Hopefully he’ll play a bigger role as things progress and we find out where he came from because his misuse is a dark spot on an otherwise great second half of the season. 

Frobo does get to prove himself useful though and open s the temple door he just weirdly dosen’t come along. But this does leave the door open for Sasha to come in as our heroes struggle with the first puzzle: Turns out this dungeon was built by a bro, seriously the temple languge is very broey and VERY hilarious contrasted with how normal for a fantasy setting the others were, as is fitting the strength gem, so our heroes have to compete feats of strength. Unfortunately this does not mean wrestling the ghost of Jerry Stiller to the ground but instead fighting some Lava Worms, and fighting just ONE of them and lifting the provided warhammers is a challenge for Anne.. and she’s the only one who can with Marcy not having enough upper body stregnth and the plantars all de-hydrated spongebob style. 

So naturally Sasha ends up being their savor, easily dispatching them and getting some help from grime who while also dehydrated, is still phsycially strong enough to be of some help. Marcy is overjoyed to see her.. and is the only one. Given Marcy hasn’t been on the wrong end of Sasha and Grime like they have, it’s understandable: while Marcy’s grappled with Sasha’s actions and grip on her and Anne, it’s been clear it hasn’t hit her as hard as it has for Anne and she likely dosen’t get the full scope of it like Anne does. To her Sasha just made a mistake and she’s back now and tha’ts what matters. To Anne and the Plantars... sasha and grime tried to kill them and Sasha then tried commiting suciide to save them. The scars of that haven’t really healed for them, nor should they. 

And given Sasha has spent the season clearly blamiing everything on Anne defying her and has been raising an army based on her resentment, and given she flew into a jealous blinding rage at finding her exes were fine and dandy without her she.. wholheartdly apologizes. 

Yeah she apologizes.. but tellingly while she talks about her and Grime being left homeless following the battle.. she leaves out everything after: The fight with Yuan, the growing rebellion, driving her friends away, the horrifying army Grime now commands. Something’s off. 

Anne naturally dosen’t trust her to do this herself and insists on coming along sitll. The next task is juts.. asking how much you lift bro, which Sasha easily passes by lifting, bro. 

The final test in Jim Crunch’s Temple of Fitness, I mean who else could’ve wrote this, is of course a big fight with a giant statue of a toad, fitting how each temple so far was built by one of the civlizations: there were frog statues and symbols in the first temple, the second was guarded by a newt and the last now has a toad guard.Though curiously.. the test itself is wholly designed for a human. Before it wasn’t 100% clear even with the hyroglyps if the chosen ones had to be human or not.. but now it’s impossible to argue otherwise. There were hints : The fact the guardian pegged her as a possible chosen one on sight , the ruins in the background of the title cards which also depict the watcher with a thousand eyes (which is what i’ll be calling him till we get his, her , they or it’s actually name. ).. but here the chamber includes a gravity increase dbz style, meaning our heroines are the only ones who can stand as the Plantars and Grimes frog and toad bodies respectively aren’t strong enough to stand anymore. And while Marcy tries it ends up falling on Anne and Sasha with Sasha being Angry Anne doesn’t trust her.. and Anne not refuting it, pointing out she has EVERY REASON not to. As she puts it “it’s not just toad tower”. For most of their lives Sasha has been controlling, caring about what she wants and not what the people she loves wants. It wasn’t just the fight there... it was simply the wakeup call to how bad a person Sasha had been. 

And for the first time in the episode.. Sasha is geniune, apologizing for what she did, and genuinely admitting how she treated Anne wasn’t wrong. it was something she coudln’t admit to herself episodes ago.. but faced with both loosing two more people due to her behavior, and having plenty of time to reflect on said behavhior.. she finally relaizes it’s her. Fuck man.. what else is there to say. 

Oh right the giant monster thing, which Anne trusts Sasha to finish.. and we get anothe rDBZ homage as Sasha removes part of her armor, which creates a CRATER, which lowers her weight enough to fight the thing. She gets a thumbs up and the honor of recharging it. 

Anne suggests opening the box.. but Marcy is VERY quick to shoot that down and suggest talking to the king. And while her reason SOUNDS good,, they don’t want to get warped somewhere ELSE at random.. it’s very clear from her actions and how quick she tried to stop it that she needs them to get to Andrias for whatever he’s talked her into. And I emphasis talked her into: Marcy trusts the king, and was in a very emotional place when he was about to talk to her at the end of season 2a... and he knew it. He knew she was at her most vunerable, most malable and trusted him completely.. and knew right then and there was his shot at getting vengance.. for him and his master. Whatever he has planned.. it’s not good. The mechancial lovecraftian horror he keeps in his creepy basement full of lost souls is a dead giveaway from that. But I don’t.. fault Marcy for it. It’s not just because I sympahtize.. to her Andrias is a good noble king trying to help her. He’s the kindly mentor she always wanted, a person who enjoys her skills dosen’t care how much she talks and has complete faith in her, something even Anne struggles with. 

But it’s VERY clear, to me at least he’s been likely using her from the moment they met: to her sh’es just an optomistic pawn, someone gullible enough to do whatever he says. I’ve always felt that her “missions” probably had some darker purpose she wasn’t aware of: getting Andrias things he needs for his army, an army she has no idea is opressing people. She’s insulated from that and instead surronded by adoring people who accept her for once. Even going to wartwood, she hasn’t yet made the connection between the toad towers and what their purpose is. I think deep down she might suspect this stuff.. but she can’t ACCEPT that the one person who every had nothing but faith in her.. is a horrible person who opresses others and somehow has even WORSE plans in store. 

Sasha likewise is facing the pressure of her parental figure.. while her patching it up with Anne was legitmate... her and Grime’s own plans rely on getting in there and Grime simply sees the other two as pawns , and just like the king he wants he wants to overthrow, their use expires once his plans in motion. 

But the thing is.. it’s clear despite assuring Grime she’s still all in.. her face in the last shot, as seen above.. says otherwise. Her apology was legitmate, not just an attempt to get close to the one thing in her way of power, but what she’s come to realize: she’s gone from blaming Anne for it.. to realizing it was her. But she’s also stuck: while Marcy is unaware of the strings her pupeteer is pulling her towards.. Sasha is all too aware of what her mentor is planning. And the thing was she was all too willing to go for it. She blamed Anne for what happened at the tower, blamed Anne for turning marcy against her and blamed the plantars and co for turning anne against her. But in the harsh light of day... none of that’s true. Marcy dosen’t hate her, neither does anne, they didn’t turn against her.. they were just tired of her shitty behavior and wanted the friend they found that day on the playground back, the woman they loved who’d go to hell and back for someone and not the bitter, manipultive person she became. She’s once again realized it was her fault.. the question is if that’s enough for her to do the right thing or not. And the hardest question of all is IF not reblling isn’t the right thing. Wfhile the Toad’s probably shoudln’t be in charge either, Andrias REALLY shouldn’t. There’s NO easy answers here, no happy outcome that makes everyone live’s better. There’s no easy way out, no shortcut home.. just the louder and louder drumbeats of war and one girl’s decision of whose side she’s going to take.

Final Thoughts on the Third Temple: As with the other four sasha episodes thus far, this was frogging brilliant. Shoudln’t be a suprise and it makes me both look forward and dread the war to come

Next Week: The plantars try to bury the hatchet with Sasha and Grime, the girls enter a battle of the bands, and the finale comes ever closer.

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[makkoskafanfic]

KakuHidan WIP fic teaser

This is part of WIP release March! A KakuHidan one for a change.

This is a Maffia - Modern setting AU but with special powers. I planned to write something like this... oh since I first started to ship KakuHidan some 9 years ago, probably. 

The idea came up again as we were rewatching Naruto last year and I got pretty far with it, before we reached the HashiMada arc and of course all the fangirl neurons in my brain got hyperfixated on HashiMada again. 

I have almost 10K words written of it, so I hope to continue one day, and not to let it go to waste. This scene is Kakuzu’s and Hidan’s first meeting. As such I would rate it M (or a strong PG13? I don’t really get the ratings) No sexual themes at this point, but there are a bunch of people getting killed, blood, gore, violence and Hidan’s dirty mouth. 

Strange to say after this, but I had fun writing this, hope you will enjoy.

Kakuzu secured the Harley and looked at the unassuming building he found at the address he was given. While it wasn’t in the best of neighbourhoods, it certainly wasn’t in the worst Konoha City could offer either. A sign in the window announced it was for sale and the faded advertisement above the door let him know it used to be a barber’s shop. All in all, not where he would imagine some crazed prophet performing his homicidal ritual. Well, his source assured him this was the place - the man knew Kakuzu didn’t take disappointment well, so it was unlikely he’d give him anything but a hundred percent confirmed information.

He walked around the building to a small alley packed with overflowing rubbish bins to find the backdoor. He pushed on it and it gave easily - it wasn’t locked.  It opened to a small room that once must have been used by the staff. It was mostly empty now, save for the empty shelves along the walls, a small desk with some old newspapers stacked on it, the large cardboard box underneath it and for the man sitting in an old office chair with one arm broken off. He stood up as Kakuzu entered. He took in his appearance, his leather jacket, his dark jeans, his mid-calf boots, the mask covering the lower half of his face, the biker helmet under his arm and he still somehow came to the wrong conclusion. He was just as tall as Kakuzu and more obviously muscled, which probably gave him a false sense of security.

“Here for a haircut? I’m afraid we’re closed for business.”

“Wouldn’t let you touch my hair,” Kakuzu grumbled. “I’m here for Hidan.”

The man’s eyes cut briefly towards the desk, which told Kakuzu what he needed to know. 

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No? I was told I need to come here to praise Lord Jashin and see the wonders he’s capable of.” He was also told some idiotic password that he didn’t bother to remember.

“The show has already started,” the man sneered at him, “no late joiners allowed.”

“That’s a pity,” Kakuzu took the helmet from under his arm, looked at it pensively for a moment, before smiting the man down with it in a lightning fast movement. There was a sickening, wet thump as it crashed the man’s skull. He wiped the blood off, noticing it got dented with annoyance. This mission was already proving to be a headache. At least there was never a complaint from Pein when he added his extra expenses for his damaged accessories.

He pushed the desk and the box out of the way, uncovering a trapdoor on the floor. A narrow staircase led down into darkness.

“A barber shop with a dungeon,” he muttered to himself as he descended. “What a circus.”

The light seeping down through the open trapdoor quickly dimmed completely as he took on the corridor. Always well prepared, he took a small torch from his inner pocket and switched it on. There were a few side doors, but he didn’t bother with them. As he walked down the corridor, the voices coming from behind the door at the end became louder and louder. He pocketed the torch and slid it open.

The people inside didn’t seem to notice his late entry. Kakuzu did a quick count. There were eighteen of them on the floor, plus two on the low stage - a woman tied to a chair, and the man he recognised as Hidan from what Pein had shown him.

First impressions were important and Kakuzu trusted his instincts. Hidan was loud, foul mouthed as he sprouted his religious nonsense and Kakuzu was taken by the deep intuition that he, for his own peace of mind, had to kill this man. He was trouble. 

He pushed himself through the small crowd, ignoring the men’s protest that he was blocking the view. Just a few feet away from Hidan he took his time to assess his opponent. He was young, just as Pein’s file said, face smooth, his half-naked body well toned. He seemed physically strong with his lean muscles, but not a match for Kakuzu’s own might of course. He was ranting about his Lord Jashin, something about his eternal gift and punishment of heathens… he was damn noisy. His voice was a deep baritone which could have been pleasant if it was quieter and if he wasn’t working himself towards shrill yelling as he got more and more agitated. The people around Kakuzu didn’t mind though - they were murmuring appreciatively, repeating some of the phrases, like “Hail Lord Jashin”, “Bring death and destruction, oh Lord,” “I swear to murder and destroy in your name”.

Kakuzu knew he was supposed to observe the whole ceremony to see the presumed powers of this preacher for himself, but he wasn’t sure he could stand much more of this. He could just shoot Hidan and see if he died or not. Not quite what Pein wanted, but it would do the job, wouldn’t it?

Hidan's eyes swept the crowd during his speech and Kakuzu made the mistake of meeting them. The dark mass was abruptly cut short. The crowd muttered as their leader fell silent, but Hidan ignored them. 

“Looks like we have a heathen, an unbeliever in our midst today!” he glared at Kakuzu, then suddenly laughed, pointing at him. “Kill him my children, let his blood flow freely as it pleases Lord Jashin!”

How the little shit knew instantly, Kakuzu had no time to ponder as the mob closed in on him immediately. Most of them were unarmed, but he spotted a few knives and what looked like a beer bottle broken in half. He kicked the first man who reached him in the stomach so hard he flew away to collide with the edge of the stage. He crumbled to the ground there like a puppet whose strings were cut. That gave him some space to work with.

His opponents were no skilled fighters, so even with their numbers against him, Kakuzu didn’t have a hard time. The magazine of his Sig Sauer held fifteen rounds, almost enough for the whole bunch. Kakuzu never missed a shot - he liked to be effective and he hated anything to go to waste. The rest he took down by bare hands. The men managed to land a few hits, even a couple of stabs, on his arms and chest, which enraged him further. They were ruining a perfectly fine leather jacket. 

He took it off and tossed it aside quickly when the last of his attackers fell to the ground with a smashed-in face. Blood was running down his left arm from a long and shallow cut. There were smaller wounds on his chest, though they were easily to ignore. 

He looked up at the two people on the stage who didn’t join the fight yet. The woman tied to the chair - unconscious, maybe drugged, so no kind of threat, and the annoying preacher. Hidan didn’t seem to be disturbed by the defeat of his followers. He had a long, sharp pike in his hand - he pointed at Kakuzu with it and he grinned.

“Lord Jashin blessed me with glorious destruction today! All this blood and the corpses! Thank you, Lord Jashin! I’m your forever faithful follower and will sacrifice this son of a bitch to you as well! His blood will seal the sacred…”

“Shut up,” Kakuzu cut into this annoying speech, feeling the beginning of a headache forming behind his brows. “One more word of this nonsense and you’ll end up in so many little pieces even your god wouldn’t be able to tell how you looked originally.”

“How dare you interrupt my prayer, you heathen fucker?!” Hidan shrieked at him. “You’ll die in the most glorious agony!” Like the obviously brainless idiot he was, he charged Kakuzu with a shrill battle-cry of “Lord Jashin”, holding his pike in front of him as if he was some misbegotten knight on a tournament.

Kakuzu waited till the last moment before he stepped to the side, grabbed Hidan’s wrist and yanked it above his head. Despite his cruising grip, the priest didn’t drop his weapon. He went fully berserk, getting caught like this. His shoulder gave a sickening, loud pop as it dislocated, but he didn’t seem to notice the pain. He brought both of his legs up and kicked out, aiming at Kakuzu’s crotch. He managed to turn away slightly, but the impact on his thigh and side was still bruising. He grunted in pain, cursed the little shit under his breath and raised him even higher up from the ground. 

Hidan shrieked in indignation and still didn’t let his weapon go. Kakuzu had to give it to him, there was something to be said for his tolerance of pain. He caught the preacher’s free hand as he swung it to claw at his face and took a firm hold on it too. Hidan swore, but was far from giving up.

He bit Kakuzu’s neck in an underhanded move and kicked him in the knees so hard his legs buckled. He allowed them to fall to the ground, pinning Hidan underneath his heavier bulk. He clasped his hands above his head, restraining them and kneeling on his legs to immobilise him fully. The Jashinist screamed vulgarities at him, thrashing wildly as he tried but failed to dislodge Kakuzu.

“Shut. Up” Kakuzu grid out, slightly breathless as he was fighting this utter madman. “You little shit, just stay still for a…”

Hidan spit him in the face, more blood than saliva, barely missing his eye. That did it. 

Stitches came loose on the underside of Kakuzu’s wrists, allowing the secret weapon of his body to burst forward.

“What the fuck…” Hidan gasped as the tentacles wrapped themselves around his neck and squeezed. After that only unarticulated, gurgling sounds left his throat. 

While Kakuzu found satisfaction in defeating his enemies, he always killed because that was his job or because that was the fastest way to achieve his goals and not because it caused him joy. This time however he found immense pleasure in the sudden silence. It was broken by pathetic, wet, choking sounds only, then not even those as Hidan’s lungs ran out of air. His trashing slowly quieted down, but Kakuzu didn’t let go until the last twitches stopped and Hidan’s eyes - a surprising shade of violet, now that he had the chance to see them from close up - rolled up in their sockets. 

He looked quite dead, with the foam in the corner of his open mouth, with his blood everywhere, but Kakuzu checked his pulse before he withdrew his tentacles to be sure. He rolled off from the still body and allowed himself to spread out on his back for a minute. His whole body ached, his clothes were ruined and he was in a foul mood.

“I’ll ask for a pay rise after this,” he muttered to the deadly quiet room. He closed his eyes - only to open them in alarm when he felt movement from next to him. He tried to roll away, but Hidan - magically back from the dead, the pike he never let go throughout his thrashing raised high - was too close. The preacher bore the weapon down, into his heart.

“Take that you rotten bastard,” he cackled and tried to yank the pike free, probably to thrust it through his chest again. Kakuzu grabbed it and didn’t let go. “You can hope they pay well in Hell, but I don’t think Lord Jashin will be kind to a heathen shithead like you! He will torture you for an eternity and reward me, his faithful servant with…”

Kakuzu breathed through the sharp pain, raised his free hand and grabbed his slicked back hair. He sat up and dragged him back, until Hidan didn’t have any other chance but to let his weapon go, if he didn’t want to lose a handful of hair.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch, it hurts you shitty fuck! Let my hair go!”

Kakuzu yanked the metal rod out from his heart, wincing at the pain. He could feel his threads moving under his skin, stitching the gaping would back up. Losing two hearts under a week. Maybe he was getting old. 

“You should be busy being dead,” he told the priest. “And as such not concerned about your hair.”

“Fuck you, my hair looks too good to be touched by the likes of you!”

“It’s a horrible dye. This must have been a shithole of a barber shop.”

“As if you are the one to talk! When did you get a cut last time? Never? And what’s with that fucking mask? Is it the flu season or what?”

“Shut up,” Kakuzu said with resignation as he knew now it was in vain. 

“You shut up. Why are you not dead, anyway?”

“Because we are both out of luck today.”

He stood up and experimentally let Hidan’s hair go. The priest got to his feet as well, examining him with his head tilted to the side. He then looked around the room, at all the scattered bodies lying around and sighed.

“This was the best mass I ever celebrated,” he said dreamily. “Was I mistaken? Are you sent by Lord Jashin?”

“No,” Kakuzu snorted at this absurdity. “I was sent by the Akatsuki. The Leader heard of your special… ability and wanted me to recruit you to our ranks.”

“What the fuck is the Akatuski?”

Kakuzu looked at him silently, pondering the probability of someone living in Konoha and never hearing about its most powerful criminal organisation. Hidan looked honestly clueless. An immortal idiot. Wonderful. 

“A place that would offer someone like you many possibilities. You get jobs done and it will treat you well.”

“I only want to spread the word of Lord Jashin and live to please him.”

“You want people to listen to you? Or you want to kill them? The Akatsuki will help you with both.”

 “Are there more people like you?” 

“There are some… not ordinary people in the organisation,” Kakuzu said carefully. “Though not quite like me.”

“So only me and you are immortal?” Hidan grinned at him. Kakuzu didn’t contradict him - he wasn’t immortal, just very hard to kill, but he didn’t need to give the advantage of knowing that. It seemed he was being successful in his recruitment. He wasn’t quite convinced it was a good thing. “So what now?”

“I am to present you to our Leader in two days. You’ll come with me, so I can keep an eye on you till then.”

Hidan looked around and shrugged.

“It’s not as if I have any followers alive at the moment. I guess I can go and see that Akatsuki bloke with you. Who are you, by the way?”

“I’m Kakuzu.”

“Kakuzu, ehh? Is that a last name or a first name?”

“It’s a name,” Kakuzu snapped irritably. “You can call me by it.”

“All right then, Ka-ku-zu,” Hidan grinned as he dragged his name out in an inane sing-song. “I’m Hidan.”

“I know,” he sighed with resignation. “Go and grab whatever you need and let’s head out.”

Hidan muttered something about his sacrifice and went to finish the woman off, probably. Kakuzu changed the magazine in his gun and made sure that they left nothing but dead bodies behind. They needed no potential eye witnesses. He didn’t bother with cleaning up though - good luck for anyone who tried to find his fingerprints in any recent databases. 

He put on his torn jacket, re-tied his hair in its ponytail and waited impatiently for Hidan. The Jashinist reappeared at last, wearing a hooded coat, but still no shirt and a small backpack.

“I’m ready to embark this new journey Lord Jashin guides me on,” he grinned at him and Kakuzu was quite sure he was just trying to piss him on. He glared at him, but it didn’t intimidate the younger man at all.

“Let’s go then.”

[maxgrayarchived]

Everything You Need in an Apocalypse Emergency Bag

    I was going to do a different post this month, something more writing related, but with the corona virus going on I’ve been slipping very quickly back into my zombie hyperfixation and now all I can think about is the apocalypse. [Fun fact: By the time this has been drafted and edited, that hyperfixation is gone. Hate it when they go so fast] 

My sister was reading that notice or whatever the governor of Virginia had sent out for the stay at home ordinance that came out on Tuesday, and it felt… Ominous. While we watched World War Z, I decided to finally start putting together my zombie apocalypse go bag. Mostly for fun, but just in case. 

    This post is going to kick off the start of a zombie related string of posts on my blog. They won’t come out back to back or anything, but every now and then I’m going to talk about zombies. Today I’m talking about everything you need in a go bag, and how you can put it together with only the stuff in your house. 

    The first thing you need to consider is your backpack. Now, anything will work, pretty much, but if you have some choices then I’d think about it. I’d suggest a standard backpack, because it’s easy to carry and likely already tailored to your weight and comfort. Some people might argue that a messenger bag is better, because it’s harder to rip off of you and lose. That’s a fair argument, but my rebuttal to that is that if a zombie grabs my bag to eat me, I’d rather shrug off the bag and book it out of there than go down with my stuff. 

    This is the backpack I’m using, which is my sister’s.

    The first thing you should grab should, obviously, be food. I picked a bunch of food that we weren’t really eating anyway, and most of those cans are from the dollar store. 

    After a few weeks of not eating, you become apathetic and increasingly susceptible to illness. A lot of people who are malnourished died from an infectious disease, not the actual starvation. Especially in the first few weeks of the apocalypse, if you find yourself needing to evacuate your home, you’re going to need all the energy you can to find a new base to wait out the chaos of the catalyst. 

    Next would be water, another thing we don’t even need to talk about. I suggest a water bottle that you can clip to your bag or your belt so it’s easily grabbable, and the biggest one without being cumbersome, but any container that doesn’t spill will do at the end of the day. 

    A smart idea (that you probably don’t just have laying around the house, fyi) is a water filter. In ZMZReloaded’s video on a zombie apocalypse go bag, he talks about how there are plenty of small, easily portable water filters that you can just pop in your mouth and use like a straw. If you’re serious about making a go bag, then this could be something to look into. If not, then it’s not a big deal. 

    Next: A med kit. I actually got a little upset when I found out the only medical supplies we have in my house are bandaids and midol, so I’m definitely going to buy an emergency medical kit and put it in the go bag. This doesn’t need to be explained, in the apocalypse you’ll get injuries from all kinds of things, and you don’t want to bleed out or get an infection. Buy the med kit, it would be useful whether an apocalypse happens or not. 

    Next on the list would be the things you need for hygiene, like a toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap. A lot of people forget about this stuff which is fair, because in the apocalypse the last thing you’ll worry about is if you smell okay, but you know the last thing you want in the apocalypse? A tooth infection. The need for a root canal. A uti. Stay clean. 

    A multitool. This goes without saying, you can do a lot with one portable little thing. 

    Matches/A lighter. I’d suggest the matches over the lighter, because I personally would prefer to have to look for more matches than refill a lighter. Maybe that’s dumb, but whatever. These are good for starting a fire, obviously, which you’d need to cook food, for warmth at night, for light in a dark building. Invaluable, really. 

    A flashlight would probably be better off for your light source, though, and I’d suggest getting one that you can strap around your forehead to keep your hands free. You’d look like an idiot but you could have an axe in one hand, a pistol in the other, and you’d still be able to see. 

I’d also always keep extra batteries on you, mostly for the flashlight but you’d never know when it could come in handy. 

    Binoculars could be useful, if the need arises. You can use them to scope out a building you need to scavenge in, to see if the new settlement you stumbled across is trustworthy, if the area is clear. 

    A knife. Obviously. If you’re not the survivalist type, grabbing a kitchen knife at the last minute could work just fine, but a combat knife with a sheath that can strap to your belt would probably be your best bet. Something easy for you to handle and that compliments your style of fighting. If you’re not comfortable getting too close, something with a longer blade. 

    Extra clothes, like socks and underwear, seems just as stupid as the hygeine stuff, but do I need to remind you about UTI’s? And ZMZReloaded mentioned in his video trench foot, which happens when your socks get wet. It starts rubbing all the skin off your feet and giving you horrible blisters, so painful you can’t walk. I, personally, put my zombie apocalypse outfit of choice in my go bag as well, so I wouldn’t be walking around in something stupid like fishnets and high heals when zombies break down our doors. 

    If you have long hair, a hairbrush and ties. This sounds ridiculous but my sister has super long, very thick hair, and it takes her like half an hour to brush it out. If she doesn’t brush it out and put it up, it gets in her face and it’s itchy and uncomfortable and that is not what you need when there’s zombies in your face. 

    Something I feel like never gets mentioned but could be extremely helpful would be a small notebook and a pen. Use it to write down grocery lists, notes on your surroundings and the enemies, notes to other survivors, to remember things to circle around to, to plan a rendezvous… When the world is ending, your brain is going to be a little all over the place, so don’t trust yourself to remember every important thing. Write it down. 

    Some things from a toolbox. I dunno. The first thing I’d be grabbing from our toolboxes would be one of those fucking hammers. But also if it’s portable, maybe just grab the whole thing? 

    Misc things. Something we don’t think about because of the lack of diversity in apocalyptic fiction is that we’re all our own people with our own needs. I have severe eczema, and I wouldn’t leave this fucking house without my medicine and a bottle of Atarax. Someone with chronic pain would probably want to bring their painkillers, because sometimes without it you can’t fucking walk. Think of something that you genuinely can’t live without, especially in an apocalyptic situation, and make a note to put it in your go bag. Don’t forget it. 

    Little candies. Just for fun. I put a bunch of lollipops in mine. 

    Lastly, your household weapon of choice. At my place, I have a wooden baseball bat from my late granddad, Danny, and we have a bunch of hammers for some reason. I’d also grab some knives from our kitchen. Think of things you have around the house that could cause some damage and make note of it. 

    The go bag I made doesn’t have everything on this list, but it’s made from shit I just collected from around the house. I didn’t spend any extra money on it and it took me no more than 15 minutes. 

    And that was it for this post. It was a lot different than my usual ones, but it was a long time coming and there will be more. I have a lot to say about the apocalyptic genre. 

    Stay safe, stay quarantined, don’t be an asshole. 

[jane-the-zombie]

Jailhouse Rock || Roland, Felix, & Jane

TIMING: A Couple Weeks Ago LOCATION: WCPD Station PARTIES: @streetharmacist, @sgtrolandhills, @jane-the-zombie SUMMARY: Mister Doyle tells Detective Wu that he was with Agent Sterling when he disappeared. The detective and Sgt. Hills take his statement while Mister Doyle eats nuts.

It didn’t feel right to continue on watching the movie alone and as it was, the peanuts had melted in his pockets. Felix just hoped Bea was alright. The incident with Javier had been weighing on him in an unexpected kind of way. Unexpected in that he readily relayed information to a law enforcement officer. He should have been concerned but he couldn’t find it in him as he stepped out of the taxi cab that stopped him in front of the White Crest Police Department. He adjusted his plum tie as he walked in. The person at the front desk raised their head and when he met their eyes, he grinned. “Hiya. Nice night, huh? Is officer Jane Wu here? I was telling her about some concerns and geez, do I have some. Would you do a guy a favor and ring her?”

Of course Felix was involved. Jane had sat at her desk with her head in her hands for approximately 15 minutes after Felix assured her he was coming down. She was a little wary, she had seen what Felix’s eyes could do. There was no reasonable explanation for Agent Sterling to flat out climb into the Devil’s Gullet. Could Felix have done something to him? She’d excused Felix for doing it the first time considering that man had a knife on them both, but she couldn’t imagine Javier having tried to do something to Felix like that. The front desk buzzed her, and Jane sighed, getting out of her chair to collect Felix, stopping to pop her head into Roland’s office. “F - Mr. Doyle is here. I’ll take him to interrogation.” She went to the front desk, looking at Felix tiredly. “Hello, Mr. Doyle,” Jane said, eying him. She still wasn’t sure that she trusted any of the other personnel to actually handle Felix. “This way, please.”

The messages Wu had screenshot and sent to Roland had left him concerned for Agent Sterling. Drugs were the most logical answer which left him deeply concerned for the man’s wellbeing. There was the big question of what had caused this apparent malfunction in his mind and whether or not it was consumed willingly. Either way, they needed to get to the bottom of it. When Wu had told them they had a lead coming in, Roland felt a wave of relief. He hadn’t been making much headway on the situation and he hoped this witness could help them find answers. “Let’s see what he has to say,” he commented as he followed Jane into the interrogation room. “Hello, Mr. Doyle,” he greeted, extending his hand for a shake, “Detective Wu here tells me you may have some information on Agent Sterling?”

As Jane came around the corner, Felix about beamed at her. Always nice to see a friend, if the circumstances were less than desirable. But hey, there were worse ways to spend a Friday night than discussing potential crimes. “Mr. Doyle, that’s a new one,” he said with a laugh, hand up in a light wave. “You got it, detective.” He followed her and took in the joint as he walked. It looked about the same as the other ones had been to before. They all really started to look the same after a while as it was. An easy, unbothered smile eased onto his face as he walked into interrogation. The room looked the same too. As the man came into the room, Felix turned to look at him. “Hello yourself, sheriff,” he said as he met the shake with his own. The smile slipped some as he nodded. “I do, yeah. Figured I oughta come share it with you fine folks. It felt like the right thing to do after all.” He glanced over to Jane before he adjusted his glasses. “I was with him last. Mind if I sit or something?”

Detective. Instant regret was what Jane was feeling. She shouldn’t have called him Mr. Doyle. He was never going to let her live it down. But she kept her face passive as they entered the interrogation room. “Sergeant,” Jane corrected, automatically, looking between the two. Sheriff. Oh god, maybe they should have done a phone call. But realistically, Jane knew that since Felix was the last person to see him that he could be incriminated at whatever happened to Javier. Jane didn’t want that. Jane really didn’t want that. She wanted him to go down for what she had been chasing him for all those years for, if at all. “Yeah, take a seat, Mr. Doyle.” Jane nodded to to the chair, before taking a seat herself, taking her notepad out along with a pen. She glanced up at Felix, silently begging him to behave. “Why don’t you start with what happened when you saw him?” Jane encouraged.

Roland had been grateful Wu was the one to correct his current rank. Maybe one day he could call himself Sheriff, but today wasn’t the day. He nodded along as Jane told Felix he could take a seat. There was no need for him to reiterate the point. He had his own notepad and pen out, but kept a close eye on Mr. Doyle’s face. Studying body language as people spoke was important and he was very keen to get to the bottom of what was going on with Agent Sterling. “Yes, please, start from the beginning.” He watched Felix expectantly, waiting for some sort of answer that would help them piece together what the hell was going on.

The fae fought the urge to roll his eyes. Sergeant. Sheriff. Detective. They were human titles. Felix kept his expression even with a hint of an apologetic smile. “Right, of course. Apologies.” Was a word. He offered it with a loose gesture as he unbuttoned his suit jacket so that he could sit a little more comfortably. Immediately, he laced his fingers together. Placed them on the table for them to see. He figured that would be important. “Well, I can absolutely tell you that I wasn’t going to start at the end,” he remarked as he straightened up. “Kidding. Anyhow, it all started when Javier, err, Agent Sterling and I were talking about mayonnaise. On the internet,” he started. “He asked me what I thought of the Devil’s Gullet and one thing or another led to us wanting to check the joint out. Together. Make a date of it or something. So we did.” He paused for a moment to look between Roland and Jane. “Is it alright if I reach into my pocket? I got some chocolate peanuts melting in there and I’m a little hungry.”

Jane shot Felix a look at his joke, but leaned forward slightly when he mentioned mayonnaise. She made a note - Javier had said someone had hacked him or something, and he spent hundreds of dollars on mayonnaise. Jane noted the Devil’s Gullet too, the area had exploded with a dead body as well as multiple human organs back in January, before she had been transferred there. Did that connect to the murders that Javier had been looking at - her train of thought was cut off by Felix. “You - what?” Jane stared at him, already exasperated. “Felix, you’re not under arrest right now, yes you can reach into your pocket.” This was going to be a long night. “What happened at the Gullet, Felix. You told me he - what as it - got in it? What happened when you two got there?” She couldn’t ask him if he flashlight eyes’d him with Roland in the room, and she didn’t know what she was going to do if he did.

The people of White Crest were nothing if not eccentric. Roland knew his features looked slightly perplexed at the mention of talking about mayonnaise over the internet. It seemed like a strange thing to kick off a potential meet-up. Did people really love mayonnaise that much? It was okay on a sandwich or in a potato salad, but he wasn’t sure he followed. Could the strange gibberish language he was speaking be linked to any of this? “So, you two went to Devil’s Gullet. What happened there,” he questioned. The question about going into his pocket caught him off guard. “Of course, you can go into your pocket. You’re here as a witness, not a prisoner.” For now, at least, though he doubted the man would be volunteering to come give information that would be incriminating. Or maybe he would. It was hard to get a good read on Felix.

“Figured it was safer to ask,” Felix said as he unlaced his hands and wasted no time in grabbing a handful of melted peanuts. He popped a couple into his mouth, chewed, then started to speak again once he swallowed. “Anyhow, so I met him here and we headed straight to the Gullet. Y’know, talked about pie as people do. Just normal conversation. I didn’t think we talked about anything strange or enough to cause concern or nothing.” A weird, off brand pang of...maybe sadness hit him. He really did want to go get that pie. He matched the pain with another peanut. Felt a little better. “So we get there and we--Alright, I gotta say, I don’t really get spooked all too much but the place really can give a guy the heebie-jeebies. The Gullet is like heebie-jeebies town square, you dig?” He looked between the two again before he continued. “But we get to the hole and Javier starts talking about someone being in there.” He accentuated the statement by making a circle shape with his hands. “I didn’t see or hear anything. Not. A. Thing. But he was real convinced.” The fae frowned and sat back. “Convinced enough to just go in, I guess.”

If Roland wasn’t here, Jane would have just flat out asked Felix if his eyes had made Javier decide to take a venture into the Devil’s Gullet. It was a hyperfixation - an anxiety tic, even as Jane hurriedly wrote a few notes on Felix’s notes, glancing up at him when he mentioned the heebie jeebies. “I dig, Mr. Doyle” Jane said flatly. Everytime she said Mr. Doyle she was pretty sure a few years got shaved off her lifespan. She pressed her lips together as she listened. “Did he say why he wanted to check the Gullet out? Like he knew that he would be, um, hearing things there?” How long had Felix said the madness lasted? A while, right? Jane stared at Felix, her head tilting to the side slightly, eyes narrowing as she examined him. Definitely not the first time she gave him the cop stare, as if she could unravel all her questions and just figure out what had happened. “What did you do after he went into the Gullet, Felix?”

While Roland had been in town a while now, he’d never found himself compelled to check out the Gullet recreationally. He vaguely knew there were some bodies found there a few months back. It wasn’t his case and he didn’t particularly go seeking thrills for fun. If he was outdoors, he was camping or fishing, not visiting a place just because it gave him the “heebie jeebies.” The bodies could have been of interest to Agent Sterling, but something about this just didn’t add up. So with Jane’s next question, he nodded and leaned forward, elbows resting on the tables, so he could watch Mr. Doyle closely. Try to find any further meaning in his words. “Did it seem like he may have been under the influence of something,” he added, not quite sure why Sterling would feel so dead set about going into the Gullet.

Given the seriousness of the location and the matters being discussed, Felix didn't smile at Jane’s utterance of I dig. But his mouth did lift slightly at the corners before it receded back to a straight line. “I think the rumors about the place interested him. I mean, heck, they interested me too,” he said as he shrugged with his hands. “Place with rumors like that, I can’t blame a fed for wanting to take a peep at it. Although in retrospect, not the most dynamite of ideas...” He glanced over to Jane as he idly tapped a finger against the table. He was all out of peanuts. “I saw a guy go headfirst into the hole, Jane,” he said with a frown. “Sorry, Detective Wu. So I got the heck out of there. I don’t know where or if that hole even ends.” He shook his head then looked over to Roland as he adjusted his glasses. “Unless he slipped himself something when I wasn’t looking, he seemed clear across the board to me. At least up until the dive he took. Your guy seemed the real straight-edge type, y’know?”

Detective Wu. God, what had she started? Jane’s mouth twitched upwards, and she had to fight to keep it pressed together in a thin line. This was a serious situation, since apparently Javier had taken a nose dive into the Devil’s Gullet. She glanced at Roland, concerned. God, Felix, what did you do? Jane shifted back into her seat, examining Felix closely a moment before running an exasperated hand down her face as she digested what Felix said. “Well, Agent Sterling is a cop,” she reminded him. Well, at least she knew that he hadn’t been doing drugs with Javier and that any he consumed were likely of Javier’s own accord. She remembered the strange language that Javier had been speaking. “Mr. Doyle,” Jane started, shooting him a look. “Did Javier say anything in any strange languages that you didn’t recognize? Or did he say anything that, at the time, may have not meant anything at, but stick out to you now?”

The look on Roland’s face was nothing short of horrified when Felix explained that Agent Sterling had dived head first into the Gullet. What were the odds that he actually survived the fall? Something wasn’t right here. Why had Javier gone off in some sort of strange language before going off to the Gullet? Had Felix really not noticed anything further off about him? This whole situation didn’t add up and Roland found himself becoming increasingly frustrated. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the edge of the chair he was leaning on. He turned to Jane and stated, “We’ll need to get a team down to investigate the Gullet and someone over to check his home.” He looked back to Felix and with a grumble said, “You should have contacted emergency services sooner. Did you notice anything or anyone else at the Gullet that could have cause his reaction?”

It wasn’t Felix’s first time being held under a police-branded microscope but like the sergeant had said, he wasn’t exactly a suspect of any crime. Even if the circumstances sure as heck were. Even the fae could admit that. The way Jane scrutinized him, he had a feeling what she might be thinking. She had seen firsthand what his eyes could do when under pressure or hell, when he just felt like it. A brow quirked over the rim of his glasses as he shook his head slightly. Then, he took his glasses off. Folded them and put them in his suit pocket. “Strange languages? Depending on who you ask, English can be pretty strange,” he said with a puff of a breath. “But nah, no weird languages from what I can remember. Said he liked the lake, liked pie, we talked about whether or not the devil really lives in the hole. That sorta stuff. And we just walked. It was a real quiet place. I didn’t see nobody or hear nobody, but he swore up and down he heard someone needing help. That there was a path.” Bare-eyed, Felix looked up at Roland. Figures the guy would be upset when he didn’t call. He was too busy trying not to bust up the car as he drove it at a snail’s pace away. Left it near some abandoned, rusted garage not too far from the gullet. “The vehicle may or may not be there anymore,” he said as he ran his tongue over his teeth. “Ain’t exactly been back there myself, so worth having your guys look it over. Like you said, sergeant.”

Jane didn’t often see Felix without his glasses, so she was sort alarmed when he took them off, right after shaking his head. Was that supposed to be some sort of message? Jane glanced at Roland, knowing that he didn’t know what Felix was. Perhaps she was just reading too much into things, but now there was a bit of doubt that Felix had flashlight eyed Javier into going headfirst down in the Gullet. That made her feel better, at least a little, but now she was too busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on. “Yes, sir,” she said to Roland. She jotted down the orders from Roland, as well as what Felix said, before shooting Felix another look when he mentioned the vehicle ‘may or may not’ still be there. “I’ll have patrol cars circle up there to look for the missing vehicle, Sarge,” she said. Jane looked back to Felix. “Mister Doyle, is there anything else you can remember?” Jane prompted. “If not, I think we have what we need, Sarge. I can walk him out.”

While none of what Mr. Doyle was saying was what Roland had hoped to hear, it was enough for them to go on. It was likely Agent Sterling was already dead if he jumped down into the Gullet. He wished the man had called emergency services sooner. There was no use in dwelling on that now. His face was grim as Jane assured patrol cars would be out there soon. “Good,” he answered gruffly, “I’ll meet them out there. You’re welcome to join, Wu.” He’d scribbled down notes in his own file and looked back to Felix. “Thank you for coming in and letting us know what happened. In the future, please never hesitate to contact us right away.” With a nod, he told Jane, “I think we do. Detective Wu will see you out Mr. Doyle. Here’s my card, please let me know if you remember anything else.” He handed one of his cards to Felix in hopes and sent the pair off with a wave.