#this is the only time i will openly talk about my ed here

[queenimmadolla]

Hiiiii my queenie! Could I please request an Eddie fic with lifeguard!reader? Honestly, the plot is up to you I just need this dynamic right now

Ooooh, guurrrrl I was kicking my feet while I typed this up. You KNOW I'm a slut for some enemies-to-lovers when it comes to Lifeguard!Reader x Eddie Munson, so here's exactly that, only 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐧' 𝐬𝐧𝐮𝐜𝐤 𝐢𝐧 there since it's a bitty blurb, featuring hellfire and heather my love.

The sounds of laughter, children shrieking, splashing and chatter filled your ears the moment you stepped out of the showers; body framed in the red hot, one-piece bathing suit you were always required to wear while on duty.

  With lips slightly pursed, a fresh layer of chapstick—spf 30, always—coating them, you surveyed the crowd that would be your responsibility in just a couple of seconds.

  The vultures—ahem, mothers and married women, interested in anyone but who they were due to go home to, were spread out on their towels and chairs. Basking in the sun with futile hopes of obtaining a tan. Mrs.Abernathy was already looking pink, you knew she’d be complaining about the burn for the remainder of the pool day.

  Small children occupied the shallow kiddie pool, floaties bobbed around in the waves their excitement created. In the larger pool, adults tried to relax while ignoring the noise that came with preteens and teenagers gathering. It was loud and obnoxious.

  Just the way you liked it.

  You raised your whistle to your lips and blew as you moved towards the lifeguard’s post, hips swaying with a confidence that befell you the moment you clocked in. Almost like magic.

  “Don’t even think about it, Curtis.” You warned the culprit, stopping him just as he prepared for a running start, no doubt ready to cannonball right next to poor, unsuspecting Mr. Williams.

  You smirked as Curtis deflated and wandered off, muttering under his breath.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” Heather cried out as she climbed down from her post, high ponytail swinging, “You have perfect timing, I need to reapply some sunscreen to my legs, I’m starting to look like a lobster.”

  With a finger on the temple of your sunnies, you lowered them on the bridge of your nose to look her over, pushing them back into place with a brilliant flash of your teeth, “You look good to me.”

  She laughed, swatting your arm, “Stop it—there’s no trouble today, we almost had a drowning this morning though, kid flipped over in his floatie and couldn’t get back up. But other than that, it’s pretty chill.”

  You hummed, pleased as your eyes scanned the crowd again.

  “Oh, and your number one fan is already here.” Heather teased and you groaned right before you locked eyes with him.

  Your lenses were dark. To anyone it should have been difficult to notice your attention was on them. And yet, Eddie Munson stared you dead in the eye from where he and his ragtag group of pale goblins—aside from Ronnie and Jeff, you liked them, Ronnie was spunky and Jeff was funny and nice and also black—huddled over a table and under umbrellas. 

  After Jeff had tagged along with his family once—he gave you some fruit his family had packed, he was so sweet—he and his friends, Eddie included, had made frequent appearances, though they weren’t always happy to be at the pool. Heather mentioned to you once, or anytime she got more than five minutes to talk to you, that Gareth had been the one he sacrificed to approach her. Started a casual conversation that continued to circle around to openly wondering out loud about what your schedule on the lifeguard tower could be. She took great pleasure in pretending to be oblivious before she wanted him to go away. 

  Now, you saw them just about all the time. Why Eddie Munson really wanted to loiter around at the community pool, you had no idea. You had incorrectly, apparently, assumed it would be out of his comfort zone.

  All his friends sat inwards, speaking heatedly about something but not Eddie. He sat with his back against the table top, arms spread out over it and legs manspread over his section of the bench. His chapped lips were pulled up into an almost sinister like smirk.

  You had a sneaking suspicion Eddie wanted to seem annoying, menacing, or even intimidating—and he once was to you. You used to avoid him in hallways, despite the butterflies that fluttered around in your tummy, because the guy was so abrasive. Constantly making fun of people he didn’t like, being ridiculously loud when he realized others didn’t like him, either, and he’d taken to occasionally picking on your group of friends—a couple of science nerds, c’mon dude—so you’d just tried to steer clear.

  Until you got this gig.

  There was something about seeing the local metal head and dealer— usually so imposing with his cool layered clothes, sharp jewelry and ripped jeans—swap out his personality for a pair of black swimming trunks and sandals, exposing his lanky frame, incredibly pale skin and even paler feet. Forgoing his armor, so to speak. Even his tattoos looked kinda funny, randomly placed and spread apart. His normally wild mane was flat, and the ends were wet so you knew he’d been in the water, but if the hair hadn't been a giveaway, his red rimmed eyes would have. You could tell the difference between chlorine and weed eyes from a mile away. 

  Eddie Munson didn’t look remotely intimidating to you. In fact, he reminded you of an anchovy. How long had he been just a guy and not some big, obnoxious overly-opinionated-to-the-point-of-being-mean ogre like you built him up in your head? Sometimes, you wondered what revelations he might be having about you as well. Made you kinda glad your little crush on him was gone.

  You tried not to laugh as you broke eye contact to return your attention to Heather who was also biting back a smile. 

  “I’ll have you know he looked pissed to be here up until the moment you walked out. Good luck!” She sang as she twirled around and hurried away.

  You’d barely managed to get settled in your seat when you realized he and his friends had left their possessions at their table in favor of occupying the area of the pool closest to you.

  “No way! I’m not doing that!” You heard Gareth hiss. It was so funny to see them awkwardly just standing there in the water, like they were waiting for the okay to go home. 

  “Causing trouble, Munson?” You asked, trying not to look at him. Eddie had quickly dunked himself underwater, and emerged wiping his hair out of his face and running his fingers through it. The way he was doing it reminded you of how they did it in Baywatch, albeit a bad attempt because his wet hair kind of melded together and his fingers got caught in it so he had to yank. It was obvious he was trying to show off and flex. Distantly, you wondered if his rib cage showing a little could be considered a six-pack.

  “Just trying to soak up the last couple minutes of fun, since you’re on duty, Killjoy.” He shot right back at you without missing a beat, teeth gleaming in the sun as he grinned, “Don’t you have kids to keep from running by the pool or something, or are you just planning on harassing innocent, little ol’ me all day?”

  “He wanted me to pretend to drown him earlier so that you might actually have to care about him for a couple of seconds while you do mouth-to-mouth.” Gareth confessed with a straight face that went momentarily terrified as Eddie whirled around, face set in a sneer and furious.

  “Dude, why the fuck would you tell her that—” And then he was back on you, “He’s lying to mess with your head, I wouldn’t want to kiss you to save my life.”

  “That’s good, because I wouldn’t kiss you—it’s not a kiss, by the way—to save your life, either. That’s a death I would have had to call.” You remarked, twisting the cap of your water bottle off to take a swig as his friends let out a chorus of Oooh!s. 

  You tried to pretend not to notice how Eddie seemed to stare up at you, the way he stared up at you, corner of his lip twitching into a smile as he accepted defeat without a rebuttal. For a second, you thought he might have been impressed, maybe even a little proud of you, and then he quickly ducked under water, until he was chin level and nervously glancing around. 

"One of these days, you two are just gonna have to get a room." Ronnie laughed, tossing her silky black hair over her shoulder.

  You felt your face get warm and chose to blame it on the heat instead of the fact that (one) Eddie Munson had popped a woody to you and (two) you definitely still had a crush on him.

  What a cruel summer this was gonna be.

𝑙𝑖𝑔𝘩𝑡 𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠 ℗ 𝑐𝑎𝑓𝑒𝑘𝑖𝑡𝑠𝑢𝑛𝑒 ♡

[timeslipcamp]

f the teachers tbh

literally from the prologue i was like what is this dude's deal....maybe it was just the discount gojo vibes or the 12 year old being in charge who knows. either way, i didn't trust them.

so let's get into that!

vague spoilers through ep 16

the prologue itself is insane enough, and then you walk onto an insane campus and up to the principal's office and then you find a literal CHILD who tells you that you will die in a year

bartender? i'll have what she's having

i did think nicolas was the hottest person in the game for a while though. and then you've got discount gojo and his ex boyfriend who was dead last year and then the assassination classroom substitute--

the teachers are just. so interesting. and shady. literally from the beginning something just felt odd, like the explanations about the ghouls that the chancellor was giving us just felt weird. the further it's gone on, the more i'm thinking that the faculty is in some way responsible for the clash and breaking up whatever good vibes the ghouls had in order to keep them disorganized and unable to unionize against the staff.

lmao can you imagine sinostra getting into union business

but i digress.

let's take a look at some of the times we've interacted with the staff and what led me to believe they would be the antagonists here.

nicolas was up first and i love him. honestly, if we have any allies on the staff, i'd put money on nicolas. he's a medical professional studying anomalous medicine and continues to be kind to yuri even though yuri is sooo bitchy to him. i love yuri lmao you hold that grudge babe.

he's been kind at every turn and does seem to be genuinely helping us. if he flips it'd be a hans from frozen level betrayal. (fun fact that was one of the ONLY characters i didn't catch ahead of time lmao. usually i'm pretty good at guessing but that one blindsided me. fuck you hans.)

i could see him going the way of him siding with the institution but only because he thought it was the right thing to do to help us. like we saw in mortkranken's more recent episode, the second he saw yuri was right, he full on supported us. so again, he might be on the institution's side for now, but if he sees that they're wrong and we're right, he'll flip.

so the second teacher we meet is hyde. he's pretty chill and 100% gives discount gojo and even kakashi vibes. i like him, honestly. if he goes the route of gojo and kakashi he's gonna come off as shady and then end up being on his students side, so. and like even with what we see between him and romeo and taiga, it doesn't feel malicious. it honestly just feels like he's trying to make money on the side 😂

i do love the taiga shovel talk though. if i'm being completely honest, i feel like he's at least partially eating the anomalies so romeo can't sell them to hyde. would love to know why he doesn't like hyde though. it's taiga's wariness and anger that keeps hyde on my shady list. that being said, i think the main reason taiga doesn't like hyde is because of romeo.

he's a real one for this though

but i think it's important to note that nicolas says there's no other teacher that cares more for the students than hyde. that's another reason, even after episode 16, that i still think hyde is on our side against the institution. i think he's playing both sides, and he's going to look shady until the end.

next is the chancellor.

what the hell is up with this dude

he looks like a child from genshin impact

but that's not why i don't trust him. in the beginning he seemed harmless enough, but given his reactions about the gala and ed and the way moby covered his mouth a few times...idk something isn't adding up. i don't have a solid motive or reason yet other than how the ghouls talk about the staff. we have rui, lyca, and sho all speaking openly about how they're bad and we should avoid telling them too much, their wack stances on imprisonment, etc; we have haku saying to just keep your head down and push through; we have one of them back from the dead and alan and tohma looking into it...the list goes on. it does seem to be more the institution rather than the faculty themselves but still

i don't trust them

zero idea what's going on with dante btw. how tf did he come back to life? is he a ghoul now too? hes hot though

the janitor has now been double confirmed to be elias, and that's the one that's working with haru (and taiga and their faceless allies gen and mio and s-something) but he still seems a lil off to me. i saw someone say former dionysia captain but idk how i feel about that. i definitely think he was a former student, and i'm inclined to think he's a ghoul despite having zero evidence because he's working with haru's lil team, but i dunno. something still feels off. i don't trust him, he knows too much.

speaking of weirdos

i hate this dude lol

my opinions aside, he's presented as kind if goofy and money grabbing and all about his kpop band or whatever it is, but this dude is my number one suspect. is he a demon? anomaly? other creature?

i don't trust him one bit. i think the first obscuary chapter is so important because it shows us that the LEADING PREMIERE RESEARCH FACILITY is incompetent at containing anomalies. ed even implies their research methods are wack. once again, it looks like they really don't see anomalies as anything other than creatures and beasts, so why wouldn't this extend to the ghouls?

i'm so fully on the train of thought that something about containing anomalies (aka actual thinking creatures, potentially another ghoul or person) was a big cause of the rift that may have had the faculty do something to cause the clash.

my main theory is as follows:

the staff and the institution don't see the ghouls as people. demons may be involved in the highest ranks of the institution. the ghouls at darkwick were staging a rebellion of some sort in regards to anomaly/ghoul treatment. a traitor was planted, hearts were broken, there goes the clash.

as usual, we have like, zero information still. i think we're about to get a lot more coming up on the one year anniversary of us being cursed, and especially as we start to go back in the loop. but that's my general guess that i'm going with for now

fuck moby tho he a freak

asks and dms always open!

[mystycalypso]

I'm gonna go on a mini rant here.

TW: p3d0ph1lia, and child s/@

God, I shouldn't have to put a TW like that on a blog where I post Hello Neighbor content with my bff, but I need to just- let off steam about this because it's something that seems to happen every time there's a franchise centering around kids facing a big bad adult where- people assume that said big bad s3xually @ buses one or more of the minor characters.

A main big example of this is obviously FNAF, with the P3d0philia William Afton being popularized by PinkiePills with her comics to the point where a large chunk of the fandom believes that it's canonical. Despite that not being the case.

The example that has pushed me over the edge to talk about this today is Theodore Peterson. I have been worried since Episode 6s release that people were going to claim that Peterson S/@ ed Nicky. And today, low and behold I see a post (not gonna name drop them for obvious reasons) saying

"At this point it's obvious what Mr. Peterson did to Nicky" with the teaser image tinybuild recently posted

Now, at first my autistic ass said, "...What?" And I couldn't figure out for the life of me what they were referring to because I mean, we don't even know when this shot is from

Then I open the comments and see people talking about whether or not it was infact s/@ . I know I said I was expecting and dreading this, but it still shocked and bewildered me because- there's genuinely nothing in the show that actually makes it seem like this.

Thankfully, a lot of the comments were openly disagreeing with this idea and sentiment. But- I need to discuss why it's a problem to me, ESPECIALLY with this franchise, which I've already explained is very near and dear to me.

But good FUCKING GOD, especially with WTRB

THIS IS A KIDS SHOW

Is WTRB able to go much darker than most kids' shows because it isn't run on tv or owned by a network? Absolutely. But would TB go that far? FUCK NO.

I've seen this person using moments from the show like this

To call Mr. Peterson, a p3d0phil3, and I need to clearly explain the purpose of this image. It is to show the power he has built in his lies. Trinity witnessed Mr. Peterson kidnap Nicky before her own eyes, but he has built up such a persona as this pathetic old man in the town that even when she can see behind his lies and see his actively horrific behavior, no one else can.

We see this same back and forth in all their interactions in episode 5. From the moment he offers cookies based on Nicky's goggles to the framing of him looming while her parents work the printer. He believes he has won and can flaunt it because there is no one in Ravenbrooks who believes these kids. No one even notices or is suspicious of Nicky going missing in the first place.

And if Trinity was also an adult or even if Mr. Peterson was say- a woman this wouldn't be coming up or a theory/hc. It is only because Theodore is an older male antagonist.

Now, why is this a problem? Why do these hcs and theories urk me so much every time I see them?

It adds nothing. All they do is make the story "edgier" and "darker" in a way that's so- flat and dimensionless. There's nothing gained by saying "oh Nicky was s/@ ed" if anything you have taken so much from the actual story of Hello Neighbor and the themes of feeling helpless to the horrors you see going on around you. You're not taken seriously as a kid, especially after doing something others see as a slip up like Trinity or by not being the model student type like Nicky. You're young and can see through the lies of others easier but no one believes you.

Not only that, but the supernatural theming of Hello Neighbor is lost because of this. The Guest, The Thing, the Cult, everything is lost or disregarded all to make the series dark on a very surface level.

I'm tired of actual themeing and good writing getting thrown to the wayside for hcs that do nothing for victim representation and do nothing to add to the story and I say this with utter genuineness

If you believe in these p3d0 hcs and theories, do not interact with our work.

Kaydin and I are both VIOLENTLY disgusted by the things we saw written by that poster and by the comments agreeing with their sentiment and we don't want to be associated with the parts of the fandom that twist the series that way.

Thanks for reading.

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

So overall I don't like the OFMD Reddit. I've tried to create a post about why narratively I felt S2 didn't work ignoring the Izzy stuff, one only about the Izzy stuff(since there are very few Izzy-focused fans on there), then another talking about Olu/Jim/(Archie/Zheng) talking about why I was disappointed in it. If it's a negative post, moderators won't approve the post to go live. Which I don't love. But okay, if you want a positive echo chamber to offset Tumblr and Twitter about this season, sure.

I still check it out of curiosity when I stumble across this GEM.

We've had quite a bit of time to debate this. Almost two years, and this was posted 11/15/23. Yes, the OP was very kind (I agree that Ed thought that Stede was cool cause he beat Izzy, and was a new pirate on the scene. Then once he realizes how dumb the crew is the plan springs up into place), and I'm not hating on them specifically. Just that some social media places are just still at this point.

I blame a large section of the fanbase for not EVER reading any Izzy POV meta. Who are now scrambling to go back to rewatch S1 knowing what we know about Izzy now.

If you want to see all the responses, ranging from those I agree with to those that are just wild, let me know, I might put the link in the comments my favorites range from. 'Blackbeard wanted to but Ed didn't' to the usual Izzy is a superhuman being. To 'ALL THIS WAS JUST TO KEEP IZZY ON THE SHIP'?

Do they not see how INTERESTING the dynamic between Ed and Izzy is? That their relationship is giving and pulling at just the right times? Izzy trying to maintain their shield and Ed desperately trying to find a life where he doesn't hate himself? Both of them DON'T REALLY WANT THIS-Ed being openly suicidal to Izzy keeping his head down and working- living day by day- each NOT talking about their issues.

That hiding behind the Blackbeard name is the only way they'll survive? That killing Stede Bonnet could genuinely give Ed the out he craves. Izzy could then Captain a ship full of a crew that (theoretically) already fears and respects him?

[Not that Izzy would be good at it, or even want to be away from Ed, but you get my point. This was a *change in their lives* that is VERY tempting to two men who have been in survival mode for YEARS-

Also, it's very obvious Jenkins didn't plan Izzy's character out, so Izzy wanting to captain to me can just be written off as Jenkins not knowing the character yet, since he NEVER PAYS THE SCENE -WHERE IZZY IS FLATTERED AT POTENTIALLY BEING GIVEN TITLE CAPTIN-OFF (cough cough Izzy could have been the captain/first mate S2ep8)...moving on]

If Lucius didn't stumble in, Ed would have killed Stede here. He was aiming for a fatal spot in his neck and actively swinging down, I couldn't find a gif and had to take a photo on my phone, but you get my point.

Ed then realizes that not only was he willing to kill a guy who, overall, had been very kind to him, but then gets the Kraken as a reminder that he HAS killed. That he's spent his entire life killing to put himself into a better spot. Slowly rising up the ranks, and it's never been enough to keep him happy. Be it his dad, or fuck, even killing this rich dude and stealing his identity.

~BUT NO~

Izzy is SO EVIL guys, Ed doesn't want to kill Stede! He just has to pretend to be violent in front of Izzy so Izzy doesn't mutiny or leave him!! Doesn't that TOTALLY make sense? Ed's struggling since he never wanted to kill Stede, and he's struggling with the 'order' Izzy gave him!!

[Ignoring how Ed wanted to help him retire in the first place, how Izzy nudges Ed to follow the fisherman thing, and how Ed wanted Izzy to *stay* in the first place.]

The reddit is FILLED with takes like this, btw. Sorry if it seems like straw-manning, but I can find the posts if you need them.

[penelopepitstopp]

hi sorry to bother you and you don't have to answer if you don't want to but I was curious as I've heard some stuff about the reasons ed stopped doing his double act with ray peacock but you seem like you'd know more so I was just wondering if you could elaborate what happened?

again feel free to ignore im just quite new to off menu and only really know james's past stuff xx

I've had a few questions like this from people and sorry I've never answered them before but I was never quite sure what to say to be honest.

It's obviously quite sensitive for both sides and is not something I feel like I should comment on as they both kept what happened mostly private.

However, I do understand I probably know more than most thanks to being introduced to their podcast at a stupidly young age (thank you older foster brother) and keeping up with Ed’s career, and thought that perhaps me saying what I know to be true will be better than people speculating.

I do have my own personal opinions on some things but I'll leave them out of this and keep it to just what they have said or done publicly so it's purely objective, and be as respectful as I can (also I have not kept up with Ian's career so most of the more recent stuff is second hand from people who have)

(Oh, also I will refer to Ray as Ian as that is his actual name and he chooses to no longer go by Ray)

So, okay, this is what's out there:

- First a bit of background: Ian is quite a bit older than Ed (13 years) but met Ed when he was at university as he did a show there. Ian said he liked Ed because he was by far the most polite boy who came up to him. He later offered Ed a job as a director for his Edinburgh show.

- Ed continued to help Ian out during uni and after he left, Ian would occasionally get him gigs.

- When Ian started the The Ray Peacock podcast with Raji James, Ed was initially a guest but pretty soon became another host. He was still only 21 at the time. The podcast later went on to become The Peacock and Gamble podcast which was massively successful for the time.

- Ed was still living with his mum at the time but seemed to also spend a lot of days/nights at Ian's too. They were clearly extremely close.

- The podcast naturally lead on to them becoming a double act which they toured and took to Edinburgh. They tried to get some telly shows commissioned but none of them got the green light. They kept mainly to live shows, radio, and occasional guest spots on telly.

- During their time doing the podcast, Ian was diagnosed with depression (he would talk about this openly sometimes and has since done a mental health podcast)

- Ed never talked about anything like that at the time but has since talked about struggling with managing his type 1 and body image issues after he lost weight, so I don't think it would be unfair to say they both probably weren't at their best mentally around this time.

- An incident happened during their time on Fubar radio where Ed felt slighted by the station bosses (I believe they were not paying him judging by what he said to John Robins) and he decided he didn't want to work for them. Ian liked the steady gig so continued on as a solo show.

- Ed started to get a lot more solo gigs and telly work, along with many others of his generation of comics. Touring with Greg also helped him massively.

- Ian has admitted he went a bit crazy on twitter for a while. During one of Ed's early solo Edinburgh runs, Ed did a promotional interview. He didn't mention Ian and this caused Ian to send a number of very passive aggressive tweets to him which Ed didn't engage with. All tweets were later deleted.

- Ed tweeted at a slightly later date something that was not directly at Ian but was assumed to be. I will be paraphrasing a lot here but it was basically something like "Your life hasn't gone the way you wanted. I'm sorry. But don't use that as an excuse to ruin my night." Rob Beckett also got involved, again not mentioning anyone directly, but appearing to stand up for Ed.

- All of their old podcast episodes were later no longer available on official sources.

- Ian did a Q&A on his podcast after he and Ed has split up and was asked if they were still friends. He said they didn't speak anymore. He did also however, cut ties with almost everyone in comedy.

- Another time Ian confirmed he was the one who stopped talking to Ed. He did not elaborate as to why.

- However in more recent years they have at least had some communication. Ian did a retrospective on the Ray Peacock podcast and it pushed him to call Ed. I did not hear this myself but have heard from others it was quite sweet.

- Ed has mentioned Ian by name a few times on various podcasts and always seems to have no ill will. He has said he is grateful and was very lucky to be given the opportunity by him. He also said he wouldn't be where he is today were it not for people like Ian and Greg Davies taking a chance on him.

- After the tragic death of the comedian Gareth Richards last year, Ian tweeted that he and Ed had spoken and agreed to re-release the interview they did with him for the podcast. As far as I'm aware that's the most recent occurrence of them mentioning each other.

And yeah, that's pretty much all I think. And while I won't say any more on the matter, I will say that their podcast was a massive part of my childhood and they both provided me with so many hours of laughter. So wherever they are with each other now (and I hope that they are broadly fine), their time as a double act was fantastic and meant a lot to a lot of weirdos. And nothing can change that :)

[possibly-in-wonderland]

Okay, I'm sorry (not) that this keeps being brought up but it really affected us.

CW: Vent, Grooming, SH, Suggestive, Incest (mention), ED, Relapse <Didn't, but almost did

This is still about that creepo dude.

Hold on...forgot what I was gonna say.

...

Right, there it is <Literally took me five minutes to remember.

He singled my friend (who I won't name despite them also mentioning it on their blog) and I out so much.

"Me and Alice will be your support." Not "Your friends can be your support."

Me and Alice.

Me and Alice.

Me and Alice.

We're one of the only adults in the server aside from about four other people. We're also the only one that interacts the most because we don't have much else to do during the day. And naturally we interacted with him a lot since he was also fairly active. And since we're an adult, he thought it would be okay, apparently, to openly be gross towards us.

Again, he called Ash, OUR HEADMATE, NOT THE CHARACTER, hot. TWICE. WE ARE NOT WHO YOU SEE IN THE MEDIA WE'RE FROM. We forgot about one of those times but it was here on Tumblr. Again, Ash was mega uncomfy and just kinda, "hahaha...yeahhhh." Like, buddy (derogatory), you KNOW why Ash formed. We vented about it. Grooming trauma came up, Anya felt worthless, BOOM. Ash. The guy that calls our vessel hot and attractive to HELP OUR SELF CONFIDENCE FROM BEING GROOMED. Source Ash (at least from the first few seasons of the show) is highly egotistical, self-confident, etc. And our Ash doesn't fall far from the tree.

We don't care if our closer friends compliment us like that because we're comfortable with them. We have a friend that calls us her, "scrumptious slice of blue raspberry velvet" and genuinely we don't care. We think it's funny and endearing. If it made us uncomfortable we would tell her.

Alice said it the other day, we're pretty sure we were fucking groomed again because we didn't listen to our gut feelings. At 19. Nine-fucking-teen. And the worst part about it? It wasn't just us that were a victim like it was in the past.

It threw us through wringer so bad that someone who said "never" to self-harm fucking actually went through with it because it was confused about what was going on and needed release. We almost fucking relapsed with our ED because "it feels like it's the only thing we could control right now" and I think that's why I'm out (or at least part of the reason) to help prevent it. Damage control, if you will.

Not to mention something else I forgot to add that has nothing to do with me, anytime some friends, who are MINORS, were in voice chat alone he'd fucking hop in immediately.

Like???

Please, everyone, stay vigilant.

P.S: Not only did he delete his blog, but we're speculating that he made a new one (that also got deleted) and the likes were public. Now, idgaf what people do or anything bedroom-wise so long as, y'know, safe and consensual. Not in my jurisdiction to judge anyone. But liking incest and ageplay and whatnot then fucking dming a fucking minor talking about, "Oh, I'm a concerned parent what happened wah wah wah" BACK THE FUCK UP. WHAT THE HELL. WE'RE SO ANGRY ABOUT THAT I CAN'T EVEN DESCRIBE IT. DO YOU KNOW HOW VIOLENT OUR THOUGHTS GOT YESTERDAY?? HOW WE DAYDREAMED OF GOING TO DUDE BRO'S FLAT AND JUST TORMENTING HIM? Again, we don't know for sure if it was him, but there's heavy speculation.

Not only did he delete his og blog, but when you go to the channel that hosted his horror series now all the videos have been deleted and it just says nothing.

If anyone needs us, we're gonna be listening to To Catch a Predator by ICP because holy Christ on a pogo stick, dude.

[thisisthinprivilege]

ANONYMOUS PLEASE <3 I’m at my wit’s end with my mother. I wanted to complain about her fatphobia, and I also wanted to you thank you for how reading here has helped me and my sisters. 

I’m a small fat in my 40s. I’ve been a bigger fat, and I’ve also been very, very skinny. I developed anorexia at about age 6 due to the usual issues one develops that from and was thinner than thin until I finally started to actually recover. I got very fat very quickly on the drugs I was put on, then dropped down in size to small fat once I stabilized and didn’t need them. No idea what my “comfortable” or “natural” size would have been without so much damage, but I’m going to guess “about this”, since it’s what I am when I’m neither restricting to the point of heart damage, nor on drugs that also made me sick in many other ways. For me, a comfortable size is the size I have when I’m not actively altering it in ways that hurt me, so I’m not going to question it.

My next younger sister, however, is a bigger fat, and pretty much always has been. In her 30s, she’s fat in a way that does restrict her clothing options and employment (she once told me that an interviewer had given her “feedback” on a job interview, and it was that she looked “sloppy”. She was wearing perfectly nice, clean, pressed, professional clothes- and expensive clothes of course, as that’s the rule for bigger clothes as we know. She was just fat in them.) Being “healthy” doesn’t really matter to this - and indeed if it did I wouldn’t have half of this rant - but she is. Fit and strong, great at physical things like endurance sports in a way I never have been. She is also perhaps the most self-aware and level-headed person I have ever met about stuff like this. When what people say bothers her, she will discuss her feelings and not try to hide them or their impact, but she will also deconstruct, and conclude that what the person has said is stupid. So it’s like she neither tries to pretend she’s immune to harm, nor allows others to be right in hurting her. 

And she eats exactly what she wants, and since we’re both autistic this also includes pickiness on sensory stuff - she doesn’t eat what she doesn’t want to, and does eat what she does. She was a great person to be around during my recovery, even though I never even mentioned to her at the time that I was in it (I didn’t tell anyone in my family about it until years later,) just because she made food such a non-issue. 

And our mother will not shut up about her size. Our mother is also fat, we’re a fat family, but my mother decided years ago that I am the one to make my sister “address her weight.” I literally left the country to get away from my family (not related to this specifically) and she STILL emails me about it. I don’t respond to those emails. I DO have lovely chats with my beloved sister on Skype though. 

I have tried all your scripts with my mom before - the team here have SO many great scripts that have worked wonderfully for me in other situations, like work or friend groups. I have told my mother I don’t agree, many times backed up with sources (sources thanks to you!) I have told her I’m not interested in the conversation and have hung up or walked away when she has persisted. I’ve called her out when she tries it on in public on multiple occasions. She will not stop. She is convinced that my extremely wonderful, fit and thriving, very happy sister is at death’s door. She’s also convinced that I, a person who has been repeatedly hospitalized for ED and the mental complications that caused it (which she now knows all about, and in fact did visit me in hospital the last time I was in, which was only a few years ago by the way) am the person to talk to her about it and make her see the error of her ways. My sister and I talk quite openly about this, and we’re both agreed our mother is full of shit and we’ll both be ignoring this. We both have also decided to persist in having a relationship with her, though with BIG boundaries around it. (Trust me, this fat bullshit is the thin edge of the wedge with her, and we’re both VERY exacting about when we will talk to her and what about. But we also both love our mother, and she’s the only parent we have.) The thing I’m most struggling with I think is that as I said, our mother is also fat. I actually feel some real sympathy here as I’m aware she’s clearly projecting her own issues on both of her daughters, but god is it mean. She couldn’t see how sick I was when I was skinny, even though I was very literally beginning to die (in fact, all she had to say to me was to mention my weight when I got fat) and she can’t see how happy my sister is in her life, because she’s fat so can’t possibly be happy, and she’s still, now, as perhaps some last gasp of control, attempting to make us fight each other over it. 

It hasn’t worked, thankfully, and it never will.

My mom has many other issues, I’m sure, but my god, it is sometimes quite astounding to look at what hell fatphobia hath wrought on my mom’s psyche and ideas of being a parent. I’m grateful my sister(s) and I instead read blogs like this so we’ll hopefully pass a lot less of this on. So I guess this rant is half a complaint and half a thanks. It’s been really helpful to be able to come here and read, for both of us (and our younger sisters as well, who we are steadily converting), to remind ourselves that mom’s wrong. My sister is fat and an exceptional person. I’m fat now too, and the world didn’t end (and in fact actually got a lot better.) Our mom is just plain fucking wrong.    Anyway, thank you. I know you’re not planning to be as active with new posts lately, but please know that you’ve been wonderful this whole time, and keeping your archives up is of immense help to at least this one group of sisters. It's been awesome to relay one of the younger ones to an older post from time to time (actually quite a few times!) Note: I wanted to tag ED as I do mention it but I don't see it in the list of tags under submission. I tagged "trigger warning", "Weightloss", and "food" to hopefully cover it. 

Apologies for the first post of this.

[foundtherightwords]

The Minstrel, the Maiden, and the Knights of Hellfire - Chapter 4

Pairing: Hellcheer, Medieval AU

Summary: England, 1139: the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud looms large, threatening to tear the country in half. For Ed and his band of traveling minstrels, however, the more pressing matter is how to survive the upcoming winter, now that they were tossed out by their latest patron. When they stumble upon a naïve pageboy looking for warriors to escort the lady Christiana to safe haven in Wales, Ed comes up with a daring plan - pose as knights, take the job, and collect the reward. After all, how hard can it be? What Ed doesn't count on is endless battles, treacherous roads, marauding bandits, Lady Christiana's pompous fiancé, and his own growing attraction to the fair maiden herself...

Chapter warning: none

Chapter word count: 4.8k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Leaving behind the salt marshes of Chichester Harbor, they turned the wagon north and headed for the old Roman road that led from the southern ports to the inland. In a village outside of Chichester, Christiana bought some plain woolen gowns and a wool cloak to replace her silk and brocade, and stout boots to replace her embroidered slippers. At the inn of the same village, over veal pies, a roasted capon, and leek pottage, a luxurious supper of which Tadhg heartily approved, they discussed their route. Winchester would be their next stop, Ed decided. It was a big town, and there would be crowds enough on the road for them to get lost in.

"Have you been there?" asked Christiana.

"Oh yes, many times," Gareth said eagerly. "Though we usually go earlier, around September, in time for St. Giles' Fair... ouch." He yelped as Ed kicked at his ankle under the table in a vain attempt to remind him that, as supposed knights-errant, there was no discernible reason for them to attend the largest fair of the country and with such regularity. Christiana didn't seem to notice the slip-up.

"I've never been anywhere," she said wistfully. "The longest journey I've ever made was from my father's manor in Exeter to Chichester. Have you travelled much in the country?"

"We've been around most of the south, yes," Ed said, to prevent Gareth from giving them away.

"All in the past two years?"

Belatedly, Ed remembered that according to the tale he had concocted for Christiana, he and his friends had only returned to England two years ago. Now that he had convinced Christiana of the need for their "disguise", it was much easier for him to be himself around her and treat her courteously. And Christiana, in turn, was also talking to him more freely, more openly. It was as if, by putting on the mask of knighthood, Ed had discovered gallantry and good manners within himself, whereas Christiana, in shedding her finery, had been liberated from the trappings of her nobility. She had even insisted that Dustin and Maxime share the table with them, saying that it would look strange if her "brother and sister" had to eat somewhere else. But that meant she was asking more questions than ever, questions that threatened to pull at the threads of Ed's story, and he had to be careful if he was to maintain his knightly façade.

Seeing Ed fumble for an answer, Geoff said, "You've been traveling long before that, haven't you, Ed? Go on, tell Mistress Chrissy about your service under Sir Giorgio."

Ed gladly seized upon this. "My mother died when I was a boy," he began, "and my father was—was killed in the Holy Land. I was brought up by my uncle. When I was ten years old, I became squire to an Italian knight, Sir Giorgio of Sicily." Here he gave Geoff a subtle nod of thanks for the prompt; he wouldn't have come up with "Sir Giorgio" with Christiana's distracting eyes fixed upon him. "He took me all up and down England, as far north as Hadrian's Walls, and as far west as Aberystwyth in Wales."

It wasn't an outright lie, it wasn't. Just an embellishment of the truth, what he'd always done. Ed had told many versions of his origin over the years to draw the audience's interest or gain their sympathy. In one version, his father had perished in the wreck of the White Ship, the very disaster that had robbed Henry I of his heir and led to the civil war threatening them at this moment. In another, his father had been the court minstrel to Henry I himself and died when Ed was a boy. In yet another, his father had been a Crusader who met his mother in Antioch. The only constant in these stories was that his mother had died when he was a boy. It was the one truth that Ed couldn't bring himself to embellish.

Still, he couldn't stop guilt from prickling at his insides when Christiana turned her wide, trusting eyes upon him.

"Is that where you met Sir Gar—I mean Gareth?" she asked. "In Aberystwyth?"

"Uh, yes," Gareth said, finally cottoning on to what Ed was doing. In truth, they had met much closer to home, three years ago, in a darkened alley of Oxford, where Gareth had been set upon by some ruffians and had his tabor broken. Ed, Tadhg, and Geoff had saved him and fixed the tabor for him, and they had been inseparable ever since.

"Have you been to London?" Christiana continued.

Ed nodded with a grimace. The capital had been a formidable, overwhelming place, too many buildings, too many people, too noisy, and with tumblers, jugglers, storytellers, and musicians coming from all over the country and even from France and Italy and the Low Countries to compete for attention, provincial minstrels such as themselves stood little chance of finding an audience. They had almost come to blows with some of the rivals. Afterward, Ed had vowed to stick to the smaller towns and villages. "It's not my favorite," he concluded.

"Still, at least you've seen it. Everything I know, I've only read in books." She looked around the smoke-filled room, as though searching for some of the adventure and romance those books had promised. "And what of the Holy Land? What is it like?"

Damn. Why was she asking so many questions? She'd barely even looked at him the day before, and now she was drinking up his tales and gazing at him like he was Saint George himself. What could he tell her? Ed wracked his brain, trying to remember the stories he'd heard of Outremer. Most of the soldiers who were fortunate to come back from it only complained of the heat, the flies, and the sand that stuck to everything. Not the romantic image of the Holy Land that Christiana was looking for.

Thankfully, Ed was saved from having to answer by the sound of bickering from the other end of the table, where Dustin and Maxime were sitting. "If we're supposed to be brother and sister," Dustin said, "then I should be the elder."

"That's rich," sneered Maxime. "I was born in April, whereas your birthday is in October! I'm a full half-year older than you!"

Christiana turned back to Ed, embarrassed. "You must think us dreadfully provincial."

"Not at all." He grinned, then quickly changed the subject, lest she remember her question about the Holy Land. "I do think you should be more careful with your coin, though," he said, gesturing to their supper. "Minstrels could not afford veal and capons, you know."

"Oh!" Christiana's cheeks reddened. "I merely thought—since you are doing me a great service—it was the least I could do to make sure we travel with some comfort."

"And for which we are grateful, aren't we?" Ed looked round at his friends. Gareth bowed over Christiana's hand. Tadhg, his mouth stuffed with pie, nodded. Only Geoff, ever the cynic, remained untouched. "But it would not do to announce it to the world," Ed continued. "It would only draw unwanted attention to ourselves. So at our next stop, I suggest that we do what minstrels do—sing for our supper."

"Aww, must we?" moaned Gareth.

"Yes, unless you want to be robbed by every brigand from here to Hadrian's Wall," said Ed sternly. "Besides, it would look rather strange for a troupe of minstrels to not be performing, wouldn't it?"

"I think it would be quite merry," said Christiana. "I shall look forward to it."

And so it was decided. This done, they retired to their rooms—another luxury. Usually, Ed and his friends counted themselves fortunate if they were allowed to sleep in the stables or the barn.

The next morning, they set out for Winchester. The mood was high after a restful night and was further lifted by the good condition of the road. Here they could walk on smooth gravel instead of dirt and mud, and the verge on either side of the road was kept, by law, cleared of trees by the length of a bow shot to avoid ambush, allowing them a view of the crystalline blue sky and the vast countryside, all golden and crimson under the autumn sun. It was a beautiful day for traveling, crisp in the morning but getting warmer as the sun climbed. They passed fields where farmers were hurrying to bring in the last of their harvest. The swish-swish of the scythes mingled with the honks of geese flying overhead, calling each other to their nesting ground in warmer climes, while on the field, not having to worry about the winter, buntings and blackbirds dashed after the reapers, picking up dropped grains of wheat, barley, and oat. The sweet, dusty smell of straw permeated the air.

They were joined by other travelers, merchants bringing their goods to harvest fairs in the north and the west, people fleeing the imminent fighting around the ports, pilgrims making their way to the various shrines and churches, praying for the saints to relieve them of whatever suffering that was burdening them, be it physical, mental, or spiritual. St. Swithun at Winchester, St. Cuthbert at Durham, St. Etheldreda at Ely, Our Lady of Walsingham, St. Wulfstan and St. Oswald at Worcester, all these and more were constantly on the lips of these people, who believed with a fervency that was quite incomprehensible to Ed. He had been wandering up and down the country for twelve years, since he was a lad of barely ten years old, and in that time, he had seen enough of suffering to know that no amount of saints' bones or saints' blood could relieve it.

Still, he and his friends were grateful for the company, for surely no bandits would dare attack them in such a crowd. Even Geoff, who had been so wary of this enterprise from the start, had become so untroubled that he brought out his rebab, a Saracen instrument his parents had brought over from their homeland, the evidence of his Moorish legacy, and treated them to a lively tune. Gareth and Tadhg also brought out their tabor and pipe, and when Ed joined them with his gittern and his voice, the other travelers soon followed in an impromptu performance, much to their enjoyment. Saints and pilgrimages were very well for the soul, but the body and the heart needed nourishment as well, and entertainment on the road was scarce.

Ed kept glancing at Christiana as he played. She, too, seemed to have become more lighthearted. She was walking along the wagon, not singing—the song was probably too common and ribald for her to even know—but she was smiling and clapping with everyone else. Then she caught Ed staring at her, and it was hard to tell which cheeks were redder as they both turned away, flustered.

By the time they stopped by a brook to have their dinner and let their horses and mules rest, the travelers had become friends. They all passed their food and drinks around to share, from the simple oatcakes, cheese, and ale to the more scrumptious white bread, sweetmeats, cured ham, and wine. At Dustin's urging, while they ate, Ed regaled them with tales of the very road they were traveling on, how the Romans built it to bring supplies from the coast to their settlements, the battles that would break out all along it, and of Boudicca's uprising against the invaders.

However, this talk of fighting and warrior queens was too much for some of the travelers, who had witnessed first-hand the clashes between the forces of King Stephen and Empress Maud and were even now escaping from them, and they started to wander off, not wishing to be reminded of the horrors. Not used to having his audience walking away from him, Ed trailed off, bewildered and embarrassed.

At that moment, Christiana, who was sharing some spiced cakes with a pilgrim, a wizened old dame, asked, "I've heard that Winchester Castle houses the Round Table of King Arthur and his knights, is that true?"

"What's that, my dear?" the dame said loudly, tilting her white head. "What's that you said about King Arthur?"

This stopped their fellow travelers in their tracks. The tales of King Arthur and his heroics, as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia regum Britanniae, had captured everyone's attention since the book's release three years ago. Ed longed to read it—what rich material it would give to his tales!—but he didn't even have his English letters, let alone Latin. Christiana, on the other hand, had clearly read it. As the travelers flocked to her, demanding that she tell them more about King Arthur, she looked up at Ed, bewildered, silently asking him what to do. 

Ed gave her an encouraging nod. In her clear, high voice, haltingly at first, then becoming more and more confident as she went on, Christiana told their fellow travelers the stories of the legendary king of England, of Merlin's prophecies, and of the Island of Glass where Arthur supposedly slept, to wake one day and return, bringing peace and prosperity to their country.

Ed watched her, enraptured. She didn't have his theatrics—her voice may be sweet, but her manner was too timid to draw in a crowd—yet there was something in her poise and her words that charmed the listeners. Ed brought people into his stories with wild gestures and sensational phrases, whereas Christiana's simple telling made her stories real.

"Well, looks like there's someone to rival your storytelling prowess, eh, Ed?" Gareth said in his ear. Ed realized he was staring at Christiana again and turned away, irritated.

Later, as they set out once more, Christiana fell into step beside Ed and asked, "Were you displeased with me?"

"Not at all, my la—mistress," he said, remembering to correct himself. "What would I be displeased with you for?"

"For telling the tales of King Arthur, for drawing attention to myself."

Ed looked at her. Clad in one of her plain gowns, with her hair in a single braid down her back and hidden under a linen veil, she still drew the eye, the unadorned clothes lending her beauty an unusually austere charm, turning her handsome rather than just pretty. He still couldn't fathom how anyone would think her a mere merchant's daughter.

"Nonsense," he managed. "You did very well. I would love to hear more of those tales when you have the time."

A blush of delight tinged the snow of Christiana's cheeks. "You haven't read Geoffrey of Monmouth's book then?" she asked.

Now it was Ed's turn to blush, only his was from shame. He didn't want to admit that he didn't know how to read. He'd learned all his songs and stories by rote.

"There isn't much time on the road for books," he said awkwardly, and was thankful when Christiana made no further mention of reading.

***

That night, they stopped at Bishop's Waltham, just outside of Winchester. The boys bedded down with the other travelers in the inn's communal hall, but the private rooms were all occupied, so the girls had to sleep in the wagon. Ed told them, apologetically, that it would be safer and perhaps more comfortable as well. Christiana didn't argue—she certainly felt better not having to take her bags out of the wagon. Ed procured some blankets and even pillows from the landlord, scratchy but clean and warm, and Christiana and Maxime settled down for the night in the stable yard at the rear of the inn.

"This is degrading," Maxime complained, shaking out a blanket. "You could have paid the landlord extra for one of the rooms."

"Ed—I mean Sir Edmund advised me to be more careful with my coin, and I agree," Christiana said primly.

"This place reeks." The stable yard did smell rather strongly of horses, but the sweet smell of hay helped to offset that somewhat. Besides, Christiana had been inside the communal hall, and she would gladly take the smell of horses over the smell of fifty unwashed bodies crammed together in one room, not to mention the fleas...

Maxime was unrelenting. "But what if there should be an ambush?"

"We're at the back of the inn. We should be safe enough... or at least have time to flee."

It was a small comfort, and as Christiana lay down in the wagon, listening to the soft whickering of the horses and the swishing of their tails, she forced herself to believe that no harm would come to them, that Vecna was busy scouring the southern ports and would not think to look for her here.

It was late—she'd just heard the Compline bells—when a rustling sound made her sit up, clutching the blanket about her shoulders in a panic. Careful to make as little noise as possible, she slid open the lattice cut into the side of the wagon and looked out.

The moon had risen, bathing the yard in its silver light. By that light, Christiana could see Ed spreading some hay on the ground by the side of the wagon before unfolding a blanket on top of it and lying down. Perhaps he, too, wanted to escape the stench and the vermin of the communal bed. Or perhaps he wanted to make sure the wagon was safe. Or perhaps—dare she even think it?—he wanted to make sure she was safe. Whatever his reason, Christiana was thankful for it. The hammering of her heart slowed, and eventually she slept, secure in the knowledge that Ed was right outside, watching over her.

The next day, they arrived in Winchester. Christiana stared at the rising town walls in awe as they approached. Not only was it much larger and more populous than any town she'd known—almost four times the size of her hometown of Exeter, both in area and people—but it also had the stately air of an old capital and the busyness of a bustling market town. The King's Gate was wide open, showing off the imposing steeples of the Old Minster, which rose above the thatch and slate roofs of the townhouses, and beyond that were the towers of the New Minster, the two abbeys, and the palace of William the Conqueror. Houses and shops lined the streets. The roads leading to the King's Gate and the nearby South Gate were teemed with pilgrims, farmers carrying their freshly harvested crops to the market, and merchants, some from as far as Normandy and Flanders, coming up the Southampton port via the River Itchen, bringing with them wine, spices, silk, and all sorts of goods, and Winchester welcomed them all with open arms.

Perhaps not quite so open. As the travelers drew near, they noticed soldiers standing by the gates, stopping people with their spears. Pilgrims were waved through, while others had their carts and packs checked. Grumbling voices floated down the line, complaining of the delay.

When it came to the turn of Christiana and her companions, they found themselves face-to-face with a sergeant, leading two armed soldiers and a little man carrying a slate and a huge scrip on his girdle.

"What's this?" the sergeant barked. He had a face rather like a hatchet. "What'd you have in that cart?"

"Our instruments and costumes," replied Ed. "We're minstrels."

"Minstrels, eh?" The sergeant waved at his men, who immediately threw open the door to the wagon and started going through the trunks and bags piled inside. Christiana's knees shook. She could only pray that they would not look too closely and find the hard lumps of coins and jewels in her clothes. Next to her, Maxime tightened her grip on the dagger hidden under her cloak, though it would do little good against the soldiers' spears.

"And what is your intention in Winchester?" the sergeant asked, while the soldiers continued their search.

"We're going to do what minstrels do, sir. We sing, we dance, we entertain."

The sergeant's eyes moved over Christiana and her servants. "All of you?"

Ed glanced at Christiana. "No-o," he said slowly. "This is my—wife." Christiana stared at him, trying to hide her surprise. "And her siblings."

The sergeant's eyebrows went up at this unorthodox arrangement. A married minstrel is not unheard of, but the life of a traveling entertainer doesn't lend itself well to matrimonial and familial tangles. Seeing the suspicion on that hatchet-like face, Christiana quickly stepped in.

"If you please, sir," she said, "our patron had his castle seized by"—here she remembered that the Bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, was the younger brother of King Stephen himself, so Winchester must be loyal to the King—"Empress Maud, or rather, her half-brother, so we had to leave. We're going to—Bristol, to stay with my mother for the winter."

Christiana's calculation was correct. At the mention of the Empress, the sergeant's lips curled up contemptuously. "That woman is no Empress," he spat. "Only a pretender." His suspicion now diverted, he nodded at the soldiers again to stop their search of the wagon and turned to the little man with the slate. 

"If you intend to earn money in Winchester," the little man said in a squeaky voice, "then you shall have to pay a toll. One shilling."

Ed and his companions erupted into indignant protests.

"A toll? What toll?"

"We've never had to pay a toll before!"

"A shilling? We're not earning a shilling even if we stay here for a week!"

Christiana was about to speak up, to remind them that they could afford the toll—that she could afford it—but she checked herself in time. As Ed had said, she shouldn't be flaunting her coin. If they paid, it would no doubt raise suspicion as to where the money came from.

Ed was waving a hand to quieten his friends. "What's this, sir?" he asked the sergeant. "We've been through your good town many times before, never had to pay any toll. We're not merchants looking for trade. We're only minstrels."

"Sheriff's order," said the sergeant implacably. "The town's being garrisoned against the Pretender, we need the money."

Christiana went cold all over, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. If Winchester had to prepare against the Empress, it meant the fighting must be close. They couldn't afford to linger.

She tugged at Ed's sleeve. "Perhaps we ought to move on, um, husband," she said. "What if there should be a siege?"

Ed sighed. She could tell he had been looking forward to Winchester; they all had. Though their stay at Bishop's Waltham had not been uncomfortable, Winchester was the promise of rest, even a bath to wash away the dust of the last three days on the road, and a chance to put on a real performance, to make real money, not some roadside show that only earned them a pie here or a flagon of ale there. For Christiana, it was the first town of consequence she'd ever been to, and she had hoped to see its sights, the palaces and abbeys built by Alfred the Great, the mythical touches of King Arthur. But not at the price of their safety.

Ed understood, for he smiled at her and said, "Of course, sweetheart. Let us go."

Christiana's heart jumped. Pull yourself together, girl, she told herself sternly. He's merely acting the part. But she couldn't help thinking that there had been genuine warmth in his smile and in the easy way he'd called her "sweetheart". 

It was with heavy tread and heavier hearts that they turned the wagon away from the gate of Winchester, now no longer looking like welcoming arms but rather like the gaping maw of some terrible beast, ready to swallow up everyone who came through it. They turned west, skirting the town walls. At the West Gate, they stopped again, at a loss. Now they have two choices—to continue west and head for Bristol via Salisbury, or to turn north and push for Gloucester, where they could cross the River Severn into Wales. But west, to Christiana, meant her erstwhile betrothed as well as the menacing Vecna and his men, not to mention the difficulty of securing passage to cross the Bristol Channel. The dwindling of their travel companions was another factor—the pilgrims who had come with them from the south were all stopping at Winchester, while those leaving it were turning east for other pilgrimage sites like Walsingham and Ely, some even going as far north as York and Durham.

"Why don't we take a barge?" asked Dustin. "We can go on the Avon all the way to Bristol and cross the Bristol Channel from there. It would save a lot of walking," he added hopefully, sitting down on the grass and rubbing his feet. Christiana was sorry for the boy. Like herself and Maxime, Dustin was not used to walking long distances, but unlike them, he could not use the excuse of their fairer sex to climb on the wagon whenever his legs were tired.

"Oh, what is it, are those widdle feet tired from a widdle bit of walking?" Gareth said, wrinkling his nose at Dustin.

Dustin jumped to his feet, spoiling for a fight like a cockerel. "Mock me, will you?" he said. "I was merely thinking of my lady—"

"Leave him be, Gareth," Ed said sternly, earning him Dustin's eternal gratitude. "It is a good idea... the only problem is, can any of you swim?" Dustin, Christiana, and Maxime all shook their heads. Although her father's estate was located on the River Exe, Christiana's mother had deemed swimming unladylike and never let her learn. "Right," Ed continued, "so if this Vecna tracks us down somehow, I wouldn't want to be stuck on a barge with nowhere to go. We stay on dry land." None of his companions voiced opposition. No doubt they were used to Ed at the helm and always deferred to him on the matter of their destination.

"So we're for Gloucester, then?" Geoff asked, tightening the strap of the rebab on his shoulder.

Ed gave Christiana a questioning look. "What say you, Mistress Chrissy?"

Christiana faltered. Was she now at the helm? Was she to decide their fates? She had never held such heavy responsibility, and it frightened her. What if she should lead them into danger? Then she looked into Ed's eyes and remembered how he'd slept on the ground outside the wagon to keep her safe, and her fear quietened.

"Gloucester it is," she said.

***

As the bells sounded for Vespers, the sergeant of Winchester signaled for his men to close the gates. It had been a successful day—the toll coffer was full to bursting. The town would be well prepared against the Pretender's forces, should they arrive.

Just when the heavy gate was being pulled shut, a group of riders came thundering up the road. "Halt!" the sergeant shouted to the newcomers. "The gates are closed for the night. If you wish to enter, you must wait for morning."

"We do not wish to enter," said the leader of the group. "We merely seek information."

"Ask away, sir," said the sergeant, for he had glimpsed the crusade cross on the riders' tabards.

"Have you admitted into your town today a party of three, a young lady with a girl and a boy? The young lady is very fair and handsome, the boy dark with curly hair, and the girl a redhead."

"We haven't," said the sergeant slowly. Then he added, enjoying the momentary power he had over the stranger, "But I have seen such a party. Traveling with her husband, the young lady said."

"Husband?" The rider's eyebrows went up.

"She's too pretty a lass to be married to such a scarecrow of a boy, I thought. And he said they were minstrels."

"Minstrels?" The rider turned thoughtful. "Are you sure they didn't stay?"

"Didn't want to pay the toll, did they? They went on. To Bristol."

"Bristol?"

"That's what the young lady said."

The rider nodded. "Much obliged." He nodded to his companions, and, as one, they turned their horses around to gallop back the way they came.

It wasn't until the rider turned his left side toward the setting sun that the sergeant caught the blind eye shining white and pale like a malevolent hag stone under the rider's helmet. He shivered and barked at his men to hasten with the gates, not relishing the thought of such creatures lurking outside the town walls.

Chapter 5

[heardsomedickwasbeinmeantoyou]

TEASER TUESDAY

this is from (what has evolved into) my jealous!eddie fic asdfhjkljjjjsksk. it's canon compliant, so far, and i actually shared the first half for snippet sunday but i'm including it here, too, because it's changed quite a bit since then.

WARNING: i personally have no hate for tommy, but eddie is becoming increasingly jealous af over tevan—and is also devastated about chris leaving and sad in general right now bc of it—and therefore kinda digging in on hating on the guy in this particular story.

.

“It'll always be you, Eds.”

Buck beams at him from across the table and Eddie thinks of Texas sunshine in late July and of violet flames and Supernovas.

He feels his best friend's words and that blinding smile in his gut like a constant, gnawing hunger, but Eddie's an old hand at starving himself of his desires and doesn't know how to answer anyway so just winks and smiles back, and it's a dim little effort peeking out from the cover of the shady place Eddie's been cowering in for a while—ever since the brutal incandescence of the lightning strike, since Buck fucking died—while he tries his utmost not to freak out two-fold: 1) at the non-stop panic attack-inducing possibility of something as completely fucked-up as those three minutes and seventeen seconds happening al over again and 2) self-abasing distress over whether or not here is just where Eddie lives, now.

Dwindling in the shadows.

He crosses his arms over his chest (his heart) and breathes in deeply yet silently, and is motionless as possible as he prays his wild-eyed expression isn't giving away his hard-won hiding place.

Buck shouldn't be able to just—say stuff like that to him. It's torture. And while Eddie may very well be a masochist, he does have his limits. Sure, right now his partner is actually only talking about them teaming up for Pictionary and whatever other games the group will undoubtedly end up threatening each other over this evening, but still. Eddie can't help but hear some things in the way he is so desperate to hear them.

Those things he wishes Buck meant for real.

Whether Eddie is capable of openly admitting it or not (maybe he has some kind of weird defect when it comes to this shit?), he now knows inherently that it'll always be Buck for him from here on out

Then Buck is merciless, adding, “You're my Ride or Die, Diaz! It's you and me forever, right?” just to up the torture and consequently murder Eddie in cold blood right here in the middle of Hen and Karen's living room in front of all their friends.

And ¡Dios mio!, Eddie is so totally fucking fucked.

Despite himself, he nods and huffs out a small laugh, confirming, “Ride or Die, Buckley,” while cursing the blood vessels in his neck and cheeks and ears as he flushes a shade of scarlet redder than the sacred Mexican Heart under the scrutiny of the entire gang (bar Bobby and Athena), fists clenching further where they're balled up beneath his armpits.

Chimney raises his beer in the air. “Alright, alright, settle down you bunch of reprobates! All Ride or Die teams have been established, so, everybody buddy up and take your places beside each other now, please. I believe that you all have a drink…” and he looks around the table to check if his estimate is correct before continuing. “Yes, cool, okay, so. It is therefore once again time to find out who this month's Most Powerful Party Gaming Duo will be—” and he turns to Maddie and says, “Don't worry pookie, nobody's taking away our reigning champion title tonight; we got this.”

Maddie smiles at her husband, sweet as sugar cookies, before addressing the rest of the room with a savage, “Get ready to have your asses handed to you, Losers!” 

There is a round of disgusted gasps being gasped and disbelieving heads being shaken and defensive fists being waved in the air, all amid Hen's, “Reigning champions? You won one time. And who the hell made you Gamesmaster Han, anyway? My house, my rules, Howard.” And then Karen's adding, “I think you'll find it's actually our house, my rules, babe,” in her wife's direction, she and everybody else now moving around the table like they're playing musical chairs—Eddie stubbornly stays put because if you ask him, it's more than enough that he's managing to be here, period—as each of them pairs up with their chosen teammates into squads made up of Significant Others.

Husband and wife. Wife and wife. Two sets of Boyfriends and girlfriends. Josh and his date. 

Eddie and Buck. 

Except it isn’t Eddie and Buck, not really. Not at all, actually, at least not in the way Eddie wants it to be—fucking needs it like his blood needs to move oxygen around his body to keep him alive—because Eddie will only ever be Buck’s ‘forever’ whenever Tommy isn’t around.

The Air Operations pilot is on shift tonight, thank fuck. Eddie honestly isn’t sure of what he would have done if Buck’s boyfriend had come over this evening. Bailed on the whole thing, probably. 

He becomes vaguely aware of the half-moon shapes that must be forming in the heels of his palms from where his short fingernails are trying their best to break the skin, and wonders when exactly it was that he started referring to his buddy, Tommy, as ‘The Pilot’. Although Eddie isn't sure of whether the term buddy can really be applied any longer, not since the dynamics between Tommy and Buck changed, and Eddie hasn’t heard from Pilot Boy in weeks. And, okay, so the reason for that is most likely the fact that Eddie kept brushing the guy off like a first class asshole, until Tommy just stopped bothering to call. But honestly, he just can’t bring himself to give a shit about whatever the new buddyship between the pair of them might have bloomed into—not when the sneaky fuck stole his Buck.

If the skin on the palms of Eddie’s hands wasn’t so calloused from work he's pretty sure there'd be blood dripping from them right now. 

“Hey, you okay, man?”

Buck has swapped seats with May and is now bumping Eddie’s shoulder and knee with his own, and Eddie wants to fucking die. 

“What? Oh, sure, peachy. You?” 

“Yeah, I'm good, Eddie. You just—you look a little—” 

“How we feelin’ about our odds tonight then, amigo? Think we can take the title?” Eddie can't change the subject fast enough. 

Steady as ever, Buck just goes with the flow and rolls with Eddie's punches like the seasoned champ he is. 

“I really think tonight could be our night, Eds.” 

Pure. Fucking. Torture.

“Eh, your artistic prowess isn't exactly well documented, Buck.”

Buck scoffs in mock-offence that has a little too much bite for it to be entirely pretend. “I absolutely beg to differ, actually, and so would—”

Christopher.

Their eyes meet for less than a second before Eddie is looking away, yet that's all it takes for him to spot the anguish swirling round his best friend's baby blues. It's like oil in water: Two things that should just never be put together.

“Eds—”

Eddie clears his throat and tries to swallow down the lump that's instantly formed, in an attempt to fill the other gaping hole in his heart; the one that sits right next to the empty space that belongs to Buck.

He can't do this right now. Not here.

“To be fair, I'm not much better, so.” His voice sounds like somebody else's.

Somebody better than him.

Again, Buck pulls on the thread Eddie's left dangling for him, the way he's supposed to. “Well that is bullshit and you know it,” he counters, with a parental look of admonishment that's become polished over the years with the ton of practice that he's had with—

This time Eddie can't keep his deep breathing covert, so he sucks in two big lungs full before exhaling sharply and grabbing at his beer. He takes a long swig to distract himself from his wayward thoughts, and the IPA is nowhere near as bitter as the foul taste already festering away on his tongue.

“You're too hard on yourself, Eddie. You always have been. You need to—you gotta learn to be kinder to yourself, man. Realise that—that some things, such as art,” Buck says pointedly, as if Eddie doesn't know that he's not talking exclusively about Eddie's mediocre willow charcoal skills, “they can just—take a little extra time and patience, is all.” 

God, Eddie loves him so much he aches right down to his fucking bone marrow.

.

tagged by the lovely @inell — thanks, boo! my tags are beneath the cut...

@rosieposiepuddingnpie @sortasirius @angela-feelstoomuch @woodchoc-magnum @veronae-buddie @kitteneddiediaz @buddiebeginz @eddiegettingshot @mazzystar24 and anybody else who wants to do the thing!

[cryptidsurveys]

Sunday, December 22nd, 2024.

when you wake up to pee at night, do you turn on the light?: I don't turn on my bedroom light, but I do turn on the bathroom light.

when was the last time you got a fresh box of crayons?: Probably not since I was a teenager.

what color is your favorite towel?: Pale pink.

do you know anyone’s phone number by heart?: I know my own number, my mom's and dad's numbers, our old house phone number, and my childhood friend Aurora's number.

do you wear hoodies?: Yep. I'm wearing one right now.

what was the last gift you gave someone?: I ordered an Ed Gorey calendar for my mom for Christmas but it hasn't arrived yet, and I'll be bringing an Oreo and Christmas M&M coffee cake to the animal shelter tomorrow (it's in the oven right now). Also, my mom gave me these absolutely adorable kitty measuring cups and spoons, as well as some tiny skillets. <3

do you cook on the stove at all, or just microwave: Only occasionally. I use the microwave much more frequently.

do you ever debate religion with your friends?: Oliver and I don't really talk about religion, but I just assume that they lean more toward atheism. My dad is the only person with whom I openly discuss the subject.

do you keep your shampoo in the shower or someplace else: I keep it in the shower.

something your mother said or did that shocked you: My mom told me at lunch today that she and my sibling are no longer in touch - at least for the time being, anyway. Apparently, they sent her some pretty nasty text messages out of the blue and she decided not to respond. She is hoping that they will reach out and apologize at some point, but who knows. I feel bad for her. I feel some level of "detached empathy" for my sibling as well because I know what it's like to be in deep emotional turmoil, but even so, it's no excuse for treating her that way and I hope she will set some strong boundaries going forward. I also sincerely hope that my sibling will get therapy one day because I know it sure as heck helped me resolve a lot of shit that was keeping me stuck and hurting the people around me. Trouble is...and this is just my assumption...but I don't think they see anything wrong with their behavior. Everyone else is the problem.

A song you play over and over and over when no one is around: There isn't one.

how many different homes have you live in: Two different homes, one apartment, and two duplexes.

did your mom go to college?: She went to a trade school. Not sure about the name.

If your best friend was a vegetable, what would they be?: I just sent them a message on IG so hopefully they will get back to me before I post this survey... Okay - verdict is in; they are CORN. They said it defines their whole personality. I was all, "can literally go through shit and come out whole," and they said, "I was going to say it has a lot more sugar in it than you would expect, but that works so much better." ;D

where is the best place you know to take a dog for a walk?: There's a neighborhood park not far from here. You could also take them for a walk at the Nature Center or the trail along the Arkansas River. There's a dog park on the south side of town as well if you're interested in that sort of thing.

are there any crazy sandwich combinations you like to eat?: Not really. They might not be common, but it's not like I'm out here creating edible crimes against humanity.

which food do you think you have the most cans of in your cupboard?: Beans.

Do you save fortunes from fortune cookies?: I've saved some of them.

are you offended when Christmas is spelled Xmas?: No.

where do you put your keys when you come home?: I put them in the drawer under the counter with the microwave.

what is your favorite movie theater snack or candy?: Popcorn, chocolate, pretzel bites, nachos.

do you prefer rugs or bare floors?: Carpets and rugs are cozy, but they're also pretty gross. If I had my choice, then I would have hardwood flooring.

describe your favorite mug or glass to drink from?: My Christmas kitty mug. I realized the other day that it is not, in fact, a calico cat. It's white with tan spots only. I also recently purchased a gift set that had a couple of mugs in it; they're pine green on the inside, white on the outside, and decorated with pinecones and (I believe) sprigs of holly.

if you needed a pair of scissors now, could you find them in 5 minutes?: Yeah. There's a pair in the kitchen.

If your bestie said your significant other is a douche, what would you say: I'm not in a relationship, but I would definitely take their assessment seriously.

your favorite app on your phone: Youtube.

your bad habit that you love the most: Smoking.

invent a pop tart flavor: Marshmallow and sweet potato. "A marshmallow and sweet potato poptart would be a pastry similar to a traditional poptart, but with a filling made from mashed sweet potato, likely sweetened with a bit of brown sugar or cinnamon, and topped with a layer of melted marshmallow on the inside before being sealed and baked, creating a sweet and gooey flavor profile reminiscent of the classic Thanksgiving side dish of sweet potato with marshmallows." Thanks, Google AI, for bringing my vision to life.

do you name your pets after tv/movie/book characters: No.

[longing-for-rain]

Genuine question but how do you have dysphoria and don’t seem like you are trans? How does that work? Isn’t trans the cure to dysphoria?

My situation is complicated, to say the least, but I guess most people's are. The short answer is no. Long answer...buckle up because I'm half dead from adrenal insufficiency and it's honesty hour. Don't read this if EDs/body image/SA stuff bothers you.

So I did have gender dysphoria along with other body image issues, and still do. However as of right now, it's hard to define exactly how I feel about my body because my hormones are so fucked. Right now I either feel like an ogre or a wisp of smoke depending on the day. Today is a wisp of smoke day.

About the gender dysphoria, I've had this most of my life, waaaay before I knew the words to describe it. I always liked "boy things" and thought "girl things" were stupid. I wished that I was a boy, and because I couldn't be a boy, I distanced myself from being "girly" as much as I could. I was basically a tomboy with an inferority complex. It got way worse with puberty because that drew even more attention to the ways I was different than boys. Especially me with my huge boobs (not bragging, I actually hate them). Over the years, I've identified as pretty much everything including "demigirl" and "nonbinary" and "transmasc." I was sexually harassed a lot and nearly assaulted as a teen. At 18 I actually was assaulted. At 18-21 I was sexually abused online, and at 22 again in person. Believe it or not, it was this very fandom I was sexually abused in. The abuser was good at hiding it; "let's talk on voice call so there's no evidence" she told me. So naturally this person (who was like 11 years older than me and wayyyy more chronically online/involved in fandom communities) manipulated the situation to make me look crazy and turn everyone against me. She had me convinced the way to be a good woman/girlfriend was to have men abuse me. Her friends would openly brag about the depraved shit their men did. I saw women talk about themselves like they were dirt. I saw a conservative christian younger than me talk about how she looooved sucking her boyfriend's unwashed dick (her words) because it made her feel like a good woman. I was made to feel crazy for thinking there might be a problem here, and for a while, I really internalized that.

Sheesh, that was a lot. All that to say: I truly hated being a woman. That was my ugly exposure to how the world views women and how they view themselves, and I wanted no part of it. During this time, I attempted suicide twice. In those moments, just before I pulled myself back, I believed I was better off dead than living as a woman. If all those disgusting, horrible things I was exposed to were what being a "good woman" meant...I would rather be dead. To be completely honest, last summer, I was fully prepared to and the main reason I applied to law school was to give myself a new goal to work towards. Without that, I probably would have gone through with suicide.

BUT don't worry, I very much do not feel that way anymore. At the end of last year, something unexpected happened. I found out I had a brain tumor. As it turns out, since about 2020, this small tumor had been pumping out excess cortisol and testosterone without me knowing. I originally was diagnosed with "severe PCOS" because of the testosterone, which I noticed when I started growing a beard. That wasn't the only body change though. This disease made me gain a ton of weight, gave me a weird fat distribution that made me feel literally like a hideous ogre, gave me acne, made my hair fall out, put me at risk for diabetes and heart issues, and made me feel constantly exhausted, anxious, depressed, irritable, and paranoid. I also couldn't sleep properly, which only made these problems worse.

Needless to say, all that shit brewing during the worst years of my life (2020-2024), was an interesting development to my dysphoria. I actually liked some of the androgen effects at first. I grew facial hair, excess body hair, and my voice deepened. Made me feel manly, and I liked that. What I didn't like was the prediabetes and mental health nightmare that came with it. The tumor made me realize something. I wanted to be a muscular hot man, not the bald fat man it was making me. That's the thing about hormones though, as I had a painful crash course in. Hormones don't just control cosmetic type characteristics; they are signaling molecules interconnected in a complex feedback system. They influence our entire bodies, and a disruption to this balance is disaster. I'm still reeling from it, and it's been going on for so long I don't remember the feeling of "normal."

But more importantly, another realization I had, the image of the "me" in my head was unrealistic, and what it really represented was my desire to by admired for my strength. Same thing with how my past desires to be thinner were a reflection of my desires to be appreciated and praised by family members who constantly degraded themselves and other women for their weight. I felt wrong in my body because the world around me made me hate it. And if you want to change your body because you hate it, you'll never be happy, because that standard you hold yourself to in your head is a fantasy. Reality never compares to fantasy, so chasing that standard didn't solve my problems.

As of right now, I'm finally in recovery. I feel drained because my body is detoxing cortisol and learning how to function again, but there is a good feeling in knowing I'm healing. I'm not saying I'm glad that I had this disease, but the experience of having it gave me a new perspective on life. It taught me a lot about myself and about the world.

So to finally answer your question, no, I don't desire to transition for the reasons I explained. I still am dysphoric and some days wish to have been born a man. But I already got a taste of excess testosterone, and I saw what it did to me. Like I said; wasn't turning into a muscular pretty boy like I wanted to, was turning into a fat balding man. Not to mention the other health problems on top of that.

What I've found works best for me to manage my dysphoria is to stop putting myself in boxes. I don't need to identify as anything or be in any kind of club. I'm just me, and that's it. My dysphoria tells me I need to be a man so I can be strong, powerful, and respected, I tell my dysphoria that I can be all of those things regardless of what I am. Not going to lie, being naturally tall helps me a lot, but I also work out to feel and look strong. I've been working on being more assertive and practicing public speaking. I'm pursuing a law degree. I'm eating a clean and healthy diet. I'm picking up old hobbies. I'm learning musical instruments. I'm learning art. I'm cleaning and organizing my space. I'm doing all of these things because I can, I love myself enough to give myself an enriched life. And now, I don't want my identity to be what I am; I want it to be who I am. Because there is only one me.

Also, I found that stopping the focus on looks so much...actually helped with looks. I've lost most of the weight I gained while I had my disease. I have buff biceps. My skin is clearer than it has been in years and my hair is growing back. All that happened because I focused on my health (and got the damn tumor out) out of self love. I still don't look like an "after picture" but I still love myself and I feel great. I'm finally starting to feel how I felt before my disease, and it makes me appreciate health more than I ever could have known I would.

Rant over! I'm going to pass out now.

[whinlatter]

author's note | chapter 9: wintering ❄️

thank you so much for reading chapter 9 of beasts. in this chapter, ginny goes home for christmas, back into the fold of the family that anchored the anti-voldemort movement now grieving the loss of a brother and a son - and finds it's tougher to keep secrets from one harry james potter than she might otherwise have thought. this was a tough chapter to write, and one i cared a lot about trying to get right. so - let's have a chat about it (and a little sneak peek of chapter 10)...

✨ spoilers for this chapter below the cut  ✨

writing notes and headcanons:

writing: this is the first chapter where i’ve strayed from the chapter plan and shunted scenes to a future chapter. i ummed and ahhed about it, then remembered no-one else knows what the plot is and what this chapter was supposed to be, then got a grip lol. lesson learned - if it’s hard work and it feels like you’re trying to force it, you probably are, so chill out lmao

this ended up, then, as a chapter about families. we see the blacks, the order itself, andromeda and teddy’s new little unit, little glimpse of the lovegoods - and the possibility of new families, most obviously in the case of bill and fleur’s baby on the way. at the core of this chapter, though, are the weasleys, this openly political family of freedom fighters, first family of the resistance, and a family thoroughly scarred by war. i’ve talked a bit about this elsewhere, but i have always been so struck that the weasleys enter the narrative as add-ons to ron, harry’s mate, but over the series increasingly become the core of the entire anti-voldemort movement, with a history of resistance and also of grief and sacrifice (fabian and gideon). so this chapter spends some time with each member of the family, a little panorama of the weasleys eight months on from the battle to see how they’re all coping (or not). it was really really important to me that each family member’s grief and emotional state got a moment in this chapter. partly this is because i think that writing character-centric fiction shouldn’t neglect attending to the broader emotional context of the ensemble around a character, but also because each family member is quietly showing ginny the different ways they’re all responding to fred’s death in ways that might get her thinking about who she feels most similar to and who her family needs her to be. that bill is the only family member who answers ginny’s wish that her family would talk about fred more and stop avoiding saying his name was deliberate. with his parents struggling so much, bill is clearly stepping up as the person to look after his family. he’s aware of his own emotional responses, he’s discussing his own grief, but he’s also looking to the future, making plans for it and trying to improve the world he’ll spend it in, even though he knows  it’ll be bittersweet. it was important for me to have ginny to have that behaviour modelled to her from someone she singularly admires.

space: as the plot of ginny looking back and processing a childhood at war progresses, i wanted to draw together and quietly contrast two spaces, grimmauld place and the burrow. these are the two headquarters of the order of the phoenix, two family homes, two sites of familial rupture - and, now,  two places equally haunted by the ghosts of people who once lived there and who are now gone. writing this chapter i did a lot of imagining the communal spaces in both residences kind of as a set for a play with ensemble characters walking on and off stage at whim, which actually made the whole thing much easier when i was freaking out about having too big a cast for one chapter lol.

harry and ginny: see here!

molly weasley: my real soapbox issue for this chapter is that molly weasley’s grief really, really matters. i know molly is rarely anyone’s blorbo. she’s increasingly hated in certain corners of the fandom (check the most kudos-ed fic tagged under molly & ginny lol) and even among those people who like molly, lots of postwar fics focussing on different characters’ pics have her just sort of return to normal, get back to fussing about the house and the kids’ relationships and careers in her mumsy way. i do get this: it’s hard to want to give a lot of time in a fic to a (usually) tertiary character’s grief rather than the protagonist’s, especially when everyone is grieving, and molly is an often convenient source of either amusement, nuisance or even antagonism in hinny fics (many of my own favourites!) for her (seemingly) conservative views on sexuality and her busybody behaviour. but i’ve never subscribed to this in my own headcanon as a canon coherent choice, simply because canon is very clear that molly weasley’s worst nightmare is the death of one of her children, and that nightmare happens. (in fact, it’s even worse than she imagines in the boggart, because even in her worst nightmares she didn’t imagine one of the twins dying and not the other.) while i absolutely do not want to relate this fictional loss to the real life experiences of friends and family who have known terrible loss, it was important to me to try and write an alternative version of molly that centred her grief in a way that felt plausible and true, and acknowledged that the loss she and arthur have endured is one that would change them enormously.. truthfully, i don’t think either character would ever really be ok again (which why grief is so hard to work with narratively - it offers no neat conclusions or easily legible arcs of healing).over the past few months, ginny has been worrying about a very teenage set of worries re molly, stressing about her mother’s response to her losing the captaincy and poor school performance, thinking she might get a howler, gearing up for a fight over whether harry can sleep in her bed - only to get home to find her mum has fallen apart. narratively, i wanted ginny to see her mum like this, and to finally start to understand why her mum was so insistent on her being a child and having a childhood and keep her away from the war that ginny was so desperate to fight in. 

the other point here, and i do feel strongly about this, is that for a fandom very interested in how families, loss and trauma during wars shapes characters (marauders fics are some of the richest best explorations of these themes), i worry we don’t care nearly enough about what molly weasley goes through, and about how women respond to their grief in complicated and nuanced ways. as @saintsenara has pointed out, the lack of attention paid to molly weasley’s backstory and grief over her brothers, and especially her grief after fred’s death, smacks of misogyny. perhaps molly’s frumpy mumsy unchic domesticity fretting about her children’s grades makes her not a cool enough character to care about her pain: perhaps it’s that she beefs sirius, everyone’s traumatised fave (and a character i adore). but i do really care in this fic about offering a rendering of molly that shows a possible way she would respond to fred's death, now seeing in her children the grief she has lived with already for so long, no longer able to return to the person she was before. i think molly weasley is a person who understands how their awful world works and tries to encourage her children into a path that will provide for them with material security and offer chances to do meaningful work towards reform. and while you can disagree with that as advice to her children, i don't think that worldview invalidates her right to thorough, compassionate treatments in fics and analysis as a character who is so very loved and special to harry. molly weasley is the only person who demands these children have a childhood and we should not forget it!

andromeda: ahhh man. ok this chapter i learnt people writing andromeda are really strong soldiers because i tried like 30 different characterisations until i found one that didn’t make me want to gouge my own eyes out. she couldn’t be too warm, because she’s a) a black and b) canonically wary of strangers and quick to be offended/insulted (ted’s the gentle one of the two of them). she does have to have a certain domesticity to her because tonks mentions her knack for household charms, but couldn’t be overly mumsy, in contrast to molly, because tonks clearly was drawn to molly’s mothering instincts (early HBP kitchen scene) in ways that suggest andromeda’s were less obvious. i wanted her to be a proud person, someone polite but wary, self conscious (and self critical) of her own particularities and mistakes as a parent, who has a working relationship with harry but not a maternal one, and who would probably be a bit suspicious of all these teenagers playing with teddy, who is now the centre of her world, lest they drop him on his head or stand on his baby toes. i imagine ginny and andromeda having a cordial but eventually slightly fractious relationship - 'girlfriend of the teenage godson to my orphaned grandson' is a weird role to play in a person’s life, after all. i can see ginny reminding andromeda of the daughter she lost, and it was fun to draw that out a bit here (andromeda immediately kibboshing the broomstick idea as a case in point).

relatedly sirius: finally getting to begin using some of my sirius scenes now we’re at grimmauld place 😈 i’m really excited about the plot to draw in the memory of sirius in this fic, and so it seemed right to begin bringing him in in a chapter about families, generations (mothers!) and what living with trauma and grief after war can do to a person. we see him finally arrive in person in a flashback to the day the weasleys arrived in his house, freshly reconfined to grimmauld and sullen because of it, but also being perceived by ginny and the weasleys as someone with great presence. he becomes the subject of a great deal of interest and hero worship by the twins and ginny, with only ron (following hermione) noting that sirius black does not seem to be a well man. sometimes in fics the (understandable) impulse to focus on sirius’ good godfather traits can be taken a bit too far with authors overstating how warm/inviting/interested sirius would be in the parade of weasleys who move in with him at a very low moment for him personally. i liked having sirius being sort of shrug about their arrival, having only the briefest moment with ginny where a commonality between them (the betrayal of a brother) is identified but saying nothing about it. sirius black is in no place to reassure someone about sibling estrangement. ginny, in her approach to sirius, tries to position herself in opposition to her mother, apologising for her with an eye roll kind of vibe, and raging at her for excluding her from the order meeting when no one else was. she also expresses empathy with sirius’ plight of being confined for your own protection when you really want to fight and have your revenge (👀). meanwhile, in the present, harry and ginny wake up in sirius’ childhood bed, spend the day inside grimmauld watched on by paps, and the ginny goes back to her own family home, where she throws herself into christmas planning and prepping to try and raise spirits and distract from all of the shit going on, à la sirius in ootp. (i’ll finish that sirius and ginny meta before the next chapter i swear). 

dolohov: me, a few months ago, realising that the man killed fabian and gideon prewett also killed remus

percy: so far in beasts, percy has come up only in passing - unfavourable press coverage, and on the board in graves’ classroom, part of the machine that sent muggleborns to azkaban and some, in all probability, to their deaths. lots of brilliant brilliant fics (some rec’d below) explore percy plausibly as a resistance agent working within the ministry, but i’m always a bit suspicious of this reading, given his line in the room of req  (‘it’s been coming on for a while, but I had to find a way out and it’s not so easy at the Ministry, they’re imprisoning traitors all the time’ - this doesn’t sound to me like a road to damascus moment the second scrimgeour died, does it? when exactly did you realise you'd fucked up perce? like babe you’re the assistant to the minister - how many people did you help imprison, given the muggleborn registration commission was up and thriving within a month of the ministry takeover?) i think, whatever the extent of percy’s resistance (and there will be more on this!), it’s clear that ginny, of all of the siblings, would probably be the least likely to forgive percy. it’s not just that the decisions he makes are so far from her own, or that his treatment of her parents was egregious, it’s also her loyalty and ferocious protectiveness of harry, who percy royally fucks over at every possible turn with little remorse. (he doesn’t engage with or apologise to harry in the room of requirement!) ginny wasn’t there with percy when fred died like ron was, an experience that i think would help ron decide life’s too short and make a cordial peace with percy. i think ginny would want percy to feel a hell of a lot of shame before ever warming up to him again. i like percy as a character, i think his arc is so good, but i also find satisfaction putting him in the corner at the weasley christmas with old xeno, stood with the other guy who should have done the brave thing and didn’t.  just because your family tease you doesn’t mean you should commit war crimes!

teddy: me writing this chapter like 

the order: the interaction i have in this chapter between lee and ginny, over whether the order beat voldemort, is my attempt to get something i have been thinking a lot about without much resolution, which is (partly) what does the order actually do, but also how do the order think about the end of the war when it turns out they kind of were peripheral to the effort of winning it? obviously they did some things, and order members obviously fought in the battle, but the order actually were instrumentalised by dumbledore into a bigger plot that involved harry that he kept them in the dark about. i think it would be very weird for the order in the aftermath of war to think about what their efforts really meant when their losses are huge and their accomplishments minimal, other than helping keep harry alive at times - and weirder still for ginny, who was never old enough to join and was kept at arm’s length from the soldiers’ table only to find out those soldiers didn’t really matter anyway.  no profound takes just curiosity on my part, but very interested if anyone has any takes on this!

ron and hermione: very sorry to the lovely anon who just asked about hermione — saying nothing for now but what do you think’s going on there! weird innit. a real mystery. if only someone would tell us

harry’s kitchenware collection: what’s up with that hmmmmmm

songs on the playlist for this chapter:

i listened to a lot of choral music for this chapter - ofc christian symbolism is all over the series (can't move for it), so was leaning into that a bit (lol), and the little church by the graveyard in godric's hollow with the muggles inside on christmas eve has always struck me as a very beautiful and sad image, so i was trying to channel those vibes too a bit in this chapter (ginny and bill listening to the carols in the village in the garden, and the view from molly and arthur's window of the ottery st catchpole church spire). my favourite is the holst arrangement for lullay, mine liking, a fifteenth century carol originally in middle english, which has these very tender lyrics that are about the infant christ but also work painfully well for molly's grief: lullay, mine liking, my dear son, my sweeting.

lullay my liking (arr. holst) by the godley singers | hey, ma by bon iver | gregorian chant for the dead by aurora surgit and alessio randon | 7 o'clock news/silent night by simon & garfunkel | i don't like my mind by mitski | this is me trying - the long pond studio version by taylor swift | should have known better by sufjan stevens (i mean - my brother had a daughter/the beauty that she brings - illumination. perfect no?) | hope by james newton howard (i have a lot of songs from the soundtrack to terence malick's incredibly beautiful film a hidden life on this playlist, because that film remains a real touchstone for the visuals i'm imagining for a lot of this fic but also a lot of the vibes of family and resistance)

reading list: 

on percy (loads here):

dawn is coming, open your eyes by dialux (an all time fave) The Last Something That Meant Anything by Anonymous (TW for sexual assault) 'Hope' is a Thing With Feathers by PeachyKeener

on molly (and molly and ginny):

Every Mother is a Grave by @witchofimber Mother, any distance greater than a single span by Simon Armitage (did anyone else read this for gcse english lit and still find themselves thinking about it a dozen years later?

on sirius and molly:

'He slammed the door in her face' by @ashesandhackles Meta: An alternative read on Sirius and Molly's argument also by @ashesandhackles

on andromeda:

turncoat: in defense of andromeda tonks née black by dirgewithoutmusic

on teddy and the potter family:

little accomplishments by irnan

ok technically i am cheating with this sneak peek because technically i shared a bit of this scene a bazillion years ago/way back in january, a month or so before i started putting the fic out (over here), so here's... a bit more of it hehe:

‘Did it hurt?’ she asks. ‘Becoming an Animagus?’ His laugh is a bark. ‘Unbelievably.’  ‘It must have been worth it, though.’  ‘It’s hard to know what things are worth.’ Definitely in one of those moods.

[notoriousbeb]

TTPD Thoughts - The Manuscript (Pt. 1)

TTPD Notes Glossary

"Fortnight"  

Definitely written in the spring of 2023. I think the video was shot in the fall.  

The concept of treason/being a traitor comes up in reference to Harry in 1989 as well (“you dream of my mouth before it called you a lying traitor”)  

In the music video, the typewriter Taylor is using is missing the 1 key (like the song “The 1”?) and she leaves several blank spaces in her writing of “I love you, it’s ruining my life” (perhaps a nod to the “Blank Space” song?)  

When Taylor and Post Malone are laying in the Taylor head silhouette it's a callback to the "Style" music video from the original 1989 era, where the Harry stand in guy is standing on a beach in a silhouette of Taylor's head.  

You know who is tattooed and kinda hot and thus a good Harry stand in a MV? Posty.  

I think she's envisioning a kind of nightmare future of being trapped in the metaphorical neighborhood that is their small industry and having to watch him move on while she continues to love him (ugh. thanks, it's beautiful and sounds awesome and i hate it).  

The last new album, "Midnights,” ends with "Hits Different,” on the line, "Is that your key in the door, down the hallway? Is that your key in the door, is it okay? Is it you? Or have they come to take me away? To take me away?" First line of Fortnight, the first song on TTPD? "I was supposed to be sent away but they forgot to come and get me.”  

A slight diversion into "Hits Different" and why I've always believed it's about Harry:  She's clubbing, so that narrows down the choices right away to either Harry or Calvin, but based on how she went right from Calvin to Tom to Joe and was definitely not heartbroken enough to be puking, but rather immediately enamored with someone else....We learn that, technically, she broke up with him ("curse the space that I needed") but she's devastated. Like "I broke my own heart, cuz you were too polite to do it?" This really seals it as 1989 Harry to me.  

“The Tortured Poets Department”  

Definitely written in the spring of 2023  

“Who else decodes you?” reminds me of how Harry called their back-and-forth song writing to/about each other (cue the “Fortnight” typewriter smoke battle) “the most amazing unspoken dialogue ever.”  

A “tattooed golden retriever?” I mean… come the fuck on. That’s a Harry descriptor if I’ve ever seen one.  

“You’re in self-sabotage mode, throwing spikes down on the road, but I’ve seen this episode and I still love the show.” “You awaken with dread pounding nails in your head. But I’ve read this one where you come undone." These aren’t the words of someone who merely wondered about what it would be like to be with a friend or acquaintance. These are two people who deeply know each other and have been together before.  

Also, Harry has documented anxiety that she’s also sung about it previously (“did you get anxious though, on the drive home?” - Now That We Don’t Talk)  

I hate and love the fact that they both told people they would kill themselves if it didn’t work out. I hate it, because that’s a terrible, dumb plan. But I love the passion. Also, who is Lucy? Was he taking to Lucy from Boygenius? That Lucy openly dislikes Matty on main, so I think it’s weird people are using her as a proof point that this song is about him. Did Taylor change that particular name here because it would have been a dead giveaway for this song being about Harry?  (Someone like, Ed, perhaps?)

“My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys  

Probably written in spring 2023  

She refers to the muse as the “sickest (I believe this is a double meaning as in cool and also having mental illness issues) army doll purchased at the mall.”  

You ever seen a G.I. Joe under the fatigues? They don’t look like a pasty ex heroin addict. They do look like a certain former boy-bander from Manchester, though. Just saying.  

“Oh, here we go again,” “put me back on my shelf,” “we could’ve played for keeps this time,” “I knew too much/there was danger in the heat of my touch,” “he saw forever so he smashed it up.” Again, these are things you say about someone you’ve been with before, on and off, not someone you saw in concert twice and worked with once. You, especially, don’t see forever with someone after only 20 days.  

“But you should’ve seen him when he first got me.” We did see Matty. Was there someone else in the background who, perhaps, we did not see? Perhaps a certain curly haired former Boy Bander?

“‘Cause it fit too right/Puzzles pieces in the dead of night.” Hmm. Doesn’t sound like the mediocre sex described in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” to me

Want to know what lines had me crying in the club on my sad girl walk? “Just say when—I’d play again. He was my best friend down at the sand lot.” Again, these are two people who know each other very well, and have for a long time.  

[daydreamerdrew]

Action Comics (2016) #1066

Lena could be soo much harsher here about growing up confined to an island with just her grandmother, “who hated living there so much that she made my life a living hell,” that it reminds me of the original Lena forgiving Lex for trading her away to Brainiac 13:

Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #117

I think that considering that Lena could forgive a completely remorseless Lex, it makes sense that she wouldn’t ultimately hold a grudge against a Lex that’s openly trying. but the concept there was that Lena would understand why Lex did what he did as a fellow Luthor, and in the current comics it’s that she’s a good person and finally believes that he’s a good person, too.

it could be that that wasn’t actually why Lena sided with Lex over Brainiac 13. Lena later instinctively called Lex “daddy” when she was in danger. and Lena said, after Brainiac 13 had tortured her for working against him, l as Superman did something Brainiac 13 thought was impossible, “You’d be s-surprised what meat is capable of… when the heart is involved,” which is a more positive view of human nature than Lex espouses here and that Lena is presumed to agree with. it could be that she sided with Lex because she craved what she thought would be a more positive relationship with him than the one she had with Brainiac 13. but I’m not completely committed to that because Lena having that dark worldview is itself compelling.

I understand the current comics going the route that it did by portraying Lena as a largely regular person with regular morals because it’s not as though there were previously any portrayals of Lena neither as-a-baby and during her being Brainiac-ed to contradict that. (our only other point of data for Lena’s perspective is that the A.I. made from a copy of Lena’s brain at the moment she was traded away to Brainiac 13, who appeared in Superman: Metropolis (2003), totally hated Lex for what he did.)

also, I think there’s actually a throughline here between original Lex having Lena’s mother placed in a coma right after giving birth and then handling a lot of Lena’s childcare himself instead of paying people to do it so that Lena would love only him, and current Lex sending Lena away to be isolated on a private island in order to hide her so she isn’t taken by Brainiac again, but also because “I didn’t want you in my life until I was something better.” it’s really a selfish approach that places his own emotional needs above Lena’s and doesn’t fully respect her as a person that has interiority. that Lex would ‘visit’ Lena digitally to just stare at her and then leave is reminiscent to me of how original Lex would talk to, or rather talk at, baby Lena all the time.

I know the intention is meant to be that Lex is genuinely a good person now, but that’s just not interesting to me…

[rosiewitchescottage]

I'm not American but I do know where talk about sex should be left alone and where it definitely shouldn't be.

So here's my take.

Is it between consenting adults, only? Then The Government shouldn't be anywhere close. It's not their business.

Straight Sex, Gay Sex, Vanilla Sex, Kinky Sex. It doesn't matter. If there are no minors. no abuse and no breaking of consent, then people are free to indulge and experiment with partners of their choice.

The porn question. I'm not going there. I've looked at both sides and they both have points to make.

Dildos? Sex toys. As long as they're only available in adults only shops. They shouldn't be The Government's business either.

But there are times when they definitely should be stepping in. And frankly, it's a worry if they don't.

Kink should not openly be in public places. Fine. You want to set up an exhibitionism scene? Then you do it with care and discretion. You're not there to make everyone watch you in action. The only ones seeing you should be adults who have consented to do so.

Walking down public streets in bondage gear. No. I don't give a flying turd if you're gay/straight/bi or whatever.

Many adults will NOT consent to see you. - They shouldn't have to.

Children may be out and about. They CAN'T consent to seeing you. They don't know that what you're doing is related to something very intimate that ought to be between adults.

It's being disgustingly unfair to them. 😠😠😠😠😠

You want a kink event? Then you should be perfectly free to do so. But it needs discretion.

Anyone who comes in MUST be adult and they MUST know what they're likely to see. So their consent is informed.

Sex Education Material. It depends on the age of children.

The smallest children need to know about strong, loving relationships and the fact that a baby grows and is birthed from a mother's womb. Details about the sex act. Not No Way Not No How.

There's a picture book (Not actually Sex Ed, but the principle is the same.) It's called Granddad's Pride. It's aimed at 4 year olds

Now. A book about a grandad with a husband not a wife. That shouldn't be a problem. I agree.

Two older gentlemen holding hands or with arms around each other, at a Pride Parade. In normal circumstances. I wouldn't have the smallest issue.

Show a loving same sex couple the same wayyou'd expect to see an opposite sexes couple presented to small children. And no one should have a problem with that.

Only that isn't what we're getting here. We get Leather Bondage Daddies! Excuse Me? 😮

In what universe is this suitable for four year olds?

Put them in rainbow coloured jumpers? No problem at all. But this goes way beyond the pale.

I won't pretend otherwise.

And yes. There are books that have been in school libraries with explicit sexual details in them.

(Irony of ironies. People were asked to stop reading aloud from these, because the working was inappropriate for a courtroom.

But it's apparently fine for 10, 11, 12, 13 year olds? I don't think so.😠😠😠😠)

It shouldn't matter if the sex is between a same sex or opposite sex couple. School aged children should NOT be exposed to it.

Letting children learn how their bodies are made, about sexual health, consent, contraception. All good.

But explicit sexual details. No, No, No.

Just thinking about how republicans are going after normie sex shit like "internet porn" and "dildos" now

we fucking told y'all

[wandasaura]

I'm impressed that you've been able to talk about your feelings so openly since you were so young. It's sad that you weren't/ aren't being taken seriously. But knowing yourself so well is a strength.

I resonate with a lot of the things you said. I started going to bed early when I was 12 because I couldn't stand being awake anymore. I grew up thinking that hating your body was normal and good actually, because my mother never helped my sister with her ED but encouraged it.

I was like a year younger than you are now when I started therapy. It literally saved my life. I still have bad days, terrible days but I've gotten so much better. I'm still tired sometimes and that's okay. You're strong just for being here, aura. For getting through so much and still being here.

Idk if it helps at all but it felt kinda good to say so uh... yeah you're a great person and you're stronger than you give yourself credit for.

-🐻

it’s always been to an extent. the moment i’m shut down, like i always am, i take the hint and don’t mention it again until im genuinely at a point where i don’t think i can keep going. but i’ll also add that i was never just a kid. mean girls was my favorite movie and by eight years old i understood the majority of sexual references so… i’ve always just been aware of things that i definitely should not have been.

pertaining to the climate of eating disorders in the early 2000s/2010s… it’s beyond upsetting to look back as an adult and realize the majority of my problems stemmed from the behaviors i not only saw firsthand, but was encouraged to mimic. flared ribs because i was shamed for having a belly as a child and told at every possible moment to ‘suck it in, girl’. i was six. nothing needed to be sucked in. i wish i could say the climate that im in has changed, but alas im still getting praised for my eating habits and the weight i’m losing because of them. it’s so upsetting to think of how we could’ve turned out had our parents and our grandparents been educated about disordered eating and eating disorders. i’m sorry your mom encouraged it love, you’re not alone in that at all and somehow i think that makes it worse.

i first ‘started’ therapy at eleven, and my grief council appointed to me by cps quit after three sessions and told my mom i was “unhelpable” and my mother turned around and told me that. at eleven years old. i went again in college when i finally got away from home and within ten minutes he was telling me “im sensing no lack of trauma here” and i chickened out because sir… this is a first session please let’s NOT DO THIS. and he didn’t even keep out session confidential. two days later it was very very clear to me that he’d turned around and ran his mouth when my RA started asking specific questions about my roommate. so my trust in therapy is very fucking finicky, but i need to go back and in just hoping to god this time around isn’t shit off the bat. you have your good and your bad days, and you’re allowed and valid to have the both of them. i’m so so so glad that you’re doing better and you have a support system behind you now 🥹💗

it feels great to talk about your problems doesn’t it?! i don’t even care if we’re making sense so long as we feel good about it!