#should i've put these all in separate posts? probably but here we are

[squishlordkiwi]

Did a 15+ hour road trip with my fam twice a little ago and I drove a good chunk of it. Used AA/DGS music to keep me awake bc music psych is a blessing sometimes. Anyway, just a roundabout way to say, I have discovered some fun things in the music that made me 👀👀👀 Idk if anyone else has noticed any of it (and I will say I have minimal music theory knowledge but I'm an English major with the tendency to read into symbolism way too much), but feel to keep reading if you're interested! Spoilers for DGS2 are in here, fair warning!

I'll try and include links to the songs when I can! It'll probably be a mix of Spotify and YouTube hyperlinks so bear with me. Fair warning, this is super long because I decided to cram everything in one post oops lmao

The Funky Time Signature

The first thing I really ever noticed was that Sholmes' "Dance of Deduction"s were weird in terms of keeping beat. It's not in common time aka 4/4 aka 8-count; I think it's in 7/8 time (so you count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 etc. etc.) which is a struggle to maintain counting since people are so used to 3, 4, and 8-counts.

Dance of Deduction - Type A

I found sheet music for easier counting! It says it's in 7/4: https://youtu.be/51vTmoQzwI8

Originally, I thought it was just because he's Weird and Silly™, but I ended up listening to "Partners - The game is afoot" which plays when Sholmes and Yuujin are on the S.S. Grouse trying to deduce where Jigoku is.

Partners - The game is afoot!

This one is surprisingly in 4/4 aka common time (you count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 etc. etc. [though I have seen sheets put it in 12/8, which is close-ish, but it still has an even counting pattern WHICH IS WHAT MATTERS]). So in actuality, Shomles' Dance of Deductions aren't in a weird time signature because he's our favorite eccentric boy (okay, it might be part that too); it's because he's missing his partner after he left and investigating never felt quite right without him. Once he and Yuujin get to investigate together again, he's whole and happy. And it's just so fucking gay I can't.

Harpsichord

The big thing I noticed while I was driving (because there was nothing else interesting on the road) was the use of harpsichords in certain Londoner themes, specifically Stronghart, van Zieks, Iris, and Kazuma's prosecutor theme, as well as some of the final songs during 2-4&5.

If you don't know, this is what a harpsichord sounds like! Yes, I know I'm a nerd for being able to pick it out and name it while driving lmao

You can hear it a lot in Stronghart's theme, specifically around 0:38-0:49 (it's pretty in the background so you kinda have to strain your ears but it's there), but it's also pretty present throughout his theme.

Lord Chief Justice Stronghart - Time-Keeper of the Law

There's also a lot of it in van Zieks' theme as well; it's right off the bat and it's one of the prominent instruments throughout the piece.

Barok van Zieks - The Reaper of the Bailey

You have to really be listening for it, but it pops up occasionally in Iris' theme as well! You kinda have to strain your ears during 0:16-0:30 to hear it, but it's definitely there. It's more hidden compared to van Zieks'.

Iris Wilson - Young Biographer

I know Kazuma is Japanese, however, since he became a prosecutor in Britain, it still counts and it makes more sense once I tell you why it's all related (if you haven't guessed yet). ANYWAY, his theme also has a lot of harpsichord in it, even in the parts that were from his original theme.

A Prosecutor, Reborn

This could all just be a stylistic choice too, but do you see it yet? All the people who correspond with these themes are directly related to the Professor killings. van Zieks and Kazuma have the most prominent because we know by 2-4 the obvious connections they both hold. Iris and Stronghart's are more in the background since both of their involvements are big reveal-type deals by the end of the game.

Bonus points: the actual theme that plays when anything related to the Professor is mentioned also has some background harpsichord to connect it all.

The Professor - A Spectre Revived

I will note that I didn't notice anything in Gregson's theme, even though he played a big part in the false conviction. Courtney Sythe's theme also has some harpsichord, but I can't remember how she's related to it other than the fact that she helped with the autopsy (which probably means I should replay the games again lol).

Other game music that proves the connection:

Enoch Drebber - Rondo of Science and Magic

The Great Gateway to the Truth

The Prison Warders

The Great Closed Trial - Court is Now in Session

Reminiscences - The Fruits of Ambition

Others I probably completely missed

A Prosecutor, Reborn

Speaking of Kazuma's prosecutor theme, one of the really cool things about its composition is the warring back and forth between itself. It starts with the completely new theme, blending his usual string accompaniment with drums/cymbals, singular bell tolls, and harpsichord. When it gets to around 0:47, you hear the bells and then it switches back to his original theme from Adventures, though it's a lot grander now and lacking a lot of the traditional Japanese elements it once had.

A Prosecutor, Reborn

Kazuma Asougi - Samurai on a Mission

And it bounces back and forth like that until the end of the song, the bells signifying the shifting. It goes to show this internal struggle Kazuma is having between finding the truth even if it's something he won't like (his original theme) and following his emotions to falsely convict van Zieks as revenge (the beginning chunk of his prosecutor theme).

I also think it's interesting how dominating the harpsichord is, again especially over the chunks of his original theme from Adventures. In connection to it being related to the Professor, aside from the obvious connection to his father, it also shows how much influence and manipulation Stronghart had over him, with him being the BBEG.

Siblings

One of my favorite things I noticed was Susato and Kazuma's connections through themes, though not the one you're thinking. Kazuma's official theme I'm sure has a few connections to Susato's (but I haven't listened closely enough to hear them), however I really noticed how intertwined the two were when I listened to Kazuma's unused theme they provided in Chronicles.

Susato Mikotoba - A New Bloom in the New World

Kazuma Asougi (Unused)

Many of the same instruments are used, as well as note and chord progressions. They have the same peaceful/serene vibes too, which is understandable in why Kazuma's was scrapped (even if I do like it a lot). But if this ended up being Kazuma's actual theme, I would've noticed the familial relationship they share instead of my initial thoughts of it purely just being professional.

That's all I've really noticed for now, but I'm sure I'll come across more things as I listen to the soundtrack to study. I will, however, shut up now and let you get back with you day/night/whatever time of day it is for you because this is getting l o n g. If you did read this far, thank you for indulging me and listening to me be a complete nerd ^w^ And definitely feel free to share your thoughts too; I love talking about this stuff if you couldn't tell!

[catliker49]

Bought Legend of Zelda BOTW! And.. I can't play it until Monday because I need a MicroSD card AAHH I've not played any Zelda games, I just recall being Mortified by the Giant Moon from Majora's Mask when I was younger (The Normal Elevator on roblox I believe is where I first saw it? It might have been The Scary Elevator or something.. OH and also the Ben Drowned Creepypasta!) And also! I might not post as much, I'll be focusing on character designing and such for my final.. final piece for my College work! Until my second year (hoping I get in..) If you have any ideas of what I could draw I'd be Happy to hear from you! <:o)

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

There's a viral video circulating from the Fort Worth Zoo, of two keepers who ended up in a habitat at the same time as a silverback gorilla. Spoiler for good news: neither the humans nor the gorilla got hurt. It's a bad situation that ended extremely well, and that's why I want to talk about it.

The audio for this video is mostly someone praying loudly, so if you need to turn the audio off to watch it, you won't miss anything relevant. If you don't want to watch it, here's the summary: it starts with a keeper running around the corner into the main exhibit, pursued by a large male gorilla. She is quickly able to get into a doorway at the back of the exhibit, but does not completely close the door because the gorilla is standing across from her, watching. He eventually moves off to the right hand side of the exhibit, where we can see a keeper is trapped in the corner at the front. She was trying to move towards the exit as he moved to the right, and she stops, standing very still behind a tree, while he stays along the far right wall. They stay like that for a minute, and then the gorilla runs to the front right corner, and the keeper is able to run to the door in the back of the exhibit and get to safety.

Let's start with basic information. Even though it's just going viral now, this video is from October of 2023. It was taken not by a guest, but by the zoo security officer responding to the situation. Hmmm, seems like he maybe should have been doing something else during that situation, instead of than taking a phone video. It's going viral now because the guy (who is no longer employed at the zoo) decided to post it on TikTok for his five minutes of fame. This guy immediately started giving all sorts of media interviews, answering questions like "why no tranquilizers" inappropriately, making memes out of his own video, generally distasteful shit.

Zoo spokesperson Avery Elander gave a public statement that "thankfully, there was no physical contact between keepers and gorilla, and all staff and animals are safe." A comment from the zoo has also indicated that the incident was due to keeper error. (As opposed to, for instance, something in the fencing breaking.) According to the guy who posted the video, a lock was left unsecured and the gorilla was able to open the door to the habitat. I don't know if I buy it, and again, this just... is probably why he doesn't have a job anymore. By sharing that detail - real or not - he places a ton of public scrutiny and blame on that keeper team. (If that's what happened, I can promise you it will have been dealt with internally.) He also was nice enough to say he wouldn't name the women in the video... but verified they're still staffers at the zoo... which means they're eminently identifiable! Excuse me while I ragequit for a second.

So there's two reasons I wanted to talk about this. The first is to make sure it is well known that this guy is purposefully and intentionally exploiting the worst day of someone's life for media attention. Their lives were in danger, and he's using it for fame. His name is in the media articles - I'm not going to share it because he doesn't deserve that attention. The second reason, though, is because this video is a masterclass on how to survive if you end up sharing space with a gorilla. Every zoo person I've spoken to or seen comment on the video is so, so impressed with how the keepers handled themselves.

The gorilla in this video is 34-year-old Elmo. All apes in AZA zoos are managed in protected contact, so keepers are supposed to be separated from them by a barrier at all times. The zookeepers were in the habitat putting out a mid-day meal when he got out. Watching the video, you can see he's not actively being aggressive towards them - he's not making threat displays or trying to approach them. Mostly, Elmo seems like he doesn't know what is going on and he's kinda freaked out about it. (This is confirmed in the zoo's press statement, too). The staff stayed calm, and importantly, watched and waited to see how he'd move and act.

The zoo did say one thing, though, that's a bit misleading. In one article, their press person I quote as saying “In general, gorillas are considered the “gentle giants” of the great ape species.” Just because this may be true in comparison to other great ape species doesn't meant gorilla aren't still incredibly dangerous. This type of messaging always worries me, because I think it leads people to misunderstand the risks of being close to megafauna. Gorilla are extremely strong animals, and their social norms/behaviors are very different from that of humans. That's why it's such a big deal any time people end up in gorilla habitats, and why sometimes in those circumstances lethal measures have to be taken to protect human life.

These keepers are incredibly lucky to be unharmed. These women stayed safe specifically because they're trained professionals who knew how to act around gorilla, they knew this particular animal well, and they'd learned the escapes from the exhibit just in case this ever happened. We should applaud them for their cool heads and quick thinking.

As for the guy who posted the video? As a colleague put it, may he always step on a Lego.

[scientia-rex]

I've been trying to figure out what the deal is with prediabetes so I can write a meaningful response to an ask I got about it, and I just keep going wait--okay--here's one paper--but here's another one--here's a Cochrane review--but here's a different meta-analysis--and here's newer data from an RCT...

It's nuts! It's bananas. And anybody who says we have good, crisp, clear guidelines around what prediabetes even IS, much less what to do about it, is FULL OF SHIT.

What I really need to know in order to feel more confident about my handle on whether to medicate pre-diabetes is the population incidence. Not prevalence. Because if I take the most optimistic studies about medication as an intervention, specifically, I could be looking at about a 30-40% reduction in risk of progression to diabetes. But! How many people is that, actually? Because medication is not without its harms! We need to compare number needed to treat with number needed to harm, we need to have high-quality evidence that says yes, if we give this medication to everyone who meets X level of criteria for pre-diabetes (it's different in different sources AND it's changed repeatedly over our lifetime!), we will see a level of benefit sufficient to justify making these other people who would not have progressed to diabetes without it endure the hassle and side effects of taking a medication for the rest of their lives.

AND HERE'S THE REAL FUN PART: we don't really know where tissue damage begins! We thought we did! 6.5-7ish A1c. But it turns out there is a marked risk of retinopathy beginning at 5.5! Which is considered normal. AND ALSO we should probably be thinking of it as at least three separate disease based on our current ability to measure--A1c is a broad marker that collapses multiple forms of dysregulated blood sugar, and when we use more fine-grained tests, we see meaningful distinctions that probably affect preferred treatments between people who have impaired fasting glucose, people who have abnormal values on an oral glucose tolerance test, and people who have both. We should treat these groups differently because they reflect different underlying pathways: elevated fasting glucose means your liver is breaking down too much glycogen while you sleep, which is one issue, while elevated post-prandial glucose means your skeletal muscles (OR SOMETHING ELSE they're not totally sure) are behaving abnormally in response to insulin. IT'S NOT THE SAME THING and people with both impaired fasting glucose and abnormal post-prandial glucose are at higher risk of progression to diabetes/tissue damage than people with just one of those. AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, what is diabetes? What's the best cutoff? What's the best measure? How many underlying pathophysiologies are getting collapsed into the same group????

THE MORE I LEARN ABOUT THIS THE MORE QUESTIONS I HAVE and experts are all being serenely confident while contradicting each other so I have to actually dig in the data a lot harder than I usually do. I've been meaning to do this for months, but one of the presenters this morning made a comment about the benefits of putting prediabetics on metformin that made me go "hm, do I need to start doing that?" and I've gone from my kneejerk answer being "no, we studied this and it doesn't help" to "I don't fucking know and neither does anyone else."

...as always, Cochrane is probably right.

[nostalgebraist]

information flow in transformers

In machine learning, the transformer architecture is a very commonly used type of neural network model. Many of the well-known neural nets introduced in the last few years use this architecture, including GPT-2, GPT-3, and GPT-4.

This post is about the way that computation is structured inside of a transformer.

Internally, these models pass information around in a constrained way that feels strange and limited at first glance.

Specifically, inside the "program" implemented by a transformer, each segment of "code" can only access a subset of the program's "state." If the program computes a value, and writes it into the state, that doesn't make value available to any block of code that might run after the write; instead, only some operations can access the value, while others are prohibited from seeing it.

This sounds vaguely like the kind of constraint that human programmers often put on themselves: "separation of concerns," "no global variables," "your function should only take the inputs it needs," that sort of thing.

However, the apparent analogy is misleading. The transformer constraints don't look much like anything that a human programmer would write, at least under normal circumstances. And the rationale behind them is very different from "modularity" or "separation of concerns."

(Domain experts know all about this already -- this is a pedagogical post for everyone else.)

1. setting the stage

For concreteness, let's think about a transformer that is a causal language model.

So, something like GPT-3, or the model that wrote text for @nostalgebraist-autoresponder.

Roughly speaking, this model's input is a sequence of words, like ["Fido", "is", "a", "dog"].

Since the model needs to know the order the words come in, we'll include an integer offset alongside each word, specifying the position of this element in the sequence. So, in full, our example input is

[ ("Fido", 0), ("is", 1), ("a", 2), ("dog", 3), ]

The model itself -- the neural network -- can be viewed as a single long function, which operates on a single element of the sequence. Its task is to output the next element.

Let's call the function f. If f does its job perfectly, then when applied to our example sequence, we will have

f("Fido", 0) = "is" f("is", 1) = "a" f("a", 2) = "dog"

(Note: I've omitted the index from the output type, since it's always obvious what the next index is. Also, in reality the output type is a probability distribution over words, not just a word; the goal is to put high probability on the next word. I'm ignoring this to simplify exposition.)

You may have noticed something: as written, this seems impossible!

Like, how is the function supposed to know that after ("a", 2), the next word is "dog"!? The word "a" could be followed by all sorts of things.

What makes "dog" likely, in this case, is the fact that we're talking about someone named "Fido."

That information isn't contained in ("a", 2). To do the right thing here, you need info from the whole sequence thus far -- from "Fido is a", as opposed to just "a".

How can f get this information, if its input is just a single word and an index?

This is possible because f isn't a pure function. The program has an internal state, which f can access and modify.

But f doesn't just have arbitrary read/write access to the state. Its access is constrained, in a very specific sort of way.

2. transformer-style programming

Let's get more specific about the program state.

The state consists of a series of distinct "memory regions" or "blocks," which have an order assigned to them.

Let's use the notation memory_i for these. The first block is memory_0, the second is memory_1, and so on.

In practice, a small transformer might have around 10 of these blocks, while a very large one might have 100 or more.

Each block contains a separate data-storage "cell" for each offset in the sequence.

For example, memory_0 contains a cell for position 0 ("Fido" in our example text), and a cell for position 1 ("is"), and so on. Meanwhile, memory_1 contains its own, distinct cells for each of these positions. And so does memory_2, etc.

So the overall layout looks like:

memory_0: [cell 0, cell 1, ...] memory_1: [cell 0, cell 1, ...] [...]

Our function f can interact with this program state. But it must do so in a way that conforms to a set of rules.

Here are the rules:

The function can only interact with the blocks by using a specific instruction.

This instruction is an "atomic write+read". It writes data to a block, then reads data from that block for f to use.

When the instruction writes data, it goes in the cell specified in the function offset argument. That is, the "i" in f(..., i).

When the instruction reads data, the data comes from all cells up to and including the offset argument.

The function must call the instruction exactly once for each block.

These calls must happen in order. For example, you can't do the call for memory_1 until you've done the one for memory_0.

Here's some pseudo-code, showing a generic computation of this kind:

f(x, i) { calculate some things using x and i; // next 2 lines are a single instruction write to memory_0 at position i; z0 = read from memory_0 at positions 0...i; calculate some things using x, i, and z0; // next 2 lines are a single instruction write to memory_1 at position i; z1 = read from memory_1 at positions 0...i; calculate some things using x, i, z0, and z1; [etc.] }

The rules impose a tradeoff between the amount of processing required to produce a value, and how early the value can be accessed within the function body.

Consider the moment when data is written to memory_0. This happens before anything is read (even from memory_0 itself).

So the data in memory_0 has been computed only on the basis of individual inputs like ("a," 2). It can't leverage any information about multiple words and how they relate to one another.

But just after the write to memory_0, there's a read from memory_0. This read pulls in data computed by f when it ran on all the earlier words in the sequence.

If we're processing ("a", 2) in our example, then this is the point where our code is first able to access facts like "the word 'Fido' appeared earlier in the text."

However, we still know less than we might prefer.

Recall that memory_0 gets written before anything gets read. The data living there only reflects what f knows before it can see all the other words, while it still only has access to the one word that appeared in its input.

The data we've just read does not contain a holistic, "fully processed" representation of the whole sequence so far ("Fido is a"). Instead, it contains:

a representation of ("Fido", 0) alone, computed in ignorance of the rest of the text

a representation of ("is", 1) alone, computed in ignorance of the rest of the text

a representation of ("a", 2) alone, computed in ignorance of the rest of the text

Now, once we get to memory_1, we will no longer face this problem. Stuff in memory_1 gets computed with the benefit of whatever was in memory_0. The step that computes it can "see all the words at once."

Nonetheless, the whole function is affected by a generalized version of the same quirk.

All else being equal, data stored in later blocks ought to be more useful. Suppose for instance that

memory_4 gets read/written 20% of the way through the function body, and

memory_16 gets read/written 80% of the way through the function body

Here, strictly more computation can be leveraged to produce the data in memory_16. Calculations which are simple enough to fit in the program, but too complex to fit in just 20% of the program, can be stored in memory_16 but not in memory_4.

All else being equal, then, we'd prefer to read from memory_16 rather than memory_4 if possible.

But in fact, we can only read from memory_16 once -- at a point 80% of the way through the code, when the read/write happens for that block.

The general picture looks like:

The early parts of the function can see and leverage what got computed earlier in the sequence -- by the same early parts of the function. This data is relatively "weak," since not much computation went into it. But, by the same token, we have plenty of time to further process it.

The late parts of the function can see and leverage what got computed earlier in the sequence -- by the same late parts of the function. This data is relatively "strong," since lots of computation went into it. But, by the same token, we don't have much time left to further process it.

3. why?

There are multiple ways you can "run" the program specified by f.

Here's one way, which is used when generating text, and which matches popular intuitions about how language models work:

First, we run f("Fido", 0) from start to end. The function returns "is." As a side effect, it populates cell 0 of every memory block.

Next, we run f("is", 1) from start to end. The function returns "a." As a side effect, it populates cell 1 of every memory block.

Etc.

If we're running the code like this, the constraints described earlier feel weird and pointlessly restrictive.

By the time we're running f("is", 1), we've already populated some data into every memory block, all the way up to memory_16 or whatever.

This data is already there, and contains lots of useful insights.

And yet, during the function call f("is", 1), we "forget about" this data -- only to progressively remember it again, block by block. The early parts of this call have only memory_0 to play with, and then memory_1, etc. Only at the end do we allow access to the juicy, extensively processed results that occupy the final blocks.

Why? Why not just let this call read memory_16 immediately, on the first line of code? The data is sitting there, ready to be used!

Why? Because the constraint enables a second way of running this program.

The second way is equivalent to the first, in the sense of producing the same outputs. But instead of processing one word at a time, it processes a whole sequence of words, in parallel.

Here's how it works:

In parallel, run f("Fido", 0) and f("is", 1) and f("a", 2), up until the first write+read instruction. You can do this because the functions are causally independent of one another, up to this point. We now have 3 copies of f, each at the same "line of code": the first write+read instruction.

Perform the write part of the instruction for all the copies, in parallel. This populates cells 0, 1 and 2 of memory_0.

Perform the read part of the instruction for all the copies, in parallel. Each copy of f receives some of the data just written to memory_0, covering offsets up to its own. For instance, f("is", 1) gets data from cells 0 and 1.

In parallel, continue running the 3 copies of f, covering the code between the first write+read instruction and the second.

Perform the second write. This populates cells 0, 1 and 2 of memory_1.

Perform the second read.

Repeat like this until done.

Observe that mode of operation only works if you have a complete input sequence ready before you run anything.

(You can't parallelize over later positions in the sequence if you don't know, yet, what words they contain.)

So, this won't work when the model is generating text, word by word.

But it will work if you have a bunch of texts, and you want to process those texts with the model, for the sake of updating the model so it does a better job of predicting them.

This is called "training," and it's how neural nets get made in the first place. In our programming analogy, it's how the code inside the function body gets written.

The fact that we can train in parallel over the sequence is a huge deal, and probably accounts for most (or even all) of the benefit that transformers have over earlier architectures like RNNs.

Accelerators like GPUs are really good at doing the kinds of calculations that happen inside neural nets, in parallel.

So if you can make your training process more parallel, you can effectively multiply the computing power available to it, for free. (I'm omitting many caveats here -- see this great post for details.)

Transformer training isn't maximally parallel. It's still sequential in one "dimension," namely the layers, which correspond to our write+read steps here. You can't parallelize those.

But it is, at least, parallel along some dimension, namely the sequence dimension.

The older RNN architecture, by contrast, was inherently sequential along both these dimensions. Training an RNN is, effectively, a nested for loop. But training a transformer is just a regular, single for loop.

4. tying it together

The "magical" thing about this setup is that both ways of running the model do the same thing. You are, literally, doing the same exact computation. The function can't tell whether it is being run one way or the other.

This is crucial, because we want the training process -- which uses the parallel mode -- to teach the model how to perform generation, which uses the sequential mode. Since both modes look the same from the model's perspective, this works.

This constraint -- that the code can run in parallel over the sequence, and that this must do the same thing as running it sequentially -- is the reason for everything else we noted above.

Earlier, we asked: why can't we allow later (in the sequence) invocations of f to read earlier data out of blocks like memory_16 immediately, on "the first line of code"?

And the answer is: because that would break parallelism. You'd have to run f("Fido", 0) all the way through before even starting to run f("is", 1).

By structuring the computation in this specific way, we provide the model with the benefits of recurrence -- writing things down at earlier positions, accessing them at later positions, and writing further things down which can be accessed even later -- while breaking the sequential dependencies that would ordinarily prevent a recurrent calculation from being executed in parallel.

In other words, we've found a way to create an iterative function that takes its own outputs as input -- and does so repeatedly, producing longer and longer outputs to be read off by its next invocation -- with the property that this iteration can be run in parallel.

We can run the first 10% of every iteration -- of f() and f(f()) and f(f(f())) and so on -- at the same time, before we know what will happen in the later stages of any iteration.

The call f(f()) uses all the information handed to it by f() -- eventually. But it cannot make any requests for information that would leave itself idling, waiting for f() to fully complete.

Whenever f(f()) needs a value computed by f(), it is always the value that f() -- running alongside f(f()), simultaneously -- has just written down, a mere moment ago.

No dead time, no idling, no waiting-for-the-other-guy-to-finish.

p.s.

The "memory blocks" here correspond to what are called "keys and values" in usual transformer lingo.

If you've heard the term "KV cache," it refers to the contents of the memory blocks during generation, when we're running in "sequential mode."

Usually, during generation, one keeps this state in memory and appends a new cell to each block whenever a new token is generated (and, as a result, the sequence gets longer by 1).

This is called "caching" to contrast it with the worse approach of throwing away the block contents after each generated token, and then re-generating them by running f on the whole sequence so far (not just the latest token). And then having to do that over and over, once per generated token.

[lil-tachyon]

For the last couple weeks I've been drawing logos / designs for local-ish (mostly NJ, some PA and NY) bands as warmups in the morning. Here's what I've come up with! Massive post below the break explaining each logo + where to find each band and listen to their music.

Teenage Halloween- a staple of New Jersey basements for probably about a decade now and finally getting wider recognition in the last couple years. Pop punk / power pop with a killer horn section. First time I saw them was in New Brunswick playing with Walter Etc. and Blowout. They played a killer cover "Build Me Up Buttercup" and my wife got a black eye in the pit. Recommended tracks: "Brain Song," "666," "Clarity." Their first EP is on a separate bandcamp page btw, check it out here it's great.

Sweet Pill - They will call themselves a Philly band but in my heart they'll always be from Glassboro. Definitely one of the more recognizable names on this list. Emo revival - early stuff is more twinkly, more recent stuff is heavier. All of it's great. Recommended tracks "Nephew," "High Hopes."

Shark Club - Central Jersey's finest. I'm very biased because I actually know these dudes and they did the music for my wedding. Some of the best pop punk you'll hear and the nicest people you'll meet. Recommended tracks: "Game Theory," "Bill Murray," "Heavens to Betsy."

Rest Ashore - My favorite band for the last (oh God I'm old now) eight years. From gut-wrenching emo ballads to virtuoso math-rock instrumentals they do it all. One time I got to sing vocals on "Lucy's Theme" at a house show- thank you Erica! Recommended tracks: "Hjarta," "Chinese Opera," "Devotion," "Soyuz Sweetheart." Too many bangers to name honestly, just deep dive their discography.

Morus Alba - First band I ever went to see at a house show and still one of my absolute favorites. Their music feels like the bridge between the best pitchfork, /mu/ alt rock bands and high energy basement emo. I mean that as a compliment and I hope it comes off as one lol. I should note that since 2019 Morus Alba has morphed from a band into an experimental hip-hop project so later releases sound radically different and basically disconnected from the earlier stuff. Also my favorite release from them, Live at Isabelle's, has been scrubbed from the internet but if you'd like the files just email me. Recommended tracks: "Skyscraper," "Human Resources," "The Goodnight Waltz."

Have a Good Season - another Jersey mainstay that's still going strong. Emo revival in their earlier releases, now with more 70s power pop influences in their newer stuff. See them live, they put on a fantastic show and usually play some great covers in addition to their original music. HaGS guys if you're reading this, please put your version of "Since You've Been Gone" online, I'm begging you. Recommended tracks: "Joseph / Shel Silverstein," (you have to listen to them together for the drop, so good) , "Gum, "Gleaux / Scab." Also, frontman Nic Palermo interviewed me once.

Elephant Jake - If you see any of these bands live make it EJ, they put on such a damn good show. Electrifying indie punk from the Empire State. Recommended tracks: "F.D.C." "Sarah Moyer," "Goodness to Honest," and of course you gotta learn "Sebastien Bauer" for the singalongs.

Blind Lion - Sadly one of the greats that we lost along the way. Defunct since about 2017. I only got to see them once but it was a great performance. Alongside their own stuff they played some killer covers of "Bad Moon Rising" and "Moonage Daydream." I had trouble doing a logo design for them because I actually really like the composition, if not the "Ed Hardy-ness," of their existing logo so what you see here are two separate attempts, neither of which feels entirely satisfying to me. Frontperson Larry Flately currently plays in Nematode and also handled production of Bradley Gardens joke hiphop group The Breakfast Boiz under the moniker "DJ Ova EZ." Recommended tracks: "Brumous," "Dinner."

Fighting Seasons - A band that I sadly found out about too late (via a sticker under the bridge in my town which has since been painted over). 2010s pop punk that packs a helluva punch, especially considering that I'm pretty sure the members were high schoolers for most of the band's existence. I think some members may have gone on to form Sawce (FFO Chon, Polyphia, that type of music) but I can't remember where I read/heard that so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Recommended tracks: "Fighting Seasons," "Oil on Canvas"

Milkmen- Another fallen giant, officially disbanded in 2019. Like Morus Alba, they played the very first house show I attended and their few releases remain on constant rotation in my home. Used to put on a great show and were one of the bands I always thought would make it big until suddenly they weren't around anymore. Frontman Ben Thieberger contributed guitar and vocals to Covid quarantine project Kin if you're looking for a bit of an extra fix but beyond that I don't know what these guys are up to these days, sadly. Recommended tracks: "Ramus," "Johnny Dangerously," "how sieves catch breeze," "K.O.T.H."

Stand and Wave - New York (now Philly) pop punkers delivering instant dopamine hits with every track. Another great live act, see them with EJ if you can! They often play shows together. Recommended tracks: "Convos," "Mrs. Dash," "Splashton Kutcher," "Michael Collins."

My Chemical Romance - You know who they are. While I was drawing all these other logos I ran a poll on Patreon to decide which famous New Jersey band should also be graced with a drawing from me. MCR won the poll by a hefty margin so unfortunately you won't get to see me do an illegible black metal take on Hoboken's Yo La Tengo. I ended up doing two versions: the one with the halo is the first, the one with the bats was the second. I tried to do something kind of thin and elegant with the first one and I don't think it's terrible but I also wasn't quite satisfied with it. For the 2nd attempt I tried to lean into the kind of pulpy, almost horror punk aesthetic of early MCR and I think that one looks better even if it's less original.

Anyway if you took the time to read through all this, thank you very much! And please support these bands! Also If any of the links aren't working please let me know.

-Logan

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The disrespect toward indigenous peoples is what popped put at me today in one of your posts. I wonder how long the English have been looking down on the Welsh. We're the Saxons like that or is it the Normans who really thought they were better than everyone else. Cause it seems like it goes back a long way.

Oh, both, just in different ways. The Normals were imperialist, the Saxons were more theft and landgrab.

Something that makes me want to start hurling knives is the INCREDIBLY COMMON English myth that the Anglo-Saxons were a sweet innocent indigenous British people who were conquered and bullied by those mean nasty Normans (and Vikings), and because the Normans came over via France, that means everything was actually THEIR fault, and the true English i.e. the Anglo-Saxons, were victims too :(

When I say it's incredibly common, by the way, I really mean it. Enormous numbers of modern day English people believe this. I've seen BBC programs about the Viking invasions that claimed without a trace of irony that the Vikings would take slaves from "the native Anglo-Saxons". I've literally had English people comment this shit on posts of mine about Celtophobia and Welsh history. Like I'm there describing how the last Prince of Wales was locked in a wooden cage in Bristol Castle at the age of eight and lived out the remainder of his life there until his fifties so the Welsh would know their place, and some snivelling English cunt will straight up write a message going "Teehee really it was the Normans not the English though and they conquered the poor Anglo-Saxons too, poor England uwu"

Anyway in the dying days of the Roman empire in Britain one of the leading reasons for Rome abandoning Britannia was the constant waves of Anglo-Saxon invaders. There were so many the east coast of Britain became known as the Saxon Shore. There were so many the Romans built a line of forts that were and are literally called Saxon Shore Forts. There were so many that an official, historically documented, paid governmental position in Roman Britain was the Count of the Saxon Shore, i.e. the guy responsible for keeping the bastards out.

Rome had banned native military, of course, so when they then withdrew and took the armies with them, the people left had no defences against the incoming waves of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. England fell pretty quickly, Angles in the north, Saxons in the south, Jutes primarily in the east, I believe. What stopped their westward expansion was the Brythonic Celtic nations living in modern day Wales. And this is the origin of the Welsh dragon - those separate kingdoms needed a banner that united them, and represented Not Saxon. An anti-Saxon force. They chose a red dragon.

This is also the origin of King Arthur. An anti-Saxon king of the Brythons, who would repel these Germanic invaders. (It was several centuries later that England realised they should probably steal the term 'British', because otherwise they were marking themselves as 'not native'.)

Anyway the saving grace of the Anglo-Saxons in the end was actually that they were whiny little bitches who gave up trying to fight in Wales with its difficult mountains and fought each other instead. The whole sorry tale of the Heptarchy is the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fighting like cats in a bag, while Saxon king Offa built a dyke along the Welsh border and went "WELL YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED OVER HERE" and every Welsh king went "...we literally didn't want to conquer you anyway, you spectacularly sad and stupid man"

Oh, and of course, there's the name 'Wales'. Given to us specifically by the Anglo-Saxons. And translated by centuries of English scholars, mostly very smugly, as 'foreigners'. A fun bit of early propaganda, look - foreigners in our own country that they tried and failed to steal.

All of which is a circuitous way of saying - yeah, it goes way back.

[familyvideostevie]

hey.

okay. hello! i'm back. :)

maybe you noticed, maybe not, but i have been away for a while.

i wish i could say i've been out living my life, so caught up in happiness and joy and loving each day that i've just not had time for tumblr. but....that is not true. i have been having a tough time! being away has been good, as i've had time to do other things that i like and to put energy into my own well-being, but it hasn't been the best time, I'll tell you that.

i peeked on the dash every now and then to keep my queue full and reblogged soothing things to my main blog and tried my best not to feel guilty about it all (i was also booping on April 1 lol). i just...I really needed a break. i've really enjoyed being here the last six or so months as i've changed my blog and entered the pedro/tlou space but i've also felt so, so alone.

and i know that it doesn't really matter!! like, we should all take breaks and go outside and all that stuff. and I know plenty of people are not very active, but this blog has been such a vital part of my life and happiness since I started it almost two years ago, so any lapse in activity feels like a loss. I've met lifelong friends and flexed my writing muscles and learned a hell of a lot. the fact that I have started to feel isolated and alone on here is a sort of personal betrayal, and there is no one to blame but myself.

So, I’m pulling back.

it means a few things — i don’t know how much writing I’ll be doing from now on. For Joel, especially — it’s been wonderful to meet folks in that community but it has also been really detrimental to my passion for both the game and writing. I’d like to return to some other characters on my masterlist, but we’ll see. I’ve got endless personal projects away from tumblr that I want to pour love and time into (my non-reader fics, my newsletter, a romance novel, a sci-fi novel, poetry, etc). I need to fall in love with my own work again.

it's a me problem, I want to stress that. i'm working on it! irl stuff has been kicking my ass. I've had a really, really hard winter and my mental health has suffered probably more than ever before. i let things I love -- like this blog -- fester and become negative and no longer being me joy. writing became stressful and difficult and I was focused on notes and interaction and looking around me and seeing success and then looking at myself and only seeing lack.

but that's why I took a break! i am getting help and support irl, i am putting in the time and effort to feel better about being alive and to be a better friend and person all around. And I want to tell you all about it because I am so grateful for your time and attention and support, even if we’re just strangers on the internet. i know this probably seems silly -- who cares about a fanfic blog? well, i care! i care a lot! it matters to me and therefore it matters!

anyway. on to the important stuff. here I am! and here's what's going to happen on this blog:

I am working on replying to asks and reblogs and comments I missed. Thank you for being patient with me! I don't know if I'll get to them all but know I see them and I am honored every single time.

I made a totally separate ao3 account with this blog url. I'm working on uploading everything I've posted here onto there and hopefully will continue to crosspost. It is going to take a long, long time, so please be patient! (you can follow my other ao3 here for my non x-reader fanfic).

I posted this fic! Jackson!Joel pulled me back into his world. It’s the first thing I’ve written in ages, so let me know what you think. as of now it's the last planned fic for that series, but who knows!

I hit a milestone while i was away that I am absolutely blown away by. I'm planning a celebration around it sometime this spring (hopefully) and I’d love to see you participate :)

lastly, thank you so much to my friends for letting me complain, whine, winge, etc. I am so sorry for missing all of your work, your celebrations, your bright energies, and all the rest. i am so sorry if it seemed like i was ignoring you. you are my guiding lights, my silver linings, my touchstones. you make me want to be here. i will try to make it up to you!

I want to be online less but make sure I’m connecting more in the moments that i am here. I want to pressure myself to write less and not feel bad that I’m not engaged all the time. I want this blog to once again feel like a place that nourishes me and not sucks me dry. i want to stop feeling like shit about all of it!!!!

so. come hang out in my inbox, my dms, let me know what you've been up to. I am really sorry for missing so much. thank you for sticking around. <3

[werepuppy-steve]

taylor (@steddie-island) and i have been in the trenches for the past week creating the most beautiful (and smutty) steddissy au and i'm very 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 about it. it's still mostly headcanons right now with inklings of plot sprinkled in, so i thought i should make a worldbuilding post about it since it's officially being added to my wip pile <3

tagging some people i think would be interested in this: @dangerous-disposition @tboybuck @patchworkgargoyle @thefreakandthehair @starryeyedjanai

@corrodedbisexual @sidekick-hero @spectrum-spectre @munsondickprint @augustjustice

@worstsequence @rozzieroos

it doesn't get real graphic under the cut but putting it under one bc it's a lil long

the beginnings of it are touched on here, but it's expanded a little bit.

it's a modern au. steddissy are still in that platonic/friends with benefits stage: steve and eddie are dating but chrissy is very happy and content being single. she likes that it gives her more freedom to do things without having a controlling partner breathing down her neck every time she turns around.

they're streamers. i don't have their niche's fleshed out yet but they do collabs with each other a lot.

we went into dirty details in dms about the three of them sexting constantly, which turns into them rolling out their onlyfans accounts. they already have so many things filmed just from their texts alone, so why not make money off of it?

some more headcanons and ideas were thrown around (along with taylor giving me snippets of her own steddissy wips that you should def ask her about if she's willing to share them 👀) that i'll probably make a separate post for.

it's been established that chrissy is a squirter

but between all the filthy smut, there's love. so much of it that i get choked up just thinking about it.

i started thinking of people who are in mostly online spaces and have probably never interacted with the queer community in real life, and how they wouldn't have the kindest opinions.

so eddie would get all of these tweets that are like "you're gay but you enjoy having sex with a woman??? [confused math lady] make it make sense." he ignores them at first because randos on the internet aren't entitled to his relationships, but it becomes frequent enough that he starts getting accused of "calling himself gay for clout" and dragging steve and chrissy into it, and then he has to address it.

he does it in a video because he's still dramatic.

"having sex with a woman doesn't make me not gay. i've been gay since i was 15 and a boy gave me my first hickey. chrissy is my platonic partner. yes, she's very cute and adorable and it makes me want to scream sometimes, but i'm not attracted to her because she's a woman. i'm attracted to her because she's my best friend and my feelings for her run so much deeper than romantic love. chrissy doesn't even label herself with a sexuality. she just likes people.

steve is my boyfriend. i'm romantically involved with him and physically attracted to him because he's a man. steve, however, is bi, so he does find chrissy attractive as a woman, and there's nothing wrong with that. they're also not interested in dating each other. the three of us fool around with each other because it's fun and we like making each other feel good and we trust each other. it's nobody else's business what we do."

and because he's a petty little shit (a trait he learned from steve) he posts a video of him and chrissy having the most tendernasty missionary sex, complete with kissing and hand holding.

then it turned into the three of them being roommates. and then somewhere along the line it turned into chrissy being steve and eddie's surrogate and the three of them coparenting (a big win for steve "breeding kink" harrington), because at this stage in their relationship, they're pretty secure in knowing that chrissy is their life partner. they're not Together together, but they know she's not going anywhere.

i think that for them to get to this point, something would've had to happen between chrissy and someone outside of their relationship. someone she's had frequent collabs on onlyfans with, who maybe wanted something more and called her a hypocrite when she said she wasn't looking for anything serious, because of steve and eddie, and wouldn't listen when she insisted that it was different with them.

she tells the boys this and it turns into her coming with sobs of "i'm yours" as she rides steve while eddie fucks him. taylor mentioned they dp her and i said that that would be the moment it kind of clicks for them that this is how they were always meant to be.

and it gave me thoughts about possibly arospec chrissy. she loves her boys with her entire being, but she knows it's not romantic love. like eddie says, it feels deeper than that. to call it "romantic" almost feels like it cheapens their relationship (she knows it doesn't, she knows that eddie and steve's romantic feelings for each other are real and just as important). she's not sure if she's ever felt romantic love for anyone.

and that's all we have for now, outside of the smut alkgjldkfgj. none of them actually care about who the kid belongs to. they've got chrissy's light hair and dark eyes.

[mirroredmemoriez]

Werewolves designs and other shit

Got bored- Remembered I have free choice to make posts on anything I want... So here I am with opinions no one asked for. As the title suggests, it's about werewolves. Starting off, I don't believe I need to explain what a werewolf is. However, I'll put it out there that in most descriptions and depictions it's meant to be a humanoid wolf. I say this because you'll find that in some movies or books it's just a person turning into a giant wolf with no human features or movement such as standing on two legs. (Or like a minotaur situation where the body is a human, but the head is a wolf.)

Here I've collected just human references and anatomy- This is so I can make comparisons and such. Humans vary heavily in the way that we look, due to things such as lifestyle and genetics. At base level, of course we're HUMAN. However, things like our body types, hair texture, eye colour or shape and yada yada all can change the way we look and create differences between us and somebody else.

This is the same for wolves, though maybe not as noticeable compared to humans? Mostly things like their size, coat colour or thickness and etc is what separates them from one another. Looking at their head shapes also can show what species they may be. Generally, they're a pretty lean animal seeing as wolves are known for their running endurance to hunt prey. Being too big would slow them down... I mention this because some depictions of werewolves people make them too muscular in my opinion? It's like they're hairy body builders. Speaking of werewolves- Let me try draw this post back to where I started it! First I wanna look at almost shifted werewolves, so not fully transformed.

(Also I will be using depictions and characters which aren't labelled necessarily as a ''werewolf'' but share many features or similarities. For example, Bigby from The Wolf Among Us.) The common things we usually see is an increase in hairiness, canine growth and eyes becoming highlighted- Usually yellow, though sometimes the werewolf maintains their natural eye colour. We also have ears becoming pointed and the area around the eyebrows and forehead starting to protrude more. All of these things when done right I enjoy in a werewolf design! Though, it's a given that some do it better than others... One of my favourite werewolf designs and transformations has to go to the movie An American Werewolf In London.

This to me is one of the PEAKS of werewolves in media. I could probably make a full post on just this movie... It's one of the most iconic designs and for good reason. Not to mention, I love practical effects, especially in horror. One of my dreams is to make a movie with them. Enough gushing though. What do I like? Well, it's grotesque nature really. A transformation shouldn't just be BAM you're a ball of fur in my eyes. The amount of change is crazy and so glossed over.

The transformation literally has bones extending along with all the muscles and tissues alongside. Don't even get me started on what the organs may have to be doing? A human heart could not support a werewolf body, it just wouldn't be big enough... That muscle would literally have to increase in size to be able to deal with the power behind the body of a wolf. Yes, I'm aware they're supernatural and I shouldn't try heavily to apply science to them... However, I don't care? A TRANSFORMATION WOULD BE HORRFIC AND PAINFUL, SO IT SHOULD BE SHOWN AS SUCH! It's also why I headcanon that turned werewolves have the chance of just dying straight up with their first transformation, compared to ones just born as a werewolf because of how extreme the change is. Anyway! Some more designs.

I think what some suffer from, is leaning either too close to a human and or leaning too close to a wolf? They can't find a balance and at times it's like a worse rendition of the Cats movie.

Like here, the werewolves from The Quarry almost lean into some classic vampire depictions. The teeth I like! But the lack of hair and flatter snout just means it's not really screaming WEREWOLF at me.. More so a general mutant. (QUICK ADD! A flatter snout doesn't always break a design. It's just when other features such as hair are also lacking that it starts becoming less wolf in nature to me.) We've also got a more recent werewolf to look at... Which is Enid from the Wednesday show. Because fucking hell, that was a disappointment? She ended up looking like a mix between the Ice Age baby and Diego the saber tooth tiger.

They did her so fucking dirty... And it would actually be very simple to fix! This could be salvaged- It just wasn't. Somebody saw that design and green lit it and whoever you are, why? I think I'll end this here now because I've reached the image limit... If anyone has any questions about certain things I've mentioned, feel free. I also want to state that this is pure opinion and by no means supposed to spread hate towards anything? It's your world, if you wanna draw your werewolves like the Sims 4, who am I to stop you? THIS IS MAL OUT! AND IF YOU'VE READ ALL OF THIS YOU'RE SOMEHOW MORE UNHINGED THAN I AM CURRENTLY. (I MAY MAKE A PT 2 AS I DO HAVE MORE THOUGHTS AND MENTIONS TO MAKE.)

[luvyuki0]

Amber ── .✦01.

✦ Summary: In which Esme and Hoseok fall in love but of course with love comes trouble especially when you're dating an idol.

Series masterlist| previous| next

"JUST SHUT UP! PLEASE!" Her cries echoed throughout the house, covering her ears as she laid on the floor. She couldn't deal with it anymore, the constant gaslighting and the mental abuse was getting to the point where it was too much. "I should've listened when they warned me, but nah I ignored them 'cause my dumbass didn't know any better, cutting the people I loved off FOR YOU! just so that you could be happy, for us to be happy!" She screamed while crying. He stood there confused as if he didn't know why she was crying, as if he wasn't the reason her mental health depleted and still is. when she finally looked up at him all that could be seen in her face was disgust. Disgust with they were he was looking and acting towards her over the years. "You know what I'm done with this bullshit." She got up wiping her tears, leaving the male's apartment ignoring all sounds and stares she received. All she could think about was why she never realized sooner......



. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Esme's POV:

        "Should I be doing this right now?" Biting my fingers anxiously as my decorated camera sat on my bed. I knew I would have to come back to making YouTube videos eventually,as it was all I knew and I would be nothing without it and my subscribers. I just never expected it to feel so foreign to me. Honestly I don't even know if I'm ready to get back but I know many of my fans miss me, and of course theres some who thought I'd be gone for good, and honestly I don't blame them for that knowing I did take a 6-month break with no heads up, not only on YouTube but on all my social media platforms, kinda like I just disappeared but if not now then  when?

I sigh grabbing my camera and turning it to start recording. "Hey guys! I know it's been a while and y'all are probably wondering where I've been, what I've been doing and more some of y'all were right and I did break up with Rome but I'm not gonna go into full details about it, cause I'm not ready yet when I am though you guys will know the full story and understand why I took a break but lemme not ruin the mood it's a time of comebacks and celebration! now I am going to get back on my routine, posting weekly and spamming my socials!" As I speak, I can just feel some of the weight I've been holding on being lifted off my chest.

I clasp my hands together before I continue talking. "To be honest with y'all I wasn't even going to start recording again this soon, but Jazmine and her Lil boo invited me and one of his friends to a trip to Hawaii!!! Like y'all don't understand how hyped I am right now! Like I may regret this later but who am I to say no to a trip to Hawaii." I shrug my shoulders jokingly.

"I didn't plan much for this video honestly, but I did want this video and the Hawaii flight video to be separate, and since I and Jaz are going tomorrow imma drop COCO off at my mom's, and hopefully jaz is gonna be home by the time I get back so we can pack together and hopefully make some cute matching fits." I explain to my viewers what I have planned for the day though it wasn't much. (A/N: coco is the name of her Pomeranian I didn't put her in the characters cus she wouldn't be mentioned much💀)

"Come here coco! Y'all why he tryna act like he dont know mee! get a hold of Coco who was trying to run away, I grab my keys, slip on my slides, and lock my door, leaving my apartment complex as I make my way to my car.

I prop my camera on my dashboard, so it won't fall, and put on Apple Music to play "Normal Girl". "As always y'all we're gonna stop by Starbucks so I can try a drink I saw going viral on TikTok then I'll head over to my mom's house to drop coco off." I look back at coco than at my camera as I speaking

"So, this is the drink I got and y'all already know I had to get my grilled cheese! Tew good." I showcase my order to my camera as I get the drink and my grilled cheese sandwich. I eat and drink my order as I make my way over to my mom's house.

I get there and ring the doorbell repeatedly to which she opens the door. "Esme gimme the damn dog so I can go back to sleep too damn early for this shit" she speaks groggily with an attitude.

"It's actually one though...and I don't even get a hello wooow" I joke with her knowing we were on the phone last night.

"Esme quit playin' with me and give me the damn dog."

"Damn here, Bye coco bye mama." I hand her coco and walk back to my car hearing her hum bye back.

"Ok so now that I dropped Coco off imma just head back home and hopefully Jaz is back so we can pack together." I talk to my camera as I start driving back home. . . . . .

I finally get back, unlocking my door to see Jaz in the kitchen getting a snack. "Oh, hey Esme" she turns and greets me.

"Hey sweetheart, did u have fun with your Lil boo," I ask with a smirk.

"Girl yes I have to fill you in on literally everything so fir-".

I cut her off before she started ranting on about what she and Yoongi did. "Before you even start let's pack while you tell me what y'all did because I know you ain't start yet and I know you gon be talking for a good minute. "

"You right" she laughs knowing what I said was true.

We both go into my room and start packing for the trip tomorrow.

.

.

.

.

.

A/N: I edited this chapter WAYY more than the second time and I'm actually happy with the beginning chapter and I made this chapter before the whole Starbucks boycott  so that's why they were mentioned I DO NOT SUPPORT them at all not even to the slightest degree

Please like and comment 🙏🏾

— 1089 words —

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

Can I ask, if you have top favorite romantic couples (can be canon or non canon) of all time from any media? Why love them? Thx :D

... now this, took a minute to answer in some ways. There a lot of ships I like, so this was really easy and hard to answer at the same time. Some ships it was an immediate yep yep and others I had to go '... but is it a fav of all time, though?" But I think I got it narrowed down.

So here we go, fav ships of all time from any media, no particular order. I didn't get any specific no. to do so I'll just list a handful until I can't think of any others. (Anyone who comes across this that sees a ship on here you don't like and feels the need to say something about it, stay in your lane this ain't about your opinions it's about mine.)

The main FMA ships

Arakawa Hiromu, nigga, you cooked. Imma just put the FMA ships as one and leave it there because if I do it separately, we'll be here all day. But if you wanna see me diving into why I like these ships in a manic ramble, here's a post I made on that here. The romance in FMA is literally a category and a discussion all on its own that I can go about on for hours. FMA has the best romances in shounen so anyone who has consumed FMA will know what I'm talking about. Like, whenever anyone tries to use a manga being 'shounen' to justify shitty romantic writing, I point at FMA's brilliant riding. An animanga's demographic is not an excuse for terrible executions in romance. EdWin, RoyAi, LingFan, AlMei and all the side ships drank and left no molecules.

NaruSaku

Toxic shippers, again, stay in your lane, I don't feel like dealing with y'all any day. I have been shipping this shit for years, always have, always will. Ignore the fact I ship Sakura with literally everyone from the Akatsuki to Hinata to Sai to Shikamaru. (Y'all I used to look up Kisame/Sakura fics, unironically TAT). (Same for Naruto honestly, I've shipped him with Sasuke, Ino, Temari, Tenten, the list goes on and on.) The way Sakura goes from finding Naruto annoying to almost dying multiple times to keep him safe, I will never EVER be over that. Naruto's love going from puppy to something as passionately red as the thread of fate itself. The MinaKushi parallels. I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of ships in Naruto pertaining to these two, but NaruSaku is my absolute favorite. Like it was literally confirmed that Sakura got over Sasuke and then it got retconned for some bullshit. Saying it with my whole chest, argue with a wall, it should have been them. I won't dog any other ships, but yeah, it should have been them. 699 chapters of Naruto being in love with one woman, I sing the praises everyday.

SakuHina

Hinata's prince charming is literally Sakura. I have a whole ass fic I am slowly, painstakingly writing about what Naruto would have been like if Hinata had a crush on Sakura the whole time. I just think they're really cute together, have amazing chemistry and balance each other out. I didn't expect to like SakuHina as much as I did but here we are.

Kyoru

I mentioned it before in another answered ask but Fruits Basket was my first manga (if you're curious what my first anime was, it was Yu Yu Hakusho) and Kyoru was probably my first OTP. There are two characters I think upon so many rewatches and rereads that were prime game for who Kyo and Tohru could have ended up with had things been different (which, I do really ship as well. Multishipper here guys) but I'm not mad about the endgames that we got. From start to finish, Kyo and Tohru's relationship is beautiful and you can feel how strongly they feel for one another. It's like, wow, Takaya really gave us one of the best ships in shoujo and didn't even apologize for it.

Klance

Red + Blue = True. They had chemistry, supplemented for what the other lacked and we really don't need to have me diving into the bs that was VLD. That show wasn't even out long, my god, it was a mess.

NeuviFuri

Should I explain to you the romanticism of Hydro x Hydro? Oof how I love them. A Genshin ship after my own heart, truly. But if anyone is trying to against MiHoyoverse (I was here from the Mihoyo days, leave me alone) in terms of seeing who ships NeuviFuri more, we all lose. They literally paid people to do an ice dancing program in NeuviFuri cosplay, paid a guy to make a companion piece to Furina's song from Neuvillette's perspective and several other animations concerning their relationship in some way. But the Mihoyoverse shenanigans aside, it's the build up of 400+ years of working together, the care they still have for one another and yes the complementary abilities and color palettes. Not enough time in the day to talk about them, I don't think.

AriDante

Almost thought I wouldn't have a gif for them, then I remembered THEY GOT A MOVIE. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is one of my favorite books in the world. I have reread it once a year religiously since 2017 when I first discovered it. This is such a beautiful novel and relationship and if you haven't had the pleasure of reading it or the sequel, please do yourself a favor and buy it or rent it from your local library. It's just, the way Ari has been in love with Dante for so long and didn't even realize it but it's so, so clear to the reader because of just how he talks and describes him? I don't even want to go to deep into this one just in case there's someone here that hasn't read this book because it deserves to be read and experienced blind. Just, just please y'all read it.

[another-day-another-shadow-ban]

Only Pretending #6

Word count: 3.5k Author's note: sooo, I've decided that until I'm shadowbanned, I'll be posting this series here! I'll still reblog the chapters so it is on my primary blog. I won't be able to reply to comments still (as this is a secondary blog), but know that I sincerely appreciate every single note you people leave, so thank you so much in advance, you are so beautiful!

If pressed, you wouldn’t be able to tell how long you spent kissing that night. Wouldn’t be able to remember when you straddled her lap, holding on for however long you could.

Larissa’s hands were the gentlest torturers you’d ever known, softly but surely going from caressing your face to gripping your neck and ending up on your hips, pressing you closer with a desperate feel to it.

You could not remember the last time you were so thoroughly studied. Maybe never. There was no part of you her hands did not travel through and for the first time, you cursed your fuzzy pyjamas. What wouldn’t you have given to feel her fingers grip your thighs without any barrier between you? It was a curse but also a blessing. If you had felt cold fingers on your heated skin, you might not have had the strength to stop it.

Larissa was following a clear path. She had a goal, and it was undeniably thrilling to know she wanted you, but you were both intoxicated by more than one another. This was not a pure desire-driven endeavour; you were drunk and while your feelings and want were very clear to you, you could not know of Larissa’s. Hell, only yesterday she had asked you to be her friend. You could very well be the available option.

When you felt her hand skirting dangerously up your thigh, you mentally kicked yourself and put your hand over hers.

You separated for just a fraction, looking her in the eyes. They were heavy-lidded and you could see more than just a simple adjustment to lighting on her wide pupils. It killed you to know what your next words were when she looked so incredible, still towering over you even when you were on her lap.

“Larissa…” you whispered, and she chased your lips, stealing a brief kiss before you had the strength to part again, “I know this is frustrating, and you might hate me or thank me tomorrow, but I’d prefer having the knowledge that you were completely clear minded before choosing to go down this route with me.”

“Why are you so concerned about me all the time, it should be me who’s saying this,” she sounded defeated, dumping her head on your shoulder for the second time that evening.

You brought your hands to her nape and started to gently scratch her scalp.

“You’re concerned with everyone around you all the time.” You smiled. “Only fair that someone does the same to you.”

Her arms circled your waist, and she buried her nose in your neck. You kissed the tip of her ear and nudged her up to face you again. You felt a satisfying surge of pride seeing her small affectionate smile, and had to kiss it one more time, just as affectionately.

Getting up and turning to lie on the bed, you pulled her with you so she would be the one on top. You went down kissing, smiling, and chuckling once when she pressed her thigh between your legs a little too much and made you groan.

“Tomorrow, we discuss it, ok?” you breathed in the now darkened room and felt Larissa nod against your chest.

“Good night, y/n,” she whispered.

“Good night, Larissa.”

You woke up alone the next morning. Sunlight was coming through the half-opened deep-red curtains, warming a line up your jaw and burning your ear. Larissa must have woken with it in her eyes.

You got up and dragged yourself to the bathroom. Larissa was probably downstairs, which shouldn’t bother you, but you thought you would talk first thing in the morning and the fact that she preferred being in Morticia’s company instead of waking you to accompany her was nauseating. Maybe she was sparing you the bother of putting up with the woman and you were just worrying unnecessarily.

Taking your time to get ready and dress, you left the bedroom almost forty minutes later.

Upon stepping into the main hall, you were surprised by the large front doors opening abruptly. Through them, a squealing Enid ran inside, dropping two travel bags by the stairs and returning just as quickly to hug an unimpressed Wednesday, walking calmly inside (though the slight quiver on the side of her mouth hinted at her true feelings).

“I can’t believe I’m finally here! Stop with the pout, Addams! Your brooding days are over, time to enjoy the holiday!”

Wednesday rolled her eyes in your direction, still in Enid’s arms, as if she could convince you she wasn’t happy her girlfriend had arrived. As if it wasn’t all she talked about at dinner last night on the rare occasions she bothered to make a comment.

“Professor!” you were next in the queue of hugs, and Enid’s joyful skips towards you managed to soothe the minor discomfort that Larissa’s absence had caused. “I’m so happy that you’re here,” she whispered timidly and quite adorably, “I didn’t talk with my parents yet. I’ll do it in person, but I wanted to thank you again for our talk.”

“Of course, dear,” you tightened your arms around her, “And I’ll be here no matter their reaction if you want to talk again, ok? We can go to the Weathervane or the park, whatever you’d like.”

You separated and she smiled sweetly at you. You knew it was young love, but you wished they’d work out because looking at them, you could think of no one else who would protect Enid as fiercely as Wednesday and not a single soul that would keep Wednesday in check as Enid did. They were such an adorable pair you almost felt jealous.

“Rissa?” Morticia’s voice sounded again, a bit louder, snapping Larissa out of her reverie.

“Yes?”

“If you’ve finished eating, I’ll summon Lurch to clear the table for you.” She gestured while seating in one of the garden chairs around said table.

“No, I’ll wait for y/n, thank you. I think she’d like to have breakfast in the garden,” she smiled, remembering your idea of what your first date would have been like. She didn’t know much about you from these last few days, but she was certain you’d appreciate the fresh air and Morticia’s deadly plants.

“You know, I don’t understand what you think you’re doing,” the woman replied, rushing through the words in an uncommon manner.

“Whatever do you mean, Morticia?”

“Oh, don’t roll your eyes at me! I can see clearly what’s happening here!” she sounded impatient, which wasn’t unheard of, but she rarely showed it to anyone; that’s how Larissa knew they were alone, she got used to that secret side of the woman twenty years ago.

Masking her discomfort with a long-since practised smile, Larissa tidied the spread while choosing her words.

“And what do you think that would be?”

Larissa heard a snort, “You’re being used! You always had a soft spot for the unremarkable and that is a very generous quality of yours. I admire it, truly, but it’s the third time around, amore, and this will end up badly.”

“What?! Careful with your lies, Morticia, they’re getting bigger and bigger, and someday they’ll lodge in your throat,” Larissa was shocked by her own reaction. She thought she’d mastered how to maintain the higher ground around Morticia, but clearly, she was mistaken; at least when it was about you, apparently. “Be honest, you can’t care less about how this will end. You didn’t care the first time, why would you now?”

At that, her old roommate stilled.

“I didn’t know about her, and you know it very well,” her tone was dangerously controlled, she was looking ahead with her jaw set and from time to time her eye twitched, “When I heard the news, Gomez didn’t even have to finish sparring, I just ran to the car.” With a deep breath, Morticia turned to face Larissa, eyes sparkling and nose flaring. “You are an intelligent woman, Larissa; we both know that. So, you must have noticed the recurrent theme of charming young ladies trying to use you for their own purposes.”

“Don’t forget to include yourself on the list,” Larissa’s tone was colder than she’d expected, but Morticia’s uncharacteristic avoidance of her gaze was an exquisite treat.

Without another word, the woman stood up and walked back through the path from where she came.

The previous night, you attributed the mansion’s imposing aura to the melting of its high towery roof against the darkening of the skies that created a strange sense of elongated walls. However, through the morning sunlit corridors, the high ceilings and medieval-like decorations didn’t alleviate you of the notion in any way. You could swear one of the rooms you passed through had an actual medieval torture device.

When you started walking down the rock path, Morticia appeared from around tall white oleander bushes, looking sour, and even though her sweet smiles had been mostly false until that moment, you preferred them. Whatever happened to her, you prayed you didn’t have to know.

Upon seeing, though, her face morphed back into “alluring menace mode”.

“Good morning, my dear. Did you sleep well?” she said in a slightly hoarser version of her baritone, coming right up to you and standing close.

“Yeah, you have very good beds,” you smirked, “they barely make a sound.”

The twitch of annoyance in the corner of her lip gave away her feelings, and her expression changed again in a matter of seconds, brows knitting together and downward lips.

“Oh, did something happen in the morning then?”

“What do you mean?” what was she talking about?

“I’ve just spoken with Rissa, and she seemed very pissy about something, could barely talk to her for a minute…” you knew you shouldn’t trust her concerned tone, the glint in her eye had amusement written all over it.

So, Larissa wasn’t in bed because she was angry? Or she regretted your actions last night and seeing the person whom she started this all for irritated her? If she hadn’t wanted to prove Morticia wrong, nothing would have happened. No cuddling on the sofa, no trips and highroad hugs, and definitely no kissing like mad until you fell asleep.

She placed her hand on your shoulder and murmured, “I’d say to approach carefully, you never know when she has a temper.” before parting with her usual saunter.

So much for hope, in the end. You could only be grateful for the chance at knowing what it could be like to be… you didn’t want to finish the thought, even that felt tainted by Larissa’s repentance.

Turning where Morticia came from, you saw a few meters ahead a beautiful black iron garden table with matching chairs. Larissa’s shoulders hung softly. She didn’t look tense from her back, more contemplating with her fingers absentmindedly tracing the rim of a teacup.

You approached slowly, and when you were in front of her, she didn’t look near throwing you the cup. Unsurprisingly, Morticia was fond of hyperboles.

“Before you say anything, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. It was a mistake, it’s ok…” you felt your throat tight and breathed slowly in to control your emotions before continuing, “We were both drunk, and I’m happy we stopped because if not this conversation would have been a lot more awful than it already is to have. I won’t say a thing to anyone, and I won’t ask anything of you, as well, don’t worry. We can just pretend it never happened.”

Larissa’s confused expression didn’t last long. You could point out the moment she stopped being Larissa and became principal Weems in front of you. Her unguarded posture swiftly shifted to the picture of a professional stance, her face was neutral and her voice calculatedly suave.

“Of course. I’m glad that we cleared it out, I’d hate for it to be a source of miscomprehension between us,” she smiled, “Good thing that we both feel the same and can act as adults about it.”

You only nodded, too stunned to muster a response.

“Well,” she got up and gestured to the overstocked table between you, “I thought you’d enjoy breakfast in the garden. You did seem rather fond of picnics if I recall,” she ended with a breath. If you knew any better, you’d say she sounded wounded before she circled you walked away.

As soon as her towering figure was out of sight, which you knew because you watched her go without so much as blinking, you let all the air you’d been holding out, finishing with the mixture of a broken whimper and a sob. Now you knew, undeniably, that your feelings weren’t reciprocated. You felt so drained you couldn’t even cry; you simply fell into the closest chair and ignored the food by your side until someone came to get it.

When Morticia saw Larissa’s face coming from the garden, she concluded her little deception had worked.

More guests arrived in the afternoon. A lot of them very eccentric and intriguing. There was one particular guest you found very charming. Wednesday introduced him to you as Cousin Itt; apparently, he also attended Nevermore years back and was a consistent winner in debates.

“I and Pugsley facilitated his marriage years ago,” Wednesday said curiously by your side, a sinister smile indicating her rare amusement, “It was good fun to dispose of Cousin Margaret’s late husband.”

“Whatever do you mean by that?!”

She only smiled a bit more and stalked away to join Enid at the garden.

Larissa was missing for the greater part of the day. After lunch, which was stilted and awkward, only balanced by Enid and Gomez lively debating Wednesday’s adventures in the previous year, she left for who knows where and only appeared in your bedroom closely before the party was scheduled to start.

You knew you still were trying to deceive Morticia, and by her comment that morning she did seem to believe you were together, but now you didn’t know if Larissa wanted to continue with the plan; she looked so tired.

“Do you think we should talk about it?” you asked when she left the bathroom in one of the fluffy robes.

“Talk about what?” her tone was clipped.

You really wanted to maintain the illusion of being an adult, but it was so difficult with her displeased principal face. You felt like a child politely scolded for your bad behaviour. Your shoulders hurt and your chest ached; spending one afternoon away from her, not knowing what was going through her head was torture. You wondered how you’d survive the rest of the year now, if it would all fade away or if the dull aching would be a consistent reminder of all you wanted and could not have every time you walked by her or were called to her office.

It was Larissa who talked fist, prompting you out of your misery with an exasperated voice.

“Fine!” she snapped, “You want to talk about it? Let’s do that. Where do you want to start from? The part where I-“ she cut herself, looking at you with ill-concealed rage and… betrayal? What? “You know what? You start… this was your idea, to begin with,” she ended in a much quieter tone, rummaging through her belongings and producing a wine bottle before dropping into one of the armchairs by the unlit fireplace.

“You brought wine?!”

She was silent for a few moments before speaking, “I thought we could share it the first night, but you were already drunk and I was tired so I didn’t even remember it,” she sounded defeated, and the emotional rollercoaster of feelings this trip was putting you through was starting to exhaust you. You wanted just that. Simple things. Sharing wine and giggling about fooling her old roommate, being friends and not worrying about screwing everything up all the time.

“Can I have some?” you approached and seated in the chair in front of her.

“We don’t have glasses.”

“Do you really mind sharing a bottle? I mean, we did worse than that already…” you winced at the comment, but when she huffed and smiled you felt almost overwhelmed with relief and fondness.

She unscrewed the bottle and took a swing before passing it over. It occurred to you it wasn’t even the first time you drank from the same place. Last night you shared your last glass you whisky without even thinking about it.

You gulped down a healthy amount and were surprised by the sweet smoothness of it. It was the same you shared the first time you went to her office. She smiled again when your eyebrows shot up and you took another sip, savouring it this time and not just swallowing for the sake of liquid courage. You didn’t know quite what to say at the sweet gesture.

“How about we start with the reason you disappeared on me the entire day,” you prompted, gently, passing her the bottle.

She huffed a laugh again, but it was bitterer this time around. “I think you know why that was.”

“I really don’t,” you were speaking quietly, as if it was any louder something would shatter, “I can guess, but I’d prefer knowing. Not knowing things have already caused enough commotion between us, don’t you think?”

“Ha, I wonder how we’ll ever work together again after this,” she didn’t take the time to appreciate the drink, downing an amount that had her throat moving slowly to manage it.

“I think you should stop with that for now…” you took the bottle and set it on the floor. She did have a different system than you, but it was starting to feel like too much too soon.

“I don’t usually… I have been drinking much more than normal the last few days,” she confessed, her eyebrows kitting softly.

“It’s ok, I just think we’re always out of sorts before having honest conversations. The time in the car was the healthiest discussion we ever had, and it took us very high amounts of stress to even start talking.”

“You are correct, once again.”

“Again?”

“You said before that it was a mistake,” her voice was just above a whisper.

“And you agreed… with me.”

“Do you really believe that?” she huffed again, “You must know by now how I feel, you’re just too kind to tell me it is one-sided. Stop trying to protect my feelings, I’m more than a decade older than you.”

You were a bit oblivious sometimes, but you couldn’t misinterpret what she was saying, however, you could not believe it either.

“What do you mean, Larissa? Please don’t say things you don’t mean thinking it will make me feel better.”

She hid her face in her hands with a deep breath. Her hair was wet from the shower and even looking cosy and casual in her robe, all you could see in Larissa was tense exasperation.

“Who stopped us yesterday?” she murmured, dropping her hands, eyes almost boring holes in yours with her piercing determination, “Who came to me this morning offering me an out, implying we both made a mistake and not only me?”

“I thought you were…” you started saying, but she cut in.

“You thought I was what? Not interested after kissing myself molten in your arms? That I regretted while waiting for us to eat together in the garden? What did you think, y/n? Enlighten me because it really is a mystery to me what passes through your head.”

You were stunned into silence by her small outburst. She really was incomparable when her eyes lit up like that when the persona of masterly disguised feelings was put aside, and the real Larissa appeared.

“M-Morticia told me you were mad… in the garden before I met you,” you breathed, “I thought you snapped at her because she was the reason we’re doing this in the first place.”

At that, Larissa got up, you were still dazed to accompany her movements, but you felt her hands on your shoulders and suddenly she was kneeling in front of you.

“This is just a guess, but don’t you think Morticia would love nothing more than to ruin whatever it is we have since it’s exactly what she’s been trying to do since we got here?” you could very well drown on those resplendent blue eyes, clear as the Weddell Sea with emotion, “It would be laughable if we were actually together, let’s be honest, her methods are ‘petty teenager’ level, but I think we are so deep into our heads we’re falling for them just like a pair of teenaged fools.” Her hand came to caress your cheek, and you weren’t sure you were being played or if this was really happening, but you couldn’t think of any words, even less muster a sentence to agree with her, so you just had to pathetically wait for Larissa to fix everything by herself. She didn’t seem to mind so much, with a small smile and drawn eyebrows.

“Did you really regret it?” she whispered, looking almost vulnerable if it weren’t for her resolve to soothe your insecurities, “Or would you say something different if Morticia hadn’t found you before me?”

“You were all I could think about…” you covered her hand on your cheek, “I just wanted to be sure your feelings wouldn’t change…”

“They didn’t,” she said simply and leaned in to kiss you.

Tag list: @anti-bright-places, @the-bagel24, @regalbootie, @tundra1029, @thoroughly-confused, @lilsmeaux, @poorwritingandstalecoffee, @alder-saan, @jelly-frogss, @enchantressb, @imean-its-just-me, @lvinhs, @iloveyall-18, @kimiinou, @jeweleegrey (why won't your names tag? What am I doing wrong?)

Chapter Seven

[bomberqueen17]

noodle bowl recipe/technique

When I'm not at the farm it's always a struggle to eat as many vegetables as my body wants me to eat. Like it's just confusing to go out and buy vegetables when you're really used to just kind of going to the walk-in cooler and being like "ok what have we got too much left over of, time to Eat That", and I need to overcome this by having a recipe in mind beforehand but one I can adapt if they don't have the thing I'm thinking of at the store. So I'm trying to collect not recipes so much as techniques, because I have this problem where it's hard for me to follow a recipe because I accidentally skip reading the middle of it. Ha.

(I saw a good post about how "measure that shit with your heart" is misleading and like, mood. I am a very experienced cook but I have attention problems and can't follow a recipe if I'm tired or distracted or in pain. So I'm trying to link to real everything is measured for you recipes where I can, so if you haven't made this before and don't know what it should look like, you've got a tested version with proper amounts to start with. Just like I do! And then once I have the technique down, and the relative amounts, I'm sharing my method, which is less so on the measuring and more on my mother's technique, which is "you put in enough and then cook it until it is done", which when I was new was so frustrating, but now that I am old, I know it is 100% based on practice. And that's all, there's no mystery, it's just "I've made it before and I know how it should look so you just make it look like that." Now that I can't reliably read a whole recipe and not miss a big whack of the middle of it, I rely so much on having practiced and generally knowing what things look like when they're "right". But it's not magic and I'm not measuring with my heart I'm measuring with my practiced eye and hand.)

Anyway. Rice bowls or noodle bowls are a fantastic way to just throw a bunch of vegetables into a nice yummy sauce over a good comforting starch and have that be a meal. I tend to do a noodle bowl, and then any left over ingredients get incorporated into a fried rice scramble thing later, so you can keep that in mind if you want to try this.

I found this recipe for butternut squash mushroom noodle bowls. And I tried it as written, and it wasn't bad, but for me, roasting everything in the oven was very hard to time and didn't turn out fantastically well. YMMV, but I have more experience sauteeing things. (My first attempt I also used bok choy instead of spinach so I roasted it separately on another sheet pan according to a technique I've done before for roasted bok choy; this approach would probably work just fine if you were paying more attention than I was; my main issue was that noodle bowl recipe linked above gives far too little time for the butternut squash to roast so mine was unpleasantly crunchy. It's wrong, give it longer, and so I found it best to just not try to squeeze anything else onto the sheet with it as that recipe directs.)

So I changed it up for a second try.

First thing I did was peel the butternut squash with a vegetable peeler (I find it easiest to do this if I kinda cut it in half crosswise first), then scoop out and set aside the squash guts, then cube the thing up and roast it on a sheet pan, drizzled with peanut oil and salt and set at 400.

That's gonna take like 45 minutes or so, so I set most of my timing around that. Check the directions on your noodles or whatever, figure out what order you've got to do those in. (Soba are best for the protein, but I had rice noodles and they needed a pre-soak and it messed up my timing, which is why I'm making this note here.)

dice an onion. preheat skillet, add oil, begin to sautee onions.

rinse and prepare bok choi or other green of choice.

when the squash is part of the way cooked (like 25 minutes or so, give it a stir and check it to see if it's softening at all), take the seeds you set aside. separate them from the guts (I squeeze them with my fingers out of the assorted gut-fibers, works pretty well), spread in single layer on small baking sheet. turn oven down to 350. drizzle seeds with sesame oil and a tiny bit of salt. put them in the oven for like ten to fifteen minutes. (Turning the heat down is my attempt to have them not pop and fly all over the oven. IDK if it'll work. Be prepared to wipe seeds out of your oven tomorrow morning. They're not messy at least they just fly everywhere.)

Now throw your mushrooms and some diced garlic into your onions and saute. Add the bok choi or spinach or kale or whatever as you're stirring. Cook it all down.

Now make your sauce-- I did not measure anything this go-round, I just grated a bunch of ginger (I keep my ginger root in the fridge and it's easy to microplane off whatever you need) into a wee prep bowl, then added soy sauce, some honey, a couple spoonfuls of water from the boiling noodles to melt the honey and clean the spoon, and then a spoonful or two of chili crisp ("happy lady sauce" [lao gan ma]) because i don't stock sriracha currently.

When your noodles are ready, turn the oven off. Drain the noodles and divide them into your serving bowls, top with squash, add sauteed veg, squash seeds, the sauce. top with sesame seeds.

This was awesome, and I have leftover cooked squash cubes I'm gonna put into another recipe later cuz if you're gonna roast a butternut you might as well roast a pretty big one. I particularly like using the squash seeds because they're so tasty and crunchy and deserve to be eaten rather than thrown out.

[omaano]

HELLO IT'S ME AGAIN and i think i overdid it with this one, so i'll probably split this into separate parts, there should be five! this one, boon givers, non-boon givers/npcs, weapons, and aspects :D in reference to who you've got as who from hades game--- so i'm going off the (hopefully accurate) assumption that those with boons are the 'gods' of this au, so-- barriss, kit, shaak, cobb, boba, ahsoka, quinlan (!!), leia, anakin/vader & maul. this leaves… literally EVERYONE else as NPCs, which i love and adore (the rancor [?], cody, satine, echo&fives, aphra, paz, bo-katan, sabine, omega, rex, wolffe, ezra, obi-wan, luke and the armorer!) okay this is just me trying to connect the dots (and from memory i think you've got a fair few more characters than the game does, so bear with me), but: (next ask)

Hello!

First of all, omg, you really put a lot of thought into this, damn! And you have so many insights and good ideas I could have never come up with (and a few assumptions I will have to correct as we go along, but that's mostly about things I haven't yet talked about, and thus cannot expect anyone to know) - especially about the weapons and aspects because... let's be honest I only got so far as "darksaber" and "spear" and the rest is not my problem lol XD

I will make a whole different post to reply to your asks about those (that one will be a LOT shorter, mostly because I will just be excitedly gushing over your ideas), but this one is getting so long I feel like I should offer something in compensation to anyone who'll read to the end ^^; (You'll see more art by mid-August when it will be time for the next monthly update, don't worry!) But I felt like that the FULL layout of all the characters would be better kept together in one post.

Waking up to all these messages had been so unspeakably good, thank you so much for taking the time not to just think these up but to type them out and send them to me as well, because omg your brain and enthusiasm!! I cannot say how much that means to me, I cannot say THANK YOU in big enough caps to encapsule that! ❤️❤️

I had so many things to reply to and talk about, please excuse me that I've taken this long to get to all of them ^^;

So, half of the replies and answers under the cut ->

BOON GIVERS

hades has ten, you've got ten! current associations-- you've said leia is a hermes adjacent character, which checks out. maul is chaos adjacent, as you've also said anakin is zeus, ahsoka is athena? ties into the parent-child/master-padawan relationship? barriss as artemis, kit as poseidon, shaak as demeter? quinlan as dionysus perhaps? cobb and boba are both boon-givers/deities and also romanceable--- boba as ares and cobb as aphrodite? vibes only man.

So the first assumption I need to correct here is that Anakin is most definitely not Zeus, but Demeter (I likely only hinted at that in the tags I think)! That was kind of the reason and realization that's wormed into my brain first and paved the road for my willingness to extend this AU with TCW characters as well. So this applies for later with your NPC adjacent ask too, because Luke is not in fact cast for Hades' but Persephone's role, as the one who needs to be found at the end of the whole mighty quest - and whom Din can also visit on the regular until he gets 75% custody of his kid back (that's a joke, but you know it checks out to a degree). So Anakin is suited for an overprotective parent figure (on a good day) who also doesn't know how to go about it without swinging in the other direction as well. (Plus in my humble opinion Demeter is stronger than Zeus anyway. This is not an objective statement, I just feel stronger with her boons with my game style XD)

I've also switched Fennec back from Barriss (I'm so sorry that I keep doing this, I hope noone's got their hopes up too high D:) because I'd taken a look at the lineup, considered my options for dialogue (since half the Mando cast has no clue about the other boon giver characters) and decided that I needed to bring back more Mando-adjacent characters. (A Boba-Fennec duo boon would be so good!) This way Fennec could technically still carry over to a potential Hades2 AU, and Barriss can appear there as a new character (I haven't watched Tales from the Empire, but I have the feeling that she would go very interestingly with Ventress).

So... they don't line up perfectly with their godly roles, but that leaves Fennec for Artemis (sharpshooter ayy!), and... Shaak Ti for Zeus, Ahsoka for Athena (your reasoning for master/padawan relationship thing kind of convinced me of this, even though Ahsoka has never been Shaak's padawan per se, but I like it when Shaak mentors her as another female togruta in the Order). You are pretty spot on with the rest, good job! :D (The guess at the Boba and Cobb vibes was great, I went with vibes too, but they check out pretty good imo :D)

NON BOON GIVERS

bo-katan is meg, and her night owls are tisiphone and alecto (given) aphra is charon (given) cody is achilles, obi-wan is patroclus (definitely heavily implied if not outright stated, i can't remember)

yes, absolutely spot on!

luke is hades (implied if not stated)

As stated above, Luke is not Hades but Persephone, except that he makes an appearance after the final boss fight to take Grogu off Din's hands (maybe even help out) as he does in the show. Hence why I'm planning to draw two versions of his character art: one for his stylish black Jedi Master getup with the lightsaber, and one dressed down to a "farm boy" and looser, happier and less serious (like how Persephone has her serious queenly look, and the one where she is just at home in her garden.

paz & axe are theseus & asterius? specifically paz as asterius i think (implied?)

Axe double times it for two boss roles (lol, although technically he exchanges one for the other to hang out with Paz later), and Paz also pulls double shift for ThAsterius (Asterius's size but Theseus' mouth and piss poor attitude XD) and Hypnos (I feel it very fitting that he would be the one to greet Din every time he crawls back to HQ, and be less kind and encouraging about it than Hypnos. It's their love language to be mean to the other, that's just how it is XD) All the same, a little bit subtly (at least while I don't have a drawing for Axe) but I'm pushing the Paxe agenda and you cannot to anything about it :P

Fun fact tangent: I think I've mentioned it in the tags for the helmeted Paz post that in order to have to two-character boss battle in the arena of Elysium before Axe can be bothered to drag his ass over there, it would be fun to have a father-son 2v2 fight like with Grogu v Ragnar and Din v Paz. Grogu can 3-shot Ragnar eventually, and then they would disappear from the field, done with their own little rivalry, but Din would have to avoid so much as brushing up against Ragnar, because if he does he's immediately lost dishonourably and would have to crawl his way back to beg for forgiveness.

din is zagreus (uh duh)

omega is melinoe (given)

Omega is Melinoe for a Hades2 AU*, but in this version that is mostly based on Hades (the first, and the only one that I'd actually played) she is leaning more towards Dusa - she's a friend, and is making friends while she stays in the halls, looking for the Bad Batch (and whatever time fuckery makes Rex look like that sometimes while Cody and Wolffe are eternally 20-somethings) and looking for ways and means to help her find them... as well as fleecing any- and everyone in cards. Gotta gather up the credits to hire a bountyhunter if necessary XD

*The next time I lose all my chill and black out for a weekend I'm planning to draw out just Omega, Ventress, and maybe someone else in the Hades2 style. I'll just have to pinpoint exactly where and how I should adjust things with the art style. I swear I never get overambitious, and know full well what's good for me (he said lyingly)

fennec is artemis but specifically in hades 2 (based on the fact that artemis plays a slightly different role in hades 2) rex is skelly (given)

As stated above Fennec has made her way back to being a boon-giver - but I didn't know that Artemis plays differently in Hades2 :o (I haven't played actually, I got overwhelmed by all the magic options when I watched my partner play OTL) Only that she's got a thing for the Moon??

the rancor (?) (i can't ID animals that well don't give me that look) is definitely cerberus

It's a mythosaur, actually. (or at least that's the intention behind it. I'm not entirely sure if there is a proper canon look to a Mythosaur, we mostly only see its skull after all, so I tried my best here with what references I could find on the internet.) He started out as Boba's rancor (so you're not entirely wrong there), but since it felt bad to separate it from Boba, I changed it to a more Mando specific creature. If I were ever to redraw the whole level that is the House of Hades (one can dream), there would be a little pool of water in the corner where Cerberus chills on his pillow, and the Mythosaur would rise from there on occasion.

the armorer i think fits the nyx role, as she's the mother figure of the main character, but she might also fit better as persephone? toss up between her and satine for that i think hang on now i am thinking, because the point of din's journey isn't to escape to find his mother, but to escape to help find someone to train his son, hence why luke is the final "boss". so, the persephone figure in this doesn't necessarily have to be his mother, but someone who can train grogu? in that case, i nominate sabine as persephone (MANDALORIAN JEDI, if you go by ahsoka canon) so: sabine as persephone- but wait. i just had a thought. sabine and ezra as platonic (?) orpheus and eurydice, i AM a genius. okay sabine works as orpheus and ezra as eurydice i think (based solely off the fact that sabine is the one actively looking for ezra, like orpheus is the one actively wanting to reconcile with eurydice [?]), so. i think the armorer works as nyx, because she's kind of a symbol of din's past.. not sure who to put as persephone yet. i mean… persephone symbolises a kind of peace in the underworld, so you could maybe slot satine in? satine as persephone, go

Okay, so first things first: that is such a fascinating theory, (and yes, yes you are a genius <3) I love it! It is all such good logic, and so much more galaxy brained than what I could have come up with, so I hope I won't disappoint with what i have in mind for these characters.

Sabine as a Mandalorian Jedi would be such a cool teacher for Grogu - but I don't think Sabine is up for the existential crisis of "ohmygod, I'm barely a jedi myself, and I'm definitely not old enough to be some 50+ year old baby's master!! D:" She would definitely have more than some insight to share with Luke though. Also just imagine Grogu looking at Sabine like she is the coolest aunt he could ever have (sorry, Fennec). Also also, as stated above and what you have also theorized, Sabine has been cast for the role and spot of Orpheus, looking for Ezra (through Din).

Okay, okay, hear me out: the Armorer as Hades. Her forge would work great as a center of gathering, same as Hades's throne/main desk, and it would be very natural that Din would go there first after arriving back to those halls. (I have so many thoughts about this and how I would want to redraw these halls... someday.) And while she is not the first final boss to beat once Din gets there (just before handing Grogu over to Luke), once Gideon (a temporary final boss) is defeated the Armorer can more than return to her Hades role for beating Din up as "training". Same as Hades and Zagreus do once they reconcile their differences.

And now, that I'm nearing the point why I want all these characters to be forced to gather/hang out in the same spot: Satine is Nyx. I know that she is dead, and we don't care for those tiny details, and I'm not planning to draw her as a shade/Force ghost like Fives, we're just going to ignore this little lore tidbit the same way how we accept that Rex can look both like his gloriously bearded Rebels self, and the fetching captain from the clone wars. We're just not talking about all this.

I deeply love the steel in her spine and her dedication in her ideals and beliefs, and I want to see her clash with the Armorer on what makes and Mandalorian with Sabine and Din (whose idea of what it makes a Mandalorian and to wear Mandalorian armor suffers a great blows through his meetings with Cobb and Boba, and Bo-Katan and her ilk) in the middle. I also feel like the clones would have their own opinion on the matter, even if it would be something like "you all have never cared for us, now leave us alone, we have our own culture".

I would need to do deeper research here for this (as much as I'd be willing to touch this ideological debate) because my knowledge of Mandalorian (or Star Wars, really) lore is all that I occasionally try to google and what I'd picked up from fics and the occasional meta post here on tumblr. But the same way that Nyx disagrees with Hades on some matters, she is still an (if not the most) important pillar of what holds up the underworld; and the same way Satine is just as important in what it makes to be a Mandalorian as the Armorer is to the Children of the Watch.

So I want them to clash (with the added drama when Bo-Katan starts hanging out there around her sister on occasion as well), and then come to a more inclusive understanding of what it makes to be Mandalorian, like what I believe Sabine and Din represent.

I know that Satine is super controversial in the fandom, but I'm willing to die on this hill, even if I'm not very good at articulating my opinions.

okay uh. we have more hades characters than star wars characters, but: echo & fives as sisyphus & bouldy, wolffe as thanatos?

Echo&Fives are to be understood as one character (there has been a thought to cast them for Orpheus and Eurydice, but then gave that storyline to Sabine and Ezra since it fits them so much better, especially after Ahsoka), and they are in Thanatos' spot (no other reason than that I wanted to include them, and they should be hanging out around Cody, Rex and Omega. I know that Thanatos doesn't make it through to Hades2(?) but you see, I don't want to line everyone up 100% with the already existing roles/characters).

With that mismatch it's actually Wolffe and Plo as Sisyphus and Bouldie. Wolffe needs quite a bit of extra work to be won over to become friendly, but once he gets to the world weary sigh of "you are okay, I guess, you can be allowed to meet my General" that's basically a shortcut to finding Grogu an alternate Jedi master, because Plo would just take him on, no problem with attachments and other concerns. There, game won, Din didn't even need to find Luke for that.

this leaves hypnos and dusa- i would like to nominate c3po as dusa, which leaves R2 as a slightly more chaotic hypnos. chopper, of course, is Tiny Vermin. (non-droid characters could be qui-gon as hypnos [idk man, something about the vibes], and… yeah, no, i think c3po fits dusa quite well) on an alternate note, i think padme and her [shade] handmaidens could fit the role of the queen/persephone quite well-- but maybe that's just me being a little padme-biased. anyway! not all of these characters quite fit, and i am in fact aware that you probably don't intend to match up all the characters exactly, but this was a fun little exercise for me!

I ADORE the idea of Chopper as Tiny Vermin XD

I wouldn't want to make Din face the horror that is regular interaction with C3PO (although I'm sure it would work in his favour if they could commiserate with Wolffe on the matter XD), he would never get over his anti-droid sentiments XD So no, sadly no appearance will be here for our favourite (?) gold plated protocol droid,but R2 would definitely be the one to wheel in and project Leia's hologram for Din to interact with, because she is a busy lady after all, he should feel lucky that she would take his calls in the first place when he needs help with getting out of trouble with the X-wing patrols.

And double sadly no Padme either, because I refuse to turn this AU into another Skywalker drama, sorry ^^;

TBC...

[lookofhisoceaneyes]

**The Best of the Best: Must-Read Fanfiction Gems**

Hello everyone! As a long-time fanfiction reader and enthusiast, I've come across some incredible stories that have left a lasting impact on me. These are the fanfics that are so well-written and captivating, they deserve to be published as books. Here are my top picks from my favorite fandoms:

Okay before we get into this, a little warning: please read the tags that come with each fanfic. I don't put smutty stuff in here either. (I'll make a separate post for that). There may be some scenes in the fics, but it's not the main focus. This is about story, characters and storytelling.  Also, I didn't list all the fics, probably because I haven't read them yet or simply forgot. Besides, that would just make the post even longer than it is right now. I will definitely do more posts on each fandom, different tropes, characters and settings. Be patient, I'm doing this mainly for myself so that I can better organize my fics. I'm just not that active in some fandoms. If you have any suggestions, feel free to write them and I will read them.

1/4

I can only post 10 links per Post (tumblr does not allow more than 10)

Teen Wolf Fandom: 

1. It came from the trees by whatshouldntbe 

it came from the trees 🍉 - Chapter 1 - whatshouldntbe - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

“Don’t worry, Scott caught me up on everything,” Kira assures with a bubbly smile via video-chat. “You and Derek, huh? I probably should have seen that coming. I always thought it might be Cora, but Derek was the one that looked at you how I used to look at you.”

Stiles goes a little pink. “It’s still kinda new but, yeah. I really like him. He’s...” Beautiful. Patient. Smart. Painfully honest. Sweet. “...a total dork.”

Kira laughs and laughs. When she gets herself together, she replies, “Yeah, those little hearts and stars in your eyes definitely say different."

or

Stiles moves from the shiny, fast-paced lifestyle of Los Angeles to the foggy, sleepy town of Beacon Hills so his dad can become the new sheriff. Newly fifteen, he does his best to finish out his freshman year of high school (by staying under the radar) when he suddenly becomes the Beyoncé of the Supernatural community. And, without much prompting on his part, he ends up catching the eye of one of the most prominent Werewolf families in all of North America. It literally all starts with a stuffed animal(s).

🍉 THIS FIC HAS BEEN ABANDONED; READ AT YOUR OWN RISK 🍉

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Main Ship: Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale

This fic is for people who don't have much experience with fanfic or Teen Wolf. It's long, incomplete but so beautiful. It built a world that I could dive into immediately. Definitely read it!

2. Wolf Within by wynnebat 

Wolf Within - Chapter 1 - wynnebat - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Instead of convincing Scott to regain his humanity by killing the Alpha, Derek offers another possible solution.

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Main Ship: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski 

I know a lot of people don't like Peter/Stiles and the ship is more than problematic, but in this story it fits well. What if Stiles had taken over Scott's werewolf powers and no one knows that Peter is the Alpha. I love werewolf Stiles stories simply because I'm sure Stiles would have been the better werewolf.

the podfic: [podfic] Wolf Within - reena_jenkins - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

3. What I Did On My Summer Vacation by grimm

What I Did On My Summer Vacation - Chapter 1 - grimm - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

There's something weird about Beacon Hills that Stiles can't quite put his finger on. The way everyone in town knows his name the day he arrives. The way they insist the melancholic howling that echoes through the forest every night is just a dog. The way his dad denies getting a dog, even though Stiles comes home to find one sprawled across his bed, some big black thing whose eyes gleam red in the right light. The way that massive oak tree out in the woods vibrates under his touch, pulsing with sickly life.

There's something weird going on in this town, and Stiles is determined to get to the bottom of it.

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Main Ship: Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale

Do you like fics in which a dog is adopted? Mysterious booksellers with a secret room? Magical creatures and a very mysterious forest? I love this fic, there's a great podfic here too that I can only recommend.

Podfic: [podfic] What I Did On My Summer Vacation - Chapter 1 - read by lunchee (lunchee) - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Supernatural Fandom: 

1. A Beginner's Guide to Communing with the Dead by suspiciousflashlight 

A Beginner's Guide to Communing with the Dead - Chapter 1 - suspiciousflashlight - Supernatural [Archive of Our Own]

Maybe it's the little girl whose disappearance turned into a murder, and whose murder turned into a cold case, and who has now apparently decided to move in with him. Maybe it's the unacceptable hole left in his life when his dumb best friend and partner in (the prevention of) crime decided to go and get himself killed. Maybe it's his brother, whose high-profile career and fantastic girlfriend and first-child-on-the-way are steadily leaving Dean in the dust. Pick one. Pick all of them. The why doesn't matter so much as the what, and the what is this: Dean is pretty sure he's going completely, certifiably insane. Sure, he hasn't started wearing all his clothes inside out, and he still showers on a regular basis (anyways, that's not crazy, just a little eccentric); but there's no getting around the fact that he just threw away his life, his career, and his reputation by dragging out his mom's old necromancy book and summoning a Class A Forbidden Entity to his attic. A cranky one, too. With horrendous bed-head.

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Main Ship: Dean Winchester/Castiel

Even though I'm not in the supernatural fandom that often anymore, this is a great fanfic. Murder mystery, cop Dean, powerful being Cas and absolutely terrific writing. I love it and could read it all the time.

2. Catching Hell by ADeedWithoutaName

Catching Hell - Chapter 1 - ADeedWithoutaName - Supernatural [Archive of Our Own]

Sam Winchester is, perhaps, the greatest asset to the hunting community. His research, advice, and insight has reached countless hunters and solved innumerable mysteries. His life is solitary, but useful. That changes, however, with the delivery of a captured Knight of Hell who calls himself Dean.

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Main Ship: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester (they are not related in this fic!!)

I know, I know, it's billed as Ship Sam/Dean but don't let that scare you away. Sam and Dean are not related in this fic! It's brilliantly written, with Hunter Sam and badass Demon Dean. I highly recommend it.

1D Fandom: 

1. Tired Tired Sea by Mediawhore (only available for ao3 users)

Tired Tired Sea - Chapter 1 - MediaWhore - One Direction (Band) [Archive of Our Own]

As a B&B owner on the most remote of all the British Isles, Louis Tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sole companions. Until, one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

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Main Ship: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles

From the very beginning, you find yourself on Louis' island and immerse yourself in a world of select solitude. I fell head over heels in love with the writing style and especially with the lighthouse. I long to go on holiday there one day.

2. Love Endless: Road to Recollection by wubwubnparmaham

Love Endless: Road to Recollection - Chapter 1 - wubwubnparmaham - One Direction (Band) [Archive of Our Own]

The year is 1973, and eighteen-year-old Louis Tomlinson is perhaps the gayest teen to ever grace the gloomy, hateful town of Fortwright, Idaho. He has a best friend, Niall, a kindhearted music teacher, and his mother on his side, and everyone else is endlessly trying to kill him

All signs pointed to his life playing out in much the same way it always had, and he was trying his best to come to terms with that.

But the course of that life changed forever when he found the mansion. A notoriously haunted mansion hidden deep within the forests of his tiny blip of a town, it sucked him in and then never let him go.

After discovering the mansion was less abandoned than he'd previously thought, he is now left with the most riveting mystery of a lifetime, each new finding leaving him with more questions. Who is this elusive owner, and why won't they show themselves? Why is there a set of journals in the same handwriting that span over centuries? Who could ever explain owning assumedly authentic ancient Roman garments and relics of the French Revolution in the comfort of their own home? Why in the world is there a padlock on the refrigerator...and who the hell is Alexander?

[Book 1/4]

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Main Ship: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles, Niall Horan/Zayn Malik

brilliantly written, if you like Soulmate's AUs, you've come to the right place. Vampire, 1970s, sassy Louis, what more could you want? And the plot twist is brilliant. Be sure to read the whole series!

3. Escapade by dolce_piccante

Escapade - Chapter 1 - dolce_piccante - One Direction (Band) [Archive of Our Own]

In the grand scheme of things, finding a date for a wedding should be no problem for Louis Tomlinson. He's rich. He's handsome. He's reasonably well behaved. But when the wedding is for his lifelong best friend (and former boyfriend), and is happening in under a month, finding a date for the ceremony and accompanying festivities becomes more of an adventure than he ever could have planned for.

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Main Ship: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles, Niall Horan/Zayn Malik

Very famous classic Larry fanfic. Brilliantly written. dolce_piccante is a great writer, check out their profile!