#some of Doc's backstory under the read more

[atonalginger]

It's Snippet Sunday! What a fun day! Thanks for the tag @therealgchu, @silurisanguine (on discord), and everyone else who urged folks to share. I will also urge those who see this and have something they've been working on to consider picking a small peek, just a snippet ;)

Anyway this snippet comes from Reclaiming Home, my DocCoe fic that has been slow to get off the ground after that spicy explosion of a first chapter. ...they needed some rest...lol

TW for discussions of past emotional abuse, attempted kidnapping. Placed under a "read more" cut

“It’s fine, Sam,” Jamie chuckled, “it’s not a secret.”

“Then why is he acting like it is?” Cora motioned at her dad.

“It used to hurt to think about it,” Jamie admitted, “but that was a long time ago.”

“So I am being nosy,” Cora frowned.

“No, you’re curious. Being nosy would be snooping and digging where you didn’t belong even after being told to drop it,” Jamie reached out and smoothed a stray curl back into place, “Fox took me away from Dodgewood when he did to save me from our parent’s plans for me.”

“What were the plans,” Cora leaned in.

“To stop me from being independent. My mom found out I’d been working with the history teacher at the school, filling out college apps and applying for financial aid. Neither of my parents wanted me going to college because, to them, that wasn’t meant for me. They were saving for Jasper’s college and were banking on Fox’s time in the militia to pay for his higher education.”

“But why not? You’re a genius!” Cora exclaimed.

Jamie let out a quiet laugh. She said it didn’t hurt anymore but the truth chewed a raw spot on her heart, “because my success would draw attention and they didn’t want that. They didn’t like people remembering I existed because it meant they had to act like they liked me.”

“But…” Cora stopped herself, absorbing what Jamie had said, “what were they going to do?”

“Dad knew a freight pilot from Hopetown who had a son a few years older than me looking for a wife. Wanted to move to Akila hoping to find better work. So my dad offered the guy a job on the farm and he and mom started working on convincing me he was just perfect for me. They hoped to browbeat me into marrying him, getting rooted in Dodgewood, and continue to be their little maid.”

“Oh, their those people,” Cora said quietly.

Her response made Jamie chuckle a little harder, “Yes they are.” “I don’t get it, it’s the 24rd century, people!” Cora threw up her hands.

“For some traditions and personal believes run deeper than any fact could hope to sway,” Jamie looked up to Sam. He was now standing behind Cora, leaned against a locker watching his girls with that worried look he wore so often nowadays. She looked back to Cora, “but Fox learned about their plans from Jasper, who was so excited to see my dreams crushed he couldn’t keep mom and dad’s secret. Baby brother’s animosity for me is what saved me in the end.”

“He wasn’t worried about you like Fox?” Cora asked.

“No, Jasper hated me with a fiery passion. As soon as they could get away with it my parents dumped all parenting responsibilities onto me. ‘Good practice’ they called it, for when I one day had my own.” Jamie looked over to the desk and took a deep breath, “I didn’t let him do every little impulsive thing his potato brain thought up and so he hated me.”

Cora’s hug caught Jamie off guard, causing her to jump slightly as the girls arms wrapped around her. She turned and hugged Cora back, rocking them back and forth slightly. Into her shoulder Cora asked, “so that why you both changed your names and kept lots of details vague in your writing.”

“Partly,” Jamie nodded and gave Cora one more little squeeze before sitting up, “We hadn’t planned it initially. We hoped some distance and time would give us a chance to prove to them it was the right call. Fox was the golden one, he did no wrong in their eyes, so he hoped he’d be able to convince them. But we learned fairly quickly how wrong we were on that front.

“Family came out of the woodwork to let us know what horrible children we were. Luckily by boss at the Rock was able to get security to keep an eye out for me when Fox and your dad were out of town. But even that started to fail and it’s one of the reasons I abruptly left the city. I couldn't risk my move being discovered by our family too soon.”

“What’s they do?” Sam asked, a heat on his words, his blue eyes burning as he looked down, hiding them from his girls.

“My Univeralist Uncle showed up with the potential suitor asking around for me, introducing the guy to others as my fiancé. People who knew me or your dad knew that was bogus but that didn’t stop the talk and then a few days before I left town they accosted me near the Rock. Deputy Monroe, well deputy at the time, he interceded and I was able to slip into the Rock but I knew I couldn’t stay after that.” A low growl rumbled in Sam’s throat. They’d need to talk about it later, when Cora went to bed. About why she never said anything.

“Seems like a lot of work when they could have just let you go,” Cora said as she sat back down. She held onto Jamie’s hand, seeming to want to keep some tether to her.

“It was embarrassing and reputation meant everything to them.” Jamie said with a tired smile, “Us leaving Dodgewood was the talk of the settlement when it happened. It’s a tiny settlement in the ass end of nowhere, it was all people talked about for a weeks. Speculation over why it happened and talk about how dramatic it looked: Fox had come home for a week of leave, was seen talking to Jasper near the spaceport, stormed home, and within an hour we were spotted loading into the militia transport he landed with and were gone. And we never came back. It was juicier than any shows they could download.”

“But couldn’t they see they were hurting you?” Cora asked.

“They didn’t care about my feelings on the matter, sweetheart,” Jamie said softly, “there are people in this world who only care about themselves. Everything they do is in service of making themselves look good to others. The jobs they take, the friends they make, the families they have, all of has the end goal of making people like them and nothing else. Most people won’t pick up on it because they aren’t personally affected by it, they’ll only see the good deeds, the kind words, the selfless charity.

“But that also means nothing can ever go wrong. Nothing can ever look out of place for them, because if it does it will let people see other cracks in their facade.” Jamie gave Cora’s hand a pat, “they wanted me to come back so they could say, ‘look everyone, we’re still a happy family and everything is fine’. As time went on and I completed my degrees, changed my last name, started making a name for myself in the Starfield, they backed off more and more because those that knew I was their daughter praised them for my success, making them look good. And those that didn’t know my family couldn’t judge them anymore.”

“Ew,” Cora scrunched her nose, “they tried to lock you away and then got to brag about your successes?

“Yup,” Jamie nodded, “and agreed, Ew.”

“Why not put them on blast? Tell everyone exactly what they did? Make sure they can’t steal your successes for themselves?” Cora asked.

“I’ve considered it,” Jamie admitted, “and every time I get close to doing it I remember that it won’t fix any of it. They won’t admit their fault. They won’t apologize. What it would do is let them play victim to those around them. Allow them to ‘woe is me, look at how my own daughter speaks of me after all I did for her’. Far better to allow my absence and silence weigh on them. If anyone asks after me and how I’m doing in my daily life they won’t have anything. And from what I’ve heard from the few people I’ve stayed in touch with from Dodgewood, that burns them the most. Sure, they love the praise of being parents of Doc Melody but when people ask questions…”

“That does sound like a better revenge,” Cora admitted.

[spaloonbabooguuscooties]

You could drink your whole life away and still never get that taste out of your mouth.

half commission for @salempie half completely self indulgent dreck pieced together from our insane conversations abt franke and elka. told myself id finally write a big explanation for all of the dum shit between these two for context so Thats Under The Cut.

so I already wrote some stuff about elka and franke's relationship back in whispering rock so feel free to look at that too . it goes over elkas blindness/‘seeing’ with clairvoyance and how her and franke started talking & all that good stuff

SO FOR STARTERS. a lot of thsi wont make sense without a big breakdown of elka herself. because elkas potential as a character is like insane to me. like just the idea of her in the long run of her life reads as something so potentially tragic; a young girl whos plagued with visions of doom and destined to be an outcast even in her own home for things she cant control and clings to the One vision of her wedding that she thinks is 'happy' even despite the fact she doesnt really love the person in it. im choosing to take the li-po doc as canon here because its funny shes the only one with backstory-

but my fucking god even the smallest look into what her parents are like is soo fucked up to me. and i do think elka especially gets a lot of influence from her mother; its funny how easily you can fit mabel doom into a box just from what elka says about her. knees deep in an avon-esque pyramid scheme and leaning into her daughters depressing ass visions & taking her to therapy at age 11 (which would be good if not for the kind of person you can already assume she is & so i doubt the therapist she has really does her any good. i think they share one). she reads as a very I Am My Daughters Best Friend type of mom to me and i can see elka being a centerpiece of the conversation when she has her Amway Girls over for drinks. wine-mom that lets her kid sip from the glass so she can feel like a big girl type deal.

and you can tell that elka is trying to hard to be too mature for her age even in her campster posts. how she writes letters to nils' mom and exchanges baking recipes with her and that feels like she really only interacts with middle aged women and not really many people her own age outside of camp (like her moms friends). which makes sense shed feel the need to ‘grow up’ early when shes probably had to process so many hard things at a young age bc of her visions.

theres a lot of filling the blanks here of course.

elka obsesses over nils to an overbearing degree even despite the fact he treats her like shit ('you promised no talking' and so on) and she treats him bad right back. she leans onto stereotypical heterosexual ideals like taking care of him and overblowing how Manly and Protective JT is and she admires romance stories like pride and prejudice and it feels like she Projects Soooooooo much of what she wants onto boys she barely feels anything for without knowing what its actually supposed to feel like. and clearly she WANTS that ideal future, a happy marriage, an actual romance- but according to nils even when they were dating she ignored him most of the time, which just seems Very Telling

like shes filling a role, overcompensating for emotions and lacktherof she cant digest quite yet, and it only makes more sense when you know shes had visions of their future together. how could that be bad for her? shouldnt it be like the books and movies? but she doesnt really connect the fact that her visions are only for Doomed futures, and if she does she certainly doesnt show it. Doomed relationships. it's been a part of her family for generations and she isn't turning out much different, is she? i dont think she even realizes thats all she ever sees yet, just that its Going to happen. that it's Her future, and it always will be

and like, her only reference for a real marriage so far has been her own parents, and she already Knows they have an affair, and theyre doomed to split, (and i actually like to think they were in rough waters anyway and elka was a child meant to mend a crumbling marriage but thats a whole other thing) and so without a framework for what an actual healthy relationship is supposed to be like she cant really grasp that her relationship with nils Isnt that and isnt ever going to be. she can only cling to this one happy idea of the future, and thats why she keeps chasing him, self fulfilling the actuality of her situation and creating and fostering the unhappy life they will inevitably live together.

and that bleeds into everything else in her life, of course, because as the years go on, as the visions grow in number it just makes sense for her to fall into the predictability of her life. she always knows whats going to happen, her visions are Never wrong- so why try to change things? shes had time to process tragedies days, weeks, months, years before they happen, shes had time to settle into every crack of her life. her parents divorce, her various break ups, her future with the psychonauts.

“and she's already seen so much of a future with [nils] she feels trapped almost. Like she has to be happy in it or else it just means her life is miserable. And it's a mixture of pride and fear of the unknown that keeps her clinging to the One thing she knows. BUT LIKE!!! She knows what's gonna happen! It's easier to grieve when she's been grieving for years... She wants so badly to be happy, But to do that she has to step into the unfamiliar. And that's more terrifying than staying the same miserable person she's always been.”

and thats where franke comes in— and yeah you Do have to take a lot of liberties for frankes character since it’s basically, like, all the info for her is just that shes a Supreme Baby Dyke but thats enough for me. i think she has protective butch itch in her . on campster shes defensive over other women evidenced in the way she keeps watch over the girls cabins for lili when elton is pursuing her . but shes also eager to please and constantly trying to make kitty laugh and also Very naive. but she tries! and i think it only solidifies more as she gets Older and really gets a hold of her feelings & her powers. this is incredibly franke to me

and i think as they grow older together— because i think franke and elka Do stay friends, both because elka is just pathetic and needs that positive connection even if she doesnt realize it and because i think franke is a very Loyal person & annoyingly persistent if you let her be . and i am also a kitty/franke truther. because kittys also important in this web we weave

because i think franke and kitty stay together after camp, to a point— theres a falling out facilitated on kittys end and they break up, but reconnect, and franke kind of... saves kitty from herself a little, from her strict military father whos love only extends thru finances , from her own stifling future , she drives all the way to bakersville in her shitty van handmedowned from her dad and they move in together eventually . they get jobs at the motherlobe , because it’s a pipeline to a decent job, because it’s whats easy, because franke doesn’t really have a future, because she’s never really been good at much, because shes never had much sense, because franke doesnt really care as long as she can live and help, sometimes, if she can, and because kitty’s there, and because elka’s there, and shes so used to being elkas eyes now and shes good at it. shes good at being the muscle of the missions when her colleagues lack it, when hypnosis and predictions arent enough. she likes it that way.

and elka appreciates frankes company. she listens, shes sweet, she does little things for her that no ones ever really put the effort for before; she likes her. franke is strong and bold and makes her laugh and shes always there but god elka cant let go of that future, of that box shes put herself in, that her mothers put her in, of being a Good Wife to a Loving Husband, of getting married normally and falling into unfailing familiarity. thats all shes ever wanted and shes not going to jeopardize that . not for franke, who may not be a boy but is handsome like one, whos always held her after every break up with nils and the men that filled empty days inbetween.

and elka is too stubborn to recognize those feelings anyway. too prideful to accept a way out. too set in her cycle no matter how much she hates it, her little self fulfilling tragedy of her own making, wallowing in her own doom. she struggles for control of her own life when she feels like every choice has been made for her anyway, she puts up her walls and carefully constructs what people see. but franke was always harder to trick, because while empathy isnt a particularly useful psychic power it’s certainly an inconvenient one. all franke has to do is get too close and all those carefully crafted walls fall apart, and elkas control is gone, and thats all she really has. and she tries to distance herself, really she does, but franke is also too persistent. and elka wears gloves, keeps contact that would make her walls crumble from happening as best as she can, but she cant really keep herself from the brief moments where she feels like someone actually fucking cares about her.

and that slightest lack of control, the need to wrestle it back is why she proposes to nils the next time theres a falling out— she knows how it happens, she plans every detail. and he accepts, despite everything. gets her a cheap ring and it feels like lead on her finger and its nothing at all like how shed thought it to be when she was a kid, theres no feather light feeling in her chest, only that dreadful reality that she cant turn this back. BUT WHAT CAN U DO LMAO

elka doesnt tell franke about this engagement until later, on their way back from a mission. late at night when neither of them can sleep, and franke invites elka to smoke in her van, because its been so long since theyve been alone like that, because elkas been so strangely absent lately. and because of everything, because frankes always so damn nice, because elka hates the feel of the ring on her finger, because she let herself get high alone with franke fucking athens whos always been so good at pulling her apart— the truth of it all spills out and its messy and emotional and she hates it, she hates the life shes made for herself, but franke makes it easier to bare and now shes here and shes so close and god she wishes she could see her smile again, she wishes she could see franke, thats all she needs right now and she cant but she can touch her and she can hold her and for tonight, she can be known, she can let those walls crumble, she can be something else just for once here with franke . she can kiss her here in this van, touch that happiness for just a moment, and forget the future that waits for her outside of it. franke begs her to forget the wedding, to just let herself be happy— and god, she wants to, but it means turning her back on everything shes known and everything shes saw to be inevitable, and franke has never been in her future, so if it were supposed to work out why hadnt she seen it and she cant, she cant take that risk but she can have this, even if its temporary, she can have it.

and just as soon as she gets a taste of it, its gone. after that night, after the missions over and theyre back at the motherlobe and have to pretend like nothing happened (franke doesnt, of course she tells kitty about it, she tells kitty about everything.) but that brief moment together haunts elka every time she sees franke, sees herself through frankes eyes, sees herself in her wedding dress because god its all franke can think about! of course it is! she knows how much elkas destroying herself she knows how much misery shes wallowing in that kiss in the van felt like an emotional punch to the teeth and she hasnt ever forgotten it and all she can do is sit and watch while elka throws herself into a loveless marriage. she can come to her wedding and see the way the bride and groom kiss with the emotional weight of a wet towel no matter how hard elka tries to hide it under a pretty dress and bouquets of flowers and meticulous planning.

and elka resents nils but she cant really hate him, its not his fault, not really. he feels trapped just like she does and his feelings of misery only cycle back into hers . they fight and gnash and wear away at each other and its a relationship thats crashed and burned a million times before elka even said i do. and its inevitable that she falls into her mothers habits, a sip of wine here and there to loosen up, until it turns to a glass, until it falls into a bottle on nights when whatever work nils does runs late.

but franke’s still there. shes always been there, hasn’t she? always trying to play knight, always trying to save her, dragging her home when shes stumbling over herself because god who else is going to do it but her? who else is left to care? certainly not nils. never nils. because franke knows her. because franke pities her. shes always pitied her. shes always known. and elka hates it, she resents it, but god in the same breath she’s desperate for it, she envies it to her very bones. elka is a mess but after frankes done with her she has someone to go back to that loves her. and god what elka wouldnt do to have that. to take it and keep it for herself because shes never ever got to have that movie romance shes always wanted.

so now comes this.

because elkas particularly miserable and particularly spiteful and she needs to get franke to understand, just for a moment, drink with her and get on her level and she needs her there with her no matter how her pity makes her feel. no matter how much it makes her shake with anger and envy and desperation, but god the way franke looks at her, the way she still tries to salvage what they have, the soft, slurred way she tells her that it’s okay but its not okay, none of this is okay, it never has been and she just wants franke to shut up and see that, and if she cant then she’ll show her, she’ll show her all the raw angry desperation, with too much teeth and hands that claw and grab and she’ll know why everyones always said she’s too much.

and she knows this puts her on nils’ level too. that this makes her a cheater, that shes no better than he is now. no better than her father and his affair. but god, she wants to be selfish. she wants to be in control. just for once. she wants to feel right and she wants to feel happy and she wants to feel loved. thats all shes ever wanted. and franke will let her have that, just for a little while, at the very least.

anyway. sorry. sorry for being crazy . this isnt even getting into the shit after the comic takes place . elkas stupid brainworld thag she has to overcome in order to finally be allowed in the polycule and live happily ever as worlds first lesbian divorceman

sorry for all the shit i make up instead of caring about actual characters with screentime . bye !

[rose-tinting]

the amount of misinformation that has been circling outside of neopets circles I swear

I see a new rumor every time

“They’re free from nft bros” Nope. Owned by one!

“The original team rebought them” God fucking no and you should not want them to, Adam Powells little meltdown over neopets users criticizing his new crypto venture is reason enough lol.

“The company was sold to Neopets Internal Teams” They sold it to the guy who used to head the former NFT project and are promising this means TNT has more freedom “under new leadership“ with “no current plans for crypto/NFTs” (This is not a promise not to make them)

One of the “brand ambassadors” who is supposed to help TNT with the knowing and understanding the userbase is some celebrity who’s wife is also a celebrity who I’ve seen people CLAIM used to be a Neopets mod. Does that sound like a neopets user who can tell the neopets team what the average user wants? No call for users who aren’t celebrities to become brand ambassadors has been made afaik.

Current Neopets mods are silencing trans people for mentioning HRT as well as top surgery and ignoring cis people talking about pregnancy, death, and surgery. (Have seen these boards go on for several hours and never get deleted even after a heated debate on one one about abortion) 

There’s items and backstory on the site that are racist. Neopets users have asked these be addressed. Do you think this “brand ambassador” will address any of that? Why does the ambassador need to be a celebrity? Unless the actual intent is to have “ambassadors” who sell neopets as a brand to the potential new userbase and isn’t about “listening to the users” at all.

god can one person with a huge following please for once just reblog and acknowledge the TRUTH. (doesn’t have to be from me I’d just like the actual info to be spread!) Awareness will help us keep the worst from happening! Pretending everything is fine until it isn’t is NOT the way!

If you want the actual info on the site Neopets has a fansite dedicated to reporting Neopets news including everything TNT tries to sweep under the rug

https://www.jellyneo.net/?comments=14391

A direct quote from their article on this

“ New CEO of Neopets is Dominic Law, who previously headed the Neopets Metaverse and brokered a "management buyout deal" “

Please if you’re reading this

stop spreading misinformation

spread the real information

make your own post even

this could go either way right now

this is not a “neopets renaissance”

this is a crossroads and we don’t know where we’re going yet. It could be great, or it could be the end of the site.

(Editing my reblog in so it can hopefully get seen too, I was provided with more accurate info on the brand ambassador.)

@pirakeet Thanks! Was actually hoping someone COULD correct this :3 Cause I was REALLY HOPING it wasn’t what it seemed since all I could find was a twitter post with an attached video where he accepts it (I immediately fled twitter may be why)

[Image Text ID]  Posted by tumblr user pirakeet: I’m not correcting anything, but just letting you know the “brand  ambassador” program has been made available - just presumably not in  the ‘john legend’ sense:  https://portal.neopets.com/brand-ambassador-program  and for clarity, i’ve been popping off about the difference, this isn’t a  “gotcha moment”.   There’s more info when you click “apply” and it takes you to a google  doc [End Id]

As I said I’m more interested in the truth being spread so I hope this can be seen!

[fansplaining]

Do you have any advice, guides, or opinions on how write a good rec list?

WELL! This is Elizabeth, and as the longtime co-curator of "The Rec Center" newsletter (with @hellotailor) I do have *a lot* of thoughts about rec lists. 😊 I'm delighted you asked, because as I'm sure both Flourish & I have mentioned on the podcast, rec-list-making is way less prominent now than it has been in previous fandom eras, and I think that's a shame. Reccing can be a great critical tool, and rec lists make a fanwork space richer—not least because they can move readers beyond the mostly quantitative metrics of the AO3.

I'll put the rest of this under the cut:

So obviously there are different kinds of rec lists, including by category/trope, favorites about a character or a ship or fandom, etc. To me, a true ~authored~ rec list is one in which the writer(s) deliberately put together a batch of fics to make some kind of argument about the works/the ship/the fandom/the source material.

Most of the lists we run in the newsletter are not like this, because we're pulling 5-7 works from our guest submissions bank—and since we don't (realistically, can't!) read the stories that are sent in, I have no idea if those 5-7 compliment each other in any real way. (When I put together one of these lists, I aim for balance: not all M/M, not all white characters, not all Western source material, etc.) (Yes, unsurprisingly, those are overrepresented in our submissions bank.)

But an authored rec list treats the rec list itself like a fanwork: you can tap into connective tissue that runs throughout the fics you choose, and you can put stories side-by-side that illuminate something when read together. You can approach this from two different directions: working from a broader pool of fics you like and pulling out a coherent batch, or starting with a theme, an argument, that connective tissue, and seeing what fits.

When I first got into my current fandom, I kept a google doc with fic titles, links, brief descriptors, and general thematic vibes etc., for future reccing use. (Obviously you can do this with AO3 bookmarks, but I use those differently, so this was a separate endeavor.) These were set up to transfer to "The Rec Center" easily, e.g.:

“Celestial Navigation” by kaydeefalls. 9K words, rated Teen. Canon-era: C & E go to NYC to try to recruit several mutants. Delicate balance sort of story with a soft revelation. No tropes.

When I actually go to rec something, I reread it—mostly because I want to get the content warnings right, but also because reading it to rec is more like reading for work: you wind up looking at the text with a different eye, always lowkey thinking about how you'll make your argument about it in writing. I haven't actually recced the fic above in the newsletter, but here's another X-Men fic I did rec at one point:

“Come Together” verse by blarfkey. 60K words across 4 stories, rated Teen.  Backstory: When Peter gets arrested for breaking Erik out of the Pentagon, Erik returns the favor and breaks Peter out in turn—and takes him to live with Charles. Beautifully awkward father-son bonding coupled with bitter, stubborn exes pining: *chef’s kiss*. The verse spans five years, with really believable character growth, which is really saying something, based on the emotionally-stunted starting point for all parties involved. Rec: Peter is the POV character here, so a+++, and the close third-person narration plays with the spaces between what he feels and what he says while capturing his voice beautifully. This means 50% dragging people and 50% feeling like an idiot, which is a total joy. A lot of X-Men stuff, canonically or...fanonically...sorry...is about found family, and I mean, this one is about finding your literal blood relations, but it’s also about building a true family, and I think the author gives that enough space to really sell it.  Content warnings: Canon-typical violence, torture, ableism, the unenlightened thoughts about women’s bodies that preoccupy heterosexual teenage boys 

That rec is from a whole list I did with @morgan-leigh a few (five???wtf lol) years ago, which I think is a good example of an authored rec list: Morgan and I had overlapping tastes and similar interpretations of the characters, so all the fics here feel like they're talking to each other in some way, and making an argument about who these characters are (in Morgan's beautiful words, many of these stories "capture the exquisite and venal dickishness of both our heroes" lol).

Obviously rec lists don't have to be super formal—we created this reccing format a long time ago to keep things standardized—and I certainly don't think recs need to sound like literary criticism (not that the examples above sound like literary criticism lol...you know what I mean). Some of my favorite rec lists are pure vibes and (performatively? in a good way) emotional, and that's great. If you're a fic author, you know what a delight those comments are to receive. And like someone's AO3 bookmarks, the all-vibes rec list is an opportunity to see if you, too, feel like the selected fics smack you in the face or whatever violent expression of appreciation people are using. They often don't give you a ton of information, but if you and the reccer have similar taste, you know you can trust their picks.

But! I would make the case for reccing as a chance to talk about fic in a way that you really wouldn't in a comment to the author or in a performatively emotional tag: critically, not in the "this is bad" definition of "criticism," but, like, in the lit-crit way. Why does this work—and how does it work? As with all literary criticism, "work" is totally contextual; a good rec list sets up that context, and gives you just enough information to want to click through and see for yourself.

All that being said, you don't need to overthink it—and I say this partly because I'd really love to see more rec lists floating around! The AO3 often primes people to sort in a top-down way, and though there are tons of great fics with lots of kudos, as the meme goes,

Rec lists let you include things that aren't super popular, that hit niche characterization or plot notes, that really worked for you specifically for whatever reason. They're pure human curation—not just recs, but an arrangement of those recs that creates a whole new work in the process. And that's something I really love about fandom! We don't want algorithmic 'if this, then that' for-you pages; we're interested in doing the actual work of reading, thinking about, and sharing what we like with others, and that's wonderful.

[amethystfairy1]

(Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.)

Hi! Hello! How are you? :]

Let me just say, your work is simply incredible.

I've been binge-reading your TTSBC series for a few days now, as you can probably tell from all the kudos (you deserve them!), and I have been going crazy

First of all, I think this was the first Hermitcraft ship fic I've read. Conclusions/thoughts;

1) You've made me a flower husbands fan, great job, I am now obsessed with them

2) the relationship between Scott and Martyn is so precious to me, you have no idea

3) I am now a fan of ALL the relationships you've written; flower husbands, treebark, desert duo, Tango/Zed, Lizzie/Joel, Shelby/ Katherine, Etho/Doc (I hope I didn't forget anyone)

4) PEARL IS A MENACE AND I LOVE HER. SHE IS MY FAVOURITE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA. She is the big sister™ and she is the best

5)Scar is a sweetheart and that is a FACT. HE WAS SO SWEET TO CUB?? AND TO GRIAN?? I LOVE HIM

6) I absolutely love mom Cleo, her and Bdubs are so kind and thoughtful and caring to each other, I will simply explode

7) KATHERINE STRAIGHT UP JUST SAID "nope" AND WENT BACK TO THE UNDER-CITY

8) I need more Scott as a journalist. I need to see his hunger to get all the details. I need to see him use his silver-tongue skills on someone, and I need to see Jimmy(or anyone) be scared but also fascinated. I need to see more Scott and Pearl fighting for the best interview.

I don't even watch cc!Scott, and now look at me. Im obsessed with his character.

9) PESKY BIRDS BEING LITTLE WAS THE CUTEST THING EVER I WILL CRY TEARS OF JOY. SMALL BDUBS?? CHILDREN ARE SO CUTE

10) I also,,, kinda,,, want to see someone react a bit badly to seeing their partner being from the under-city. Maybe,,, Martyn being angry with being lied to? Maybe,,, Scott screaming at him that what he's doing is helping no one? Maybe, maybe,,,,

(im secretly an angst-girlie at heart, what can I say. I love me some good hurt/comfort)

11)JOEL AND LIZZIE'S BACKSTORY IS ALL I NEEDED IN LIFE, I CAN NOW DIE HAPPILY

12) please let zed and tango have a happy ending pleasepleasepleasePLEASEPLE-

13) also the titles have all been so cool! I saw a post of yours that said you use terms of endearment, and I thought that was really cute :)

14) SOUP GROUP

In conclusion, I am crazy for your work, please feed us more.

To show you how crazy I've been over this series;

I went completely nuts, explaining to my friend some basics about it the moment I was sure I've read everything, and Im probably gonna make them read it too. I've already sent them the link to the series.

They are not even a Minecraft fan. They don't know what Hermitcraft is.

Anyway, this was all to say; you're amazing, your work is truly fantastic, your writing style is one of the best I've ever seen/read (and I've read a lot of fics, do not doubt me)

Please don't feel forced to write anything I've said! I'm just throwing ideas that came over my head when reading!

(your traveling thieves series is also amazing! Im just currently full of ttsbc thoughts rn, its eating me alive /pos)

Hope my spam liking was not annoying!

Have a great day!

:D

It was not annoying in the SLIGHTEST!

Hello hello, thank you, thank you! I'm so glad TTSBC has been so enjoyable for you and that you've had fun binge reading all of it!

I am delighted and honored to be the first author you've read that has written Hermitshipping and that you've enjoyed it and it's caused you to love all my ships! That's a great day for a fanfic author!!!

FLOWER HUSBANDS ARE MY FAVORITE! More people who like Flower Husbands? HAPPIER I AM! It is a DIRECT correlation!

Someone commented at some point that they reminded them of drunk girls comforting each other in the bathroom after a party, and I think that's exactly accurate 😆

YES! ALL THE SHIPS!

Pearl is the Big Sister ™️ of the group and if anyone hurts any of her little siblings it is game over!

Scar is SUCH a sweetheart in this AU! He's a superhero, he's a boyfriend, he's a best friend, he's a professor, and he's just doing his best to juggle it all!

Zom-Mom and Sentient Glowstick. Only the best combo!

Katherine said "Wait crap I think that was the love of my life!" and dove back in!"

Journalist Scott will be making a return in several pieces of the future, don't you worry! We'll get to see him strut his stuff! I'm very glad I've gotten you to love c!Scott even if you don't watch cc!Scott, that's just the best!

PESKY BIRRRRRRRBS!

ooooo there's an angsty take. Hm. Well, there is certainly more angst on the docket for everyone, I assure you, and while I can't promise that brand of angst in particular, there is other stuff left to unpack! Please look forward to it!

JOEL AND LIZZE! BUTTERFLY AND CAT LADY! MARRIED FOR OVER A DECADE AND RUNNING A BAKERY! ADORABLE!

Zedango will return! That is all I shall say!

I'm so glad you like the titles! I think it's very cute but I have to admit I'm starting to struggle to come up with terms of endearment I haven't used before 😆

SOUP GROUP

I'm so glad you're trying to get your friend into TTSBC! The nice thing is I don't think it's too terribly difficult to spring into without context of watching any of the CCs because the characters all pretty much explain themselves within the AU. Maybe looking up some fanart for what everyone ought to look like, but it's not the worst thing!

Glad to hear you also like Traveling Thieves! I was gonna point you that way when you said you were an angst girlie so good that you're already there!

Thanks so much for coming by! 💖

[bigirlbased]

fallowl au time!

second post in like 10 minutes lol anyways luz king and eda time! as ive said in the initial couple post luz king and eda are taking the place of the courier/mc. They all three travel together delivering packages acrose the wasteland, but one day they are interecepted by a gang and they are knocked out and burried alive, the platnium chip they were delivering to the strip taken They wake up in doc Mitchel's house in goodsprings and are told they were found by a securitron in three shallow graves, they are given some supplies and sent on there way and the story goes form there but in this post were talking backstories!!!!!!!!!! Eda: Eda grew up in a little town called bonesburrow in california, she was raised with her sister Lilith and together they both dreamed of one day joining the ncr, but life happens and dreams change. Eda went on to become a courier for the mojave express and Lilith joined the ncr and ended up becoming a high ranking member eda spent her days delivering mail and adventuring across the mojave, until one day she met king... (not going super in detail into eda as 1. i wanna save some for later and 2. im still figuring some stuff out) king: One day while eda was exploring an abandoned vault for treasures and supplies she found a young king, he had been abandoned and Eda had decided she would care for him, it was unclear what king was exactly but it didnt matter to eda,she took him in king has the same personality he has in cannon and is overall the same charecter, just edas companion/adopted son on her adventures Luz: Luz grew up in gravesfeild, a small farming town on the outskirts of the mojave, her father died when she was 7 and she never got to know him super well. She was close to her mom and she loved reading pre war fantasy novels, none of the other kids in gravesfeild never really got her, she was soemtimes mocked and ridiculed but her mom was always there and while it hurt to have no one understand her but she got threw it that was, until the legion attacked when she was 12 the legion attacked gravesfeild and burned it to the ground, her and her mother tried to run but Camila dies trying to defend Luz, and she was left alone. She hid in a secret room under one of the houses until they left, and when she leaves she finds the town burned to the ground and everyone gone, until a woman and her companion stumble into the town and find her Luz has been traveling with eda for the past 4 years and has become part of there little family and they have gone on plenty of adventures together sdie notes: like i said in an earlier post i decided to age up the hex squad just a bit in this au, just cause fallout is a pretty violent series and i thought they should be at least a bit other before getting into shootouts lol anyways the stuff with luz is new lore, like i new i wanted to do the whole orphaned by something happening and eda taking her in type story for luz but the specifics about the town and the legion are new, also gives her more reasons to hate belos, also i just kept the names of towns from the show for any new settlements i add to this au cause i think its neat anyways hope yall enjoyed

[ava-core]

so finals is whooping my ass and i can’t play new vegas because it’s either play or rest my poor posture in bed and i can’t really take the back pain any more than i have to when i’m productive </3 i miss my courier six may a lot so

some informational tidbits about her under the cut! (her whole profile/backstory post is still separate i will make it when i have time ong)

she’s actually an alcoholic. the type where her tolerance is so high, in her story, her vault 13 canteen is actually full of scotch and not water. she brings a separate canister for water, but even then, it’s more likely the vault 13 canteen is full as opposed to her water bottle. she’s fond of scotch, and if she had more leeway, she’d be shaking csravaners and bartenders down for her native baijiu.

her birthday is June 6, 2253. Her birth time? 7:06 PM. (a gemini sun, libra moon, and sagittarius rising…yeah, and a cancer venus, too. as someone with a lot of earth signs myself, i genuinely think she’s fated to be doomed with melancholia LMFAO)

she will raze the wasteland for some banana yucca fruit. to may, it’s the universe’s gift for the little good that’s left in the world; it also reminded her of her mother’s pastries back home, which she’d sometimes use bananas for.

when no one’s watching (or so she thinks—boone has caught her a dozen times), while out in the wasteland, when innocents die, she picks broc flowers and leaves them by their corpses. when she can move their bodies, she does, laying them to rest behind a stone so at least they could get some respect in death.

on that note, it’s one of the reasons why the legion gradually infuriated her. in Shi culture, death rites are held in high regard, and that stuck with her. so to find corpses of murdered civillians disrespectfully laden with bombs and traps, used to bring about the death of another? it brought such a sour taste to her mouth even her aura, the air about her: it darkens, becomes heavier.

she has holotapes of Shi music she’d been meaning to make a player for, but just couldn’t find the time. her getting shot was a blessing in disguise: when doc mitchell gave her the pip-boy, it made her happier somewhat that it could read all the songs she’d been collecting for the past few years. so instead of Johnny Guitar, you’re more likely to hear Lily Chao’s Shepherdress, or even Slim Whitman’s China Doll.

in early game, may only uses one gun: the assault rifle she used to escape the Shi prison, which she added with a silencer and kept in good condition as it was the only weapon that kept her alive all these years. it was also the only one she could afford. however, as she builds her skill in guns, she starts to explore.

may is most proficient in melee and unarmed. back in the Empire of Shi, they teach the military a lot of martial arts techniques, and alongside her brother who taught her she watched military training and followed along—much to her father’s chagrin, especially during the times when she’d sneak out of class or a meeting with the Shi high society matchmaker to learn the latest move.

in this vein, it’s actually a reprieve that may guns you down. because while she’s got a small frame, she’s agile…and her hands and feet kick where it hurt. have you ever been on the receiving end of punches so strong and fast you don’t even see it coming until you black out, barely registering the surprise? a thug in freeside would tell you all about it, but he’d have to be alive to do so. unfortunately for him, may kicked a little too hard. oops.

there’s also a small moment after she returns from Big MT where boone asks her to teach him some of her moves. of course it’s a tension filled moment. of course may beats boone’s bigger frame. of course it turns boone on to be kicked in the face and pinned to the ground by this gorgeous woman.

ALSO: how boone and may met! of course, it was inside Dinky the Dinosaur’s mouth; hard-pressed for caps, may didn’t want to go into the lobby and lob over her precious caps, few and far between, for lodging. she doesn’t see boone’s gun, so she gets the smart idea to squat up that dinosaur’s mouth, just sleep for three hours before hunting down her platinum chip.

imagine boone’s surprise when a masked girl sneaks up on him silently. when he raises his rifle, it freaks may out, and her instinct in close quarters is to go into Butterfly Angel on this man’s face before he can pull the trigger. it ends with may overpowering boone, her face over his as he looks up at her.

“you legion?”

a pause. at this point, may only knew of them from nipton and rumors from the other people in the mojave. “the costumed freaks from the east? no.”

“then what are you doing here? who the hell are you?”

“wanted a place to sleep. cheap. didn’t think someone would be here,” she says, letting him go as the two stand up while the sun rises. and the rest is history.

may would never say it aloud, but she’d always wanted a family of her own. if survival was an assurance, not a slim possibility in the wasteland, she’d have more incentive to settle down—but alas, she doesn’t want her children to suffer the same fate.

surprisingly, she gets along well with veronica. may and boone stop at the 188 enough for veronica to chat may up, and eventually she lets her join them (to boone’s chagrin, but he eventually grew to like veronica’s chatter—because it often gave him a chance to hear may’s voice. later on, maybe even a dry laugh, when veronica says a stupid joke.)

may lives in an eternal conundrum in terms of her appearance: people can’t tell if 23 is too young for her expression and personality to be as grumpy and unsociable as it is, or if it’s surprisingly older because of her youthful face. she could pass for 19–hell, she could pass for a model.

it’s why she goes out masked in the wasteland. she knew being ‘pretty’ (she hated the word, like it was all she was supposed to be the way people gushed at her over it) was a reason to be targeted more often, so she always concealed her face.

boone doesn’t even see her face until she meets mr. house and he’s invited to the presidential suite, where jane the securitron gives may a change of clothes. after a shower and slipping into the black gown, it almost gives boone a heart attack: this is what this woman looked like? holy shit. what the hell?

after getting the platinum chip from benny, she also sneaks out of the strip using the NCR monorail because she had a bad feeling about Mr. House. it’s why she’s in businesswear and shades: not the best disguise, but at least it wasn’t her merc clothes.

OKAY that’s a lot of rambling >< i just love may a lot?! i can already see people in new vegas in the tv show talking about “courier six” and one gambler going “i heard she was the meanist and smartist bitch in the wasteland!” and this gambler would be RIGHT.

(she’s also very in love when OWB rolls around but you didn’t hear that from me.)

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: B’Elanna Torres

By Ames

Get ready to have an honorable day as we swivel our character spotlight over to the Voyager’s chief engineer this week on A Star to Steer Her By. Every day is an identity crisis for B’Elanna Torres, whose half-Klingon, half-human pedigree serves to frequently explore mixed heritages, familial disputes, and issues of self loathing as the series goes on. But mostly, Torres is just a wildly creative and intelligent character who is so frequently pushed to the brink, as is this show’s wont.

So grab a fork and dig into a whole freakin’ blood pie as we take a deep dive into Torres’s complex character and rich backstory. Read on below for some choice moments and listen to our recitation of the Klingon plea for the dead over on this week’s podcast episode (warp over to 54:21). Qapla’!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Did we just become best friends? Early in the series, Torres has a lot to prove, both as one of the Maquis terrorists that joins the integrated crew and as a character who clearly has a permanent chip on her shoulder about all things Starfleet. So it’s a wonderful moment of bonding with Janeway when they work together in “Parallax” to escape the event horizon of a quantum singularity using science!

Me, myself, and identity crisis It always amazes me that “Faces” is slotted in season one of Voyager because it is so successful at exploring the dual nature of Torres’s makeup while her character is still getting her footing. When she is split into her Klingon and human halves, she really gets to take a closer look at herself (literally!) and how her two identities make her whole (also literally!). Early character work for the win!

Nothing, just talking to myself For the first (but not last) time Roxann Dawson voices a homicidal computer, we are treated to Torres figuring out how to disarm the Dreadnought in “Dreadnought.” She’s prepared to sacrifice herself to stop this weapon from taking out a planet, but it’s a triumph to listen to her argue with herself until she succeeds, even if she did create the weapon in the first place…

Prototype Unit 0001 is ready to accept programming We totally missed mentioning this one on the podcast, so I’m squeezing it in now because it’s such good work from Dawson. In “Prototype,” she tries so hard to help the automated units find a way to reproduce, creating sentient life in Prototype Unit 001, which is impressive on its own! So that makes it all the more devastating when she has to deactivate him, her first child.

A more honorable Klingon than Worf We gave Worf some stink for refusing to donate blood to the dying Romulan in “The Enemy,” and in “Lifesigns,” Torres goes the other way. When Danara Pel needs some of her Klingon tissue, Torres looks past the trauma that Vidiians inflicted on her and sees that Danara is an individual. Lumping everyone of a species together is not the Starfleet way. Worf, take note.

Learn the truth for yourself There’s a lot that we like about “Remember,” and a lot of that comes down to some stellar acting from Roxann Dawson. Torres won’t stand by quietly as the Enarans sweep their problematic history under the rug and pretend they’ve been a moralistic society all along. She steps up for learning from the past, acknowledging where we’ve come from, and being better for it.

You’re not going to learn anything from being with these lollipops Another instance of Torres not letting someone take the easy way out comes when she meets the Doctor’s The Sims family in “Real Life.” She reprograms his bubblegum characters to have something closer to agency of their own, challenging the Doc to learn to compromise with and respect his fake wife and fake kids. Ya know, skills that he can use with his actual crew!

B’Elanna and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Honorless Day I’m a sucker for the quiet reflection and character study that we see in “Day of Honor” when Torres and Paris are on the brink of death, floating in space helplessly in EV suits. In confronting what could be her final moments, Torres finds some clarity in her existence. And it’s just a touching admission for her to voice her love for Tom, kicking off their romance arc.

I’m going to have to deactivate you It’s telegraphed from pretty early in the episode, but it’s still impressive when Torres takes out Dejaren with an isomimetic conduit in “Revulsion.” We do give her credit for trying to help the wayward hologram in the first place, but she’s also smart enough to see through his facade and keep herself alive when he predictably goes nuts and tries to kill her because she’s corporeal.

Where’s the boob tube? This is a smaller detail but it’s indicative of the Torres-Paris relationship. When Tom returns from a two-week away mission, B’Elanna surprises him with a classic TV set in “Memorial.” It’s surprising Tom didn’t already have one, so it’s a good touch to see that B’Elanna knows exactly the kind of thing that would make his day, like a loving and thoughtful partner would.

We’re still alive and I’m still asking Star Trek overall is hit or miss when it comes to character relationships (one day, we’ll cover them all!), but Tom and B’Elanna just work. Sure, they both do stupid things sometimes, and you’ll see them in our Worst Moments lists, but Torres marrying Paris in “Drive” is weirdly right. It’s a joy to see how much they complement and expand each other’s characters. <3

Not every Cardassian is arrogant and cruel Wow, Torres gets held hostage by holograms a lot, doesn’t she? The thing I like most about “Flesh and Blood” is Torres’s interaction with the Cardassian hologram engineer Kejal. As we’ll see below, Torres has a bit of a tiff with Cardassians, but like she did with Danara Pel in “Lifesigns,” she’s able to treat this one like an individual and work together to save the day!

—

Worst moments

I know this weapon very well You know I love it when the same episode pops up on two lists. Even though Torres did a great job disarming the Cardassian missile in “Dreadnought,” don’t forget that it was her fault that this thing was careening around in the Delta Quadrant in the first place. She knows this thing like the back of her hand because she was the one that reprogrammed it for the Maquis!

No means NO! I will shit on pon farr every opportunity I get, the same way I shit on oomox jokes. So even though Torres herself isn’t to blame for contracting pon farr in “Blood Fever,” it sure is the writers’ fault. It’s just so gross to watch this strong character lose her agency because of that creep Vorik, and it’s even worse that she tries to rape Tom even when he rightly tells her no.

No PDAs next to the warp core The Torres-Paris relationship is quite cute, as we stated up above, but their constant making out in the middle of engineering in “Scientific Method” is unprofessional. Guys, your coworkers on the first floor can totally see and hear everything, and we know how loud Klingon mating is, so keep it in your quarters when you’re off the clock before Tuvok writes you up.

If thoughts could kill… Even compared to other Klingons, Torres’s temper is substantial. The strength of the violent mental image she concocts in “Random Thoughts” pushes the Mari who experience it into committing murder. So really, how bad must it have been if it had such an exaggerated effect on people that their police force wanted to lobotomize her? Nightmare fuel, no doubt.

Try to remember that we are not just a bunch of drones Ever since Seven of Nine first joins the crew in “The Gift,” Torres is a major bitch to the former Borg. She’s opposed to working with her in “Day of Honor” because of her background even though Seven is recuperating, and it’s not until Chakotay orders her to chill out on the poor woman in “Message in a Bottle” that Torres shows her any respect at all.

Where’s Counselor Troi when you need her? We will say on the podcast that Voyager badly needed a counselor until the cows come home, and “Extreme Risk” is the perfect example of that. Torres is clearly coping with trauma, among a lot of other stressors, but instead of coping with it in a healthy way, she opts for the dangerous solution of getting herself injured in the holodeck all the time. At least program a Freud puppet!

As far as I’m concerned, they’re all cold-blooded killers Somehow, even though Torres was able to put racism aside in “Lifesigns” to help Danara Pel, she won’t give an inch to Cardassians in “Nothing Human” to save herself. And this Cardassian isn’t even real! It seems like a weird hill to literally die on for Torres to be so stubborn and willfully naive to refuse care. At least ask the Doc to reprogram Moset’s face first!

You must learn to master your emotions So most of “Juggernaut” is a Best Moment for B’Elanna but I ran out of slots above, so here we go. Even though she successfully figures out the whole Malon ship problem and discovers the true identity of the Vihaar, so much of the episode feels like a regression because Torres spends so much of it angry and violent – a backpedal for how far she’s come as a character.

Death becomes her Speaking of character regressions. This show can’t seem to decide where Torres ever stands in her relationship with her Klingon culture, and “Barge of Dead” goes all in on mystical claptrap. Despite five previous seasons of keeping her roots at an arm’s length, Torres uncharacteristically jumps into this dangerous death ritual with both feet. What the Gre’thor?

Such a Mary Sue It’s sweet that Torres is so nice to Kellis the playwright while he writes his Voyager fanfiction in “Muse.” But she crosses the line when she decides to improv an ending for Kellis’s play just because she’s so egotistical that she doesn’t want him to kill her character off, beaming out in front of the whole audience. It might be the most selfish reason for breaking the Prime Directive yet!

I’d say you’re capable of a lot more than delivering PADDs, if you know what I mean I blame this one more on the writers than on B’Elanna, but it still made me uncomfortable. Icheb gets it into his hormone-fueled head that Torres has taken a romantic interest in him in “Nightingale,” which is just peak adolescent boy fantasy. Unknowingly, she leads him on, and what I’m sure was supposed to be a joke just feels cringe. Really, she should’ve decked him.

Genetic modification is the treatment of choice Close to the end of the show, we’re back to Torres’s fraught view of her Klingon genes when she learns her unborn daughter will have head ridges in “Lineage.” Torres falls yet again into a spiral of self-loathing, assuming Tom will leave her the way her father did, and she tries to trick the EMH into surgically altering the fetus to remove any Klingon attributes. That is without honor!

—

Let’s restore some honor to this post before we move on to our next character spotlight. Keep watching here as we go through the whole Voyager crew and also keep following along as we’ve finally reached season 4 of Enterprise over on the watchalong podcast at SoundCloud or whatever listening app you like best. You can also bond with us about science over on Facebook and Twitter, and if you’ve got Klingon rage problems, maybe talk to the EMH about it.

[torchickentacos]

3, 6, & 21 for Drew, our beloved

THANK YOU ANON! Love the usage of 'our' here. We all have joint custody of this weirdo.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

OOOOOOH. Okay. This is going to sound like an early April Fool's joke coming from me specifically, but STAY WITH ME. My least favorite thing is that he literally only ever talks to May. Which, okay, kind of my favorite thing too, but he just has such INTERESTING interactions with others when pokeani lets him, but they just never really do. On one hand, I seriously love the tunnel-vision. He literally will ignore a room full of people if she's in it. Like. Canonically. It's all he ever does. But when he DOES interact with others, it's FUN! We get so much about him from those interactions but they just happen so rarely.

Anyways, incomplete list of characters that Drew should TOTALLY have gotten to interact with: Gary. Tracey. Misty. Brock (Brock has HILARIOUS one-sided beef with Drew by the way lmao, calls him nails on a chalkboard). Paul. I know Paul came after Drew but IMAGINE. What would that even look like?????

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

Honestly, not much. At all. I'm extroverted, heart-on-my-sleeve, nonconfrontational, spontaneous, unorganized, forgetful- things he is absolutely not. But I am a hopeless romantic who will get stuck pining for years on end, so that's something lol??? But honestly, veeeery little lol.

Rest under cut bc this is getting long.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

this is also under cut because I'm incredibly touchy/quiet about my fic stuff here, but anyone who actually wants to read this and clicks the read more is someone who I'm fine with reading this answer lol. Mostly just don't want non-mutuals skimming my fic thoughts. I wish there were tumblr circles like twitter had- it would stir some bullshit, yeah, but there's... kind of a lot of you guys here and only a select few are pokeani, lol, and it's intimidating. I wish I could post for a smaller audience but alas. If you're bothering to read this then you're probably fine. I've had bad experiences with judgmental people, so fic stuff is something I only talk about to a really tiny group, but I think I can answer this. Feeling brave.

Okay. Something I like to do is lean into his overthinking. So, technically we have no idea if he overthinks or not in canon, but it seems to be a pretty unanimous fandom decision that he's someone who gets stuck in his own head a bit. He thinks too much for his own good, and I try to play into that. Not that most of it ever leaves google docs, but lol. So it goes. I think, in stark contrast to specific other characters lol, he's someone who has the next ten steps planned if he can help it, and that's fun to mess with.

Something I dislike doing... hmm. I usually leave his backstory pretty up to interpretation. I'll add details where I see fit, but overall I just leave it blank. It's not that I don't have headcanons! But I really can't settle on just one, so I never write much of any at all. I love reading other people's ideas so much! I just can't commit to my own and I leave it as-is, pretty barebones. I also don't really lean into his arrogance as hard as other writers. Not that I dislike it! I just think, for me, I tend to enjoy writing other aspects of his personality more. Him being kind of a jackass is an undeniable part of him kjdfhskdjfhbdkj but there's different ways to go about it and I leave the brunt of it to people who can write it better than I can.

[enigma-absolute]

Can I hear more about Maddox? What's his backstory like? Where does he fall on the timeline?

(if I'm sending too many asks, do forgive me!)

You’ve unleashed something in me and now I can’t shut up

To start us off, here’s my boy! This is his original character-defining spread in my sketchbook from early last year:

Here’s some more art of him, as a colour reference! And what’s this? MORE banger art of my boy????

And here’s a meme too!

Aside from this older character development challenge google doc providing a lot of his original foundations (including his original character submission sheet!), allow me. To expand on. The Lore.

I don’t think I can shut up greatly so I hope you’re ready for a big ol read under the cut!

So. Maddox is a rebel spy before and during the Rebel alliance in the Galaxy Far Far Away. Standard stuff for a 24-year-old right? WRONG

He’s actually an Australian, a Sunshine Coast local, from OUR earth in early 2023, swept up into something that took him back in time and far off into space (of course, a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away) to have adventures and stuff like that. Adventures and all are just it, right?

WRONG.

AMNESIA BLAST UPON THIS BOY. GET DUNKED ON.

Joking aside, to quote the backstory portion in his original RP submission form, and even the addition directly from the document:

Maddox genuinely has no clue how he got here.

As in, how in sweet Force he ended up a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far far away from his own. His retrograde amnesia from a recent-ish rebel spy mission (involving hijacking and detonating an Imperial ship before escaping) has receded away enough for him to remember his life on his home country of Australia on Earth (and a rough knowledge of OT canon and even rougher knowledge of PT canon from that time), but a lot of things are still fuzzy.

He’s grateful he can remember quite a lot, including: his name and age, his past life and home, muscle-memory for espionage, how to catch on to flying several starships if given enough time, and even some previous missions. But whatever his amnesia is hiding from him, he hopes that the Force can help reveal it again… and maybe help him find a way back home. In the meantime, his goals for this galaxy are to continue his sick espionage job, find a way home, make some close friends and maybe, hopefully, call the Emperor a bitch to his face before he carks it during the events of ROTJ. Not all in that order specifically, but he’ll work on that.

Maddox specifically landed in the year 9BBY, roughly before the events of Kenobi were about to happen. He was picked up by and later joined Bail Organa’s Rebel Cell, as the Alliance wouldn’t have existed yet.

His fateful mission, subsequent amnesia and initial recovery occur at the tailend of Kenobi, leading him to re-meet a young Leia Organa when recovered by Bail’s rebels. Leia sneaks in a word to her dad, and Maddox is sent away for a week or two for some ‘minding’ with help of the Force. He later recalls the word ‘therapy’ to better describe his situation and tells the therapist there (who is also initially annoyed about this whole situation happening) that ‘minding’ is a stupid term and the galaxy should really get behind ‘therapy.’

(He won’t know this till later, but his therapist Ben also gained hope and healing through it too.)

Due to Force *~shenanigans~* and the still unremembered way as to how he came to the GFFA time from 2023 on earth, Maddox doesn’t really have a way back home and is physically stuck aging at 24 years old. And despite obviously being from Earth and thus having no midichlorians of his own, he is Force-sensitive after having an encounter with it while in spy training. That being said, he has a unique relationship with it where he can feel it more ‘talking’ to him than not, and is able to use it with study, self-teaching and meditation. However, he will NOT take a kyber crystal of his own. He may be a light-sider, but he doesn’t feel he deserves the title of Jedi.

We’ll get back to that in a bit.

His amnesia is (of kriffing course) courtesy of the Empire, under a top-secret, but now defunct and destroyed experiment called Project Lethe. This experiment had been self-contained in the star destroyer Calledania, but when a Rebel spy mission to break its secrecy had gone awry, Maddox had enough time to help set charges to blow it up before his capture and subsequent retrograde memory wipe.

You can imagine the horror he’d be going through, waking up after falling out of a bacta tank and coughing it out of his lungs, knowing NOTHING about himself or what’s going on. Then only arming himself with a scalpel and maybe a doctor’s medical ID before running out onto the main bridge to see that he’s in space (he really shouldn’t be), everything is chaos and falling apart (is he in a spaceship?) and he’s certainly feeling everything falling into a nearby planet’s orbit (these stars are NOT his own).

Of course, he managed to escape and started to recover his memory with the Force, but you’d have to ask him for the fuller story. And that’s if you can convince him to tell you all the details.

In terms of timeline and character relations, aside from entering and joining the early stages of rebellion prior to Kenobi’s events in 9BBY, he’s become a cool older ‘cousin’ friend of a sort with Princess Leia, especially since she was the one who knew his later-therapist Ben (Maddox nicholasnames him ‘Benny’) first. Bail has also been a mentor figure for Maddox before and after his amnesia - in terms of the growing rebellion, high-class etiquette and manners (which mostly consist of keeping an eye on Leia at fancy guest parties and learning from her). Not to say there’s no personal platonic fondness between them, it’s just that the professionalism has been more important for Maddox to get a grasp on his new life.

He’s also grateful for meeting and befriending friendlier folks in the GFFA, such as freeman Clone Troopers Juggernaut and Jorts (OCs in the first RP server I ever entered him into), and in 7BBY, @moobrvoobl-moobmoob-oobmpoobroom’s Clone OC Strike and co-created OC Pins, a stormtrooper who ditched the Empire when the two rebels had their cell missions cross paths and escaped together after going after an asset. Maddox has quickly grown to befriend and fall in platonic love with Strike and Pins, the former particularly since she causes/caused flares in his memory of his mum.

Especially since, in his old earthen life, he was an Eshay, and a horrible person to his mother and sister.

Did I mention he’s a regretful older brother? And a regretful son?

For leaving his family behind? For not being the person he should’ve been? For being selfish and into stupid stuff when there are things in life worth more than stupid ‘friends’ and stupidity?

Good god he’s ashamed to admit it. But he has to admit it somehow.

It was the second memory recovery in the Force that he recalled how he used to be, getting so depressed he needed that therapy from Benny.

Okay here's a couple rapid-fire points about Maddox bc I don't have all the brainspace for backstories:

In the flight back to the base after his couple-weeks therapy from Benny, Maddox had a dream about talking to some fella named Anakin, infodumping to him about the fauna and flora of Australia the entire time. Anakin was in awe of earth's natural flora and flora.

Maddox didn't put two and two together on that 'Anakin' guy until after waking up. His memory got intact enough to connect those dots.

(He won't do the same for Benny for a long, long time).

His enamel pin is actually his sister's, and it's another Peter Pan reference with the star and text saying 'straight on till morning'. (I really hope I can defictionalise it into a real pin one day!)

The leather bag he carries was borrowed by his sister for some time before he took it with him to the GFFA, so he's got more of her belongings with him rather than his own.

He modded an iPod over quarantine days into having a new battery and 256GB SSD drive to fill with his own music, but of course - his sister got to it when he wasn't looking and filled it up with her own tastes before he could wipe it clear.

So now he has his sister's tastes in music, for the most part. Which is a good thing.

So as for Maddox right now in my personal timeline? Well, I just have fun tossing him in the years between 9BBY-4ABY, putting him in Situations and Events (mainly RPs) to see how he develops and how far his character goes. There's a couple alternate timelines and AUs he's in, including the Chrumblr RP in the big discord.

And that's not even getting into the stuff his sister gets into in AUs and timelines.

[googleitlol]

Two questions! Well, one’s more like a prompt/scenario, but I’m still saying it!

Do you have any plans on getting back to your “The Memory of You” fanfic in the future? Because I’m a certified Macaque wimp (right there with Wukong) and I’m dying to know everything that happened between him and Lian!😭

And second:

I just got myself Black Myth Wukong brainrot and I randomly thought of a situation where Dove would wake up from a nightmare about Wukong’s death, and she instinctively places a hand over the Destined One’s heart to hear it beating because of his resemblance and everything. And the Destined One just helps hold her hand to his chest and resting his own hand over hers until she calms down🥲💘💞

1) Omg tbh I didn't realise ppl were still reading that one! I'm focusing on PoM rn so I don't think I'll be getting to it anytime soon unfortunately. I do wanna continue it tho, and rewrite some stuff too! My google doc is so big for TMoY that if you wanted, I could totally answer some asks about it. Since I'm focusing on Dove and Wukong rn, I wouldn't mind sharing some secrets about Lian and Macaque's past (I will yap so much abt them, I love Lian she's my sweetheart).

I also took a break from writing that fic because, uhhhhh… I had only seen part of season 4 when I started writing the backstory for Lian, did some research into chinese mythology and legends I could pull from… then after posting a bunch of chapters, I watched the rest and realised I accidentally made her backstory/creation extremely similar to someone else (if you're caught up on the show, you'll know who I'm talking about). They both involve, uh… similar people?? So I got spooked and decided to wait a bit to see if that character's backstory would be like what I'd written for Lian and… it's starts out very similar 💀

But honestly, I think I'm gonna keep it the same cuz I love Lian, and I love the story I've made for her and Macaque. So if you've got any questions abt them, I'd be happy to answer until I shift my focus back onto TMoY.

2) Oh, and… my god. I love this idea of yours. That dream. Hoo boy, that dream. I love it when people understand the sort of angst I wanna put Dove under. Running to her love, knowing what's about to happen but too far to stop it. Maybe if he saw her, if he knew she was coming, maybe he'd still be there. But no matter how much her throat scratches as she screams, no sound is made. No matter how fast she runs, how far she pushes herself, nothing changes.

The Destined One frowns, he's seen her like this on so many nights. There's something that's plaguing her… he just doesn't know what. She shuts him down at any and all moments he has to inquire about her night-terrors. Still, he's found a subtle way to help in the best way he can. After one night where she reached out for him and he let her hand press against his chest, he noticed how she calmed a bit.

That becomes their nightly ritual. Whenever he notices how she starts to mumble in her sleep, shout and cry, he'll cuddle up next to her and hold her in his arms. He'll keep her head pressed against his chest so she can hear his heart– that always calms her down. As long as she has something, her hand or even an ear pressed to his heart, she'll calm down. Maybe the first few nights he started doing this, she'd cuddle up to him a bit. He'd be awkward about it at first, but eventually grow used to it. After a while, he'd find that he actually really enjoys spending those nights with Dove in his arms.

[au-drayton-shenanigans]

Hello rotomblr!

It's the Drayster here, but my friends who are other Draytons call me cloak guy! We're all technically named Drayton, except for two of us. We use nicknames to be less confusing.

Ever wonder what kind of chaos would come from multiple Draytons existing near each other? Well wonder no more! We're in the "dimension travel is an everyday technology" part of the multiverse!

We'll interact with any type of rotomblr blog! And we're fine with things like pelipper mail, magic anon, and pretty much anything else. It's all allowed unless we someday have reason to disallow it. No nsfw asks please! Not just because most of us are minors but also because that stuff's nasty! Although we're fine with mentions of blood.

Right now, there are 7 of us including myself. We will make ourselves known by emojis. Here's a quick list!

-🦉Cloak guy.

-🦊Beast.

-🦇Bat.

-🐛Wizard.

-🐀Voidray

-🐟Fish

-💜Drayka

//More info about the Draytons and some other stuff under the keep reading. //This is a multi-muse blog. If you don't specify who an ask is for, I am most likely going to default to cloak guy //I'm new to rotomblr and also still low on social skills. And I don't always understand english(sorry it's my first language) I'm trying my best please be patient with me. I like using pink text for describing actions. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are summaries of them lower in this post, but I have a google doc with more detailed info on them.(https://docs.google.com/document/d/11mhs4SmrGA_7B4OI8gOK1dh1KStY15JW9ZSXN9YKBXM/edit?usp=sharing) When I get more than 4 Draytons, they'll be listed there too. Whatever isn't revealed in my google doc has to be slowly revealed by activity. Unlockable content in a video game from talking with the characters.

Technically they're all still named Drayton, but since they all hang out with each other in whatever universe they happen to go to, they have nicknames for each other. I might also have other characters show up occasionally. They will be represented by the same emojis as the Draytons depending on whose universe they're from.

Teehee funny whiteboard drawing.

Cloak guy 🦉(image) Sassy and something of a jerk a lot of the time but he will help people who mean anything to him. He tries to keep any helpfulness secret if he can. He has his reputation as a horrible monster to uphold after all. He has plenty of enemies he intentionally made around the multiverse and sometimes he has another scar that wasn't there before. Doesn't know how to shut up sometimes. Commonly subjects people to his long-winded "nonsense rants" in which he noisily gives a speech without planning any of the words beforehand to hear what ends up coming out for his own amusement.

~~~~~~~~~

Beast 🦊(image) Very chill, extremely friendly. Nearly impossible to upset him at all. Possibly numb to emotions. Maybe. Rarely does his face show anything but a blank stare. Thinks math is fun (ew) and has a photographic memory to a seemingly impossible degree.

~~~~~~~~~

Bat 🦇 (image) An apocalypse almost-survivor who has died at least once yet lives on because cloak guy did something. Bat is basically a vampire. Anything other than blood, bones, or raw flesh are toxic to him. He feels guilty that he has to eat at the expense of others. There are folks who care about him and offer their wrist for him to get a small drink from but if he's in one of his moods, he'll even refuse that. Actually the most mentally stable one here but you wouldn't believe it if you knew his backstory.

~~~~~~~~~

Wizard 🐛(image) Snobby rich high elf who's at the top of his class in magic school even though he's doing nothing just because he has a rare and powerful form of magic with various unique abilities. One of those abilities lets him freely shapeshift and his favorite transformation is a giant centipede.

~~~~~~~~~

Voidray🐀(image) Voidray is his real name instead of a nickname. A tiny weak imp with too much anger for his size. Imagine something like a really vicious chihuahua dog. He has venom he can inject using either his claws or his teeth. Can temporarily turn into an ink creature to become stronger and to match the size of the average Drayton.

~~~~~~~~~

Fish🐟(image) A merman who's playful and mischievous, but he means well. He's often seen napping in the water, either floating at the surface or curled up on the floor.

~~~~~~~~~

Drayka💜(image) A girl version of Drayton. Drayka is her real name and not a nickname. Out of all the au Draytons here she is probably the closest to canon Drayton in terms of behavior. Although she can easily be influenced by cloak guy's chaos and is likely to join in, she's pretty normal. The only one here who can't use magic.

~~~~~~~~~

[lurkingteapot]

bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you meme!

tagged by @mahuhumaling and @galauvant, meme created by @fiercynn

note: i consider "fanworks" to pretty much everything people create related to a fandom, including but not limited to meta/analysis/discussion, gifs, fanvids/edits/fancams, filk, fanart, fanfic, fan food, fan crafts, etc. please include this note with the meme unless you have a different definition!

name and whatever you want to share about yourself I'm tpt! 30s, queer, brainweird, language nerd, been reading BL and slash and other queer lit since before the turn of the millennium and probably (hopefully) never gonna stop.

when did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom? I watched the first episode the day after it aired. Went in knowing nothing about it except the English title, which I thought was thoroughly unappealing, and the promo image. Came out of ep 1 convinced Paa was the only person with any sense on the entire show, but sufficiently intrigued (ointment sharing! Line ID shenanigans!) to keep watching. So I watched as it aired from ep 2, and when the bus stop scene rolled around, I blocked the airing time slot out in my calendar so I could watch live (which didn't work out for ALL eps, but … close enough). I did find a regular group to squee with after ep 5, but didn't really interact with fandom beyond that little bit of squeeing with friends and looking at fan art until after ep 9, I think. This was the first Thai BL show I watched week to week, and that also made it special to me.

favorite ship(s) Pat/Pran.

favorite character(s) Used to be Pran no contest, but Pat worked his way into my heart in the later episodes. couldn't choose now. they're all favourites.

favorite episode(s) I really love episodes 3-5 and 10/11. but honestly I love the show as a whole, and the episodes in the context they exist in. Except for the gun subplot.

favorite scene(s)  the opening sequence of ep 2! also episode 3 bus stop scene (and Pat's way of accomodating Pran in it), ep 4 sleepover scene, ep 5 Pat's realisation/the fight, ep 6 gate convo scene, ep 8 fight/apology scene, ep 9 hand-holding scene, ep 10 Our Song teaser scene and confrontation scenes, ep 11 affirmation/we got to go back scene and wishful thinking sequence, ep 12 bar scene.

one thing you would change about the show if you could I'd adjust the pacing of ep 12 so the fake-out is a smaller part of the whole thing proportionally.

what are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people? It's really hard to pick. I love SO MANY. Even just the authors whose fic I list here have written more than one of my faves each. but let's see:

fic (missing scene): keeps me warm by unsungyellowraincoat (@isaksbestpillow). direct ep 8 aftermath exploration that made me ache.

fic (canon divergence): fight or flight (worth the wait) by jabber_moose (@galauvant). Ep 2 canon divergence wherein Pran is discovered under Pat's bed.

fic (AU): Pinocchio by aworkingprinter (@miscellar). In which Pran has an obvious, unsuppressable tell when he lies.

fan animation: international love song by @architectxengineer

fan art: this pic by @ thatgothsamurai was one of the first things I saw in this fandom in the way of art and it's stuck with me

(if you create fanworks) what are your favorite fanworks that you’ve made?

fic: the only truth that sticks (<5k, G) is my take on Pran's mother's backstory, told as vignettes from her school years. There's a lot I'd do differently if I wrote it now – not give her a nickname, for one – but it's nevertheless my baby; when I started it, I hadn't finished and posted any fic in over 20 years.

I had a collection of random language- and storytelling related observations about the show on twitter that I should probably copy over somewhere else at some point for preservation purposes.

there's an epic canon divergence that lives only in my friend's and my DMs and a back-up doc that I'm starting to think will never take full shape, but I love it anyway. There's also an escalating intimacy thing set vaguely pre-canon plus ep 7 to time skip that I've not added to in a year and probably won't finish, either, but again: love what I've got there.

a song that makes you think of bbs (the ones in the show don’t count lol) If it's a bittersweet love song I'm PatPraning it. But specifically: Tilly Birds' เพื่อนเล่น ไม่เล่นเพื่อน (Just Being Friendly) and pretty much the entire tracklist from the ON Thailand fanmeet, especially แดงกับเขียว (Red and Green) by TaitosmitH, แน่ใจไหม (Are You Sure) by Nont Tanont, อย่าใกล้กันเลย (We shouldn't be close) in Aof Pongsak's version, and ดวงเดือน (Moon) by Joey Phuwasit.

idk anything else you want us to know? I love this show. I love the hopeful ending. I love all the recurring characters (yes, that includes Wai and the parents), with all their flaws. I love how gently P'Aof tells this story – the way he approaches entrenched BL clichés, picks them up, examines them, and puts them back down: does it have to go this way? not for us, not for this story, let's look at how else this could go. He said he wanted to make a typical, an ordinary BL, and he did, and he didn't.

I love that I met so many nice people through our mutual love of this show. I love that we're still on the rooftop nearly two years later.

I love that there's so many sides of this fandom – analytical, transformative, curative, and everything in between.

I have completely lost track of who has and hasn't done this yet, but IF you see this and think, hey, this seems fun! and decide to do it, please tag?

[ocrpfinder]

I'm off work for the time being so time to find some new RPs!

At the moment I'm looking for plots with a solid concept behind them, even if that concept is fairly simple. I have a love for arranged marriages, magically sticking characters in a get-along shirt, and AUs involving a 'soulmates' concept because forced proximity is my jam. If that's not your thing, anything involving two characters with an interesting backstory and fun dynamics is enough to keep me interested. If you want some more specific ideas, they're in my doc.

I really am looking for someone who is semi-frequently available. I don't demand constant availability--I am an adult and have to do adult things sometimes--but like to volley posts back and forth when schedules line up and it would be nice because I miss doing it lmao. As long as you communicate with me about your availability and let me know if your interest fades, we're good.

I generally only do LGBT pairings. I will occasionally do a MxF plot if it's got a really interesting concept behind it. I probably don't want to do a MxF plot if you are a cishet dude looking for 'women or nonbinaries' because you won't write with other dudes.

I tend to prefer writers over 25 due to life experience (I'm 33) but will bend this rule so long as you are 21 and have a good story to tell. Obviously all characters must be over 18, and I rarely play anyone under 21.

I expect people who DM me to have read my doc. There isn't a password (they're silly) but please don't come to me and start off with something I explicitly said no to in the doc, it makes me tired.

I'm not here to get you off. Don't present me with a kink poorly disguised as a plot idea (I'll notice and probably make fun of you).

I know I sound pretty blunt but I'm easy as long as you wanna tell a good story. If it sounds like we'd vibe send me a DM, no need to ask me first. Let's see what we can come up with! DM me to get my discord.

.

[beetled-juice]

👀👀 would love to hear those "true form" beej headcanons if youre in the mood to share.........!!

@bunnys-beetlejuice-blog I'm always in the mood to share! Though I should clarify that my true form concepts for beej can be on the graphic side, since I enjoy taking each beetlejuice canon and thinking "how can I make this into genuine horror?". So I'm going to throw this under a read more, just to be safe!

These hc's are for musical!juice specifically - I have others for toonjuice and keatlejuice. This also isn't complete by any means - I have pages upon pages of writing on google docs about this stuff, so I'm trying to condense!

Netherworld Form - Dead is the New Sexy

So to start, I should also clarify that I personally view musical!juice as a vessel of sorts, a form that allows him to exist on earth as opposed to in the netherworld. Because of this, I think there are two distinct "versions" of beej's true form - one is the vessel / form you would see upon entering the netherworld with him, while the other is the demonic eldritch horror that he crams into said form(s).

-----

Whenever you go to the netherworld with him, he becomes like a walking corpse - more than normal, that is. Think skin rotting and sloughing off, joints twisted in unnatural positions, perhaps even internal organs trying to become external. It's not entirely clear how he can even move, or how he doesn't just disintegrate into piles of rotten 'juice with a voice, but somehow he manages to shove his mangled body around in a way that's not too dissimilar to that of a zombie movie. If you're used to the mossy and stinky demon as seen in the musical, this would be an immediate shove into a harsher reality - he looks like he's been decomposing for months, and nothing can help with the smell.

This can become even more devastating if we base his backstory for death more on movie canon than musical canon (i.e that he hung himself instead of Lydia stabbing him through the tit), because just like everyone else in the netherworld, he'll be unable to hide the evidence of how he died. In this case, you'd see the ring of bruising left behind, and the shift of the cervical vertebrae under what's left of his skin from where they broke.

The Cosmic Eldritch Horror We Know and Love

Overall, I think of him as having the keatlejuice makeup/effects, but taken to the extreme. Depending on how much I want to crank up the angst factor, I may or may not include the hanging aspect.

-----

This is where I kind of go off the rails in terms of very specific imagery. Have you seen the posts about what depictions of biblical angels would look like, but also the fact that they would try to mate with a telephone/power line? Or the post that’s about how cosmic entities using vessels to interact with humanity is like finger painting? That's beej's true form in a nutshell.

One of the things made very evident in the musical is that the netherworld is a dark place - literally! So I think it would be infinitely more horrifying if the demon trying to give you a little smooch stalking you through the vast abyss was a brilliant, glowing white - like a spotlight turned to its maximum setting, humming with power and electricity and impossible to look at directly. This also makes the name Betelgeuse more fitting - was he named after the star, or was the star named after him?

If you can manage a glimpse of him without blinding yourself, you'll see he's very big - easily dwarfing anyone or anything around him. You'll also notice that he doesn't move quite right. He doesn't walk, but he doesn't float either, instead making a weird lurching dragging motion that sounds like knives scraping on a plate. Don’t let this fool you though, because if necessary he moves like a lightning strike: fast and deadly and gone in a flash.

One of the interesting things about beej in this form is that he can’t really speak so much as convey thoughts and ideas - he has to be very careful though, or he could quickly overload your brain and leave some damage. In your head, he sounds the same as he normally does (if not a little base boosted), but his actual voice? The stuff of nightmares. Lack of speech doesn’t mean lack of sound, and even when he’s utterly silent he gives off a headache-inducing version of the hum you hear from the fluorescent lights at a gas station in the dead of night. Sometimes he sounds like rolling thunder and rattling glass, other times it’s infernal hell-speech and a wailing that makes your bones ache.

One of the unfortunate truths of being a demon is that over the course of millennia, he’s had to fight for his place in the pecking order. There are spots where he shines a little dimmer, his form marred by the thick bands of scars left behind by demons of old (primarily, his mother). Some still weep like open wounds, pouring thick black ooze that sizzles and burns against anything it touches. Only time can heal these - time on a scale living beings could never comprehend.

Even before you could see or hear him, you’ll catch the scent of ozone and the sharp tang of frozen metal on your tongue. You’ll feel an unease blanket you, your body and mind screaming at you to run, but you won’t be able to fight the feeling of heaviness that weighs your body down and anchors your feet to the floor. Out of everything, this is the part he hates the most - even if he just wants to be near someone, his very presence in this form forces them to seek a way to escape. That’s why it’ll be a rare instance to experience Beetlejuice’s true form - he’ll do everything in his power to keep from exposing it to anyone he cares about.

[amethystfairy1]

I finally read light of my life. I'm so interested in all of the little undercity lore and backstories.

Little Bdubs was very cute. I hope we get the rest of his and cleos story eventually.

Merry Christmas <3

I'm so glad you enjoyed 'Light of my Life'! Little Bdubs is adorable, just a sentient glowstick and hew new Mom trying to keep it together! I have plans for exploring more of the backstory of the under-city and the various characters, both with Doc and Etho during the Anarchy (the period of time after the Director died) and spending some time with the baby birds!

Happy Holidays!!!